Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  Chapter 10

  Falling

  Eventually, Satoru managed to calm his mother down and get her back in the car. As they drove off, Grandma was still vowing that she wouldn’t go home without talking to Akira. Her massive traveling bag sat heavy in the back seat, a testament to her determination.

  Wataru and Kuniko went back inside under a pall of silence. As Wataru headed off to his own room, Kuniko called out to him.

  “Can we talk?”

  She looked horribly tired. Her cheeks were ashen, her hair a tangled mess from when she had wrung it between her hands down in the garden. It was difficult for Wataru to look her in the face.

  Mom’s sick, that’s it. Mom’s terribly ill. We should call a doctor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last in a tiny voice. “I’m sorry you had to go through this.”

  Wataru sighed quietly, his eyes cast down to the floor. They were sitting in their usual dining room chairs, only Akira’s chair was empty. It never would have occurred to them to sit there, though there was no danger of its regular occupant suddenly walking in.

  This scene, the two of them sitting where they were sitting, right now, at the table, was utterly normal. It was Sunday. Akira had gone out golfing, or maybe he was on a business trip. Nothing was different. Wataru wondered if the day would come when he, or maybe his mom, or someone else entirely, would sit in Akira’s chair without a second thought.

  “Don’t apologize. It wasn’t either of our faults. That’s what Uncle Lou said,” Wataru muttered. “It’s Dad’s fault, he was the bad one. He and the woman he’s with now.”

  Kuniko sat with her head hung low, wrinkles showing on her forehead. “The woman…”

  “He’s right, isn’t he?”

  Kuniko looked up with a wan smile. “I suppose you heard what your grandmother was saying down in the garden. There’s no point in trying to hide anything from you now.”

  No, there’s not.

  “Wataru, do you know what that means?”

  “I think so.” Wataru recalled what his uncle had said about that sort of thing happening on television all the time. He said so.

  “Soap operas…” Kuniko said with a sigh. “You’re right. I used to think this sort of thing happened only on television. Those advice columns, and those radio call-in shows, I thought they were all fake. I never thought…” her voice trailed off. She was talking half to herself. “Those sort of things happen to other people. People who didn’t run a good family, people who were lazy, who got into trouble. Not…not us.” She shook her head. “Maybe I was too proud, and this is my punishment.”

  Wataru knew he should say something. You’re wrong. That isn’t it at all. But he said nothing. Because I feel the same way!

  He only had more questions. “What do we do now? How do we get Dad to come home?”

  “I don’t know,” Kuniko answered quickly, the words coming out in a jumble. For a second, Wataru saw his mother differently. She was more than his mother and more than his father’s wife. She was a complete person, someone he had, until this moment, never seen before.

  And then it was gone.

  “No, Wataru, you shouldn’t think about this. It isn’t your problem to worry about. It’s like your uncle Satoru said, you haven’t done anything wrong. This problem is between me and your father.”

  Wataru’s logical brain—inherited from his father, no less—immediately began clicking, constructing a counterargument. Sure, if it was a problem between “Akira” and “Kuniko,” then it may very well have nothing to do with “Wataru.” But what if it was a problem between his “mother” and his “father”? Then it didn’t make sense to leave him out of the equation.

  So who are you? Kuniko and Akira, or my father and my mother?

  What good would asking do anyway?

  “Dad told me that even if he—even if he divorced you, he would still be my dad.”

  “He said that when you came back on Friday night with Uncle Lou?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your father told you that, did he?” said Kuniko, her eyes filling with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You only said he told you that he would be leaving and wouldn’t come back for a while.”

  Wataru had lied to her, he remembered. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not something you need to apologize for,” Kuniko said with her elbows resting on the table and her hands covering her face. “Why should you have to apologize? That’s terrible. I…”

  She slumped onto the table, and started crying. Wataru whispered that he was sorry. Everything he saw went blurry. He rubbed his eyes again and again but the blurriness didn’t go away.

  “No, Wataru, I’m sorry,” Kuniko said between sobs, her head still down on the table. “The terrible one is your father. Can you believe it? He says that even if he leaves he’s still your father—and what are you supposed to say to that? Nothing, that’s what. You had to just swallow it all up inside. And then he walks out.”

  Uncle Lou’s voice rang in Wataru’s head. Akira had always been that way, keeping his thoughts to himself, voicing only his conclusions. Wataru knew this about his father. Logical thought led to rational decisions, and those, once made, were final. No amount of arguing could dissuade him once he had set upon a course of action.

  Rational decisions. For Akira Mitani, the rational decision had been to leave, to abandon his wife and son, so that’s what he had done. But how had he come to that decision? What path did his reasoning take? How could Wataru be sure his father hadn’t made a mistake, an error in his calculations?

  Because Dad never gets anything wrong, never makes a mistake. Until now. This was the exception, it had to be. Somebody had to tell his father that. Somebody had to check his math.

  “What did he say to you, Mom?”

  Kuniko lifted her head at the question and shook her head. Tears trickled from her eyes. “I don’t think you need to know that.”

  “I want to know,” Wataru said, his heart rising in his throat. Kuniko looked at him through teary eyes and smiled a smile so bitter she seemed to be in pain. “Such a good kid.”

