Everything looks brighter now, sounds sharper, and I wonder, for a second, Is it nerves, or a new lust for life?
But when I focus on the question, it’s there: the muscle cramps and tightened breaths, the fear and helplessness. It’s right. It’s time.
“Mama,” I say, when she looks up from her work. “What will you do when I’m gone?”
She physically recoils, pulls away from me. “Sora!”
“I’m serious.”
She sighs. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Will we?
I wish that I could tell her that it’s always later, and there’s not as much time as she thinks. But I cannot. Instead I say, “Those photographs . . .”
“Yes?”
“We haven’t taken any in a while.”
“No. I didn’t think—”
“We should.”
“Okay.”
And in the evening when she slides the laptop back into its case, that’s exactly what we do. In every room. Pictures of us pulling stupid faces, grinning, arms around each other. Serious portraits of us with books, and tea, and staring through the windows. And then we bake, and we take photographs of that, too. When the cakes are in the oven, my mother grabs a handful of flour and dumps it out onto my head, snapping my look of surprise amidst a cloud of white. I shake my head so hard that I see stars, and when I look up she is covered too. And the last picture of the night is of two white-haired, white-faced people with flour hanging off their eyelashes, grinning like they really mean it.
96
And then it’s here. The Night Before. My final evening.
I let my breath out slowly, and switch on the camera.
This is hard.
But I have to. I can’t just leave without saying good-bye. He’ll understand this, but he would not fathom that.
One. Last. Letter.
“Hi, Ojiisan.
“I don’t even know what to say. Except, there is a reason that they limit the number of extra innings to a game. Sometimes . . . sometimes you just can’t win.”
“I tried. I promise I tried. But this was one hell of a curveball.
“But I slid into base before the other team could stop me. I’m content with that.” I swallow hard.
“Mama will not understand at first. I know she won’t. But maybe you can show her how to hold a bat again and live. Just like you taught me.
“Look after each other. You’re my team. I love you always.”
I sit here for what seems forever, trying to convey everything I feel. All those memories. Every single one. And how I love him and I’m sorry and I wish that I could stay. And yet, this is exactly right.
Then I stop recording and attach it to an e-mail, scheduled to send out tomorrow night, when it’s all over. And I sit, staring at my screen. I don’t know where the week has gone, and I can’t remember what I did with it. Sure, there are photographs, and memories, and when I close my eyes I see them all, up close and personal, a slide show just for me. But what have I done? What will I leave the world except a sorry note?
• • • •
“Oh, oh, oh! Yes! You’re here!”
“Hi, Mai!” I laugh, baffled by her cheeriness.
“Hi?” Kaito says too.
“I did it, I did it, I did it!”
“Did . . . what?”
“I told her! I told her I want to study art, and, I used you, Sora, I hope that you don’t mind—”
“Me?”
“Yes! She looked at me like she was going to yell, and it just came out. I begged her to listen, and I told her about you, and how you taught me that dreams are important because time is short, and sometimes, even when it’s hard, we have to take control of our own destinies.”
She actually did it?
“And?” Kaito beats me to the question.
“She went tight-lipped and quiet, and I thought that she was going to send me to my room, tell me again that I’m too young to know what the important things in life will be . . . but she didn’t. She just asked to see my art.”
I can see Kaito on the screen, holding his breath exactly as I am.
“She looked at it all. And then we sat, and talked, and I’m not going to law school! I’m going to write to the dean and explain. And I’m hoping that he’ll let me switch, but if he doesn’t it’s okay, I’ll go somewhere else. I don’t care. I’m not going to be a lawyer!”
“Yesss!” He punches the air victoriously, “And she beats the Mega Boss. Mai takes the win!”
“You,” Mai giggles, “are such a dork.”
I watch them, so close that even though they’re halfway across town from each other, they might as well be in the same room. And I am glad.
• • • •
All the way through dinner, I can feel the tears, hot and heavy just behind my eyes. Every time my mother asks “Is that all right?” or “Water?” my throat cracks beneath the awful truth. This is our last evening meal. The last time I will sit, unhurried, at the table with my mother. The last time she will cook her soba broth for me. I breathe in the scent of it, rich with spinach, and I wonder whether she will ever eat the dish again, or whether it will always be our last meal in her mind. Forever tainted sour.
I’m glad that it is broth tonight and there are no chopsticks. I don’t have to imagine my mother placing bones—my bones—into an urn.
She knows something is wrong, offers to get me extra pain relief or make me an appointment to see Doctor Kobayashi, and I almost tell her, but I do not have the words.
97
I wake up in the dead of night, and for the briefest moment I’m confused. There is no light, no noise, no pain. Why am I awake?
And I remember. The last day. The ending.
Nerves jump like crickets on my insides. I lie here, listening to sounds that are not there: imagined wind, the ticking of time, a fox rummaging through dustbins ten stories below. And I think of Yamada-san; would he have ended it like this, if he had the choice?
And the man who spoke to newspapers about the day he died; was that real?
And this: I cannot mourn, for I have lived.
