Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (29 page)

As his return date drew near, I pored over the “newspaper” (cruel misnomer!) in search of news of him. I scoured the sports highlights, honor rolls, graduation, and wedding announcements, even the police log. Religiously, I read the column that corresponded to his hometown in search of any mention of him or his mother. Such columns recorded the migration patterns of locals young and old and their achievements in the greater world; they documented their slightest movements with the avidity of ornithologists observing rare birds. Still I found nothing, not even any mention of P.I.P., which would have been a consolation. (Such columns seldom chronicle the lives of shy, private people; there is no way for the columnists to acquire their information.) A few journalistic facts would have perhaps tethered my brain more snugly to reality. As it was, my imagination roamed between the realm of sexual excitement and the realm of pure terror. One moment, I was convinced he would look past me at the dock to greet a slight yet sensual Sophia or a Rubenesque Rosamond, the next moment I was so inflamed by memories of the loft as to require a shower on those already sweltering summer afternoons.

* * *

August 14th was the day of the
Akihito futuna
, a fish that exists in a single river on the island of Futuna. The day seemed made for us. When at last it arrived, I brought Maria along with me to meet his boat, for the nursery was closed in summer and there was little hope of finding a babysitter during the high season. Though I confess I didn’t actually phone anyone. In fact I made no effort whatsoever to free myself from her company because greater than my desire for privacy was my need for a companion and no one but Maria could have safely accompanied me on such a deviant mission. No one except Violet perhaps, but then I was a greedy one, wasn’t I? Firmly, I told myself she’d be too busy waiting on fools to tear herself away.

There was already a crowd waiting outside the terminal when we arrived. Another smaller crowd had formed near the dock. I felt the need to be separate from both groups, to eliminate myself from view. For the first time, I was not afraid of being seen with him. Rather, I was terrified that he would not appear and that I would be seen weeping in public with Maria at my side. We sat at the bus turnaround on the bench that was nearest the ferries and watched the boat arrive.

The first passenger off the boat was a Kamala of about sixteen. Dark-skinned, wearing a white sundress, she led the procession like a queen and I had to wonder if the young man was trailing like a slave not far behind her. It was a noon boat, full of exuberant, hungry-faced people. There were women wearing the Indian tunics and dresses made of hand block print voile very much in fashion that summer, men wearing the usual oxford shirts and boat shoes, children wearing backpacks in the shapes of animals and sandals with Velcro straps, some bounding, much to their parents’ dismay, ahead to the parking lot, some asleep in their mothers’ arms or on the backs of hired helpers, some riding like little kings and queens on their fathers’ shoulders. But no seventeen-year-old boy wearing a blue backpack filled with Californian treasures for his favorite forty-two-year-old librarian. How unlikely it would be to see such a figure striding down the gangplank toward me. It was not the stuff of literature much less the stuff of life.

“What are we doing?!” Maria wrapped her arms around my waist and jerked me to one side so that I nearly fell and scraped my leg on the low brick wall in attempt to recover myself.

“Just a minute!” I snapped urgently. I polished my glasses on the cuff of my blouse then replaced them before looking again.

There was no sign of the young man nor of Violet. I was nearly relieved. Had he come, I would have had to introduce him to Maria and vice versa and I had not prepared myself for such a reckoning. (She may have said about him what she had said about a friend of Var’s:
I don’t believe in him
. And then how would I have managed?) I hadn’t even brought a gift. Certainly I was ill-prepared to encounter the young man; I couldn’t begin to consider the problem of Violet.

The passengers began to disperse—some climbed into waiting taxis, most of which were shabby-looking vans, many were whisked away by friends or family in sparkling cars with plush interiors, a few stepped into open convertibles, and some strolled directly from the dock into town, all of them moving away from the boat and into their lives, their futures, their fates. At last, only Maria and I stood stalled at the dock.

