Yuji laughed, a wry laugh that was full of life. Yoriko wasn’t kidding: Their father was a different man compared with when he was mourning the loss of his wife.
This advice business buoyed Yuji’s spirits, but as time went by, the questions grew more serious and somber. This made him uneasy about leaving the advice box in plain sight, so he switched over to the current system of mail slot in the shutter and milk crate out back. When goofy letters came, he still posted them, along with his response, on the wall.
Yuji, sitting on his heels at the table, crossed his arms. His pad of stationery was open, but he didn’t reach for his pen. His lower lip was slightly pouted. Wrinkles appeared between his eyebrows.
“You’re really giving that some thought,” Takayuki noted. “Is it a hard one?”
Yuji nodded patiently. “It’s a letter from a woman. The hardest kind.”
In other words, romance.
Yuji’s marriage had been arranged. Evidently, the pair knew nothing of each other until the day they married. Asking someone from that generation for advice on love is misguided at best, Takayuki thought.
“Just write anything. Who cares?”
“Excuse me? You think I could do that?” Yuji sounded perturbed.
Takayuki shrugged and stood up from the floor. “You got beer, right? I’ll help myself.”
He didn’t get an answer out of Yuji, but he went to the fridge anyway. It was an early two-door model, one that had belonged to Yoriko’s in-laws until they bought a new fridge two years back. Prior to that, he had been using a one-door fridge he bought in 1960, when Takayuki was in college.
Inside, Takayuki found two cold half-liter bottles. Yuji loved his beer and always kept the fridge stocked. He hadn’t always cared for sweets. The buns from Kimuraya had only become his favorites in his sixties.
For now, Takayuki grabbed one of the two bottles and popped the cap. He took two glasses from the cupboard and brought them to the table.
“You drinking, too, right?”
“No, not now.”
“Well, well. Everything okay?”
“I don’t drink until I’m finished with the letters. I’ve told you that before.”
Takayuki nodded and poured beer into his glass.
Yuji, deep in thought, turned his face on Takayuki. “The father has a wife and kids.”
“Huh?” Takayuki vocalized. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Yuji held up the envelope. “The woman who wrote this. The father has a wife.”
Takayuki didn’t get it. He had another sip of beer and set down his glass.
“What’s so odd about that? My dad had a wife and kids, too. She might be gone now, but the kids are still alive. Me, for example.”
Yuji scowled and shook his head. He was getting pissed.
“This isn’t about me. You’re missing the point. I don’t mean the woman’s father—I mean the baby’s.”
“Baby? Whose?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Yuji waved his hand impatiently. “The baby’s in her belly. This woman’s.”
“What?” It took Takayuki another second. “Ah! Okay. So the woman’s pregnant, and the man who got her pregnant has a wife and kids.”
“Precisely. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Well, you could have made it clearer. Who wouldn’t think that father meant her own dad?”
“That’s what you call jumping to conclusions.”
“Guess so.” Takayuki tilted his head and reached for the glass.
“What do you think?” asked Yuji.
“About what?”
“About this, what else? This guy has a wife and kids, and this woman’s carrying his baby. What should she do?”
Takayuki finally understood the problem. He had another sip and sighed impatiently.
“Girls these days have no principles. And they’re stupid. Nothing good can come from fooling around with a married man. What the hell is she thinking?”
Yuji made a sour face and smacked the table.
“I’m not asking for a lecture on morality. She needs advice. What can she do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She has to get an abortion. What else is there to say to her?”
Yuji snorted and scratched behind his ear. “I shouldn’t have even asked.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Fed up, Yuji gritted his teeth and slapped the envelope against the back of his hand.
“‘She has to get an abortion. What else is there to say to her?’ —Leave it to you to say that. I think we can assume she’s thought of that already. Can’t you see her problems go beyond that?”
This harsh rebuke left Takayuki silent. He saw it now.
“Listen to me,” Yuji started. “She’s writing with the awareness that having an abortion is the right thing to do. She doesn’t think he’ll take responsibility, and she can see that raising this child on her own will make life harder for both of them. And yet, she can’t rid herself of an urge to have her baby anyway. She can’t bear the thought of an abortion. Do you see why?”
“I guess I don’t. Do you, Dad?”
“Only because I read the letter. From what she says, this is her last chance.”
“Her last? Why?”
“If she lets this baby go, she may never have another. She was married once before, but she couldn’t get pregnant and went in for an examination. They told her that in her condition, she was going to have a hard time having a kid of her own. The doctor went so far as to say she’d better give up on having a baby. That was the beginning of the end for her marriage.”
“Was she infertile?”
“What matters is that she sees this baby as her last chance. By now, I should think even you would understand why a simple response like ‘She has to get an abortion’ won’t cut it.”
Takayuki drained the last of the beer in his glass and reached for the bottle.
“I understand what you’re saying, but don’t you think she should reconsider? I feel sorry for the kid. Things are going to be tough.”
