After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  It didn’t matter how much she read or did, however. She still feared that she’d missed some crucial lesson, that she’d fail miserably in the end.

  “Did Daddy pack enough warm clothes for you?” It would be cold at the campsite at night. Men didn’t think about these things.

  “Jodi did.”

  “Jodi?”

  “Yeah. She’s Daddy’s new friend.”

  A strange, unsteady sensation passed over Rita. Sure, she’d assumed that Cal was dating, but this was the first woman he’d introduced to Kristen. Not that Rita hadn’t sensed this moment was coming. Still, couldn’t he at least have the decency to give her a heads-up? And was it really appropriate for this woman — his new girlfriend — to accompany them on a camping trip? After all Cal’s moaning about how much he missed Kristen, how about a little one-on-one father-daughter time? Rita pictured the three of them — Kristen, Cal, and Jodi, the impostor mother — sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs. Staring at the scratched up walls of her apartment, she’d never felt quite so alone, pathetic.

  “Well, what’s this Jodi like?”

  “She’s nice. She painted my toenails red.”

  So that was all it took to win a little girl’s favour? And what kind of woman thought it was appropriate to paint a six-year-old’s toenails fire-engine red anyway? What next — she’d be perming Kristen’s hair? And where was Cal in all this? Rita had to struggle to keep her voice from quivering. “Honey, do you mind putting your father on?”

  Cal sounded totally relaxed as he greeted her.

  “So Kristen was just telling me about the new woman in your life.”

  “Yeah, the girls have been hitting it off.”

  The girls. Cal used to refer to her and Kristen as his girls. It hadn’t bothered Rita at the time, but now — hearing this reference attached to her daughter and another woman — it made her skin crawl. “How old is this Jodi woman, anyway?”

  An irritated sigh. “Relax, Rita. She’s thirty-one.”

  So she was older than the twenty-two-year-old flight attendant he’d dated during their separation. Cal had long had a roving eye when it came to pretty young things. Though he claimed he’d never acted on his desires before they split up, Rita suspected otherwise.

  Just because Jodi was a respectable age didn’t mean she was fit to be taking care of a small child. “What exactly does she do?”

  “Do?”

  “For a living.”

  “She works in international development. Now are we done with the third degree?”

  For a moment, Rita almost wished he’d said an aesthetician, a cocktail waitress, a stripper. “Well, what does an international development consultant know about kids? I thought this was supposed to be your time with our daughter, Cal? Instead, you’re getting a perfect stranger to babysit her all the time?”

  “Christ, Rita. Jodi’s a part of my life now, so of course I want her to be a part of Kristen’s life, too!”

  “Oh, nice. As always, you’ve got our daughter’s best interests at heart.”

  “It is in her interest to see her parents happy. With other people. You, too, Rita. You should move on, start dating.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The gall of him. “And who says that I’m not?”

  “Look.” His tone softened. “I realize this can’t be easy for you. It isn’t easy for any of us.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Cal didn’t make it appear very hard at all.

  Rita flopped down on the bed in Kristen’s room and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Fighting with Cal had left her drained. As if she hadn’t already been feeling utterly drained.

  Although she’d given Kristen the larger of the two bedrooms, it was still only half the size of her old room, back in the days when they all lived together as a family. And the windowsill was cracked and mouldy, the screen in tatters. Painting the walls robin’s egg blue — Kristen’s favourite colour — would help. A bit, at least.

  What kind of mother let her child live in these derelict conditions?

  All her life, Rita had resented Lily for letting them grow up in poverty. You’ve had a good life, haven’t you, dear? Rita still had no idea what her mother had wanted to hear in asking that strange question. Absolution, perhaps. Well, the truth was that Rita didn’t feel like she’d had the greatest of childhoods.