The whistle of the sword, sings; frees me with a final kiss.
I’m scared, and I’m excited, and relieved. Because today, whatever it is that will follow this, I take control. Today everything changes.
Tomorrow there will not be that awful stomach-sickening moment when my mother has to wipe me clean, or the guilt as the baggage beneath her eyes grows larger, darker, every day. There will not be the promise of a ventilator, a machine that reads your roving eyes and translates movement into t.h.e. s.l.o.w.e.s.t. e.v.e.r. w.o.r.d.s.
There will be only memories, and freedom. In the next room, my mother lies asleep as though nothing is different, but today everything changes.
I almost made her a video too, but I could not. She would play it on repeat until my image warped and my words took on meanings that were never meant.
I still don’t know what I will say to her. Or how. Or when. I wish that I could take Mai’s victory—my part in it—and share it; make my mother proud. And I wonder about telling her at breakfast, but I do not want to bring Mai into it. Breakfast is for us and us alone.
98
We eat in almost silence, but I do not mind. I let my eyes trace her hairline, the wrinkles around her knuckles and the way she draws a breath every time I close my mouth around a bite-size square of toast, her lips mimicking mine in miniature as though she’s willing me to eat. And I remember. I remember all the times she’s dealt with cuts and scrapes and bruises, all the times I ran out the door without saying good-bye.
And here I am, almost grown, doing it again.
When lunch is over, she sets water on the stove for tea. Only this time, she does not drop tea bags into mugs. She reaches for a tin, pulling out an orange teapot I have never seen before.
“I thought,” she says, turning to me with a smile, “that perhaps it was time you and I lingered a little.�
�
99
My mother kisses me good-bye and waves us off as though this were any other afternoon.
The air feels strange. It crackles as it rubs against my skin.
“Are you okay?” asks Kaito.
“Yes. Are you?”
They nod.
“So where d’you want to go?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, man, anywhere. Your chariot awaits.”
It’s cold, and my friends look as though they haven’t slept and their brains need switching off, so I suggest the movies. Pure, traditional escapism.
The first movie I ever went to see was Spirited Away. I sat beside my mother and the whole way through the film I had to keep on checking she was there, that she had not been stolen by Yubaba and turned into a pig. I knew she hadn’t, because my mama was not a greedy, selfish thing like the little girl’s parents, but still I had to check.
I loved that movie. The colors and the sounds, the tiny, clackety soot sprites. But it gave me nightmares for a week.
Today I sit here in the dark, staring at the screen, but I’m not watching really. I let the pictures flash before my eyes as I inhale the dusty-seats-and-popcorn smell and listen to the people fidgeting around us.
And then the lights come on and it is time to go.
I have not eaten with my friends since I started to need help to get the food up to my lips, but today I want to taste everything, and so, when Mai suggests the food court, I happily agree.
“Your food, sir,” Mai says, bowing theatrically. She chooses a split-tailed shrimp sitting on a small pillow of rice as the first morsel, holding it out for me to bite. Except she is too far away, cautious, and when I stretch forward to reach it she realizes her mistake and moves her hand, and in one swift effort I am stabbed in the nostril with a pointy stick and showered in pearls of rice.
She laughs, one hand to her mouth in shocked apology. “I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay.”
“Let me try again,” she says, and this time she is slow and steady, and I bite down on the morsel without incident.
It’s fresh and sweet, and Mai grins at me sheepishly, and I wish that this could last forever.
“How is it?” she asks.
“Good.”
If anyone walked by our table, they would think us spoiled and greedy. We have salmon rolls, and tuna, and egg rolls soaked in sticky syrup. Seaweed and crab with avocado. My friends take it in turns to help, exclaiming, “Gosh, you have to try this!” and “Eat up!” with every bite. I eat until my stomach swells, and then Kaito looks up and says “noodles.” And orders us three bowls of ramen.
• • • •
Predictably, we end up in the park, wandering the paths beneath the trees. So far, nobody has said a word about tonight, and I am glad. I want to give my friends this day, a parting gift, untainted.
But as we walk along, Mai asks, “Are you scared?”
“No.”
She nods, but she’s still frowning. “I’d be terrified.”
I’m not scared. Not of that, the what-comes-next part, but it isn’t quite true that I am not scared at all; there is a hollow pit inside me that should be squeezed out by all that sushi, but it’s not.
The sun sets early in December, and it is already growing dark around the edges of the sky.
“I love the way the branches hang there in the winter,” Mai says as I look up to see the winter canopy. “Like someone took a brush and ink and painted them all in.”
She’s right. And I imagine her going home tonight and painting half a dozen trees, each blacker than the last. “Me too. It looks so . . . deliberate.”
“I think nature is deliberate. Only we can’t see it because we are so used to chaos,” she says. “Like . . . that tree with the pin-straight trunk.” She points ahead of us. “You couldn’t build a thing that straight.”
And she moves around in front of me and stands on one leg, arms outstretched to greet the sky.
