The Electrical Field (27 page)

“Ne-san, stop,” Stum was urging. “Please.” So calm. “It wasn’t you.”

His hand on my sleeve. “It was me,” he said. “I told him.”

I tried to push him away but he stayed put. Stum could not save me. No one could. I would not allow it. I simply nodded at that patch of carpet, pretending to accept his kindness. His lie. I stared at his shoes, and finally they stepped back.

“Are you all right, ne-san?” the voice from above said.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“We still don’t know, ne-san.”

“We don’t, no.”

“I have to leave now.” He gave a sigh; his feet made a half-turn, then paused. “Those flowers, they’re no good now. I’ll bring you some fresh from the supermarket tomorrow. Let me throw them out.”

“No, no. I just cut them.” I waved him away.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. You all right?”

“Yes, yes.”

I watched his feet lift, one then the other, then shuffle towards the door. Heard the crunch of that paper bag rolled under his arm. Out the door, down the porch steps they went, into the car and away.

I sat for I don’t know how long. Performed my duties for the rest of the day, feeding Papa, settling him in for the night. Each time returning to my armchair, unable to bear the day’s
final routine climbing of the stairs, the steps down the hall, the desolation of my room at the end of it. In front of the window I sat through the night. Not bothering to close the drapes. No wind, no birds, no children. The darkness thick, like snow, settling on me, piling up silently. My limbs drained of blood and feeling. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed my drooping flowers, gone black. Outside, the clouds stayed black, invisible in the night. The end of the world. I slept a short, blank sleep.

The door must have been left open for I heard nothing, no familiar knock, until Sachi was standing in the hallway. The sky, the clouds, all blindingly bright, starting to move with the sun. Sachi teetering on her limbs, skinny and spindly as a wishbone, outlined by the light. The dog beside her, panting. The morning paper, still rolled up, dangled from one hand; her other hand lingered over the dog’s finely shaped head. It raised its nose to sniff at her, no longer cowering. Slowly the newspaper slipped from her hand and dropped to the floor. She let it sprawl there, and watched, like a cat that has dragged in a carcass.

There it was: bottom corner, front page, that same family picture they’d run before, this time with only Tam and Kimi and Yano. Where Chisako had been, a sliver of her dress showed, a line at the very edge remained. Beneath it:
Man shoots son, daughter, and self.

Everything was quivering, everywhere I looked. Tiny quivers, side to side, quick. Sachi looked blank, numb. The floor under my feet began to sink, pitched to one side, the house was falling, the things in it trembling. I held a hand out to the wall to steady myself; we stopped sinking.

Sachi took a step closer. “Keiko won’t let me keep it,” she declared, her voice too loud, too clear in my ears. She knelt down beside the animal, leaned her head against its fur. Obediently it sat, its dainty paws lined up, the wildness I’d glimpsed in it banished.

“I wish it was Tam’s,” she cried.

“Maybe it is,” I might have said, “in its heart.” I could not bear to look into the creature’s gleaming, helpless eyes. Eyes that did not blink, like Tam’s. But I could not conjure him up, not his eyes or any part of his face.

I left her sitting in my chair at the window, with the dog at her feet. Went into the kitchen and began pouring a glass of milk, arranging cookies on a plate, too many. I stalled there for a time. She was staring across at the Yanos’ house when I returned, its empty window, and fingering a darkened petal in one hand. I set down the plate and glass, not daring to touch, to pat her back or smooth her hair. I did not deserve that.

I bent down beside her. “I might have been the cause of all this,” I whispered by her ear, choking, just as Yano had whispered his refusal to believe into mine. I could no longer endure myself. In that dark night with Yano, Chisako’s secret burning in my throat, aching to be let out. His face, how it looked in the dark; the next morning.

“No, no, no, no,” Sachi muttered, over and over, wincing with hurt eyes, flailing her arms against me. She didn’t want to listen. She got up, shoved the dog aside. “No, Miss Saito. You don’t know,” she said, making no sense, flustered, cringing, her cries tearless and dry, coming from her throat like raised dust. She pushed at the air that crowded her, bruised
her. “There are things you don’t know.” She banged her leg against my table and the untouched glass of milk tumbled to the floor. She tore out of the house, the door shuddering behind her. From my window I saw the wind come alive to whip her dress and her hair as she darted out to the field first, then doubled back towards the creek. She was gone.