“She says she’s prepared for that.”
“She says that now.” Takayuki poured more beer and looked up at his father. “But if that’s the case, she isn’t asking for advice. If she can say that much, she’s already decided. It won’t matter what you say.”
Yuji nodded. “Maybe.”
“Maybe…?”
“There’s something I’ve learned from years of reading people’s letters. In most cases, they already have an answer to their problem. They’re asking for advice because they want to see if other people think they’re making the right decision. That’s why a lot of people send me a response after reading my advice. Maybe they had a different solution in mind.”
Takayuki took another sip and grimaced. “What a pain in the ass. I’m amazed you’ve kept this up for so many years.”
“I’m helping people. What makes it a pain is what makes it worthwhile.”
“You’re a strange one, all right. But hey, doesn’t that mean you don’t need to overthink this one? Since it sounds like she wants to have this kid, why not tell her something like ‘Good luck, hope it’s healthy’?”
Yuji looked at his son as his mouth sagged at the corners. He shook his head.
“You just don’t understand, do you? I know the letter hints that she wants to have the baby, but what matters here is the difference between what we feel and what we know. She might feel strongly that she wants to have the baby, while knowing she really has no choice but to let it go. She wrote in an attempt to harden her resolve. If that’s the case, I can’t just tell her ‘Good luck with the pregnancy.’ It would only make it tougher to decide.”
Takayuki scratched his temple. His head hurt.
“If I were you, I’d say ‘Figure it out.’”
“Lucky for you, no one is asking for your advice. I have to get inside her head. The key is somewhere in this letter.” Yuji crossed his arms a
gain.
Poor guy, thought Takayuki. Part of him felt bad for his old man, but he knew that these tough responses were the best ones for Yuji. This made it all the more difficult for Takayuki to say what he’d come to say. After all, he hadn’t made the trip out here just to check on his aging parent.
“Hey, Dad, you have a second? I have something to ask you.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy.”
“It won’t take long. You’re not actually busy anyway; you’re just stuck. Maybe if you think about something else for a while, you’ll come back with a good idea.”
Yuji must have reluctantly admitted he was right. He turned to his son with a sullen look. “What is it?”
Takayuki sat up straight. “Yoriko was telling me about the store. She said things are looking pretty bad.”
“She gave you that garbage, too?” He scowled.
“She told me because she’s worried. It’s only natural. She’s your daughter.”
Years ago, Yoriko had worked for a tax adviser. She drew from her experience to take care of the store’s tax returns. But this year, when she finished up the forms, she’d called up her brother.
“It’s bad. We’re not just in the red. We’re crimson. It would look the same no matter who did the forms. There’s no use hunting for loopholes. Even if I send it off, things are bad enough that we won’t have to pay taxes on anything.”
When Takayuki had asked if it was really that horrible, Yoriko had replied, “If we let Dad file himself, they’d probably make him sign up for welfare.”
Takayuki turned toward his father.
“Hey, Dad, don’t you think it’s time you closed the store? People in the neighborhood are all shopping over by the station. Back before they built the station, the bus stop was enough to keep the business running, but not anymore. Let’s call it quits.”
Yuji looked tired. He stroked his chin. “Close the store, and then what?”
Takayuki took a breath. “You can come to our house.”
Yuji’s eyebrows jumped up. “What?”
Takayuki looked around the room. He saw the cracks in the walls.
“If you close the business, there’s no use staying here. It’s so far from everything. Come live with us. Fumiko has already given it the okay.”
Yuji grunted. “You mean that tiny room of yours?”
“Actually, we’re looking to move. We’ve been thinking of buying a house…”
Yuji’s eyes went wide behind his reading glasses. “You? A house?”
“What’s so funny about that? I’m almost forty. We’ve started looking into things. That’s why your situation came up.”
Yuji scowled and waved his hand. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can get by on my own somehow. I don’t need to depend on you.”
“You say that, but sometimes you need to call a spade a spade. You barely have an income. How would you survive?”
“That’s enough, thanks. I told you—I’ll get by somehow.”
“Somehow? How—”
“I said enough.” Yuji raised his voice. “I’m assuming you’ll be commuting from here tomorrow morning. Quit your jabbering, take a bath, and go to bed. I’m busy. I’ve got work to do.”
“Work? All you have to do is write that letter, right?”
Yuji glared at the paper. He had nothing more to say.
Takayuki sighed and stood up. “I’ll take that bath now.”
No reply.
The old stainless tub at the Namiya house was cramped. Takayuki had to hug his legs against his chest, like some kind of gymnastics exercise. Sitting in the bathwater, he gazed out through the window. There was a big pine tree beside the house, and he could make out some of the branches. This was a familiar view, one he’d known since he was a little boy.
Yuji was probably going to miss giving his advice far more than anything about the actual store. If he closed up shop and moved away, he knew the letters wouldn’t follow him. People liked the current system. There was something fun about it. It was why so many people asked him for advice.
