The Electrical Field (22 page)

He was half kneeling, absurdly, one hand resting on his knees, his head down, resigned. “Can’t you say it, ne-san?” he was pleading. His breath came in audible gasps. “Tell me you’re afraid too,” he implored in a slow, muffled voice. “You want me to be the only fool?”

I wanted to say it. With all my heart, I wanted to let go. To say, yes, Tsutomu, I am afraid. For once to release us both, so I could begin my days alone, without him, with only Papa. To face that truth. Too tight, that was what Sumi had meant—Eiji’s friend, Iwata-san, that day in church. I saw her saying it to me, holding up her two hands to show me mine at Eiji’s neck. Too tight, let go.

But when I gazed up at Stum, I imagined I saw Angel with him, too dark and smiling with her high round breasts. I saw Stum touching them, patting them gently; kneading them. I felt his hand on mine, sickly warm flesh; I yanked mine from his and stood up.

“This is a game to you, is it? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” Shock came over Stum’s face, at my crudeness; then the eagerness there a second ago hardened to a mask. “I won’t fall for such childishness,” I kept on, ignoring the change on his face. “I won’t.”

With that, he got up off his knees, where he’d been bent down like my suitor. He did not squabble, didn’t try once
more, as he usually did, and it froze my heart; into my mouth trickled something acrid and burning, that taste I remembered. In my head, this silent shrieking, it was me:
Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Tsutomu!
His name just there, as only I could pronounce it. He was leaving me. Not this minute, not tomorrow, but soon. This was the disgrace I imagined for myself, not before some stranger but before my brothers: that I’d be pleading, crying shamelessly not to be left behind. To be held by familiar arms, with the smell of familiar breath on me. To be held by one who had known me, every ugly bit, since long ago, since the very beginning, so that it was all only me, Asa-chan, my old flesh, my sour breath. My love.

Before he opened his mouth, I said it; I asked what had been going round and round in my head for years, in a timid voice that almost disgusted me. What I had never dared ask anyone, even Chisako.

“What is it like, ototo-chan?” For a moment he was the little brother I could be tender with, could entrust myself to. My ototo-chan. What is it like to let yourself love someone? To be loved back? I needed to know.

He returned to me then. He raised his eyebrows, so very tired. “It’s different, ne-san,” he sighed, “and not so different.”

I bustled about to disguise my embarrassment, my disappointment. “Don’t talk nonsense,” I muttered gruffly. Different from what, I almost asked. Almost betrayed myself. For it was obvious: different from the hundred small things that made up my life. I wanted more, he had to tell me more; he must have known that. Because it had to be the most difficult thing, to give yourself. And yet here he was, the same person, ototo-chan.

“You never came to me about it—about her,” I started to say. But he had come, he had, that one evening, not long ago. Something wonderful has happened, he’d said. “You should have come to me earlier,” I said, scolding him, scolding myself. “I might have tried …” I didn’t finish. Tried harder, I meant, if I had only known, had understood.

He was nodding slowly. “It was Yano who helped me,” he said finally, measuring his words.

“Yano?”

“Yes.” He looked to see if he should go on. “I know it sounds strange, ne-san. I know you didn’t—you don’t—like him. But he asked me all about myself, he wanted to know. He was a crazy kamikaze. It was easy to tell him about Angel. We talked one, maybe two times. I thought, what could it hurt?”

I was shocked. I’d watched and seen nothing. When had these talks between the two of them taken place? How could I not have known? “He wasn’t your friend, really.”

“I think now he was.”

“What did he tell you?” I demanded. “What advice did this kamikaze give you?” I tried to keep the bitter chill from my voice, but it crept in, I heard it, and so must have Stum; he knew me well enough. I waited, seething, for his reply.

Moments went by. Then he answered: “Yano told me that if his beautiful wife could be with an ugly man like himself, then I should have some hope too.”

Across the electrical field, Yano’s house sat still and empty. Yano was ugly, repulsive. Chisako was beautiful. Countless times, sitting by my window, lying in bed sleepless, I’d asked myself how she could bear his touch. I even once, in one of
our last visits, asked her as much. She tilted that beautiful face to me.

