Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (32 page)

At eighteen I spent a summer in Tokyo, in part because I had grown up with a coffee table book called
Tokyo: The Most Beautiful City in the World
. During grade school, I often pored over its color photographs and imagined myself there. My father made arrangements for me to study Japanese while living with a local family during the week and with Aunt Tomoko on weekends. I have never been lonelier than I was in Tokyo, though it was, as the book promised, a beautiful city, and though he never said so, my father was bursting with pride upon my return to England. How he loved to hear me speak Japanese and how deeply disappointed he was (though he never showed it) when I discontinued my studies.

After spending time in a foreign city I was no longer afraid of American cities and moved to New York. How provincial and cozy it seemed to me in contrast to Tokyo—a city made of antique buildings bearing perfectly comprehensible signs in English, its busy streets and many skyscrapers populated by people who spoke English or who were at least accustomed to hearing its alien sounds spoken. It was in this comfy American context that I found myself better able to discover cultures other than my own: the Portuguese-speaking
Igreja Católica Apostólica Brasileira
where I met Var, next door to the public library where I checked out British novels, across from the Chinese restaurant with its menus printed earnestly in f.o.b. English. It never dawned on me then that New York too was an island. The pattern was set unconsciously.

I felt a new curiosity about death, as if it were a place I had never traveled to, the only place where I might possibly find the young man, a place that might feel like home. This curiosity, which might be more aptly described as longing, collided with my efforts to care for Maria. There was no way to accomplish the two things at once. Between my longing for death and my longing for Japan, the latter seemed the more life-affirming destination.

I stood in the doorway of Var’s room, feeling faint, a bit torn, and watched him carve a sash for his
kokeshi
. “I’ve got to get off this rock,” I said, using a touch awkwardly the young man’s phrase yet feeling for the first time I understood its meaning. How much larger the impossibility of being with him seemed on this particular island. It was as if he existed somewhere else in the world and if I were to leave the island I might find him.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Var asked. I had at last shocked him into inquiry, though I no longer cared if or what he asked. To make matters worse, he placed his large, soap-scented hand on my shoulder. It had been years since he’d done that. I felt at once disturbed by his return to that old gesture and lulled by its deep familiarity. For a moment we were having one of our vintage, quiet chats that had been a signature of our university years together. When I searched his face for a change, it only looked more familiar and kind, the way it had then. “Is there someone else?” he asked. I thought of confessing to him, in the spirit of honesty or to establish a closeness between us, but decided it was a selfish impulse, that the truth would only wound him unnecessarily. Then again, perhaps he knew already, perhaps he had sensed it and had been waiting for the trouble to pass.

“No,” I sighed, dismayed by the awful truth of my answer. If only there were. The Varian phrase “A day late, a dollar short” floated cloudlike across the sky of my mind and then out of sight. “I want to learn Japanese,” I said. “And I want Maria to learn it too. There are no Japanese here. It’s depressing.” Like me, Var spoke only English and had learned about his dark ancestors from an American university.

“What about Chieko?” he asked.

I sighed again. I suddenly felt very tired and wondered if I truly had the will and stamina it would require to leave the island. “You know what I mean,” I pressed on. “Chieko’s down-island. Besides, even if she lived downstairs, I wouldn’t expect her to be my Japan.” One Japanese British wash-ashore plus one Japanese Brazilian wash-ashore does not a Japantown make.

“I know,” he said sheepishly, as if he had known all along I could not be persuaded and had tried anyway to persuade me, as if he knew that if there had been a Little Tokyo down the road I would still go.

Var consented to Maria and me spending a month in Japan, enrolled in a reputable Japanese language academy, while he stayed behind. We would stay two weeks with my father’s youngest brother Tadashi and two weeks with Aunt Tomoko. To this day I feel grateful to Var for his lack of interference.