By then I had given up looking on the sunny side of his disappearance and was entertaining the notion that a significant percentage of travelers missed their boats and had no choice but to wait for the next one. This was a comfort. Why, he could jolly well be on the other side of the water, sitting as I was, waiting for a boat, the two of us together on our island of waiting, while the rest of the world receded like waves around us.

Steamship Authority clerks have a reputation for rudeness but I found both the male and female clerks to be touchingly compassionate (I alternated between them in part to save myself some embarrassment, in part due to the requirements of the fluctuating lines). Each seemed to realize fairly quickly (perhaps well before I did) the direness of my situation. Neither showed any sign of impatience when I persisted in walking up to the counter to inquire after the next boat et cetera. The woman offered Maria a red lollipop and the man joked with her at length. (Maria had a knack for accomplishing more than I did, even on errands that were designed for my own purposes with little if any regard for her agenda.) Between arrivals, when I was not quietly pursuing the kind clerks, I scanned the terminal nervously for Violet, half hoping to see her so that I might then see the young man, half glad she was nowhere to be found. Her absence made it a possibility, however small, that I had come on the wrong day.

At last, I was not surprised when he did not appear on the day he had promised. I had, as much as was humanly possible, prepared myself for such a disaster. In the manner of a children’s librarian, I had, in a persuasive, calming voice, told myself a story complete with lavish illustrations about the young man’s journey.
Once upon a time there was a young man who loved a woman he could not have and so he left the small island where they lived and set sail to find happiness elsewhere. He promised to return, if not to claim her as his own then to bring her news of elsewhere.
I did not blame the woman for doubting the young man’s promise nor did I blame the young man for failing to return. It was just the way the story ended.

* * *

Days went by without any news from them. Jealously, I imagined a cozy mother-son reunion, a bejeweled Kamala alongside him. I felt excluded from their sudden change in plans. Finally, one late August afternoon, Violet came to the library. She did not return or borrow materials but simply asked if I would come to her house for tea. There was something about her manner (shy, polite, with something held in reserve) that was endlessly appealing though she might have used any manner in the world and I would have complied. I was wildly curious, but refrained from asking any questions with the exception of: “Where is your house?” At this she looked surprised and then smiled the most painful smile I think I have ever seen upon the face of a pretty woman as she jotted down directions distractedly on a scrap of library paper using one of our tiny pencils. Her script was nothing like her son’s. In its legibility and precision it reminded me of my father’s Japanese which I had always tried and failed to imitate. I was more than primed to follow its clear instructions.

There was no easy way for a nondriver to get to the two-hundred-year-old house. I suppose one could lug one’s bicycle on the #4 then disembark at Tea Lane and ride one’s bicycle the remainder of the way, but I had two misgivings about such a scenario. First, I have always deplored the moments during which one must install one’s bicycle onto the grille’s contraption; one often holds up traffic fiddling with the clanging bars and rusting slots. Second, there are only enough slots to accommodate the wheels of two bicycles, the system is first come, first served, so in theory it is possible (though unlikely) to be denied a space, possible to be marooned with one’s bicycle no closer to one’s destination than before, and so I cycled the entire distance.

I arrived in a shimmering cloak of chamomile-scented perspiration and stood panting in the shade of an apple tree for several minutes before leaning my bicycle against it and proceeding to the great front door. He had told me about the historic door. His grandfather had built it using the wood from a single oak that he had felled himself. It stood as yet another proof of the self-reliance and ingenuity of which the young man was a direct descendant. I literally rang the ancient bell that was mounted to the wall by pulling its soft, braided rope and could not help but think of Melville’s sailors as I touched it, of all the tough, worn-out things that had outlasted them. I felt a bit ridiculous ringing a bell; it rang out like a farmer’s dinner bell or a church bell making public a private occasion. Violet appeared at once. As she said hello she placed her hand on the bell to silence it. She paused ever so slightly in the doorway with her hands clasped in front of her before leading me into the foyer. I wiped my feet cautiously on the black mat within.

