A Thousand Stitches (2 page)

Sam turned and swept Katherine into his conversation with Pauline. Morgan turned to Akiko. She asked about his wife, his job as an editor in Washington, D.C., and about the trade show he was covering in San Francisco. They had moved on to talking about Sam's various job prospects in Japan and speculating what the final interviews would be like, when Morgan stopped and said, “What is that song?”

Akiko had been aware of it as she sat and chatted. She remembered the first time she had heard it, six years earlier, when she and Sam were living in San Francisco for a year, as he set up the English language program at the university where Maxie and Pauline were still teaching. She had been in Soko Hardware, just about two blocks from the restaurant where they sat now, when the song,
“Seto no Hanayome,”
had played on the store's sound system. When the proprietor had seen her stop and listen, he said, “My son just came back from three years in Japan and says that this was
the
hit of a few years ago. Very evocative, isn't it, especially if you know the Seto Inland Sea area.” Akiko nodded yes and lingered a little longer to listen after she paid for her purchases.

“Isn't it something about a bride and a boat trip on the Inland Sea?” said Morgan. “My Japanese is rusty, but—”

“Yes,” said Akiko, “it's the story of a young woman leaving her small island and her family, including her little brother, to travel to another island to marry.”

“Ah,” said Morgan.

“It's a love match,” said Akiko, listening as the second verse shifted pace, the strings swelled, and the singer's voice edged toward but never quite into tremolo. It reminded Akiko of “You'll Never Walk Alone,” which she had heard in a student production of
Carousel
the month before. As much as she thought it was ridiculous, she melted as Julie sang of her Billy's love beyond death and time, using the same vocal techniques Rumiko Koyanagi was using as she sang of the small boat rounding the cape, the sunset glow, the promise of a clear day on the morrow, and the hopes of the couple for their future. The cloying sentiment was the same, the swelling of the violins the same,
“Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart…”—“Don't cry, little brother, you'll be fine with Mother and Father…”

“Sam, Sam, listen to this song,” Morgan called, but by the time Sam finished what he was saying and turned to Morgan, the song was winding down: the violins faded and the sound effects—the cries of Seto sea gulls—brought it to its conclusion. “You don't know this song?” Morgan asked.

“No,” said Sam. He called the waitress over. She explained that the tape would loop back to it in about an hour. When Morgan and Sam both began telling her about their childhood in Matsuyama and the many ferry trips they took across the Inland Sea, she smiled and said she'd ask the manager to reset the tape.

She was back in a few minutes and was saying, “He's agreed to reset it. He said he knows the area himself,” as the tape squeaked to a stop. There was a moment of silence before “Seto Bride” began again.

Everyone listened. The manager came and stood by the big round table to listen with his customers. Morgan and Sam translated bits as the song flowed past them. Pauline asked for a complete explanation when it was over, and the two old friends did the best they could. “Akiko says it's about a love match,” said Morgan.

“Claire saw the Inland Sea the year she taught in Japan,” said Sam, “but for the rest of you, that treat still lies in the future. I'm so glad Akiko and I decided to go back to Japan. It's time for me to slow down. Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to end up at a university in Matsuyama again.”

“It is tranquil and beautiful,” said Claire. “It must have been a great area to grow up in.” She looked at Akiko as Morgan and Sam nodded. Akiko caught her eye, and turned away, smiling at Morgan, and responding to his latest comment.

Please, please don't let Claire or any of the others see my panic. I think I'm keeping it off my face. Just be calm. It is time to go home. I would love to see my sisters. And he has three good possibilities for jobs. We're just as likely to end up in Tokyo or in Himeji as we are to end up back in Matsuyama.

She remembered another
sukiyaki
dinner that she had prepared when Claire had come back from her year in Japan. Claire had described her trip to Shikoku, where she had visited Takamatsu and had climbed the steps all the way to the top of Kotohira Shrine in nearby Kotohira before traveling to Matsuyama, where she toured the city and the hot spring at Dogo.

“I'm sorry I didn't bring you anything special from Shikoku,” Claire had said to Sam.

“What I want is some fresh sea bream from the Inland Sea,” he replied, “and that's something you couldn't get through customs.”

Claire had helped Akiko clear the dishes after that
sukiyaki
feast and had said, “Akiko, you don't seem as excited about Matsuyama as Sam does. Isn't it your hometown too?”

“Yes,” she had said, “or at least sort of. I'm from a small mountain village in a remote corner of the prefecture. But I've never enjoyed the best opinion of Sam's family.”

“Why, what could be the problem?” Claire had asked.

“Oh, it's a long and complicated story,” said Akiko. “But I have no regrets. I was lucky enough to have a love match marriage at a time when they were virtually unknown,” she said as she closed the door to the dishwasher and shook out a tea towel.

