The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  “Sometimes I think of that story my daughter told me from the book. I would feel better some days if I could do something like that. Better than having no one to bury, better than having hope that dies. I am sorry.” He looked around the table and shrugged. “I am sorry to be saying sad things. Maybe when the women roll down the hill in the story, also they laugh. Or they cry. This is not something I have seen with my two eyes, and maybe it is rare and maybe it is invented. I try to imagine a good storyteller writing this. My daughter told me and now I share with you.”

  He smiled and the others smiled, too, each creating a picture, each imagining the ritual, finding the nearest slope—if the graveyard didn’t have a hill of its own—and rolling, whatever the season, whatever the weather.

  “I’d like to read that book,” said Gwen, speaking softly and for the first time this evening. “Next time we’re here, will you tell me the title?” As if someone else had made the request, she stared at the pumpkin again.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to roll down a hill,” said Hazzley, thinking of what such an act would release. She would get rid of the bottles, then find a hill and roll down. Or roll the bottles down. That would be the end of them. Except there’d be broken glass at the bottom of the hill, a lot of glass. Not a solution after all.

  “Sounds like a great ritual,” said Addie, thinking that sadness imposed by grief would be heavily tinged with relief while rolling down a hill. “I’d like to meet the woman who started this.”

  “This ritual, these women in the story,” said Allam, “they give strength one to the other. There is a place in the world for ritual. Not everything is a bad story, sad story. I know we must look ahead, not forever behind.

  “Another ritual I have learned—not about humans—is the dance of the cranes. In Hokkaido, red-crowned cranes were hunted until on the edge of extinct. Is this understood? On the edge?” The others nodded, and he carried on. “In the last century in the north part of Japan, only thirty of these beautiful creatures remained. Now they are protected, valued, hunted no more. When the numbers became bigger, the old meaning of cranes came back for the people, for the culture of that place. Beauty, long life. The dance of one pair of cranes declares territory, but the dance also makes the cranes strong, one to another.”

  “I hope to see dancing cranes someday,” said Chiyo. “I’ve never been to Japan, though it’s the land of my ancestors. Plenty of ritual in that country, I’m sure.” She paused for a moment. “Here’s something that isn’t exactly ritual. Or maybe it is. About a week after my mother died, I was home by myself. People had come and gone and the funeral was over, and I was in the living room alone and sun was shining through the window and I lay down on the floor in the middle of the room and curled up and wept.”

  “You did that?” said Hazzley. “I did exactly the same—though I didn’t plan to tell anyone. After Lew died, when everyone was gone and I was alone, I wandered around the house for a while and kept thinking of what people had said at the funeral: that he’d had a good life, a useful life. He’d been dead only a few days and already he was being summed up. And what if I didn’t agree? There are so many facets to a person’s life, so many incidents and turns and adventures and insights and loves and joys and likes and dislikes and regrets and embarrassments—well, now I’m out of breath. But how can we choose ‘good’ or ‘useful’ as if together those two adjectives make up a life? Finally, trying to put this all together, I wrapped a blanket around myself and curled up on the floor in the family room and cried my eyes out.”

  Chiyo and Hazzley looked to the others. Gwen was nodding. She had something else to say. “I cried so hard when my boys—the twins—left after the funeral,” she said, “I stayed on the floor the entire afternoon.” She did not say that there had been days when the only feeling she had was the recognition that her life energy had gone out of her. She had been deserted by her emotional self.

  This was Gwen’s first mention of children, let alone twins, but no one had a chance to comment because Tom jumped in. “The floor was hard,” he said. “There were moments when I felt like doing that, but the floor was merciless for these brittle bones.” He had stood at the window and cried for Ida and for himself, but he didn’t mention that. Nor did he mention that when he cried, tears flowed only from his left eye. One more condition to report to his ophthalmologist, along with the occasional difficulties he was having now with depth perception.