By my feet, the dog was licking the spilled milk from the carpet. I pushed the creature aside to scrub the spot with my kitchen sponge, scrubbing and scrubbing in spite of my exhaustion, greater than any I’d ever felt. The dog sat silently beside me as I went on, wearing down the pile. I could not stop. As I scrubbed, the flesh of my hand grew pink.

On the carpet the newspaper lay where Sachi had dropped it. The words, the miniature faces blurring as I went on with my scrubbing, back and forth.

It felt natural that Yano’s dog should be here with me now, I thought, settling into my bed at midday, strapping myself in between the sheets. Strangely so. I considered retrieving Eiji’s picture from the drawer downstairs but my body would not move. The thought of that photo sitting inside its darkened drawer, silent, serene, was more comfort than I deserved: Eiji at rest, intact, as I now wished to be. The mattress gently buckled as the animal eased itself up beside me to rest its small head on my hip, tickling me in the slight dip beneath the bone there, not used to touch even through the thickness of my covers. So I dozed, my hand buried in the soft fur at the dog’s neck. A fever crept into me instead of sleep, a hot-ness went into my bones, my head. I wanted to sleep. I wanted peace.

At last I did sleep. A dreamless sleep that floats you on its surface. The kind of sleep you have only in daytime. Yet somewhere, somehow, in the midst of it, I realized that I understood Yano utterly and completely.
What will I tell my girl and my boy?
he’d asked me in desperation.
We’re a family
, he’d said, answering himself.
A family.

Of course I understood.
No good
, he’d said.
No good. Dame.
All along I’d understood. How one thing turns everything bad, taints all of it, and there is no going back. There is no return. For hadn’t I longed for that too, a hundred, a thousand times? Hadn’t I fooled myself into believing it possible? The slate wiped clean. The electrical field in winter, glimpsed from my window after a night of snowfall. Almost pristine that December afternoon I’d sat with Chisako at the bus stop, before my walk home, before I sank my footprints into it. And when I did, how I’d wanted to take them back, to somehow erase them.

Asa, Asa-chan. Someone was calling. I did not want to wake up. But the voice was sweet and reassuring; a woman’s. Like no voice I knew. It was pleasing in my ear, drawing me in. I could have resisted but I did not. I was too weak. I cared too much for myself. A hand, a hand that did not go with the voice, was shaking my arm, shaking it like a rattle.

Asako, please wake up. Wake up.

I opened my eyes to find Angel sitting on my bed, leaning over me in concern. Beside her, gripping my arm, was Sachi. She was pale, the rims of her eyes raw and pink, my wise child, wizened and old. Waiting. The pleading in her eyes at once brought back all I’d left behind. Her hand was
cold on my arm, a touch that chilled, another reminder, and without thinking I recoiled. Immediately I cupped her icy hand in the two of mine, but it was too late. Her eyes clouded over, became distant, unreachable.

“Asako, you slept for two straight days. We were worried about you!” Angel exclaimed. “We even called Dr. Honda to make a housecall.”

“Two days?” My voice was a croak from nothing passing through for such a time. It seemed incredible. So much time. And yet nothing had changed. Nothing was forgiven.

“You were grieving,” Angel said, momentarily solemn. “For your friends.”

“Sachi, are you all right?” I asked. Stupid, stupid question. I tightened my grip on her hand. Nothing could warm either one of us, at least not now.

“She’s been brave,” Angel answered, patting Sachi’s head.

I stopped myself from saying his name, the one first on my lips. Sachi pulled her hand free. She got up and went to the window, listless but calm. She began to hum faintly, something she never did, fingering a small black box left on the sill. That song of hers I recognized from before, about how easy it was to love someone who is beautiful. With that long and piercing high note that gradually fell at the end of its chorus.

“They’re all …? Yano?”

“The newspaper says yes,” Angel replied.

Stum hovered by the door, too shy, it seemed, to enter my room in Angel’s presence. But Angel waved him in. “Come, come. Say good afternoon to your sleepy-head sister.” He stumbled in, nearly tripping on my small throw rug.
He bent down beside me. “Genki, ne-san? Are you all right?” He said this as if I were fragile, a feather he might blow away with a big breath. I looked around me. My room, usually so dark, so dry and folded in shadows, had never felt so bright, so open.

“She’s very genki,” Angel said.

“Genki,” I said. “Much better now. Thank you.” And as I said this, I did thank him with all my heart. Silently I poured out my love. I thought I might cry, not knowing why or for whom. Perhaps it was only pity for myself.

