Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  “It is Lord Wada now. Will you come with me?” He looked at her pleadingly, then bowed his head. “I will not keep you from your sword or hide you away.”

  “I never want to see a sword again.” Her vehemence surprised her. “But do you not have a wife? Am I to be your concubine?”

  He inclined his head in affirmation. “But other women are pale imitations of you, Tomoe.”

  She closed her eyes again. “You would let me get my mother and Aoi? That’s three more mouths to feed, Wada. Be practical.”

  “You know poets are never practical.” Wada bent his head toward her, his breath warm on her ear. “Tomoe. Come with me. We will make our world new again.”

  She thought of Yoshinaka. The homeless orphan. How he had hit her with that stick, knocking into motion the beginning of her warrior journey. Like a tremendous landslide begun by moving the smallest rock. His last act was a generous one, saving her.

  A convent would provide a peaceful life. She would not have to fight or think or be concerned about anyone or anything except prayer. Shut away from the world. Wouldn’t it be nice? Perhaps. But it was wrong for her.

  Tomoe opened her eyes. She picked up a piece of the broken rice bowl. All of them had used it, she remembered. It was greenish-brown earthenware, made by a ceramist in the capital, brought here by Yamabuki.

  Wada took it from her hands and put the pieces back together. Only one small chip of a hole was missing. “I know of a man who can repair this with gold. It will be more beautiful and stronger than it was before.”

  Tomoe bent her head. “Can he repair me as well?”

  “Only you can do that,” Wada said.

  Sister of heart, a familiar voice said in her head. Live.

  “Yamabuki,” Tomoe whispered for the final time, her voice so faint only her mind heard it.

  Wada sat still, his head bent over hers, his eyes shut.

  She reached for him.

  Twenty-three

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  Drew awakens early on Christmas morning, the way she did when she and Rachel were very small. When she still believed in Santa. Her stomach thrums in excitement. It’s barely dawn. They went to midnight mass last night, yet Drew feels alert, like she’s had a full eight hours of sleep instead of four. After breakfast, she’s going over to Alan’s house, where she’ll meet his in-laws for the first time. See the girls have Christmas for the first time. Begin her part in making the girls’ childhoods better. Never worse. She can’t wait. She wonders if people have children, in part, to have a sort of do-over of their childhoods. Later on, she and Rachel and everyone will go over to the hospice home where their mother is. Bring her some Christmas spirit.

  Drew opens the door. The Christmas tree in the family room glows softly, strung with a thousand white lights that took forever to put up. Especially the exacting way Rachel wanted it done. Drew smiles wryly.

  She sees the back of Rachel’s head as she sits on the couch. A log’s burning in the fireplace. Just like a Christmas card, Drew thinks. Like no Christmas she’s ever had before. “Hey.” Drew shuffles over. “You’re up early.”

  Rachel pulls the blanket back and lets Drew inside. It is warm, almost hot. “I always get up early on Christmas. Even though my kids sleep in now. I just like being the first one up. Besides, I have a present for you.” She pulls out the Japanese samurai book, and a leather-bound notebook beside it. “Completely transcribed into English.”

  “Oooh.” Drew rubs her cold hands together and opens the notebook. It has parchment paper pages with deckled edges, and feels good on Drew’s fingers. Joseph wrote the story out in careful handwriting, the kind of neat script you don’t often see anymore. “Thank you. I haven’t been this excited about a present since Spanish Barbie.”

  Rachel cocks her head to one side. “You remember that?”

  Drew nods, her eyes skimming the pages.

  “Mom and I got that for you, you know. I told her to get it after Dad said you were bad.” Rachel’s arm lies warm against Drew’s.

  “You did?”

  Rachel nods.

  Drew looks down at the samurai book. Her eyes blur. All this time, even when she didn’t know it, her sister had been looking out for her. She puts her arms around Rachel. “Thank you.”

  Rachel hugs her back. “Stop it. You’ll make me cry.”

  “Let me get mine for you.” Drew goes into her room and returns with her iPod and a gift box. She hands Rachel the gift box and plugs her iPod into the stereo on the bookcase.

  Rachel tears open the paper and takes out a small earthenware bowl in shades of brown, green, and blue. A crack of gold runs around the outside in a jagged pattern. Rachel looks up at Drew with shining eyes. “Is this—?”

