Rina nodded and breathed out slowly. She was beginning to calm down, returning to rational thought. ‘We can fight this, can’t we, Kai?’ When he did not reply, she glanced up.
‘Rina, I have something to tell you.’
She frowned, a shard of dread pierced her stomach. Kaitarō’s eyes were dark, darker than she had ever seen them.
‘Rina, I know him.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve been following him.’ Kaitarō held up his hands in defence as Rina got to her feet.
‘What have you done?’
‘Rina, I had to.’
‘You had to follow my husband?’
‘No.’ He was on his feet too now, reaching out to her, pleading. ‘No! I . . . I needed to know who you were leaving me for. I didn’t trust him not to hurt you.’
‘Did you know about this?’ she asked, while the horror of this new knowledge percolated through her. ‘Did you know about the divorce form?’ She was almost shouting.
Kaitarō inhaled sharply. There was a pause, a fraction of a pause.
‘Did you?’
‘No,’ Kaitarō said. ‘But he’s been seeing someone in Nagoya.’
‘Oh.’ Rina paused, and then quite dumbly she added, ‘That’s where he’s from.’
‘Rina . . .’ Kaitarō said. He looked as though he would like to reach for her, but something in her expression stopped him. She could see her shock and pain mirrored in his eyes and so she turned away.
She tried to focus on her breathing but all she could think of was her own stupidity, her culpability. Of course she wasn’t the only one to have been living half a life. ‘Years ago, when Satō was drunk one night,’ she said slowly, ‘he told me about a girl he’d cared for in high school. She was prettier than me and more fun, but his family did not approve, so he gave her up. Her name was Naoko, I think.’ At this Rina flicked a glance at Kaitarō. ‘Is it her? Or am I just being naïve? A hopeless romantic?’
When Kaitarō did not reply, Rina rubbed at her arms through her coat, holding herself in an embrace. ‘You will never lie to me, will you, Kai?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ he said, and she heard in his harsh, clipped tone his hatred of dishonesty.
‘This is all my fault,’ she said as the full weight of her humiliation washed over her. ‘I should have known, and’ – she glanced once more at Kaitarō – ‘I have been a bad wife.’
‘No, Rina! Please. None of this is your fault.’ She sat down on the grass and Kaitarō joined her. This time he drew her close, enfolding her in his arMs
‘I am a fool,’ she muttered. ‘What do you see in me?’
‘Everything,’ he said simply.
Rina looked at him, sure that her vulnerability was still plain because he winced at her expression. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about all this?’ she asked softly.
Kaitarō shook his head. ‘I don’t really deserve you, Rina, and I’ – he looked down at his hands for a moment before finally returning his gaze to hers – ‘I wanted you to choose me . . . for me.’
‘I do choose you,’ she said softly. ‘Surely you know – couldn’t you feel it that night at the gala? I have always wanted you. I just felt bound – ‘ Her gaze travelled over him from the frown between his brows to the line of his mouth and the afternoon beard forming on his cheeks. He swallowed and she felt him reach out to cup her face. ‘I am not here because I am in trouble.’
‘Rina, I know—’
‘No,’ she interrupted, ‘you don’t. I know I have put other people before us, but it turns out that I am selfish to the core because after Sumi, I just want you.’ She watched as his lips curved into a flicker of a smile. ‘Can you still love me, even if I am not brave?’
His smile broadened and he nodded.
Rina rested her head on his shoulder and nestled close. Kaitarō tipped her face up and kissed her on the mouth.
‘What I have with Satō,’ she said, ‘I have to believe that not all relationships are like that, just selfishness and betrayal.’
‘Not us,’ he said.
Rina took his hand, stretching out his lean, strong fingers between her own. ‘Not us?’
‘No,’ he said, pressing a kiss into her palm.
For a moment Rina hesitated and then she looked up at him. ‘Sometimes, I used to think about what life would be like if we were married, but now, I can’t say—’
‘I’ll take whatever you can give,’ he said, and in the silence that followed she knew it was true. Rina smiled as he lifted her onto his lap, and she put her arms around his neck.
‘If anyone photographs this, we’re fucked,’ he said, and they laughed as the tension eased out of them, mingling with the breeze. They were silent for a moment, watching the wind drift up through the trees and out into the great expanse of sky.
‘He is just threatening you with court. He will not take Sumi,’ Kaitarō said. ‘He wants to frighten you with the prospect of mediators and an unpredictable judge.’ He shifted her in his arms, making sure she was comfortable.
Rina raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Where did you train?’ she teased, but she rested her head back on his shoulder, acknowledging his point.
‘Satō wants a deal, a private settlement on his terMs’
Rina looked up at him. ‘Custody of Sumiko?’
Kaitarō winced. ‘A bargaining chip. What you love most.’
Rina nodded. She took hold of his hand, their fingers interlacing.
‘I have some evidence against him,’ Kaitarō said quietly, pausing to let Rina digest this. ‘I will give it to you. Use it and offer him a financial settlement. With the right incentives he will settle out of court.’ Gently, he caressed her cheek, smoothing the tension from her face. ‘We will emerge from this—’
‘Kai, you won’t approach Satō yourself, will you? This is between him and me,’ she said, and he nodded in assent.