  Would Kristen one day feel the same way? Would she hold Rita responsible for not being able to keep their sprawling house on Golfdale Road? She probably resented Rita already. Yet poverty was a relative thing. In Lily’s mind, they’d never truly been poor because they’d owned their own house — even if it had been mortgaged to the hilt and crammed with all those weird boarders. So many different types of hair all woven together in the giant hairball that had clogged the bathtub. Red pubes, grey pubes. Mismatched, multicoloured dishes on the counter, vestiges of foul-smelling foods. The constant rise and fall of husky voices through the thin walls, a waterfall of piss into the toilet. No matter how familiar these men’s intimate sounds became, they remained absolute strangers.

  The walls of this place were thin, too. Last night, the kids upstairs had thrown a party and later Rita had heard staggering around and ecstatic moaning, as two — or several — of them went at it until the early hours of the morning. What was she going to do when Kristen got back? Knock on their door and say, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but would you mind keeping the orgy down so my daughter can sleep?”

  Funny how she’d never thought of Lily as a single mom until now. Why was that? Maybe because Kaz had never been around to walk out on them. At least, Rita had no memory of that. She’d been too young to remember anything. Had she been older when Kaz ran off, she would have seen Lily’s aloneness as a distinct change from an earlier, happier state, rather than just the way things had always been. Struggling to get by, for Lily, was simply the norm. Because that’s what single moms did. As if Rita had time to date anybody. Cal had some nerve giving her dating advice.

  She’d promised to go over to Gerald’s house again today, and now she was late because Cal and Kristen had called later than scheduled. They’d probably lost track of time because they were having so much fun with Jodi, all three of them lounged back in the car, listening to Beatles tunes and playing licence-plate games.

  If Lily were here now, Rita would ask: How on earth did you manage to do it? How did you make a home for us from a crumbling old house, furnished with battered castoffs? How did you not drown in self-pity as you saw all the happy families around you?

  But Lily wasn’t the sentimental, self-pitying type. She was a survivor who rolled up her sleeves and did whatever needed to be done. Rita prayed that her survival instincts were serving her well now.

  Mail had piled up at the house. A bulky stack of bills interspersed with Cosmo and Glamour, the puckered, painted lips jumping out like wounds. As Rita sorted through it all, stacking magazines on the coffee table, she noticed that some back issues had scraps tucked inside. She’d forgotten about this old habit. For a while Lily had carried around a notebook to jot things down in, as an aid to her memory. Although that hadn’t lasted more than a month, she’d improvised another system: things furtively scribbled on napkins and discarded envelopes, shoved here and there.

  They were just lists. Bread, wine, aloe vera, hair dye. Rice vinegar, dashi, nori, pickled ginger. Pick up dry cleaning, vacuum, eggs. Sweets for Nisei Women’s Club, fibre for Gerald, 2:00 Gerald Y-E. Plums, meringues, Ted F., Folgers, pork chops, Ted F., 3:00 Fri. Drano, if not call plumber, Polysporin, prunes.

  On they went, all in Lily’s messy, curvaceous hand. Some had dates at the top; others only had Thurs or Mon. Perhaps the month of the magazine in which each note had been stashed comprised Lily’s system of cataloguing her life. Her brain probably wasn’t that methodical. But what did it matter if she wrote Maxwell House instead of Folg
ers? None of these chicken scratches were terribly illuminating.

  The only thing that seemed at all out of the ordinary was “Ted F.”

  Years ago, Lily had dated a man named Ted Fujita. His freshly bleached dentures gleamed whenever he smiled, an eerie contrast to his liverspotted skin. He was one of those men who always seemed to be trying to give the impression he was happier and more successful than he actually was.

  What could he be doing on her mind after all these years?

  Just as likely, however, that “Ted F.” referred to Lily’s hairdresser or plumber. Besides, Rita didn’t relish the thought of cold-calling her mother’s ex; the news of Lily’s disappearance would throw him into a panic. It was exhausting always having to deal with other people’s frazzled nerves.

  “There’s a lady on the phone. I think you better talk to her,” Gerald hollered up the stairs.

