“I put them up,” Momo said, covering Mother’s words with her own.
Not all were photographs of Rei. Me, holding a tiny, tiny Momo, in her first month. Rei’s parents, beaming, posing before a low table lined with half-empty cups. A picture of Rei’s sister’s children, the two boys, tangled up, laughing. She sent it, I believe, when the older boy was five, when they took him to the shrine, on November 15th, for the festival that day. Already, by then, Rei had disappeared.
Intentionally, I suppose, the pictures’ edges have been made to overlap, a bit, they are hung at a slight angle, arranged attractively.
There is one of me with my parents. I remember, clearly, when it was taken. It was spring vacation, before I entered eleventh grade, Father had just come back from the town where he lived, where his company had relocated him. We were going to have dinner at a restaurant in Ginza, all dressed up, we took the picture in the garden. There was a nip in the air that evening, my father perched the camera on the gate, set it so the shutter would go off by itself. It didn’t work the first time. The second time, Mother set the timer. You know, I just realized, it’s bad luck to take a picture with three people, isn’t it? Kei, get a small doll, or that figurine in the entryway, maybe, the glass one, bring that out, will you? You can keep it hidden in your hand, as long as it’s in the picture.
I ran inside, grabbed the glass figurine. I felt its coolness in my hand. My heart pounded when the photos were developed, a shot of the three of us, but with another, invisible. Three, and yet four. Only, three.
A dozen or so old pictures, that one among them, on the wall.
“We’d put them away, I guess,” I said, and Momo stared, unmoving.
“When you put them up and look like this, it seems so real.”
So real. Momo enunciated the words, those two, very clearly.
“Well, it was real,” I said, and Momo cocked her head.
“I know, but for me, I don’t remember it, whether it’s real, or not.”
Mother laughs loudly.
Rei’s eyes, in the photograph, stare fixedly at something. I don’t remember what.
I WONDER IF Seiji will agree to meet me.
Agree, not agree, I am startled to find myself using these words. Did he agree to meet me? And did he, sometimes, not agree? Was it like that, the way we were?
I can’t take it, I shake my head.
Pushing all that from my mind, I call Seiji. I hate calling. I told Seiji this once, a while ago. I don’t like it that, when I call, I can’t see you, can’t see how you are.
I’m fine, however I am, Seiji replied.
I laughed at the word, fine. It was true, he seemed fine. Always calm, quiet, never shaken.
“Can we—” I begin, but his voice, steely, interrupts.
“This is a bad time.”
“But—” I say, strong.
“I mean it, I can’t now.”
It is true, I can’t see how he is. I listen for sounds in the background, but I hear nothing. Is he outside, or in a room? He picked up the phone so he probably isn’t in a meeting, maybe he stepped out to answer, but if he has decided not to answer my calls, he wouldn’t have stepped out.
I hate it, calling.
I think again. It doesn’t have to be now, when you’re free, call me, I say, and Seiji hesitates, there is something he cannot make up his mind to say.
Please, don’t call me again.
He is about to say this, but he hesitates, is that it?
What has made Seiji this way, it makes no sense.
You don’t believe in anything.
I don’t understand, those words that he said. Because I do believe. How could I have had a child, if I didn’t believe, it’s impossible. And I couldn’t have gone on seeing him, either, without believing. I couldn’t keep breathing, to keep myself alive, if I didn’t believe.
And yet, I had a feeling, faint, very faint, that perhaps I knew I didn’t.
I don’t believe in anything.
Since that day? The day Rei disappeared?
Calmly, quietly, with a sense of finality, Seiji hung up. He’s fine, even without me, I think. The welling tears blur my vision slightly.
YOU’RE A FOOL, the woman says.
It has been a while since she has come, and followed.
It’s not Rei I’m worried about now, I say coldly, and the woman leers.
My, my, how busy the living are, she says, chuckling.
It is true, all my life, I’ve been busy, changing. I see one landscape in the morning, and by noon it has changed. I feel one way at night, and in the morning things are different. Last year’s hats are out of fashion now, I don’t wear them anymore.
“Momo and I, we’re different now, too.” I tell the woman, plaintively, without thinking. Though I know enough not to expect sympathy.
“It’s true, it’s like that, especially with children.”
Unexpectedly, she responds.
“You watch them so closely, enjoying, rejoicing at how they change, until one day, all of a sudden, just like that, off they go.”
I see Momo’s face. Turned away. The curve from the base of her ear to her chin is so gentle, and yet the sense of determination I see there is hard.
Yesterday, my heart was pounding over Rei, today it pounds over Seiji. Yesterday, I would gather Momo in my arms, hold her, today she has escaped me, and I stand watching her leave, numb.
“Really, always so caught up in things, I feel like a fool.”
We’re all the same. Seiji, was that his name? From over here, he’s no different, just another fool. What point is there in refusing you like that, so stubbornly? the woman says.
Pain stabs the pit of my stomach. Refusing is the word that hurts.
Isn’t there anything constant? I ask the woman, wondering what she will say. She turns her head ambiguously. Is she telling me yes, or no? Or is it, perhaps, neither one?
Why not throw it away, into the ocean, she says, after a while.