  “You know something?” said Hazzley. “It makes me feel better to hear that others have done the same. But what on earth is comforting about lying on the floor? The act, I suppose. The prostration of self. The giving over. The discomfort. The abandonment to grief. Comforting in some way. But done privately in our culture. Not actually visible to others. Not like rolling down a hill. Though I suppose one could roll down a hill when no one else is around.”

  Allam slid back in his chair, watching, listening.

  “There are so many things that aren’t apparent,” said Addie. “Things we keep private. Not necessarily about grief, and I don’t mean to change the topic—that is, after all, what has brought us together—but . . .”

  “Things that aren’t apparent.” This was Chiyo.

  “More or less invisible. We could take this in any direction.”

  Gwen was thinking about how she was able to become invisible while hiding in plain sight. She still hid occasionally, even though she lived alone. She didn’t actually hide, but she felt that she was hiding. Old habits. After Brigg died, after the funeral, after her sons left to go back to their families in Texas, after she’d curled up on the floor and cried herself out, she picked herself up and opened a bottle of red wine and sat on the stoop at the back of the house, where she was sheltered from prying eyes. She drank one glass of wine. Another. She smoked two cigarettes she’d blatantly lifted from a package one of her sons had purchased while staying with her. She tried to inhale. Blew smoke gracelessly into the air. No grace, no elegance, no charm. Finished the first cigarette, stubbed out the butt, lit the second. Drank a third glass of wine and felt a sense of accomplishment. An act of defiance against the dead. Dead Brigg. There was no summing him up. No sirree.

  Allam looked over. The woman beside him, the woman introduced as Gwen, was trying to erase herself. He knew this instinctively.

  “Let me tell you something that has been out of sight in my family,” said Addie, who’d definitely decided to keep the lie about Sybil buried. Sybil was alive in Greenley, but barely, in a single room in palliative care. Rails on her bed to prevent her from falling out; family members taking turns sitting in a chair at her bedside, reading, staring out the window or falling asleep under a borrowed hospital blanket. Taking their cues from Sybil’s level of consciousness. Nurses came in and out of the room. Not sadly or tragically, but not cheerily, either. They did what had to be done. Drugs were administered for pain. Addie had the feeling that all of them, including her, were managing to “support” and “sustain” Sybil. Collectively and with enormous effort, they were holding her frail self together. They reinforced her human dignity, her right to breathe, her right to existence, as long as these rights endured. Who would give the signal to let go? Would it come from one of them, or from Sybil herself? Maybe her friend was ready to die and they were all standing in the way, blocking her exit.

  She continued, switching tracks in her mind. “Family funerals, though very much a reality, have become almost invisible in my extended family. In the past, I’d heard rumblings about unresolved disputes among my mom’s relatives. Grudges. I suppose there are disputes of varying proportions in all families.”

  “There isn’t a family I know that doesn’t have a few members who don’t speak to one another,” said Hazzley.

  “True enough,” Addie said, and continued. “Relatives can make demands. Or feel they’re in a position to criticize. The grudges in my mom’s family started out as personal quarrels among aunts, uncles, in-laws, outlaws, even cousins, nie
ces, nephews. My late mother had a large number of relatives, many of whom are still alive. Here are some of the tales that were reported: a brother snubbed a sister in a Walmart parking lot; an uncle sent a letter to a brother-in-law that the recipient found insulting; a sister told her brother he smelled like boiled meat; someone offered to help put up storm windows but didn’t show up; another was accused of ‘ugly’ behaviour when he drank too much rum at an anniversary celebration and refused to go home; an aunt flirted with her sister’s husband; there was a misunderstanding about a ring. I didn’t hear the entire range of behaviour. I only know that the sum of all the grudge-holding was magnified out of proportion to the initial disputes. Everyone was getting old, moving along the continuum, and no one knew how to fix things. Now when someone dies, nobody is notified. The immediate family holds a private funeral, and two or three weeks after the burial, an obituary is placed in the local paper. The relatives, including sisters and brothers, are not given the opportunity to attend or participate in mourning rituals. This has happened four times that I know of. Does this help anyone involved? Of course not. It only adds an extra layer to the existing grief.”

