Villain a Novel (2010) (28 page)

When I was little, he recalled, before Mom took me to live with my grandparents and we were still living in an apartment in the city, she said she’d take me out to see my father, and I was so happy getting ready, and riding the streetcar together. “When we get to the station we’ll transfer to a train,” she explained. I asked her, “Is it far?” and she said, “Way far away.”

In the crowded streetcar, she clung to the strap. And I held on to her skirt. When the streetcar started to move, some men seated in front of us began to elbow each other and laugh. They were laughing at my mom, who’d forgotten to shave her underarms. Mom turned all red and hid her underarm with a handkerchief. It was a hot day. The packed streetcar lurched to one side and her handkerchief slipped off and the men tried to keep from laughing.

We got to the JR station and transferred to a train. Trying so hard to hide her underarm on the lurching streetcar had left Mom covered in sweat. As we were waiting at the crowded ticket counter to buy our tickets, I said, “I’m sorry” to her. Mom looked at me vacantly, her head tilted. “It’s so hot, isn’t it?” she said. She smiled, and wiped my sweaty nose with that handkerchief.

A car horn blaring behind him brought Yuichi back to the present. He accelerated abruptly and his body, clinging hard to the steering wheel, was snapped back against the seat. He was so distracted he didn’t merge into the highway but went straight over the overpass.

He slowed down to do a U-turn and switched on the radio to get his mind on other things. The local news was on. Yuichi did a huge U-turn, and the on-ramp to the highway loomed closer.

“In another story, in the case of the murder that took place just after midnight on the tenth of this month at Mitsuse Pass, the twenty-two-year-old man police have been searching for as a material witness has been found. Last night a clerk at a sauna in Nagoya contacted police, who immediately took the man into custody. He has been transferred back to Fukuoka, where police are questioning him about the incident. As we get more details, we will update this story on the eleven o’clock news.”

The news ended and an insurance commercial came on. Yuichi steered back, away from the highway on-ramp, and stepped on the gas. He cut in front of another car and the driver blared his horn. Yuichi sped up more, overtaking another car. Finally he slowed down and pulled off the road, coming to a stop in front of a vending machine.

A nostalgic Christmas song was playing on the radio now. Yuichi switched stations but couldn’t find any more news about the murder at Mitsuse Pass. He held on to the steering wheel, even though his car was stopped. A huge truck roared past, the blast of air rocking his car.

Yuichi shook the steering wheel, but no matter how much he tried, it didn’t move an inch. He tried again, but the harder he tried to shake it, the more his own body shook back and forth.

They’d captured the guy. The guy who’d been trying to escape. They’d arrested that guy who’d taken Yoshino Ishibashi to Mitsuse Pass. He found himself muttering these words, and as he did, for some reason he pictured again the scene, years ago, when he and his mother had gone to see his father. The men on the streetcar chuckling at her hairy armpit. Standing at the crowded ticket window and his mother’s face as she wiped the sweat from his nose. Why that day would come back to him now, he had no idea. But he couldn’t erase the images from his mind.

We took the streetcar to the JR station, Yuichi recalled, where we
boarded a train. Mom had me sit down at a window seat, and she sat next me, dozing.

Just after Dad left, Mom used to cry every night. When I got lonely and sat down beside her she’d stroke my head and say, “Let’s just forget about anything sad, okay? Let’s just
totally
forget about it,” crying even more loudly than before.

From the window I could see the ocean. I was sitting on the mountain side of the car and on the other side, the ocean side, were two elementary school brothers wearing caps, traveling with their parents. When I leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sea, my mom woke up and said, “Sit down. It’s dangerous,” pushing my head down. “Once we get there, you can see the ocean as much as you like.”

I don’t know how much longer we were riding after that, but all of a sudden I dozed off like her.

“We’re getting off now,” she said, grabbing my arm, and I stumbled off the train still half asleep. We left the station, walked for a while, and arrived at a ferryboat dock.

“We’re going to take the ferry and go over there,” my mom said, pointing to the other shore.

In the parking lot of the dock there was a line of cars. “They’re all going to go on the ferryboat with us,” my mom told me.

Just like she’d told me on the train, there was the ocean, right in front of me. And way off on the far shore was a lighthouse. The first one I’d ever seen.