  “Kintsukuroi pottery.” Drew touches it with her forefinger. “Like what Wada was having repaired for Tomoe in the book. The breaks aren’t hidden. They’re beautiful. Part of its history.” She chokes up a bit now and has to look at the ceramic instead of her sister. “I want us to be like this.”

  “Drew—Thank you.” Rachel reaches for her, but Drew’s stood up and gone to the bookcase. She presses play.

  Drew’s song. She made her own recording—amateur for now—with Drew playing all the parts and then mixing them together. Guitar, piano, viola. Drew singing—passable, Drew thinks, not professional, if she’s honest. Drew looks at the fire, feeling shy.

  The song ends.

  Rachel says nothing. The fire crackles, sending a spark to the hearth. Drew’s mouth is dry. Finally she can’t stand it and looks at her sister. “Well? Did you like it or not?”

  Rachel’s face is wet, her nose swollen. She mops at her face with a handful of tissues. “Holy shit, Drew. What do you think?”

  Drew runs over and puts her arms around Rachel. They hug each other. She thinks of what her sister will look like when she’s very old, when Drew is also very old, their skin loose and wrinkled. On another Christmas morning, in the past, they ran to the tree, Rachel faster. I’ll be as big as you someday, Drew said. No—you’ll always be my little sister, Rachel shouted.

  Will they ever sit here again, early on a Christmas morning? Everything’s changing. Like always. She’s going to enjoy every minute of what they have. She hugs Rachel harder.

  • • •

  A week after Christmas, Tom and I sit alone in the living room. We’re wearing formal clothes for a Saturday, Tom in a loosened tie and dress shirt, his black suit jacket off, and me in a dark blue dress with long sleeves. He has his arm around me and I’m staring at the large photo of my mother resting on the sideboard, propped up against the wall. I took the photo one Christmas about a decade ago, forcing her to stand in front of the Christmas tree with the kids, my children looking everywhere but at the camera—they’re blurred. Next to it, I’ve framed the photos of Mom with her long-gone baby, and with her parents.

  Sympathy cards stand around the photos of my mother. Macaroni and cheese, enchiladas, cookies, and salads cover the kitchen counter. Most of these are not even from people who knew my mom, but people who know me. Who want to comfort my family. I’m touched—even Elizabeth and her son Luke came by with a tray of cookies. “I made these,” Luke whispered at me. “Mixed the ingredients separately.”

  I put my arm around Tom’s midsection and exhale, feeling his breath move my hair. Everyone’s gone home. Drew and Alan took the girls out to the zoo—some fresh air, something to do.

  Two days after Christmas, Mom had a massive stroke in the middle of the night, passing away peacefully in her sleep. For this I’m glad—glad that it wasn’t drawn out.

  “I’m going to get a soda. Do you need anything?” Tom squeezes my shoulder. I shake my head. We disentangle and he gets up, goes into the kitchen.

  I look around for something to do. It feels better to be occupied. There’s a stack of
unsorted mail on the table by the front door. I go through it, flipping ads and coupons directly into recycling.

  There’s a community college catalog stuck in among all the grocery store circulars, addressed to my daughter. She’s still not sure if she’ll go back to school, so she’s staying here for now. She got a job working at the local Nordstrom for the Christmas season, paying us a bit of rent.

  I sit on the couch and open it. If I were to go back to college, what would my major be? I pick up a pen from the coffee table. It’s four-thirty and almost dark, cloud cover making the light thin and watery. Wind blows at the trees, bending them back slightly. Two neighbor kids, a boy and a girl, shriek past on the sidewalk, their Big Wheels rumbling over the concrete, their red curls flying. They are like skipping shadows on film, a glimpse of my once small children. I smile as they pass.

  I circle the classes I’m interested in. Survey of Asian History. Japanese Language. Asian Art. I’ll have to reread the Tomoe Gozen story when I’m through with these courses. Maybe eventually I’ll be able to read those first-person tomes Joseph was talking about.

  Thudding sounds on the stairs as Chase and Quincy clomp down. “Hey, Mom. What’s that?” Chase comes over and throws himself onto the couch next to me.

  “I’m thinking about taking a class or two.” I hold up the catalog.

  “You can sign up online these days.” Quincy perches next to me, puts her arm around my shoulders.

  Chase points to the photo of Mom and her baby. “Is that you, Mom?” It’s the first time he asked about it.