  “As an only child, I’ve always wished for sisters and brothers. I tell myself I’d heartily accept grudges and all,” said Hazzley.

  “You might want to reconsider what you wish for,” said Chiyo. “One of the complaints I’ve heard more than a few times from participants in my classes is that out-of-town relatives who drop in for a few hours or a few days to visit are the first to criticize the primary caregivers. They go away believing they can do better but don’t bother offering to share the load. They often have no idea how bereft of spirit—how bereft of energy—the responsible persons really are. Well, who knows, really? I, too, am an only child.” I needed help, she thought, but I had no idea whom to ask or how to ask. I’d already been swallowed up by the role.

  “I was lonely sometimes,” said Hazzley. “Though I did have cousins. After I moved to Canada, away from my parents and their extended families, I stopped hearing about daily events.” She nodded to Chiyo. “I can see how complications could arise when blood relatives live within shouting distance. Same village or town, same province, even same country.”

  “Grudges are not so amusing when you’ve heard the litany of baggage relatives tow behind them for half a century,” said Addie. “Though I’ve laughed at some of the antics in my family. When I was a student in Montreal, I used to visit one of my favourite aunts, who lived near Dorval. She was skilled at doing crafts and started up a joint venture with her closest friend, who was considered family. They created sturdy baskets using a variety of materials, and local gift shops were happy to carry their creations. My aunt was not in great health and couldn’t get out to drive, so her friend did the driving to the craft stores to purchase supplies. My aunt paid exactly half the cost of the materials, but she refused to pay half the cost of gas. There was a dispute, an actual fight, and they stopped doing crafts together, which was a great shame considering how much they enjoyed the shared activity. They remained friends and continued to see each other from time to time, but never again discussed the basket-making. That was the elephant in the room.”

  “Elephant in the room?” said Allam.

  “A problem people don’t want to talk about,” Tom offered.

  “Ah, the fact that is refusing to be ignored.”

  “What my aunt’s friend didn’t know was that my aunt continued to make baskets,” Addie said. “She hid them away until someone else could collect them to be sold in a different set of shops. I was at her house one day when her friend arrived at the door unexpectedly. My aunt hissed at me to gather up the baskets and materials, run them down the hall and hide them on a top shelf in her bedroom closet. ‘She’ll never go into my bedroom,’ she shouted after me. And then arranged herself to greet her friend.” Addie shook her head. “What a family. Invisible funerals, invisible crafts. After that, my aunt lived in fear of being caught out by her closest friend. Even so, she carried on creating baskets for several more years.”

  “Fear,” said Tom quite suddenly. “Fear can be hidden, out of sight . . . sometimes. After 9/11, no one wanted to fly—at least not right away. My wife, Ida, said she was staying put, but I booked flights and began to take trips, several trips. I realized later that I did so in the spirit of trying to cheat death. A bad thing had happened. An unthinkable event. An unthinkable series of events. I told myself: I will board a plane; I will fly without fear. Could this horror possibly be repeated? I flew to visit our son, Will, in Edmonton. After that, I flew to New York to see a Rockwell exhibition at the Guggenheim. With that trip, I was showing solidarity with our American friends. But I did not fly without fear. Many of us who flew during those early days after 9/11 were frightened. But we were watchful, too. We were on the lookout for odd behaviour. In airports, in rows of seats on planes. You know what I mean? I could see others watching. Trying not to be obvious. Men were sizing each other up—including me.”

  “I do know what you mean,” said Addie.

  “I didn’t fly until several years after 9/11,” said Hazzley. “I lost all desire to travel.”

  “A whole range of feelings was experienced during that time,” said Tom. “So much was public, but much was also kept private. I never discussed my feelings about this with Ida.”

