by Kyoko Mori
At the same time, the bartender, in the middle of mixing one of the drinks, said, “Two martinis, two gin and tonics, a Manhattan, two tequila sunrises, what else? Did you say whiskey sour cocktail or whiskey and sour?”
“I can’t remember,” Yuki said.
“What do you mean, you can’t remember? That’s your job.”
The busboy repeated, “Did you hear me? The check.”
“Leave me alone,” Yuki said. Everyone at the bar turned around. “Both of you. Leave me alone.”
The bartender stopped in the midst of making the second tequila sunrise. The grenadine continued to drip into the glass, each drop of red blooming toward the bottom.
Flowers floated into Yuki’s memory. Large flowers like watercolor splashes. Her grandfather’s morning glories had come in more colors than anybody else’s. Every fall, he saved the seeds, labeling each package in his beautiful handwriting about the color and the year and the size of the flowers so that the morning glories would continue, huge splashes of color climbing over the fence.
The bartender was staring at her.
“My grandfather died this afternoon,” she said. Her voice was thick and her throat hurt.
“Take a break, Yuki; it’s all right,” she heard the bartender saying. “Those people can wait. Go onto the balcony. There’s no one out there.”
She turned away from the bar and hurried onto the balcony. She walked to the far end and stood watching the white and yellow lights of downtown, a few miles away. The low sky above them was streaked with their reflections. Her grandparents’ house seemed so far away. There, the countryside would be completely dark now, the miles of flooded rice paddies like a calm sea. During her visit, she had sat in that darkness with her grandfather, listening to the early crickets. She had imagined the stars above them making the same sounds, light-years away. Her grandfather had said that watching the stars with her, when she was a little girl, was one of his best memories. Yuki looked up from the glimmer of city lights to the dark sky, which was too hazy for stars. On the road below the balcony, cars were driving by, their wheels making a swishing sound like water flowing down a long river. Yuki stayed alone on the balcony for a long time listening to the sounds.
15
THE EFFECTS OF LIGHT
(August 1975)
The chives planted outside the window at Isamu’s boardinghouse had flowered in the four days Yuki was with her grandmother. Their purple heads stuck out above the narrow green leaves. Isamu was making some coffee. Yuki sat at the table to examine the three black-and-white photographs he had taken of her the day before she left. In the background, she could see the field outside Nagasaki where they had had a picnic lunch. All three photographs showed her standing in that field and laughing. Anybody who saw them would think she looked happy. At the time, she had had no idea that her grandfather was dying.
Yuki put away the photographs and watched as Isamu poured the boiling water over the coffee grounds. In his blue T-shirt and jeans, he looked tall and thin, reminding her of the shadows the moonlight made from poplars and cedars. The first time they met, on the first day of school at the college library, he was standing by the window with a large photography book in his hands. He looked serious, almost sad. But then he closed the book, smiled at Yuki, and said, “Hi. I’m Isamu Nagano. Who are you? You must be a new student.” A year ahead of her in school, Isamu had grown up in Nagasaki, though his parents now lived on the main island. In April and May, he showed her the city and the countryside around it. Since school got out in June, he had been teaching her how to use his camera and develop her own film. They went to parks, beaches, the mountainside to shoot pictures. They could go almost anywhere on his motorcycle.
When the coffee was ready, Isamu handed her one of the cups and asked, “Do you want to sit in the garden?”
“Yes, that sounds nice.” Yuki stood up. She was tired after her all-night train ride. When she called Isamu from the station at six, the sun had just come up. Now, it was past nine and the garden looked sunny and warm.
Yuki left her travel bag in the kitchen and went out the back door to the stone bench in the back of the garden. Isamu had brought his camera. He aimed it at his landlady’s dahlias, but put it away without shooting. The dahlias were bright pink. Blue and yellow delphiniums towered behind them.
“The garden’s at its best, isn’t it?” Yuki said as they sat side by side drinking coffee. “This is such a nice place to sit and see the flowers.” Because his landlady was an old friend of his mother’s, Isamu was free to use the kitchen and sit in the garden, privileges most boarders didn’t have.