It feels good. Hurling it, sending it flying, into the distance.
I recall the figure of the woman, whenever it was, throwing her twins away, into the water. The waves were rough. She hugged the child to her chest, tenderly, before she threw it in. Her arm was supple and strong, she betrayed no hesitation at all. She threw the twins, one at a time, away. The two babies soon swallowed up, under the tall waves.
FOR A MONTH, two months, I did not hear from Seiji.
Another year began.
“I’m a year older, by the old way of counting,” Mother says. “Next year, I’ll be seventy.”
You get two years older, every year, the old way? Momo asks, puzzled. No, in the old way of counting, you would add a year to the ones you already have at the beginning of each new year, that’s how it worked, Mother tells her. I still don’t understand, Momo laughs. Why did people back in olden times want to count like that when it made them older?
“Is that what I am? A person from olden times?” Mother laughs, too.
I guess, back then, people thought it was a wonderful thing to live long, so they wanted to get older and older, don’t you think? Mother says. Mmm. Momo nods agreeably.
It strikes me as funny, this weirdly unremarkable conversation taking place at the same time that I am so caught up in thoughts of Seiji, and I smile.
Picking at the New Year’s dishes Mother and I have made, half her, half me, I prepare the main dish, a soup with mochi. We never have sea bream or shrimp for New Year’s in our house, Momo says, dissatisfied. Sea bream and shrimp, those are just symbolic, you know, they don’t actually taste that good, Mother tells her. I don’t see how that can be true, there is always shrimp in the prepared New Year’s meals they sell, sometimes a whole sea bream, too.
I recalled the New Year’s soup at Rei’s parents’ house. The first New Year’s after we married, on the first day of the new year, I prepared the soup the way they made it there. On the second day, I made it in the Tokyo style, as my mother
had taught me, with clear broth, komatsuna and chicken, a sprig of mitsuba floating on top, the mochi toasted.
In the region where Rei was born, the cakes of mochi were round, they were not toasted, the broth was made with konbu and flavored with white miso. Daikon and carrots gave it color. I enjoyed it more, because I was unaccustomed to the flavor.
“Ah, the air is always so clear on New Year’s day,” Rei said, stretching out on the tatami. He had been drinking spiced New Year’s sake, then regular sake, too, his face was flushed. You really get drunk when you drink during the day, he said, and a second later he was snoring.
I wonder if Seiji is with his family now, too.
I think, curious how it will feel, and the pit of my stomach aches. I have never been jealous of Seiji’s wife or his children. Because it is unclear to me what family means. I did not create the family into which I was born. The family I tried to create broke, so easily. I have never, really, sensed it, what a family is.
I am jealous now.
Not of their being family, but because they have a reason to be close with Seiji.
In the lacquer boxes of New Year’s food, there are now gaps where the food has been eaten, revealing the bottom of the box, sticky, gleaming. Once I have filled the gaps with more food, I will forget that the gaps were ever there.
I felt an unpleasant sensation. Once more, the pit of my stomach ached.
IT IS HERE, but it isn’t.
I open my laptop, type the words.
A novel, Seiji said. I have not heard from him, even now, when the New Year’s decorations that stood outside the front door, pine and bamboo, are gone. I recall, from a distance, a woman planting bulbs, in a scene in a story that I wrote a while ago. The woman buries several crocus bulbs in a corner of the garden, but before they grow, before the flowers bloom, she leaves.
Was it because of Rei, that I wrote about a woman who leaves home? The story was based on the things Rei had done, yet without realizing it I made the woman do them.
“She isn’t happy, in the end,” Seiji said, after reading it. He was not involved with the story, it was for another publisher, so this wasn’t until after it was published. I had not told him about it. But he found it after some time, and he had read it, without telling me.
“Who?” I asked, not understanding.
“The woman, who left.”
I had not written about what happened to her after she left. I wrote only about the man left behind, staring blankly at the deep yellow bed of crocuses, pouring myself into the writing.
“I didn’t sense any happiness rising up from the prose.”
I should hope not, going off like that, it wouldn’t be fair for her to be happy suddenly, I told him, I think. Seiji smiled faintly. Then, ever so slightly, his face darkened.
It isn’t here, and yet it is.
I flip the words, type them on the second line.
I can’t write a novel. I am too distracted by the affairs of this world, I lack the self-possession to enter into the act of imagining what is not here. Rei, who isn’t here, but is; and Seiji, who is here, yet isn’t. It is maddening. Maddening, and, sad, I yearn to be with him.
It startles me, how attached I am to Seiji. But he is here, so I cling. If he left, I would have nothing to hold on to.
Why not throw it away, into the ocean.
I remember the woman’s words.
Perhaps I will throw it away.
I HEARD SEIJI’S voice.
Not because he called. I went to the office of a different publisher, not his, to discuss a project. After the meeting, as soon as I got in the elevator, I heard his voice.
“We’ll have to celebrate!” the voice said.
Looking up, I saw a broad-shouldered man with clear skin, nothing like Seiji.
“Is something wrong?” the man said.
By the time we reached the ground floor, everyone but the man and I had exited the elevator. I had been staring straight at him.
