Bicycle Days (28 page)

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I have too many thoughts,” she said.

“About Grandfather?”

“When I was young, a girl, I would come here often,” she said, her voice quiet and distant. “I would take walks with Grandfather, and he would hold my hand and tell me so many different things about this land and about our family. About life. He said to me once that life moves like a river, and that to have happiness a person must find balance in it. Because of Yamadera, because I understood this river, he said that I would find this balance. And always I listened to him. And so I felt, I think, that it would not be hard to grow older—to grow up, as you say. But I was so foolish. I never thought how hard it would be to live like this. To have my years, my work, to live as a woman in Tokyo. Do you understand, Alec? Sometimes it is hard just to … to balance these things in my life. I thought I had learned how to make them balance, but now I am forgetting. Because of you, I am forgetting. I did not think that I would care about you so much; that I would think about you so much. But as it is, I do, and it is too difficult. Sometimes you are like me, I think, in too many directions, wanting to find balance. It was too hard for me when you did not pay attention to me after we made love. I could not work. I could not live my life. But then today, at the funeral, it was too much the other way. Today you wanted me to be with you. But I could not do that today. And perhaps not tomorrow. To be a confused person in Japan, not to have balance, is dangerous. There is no one to help. And you are confused. Because of you, I am confused
again. The way it is now, it is too difficult. Perhaps as friends it will be better.”

Alec didn’t say anything. He realized that she had not moved since his arrival on the porch, that her face was still turned away from his, looking out into the darkness. And he felt her slipping away from him even as he held her, the pieces coming apart. He wanted to shout at her, shake her, tell her that this was the one thing that couldn’t happen right now, because there was nothing else to count on.

He stood up. When he spoke, his voice sounded foreign to him, weak and pleading. “Maybe we ought to go away from here, take a few days off and go somewhere else. Anywhere you want. You can get the time off work. I know you can.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I am sad, too,” she said, and from her voice he thought she might be crying.

“What about last night?” he said. “What about that? You needed me then. Remember? The way you were crying. The way you held me.”

“Because Grandfather was dead, Alec. And because my feelings for you are very strong, and you had not talked to me for ten days. Because of all those things.”

Kiyoko stood up and turned to face him for the first time. She reached out her arms, and the white comforter fell onto the porch. She hugged him, putting her naked body against him. She told him that she loved him, that they would be good friends. She seemed somehow unreal to him then, and Alec held her and felt as if the funeral had never ended, as if he still knelt beside her in that hot, grief-filled room, waiting for her to speak and knowing that she was lost to him.

A
lec must have walked past the old bicycle half a dozen times before he finally began to pay attention to it. The black paint had dulled to a milky gray, with patches of rusted steel showing through. The tires were thick and worn smooth, and the woven handlebar basket had a hole in the bottom. He could tell just by looking at it that it had been used by an old man, although the frame was so small it might as easily have belonged to a young boy. Though battered and scarred by the land and weather, it was still strong and durable, unchanged in all the important aspects. He stared at it a long time, thinking that, in a crazy sort of way, the bicycle actually
looked
a little bit like Grandfather. It was easy to picture him riding it, calmly working the worn pedals as he made his way out of the valley.

The sounds of people eating and talking reached him now as he stood outside the house; the final meal before everyone left to return to their own busy lives in their own parts of Japan. Kiyoko had told him that Yamadera was no longer so important
to many of the people in her family, to those who lived too far away or were too busy to travel to a remote village in the north. And yet they had all come back this time, relatives and friends and neighbors. It seemed to Alec as if they were bound to one another by feelings and codes and passwords that he had never learned, probably would never be able to learn. He remembered the sense of solitude he had felt during his first visit to Yamadera, and now he longed for it, as though it too had died, as though Grandfather had taken it with him.

He knew that they were expecting him inside, but he didn’t move. The idea of another long, awkward meal seemed impossible right now. So he just stood where he was and stared at the bicycle, and half wondered whether it was possible to envy an object. Because he did, in a way—envied the old bicycle its quiet post at the side of the house and, mostly, the simple closeness of its connection to the old man.

He had already walked up to the bicycle and grabbed hold of the handlebars before he noticed what his hands were doing, how sure they looked on the rusted chrome. He pumped the brakes, listened to them squeak. The brake pads opened and closed around the thick tires like the gills of a landed fish. He straddled the frame, rubbed his hand over the broad seat, the leather worn and shiny from years of constant use. Beyond the small grove of cherry trees, a cluster of parked cars marked the start of the dirt road that led out of the valley, eventually winding up to the paved road running along the crest of the hills. He put his foot to the pedal, and then the bicycle was moving, heading for the road, taking him with it. Twigs cracked under the tires. As he cut across the front of the house, he thought he saw Kiyoko step out onto the porch and stare at him. He waved once, then disappeared into the trees.

When the tires touched the packed dirt and rock of the road, Alec began to pedal harder. The bicycle was too small for him, and his knees rose practically to his chest. It made him think of the first bicycle he had ever owned—a bright orange Huffy one-speed, with a low-rider seat and stingray handlebars. For
three weeks he had been the toast of his block. Until Jimmy Nichols’s parents had bought him a bike just like it. Alec’s mother told him that he had just learned a lesson about the sudden rise and fall of status in a country like the United States. Alec had wisely nodded his head, decided that skateboarding might be an easier way to reach the top.

