The Electrical Field (21 page)

“It’s just that I’m responsible, see,” she said. “I told the police I’d look after it, or else they’d lock it up in the pound.”

“I see.”

“I let the girl take it yesterday and she never came back.”

“Why don’t you try her house?” I suggested coldly. It was, after all, up to Keiko to contend with this; I had no patience for a useless conversation with this strange woman. I felt the draft coming in at my legs, and noticed that I’d forgotten to put on my stockings. I started to shut the door.

“There was nobody home there,” she said, ignoring my hints. “I saw you and her go off with the dog yesterday. That’s why I’m here.” She looked at me blankly, waiting for a response.

“Well, yes, that’s true,” I stammered. “But that was yesterday. I left them at Mackenzie Hill and came back here myself early in the day.”

The woman murmured something unintelligible, I suppose meant only for herself, and I went to close the door again.

“Mrs. Saito?”

I turned back, a little jolted. The woman knew me.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” She smiled, stretching those lines across her upper lip.

“Why, yes, it is.”

“Just thought I’d let you know. One neighbour to another.” She almost reminded me of Yano for a second, with her conspiratorial tone.

“Yes?” I said, noting the flash of a thin gold band on a finger. “Mrs.—?”

“Frean. You see, I saw you that day when the kids disappeared. You were talking with Mr. Yano. Having a bit of a disagreement, it looked like. Out there.” She pointed to the electrical field behind her.

I could only nod, trying to take in the meaning of all she was telling me. “I see,” I said.

“When the detective asked me, I had to tell him. Maybe it slipped your mind. He said he already questioned you and your husband.”

“I see,” I repeated. I thanked the woman and firmly shut the door. Laughed to myself about her mistaking Stum for my husband. I didn’t even go to the window to watch her cross the field. Instead I put the whole conversation out of my head. Such a nosy busybody, I thought, swatting the air still tinged with smoke.

I took up my rag again, determined to finish my dusting, but when I touched it the ledge was farther away than it appeared. In my living-room, I felt small, and my senses dull.

Yet when I lay down to rest, an alarm blared in my head and wouldn’t stop. Like someone else’s emergency that I was helpless to attend to. It went on for some time before I realized that the sound was actually a cry, a scream at high pitch. It was human, reminding me startlingly of Sachi, as she had been when I’d left her on the hill the day before.

“Get away!” she was screeching. Shrill enough to pierce
my eardrums. She’d frightened me, confused me so that I was not fully aware of what was happening. I had decided to leave, worried about the time away from Papa, that much was clear. I suppose I was hurt by how little she seemed to think of the story I’d shared about Eiji. How she’d seemed even insulted by it.

“Go!” she’d screamed. “I don’t want you here anyway!” She’d cursed me violently, using words I could not repeat. It was no wonder that I’d not fully taken in all that had happened up on the hill; that I’d put it out of my mind right then and there. I recalled stumbling down, her screams chasing me away. I’d stopped for one second, thinking to reason with her, and she’d screamed again.

“You’re crazy!” she shouted. “Just like Yano!” She wound up her finger to her head, as Yano had when talking about his brother. “Your stupid stories. You tell the same thing over and over.”

She was upset, I told myself, didn’t know what she was saying. I nearly fell over myself in my hurry to get away. But then I stopped myself again. Halfway down, it struck me: that poor girl, afraid and alone; her cries, they were cries for help. I thought of her left behind after Keiko’s New Year’s dinners. And the cuts on her hands; what would become of her if Tam wasn’t found? I turned around and climbed back up; I held out my arms to her. I felt them trembling. I even said her name.

She came down slowly, tentatively. I tried to let my eyes speak to her, gently, as a mother would, to beckon and comfort. But just then a cloud burned away, the sun blotted out her face. To a faceless dazzle that screamed once again, the
blare, the alarm sounding once more, pushing me away. Down the hill I retreated, as quickly as I could. Because then it was clear, painfully clear, that I had gone too far. How could I blame her? It wasn’t me she wanted. It had never been me.