“But he isn’t ugly, Saito-san.” Her expression was serene but perplexed. I was about to remind her of what she’d called him—hidoi hito, a monster—but her smile silenced me. I felt ashamed. For this was her husband, after all. The man she’d married. Yet it plagued me, this question, petty as it seemed. How an ugly person could be loved. Could I have been wrong?

Stum gave a gentle laugh. His lips twisted. “But you see, ne-san, in the end she couldn’t. Chisako-san couldn’t stand him after all. You must have known that.”

I was unwilling to give anything away. “But how could you trust a man like that? A crazy man?”

“We only talked a few times, ne-san,” Stum said.

“You said only one or two.”

“Three, maybe. That’s all.”

“If he was so full of wise advice, he should have at least told you to bring home a nice Japanese girl instead of a—”

“It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference,” he cut in, “whether she was nihonjin or not.” He stared at me hard. “You never would have welcomed her.”

I’d spoiled things between us. But all I could think was how I’d watched and watched, all that time, and seen nothing.

“Ne-san, calm down,” he said, suddenly concerned. He shrugged his shoulders. “After all, it’s not that serious yet between Angel and me. It’s too early to tell. She may get fed up with me.” He yawned and indicated that he was going to bed.

“Why should you be tired?” I snapped. I wanted the last
word. “It was me who did the dirty work. Me who cleaned up Papa tonight. As usual.” Instantly I regretted it. But it was said, and with that I switched the light off, leaving him in the dark as I quickly climbed the stairs.

I sat in my room, nothing but the dark shapes of my dresser and night-table lurking around me. Chisako came to me then, as she had been the last time I’d seen her. The spilled green tea, my clumsiness; a stain on their ivory carpet in the one room, a small den hardly more than a walk-in closet that Chisako had kept for herself. Had kept from Yano and the dog, from her homely Kimi, even from Tamio.

I remembered the overgrown path to the house that afternoon, the weeds seeming to choke my ankles as I waded through them. The heaviness of my feet as I climbed the porch steps to her front door, lifting one after the other with all my strength. I grasped the handrail slick with rain and my breath came in gasps. Breathing took all my energy, as if I’d caught Yano’s asthma, as if it were contagious.

I knocked on the inside door; the buzzer dangled from the frame by a red wire. I clucked my tongue at Yano’s sloppiness; the whole house was a shambles. I knocked once again. Chisako had to be there; she’d telephoned me moments ago, in a panic, asking me to come as soon as I could. How odd, the call, hearing her voice high and twittery through the telephone line. The sound of the ring itself had jolted me; we so rarely received calls that I could often guess who the caller was. My heart was thumping that morning, it seemed to take on the rhythm of every little thing that made noise around me.

At last I heard footsteps, a giant’s reverberating heavily in my heart, and the whoosh of the door as it was opened.

“Ah,” Chisako sighed, clearly relieved to see me. Graceful as ever, even in her distress. As I removed my shoes, she set down a pair of her dainty brocade slippers, which I tried in vain to fit my broad feet into, my face growing heated as I bent over. She adeptly pushed before me a pair of brown tweed slippers that easily fit. She then led me through the living-room, every surface cluttered with Yano’s things, his useless propaganda: the flyers piled high; the envelopes strewn around the old typewriter; a half-typed letter clamped in its roller; newspaper clippings here and there—every last object coated in dust and dog hair. The musty, dank odour, like Yano himself. I shuddered at the thought of the mind behind it, the person, his dirty fingernails, the greasy scalp he scratched at continually. Chisako led me through smoothly, ignoring the mess.

She drew me into her room. Clean and dustless, with nothing but one chair and a loveseat arranged at the window, and a portable television set on a bureau. Closed the door, shutting out that other dirty, hectic world, then collapsed onto the chair at the window, which overlooked the neighbour’s yard. As I sat down, I saw from the corner of my eye a woman flitting back and forth in front of what seemed to be her kitchen sink. It was the next-door neighbour, the same wheat-haired woman who later came to my door.

Chisako let out a long sigh. I saw traces of tears streaking her face. Instantly her eyes filled, as they had that day she’d sat beside me on my living-room couch. The sight of those eyes, those drowning eyes—I felt such pity in my heart for her. I felt at that moment that I had weathered nothing, risked nothing; I had no heartache to compare with hers.