“You can come here anytime,” he said, “even if I’m not home. I’ll tell my landlady.” He poured her more coffee from the thermos. “So are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “But I’m worried about my grandmother. She’s never been alone in her life. My uncle Saburo lives close enough to help, but I’m worried she’ll be lonely.”
Isamu put his hand on her back. “Things will work out.”
His hand was warm. He patted her shoulder and then rested his palm against the nape of her neck. She stood up abruptly and walked back and forth in front of the dahlias. Her steps stirred up some brownish grasshoppers. They flew low to the ground, their wings vibrating. She stopped in front of the bench and sat down on the grass.
“So tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Let’s see,” he said, smiling—still, in the way his eyes narrowed, she knew he was hurt by her abruptness. While he talked, she picked at the grass and the fallen twigs around her until she realized she was making a small pile of broken stems and leaves. She scattered them again. She couldn’t help thinking of the way people at work teased her about him. “No, he’s not my boyfriend,” she would insist, her face feeling hot. “He’s my best friend. That’s better. I don’t want him to be a boyfriend.”
* * *
At ten, she got up to leave. “I have to go to work. I should drop off my bag and get my uniform.”
“I’ll give you a ride,” he said.
“No, it’s only a few blocks.”
“How about getting to the restaurant?”
“One of the other waitresses picks me up when I work during lunch. She’ll be there.”
“I’ll walk with you to your place, then.” When Isamu stood up, his camera fell on the ground. He sat back down and picked it up. “The shoulder strap’s broken.”
“Let’s see.” Yuki sat down next to him. She took the camera and put it on her lap. She could see where the black leather strap had slipped free.
“There should be a buckle that holds this together. It must have just come off.”
He leaned forward over the ground, looked, and then found the small metal clasp. She put the camera back on his lap.
“Here, you do it,” she said. “It’s your camera. You want to know how to fix it in case this happens again.”
“Do I?”
“Watch.” She picked up one end of the strap and put it into his right hand. Next, she hooked the buckle onto the other end and placed it in his left hand. “Look, the strap goes under and over the buckle and hooks on the other end. Just like a belt. See that?” Yuki put her right hand over his, trying to guide him. “No.” She drew back her hand. “Hold that buckle steady. Don’t move it around like that.”
“To tell you the truth,” he said, turning sideways to look into her face, “this is kind of distracting. I’m not exactly thinking about the camera.” He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I thought about you a lot,” he said, “while you were gone.”
She stood up, her heart beating fast. But when he reached up and took her hand, she didn’t pull back. He turned her palm toward him and put his lips lightly to her wrist. She hesitated, half wanting to sit down. He looked so serious, a little sad even. Neither of them spoke. Finally, she drew back her hand very gently so he had to let go. The next moment, she wa
s walking away. She didn’t turn around until she was in the neighbor’s yard, too far to see his face clearly. He was still sitting on the bench. The camera had fallen on the ground again.
“I’ll call you after work!” she shouted. “I’ll see you later.”
She cut across the yard to the street and ran back to her boardinghouse. Standing in front of her door with the keys in hand, she realized she had left her bag in his landlady’s kitchen.
* * *
At twelve thirty, when every table but one was occupied, a regular customer, Mr. Sato, came in and stood at the door. The hostess went to seat him. The two of them took a few steps away from the door and then stopped. They talked for a long time. Yuki could see them looking in her direction now and then as she waited on her tables. In the end, Mr. Sato went back to stand at the door, to wait for a different table, Yuki guessed. The only unoccupied table was in her section. As she walked back to the kitchen to pick up her order, she felt satisfied, almost proud, that Mr. Sato would not sit in her section. She didn’t care what he said to the hostess to avoid taking that table. She wouldn’t have waited on him even if he had sat there.