  What he did not say was that there were other things he hadn’t discussed. Nor did he say that Ida had been the most honest person he’d ever known. When he’d occasionally learned, after the fact, that he’d paid a price that far exceeded the value of an acquisition, did he tell her? No. She’d have been upset. So he’d fudged the accounts once in a while, to save himself an argument. Oh, it was all small stuff. But truth needed a break every now and then, he’d told himself. He had wanted to tell that to Ida, but the circumstances were never quite right. How would he have started such a conversation? So he told occasional lies, but only when necessary. Didn’t matter; she never knew.

  Or did she? Did she expect him to reveal every fib he’d ever told, no matter how tiny? One truth he was certain of was that Ida had loved him. And later? Had she loved him later in their marriage? The way he loved her? They were together many years, and they’d done all right. They’d been friends, real companions.

  “I’ll tell you something that wasn’t obvious to me, at least not at first,” said Chiyo. “And this has nothing to do with 9/11. I suppose you could call it a moment of overwhelming emotion. A few years ago, I learned that a rerun of Snow Falling on Cedars was coming to the repertory theatre in town. I had never seen the film—I was in my early twenties when it first came out—and asked my mom if she wanted to see it, and she surprised me by saying yes, though she rarely went out to a movie. She preferred to watch DVDs her friends brought to the house—a lot of them were films from Japan. I mean, maybe she and my dad went to movies when I was a baby, but I kind of doubt it. I did tell my mom a little about David Guterson’s story because she hadn’t read the novel. I knew she’d be interested, and I asked if she wanted the book from the library. But she said no; she didn’t feel the need to read it in advance.

  “So we went. And at the end of the movie, after the last credit rolled, neither of us was able to move. We just sat there. My mom could not rise up out of her seat. The lights came on and the other patrons wandered out, but the two of us stayed. No one came down the aisle to ask us to leave, which was a good thing because I don’t know how my mom would have reacted. I believe she was physically incapable of standing during those moments. She showed no outward emotion. We just kept sitting. I’d never seen her like that before. Her feelings about those memories were so deeply hidden.

  “After a long silence, my mom spoke, but she did not turn in my direction. She was staring straight ahead. ‘I know some of those people,’ she said. She motioned with her chin in the direction of the dark screen. ‘People in that movie. Actors, extras in the crowds—do you remember the part? When the families were forc
ed to leave their homes? Some of the people who acted in this movie were in the camp with our family. I recognize them even after all this time. Part of it was filmed in Canada. It had to be. One of the scenes was Greenwood; I know that place, old mining town. We moved there for a short time after we left the Fraser Valley at the end of the war. I think one of the boat scenes, too, was filmed in Canada. Did you see how helpless those families were when they were taken away? What were they supposed to do? They had to follow orders, just as my parents did when I was a child. We were ordered out of our home. We were allowed to take only what we could carry. That was British Columbia, where I was a Canadian citizen. But this is an American film, what we just saw, ne?’”

  Chiyo stopped there. The credits had run up the screen quickly; she hadn’t been able to spot every filming location. She looked up the information later. Her mother was correct: several Canadian locations were used. But her mother had looked so helpless sitting in semi-darkness in the theatre. Reliving what her parents had gone through. Reliving what she had gone through as a child in the camps. Small and helpless.

  Addie had seen the film, as had Tom. He remembered the year, 1999. He and Ida took the train to Toronto and managed to get tickets for several films at TIFF. They were both moved by the film. They had read Guterson’s book in advance. Tom had never met anyone directly related to someone who’d lived in one of the camps, and he was interested in what Chiyo had to say about her mother’s reaction.

  Hazzley picked up the war-movie thread.

  “Hope and Glory. I watched that in Ottawa with my daughter, Sal. The setting was the Second World War, and the film was pretty darned accurate about capturing the experience of children in London—some children, anyway. I was young during the actual war, but for me the film evoked the years that followed, when there was so much rebuilding to do. Parts of Hope and Glory were amusing, downright funny, despite the seriousness of the times. Ian . . . Ian . . . the grandfather?”