too hard to say, I’d rather be Tokunaga Momo. I remember Momo saying this. She was laughing. She laughs often. Even now that she is sullen, laughter gushes easily from her.
It was hard with Rei, but I could call Seiji by his name right away.
Seiji is five years older than Rei, who was two years older than me. Seven years my senior, and we got to know each other through work. I could call him by his name. And softly stroke his shoulder or waist from behind, all of a sudden. Seiji’s voice is gentle.
“Ms. Yanagimoto,” he calls me. He maintains the same formality. Occasionally he drops from a yes, remote as the day we met, to a yeah. But he keeps switching back. I am different. I am almost too easy with him.
“Seiji, do me,” I say, things like that.
Sometimes he responds, and when he can’t he says, “I’m sorry.”
That same remoteness.
I was determined to fall for him. When I felt I could love him, I made up my mind to love him. He did not refuse. The current of my feelings flowed his way. This is my loving. The stronger emotions, and the weaker ones, turned and surged, not straight at him, only toward him. I was grateful that he hadn’t refused. After Rei’s disappearance, I had no place. I didn’t know where to channel what I felt. When the path ahead is still unformed, we lose all sense of our location. The fear in me resembled the inability to tell upstream from downstream, to perceive the direction the water was going.
When we do it, he is vocal. Yet he never laughs aloud.
There was a sign, written vertically, that read instruments & records.
Head south from the station, walk straight until you come to the sign, then turn left beneath it. The road narrows somewhat, not enough to call it an alley, and then you turn into another street with a soba shop on the corner. There, a few doors down, was the building where Rei lived before we were married.
“What do they call this? An apartment building? A luxury residence?” I asked.
Rei cocked his head. “Do you really have to know?” he asked in return.
No. I was just asking.
instruments & records. There was a picture of a guitar on the sign. And a round disk, presumably an LP. That store looks kind of old, huh? Have you ever bought a record there? Once again Rei cocked his head. Don’t remember. Maybe I did. Or maybe not. Rei was such an easygoing sort. Not a man you expected to disappear. I never imagined it.
I went into instruments & records once. By myself, on the way to Rei’s apartment. Whenever I could find the time, I visited his apartment. Not only when he was there; I went when he wasn’t there, too.
“You’re a nesting animal, I guess?” Rei asked.
“I’ve never been like this before,” I said, “never.”
Rei laughed. He laughed often, just like Momo.
It was brighter inside instruments & records than I had thought it would be. A popular song was playing—the voice was male. The clerk was a young man. He was about twenty with a long, thin face and long hair, and he was rocking back and forth, to a rhythm different from that of the music playing. There were no other customers.
Flipping through a box of LPs in the “Western Music” section, looking at each one, I was overcome by an urge to go to Rei’s apartment. Even though it was practically next door. Even though I would be there in almost no time. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait.
There was no reason not to leave empty-handed, but instead I selected an LP at random and hurriedly paid for it. The jacket had a photograph of a woman, in monochrome. I assumed it would be vocal music and that the woman would sing, but it was all instrumental pieces with a neat, driving rhythm. As soon as I stepped into Rei’s apartment I tore off the cellophane wrapping and put the record on.
Wow, this is great, Rei said. I like it. So I gave it to him. When we married, I discovered that monochrome jacket among the few dozen records Rei brought with him, and it made me happy. Reunion. I thought the word. Reunion. Now that Rei has disappeared, it is hard for me to think it. Inside instruments & records, everything was faded and warm.
Year after year. I can’t get used to Parents’ Day.
The classroom’s dustiness; the samples of calligraphy tacked to the wall, paper curling at the edges; the warmth of the mothers’ bodies, and their perfumes; and mixed in, every so often, a father or two, always wearing, for some reason, black or navy blue. It is unfathomable that I, too, once sat day in and day out in a classroom just like this. When I was in junior high, that classroom felt right. In elementary school, that classroom felt right. Maybe because I had nowhere else to go. Or maybe back then I didn’t feel this restless burgeoning, this seeping out.
Feeling right was not a matter, then, of thought. Being with Rei felt right almost immediately. So good that I decided to marry him, to let my life become our life. Feeling right is not a help. It is like a mirage. A distant vision, trembling on the sea.
Ill at ease at Parents’ Day, I sit in a line with the others, head down. When your turn comes, I’d like each of you to tell me how your children have been lately, any concerns you may have. I’m undecided as to whether or not I should let him have a cell phone. Ever since she entered ninth grade, she’s gotten so argumentative, I don’t know how to deal with her. He tells me he’s always exhausted, he ought to know it’s no help to be too busy but somehow he can’t learn to manage his time. She’s been sickly since she was little and she still has to go regularly to the doctor, so for the time being I just want her to build up her strength.
No one says the things they most want to say. This is not a place to say them. Listening to this litany of “how our children have been lately,” I lose all sense of how, ordinarily, I engage other people in conversation. I become bewildered.
I went to Parents’ Day today, I told Momo when I returned. She gave me a petulant nod. You didn’t forget this time. Twice in the past it had slipped my mind. You weren’t there today, were you? she asked me the first time, and the second. Before the parents go to talk with the teacher, they sit in on the class. So she could tell right away. She didn’t blame me for having skipped it, but it occurred to me that perhaps unconsciously I had been avoiding a place I couldn’t grow accustomed to, and I felt ashamed.
“What did you say?”
“That you seem to be enjoying school, you know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Sorry.”
A sigh escapes me. I take care to keep Momo from hearing. She’s that age. I say the words in my mind. She seems so much more confident than me. Confident in her ability to survive her life. Confident because she has no knowledge of what lies beyond the edge.
Or maybe she knows. Maybe her young world contains within it all of life, the way a drop of water holds the universe. What was it like? I can’t remember. Your mother really is a dunce. I speak the words aloud. You’re a dunce? Momo asks, astonishment written on her face. She comes over, grinning. I love you, Momo. You’re such a cutie, such a good girl. My thoughts are in a whirl. I want to hug her. And yet I hold back. When she was close, I never hesitated. To fold her into my chest, to gather her in.
I forget my fear, and give her a tentative hug.
Laughing, she slides deftly from my arms, away.
Come with me to the department store? Mother asked.
She wanted to send a thank-you gift. I needed to send gifts to two or three people myself, so I agreed without hesitation. At the store, several things came and followed me. One in the thronging basement grocery, near the end of an isle, near the corner. On the side of the escalator where no one was standing, I noticed another.
They are always faint in the department store. Any number of them, faintly fading and then coming back, following and drifting off. Too dim for me to know if they are female or male.
“How