About a month ago, Mr. Sato came in for lunch at two thirty, almost stumbling from being drunk. Because he was a regular customer, the hostess seated him though it was near the end of lunchtime and the few customers still at the tables were getting ready to leave. After Yuki took his order, Mr. Sato dropped his fork and signaled to her. She brought him a clean fork and was about to put it down in front of him when he reached and grabbed her other hand. He squeezed her fingers. Yuki brought the fork back up, held it next to his nose, and said, “Let go right now. This should be sharp enough to break your skin.” She didn’t raise her voice because she felt perfectly calm, though very angry. Mr. Sato let go immediately. Nobody saw or heard the exchange except Kazuko, one of the other waitresses, who happened to be nearby, cleaning up her tables.
“You’ve got nerve,” Kazuko said. “I’d have gotten all flustered and nervous if he had done that to me.”
Yuki had shrugged. “It didn’t bother me that much,” she said. She didn’t feel nervous when she was angry but in the right. When his order came up, she brought it to his table and said, “This is absolutely the last time I will wait on you.” Mr. Sato still came back to the restaurant for lunch occasionally, but he never sat in her section.
As Yuki stepped out of the kitchen with a tray full of plates, Mr. Sato turned to stare at her from the doorway. She stared back until he looked away, and wished there was an adult version of sticking out your tongue at people so she could show him her contempt.
Putting two cups of coffee on the tray along with the dishes, Yuki thought again about what had happened this morning. It was completely different from her run-in with Mr. Sato. She could still hear Isamu’s voice saying, “I’m not exactly thinking about the camera.” His eyes were saying, I’m thinking of you, isn’t it obvious? He had looked at her that way several times before, but not as clearly as this morning. Her heart beat faster when she remembered how he put his arm around her shoulders. They were so close she could feel the words starting up in his throat before he said them. “I thought a lot about you,” he had said. His words had upset her because she, too, had thought a lot about him while she was gone. Between the times when she was sad about her grandfather or worried about her grandmother, Yuki had wondered what Isamu would think of the green paddies outside, her grandmother’s purple lantern flowers and the wooden slide her grandfather had built, the finches their neighbor kept in bamboo cages. When she talked to Mr. Kimura, she wished Isamu was there to meet him. They would have liked each other, she was sure. She thought of the way Isamu held her hand and kissed her wrist this morning. She had wanted to sit down next to him and say, “I thought a lot about you, too.”
But I don’t want to fall in love, she reminded herself. She put the tray down on the table and placed the food in front of two women—a mother and a daughter, no doubt. They both had big paper bags as if they had been shopping all morning. Yuki asked them if they needed anything. No, they shook their heads, nothing. They looked a lot alike when they smiled. Yuki turned to go. What I need, she told herself, is friendship, not love. Isamu is my best friend. I should be satisfied with that. Besides, she thought, love ends in sadness one way or another—I don’t want any more sadness.
* * *
When she got home from work, she found a note on the door from one of the other boarders: Isamu called, it said. call him back. She took down the note and put it in her pocket. A flat, square package had been left by the door where the landlady put Yuki’s mail. Yuki went into her room and sat on the bed with the package. There were stamps on it, but no return address. She tore the brown wrapping and threw it on the floor.
Inside, she found a large notebook with a bright sky-blue cover. Immediately, she thought of her mother. It was one of the colors her mother had loved. She had a notebook like this for her pencil sketches and watercolors.
Yuki opened the notebook in the middle and found a sketch of a park. A little girl in a straw hat was feeding some pigeons by a water fountain. Yuki could almost feel the tight weave of that straw hat; it had a long pink ribbon that fluttered in the wind when she and her mother walked in the park and sat by the fountain. She picked up the torn paper from the floor. The stamps had been canceled two days ago at a post office in western Osaka; that would be the post office closest to her father’s office.
Her father had been notified of her grandfather’s death. Her uncle Saburo had sent him a telegram even before Yuki’s arrival. “He was our son-in-law,” her grandmother said. “He shouldn’t have to find out from someone else. That would be an embarrassment to him. People would say he had given us cause for resentment and that’s why he wasn’t notified. I don’t want to embarrass him that way.” On the day of the funeral, her father didn’t call or send a telegram. Even in the next three days, no flowers or note of condolence came from him.