It seemed wrong that I should leave the island without first checking on Violet. For all I knew she lay shivering in a bathtub or slumped in a chair, for all I knew she’d taken her own life. But every time I approached the phone I began to shake. More than once I lifted the receiver then dropped it clattering to the floor. If I had known she would call I would have sat calmly by the phone waiting for her ring. Instead I approached the phone repeatedly. I held the receiver intending yet unable to complete the call. Until, as sometimes happens to one in the habit of holding the phone, I pressed the button to engage it and she was there. The phone never rang. It merely acted as a conduit, a tunnel that had always been there waiting for us to enter.

“Mayumi?”

“Violet.” How quickly her voice stilled me.

* * *

When I told her I would soon be leaving for Japan she suggested we meet. I couldn’t refuse. My desire to see her was stronger than my fear.

Her face, very white with a round, red mouth, brought to mind the Japanese flag. She stood leaning against the café, wearing a tan P.I.P. shirt. The cursive lettering, the twin plums on their stem, looked as if someone had drawn them on with a dark chocolate pencil, an edible pencil. Her arms dangled like a girl’s from the cap sleeves.

“You look so thin!” I cried with alarm, even before we embraced and I felt the skeletal fact of her.

“So do you.” I nodded but the weight I’d lost was nothing in comparison.

The café was crowded, clamorous. I felt immediately our choice of such a public location had been a mistake. It was not the time or the place for any confidence. I could see that Violet would not have the opportunity now to say, when did it begin, were you ever going to tell me.

She exercised an excessive amount of politeness upon me, every gesture, every word, another stone she placed on the wall between us. If these stones were her protection she could have them. I would have given her much more had she asked.

“Which table would you prefer?” she asked.

“Anywhere is fine.” She stood in the doorway waiting for me to choose. How many of the people within that small room knew?

The lone waitress burst out of the kitchen like a cuckoo and fluttered over to us. She greeted Violet by name and showed us to a window table.

“Would you and your friend like some water?”

“None for me, thanks, but my friend might like some,” Violet winked. I thought fondly of Siobhan, of my abiding affection for lady winkers.

“No, thank you.” Like a criminal I felt pressure to conform.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” she said.

“Don’t be silly. I’d meet you anytime.”

“You would?”

“Yes, I would.”

Violet clasped her hands and tilted her head slightly to one side to rest upon them. She gazed at me as if I were a place in the distance.

“So you’re leaving.”

“Yes. But only for a short time.”

“Let’s hope the weather’s good.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You don’t really know.”

“Okay.”

“What about your family?”

“I’m bringing my daughter along. The relatives are thrilled. They haven’t seen her since…” I winced at my own mention of traveling with Maria, my living child.

“You’re smart to bring her.”

“Yes, well, she’s only five.”

“I take it your husband isn’t coming. You do still have a husband?”

“Yes, I do. And no, he’s not coming.”

“Still, it’s smart of you to bring her.”

“I don’t feel very smart.”

“Well, you are. I’m the one who was stupid.”

“Violet.”

“Don’t.” She held up her hands.

I ordered a salade Niçoise and she ordered the lamb burger, together we ordered a side of cooked greens; together we experienced a momentary surge of appetite. We ate the greens diligently as if they were medicine but left the rest of the food untouched.

“I have something for you,” she said and set down a small, white box, the sort that typically holds jewelry. My first thought was that she was giving me something of his: a pair of cuff links, a tiny toy, a ring.

“Did you know that my son always wanted to go to Japan?”

“No, I didn’t know that. I had no idea.”

“Ever since he was a little boy he’d wanted to visit every island in the world. But he especially wanted to go to Japan. He loved Kurosawa, he loved Misumi’s
Lone Wolf and Cub
.”

“But I…” I didn’t want to pick up the box.

“It isn’t much,” she said, picking it up and setting it down again. “It isn’t heavy.”

I had the bitter thought that we were at last having lunch together. And in a restaurant no less. Despite everything, Violet had kept her word.

“So will you do it?” she leaned closer. I had never seen her looking so greedy. I couldn’t answer. I was determined never to cry in her presence. What right had I to sadness in the face of her loss?

“It’s the least you could do for me, you…” she cut across herself.