Yuichi’s cell phone rang. He was still sitting in the car by the side of the road, hands tightly clasping the steering wheel. Trucks continued to roar by right next to him, the air blast lifting his car up each time they passed.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The caller ID said
Home
. When he answered it, it was his grandmother, sounding a bit hesitant and timid.

“Yu—Yuichi? Where are you?”

It sounded like somebody was right beside her, and she was checking with that person as she spoke.

“What d’you want to know for?” Yuichi asked.

“The—the police are here.” She tried her best to sound upbeat, but her voice was trembling. “Where are you? Can you come back soon?”

Another truck roared past. Yuichi hung up, and almost reflexively his fingers began to move on the keypad.

Is that right? So Yuichi still remembers that time? … He must have been five, or maybe six then.… I was sure he’d forgotten all about it. As I told you before, after Yuichi started working for me I treated him even more like a son. He’s really gotten good at his job these days, and was even thinking of getting a crane operator’s license.

If you think about it, that was how he came to live with his grandfather and grandmother. Really? So Yuichi still thinks he was going to see his father that day? That’s pretty sad. What happened was, that was the day his mother abandoned him.

I don’t know what Yuichi told you, but back then his mother was at the end of her rope. Everybody told her she shouldn’t get involved with that worthless guy, but she ignored them and did it anyway. Things went okay until Yuichi was born, but before three years were up the guy ran off and left them. I’m not trying to take her side or anything, but she did get a job in a nightclub and thought she could make a go of raising Yuichi. But things never work out that easy, do they? Working in a place like that, she took up with another bad guy, who spent all her money, and she got sick.… She should have called her home for help, but she couldn’t. So she ended up alone, with no one she could rely on.…

So anyway, his mother was desperate. She lied to Yuichi, telling him they were going to see his father, even though she had no idea where the guy was.

She abandoned Yuichi there at the ferry dock that day. He sat there, waiting, all alone, until the next morning. She said she was just going to buy their tickets, and ran away, but what she did was hide behind the pillars of the pier until morning.

The next morning, when one of the ferry workers found him, Yuichi refused to budge. “My mom told me to wait here!” he said, and actually bit the guy on the arm.

Apparently as she left his mother told him, “See that lighthouse over there? Just look at that lighthouse. I’ll go buy our tickets and be right back.”

His mother got in touch a week later. She said she felt like she was going to die, but I don’t buy it. So after that, Yuichi was taken over by Child Protective Services and Juvenile Court, but his grandparents took him to live with them, and not long after that his mother took up with another man and disappeared.

The whole parent-child relationship is a strange thing if you think about it.

Just around the time Yuichi started to work for me, the topic came up and I asked him if his mother had ever contacted him. His grandfather was doing poorly around then, and I figured if things turned out bad I should be able to get ahold of her to let her know about the funeral. It was just a thought I had that I blurted out.

I was positive that after she took up with that last guy there’d been no word from her. I asked his grandparents and they told me, “She sends us a New Year’s card every couple of years. Each time it’s a different address.… Probably she’s with a different man each time.”

I asked Yuichi if she ever got in touch. He shook his head and I thought that was the end of it. But then he added, “If it’s about Grandpa’s condition, I already told her.”

“You told her? You mean … you have kept in touch with her?”

“We go out to eat sometimes.”

“What do you mean by sometimes?”

“Once a year, maybe.”

“Do your grandparents know about this?”

“No, they don’t,” Yuichi replied, shaking his head. His grandpa
took great pride in the fact that he’d raised Yuichi, so it must have been hard for Yuichi to say anything about it.

“Don’t you get angry when you meet her?” I said this without thinking. I mean, look, his mother abandoned him there at the ferryboat dock, without anything to eat, and he ended up stuck with his grandparents.

But Yuichi said, “No, I’m not angry. I don’t see her enough to get angry.”

“Where is she now, and what’s she doing?” I asked.

“She works at an inn, in Unzen.” This was about three or four years ago.

Apparently he’s driven over a few times to see her. “What do the two of you talk about?” I asked.

“Nothing much.”

I know I can’t forgive his mother for what she did. I can still picture Yuichi at the ferry dock, abandoned. It’s not just me. His grandfather and grandmother, and the other relatives, feel the same way. But this parent-child relationship really is strange, isn’t it? None of us forgave her, but Yuichi did.

After seeing Yuichi off, Mitsuyo sat for a while on the staircase outside her apartment. The hard concrete chilled her backside, and from an apartment on the first floor, she could hear a young man soothing a baby.