Bicycle Days (19 page)

The expression of concern had not left Grandmother’s face, though now it had changed, grown softer. She walked up to her husband and gently tugged his belt knot back to the center of his waist. Her gaze was fixed on his face.

“Tea,” Grandfather said.

She prepared tea for him. He sipped it loudly in appreciation. After a moment, she turned back to the sink and began rinsing the noodles again.

“Grandfather rested all afternoon,” she said to no one in particular.

Grandfather was looking at her back. “It has been raining all afternoon.”

“Perhaps Grandfather is sick,” she said to the noodles.

“No,” Grandfather said firmly. He went and stood behind her at the sink, peering over her shoulder. “Alec, what is Grandmother making for dinner?”

“Nabe,”
Alec said.

Grandfather touched his chin to her shoulder. “That is
good, Alec. Grandmother makes the best
nabe
in Japan. The best.”

Grandmother gently shook him off her shoulder. When she turned around, Alec saw that she was blushing.

“It is not true, Alec. My husband is only teasing me.” She reached back, wet her hand under the faucet. Then she smoothed down the hair on the back of Grandfather’s head. “Besides,” she said to Grandfather, “Alec is helping me. He is a very good cook.”

Grandfather’s face had regained some of its life. He scrunched up his eyes as if he was chuckling to himself. “It does not require patience to be a good cook. Eh, Alec? Not like fishing.”

“I don’t know, Grandfather.” Alec picked up a whole onion from the chopping block. The old couple watched him while he peeled off the outer skin, put the onion back on the block, and handed Grandfather the knife, handle first. “It is a very big onion.”

Slowly, the valley was awakening. Alec felt the thrill of being there to watch it happen on his last morning. The early light seemed to have nothing to do with the sun. It moved from the darkness without a trace of where it came from.

He walked for a while, feeling the dew soak into his feet and ankles. Life was changing around him, stretching, shaking off a night of sleep. Still roosting in the trees and bushes, birds gave their first hesitant calls of the morning, as if afraid they might have lost their voices during the night. Alec heard the river before he saw it. When he was close enough to see the dark ripples in its surface, he veered right, walked along the bank a ways, and stopped in front of the smooth rock where Grandfather had rested.

He set down the canvas bag and bamboo fishing rod. It only took a minute to thread and secure the lure. He laughed when he put on Grandfather’s child-size waders. The coldness of the water touched him through the green rubber, making him
shiver. But he held his place, gradually digging his feet into the soft bottom. It was an easy cast, the lure making it only halfway across the river. Striped and triple-hooked, it hovered on the surface, kept afloat by the slightest lateral movements of his hands. Alec watched the outlines of its form grow more and more distinct in the light. Except for his hands, his body was motionless, settled in. He studied the moving water.

W
hen he returned to Tokyo that night, Alec found a letter on his pillow. He recognized the handwriting on the front of the envelope immediately. He turned it over. The return address was his mother’s apartment in New York. Above it, written in a large, wild script, was the name:
M. Stern.
Mark.

Alec’s fifteenth year had run over him like a truck. He grew taller and his voice changed from a sweet soprano to a painful squawk. He went away to boarding school, leaving home to surround himself with people he had never seen before, scared and homesick and wondering why he had ever wanted to go away in the first place. Just before Thanksgiving break, his parents called to tell him they were getting a divorce. They asked him if he wanted to come home. He said that he had to go, someone wanted to use the phone. They asked him if he wanted them to visit. He said that he really couldn’t talk right
then, people were waiting. They told him that Mark was on his way up to the school, that it had been his idea to see if he could help his brother.

Alec hung up and walked through the faculty adviser’s living room, where some of his classmates were sprawled across sofas and on the floor, eating popcorn and laughing uproariously at Laurel and Hardy on television. He continued out into the hallway, where a couple of other boys were kicking a soccer ball back and forth. And he moved around them and down the hall, away from his room, where he knew his roommate was studying, and into the enormous bathroom. The tile was cold and damp. He closed himself up in one of the stalls and sat down on the lidded toilet with his knees held tightly against his chest. And with his face buried in the warm pocket formed by his own body, he cried.

It was Mark, tall and gangly and wild-haired, who found him there. He had come alone from New York on the train. He told Alec that things would be okay. Family would still be family, just different. Divorce didn’t mean they weren’t your parents anymore. He suggested they go get a pizza before curfew. So Alec washed his red face in cold water, and they walked to the Greek pizza parlor in town. It was a large pizza, pepperoni and mushroom. They ate the whole thing, then felt sick afterward. And Mark put his arm around Alec’s shoulders and told him that he should never be ashamed to cry in front of anyone, especially his older brother.

In bed that night, Alec tried to remember if any of this had ever happened before. He tried to think back to when he and Mark had been babies lying next to each other in the crib, whether they had been close then; whether they had laughed and cried and held each other the way innocent children were supposed to, the way brothers were supposed to. But he could not remember Mark ever once putting an arm around his shoulders, ever supporting him the way he had that night. He could not recall in their life together the quiet comfort of a walk to town and a shared pizza. There were only the endless mad
dashes through the apartment, the hot fury and tears, atoms bouncing, deflecting, bouncing, too far apart to see each other. But Mark was there in his room that night. That night they were brothers. And it seemed too strange, that sudden closeness. Alec fell asleep wondering what would come of it.