He was nearing the crest of the hill now, where the dirt road met the narrow paved one. His legs burned from the steep climb. Still pedaling, he stood up in the seat while the bike bounced over a cluster of rocks. The vibrations shook his body, making his teeth knock together. He skidded to a stop at the edge of the paved road, which twisted and turned around blind corners.

He turned to the right, away from the small town. The tar was smooth and solid under the tires, and he glided like a hawk across one hill and then another. He thought he could feel the bicycle wake up under him, shake off some of its years and bruises. They worked together, an agile, confident team. No corner was too difficult. Even on the straight sections of road they weaved from side to side in sharp, swerving turns, testing their skill. They danced and played and sped forward all at once, and Alec felt himself transported in time. He imagined himself in other situations, in other places: curb jumping in the city with Jimmy Nichols; a family ride through Central Park one Sunday; up at the country house, tearing down a steep hill with no hands on the handlebars, half-crazy with the fear and freedom of it.

The road dipped and leaned down the hill. He removed his hands from the handlebars, raised them high above his head. The speeding bicycle wobbled for a second, and he felt his heart thrash like a fish in his chest. But then it was under control, all his, riding straight and gaining speed. The entire valley lay spread out below him. The wind tore at his hair and whistled through his open mouth. He turned his head sideways to breathe and let out a yell that sat in his ears for a brief moment before being dragged away by the wind. He let out another, stronger this time. The sound grew straight from his heaving diaphragm, and he listened, enraptured, the pavement speeding under him,
his arms still raised above his head like a man about to be crowned champion of the world. And he felt it then, the freedom and confidence coming back to him from somewhere far away, rushing over and through him. He wanted to yell again, loud enough this time to reach his parents and Mark and Kiyoko and Jimmy Nichols and a hundred other people, to tell them how unbelievably good it felt.

Alec turned his head forward and saw the road disappear around a sharp corner. He did not reach for the handlebars. There was time enough only to feel the sudden loss of balance as the bicycle began to fall, throwing him headlong off the road and into the thorn bushes. He could think of nothing but the pain then, of how it had come up on him from nowhere, surrounding his chest and stomach like a vise, crushing the breath right out of his body. But when he stopped flying, he didn’t feel it anymore, or anything else for that matter.

The world came back to him in beams of refracted light. Moonlight entered through the single window, bouncing off the walls, angling about the room. He saw the ceiling first. It was bathed in the shadowy green of childhood ghost stories, and for a moment he thought he might already be dead. He tried to sit up quickly, wanting to run away. Pain stabbed at his ribs and chest, making him gasp and almost cry out. Slowly, he eased himself back onto the futon. He could feel the blood rushing and pounding through his head, making him dizzy. He tried to think about where he was and what had happened to him. He moved his left arm, realized that it hurt, too. And his right knee. And both hands. He felt his teeth with his tongue, grateful they had been spared.

The ceiling continued to glow in the patched darkness. A narrow rectangle of light shone on one of the walls, a marionette of intricate shadows prancing about in the center, its invisible strings pulled by the swaying of a tree just outside the window. Gently, he turned his head so that he could see partway round
the room. It was a room he knew, one in which he had stayed before. He remembered the colors and sounds of night in this room and the fresh laundry smell of the cotton futon and comforter. All around him people were breathing, some easily, others with a muffled catch in their noses and throats. He supposed they were there to take care of him, though he could think of nothing they might be able to do, even if they were awake. He listened a little longer and knew that Kiyoko was the one closest to him. He tried to remember when he had last seen her. The porch of the house came to him as a picture, and his waving to her. Then the bicycle and the speed and the blind corner and the car. The pain was what connected it all to the present.

He remembered the exhilarating sense of escape he had felt as he swept down the hill, the way the wind had torn at his hair and face like hands, pawing at him, menacing him, uplifting him. Crowning him Champion of the World, unconnected to anything, too fast and free for anyone. For a few seconds. And then he had lost control again. The world had reared up and come down on him, hurt him, until he thought his head might fall off. He worried that he had done something terrible to his body, something that wouldn’t ever heal. And he wondered what would have happened if he had died here in this remote part of Japan, if his funeral would have been in Yamadera, who would have come.

Unanswered questions filled the room, threatening to drown him. He tried to sit up, as if moving to avoid them, and realized that his ribs were wrapped in stiff bandages. The pain caught him midway, exploding inside him, tearing through him like knives. But he held his position. Gasping and fighting, he managed finally to sit upright.

People left, and Alec remained in Yamadera to recover. He called Mrs. Hasegawa to tell her what had happened. She told him she would take care of him in Tokyo. But Alec said he
would be okay where he was for a while, that he just needed time to get well and figure some things out. He told Kiyoko the same thing. She kissed him on the cheek the morning she left for work. And then he really was alone, except for Grandmother and two teenage girls who had stayed on to help her around the house.

Grandmother had taken to sleeping in a room on the first floor. Alec supposed she didn’t want to sleep in the room she and Grandfather had shared for so many years. The girls also slept downstairs, but Alec never heard them talk to the old woman. For several days he never heard her speak at all. Once, he heard her humming to herself, the notes so sad he thought she must be crying. Sometimes he would see her from his window, standing between the cherry trees and the vegetable garden, her back to the house. She would walk now and then, but never very far. Her steps were no longer sure, and the wooden sandals looked too heavy for her frail legs.