“I’m ashamed to be his daughter,” Yuki had said.
“It’s not your fault,” her grandmother said. She didn’t say, “Don’t say things like that about your own father,” or “Maybe he has some good reason.”
If her father had a good reason, it would be that he never got the telegram. But Yuki was sure now that he had gotten the telegram and found out about her grandfather’s death. He had sent the sketchbook to her two days after. He must have thought it would somehow make up for not sending his condolences to her grandmother. But he didn’t write her a note or even put his name on the package. It was almost as though the sketchbook had come back to her on its own and he had nothing to do with it. He’s wrong to think this makes up for anything, Yuki thought as she opened the first page.
The first set of pictures were watercolors. The dates penciled in the corners were from before her birth or even her parents’ marriage. Still, she remembered looking through them a long time ago with her mother, who stopped after each page to tell the stories of her father’s illness. Yuki tried to remember. Here, she thought, was the view from the hospital where her father had spent a year with his tuberculosis. Then there was the tray of lunch he refused to eat because, her mother said, he thought everything at the hospital tasted like throat lozenges. Then the tulips his mother had brought one day, which he didn’t like because their bright colors gave him a headache. Yuki’s mother had laughed as she told these stories. She was amused by what a terrible, spoiled patient her husband had been.
Yuki peered at the picture of him sleeping on the hospital bed. Her mother had loved him and found his faults amusing. Maybe he was different back then, she thought. Otherwise her mother wouldn’t have been at his bedside every day against everyone’s advice. Forget him, they told her; he’s going to die. She should have forgotten him, Yuki thought now. She should have walked out of the room while he was sleeping and never gone back.
In the middle part of the sketchbook, Yuki saw sketch after sketch of herself done in pencil.
The strokes were swift but careful. In the later pictures, she recognized some of the clothes, toys, places. She remembered the grainy taste of the wooden building blocks, the pink wool cap she had wanted to wear even in the summer, the pier where she had seen ships for the first time. Then she came to a group of watercolors from a vacation she could remember well, when they spent a weekend at a friend’s cottage in the mountains near Kobe. She looked through the pictures of the cottage, the flowers outside, the dairy farm her father had taken them to. That was the last weekend her father had spent with them. Yuki was seven, in second grade. She had collected mountain flowers and leaves and pressed them between her mother’s books to bring to school in the fall.
On the second-to-last page, Yuki found a detailed watercolor portrait of herself holding some daisies to her nose and smiling a big, frank smile. Her hair was braided and tied with red ribbons. This is how my mother saw me, she thought, such a happy child. Back then, strangers used to smile at her on the bus or in the store when she was with her mother. “You’re mama’s girl, aren’t you?” they would say as she and her mother stood or walked hand in hand. “You’re lucky to take after her so.” We were happy, Yuki thought; anybody could tell.
She turned to the last page. It was a pencil sketch of her father sleeping on the chaise longue in the cottage. Her mother’s pencil strokes were at once bold and careful. She must have been eager to sketch him before he woke up. Several hydrangea blossoms had been pressed right onto the page. The petals were intact, though the color had faded from bright purple to blue.
Yuki went back to the first sketch of her father sleeping in the hospital bed. In both pictures, he looked slightly sullen but almost comical, endearing even—the spoiled patient whose complaints had made her mother laugh. This is how she wanted to see him, Yuki thought as she turned back to the last page, even when I was seven.
The hydrangea blossoms were shaped like round-edged crosses. These, Yuki remembered, were the flowers her father had brought. Her parents had argued for a long time that morning. As usual, her father had shouted, slammed the door, and gone away. But this one time, he came back in the late afternoon and handed the flowers to her mother. He sat down on the chair, looking sheepish and sorry. Then he fell asleep. He must have been relieved. Rather than complaining to him about the way he had walked off, her mother had let him sleep. She even pressed these flowers to the last page of her sketchbook. She must have wanted to remember his gesture of apology, his coming back to her. She must have loved him still.