“Of course I’ll do it!” I spat. I swiped the box and thrust it into my bag. I couldn’t bear to see it sitting amidst our lunch things, to think, even for a moment, of what it contained.

“Do you know what he would have said right now?”

“No,” I said. I dreaded what she would say next.

“Let’s make like a tree and leave!”

I smiled faintly. “How silly of him,” I said.

“Oh, he was always silly, you didn’t know that?”

Her life had been one in which everything had a season. Winter was South America, spring was cheese-making and placing orders, summer, all day, every day, was the shop. Fall was the winding down, the diminishing of hours, the mark-downs, the clearing out and then the darkening of windows. If her life was a calendar, every page was now torn.

Her son’s death was like ink from a bottle spilled on a good dress. How or why, it didn’t matter. In seconds the dress was ruined. The stain was fast, one couldn’t stop it spreading. Violet could wash and rewash the dress, it would never be the same and there was no replacing it for it was not a dress but her life. This was the way it looked now.

There was surprisingly little to take care of before we left. Filling out the online application was terrifyingly easy. I could not help but think of the young man and his well-meaning summer program as I clicked the green “Submit Your Application” button and waited for that simple gesture to take effect. Within minutes a post appeared in my inbox confirming the receipt of my application. One week later my application was accepted. I made the necessary arrangements with Maria’s school. The second month of kindergarten seemed as good a time as any to miss. I made arrangements with the library director to take the many vacation days I had accumulated. Even post-fever, I still had plenty of days remaining. It was an excellent time to take a leave. Nella’s replacement had been hired; by the day of our departure summer would be done and the library would be quiet again. Our passports were already in order due to a trip we had planned but never taken to Aunt Tomoko’s the previous Christmas. We brought almost nothing with us save one carry-on apiece, filled for the most part with gifts for our relatives and teachers. Paper-wrapped soaps, jars of honey, chocolates, tea, little bits of the island were all we carried. And then we were gone.

* * *

One earnest person can silence a crowd of comedians. In part this is due to the reverence even jokers have for truth but it is also due to the short life of sentiment and its incompatibility with laughter. A child too possesses this silencing power. Indeed Maria cured me of some of my sentimentality with regard to the young man. On more than one occasion, during our month in Japan, I tried obliquely to speak of him and was met with resistance, if not her outright refusal to grant me an audience. There was little room for the dead in the living world of her childhood. When I spoke of America or of the past, she would hold her arms out and shout, “
Dako! Dako!
” or “Pick me up! Pick me up!” and I would obey, though she was almost beyond a weight I could safely manage. When, without explanation, I wept, she took me in her arms like a little mother. She said to me in a low, storytelling voice:
I used to be your mother. You used to be my little girl. I remember living inside you. It was so cozy, I didn’t want to leave.

If we took in any particular sights, I’ve forgotten them. (Typical of me to make of myself an island wherever I am.) I bought a postcard for Violet but didn’t send it, such an act seemed violently casual, that of a carefree traveler dropping a line. We studied our Japanese quite diligently. I remember Aunt Tomoko’s country rice (whose surprising secret ingredients were mushroom-soaking water and a dash of oats) and her blood-cleansing burdock rolls, the cousins helping us do our flashcards for hours, teaching us silly Japanese songs, the
an pan
from the bakery next to Uncle Tadashi’s, Uncle Tadashi’s stories about my father as a boy, always with a book in his hand, his refusal to look up from it even when answering the door. Like Melville’s nursing whales, I lived a double life. One self—hungry, wanting to live—drew mortal nourishment from the country rice, the kindness of my loved ones, while another self—absorbed by grief—feasted on memories of the young man.

On our last morning I walked alone to the sea. Afraid as I was of being seen, I went early, when it was still dark. Although
early
is a culturally relative term; to my dismay there were already throngs of people strolling the shore and a few robust swimmers. Most of them were elderly, one, two, three, even four times the young man’s age, and yet they had risen early, they were swimming, they were strolling the shore. He would have liked to have seen them—miraculous—the way they all cleaved like the earth to the sea. He would have found it a beautiful thing.