“Your voice,” I whispered.
My voice? he asked, peering at me.
“Your voice, it sounds just like someone I know.”
What kind of person is he, that man?
“Someone whose voice I yearn to hear, but can’t.”
Without meaning to, I had told him the truth. It wasn’t the sameness of his voice, it was the way he was standing, that made me say it.
“Well, then, I’m happy to let you hear it,” the man said, and put his hand around my waist. It was an unnatural movement, but he made it natural. We went, together, to a hotel.
I sweated a lot.
I didn’t think I could do it with anyone but Seiji, it had been so long.
But I could. It was easy.
With Seiji, and Rei, too, it was easy.
To grow distant. To go where I could not see them.
“You’re beautiful,” the man told me.
“It was because I wanted it,” I replied.
“I’d like to do this again.”
“We can, but I doubt it will be better than today,” I said, honestly.
That’s all right. That’s how it is, usually. A lot of the time, the way things actually are, and the way they feel, aren’t the same. No one remembers how they really were, you know, not really, he said, his expression serious.
I don’t remember it, whether it’s real, or not.
I recall Momo’s words.
They seem similar to the man’s, but different. They were different, and yet it struck me that in the end, perhaps it was the same thing, after all.
Great, let’s get together again, then, I said, manufacturing a smile. Knowing, even as I spoke, that there would be no second time.
I washed the sweat away in the shower, but the smell lingered, faintly, on my shoulders.
I PULLED MY right pajama leg free and took a few steps, the left still on.
A morning bath. I would run the washing machine while I soaked. Losing myself in housework let me forget Seiji, so lately I hardly ever left the house. The air inside was humid and warm. I would forget it all, everything.
My cell phone launched into its delirious music.
This early? I thought, wary, and went out, one pajama leg on, the other trailing on the floor.
It was Seiji.
Oh, good morning!
My tone was bright. What am I supposed to say, in this state, with one leg in my pajamas, making excuses for myself, to myself, but I can’t explain this to Seiji.
“I’m afraid it’s been quite a while since I called. How’ve you been?”
Very polite speech, more intimate speech, mixed. As always.
What is it? Has something happened? I ask, growing worried. He wasn’t the sort of person who could go back, just like that, to the way things were before, acting as though nothing had happened. I felt concern for Seiji, first, before the anxiety of waiting, the annoyance.
“No, everything’s fine.”
A warm sweat, something like that, spreads across my body.
“It makes me happy to hear your voice.”
Before I can think, I am speaking the words. Seiji falls silent. I have been rebuffed.
“How is the novel going?”
“How is it going?” Rebuffed, his call still pleases me, I parrot his words.
“Are you writing?”
I’m writing, a little.
My novel, a mere two lines written. Seiji has thrown me away. I listen to his voice, and that is clear. But I am happy. Simply to hear his voice, in my ear.
Goodbye, I think, pulling my pajamas from my leg. I toss them into the washer, push the button. I measure out the detergent, sprinkle it into the machine as it begins to fill. I stroke the top of my naked thigh, to see how it will feel. It feels smooth, and soft. Read it, when I’ve written it, I tell Seiji, and hang up. What did Seiji want to tell me, I wonder? So early in the morning.
The washing machine goes round, making a whirlpool. Some detergent remains, undissolved by the cold water this w
inter morning. The water spirals, splashing up.
I rest my hand against the door to the bathroom, I recall the softness of Seiji’s lips. They felt like thick petals. Seiji, I say, just to see how it feels. No one answers. No one is there. Everyone retreats from me, goes away.
seven
MY BODY IS pulled, almost dragged.
It is not, exactly, that I want to go, it is simply that I go.
“Manazuru, again?” Mother asked, as I was leaving.
I remember Momo, slipping on her shoes in the entryway, calling out to Mother, I’m going. With my chopsticks I lifted a bite from the heap of bacon and eggs on my plate and hurriedly shoved it into my mouth. I remember, too, feeling it catch, a strangled pressure at the base of my throat, as I swallowed. Had I fixed the bacon and eggs, or was it Mother, that is something I do not remember. I do not remember, either, taking my plate into the kitchen and washing it. I went straight to my room, took a heavy sweater from the chest of drawers, donned my coat and scarf, put my wallet and a pair of underwear, nothing else, in a small bag, stepped over the brown slippers that Momo had not bothered to straighten in the front hall, grasped the door handle. It was then that Mother spoke.
“That’s right.”
“What is it, in Manazuru?” Mother asked, pain in her expression.
I look away.
Long ago, when Father was still alive, I dreamed of Mother making love. The smooth skin of her back, pale against the surrounding duskiness, was all I saw, I could not see her face, and yet I knew, dreaming, that it was Mother. Was the man she was with Father, or not? I was not interested. Mother, making love, was all that mattered.
I was scared. And also, relieved. I didn’t want to see, but now, at last, I had seen, I did not have to prepare myself for what I might see, and I felt deeply relieved.
I saw the same pain in Mother’s back, in my dream, that I read in her face.
“There isn’t anything, I’m just going.”
A voice, unlike mine, replied, and yet it was my voice, and I left.
Manazuru Page 13