She wobbles, and Kai laughs. “You’d be straighter if you planted all your roots against the ground.” And he leaves my chair and walks behind her, takes her arms in his, stretching her farther upward, and they’re reaching, steadying each other. And as the half-light glows behind them so that they look like a painting too, I think that this is how I will remember them, for always. This is what life is; what makes the world so strong.
We settle here to watch the sunset, beneath the pin-straight tree. It seems as good a place as any. Kaito leans his back against the trunk, and Mai leans hers into his chest, and for a moment we are quiet.
The sky turns, the edges dimming while the center glows the brightest gold.
I tear my eyes away to look at them. “What will you both do?”
“Huh?”
“When the sun comes up tomorrow, and next week, next year . . . what do you think you’ll be doing?”
“I don’t know.” Kaito is the first to answer. “Tomorrow does not feel so real, right now.”
“No,” she agrees sadly. “But beyond that’s easier. I’m going to study art and become famous for my work. It will be beautiful.”
I smile. “What else?”
“I’ll live in a nice house. A proper house, with a garden gate. And I will let all the neighbor’s children pick plums from the trees.” She stops, and then: “And before that, I think I might go back and volunteer at the hospital.”
“With that crazy nurse?” Kaito frowns, pulling her closer.
“No! Yes. I don’t know. I don’t care, I just think it would be nice. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How about you, Kai?”
“I honestly don’t know. I want to do something, but I don’t really know what yet.”
Mai looks up at him, snuggling closer. “You’ll be taking over the whole Internet before you’re thirty, dork.”
“Oh! You’re right! How awful of me to forget the master plan!” he says, grinning.
“It is! I want a mansion to go with my garden fence.”
The sky deepens, and it’s almost time to go. And then I see it. “Hey look!” I say. “The first star!”
The first star of the last night.
We watch them blink on, one by one, and I’m reminded of that night with Ojiisan.
I always used to think that the stars lived forever, that I would too. And I can’t believe it’s over.
One, two, three . . . I count the shining, distant lights, and Ojiisan’s voice sits inside my head. Heavy. Worried. “So many of them will be burned and gone before we even notice them.” I know exactly what he meant, now, but it’s not the way he thinks. The sky is different here. I can count the stars we see upon my fingers. And as I sit beside my friends, I know I’ll not be cast aside unseen.
100
As we approach my apartment block I start to get nervous. My friends have not stayed after our days out before. Will I have to beg? Come up with a reason that they have to stay? Will my mother be suspicious?
But I needn’t have worried. My mother greets us with a smile, and rather than her usual “thank you and good-bye” she turns to my friends and says, “Would you come in for some tea?”
Does she know?
Does she suspect?
But as she bustles around the kitchen, boiling water, setting out the teacups, scooping tea into the pot, she hums. An old tune I have not heard for years, a song about the cherry blossoms hailing spring, filling up the air.
I wish that I could tell her just how right she is; that tomorrow, everything will be completely different. New.
We sit, the four of us, and sip our honey-colored tea as though it is the most ordinary thing. And when the tea is drained, we shuffle off toward my room. We stop in the doorway and I look back. I need to see her, at the sink or clearing dishes, unaware that eyes are watching her. I need to see her one last time.
But she has not yet turned away. She smiles at me and says, “Just an hour, okay? It’s get
ting late.”
“Yes, Mama.” I can’t believe that this will be almost our last conversation, and the silence hurts my heart, but I don’t know what to say.
I have to do this, and I hope she understands.
101
Kaito slides the door closed, and we look at one another with nervous grins. They might be grimaces; I can’t tell.
“All right,” I say, and as I hear the words, adrenaline rips through my veins. “Let’s do this.”
Mai pushes air out of her cheeks and stares at me. “You’re sure? We’re really doing this?”
Not now. Please not now. I cannot not go through with this.
“Yes.”
“Well then.” Shaking slightly, Kaito reaches down into his bag and pulls out a large, clear bottle, “I brought you this.”
Sake.
“I read about it. It’s supposed to help depress the central nervous system.”
“Yes.” I nod, tasting the saltiness of nerves upon my tongue.
“It’s not all for you, though,” he adds, unscrewing the lid and lifting the neck to his lips. He swigs. “For courage!”
He passes it to Mai, who does the same. “For courage!”
And she holds it out for me.
I expect it to be smooth and bitter, but it’s not. It’s rough and woody, and my lips and tongue buzz underneath it. I swallow, and my throat does too.
“Wow!” I say, and then, “For friendship!”
We pass the bottle around once more, and then I say, “The pills are in a pot beside my bed.”
“Wait.” Kai stops me.
“I have to, Kai.”
“No. It isn’t that. We . . . we have a surprise for you. A parting gift.”
I imagine rice balls drenched in syrup, incense, or a dagger to protect me from the evil dead; something that will send me on my way with a full stomach and stout heart.
But Kaito moves across to my computer, and he turns it on.
“It’s not . . . I hope . . .” He swallows, starts again. “We made something. There’s so much that Professor Crane and his friends never got to do, and . . . well . . .”
The Last Leaves Falling Page 20