How could he take away his father’s only joy in life?
He woke at six in the morning. His old windup alarm clock had come in handy. While changing in his room upstairs, he heard a noise outside his window. Parting the curtains, he peered down and saw a person walking away from the milk crate. A woman with long black hair and white clothes. He didn’t see her face.
Takayuki left his room and went downstairs. Yuji was awake, too, in the kitchen, boiling water in a pot.
“Morning.”
“Oh, you’re up early.” Yuji glanced at the clock on the wall. “Want some breakfast?”
“I’m good. I gotta get going. Hey, how’d that letter go?”
Yuji was pinching flakes of bonito from a canister. “It’s done. It took me half the night.”
“What’d you decide?”
“Can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“That’s how it is. Those are the rules. It’s called ‘privacy.’”
Takayuki scratched his head. He was surprised his father knew that word. “Anyway, a woman was just looking in the crate.”
“What? You mean you were watching her?”
“I mean, I happened to see her from the upstairs window.”
“You don’t think she noticed, do you?”
“I think you’re fine.”
“You think?”
“It’s fine. It was just for a second.”
Yuji pouted out his lower lip and shook his head. “You can’t just look at these people. That’s another rule. If they think they’ve been seen, they’ll never come back for advice.”
“Listen, I didn’t look at her, okay? I saw her by accident.”
“You go ages without showing your face only to pull a stunt like that,” he muttered on. Yuji’s soup stock smelled about ready. He spooned some up.
“I said I’m sorry,” whispered Takayuki before he went into the bathroom.
Afterward, he brushed his teeth and washed his face and got himself ready. Yuji was making tamagoyaki, a type of Japanese omelet, in the kitchen. After years of living alone, he’d gotten pretty good at it.
“So no, then, for now,” Takayuki confirmed to his father’s back. “You know my door is always open.”
Yuji was quiet. He hesitated to dignify the offer with a response.
“Okay, well, I’d better go.”
“All right,” Yuji said, barely aloud. He still had his back to Takayuki.
Takayuki stepped out through the back door. He checked the milk bin on his way.
Nothing.
What had his father written? He was a little curious—no, he was dying to know.
2
Takayuki worked in Shinjuku on the fifth floor of a building overlooking Yasukuni Street. His job entailed selling and leasing office equipment, and his customers were mostly from small- and medium-sized businesses. The young president of his company was adamant that they were “entering an era of the micro,” an abbreviation for microcomputer. He said it would become the new standard to have one at every office in a few years. Takayuki had a background in the humanities and no idea what he would ever need his own computer for, but the president claimed its uses would be limitless.
“You guys will have to study up.” Lately, this was the president’s new favorite thing to say.
When Yoriko called him at the office, he was reading a chapter in An Introduction to Microcomputers. He hadn’t understood a word of it and was just about ready to chuck it in the garbage.
“Sorry for calling you at work.” She really sounded apologetic.
“It’s fine. What’s up? Is it about Dad?” Whenever his sister called, that was always his assumption.
He was right.
“Yeah. Yesterday, I went up again to see him, and the store was closed. Did he say anything about that?”
; “Huh? No, he didn’t mention it. What happened?”
“I asked him, but he said, ‘Look, we can’t be open every day.’”
“He’s got a point.”
“There’s more to it than that. On my way back, I asked one of his neighbors, ‘How’s the store been doing?’ and you know what they said? The shutter has been down all week.”
Takayuki narrowed his eyes. “That’s odd.”
“Right? When I saw him, he didn’t look so good. He was all skin and bones.”
“He would tell us if he’s sick.”
“That’s what I thought, too… But I don’t know.”
This got Takayuki’s attention. Giving advice was what kept Yuji going. But to keep it up, it was essential for the business to be booming.
Two years had passed since he’d tried to get Yuji to shut the store down. Back then, his father wasn’t sick at all and would never have closed shop, for even a day.
“All right. I’ll stop by tonight on my way home.”
“Would you mind? I feel like if you ask him, you’ll get a different answer.”
Takayuki wasn’t quite so sure, but he told his sister he would “see and let her know” and hung up.
He left work on time and headed back to his hometown. On the way, he stopped at a payphone and called his wife. When he told her what was going on, she sounded worried, too.
He hadn’t seen Yuji since New Year’s, when he’d brought Fumiko and their son for a visit. Yuji had been looking good then. Six months had passed. What had happened in the interim?
It wasn’t until a little after nine that he arrived. He stood in front of the Namiya General Store and took in the scene. There was nothing strange about the shutter being down that time of night, but the store felt void of life.
He went around back and tried the knob. Oh, it’s locked? That was unusual. He pulled out his spare key. It had been ages since he’d used it.
He opened the door and went inside. The lights in the kitchen were off. He stepped up and walked over to the tatami room, where he found Yuji lying on a futon in the middle of the floor.
The Miracles of the Namiya General Store Page 11