‘Trust me, Rina. We will get custody of Sumiko.’
She leaned back against him, but she did not smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said a moment later. ‘I’m sorry for how I treated you.’ His arms tightened around her and she pressed her face against his neck. ‘I am sorry that you are caught up in all this.’
‘I’ll make it right,’ he said.
‘Are you . . . are you still going back to Hokkaido?’ she asked.
Kai eased her away from him a little, looking at her intently.
‘Can I come?’ she asked, echoing his words in Shimoda.
He raised an eyebrow as Rina placed her hands on either side of his face. ‘I mean it,’ she said.
Suddenly he grinned and she did too. He bent down and kissed her hard on the mouth. When they drew apart, it was by a fraction only. ‘My love, what’s left of me is yours,’ he whispered, and she smiled, relieved, radiant.
Rina checked her watch as she left the park. She was running late to pick up Sumiko – she’d been late for one thing or another all year – but now she was going to put it right. Sumiko was at archery practise, only a short walk from her school. Rina imagined her daughter at the head of the line, her breath almost vapour in the unheated dōjō. Her small feet in their white socks flush to the chilled wooden floor as she grasped the bow. Rina smiled. Sumi was intense in all that she did; she had already been permitted the glove and the arrow.
Rina saw her daughter step up to draw, correcting her stance, straightening her back to form a direct line from her narrow shoulders to her feet. She inhaled slowly, focusing on each breath, drawing the air in as she raised the bow above her head and brought it down, pulling the string taut all the way back to her ear. The fingers of her deerskin glove brushed her cheek and a clock ticked in the stillness as she lifted her eyes to the target and released the shaft, confident and untroubled, as she should be.
Heading into the subway, Rina scanned the shops and grocer
y stores beneath the fluorescent lights. Yoshi had asked her and Sumi over for dinner, but now Rina could not bear the thought of it. She would pick Sumiko up and they would go for red bean doughnuts instead. Afterwards, Rina would make crab with tofu and spring onions and teach Sumi to prepare it. She loved to cook with her mother. She watched so keenly as Rina sliced potatoes at tremendous speed for her favourite Sunday gratin, crying out, ‘My turn, my turn!’
Rina swallowed hard, blinded by the lights of the underground, and once more she felt the fear rising up inside her, for even with Kai’s help, she knew that a chance of losing her daughter remained.
Sumiko
Possession
I remember what it was like to have both my parents at home. At night, I could hear them in the kitchen, eating udon or hot pot, perhaps the braised pork and cabbage he liked her to prepare for him. Father came home for dinner in those days, and even though it was late, Mama always had something ready. She would prepare a variety of dishes too, one meat, plus a soup and a salad. I listened to them as they talked in the kitchen; sometimes the small portable TV would be on low as my father checked the news, but their voices continued above it, gentle and calming. I was almost always in bed by the time he came home. In the shadows of my room, I could see the lights of the city muted into softness through the curtains. As I became drowsy, I would watch that light, listening to the hum of the heater in the background, and with that and my family close by, I would fall asleep.
As I grew older, my father started to come home later and later, and my mother no longer went to such trouble with his meals. She stopped cooking afresh for him late at night and began to leave out a large portion of whatever she and I had eaten. This progressed to conbini bentos from the store, then rice balls with cold green tea, and, finally, a pot noodle by the kettle.
There were times when I awoke in the night to an almost unnatural stillness. I would hear the deadbolt on the front door click into place, and an emptiness would enter the apartment. I heard my mother walk from one room to the other, drawing the curtains, turning off the lights. In the living room, the TV would come on, soft at first. I imagined her looking towards my room to see if it had disturbed me, but after a few minutes, when I didn’t call out or open the door between us, my mother would turn up the sound until it was a low steady blare, as though she didn’t want to hear anything but its noise, no sound of the world outside.
There were nights when she no longer watched TV, but still she did not sleep. She walked and walked around the apartment. After she had finished checking the locks and the windows, once she was sure that our home was secure, she would pause by my bedroom door, opening it only an inch or two so as not to wake me. I longed for those moments, though when I heard her and saw the thin shaft of light dart across my bed, I always closed my eyes tight and pretended to be asleep.
One night she came in. I heard her open the door and felt her hand on my head, her kiss on my cheek. I smiled at her as she crawled into bed beside me. I giggled as she cuddled me to her, but she was not smiling when she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. She was trembling. I could smell her sweat, the acrid scent of fear. I could feel a fierce energy running through her like a current, though she tried to still it. She kissed my cheek, my forehead, my hair. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘all right.’ That was the last night I spent at home in Ebisu.
Now I know why she was afraid. Even today, in each and every separation, one parent must accept that they will lose their children. They can decide between themselves or a judge who has never met their child will.
The principle behind this practise is the belief that divorced parents will not be able to cooperate and act in the best interests of the child. So only one is granted custody, the right one in the eyes of the court.