The house was mysteriously cool, and dark as a temple. There was no air conditioner, I was sure of that, both were allergic to conditioned air. Wooden shutters covered the insides of the windows. The orchard on the south side must have cooled the house considerably and God knows what other old-fashioned energy-conserving tricks his mother had been taught by her Calvinist parents and theirs before them and so on. The house was smaller and far less fine than I had imagined but it was pleasingly
wabi
. The floors were old wood, not shiny but clean. Most of the furniture was dark wood and the walls had been painted cream. I saw, at the end of the long dim hall, through a half-open door, a slim river of light, and thought at once of the voluminous library.

Violet led me to a parlor off to the left. As we entered we passed a large, oval mirror from which I shamefully averted my eyes. I scanned the room for signs of him. I looked for childhood photographs, trophies on the shelves; I studied the walls in search of a high school diploma but found nothing.

She showed me to a small, exquisitely set table. In the manner of a well-trained servant she pulled one of the chairs out and I sat down in it. I felt my own eagerness and curiosity to be too visible on my face.

“Thank you for coming.” Like a fishing line her words seemed weighted, designed to sink then catch.

“Of course.”

She served cream tea, the jam of which was beach plum. When I told her it was delicious she winced the way her son so often did when I complimented him. Without a doubt the scones were her own; they were warm and the scent of them hung in the air. When I felt I could not scan the room any longer without appearing paranoid or deviant, I rested my eyes upon the table to find the very same red and white cloth he had served our many lunches upon. In the anxiety of being seated I hadn’t noticed it. The sight of the familiar hand block pattern caused my heart to quicken; it was nearly enough to bring tears to my eyes but I steeled myself against such an onslaught and was grateful in the end that I had.

Violet was silent. We were in a room whose windows, from a great distance, looked out at the sea. The blue like an eyebrow upon the land’s green face. There was a fireplace, a day-bed covered by a quilt of creams and whites, a tiny end table adorned by a milk glass lamp; there were rugs the color of harissa and books on the floor. The objects seemed to know things. For years they had existed in the room with mother and son. They knew the answers to my questions.

Something in her demeanor had changed since the last time we’d met. Could it be that I’d been wrong and she really hadn’t known until now? I feared everything about her. I feared her silence, her high cheekbones, her pale skin.

The suspense was difficult to bear. Violet began chattering softly and incessantly about shop inventory, pending orders, the high price of local produce, her eyes fixed on some unknown point in front of her as if I weren’t sitting right across from her. It frightened me, the way she went on delivering what seemed to be a monologue mumbled by a woman in crisis to herself.

To avoid her sudden outpouring, I busied myself with the scones and stared at her sweater. It was the same cotton sweater she always wore. Once rifle brown, now a shade of cocoa, its cowl hung down limply to reveal a portion of her pale neck. She must have worn it every day since the day I saw it for the first time. If I hadn’t been so incredibly lazy when it came to learning how to knit, I’d have had the cherry sweater wrapped in a box for her now. It would have come in rather handy at that moment, providing comfort to her and an easy topic of conversation.

It was not until I’d devoured two scones and a full cup of tea with milk added beforehand (my mother too had always added the milk beforehand) that I learned both the reason for my visit and the reason for her son’s failure to return. The two reasons were in essence the same. One rainy afternoon, in some still wild part of Northern California, while swimming with friends, he had dived into the river, struck his head on a rock, and had not recovered.

I tried to look her in the eyes after she said it. I was frantic for a look from her, a signal to confirm the validity of her statement, but she would not engage me.

Instead she tugged at a loose thread on the hem of her sweater as she muttered to me in the parlor’s dappled light. She rambled on quietly citing statistics, explaining how very common it was for a head injury to result in death, and I, in response, looked down at my hands and began to pick at the edges of my fingernails in an attempt to shield myself from such information, wanting her to speak instead of her son in particular, to hear some detail about him, however gruesome, that I could, in the way of a cool pillow, rest my feverish cheek upon.