“Chisako-chan!” I cried, daring to call her that, to show the fondness I suddenly felt for her: my sincere desire to be of some comfort, no longer a bystander to others’ pain. “Is he, did he … hurt you again?” I ventured to say it aloud, to pronounce between us words to make real what I had not been able to see on that pale flesh beneath her blouse.

She quickly drew the curtains then turned her lovely eyes to me, seeming to regain hold of herself. She patted my hand. “What are you saying, Saito-san?” She gave a quavery laugh. “Yano would never harm me.” She laughed again, the tinkle of shattered glass. “Baka-rashii sa,” she murmured and patted my hand once again, a little harder, just shy of a slap. “I hope you’re not repeating such things to your friends.”

My hands loomed grotesquely large in my lap. “You are my only friend, Chisako,” I said quietly. Yet a friend, I told myself, would not call the other stupid. She was telling me that I’d overstepped, said too much. But she’d hurt me, using that word; even dressed up, it was Papa’s word, baka; she should have known better. I could not, would not, forgive that. Quickly I gathered my coat around my shoulders but when I stood up to leave, I felt Chisako’s fingers grasping at mine.

“Please,” she said, looking away. “Chotto.” She bowed her head slightly. “Asako-chan,” she whispered, as if pained. “Please don’t go.” With that she swished out of the room. Sounds drifted in from the kitchen, dishes clattering, cutlery, the refrigerator opening and closing. I contemplated my feet on the new ivory carpet, in slippers which I suddenly, with horror, realized must belong to Yano.

Chisako reappeared, carrying a tray with teapot, cups,
and a plate of cookies which she set down on a folding table. She must have noticed me examining the slippers, for she said: “He hardly wears them. Never takes his shoes off, chanto.” Not like a proper gentleman, she meant.

“Stum is like that too,” I told her, eager to skip past the awkwardness hovering like a third party in this tiny room. “Urusai, ne?” I exclaimed too loudly. What a bother these men could be, I meant to imply, with a casualness I could never muster, but the unnaturalness of my situation was instantly brought home to me: comparing her husband to my brother. I blushed, but there was no reason to, not with Chisako, who considered me smart, kashi-koi, and fearless. Fearless in the face of any gossip that might be spread about me. But what gossip? Whose? Those nisei women who stood in line in front of me at the Japanese grocery store downtown? Who barely remembered me from old camp days? Who had chased after my Eiji? Whose mothers had tsk-tsked about Mama being too old to be pregnant there? Now all they could do was politely ignore me. Perhaps they called me ki-chigai baa-chan behind my back, crazy old woman. But I wasn’t an old woman yet, even though I wore the clothes of one. One who was already dead.

We drank green tea, nibbled at cookies that had a chewy texture and mouldy taste. Finally Chisako set down her teacup carefully. She held her hand to her throat, its poreless flesh a shade darker than the makeup on her face, a difference I could have detected only in this particular light. The fingers curving around her neck. “I think he knows,” Chisako said tentatively. She stared down into her empty teacup for the longest time, waiting for I didn’t know what.

“About my friend,” she added.

“I see,” I said. “Are you sure?”

“No,” she said impatiently. Meaning, how can one be? She stood up abruptly, shook her hands at her side with dainty violence. Just then we heard the front door opening, with the hum from the outside world, and shutting. Chisako went to the door of the room and opened it a crack, wide enough for me to glimpse Kimi passing: a sullen fragment of her mouth, downturned like Yano’s, and an eye that darted at me through the slit. Come home alone, Tam long gone from her, taken by Sachi. Chisako blurted words in Japanese, too quick for me to catch, in a surprisingly harsh tone, an octave lower than when she spoke English. The girl shrugged.

“Kimi-chan. You promised.” Chisako swung the door a little wider and leaned into the opening, closer to her child, softening. Something passed between them in the next quiet moment, before Chisako closed the door.

Down the hall another door closed, and the rattle of music from a radio started up. As she returned to me, Chisako caught her reflection in a small mirror mounted on the wall, watched herself pivot, then parted from her image as she lowered herself into her chair. “I want her to join the clubs after school,” she said, flicking her hand to say it didn’t matter what. She scarcely looked at me saying this. “Kimi has a pretty voice,” she added, “like mine, not like Yano.”

Despite her carelessness, I was reminded that she was a mother, one who kept track of these things. “She could join the choir,” I started to say. “It’s important for a young girl—”