  I expect to feel the familiar flutter of nervousness I always did whenever I spoke of Mom, but I only feel a surge of gladness. “No. Her name was Yoshimi.” I pause to collect myself. Quincy hands me a tissue. “Before ’Bachan met my father, she had a little girl who died.”

  “Oh.” His mouth turns down. “That’s too bad.”

  My daughter tightens her comforting grip. “How come you never told us?”

  “I didn’t know until I talked to my father,” I answer. They know all about him now. Everything’s out in the open.

  “Well,” Quincy says with a sigh, “like Grandma Perrotti says, a leopard can’t change his spots. His loss.”

  Chase squints at the photo. “The baby sort of looks like you.”

  I peer at the photo, trying to see the resemblance between me and the fully Japanese girl, the same way I tried to see the resemblance between Mom and me or Drew and me. “How?”

  “In the chin,” Chase says. He sticks his out. “I have it, too. So does Quincy.”

  I hadn’t seen it before. We all have a slightly heart-shaped face: Mom, me, Drew, my children.

  “It is by far the superior chin,” Chase says. “I’m glad we didn’t get Dad’s.”

  “Hey,” Tom comes back, “what’s wrong with my chin?” He squeezes in next to Quincy and hands me the papers. “Mine is perfectly functional.”

  Chase grins. “No offense, Dad, but you have that little dimple in the middle, and you always have whiskers in it.”

  Tom feels the offending spot with his index finger. “True.”

  The kids and Tom talk about nothing, about time-traveling phone booths, sports, what they should watch next on TV. A comforting hive buzz. They decide to watch television and all of them decamp into the family room. “Coming?” Tom says.

  “In a minute.” I smile. I pick up the original Tomoe book from where it sits on the coffee table. Good-bye, Tomoe. It’s time for you to go into the special archival box and be stored away. I can take you out whenever I need to.

  My house makes that creaking noise it sometimes does, its old framing with its new plumbing settling down for the night. The sun’s almost gone. Outside, all the trees are bare, a few just beginning to bud. A gust of wind stirs up grass and leaf clippings on the lawn, swirling it all up into a cone, about the size of a person. It hovers for a moment, a spectre made of dust, and then collapses, once again, into the earth.

  EPILOGUE

  SURUGA BAY

  IZU PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Summer 1194

  Tomoe wiggled the fishing line in the clear blue water of the bay. “You must not give up,” she said to the young boy sitting beside her in the light brown sand. Beyond, the imposing mass of Mount Fuji rose out of the waters, always snowcapped even when it was so warm they wore little more than their cotton yukata.

  The boy scowled, drawing his grubby knees up to his face, picking at a scab until Tomoe caught his hand. “It’s no use,” he said. “We’ve been at this all day.” He picked up a rock and skipped it across the water.

  “That will scare the fish.” Tomoe knew there was only one remedy for her son’s grouchiness.

  Yoshihide had been born two years after Wada found Tomoe at Shinowara. The boy was the miracle she and Yoshinaka could never achieve. Sometimes, Chizuru said, such things occurred. Just because they were rare did not mean they never happened.

  Now Tomoe lived here with her family, in this small fishing village near the bay. Their house was off the beach. Wada had offered to keep her in a finer home in the capital, apart from his wife, but Tomoe refused. She was happier here, far from the crowds and Yoritomo, who was now shogun. Far from the memories.

  The beach house had turned into Wada’s vacation home, with Wada visiting when he could. His trips had become more frequent of late, with Wada coming often to see Yoshihide, his only child, and staying longer and longer.

  Tomoe reached over and tickled Yoshihide. He tried to resist, holding his body stiff, but before long his mouth wiggled and he began to giggle helplessly. “I’ll teach you to scare the fish,” Tomoe said. He laughed and tried to scramble away, clawing at the sand and throwing it about dramatically, but she held on to his ankles. “You will not escape me!” Yoshihide broke away. At eight, he was almost stronger than she. “Come back!” Tomoe leaped on him again, her belly landing across his legs in the sand. She growled like a monster. Yoshihide laughed so hard he stopped making noise, which amused Tomoe all the more. She went for his belly, his most ticklish spot.

  “Ai, Tomoe, stop. You’ll make him wet himself,” Aoi called from where she hung up the laundry. Tomoe paused, her skin prickling. Once Tomoe had tickled another little boy, just a bit younger than this one was now. Tomoe felt her eyes well with unexpected tears, even as a laugh escaped her belly at her son’s joyous expression.