As Sam continued to talk about Matsuyama and his job prospects there and in other Japanese cities, Akiko was overwhelmed again. Sam's mother had refused to meet her on their first visit to Matsuyama as a couple on a Christmas break from Ohio. She remembered walking the short distance from the department store back to the hotel as the light faded from the afternoon sky and fat
botan yuki
peony snowflakes fell. Her packages, with presents for the children of her sisters and her friends back in Ohio, were heavy, and the snow, so unusual in Matsuyama's mild winters, stuck to sidewalks, seeped into her shoes, and soaked her coat. She sat alone in the hotel room drying out and waiting for her husband to come back. The weight of the hometown values and the social system she had defied pressed down on her.

Her proud, strong mother-in-law went to her grave having never acknowledged her second daughter-in-law. The next year, Sam's father visited Ohio. He was a pleasant elderly gentleman who enjoyed being in the States again, but was lost without his wife. Akiko had waved goodbye at the airport in Columbus. Sam went with his father to San Francisco and saw him off from there before coming back to Ohio. His father was dead before the end of the year, and Sam went alone to the funeral. When he returned to Ohio, Akiko had thought that that was the end of Matsu­yama in their lives.

But Sam had grown sentimental in the past few years. He had been on a few professional visits, and Matsuyama now seemed to be number one on his list as he considered jobs in Japan.

“After I've chosen my new job and we go back to Japan at the end of the next academic year,” he was saying, “we will have spent a total of eighteen years here in the States. I think that my last job in Japan will be a nice counterpart. If I'm lucky, I'll have another eighteen years—or more—to work in Japan.”

Akiko smiled and thought how glad she was that she was going to stay in Tokyo with her sister while Sam went to visit Matsuyama to talk to the officials at Ehime University.
Stop fretting. You defied them—all of Matsuyama—before. You can do it again if you have to.
And right then and there she decided that if she had to go back to Matsuyama, she would do so with her head held high. Her life in the States had been a grand adventure. She could walk through any storm she had to.

A month
later, Akiko opened the china closet and took out the parcel from the crematorium. She sat at the table and slowly untied the white
furoshiki.
The box inside had a white paper wrapper with religious symbols. She opened it, knowing that inside the drawstring bag she would see exactly what she didn't want to see, what she had seen the day she brought it home. She told herself she had to do what he wanted, had to get it done by his birthday. And she had to have this taken care of before she could deal with the manuscript.

She went to the kitchen for the extra
suribachi
and
surikogi
mortar and pestle still in their box from the pottery shop. She placed them on the dining room table, remembering the drinking party and how happy it had made her to hear Harumi read Katherine's letter. She went back to the kitchen and boiled water for
genmaicha
, her favorite tea, and told herself she had to get to work.

Her hand slipped. She applied more pressure, leaning all her weight into it, but the entire bowl slipped from her grasp. She thought she had broken it but then realized the bowl was fine; it was her finger that was hurt. The scrape bled on the chunk of bone as she picked it up from the floor and put it back in the box. When her hands stopped shaking, she went to the phone.

“
Ne-san
, I started that job I told you about when you were here. I can't do it.”

“I'll take the next train. Wait at your counter,” was Junko's only ­response before she hung up.

At
two-thirty Junko came through the ticket barrier. Looking determined as usual, she marched up to the tourist information counter where Akiko was talking with Ichikawa-san. Akiko introduced her big sister and explained that she had come to visit from Osaka.

As they walked away from the counter, Junko said, “Taxi. I'm carrying too much for the bus.” Along the way, the taxi swung by the Castle, and Junko said, “Can't say that I mind seeing the White Heron when I come here. It really is beautiful and looks great in the fine weather.” When they pulled into the entrance to Akiko's condo, Junko said, “Oh, little sister, I have news. I read my newspaper on the train. Shotaro Miyaz­awa has died. Big funeral tomorrow. I guess it's a major event for corporate Osaka.”

“So Michiko's a widow now too,” Akiko said.

Junko slipped out of her shoes in the
genkan
and began pulling things out of her shopping bag. “Here's the article from the Osaka paper. And here are some Kobe cakes. They sell them in the department store in Osaka Station now. It's a plot to make me even fatter. And here's a new
suribachi
and
surikogi.
I decided that's probably the best way to do our job.”

“I have an extra set too. Maybe we can finish quickly.”

They
had tea and ate some of the Kobe cakes before they began. They picked big chunks of bone from the box with new chopsticks. “Don't think,” Junko said, and she went first. They took turns wrapping the large chunks in the white
furoshiki
and smashing them with a hammer. Then they began grinding.