And now, as he read the letter and discovered that Mark would soon be coming to Tokyo for a visit, Alec leaned his back against the wall, brought his knees up to be hugged fiercely by his arms, and once again buried his face in the warmth of his own body. But it didn’t work this time. Slowly he rocked back and forth, felt a chill come to him in the heat of the little room. He shivered to himself.

T
he view was from a prone position on the hardwood floor of the Tokyo University gymnasium. The ceiling was distant, spotted with yellow lights shining weakly from within little domes of wire grating. The space beneath the lights was empty, boundless, a home for echoes. Alec turned his head and saw people standing around him, looking down at him. Sweaty men in gym clothes, stolid and unmoving, like a bizarre Stonehenge impersonation. Park was closest among them, nervously peering at him through foggy lenses. Alec felt the familiar, comfortable urge to reach out and strangle him. It was Park who had talked him into joining his team in a Sunday basketball league; the same Park who had arranged for him to guard Miyaki, the biggest and ugliest Japanese Alec had ever seen outside of the national sumo championships.

Alec peered through Park’s legs and saw the three Hasegawa children sitting on the uppermost row of the otherwise empty
aluminum grandstand. They were whispering among themselves, their expressions caught somewhere between concern and laughter. They had insisted on coming to watch him play. Americans are the best at basketball, Hiroshi had said. Filled with visions of slam dunks and game-winning corner jump shots, Alec had agreed. Now, having just been knocked flat by Miyaki, he silently cursed himself.

Park extended his hand. “You are all right, Alec-san?”

Alec grabbed his wrist, pulled himself to his feet. “I guess so.” He rubbed his throat where Miyaki had caught him with a sharp elbow.

“You are not in pain?”

Park was whispering as if his words contained secret information. Alec decided not to remind him that no one else on the court understood English.

“A little, but I’m all right. I thought you said this was a basketball league.”

Park looked confused. “Basketball, yes.”

“Then how is it Miyaki’s allowed to knock me to the ground every time I touch the ball? That’s football, not basketball.”

“Ah, yes, football,” Park said, showing his teeth. “You are making an amusing joke, Alec-san.”

“Jesus Christ,” Alec muttered, and turned away. He waved and smiled at the Hasegawa children. Yoshi and Hiroshi waved back, Yukiko jumped to her feet and clapped her hands.

“What score is it?” Alec asked Park.

“Already we are behind by three baskets,” Park said, still whispering.

A dull clapping echoed through the gym. Alec saw Miyaki dribbling the ball back and forth between his legs. They made eye contact for a moment before Alec looked away.

The game continued. Taller than Alec, and heavier by about twenty pounds, Miyaki played a physical game, using chest, hips, and elbows to achieve dominant position under the boards. There were no referees, and the fouls had begun in the very first
minute of play, increasing in frequency until Alec was barely able to regain possession of the ball without being knocked to the ground. Each time he sat for a moment on the hard floor, staring up at Miyaki’s pug, sweaty face, at the feigned expression of surprise. Then Park came hurriedly to give him a hand up, whispering that Miyaki hadn’t meant anything personal by it. And each time Alec nodded slowly, absorbing the words, afraid of the consequences of not believing them. He waved and smiled at the Hasegawa children to show them everything was all right. Then the ball was put into play, and he was back in it. The goal was simply to run through to the end, accepting the images as they unfolded.

It was almost ten years since Billy Bevins had challenged him to a fight in front of the entire seventh-grade class. They had met after school in Central Park, in the center of the meadow off Ninety-sixth street. A few classmates, willing spectators, lingered expectantly nearby. Alec could hear them whispering. A light rain was falling, making the ground soft and slick. Above, the sky pressed down on them like an oily-dark iron griddle.

Alec could not decide whether this was the worst moment of his life. His stomach seemed to think so. It groaned and bubbled like an orchestra until he was sure everyone in the park—especially Billy Bevins—could hear it. Billy moved forward a few steps, his eyes locked in an angry, intimidating stare. His fists swirled out in front of his chest like the blades of a threshing machine. Alec studied those fists as they came toward him. He could not get over how confident they looked.

He tripped Billy Bevins because it was the only thing he could think to do. And then, suddenly, he was on top, in control, cocking his fist back the way he had seen other kids do. Billy looked up at him, as surprised as he was, expecting for one brief second to be hit.

When it was over, and Billy Bevins had gone home, Alec lay still in the meadow, bleeding from his nose and lip, mud smeared in his ears. The rain was coming down harder now, and he could
hear around him the splatter of puddles. Already he found that he couldn’t remember the fight. He could remember only that brief second, his knee on Billy Bevins’s chest, his fist coiled tight and ready, and then the sudden moment after, the impotence of it, as he realized he could not throw the punch.

Alec backed his way closer to the basket, a couple of inches at a time, putting his full weight against Miyaki’s chest. The contact was all body, too close for elbows. Miyaki was pushing him, soaking him with his sweat. Alec worked his way down to the low post, just to the right of the basket, and extended his arm in a silent call for the ball. Behind him, he could hear Miyaki’s stuttering breath. Standing just above the top of the key, Park was directing the offense, showing more poise and assurance than Alec had ever seen him exhibit in the office. Dribbling to his right, Park spotted him and fired a perfect over-the-shoulder pass. The moment the ball touched his outstretched hand, Alec felt himself slammed from behind. His head snapped back, his arms flailed as he was sent sprawling to the ground. His shoulder hit first, the pain was immediate.