  Tomoe looked at the girl with the black hair blowing in the breeze. Aoi pulled a strand away from her smiling mouth. Her black eyebrows curved up, nearly as thick as her father’s had been. At thirteen, Aoi resembled her mother, with the same pale complexion and lustrous black hair. But Tomoe was determined to help Aoi weather life well. Already Aoi was used to hard work, was smart and practical. She could fish, cook, and fight as well as anyone.

  Next to Aoi, Chizuru, a stooped and white-haired old woman, sniffed the wind. “I smell rain coming, Tomoe. Perhaps we should stop this work.”

  Tomoe smiled fondly at her mother. “All I smell is fish.”

  Yoshihide pitched another rock into the water. She leaned back into the warm sand as though it were a hammock and closed her eyes, remembering sitting near another fisherman, another time.

  Fat drops of water hit her forehead. Tomoe’s eyes flew open and she sat up. The children shrieked in delight. “A big rain!” Yoshihide shouted, dancing around his mother. “Come on!” Thunder shook the sand, and a flash of lightning arced across the bay. Her mother had known, of course. Chizuru was already at the house, shaking her head at their stubbornness. Aoi pulled down the laundry as quickly as she could, flinging the clothes into a large reed basket.

  “Tomoe!” Wada-chan stood at the door, beckoning her. Even from this distance, Tomoe felt the warmth of his smile. “Hurry, before the lightning gets here.”

  Wada’s hair was more gray than black now, and
his face leaner, but Tomoe saw the young man who had so carefully courted her. Aside from her mother, he had known her longer than any other person alive.

  “Race?” Yoshihide asked hopefully. His adult front teeth were just beginning to come in, pearly-white and slightly serrated.

  “You can’t catch me!” Aoi slipped past them, the heavy laundry basket of wet clothes tilting precariously on her head. Yoshihide took off after her.

  The humid, warm wind blew hard across the bay, sending up plumes of mist, bringing the storm closer to shore. Tomoe heard Kaneto’s voice in her head. Your will to live is too great . . .

  She tilted her head and peered at the roiling gray clouds above her. She thought of running inside to Wada-chan’s waiting embrace. How they would gather around the table to have the smoked eel Tomoe had caught and prepared. How Chizuru and Aoi would sing as they washed the dishes. How Yoshihide still didn’t mind, even at his age, getting on his mother’s lap during a thunderstorm. How he still allowed her to kiss him on his downy cheek when she put him in his bed at night, the snug weight of his arms around her neck. She swallowed away a lump. “You were right, Otochan,” Tomoe whispered.

  “Hurry, hurry!” Yoshihide shouted. “You’re dawdling, Okachan!” He began running in slow motion. “I will let you catch up.”

  Tomoe turned her back on the dark clouds and the water, and broke into a run for home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Novel writing, while a solitary practice, requires a veritable behind-the-scenes legion, providing logistical and moral support. Thank you to my supportive editor, Christine Pepe, and to Ivan Held for believing in me—and huge thanks to everyone at Putnam: Meaghan Wagner, Ashley Hewlett, Kate Stark, Lydia Hirt, Mary Stone, Anna Romig, Christopher Nelson, Amanda Dewey, and the rest of the team.

  Many thanks go to my agent, Dan Lazar, and to Victoria Doherty-Monroe, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, and the rest of the Writers House crew. To Julie Kibler, thank you for the moral and reading support beyond the call of duty. Appreciation goes out to the rest of our Oregon Women’s Writing Retreat, where I wrote some of the first draft and whose members provide ongoing support: Marilyn Brant, Sarah Callender, Sarah McCoy, Jael McHenry, Kristina McMorris, Erika Robuck, and Therese Walsh. To my writer friends Jean Kwok, Susan Meissner, Patricia Wood, Jamie Ford, Ben Brooks, Kristan Hoffman, thanks for your sympathetic ears and advice. Thanks to my assistant, Frankie Masi, for freeing me to write. Tracie Masi, Brenda Radder, Jennifer Kurpiewski, Carly Garrett—you all helped in ways you probably don’t even know about. Thanks to The Naked and Famous, The Airborne Toxic Event, and Tokyo Police Club for providing my writing sound track.