  Rita picked up the bedroom extension. “Hello?”

  “My name is Aya Yamamoto. Your mother and I know each other from the Nisei Women’s Club.”

  A rise of excitement in her gut. “Thank you for calling — we’ve been wanting to get in touch with the club.”

  “As soon as I heard about Lily, I had to call to see if there’s anything I can do to help.” Perfect English, not a trace of an accent, a typical nisei. Mrs. Yamamoto’s words were almost too perfect, too carefully formed.

  “How was my mother at your last meeting?”

  “Actually, Lily didn’t come.”

  “But my mother always attends, doesn’t she? She speaks so fondly of your activities at the club.” In truth, Rita had no idea what they did there. Flower arranging? Tea ceremony? Sewing tiny Japanese angels with black yarn hair for the Christmas bazaar?

  “I also thought it a bit odd that we didn’t see her last Thursday.”

  Thursday. The day before Lily disappeared.

  A light purring: breathing, hesitating. Was there something else Mrs. Yamamoto wanted to say?

  “I’m not talking about the Nisei Women’s Club, Rita.” The voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m talking about our other meetings.”

  “Other meetings?”

  “So Lily never told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t have.” A peculiar excitement — the thrill of secrecy, a girlish note — animated her voice.

  “Mrs. Yamamoto, what exactly are you referring to?”

  Silence.

  Rita flushed at her own brusqueness. “I’m sorry. I just … I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  Shuffling on the other end. Mrs. Yamamoto was pacing around, emitting a nervous, bristling energy. “Better if we discuss this in person.”

  That edge of paranoia. It was the trademark of folks of that generation. They believed that the government and police were spying on them constantly. It was absurd — pathetic, really. Did they honestly believe they were important enough to merit phone taps? What was this, Watergate? Yet they lived in a world of government conspiracies and men in dark suits out to get them.

  Evidently, Mrs. Yamamoto had no intention of saying anything further unless Rita paid her a visit. Well, it wasn’t like she was getting a lot accomplished here anyway. “Shall I come over to your house right now?”

  “Tomorrow morning would be better, dear.”

  Rita jotted down the address in Don Mills, wondering whether Mrs. Yamamoto was some batty old lady in need of attention, neglected by her kids. Maybe that was what the Nisei Women’s Club was really all about.

  Rita filled her glass yet again, kicked off her flip-flops and lay back on the lumpy couch. The good thing about buying French Cross in four-litre cartons was that it allowed you to lose track of how much you’d drunk and not feel guilty about having polished off a whole bottle.

  The wail of a baby rose up through the floorboards from the basement apartment. A guy with a shaved head and plenty of intricate tattoos lived down there. Had an ex-girlfriend showed up out of the blue with their offspring in tow? While Rita didn’t relish the thought of a crying infant in the building, the guy was lucky, really. Having a kid around forced structure and discipline on your life. If Kristen were here now, no way would Rita be staring at the wall, slowly getting wasted.

  She used to have friends she could talk to when she got like this. A few years back, her best friend from art school, Meryl, had hooked up with a Mexican potter, and now the two of them lived at an artists’ colony in Oaxaca. The place didn’t even have a phone. These days the extent of Rita’s contact with Meryl was an occasional postcard: “Come visit me — mi casa es tu casa. It’ll be like the old days. You can get back into your painting. And there are plenty of beautiful men wandering around half-naked.” It was a lovely idea, but she’d never make it out there. If she ever had enough money to go on vacation again, she’d want to take Kristen, so it would have to be somewhere more child-friendly. At times like this, though, she desperately missed talking to Meryl.