I now took my place at the window. I dozed there fitfully until Sachi’s cry at last began to subside in my head. Soon I became aware of familiar voices muffled by the window glass. I looked out to see Stum and Sachi at the edge of my yard. The dog circled, shot past them to the field several times, and each time came back to them. It sniffed at my bushes, then, sure enough, squatted ladylike to pee, and once it finished its business it glanced up, seeming to meet my eyes dead on through the window. In a second it was racing about again. Such deceptive creatures, dogs, with their shining human eyes. In the end leaving you as alone as ever, racing after this or that. They’d give you up for a bit of bone. Yano must have found that out.

Stum was leaning close to Sachi, listening. She stood there forlornly, more unkempt than she’d been yesterday, if that was possible: shoulders slumped, feet planted too wide apart, as if they weren’t a pair. Stum was standing too close, too greedy. Wasn’t the company of his Angel enough? I paced back and forth noisily, wanting their attention, but of course how could they hear me? At last Stum straightened up. Sachi headed across the field, in the direction of the school, the dog trailing after her. But there was no school. She might have been coming to see me, before Stum scared her off. I thought of running after her. What if there’d been news, what if Sachi had been coming to tell me? What if she needed me?

Stum didn’t see me when he came in, distracted as he was. Women still made him awkward, even a little thing like Sachi. Despite his recent manly experience. He set down the brown paper bag he’d taken to carrying whenever he stayed with her, his Angel friend; a crude, bald thing, I thought. Containing his underwear, perhaps, and who knew what else? When he looked up, there I was, startling him.

“Ne-san. I didn’t see you.” Clearly he hadn’t worried himself over me. So soon forgotten, I mused, nodding to myself. He was about to go upstairs when he glanced at me again, this time with concern. Perhaps I’d mumbled the thought aloud.

“Ne-san, what is it?”

“Nothing,” I said, cheerfully. “Nothing at all.”

Abruptly he grew alert, surveying the living-room; even sniffing the air, as if something disagreeable was wafting about. I looked around too, seeing what he saw: the rumpled cushions, my coat and sweater and shoes strewn about, the dirty teacups here and there. The dusting rag still on the ledge.

He smiled tiredly. “There’s no news. They haven’t found out anything. Sachi talked to Detective Rossi last night.”

“Would they tell her if they had?” I shot back. I paced to the window, irritated by his naivety. I glimpsed the tumble of his feet as he quickly climbed the stairs. Eager to escape me. I’d let myself go a bit, I had to admit, but everyone was entitled to a day off. A day of carelessness.

I was gathering up the teacups when Stum came stumbling down the stairs, out of breath.

“Ne-san, Papa, why didn’t you …?” His confusion made me feel my own state of calm. He pointed helplessly upstairs. Instantly I heard Papa’s wails, louder than ever, piercing,
angry one second and pathetic the next. As if a radio’s volume had just that moment been turned up.

“Why didn’t you go to him, ne-san?” There was an accusation there but I wasn’t sure what.

Stum was staring in horror. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. Instead he grabbed me roughly by the wrist and led me upstairs. “Come, help me,” he urged nervously. “I can’t do it. Not by myself. You know that.” He glanced back, the accusation there again.

As we approached Papa’s room, his wails grew more pitiful in my ears, like an old child’s. The covers were kicked aside and that shocked me; I thought the strength had long ago left his legs. His eyes locked on me, and his cries grew smaller but more wretched, the urgency wrung out.

“If you had to leave, ne-san, why didn’t you tell me? How could you? I don’t understand.”

I looked down at my father lying there so pitifully, and somehow I was stunned yet unmoved by what I saw: the spreading stains across the sheet, where he had overflowed his diapers; the vomit crusted around his mouth; his eyes, lolling and then locking on me, with the same accusation Stum had held in his voice. He was trembling, too—ice-cold, soaked in his day-old shikko.

Stum’s hand pushed the small of my back towards the bed, his thumb pressing near the top of my buttocks. “Do something, ne-san,” he whispered. “Clean him up. Hayaku! Please!” He wanted me to hurry, to take this from his sight. I moved slowly, as if every thought in my head resisted. I struggled for some bit of memory of how this had come to be, how I could have made myself so absent.

“Get the bucket and fill it with hot water,” I ordered, forcing myself into the moment. “Bring some towels and a plastic bag.” Stum obeyed without hesitation, grateful for an excuse to leave the room, relieved I’d taken charge, efficient as ever.