“The dog…,” I muttered, the instant its absence struck me. I strained up from my pillow to search the floor around the bed. A little rush of panic.

“Shush, shush, Asako,” Angel said, gently pushing me down. She went to the open window overlooking our yard, stood beside Sachi to show me, as if I were a slow child. I didn’t mind. She leaned her head out and cooed. “Yuki. Yuki,” she called, and a familiar whimper and bark rose up, sifted through other yard sounds. “She’s just fine, Asako. Don’t worry.” She gave a kindly pat to Sachi’s head, which the girl flinched from.

But now there was an insistent press into the palm of my hand. A dig of nails into my flesh that was almost painful. Angel and Stum exchanged a knowing glance, then moved towards the door together. “They didn’t suffer, Asako,” Angel said gently. Then, “We’ll be downstairs.” Such ease, no longer the stranger, the guest in my home. It did not pain me. I did not mind when I saw her slip her hand into my brother’s on the way out.

I twisted my head to see Sachi better as she let herself be
pulled nearer to me on the bed. I caressed her hands, careful where there were fresh cuts deeper and longer than usual. Her hands were grey and cold: bloodless, like mine. I no longer had words for her; I had nothing to explain. The terrible urgency I’d felt to tell her what I’d done, how I was to blame; the burning wish to unburden myself, selfish, selfish wish: I let go of it all. She dropped her head onto my breast, ear to my heart. The scent of her crushed close, young and unspoiled. She’d never let me hold her like this before. She squinched her eyes shut, tight, because everything hurt.

“Miss Saito,” she whispered. A harsh, sandpaper whisper.

“Yes, Sachi.”

“Miss Saito, you have to take me.” Her hands were clawing my hands, my forearms under the covers.

“Take you where?”

“To that place. The ravine.”

“It’s no use, Sachi. He’s gone,” I said, as gently as I could. The words lifting off my tongue, light as air. She dug her nails into my arm then, making me feel my own callousness, my heartlessness.

“They could’ve made a mistake,” she said, sucking her breath sharply. “A mistake.”

She clung to me like a monkey, hugging me, stabbing me, all the while humming snatches of that song. I didn’t know whether to hold her tighter or push her away. I couldn’t help remembering her clinging to Tam this ferociously, her legs climbing. Their bodies rolling and twisting once the game was almost over and they’d stopped taking turns, so her back was to me, and he held still, letting her do it all, and I saw his face above her shoulder, what she couldn’t see.
So fierce and aching, it pained me to see. Looking so much like Chisako.

“Please,” he’d groaned. I’d seen him with Yano countless times, a small, stiff soldier, doing what he was told.

“Tell me,” Sachi had coaxed. “Come on.” She was smiling, I knew, though I could not see her face. Because he wanted it, he’d pointed to it in the game. I could tell the tone in her voice. The teasing. Holding out what she knew you wanted most, making you reach for it. She nudged him with her shoulder, giggling. He seemed to stare right at me crouching among the bushes, yet did not see me.

“Chin chin,” he whispered at last, and his face broke open, the fear giving in to her. That baby word. I saw her take his hand and push it down the front of the light blue jeans she wore that day, planting it in the dainty jungle there, her mystery. She was never gentle, with him or herself; she pushed and pushed when his hands were like spiders. I’d stuffed my fist in my mouth to stop from gasping, snorting, from crying out, I don’t know what. But I saw their faces, both of them, I saw how they looked. Her mystery.

Sachi’s tears were spilling onto my chest like sweat; they ran between my breasts.

“Please. Miss Saito, Miss Saito. I have to go. I have to.”

I heard the dog just then, its plaintive bark echoing up through the window. “What about the dog?” I said, reaching for something, anything, to distract her. “Tam’s dog. Go see her, she needs you to stay with her.”

“He should’ve shot the stupid dog!”

She sobbed onto my breast; sobbed and sobbed. I felt the front of her teeth press against my skin; her lips pulled back,
trembling. Her cries a keening in my ears. “Please take me, Miss Saito! Please!”

“It won’t do any good.”

“It will! It will do good! Don’t you know, Miss Saito?” She groaned as if physically pained. One hand went to her temple, the fingers stiffened and flayed. She held it there as if against an intense flash of light. Then she drew herself up and brought her lips to my ear, pressed them right inside it. “I have to see him.” A bird’s whisper.