  Sure, Rita was friendly with a few colleagues at her school, but they weren’t old friends. They were fine for a lunch out or a coffee in the staff room but that was about the extent of it. Besides, most of them had picture-perfect lives. They probably weren’t even in town, off at their cottages for the summer. And she had one or two single girlfriends who were good for a night on the town and wretched hangovers the next morning (exactly where she was headed anyway, unless she eased up on the French Cross). They were the sort of friends you could chat with about guy problems, sex. Not your mother having gone missing. Was it really possible that she had nobody she could call up to talk to? How had she let herself become so isolated? Somewhere along the way, Rita had managed to lose touch with every single living soul who’d once cared about her. How the heck had that happened? Was this why people got dogs? A dog would nuzzle his furry head against her thigh, every hair breathing warmth, affection. At least with a dog around, she’d be assured that if she hit her head in a drunken stupor, she wouldn’t die all alone on the living-room floor with nobody even noticing.

  Grandpa always knew how to cheer Lily up. “Your mother came this close to winning the Cherry Blossom Pageant.” His words had confused Rita, because she’d thought all pageants were like the Miss America contest, and she’d never seen any Asian participants on TV. This had been a different kind of beauty contest, Grandpa explained, one that was only for the Japanese immigrant community.

  Back then Rita must have assumed her grandfather would live forever. He was like that old elm tree in their front yard: a bit gnarled, its branches twisting off in tormented directions, but perfectly solid, its bark so comforting to touch.

  Until one day the tree had to be chopped down. Grandpa’s heart attack seemed just as sudden and brutal.

  His death left Rita panic-stricken, numb. Like she was lying in a tepid, murky bath and couldn’t muster the energy to pull the plug if her life depended on it. How empty, how devoid of anything, the house now was, with just her and Lily. Listening to the crunchy-mushy sound of each other chewing, a yellow cereal-box wall between them.

  Weightless. That was how she felt most of the time. With Grandpa gone, the sensation was more extreme than ever. He’d been her only connection to her father, and now he was gone, gone, gone. They were both gone, and nothing could ever change that.

  Since there was no one to keep house anymore, with Lily in her debilitated state, the two boarders moved out quickly. And Tom had left a long time ago to live with his girlfriend.

  So everything was going to fall to Rita. It didn’t matter that she’d just graduated from high school and had her whole life ahead of her — “most likely to travel the world” written under her self-consciously vivacious smile in the yearbook. What did it matter? She wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be forced to be the saintly one. Every Asian family had one: an unmarried daughter who got stuck at home caring for the ailing mother, fixing tea and doling
out pills and massaging bunioned feet. Perhaps at first it would seem to be just a temporary situation — just keeping Mom company until she got back on her feet — except in Lily’s case that was never going to happen. While Tom would be grateful at first, soon he’d take everything she was doing for granted, and since she’d never have time to get drunk and meet guys to dance the night away with, she’d never fall in love. The years would slip by, and before she knew it, she’d have gone from being the good daughter to just another lonely spinster, staying with her mother as much for her own sake.

  So Rita rebelled. If Lily was a mess, Rita had to show everyone that she could become even more of a shit show. It wasn’t something she planned, yet maybe there was a vague sort of premeditation in her attempt to out-Lily Lily, as she slithered into her tight, fringed miniskirt and brushed silvery soot over her eyelids, particles getting stuck on her trembling lashes such that she saw the world through a haze of stardust — more so, inhaling deeply, holding that first hit in her lungs for a moment frozen in time. And then she and her best friend, Eve, were out the door, their pulses thrumming, heading to Yonge Street to hear some group that Eve adored play at Friar’s Tavern or Le Coq d’Or. The music sounded folksy but more upbeat than what Rita was used to, and she couldn’t really get into it, woodenly bopping her head and hanging back from the stage. Things got easier after that guy who looked like Jesus bought them drinks and gave them a tiny white tab. Then something seemed to loosen or open up in Rita’s body — distinct and actual enough to have its own colours and luminosity — and soon the music was whooshing through her heart, a magnificent sense of freedom taking over.

  She didn’t feel like she was looking at herself as she leaned toward the watery mirror at some guy’s apartment later that night, tracing the feral shadows around her twin’s eyes.