Left alone with Papa, I avoided his eyes. The accusation, harsher, more than I could bear.
Why did you do this to me?
And on the table by his bed, shoved back almost out of sight, to make room for the food tray, a photograph of Mama, taken during the years in the city. In that gabardine dress I’d sewn, the round collar that made her face rounder. Smiling the meagre smile that was never for me, reminding me how little she cared.

By the time Stum returned, I’d stripped half the bed and rolled Papa over to that side so I could replace the soiled sheet. Even the mattress pad was stained. “Ara!” he’d cried faintly when I eased his body over. Only his sounds left, the look in his eyes; no words. I removed his pyjama bottoms from him, tearing them at the seams, then threw them in the plastic bag Stum had brought, along with the sodden diaper. Stum drew back at the smell, sharper and more sour than usual. I took the towel from his hand and began cleaning Papa, plunging my hands in and out of the darkening water to rinse out the towel. I sent Stum back to the washroom to change the water and he did so dutifully, flinching now and again at the roughness of my gestures, but without a word. I was about to put a fresh diaper on Papa when Stum tried to still my busy hands. “Shouldn’t we give him a bath first, ne-san?”

I shook my head. “He’s too weak. Tomorrow.” I made
Stum bring a fresh mattress pad and sheets, and threw the stained ones away. Moments later Papa was tucked into a clean bed. His eyes were closed and he seemed to have given in to sleep. Yet as I turned off the light I saw his eyes flick open, glassy and wide, as if in fright, before shutting once again.

I sat in the living-room, at last alone to piece together what I could not remember. Had I fed him today? Who else could have? The image of a fork raised to his quivering mouth floated into my head, the feel of its cold handle between my fingers, yet that could have belonged to a thousand afternoons. I recalled an off-taste in my mouth, acrid. I remembered a cry growing loud in my ears, someone calling me, needing me: Sachi haunting me from the day before, I had thought, but it had stopped, the volume clicked off without warning. Just as it clicked back on this afternoon when Stum came in. In between, the day seemed to pass peacefully enough.

When I looked up, Stum was staring at me intently. I’d forgotten him. I looked at my watch and saw that it was well past dinner time. “Dinner hoshii?” I offered, trying to appear cheerful.

Stum frowned moodily. “I have no appetite. Not after all this. What’s wrong with you? How could you do that to Papa?”

He tailed me doggedly into the kitchen. “Ne-san, answer me! How could you?” I tried to ignore him, tried to concentrate on the task at hand, clattering pots and pans, but he kept after me.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I said.

“But how else … why …?” Then his face released its
frown as a new realization came into his head. “I see.” He nodded to himself, then turned away.

“What? What do you see?”

He stood there stupidly, with a stupid superiority. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“Of what?” I gave a small, strained laugh.

“Afraid I’m going to leave you. You’re trying to make me worry that you’re not capable of taking care of Papa any more. Just so I’ll stay.”

I laughed out loud, long and hard. Until there were tears in my eyes, streaming down. My little brother’s imaginings were at once too elaborate and too childish.

“Did your Angel tell you that ridiculous story?”

“How could she? I haven’t seen her since this morning.”

I turned away, embarrassed to have shown my pettiness once again. Then I wheeled around. “No, little brother. It’s you who’s afraid. Afraid to leave us!”

We sat in the living-room for hours, it seemed, silent as the evening light turned stale, then black, and the streetlamps blinked on. Both of us slumped in our chairs.

“I am afraid, Asa-chan,” he finally said. My name, uttered like that. I couldn’t find his eyes in the dark, didn’t want to, really. But to leave him there alone, unanswered, would have been cruel. I reached for the light and turned it on. He squinted at first, shielded his eyes with his sleeve. His cheeks were wet with tears; his shoulders heaved. It took all my strength, all my resolve, not to run from the room, to see him like this.

“There, there,” I muttered mechanically, in a doll’s voice, reaching my hand out uselessly to the space between us.

Stum’s voice burst into the air, as if from under water. “Is that all you can say, ne-san?” I struggled for something in my head, something an older, wiser sister would say. Nothing to fear but fear itself. Some such thing. But nothing came. I saw Stum’s hand take mine, but I barely felt it. His skin was still youthful, thick and smooth across his knuckles.