Still, there is a choice. In that brief hiatus before acrimony and legal proceedings, parents have a chance to agree privately and informally who will get custody and to establish visitation rights and uphold them. In these cases it is possible for a child to grow up with both mother and father in their life. But, of course, trust must be maintained. Both parties must agree to put their child’s interests above new jobs, new homes, new partners, old hatreds, and this is where things start to unravel.
People are ruled by their desires; they will do almost anything to achieve what they want. A spouse who is tired of their ex can move to a different prefecture or country. Even if they remain nearby, they can make it impossible for their former spouse to see the child – because of illness, appointments, unscheduled weekends away. Agreements reached privately are not enforceable, and often one spouse is left with nothing, neither legal recourse nor retribution.
Because of this, every separation eventually comes down to one thing: the physical possession of the child. In matters of custody, the courts value this highly, so in cases where amicable resolution is not possible, the battle to secure the physical body of the child starts early. Grandparents can get involved and hide a child away, anything to secure it for one side or the other. As she held me in my bed in Ebisu and waited for Kaitarō’s information on my father, my mother must have thought this was the last card she had to play. The next day, she took me to see Grandpa.
I remember that when we stood on the green tiled drive of the Meguro house it felt like a playdate; in a couple of hours she would come and take me home. It was only when she stroked my face and I saw the tears in her eyes, the way that she was blinking, that I realised she would not be there that night to kiss me before sleep.
‘Sumiko,’ she said, folding me into her arMs She tucked Tora, my white tiger, between us and held me close. I clutched at her, breathing into her neck, ‘Mummy.’
‘I’m here,’ she said as I began to sob. ‘I’m here. Soon we will be together again.’ She took out her handkerchief and dried my face and then hers before anyone could see. ‘No more tears now. We are Sarashima!’
I stood watching her as she walked away from me down the drive; the banks of pebbles on either side of us glistened in the rain.
You could say I was lucky. My mother, for the short time she was with me, and then my grandfather, brought me up with great care. But this story of ours has so many sides that I doubt I will ever know the full extent of it. I will never know if my father loved me: I will never know if I was a burden to him, a pawn or a child. I will never know what my mother was thinking as she walked away from me that day. I will never truly know what she faced or the price that was paid.
Alone in Meguro, in the home we had both grown up in, the very rooms seemed to echo with her absence. At the beginning of my investigation I had only wanted to deal with the facts. I had needed each detail to speak for itself. But the more I read of the case file, the more my memories of that last year with my mother pushed to the fore. Hours would pass when I would stare into my mind’s eye, the documents before me forgotten.
One morning, as the clock in the dining room ticked past the hour, I glanced at the calendar on the sideboard and calculated the days. It had been more than a week since Grandpa had left for Hakone and soon he would be home. If I wanted to discern what had really happened, if I wanted to work without his interference, I would have to hurry.
I was looking over the pages spread out before me once more when the doorbell rang. It was the postman with a parcel for me. I took the mail into Grandpa’s study and set it down on his desk out of habit, switching on the lamp. There were some bills and a large envelope that I knew contained the contract from Nomura & Higashino awaiting my signature and seal, but I could not bear to think about it and so I put it to one side. Inside the parcel was a small black box. For a moment I paused. I had been so immersed in how the law applied to my mother’s life, how it had failed to protect her, that I had forgotten how it applied to mine. And so I was unprepared when the day I had been working towards for years and years and years finally arrived.
I sat for a
long time staring at the box in my hands before I opened it. When I did, I found that inside, resting on blue velvet, was my attorney’s badge. I tilted it under the desk lamp and the light glanced off the gold work, illuminating the finely etched petals of a sunflower and within it a tiny set of scales, the emblems of freedom and justice for all men.
I turned the badge over, reading out my personal identification number engraved on the back. These badges are symbols, not only of the law but also of power. They belong to the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations and are for the honourable and the qualified. Should you be convicted of a crime, disbarred, declared bankrupt, or die, you or your family must surrender your badge.
If you are so careless as to lose it, a new one must be made and engraved with a mark indicating whether it is your second or third – a symbol of shame and a warning. Notices of lost badges are published in the Kanpo, the government’s official gazette, so that everyone will know of your carelessness. The power and authority conferred by these symbols must never be abused, and the law must be upheld at all costs.
Yet, as I looked at my badge in my grandfather’s study and sat at the desk where we had once planned my career, I realised that my relationship to the law had changed. There were lawyers I knew who had become disillusioned quickly, but I, with all my hope and energy, had thought that if that did ever happen to me it would take a very long time. Now the limits of the law and my questions about its efficacy stood out in stark relief. The law had not helped my mother; it had only trapped her and endangered her. It had not helped me. The law as I was coming to know it did not protect. It could not reconcile or mend.
When my mother first took me to live with Grandpa all those years ago, I became so distressed that he decided we should leave Tokyo for a while. In a parody of our summer holiday, we went to our house in Shimoda, and there by the sea and in the forests of the Izu Peninsula I waited to hear from my parents and to learn my fate.
Looking down at the badge I had worked so hard for, I rotated it slowly in my hands. Then I set it down on the desk and released it with a flick of my fingers, watching as it spun like a die.
What's Left of Me is Yours Page 18