  “Mom…”

  “No. No, you don’t need to worry about a thing anymore. I’m fine!” Kuniko nodded exaggeratedly. “I’ll do it. I’ll speak with your father; reason with him. Then, he’ll come home. Look, Wataru, why don’t you just think of this as an extended business trip? That’s really what it is. He had some difficult work to do, and he has to devote his time to it for now. A business trip. Right?”

  And what was he supposed to say to this? Nothing—just like it had been with his father. Maybe that was the way it had to be.

  “That’s right,” Kuniko declared. “You’re such a good kid, how could you lose your father? You can’t, of course, and I’ll make sure of it.”

  After that day, his mother didn’t bring up the subject again. She met with Grandma in Chiba and Uncle Lou, talked in a hushed voice for long hours on the phone, and called her own parents in Odawara. Oddly, Wataru never knew what was happening, or what she was talking about.

  Dad’s on a business trip. That’s all. A lie, he knew, but he tried to believe it all the same.

  When it grew inside him until the pain was too much to bear in silence, he went to Uncle Lou. His uncle changed the minute he brought the topic up.

  “What has your mother told you? You listen to what she says, and just, er, live life. Normally.”

  Huh? Normally?

  “Hey,” Uncle Lou beamed. “Less than two weeks until summer vacation. You’re coming out here in August, right? You’d better, cause I’ll be waiting. And finish your summer homework too!”

  Wataru’s mother had told Uncle Lou not to say anything; that much was clear. He pressed harder.

  “What about Grandma? Did she talk to Dad like she said she would?”

  “She’s getting busier at the store, what with summer coming and all. Don’t you worry about that, okay?”

  “What do you me
an, don’t worry?! It’s my life!” he shouted.

  His uncle’s voice got suddenly quieter. “Look, don’t give me a hard time about it, Wataru.”

  “I don’t mean to give you a hard time, it’s just…”

  “You’re still a kid! You can’t walk around with these adult problems on your shoulders. You haven’t done anything wrong, so you don’t have to do anything now. Your mother asked me to tell you that there’s nothing to worry about. So please, don’t worry. For me?”

  Something’s wrong. Uncle Lou’s not usually like this. Why is he siding with Mom and not me?

  There was only one thing left to do, and that was to talk to his father directly.

  I can’t. Not without telling Mom. I shouldn’t.

  But what was his mother telling him? What was she doing that wasn’t hidden from his eyes—in words he couldn’t hear? She was trying to clean things up all by herself. It wasn’t fair.

  I’ll do what I think is right. I’ll make my own rational decision.

  June slid into July, the depressingly overcast days of the rainy season became scarcer, and the sun shone hotter. The bespectacled weather reporter on TV pointed at his weather map and warned about heavy sudden thunderstorms and rapidly fluctuating temperatures. Careful you don’t catch cold!

  Before Wataru realized it, summer vacation was upon him. It was everywhere in the air. Even at cram school, the excitement was palpable. It was like he could hear a whispered countdown in the air:

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Vacation!

  In reality, the cram school held classes even during summer vacation—actually, they held them because it was vacation—and if you were to attend them all, you wouldn’t have much of a vacation left. Still, having some schoolwork to do and having to actually go to school were two separate things entirely. The former always seemed much brighter and full of hope than the latter.

  He sat in his usual chair, but his mind was far, far away. From the outside he figured he looked much the same as always. No one had said anything about him seeming down, or not himself. They didn’t get many tests this time of year, so there were no bad marks to raise his teachers’ suspicions either.

  Of course, there was no fooling Katchan.

  “Hey Wataru, why do you always look so angry lately?”

  Exactly a week had passed since the Sunday when Grandma Tank rolled into town and blew his world to smithereens. Wataru was over at Katchan’s house, playing in his room. It was a small room, with a big dresser, and laundry hanging outside the window. There was a ton of it, flapping in the breeze.

  Wataru looked away from the video game and peered at Katchan. His friend sat with a large mug of soda in one hand, his eyebrows raised in an exasperated look.

  Wataru’s mug sat untouched atop a serving tray, sweating in the summer humidity. The mugs were the same exact ones they used for beer and mixed drinks down in the bar. Compared to a regular soda glass, they were huge. If he drank the whole thing he’d be burping the rest of the day.

  True to form, Katchan had already downed half of his, and when he opened his mouth to say something more, a loud belch erupted.

  Wataru cracked up, and Katchan joined him. Wataru dropped his game controller on the floor, laughing while his computer-generated opponent proceeded to dice up his character.

  Katchan suddenly straightened up. “It’s like you’re wearing this angry face all the time.” Wataru was silently surprised. He had no idea it was so obvious.

  For the past week, Wataru had been trying to contact his father every way he could think. He just wanted to talk to him once, just once. But it was proving difficult. It was as if Akira had flown to the moon. What Wataru thought would be so simple was turning out to be so difficult.

  His dad had a cell phone, he knew, but Wataru didn’t know the number. There had never been a need until now. That Friday night, travel bag bulging, his father had told him to call him on his cell phone, but how could he do that, if he didn’t know the number?

  There was no use asking his mother. Kuniko wouldn’t tell him. Since their talk she had been trying her best to cram Wataru into a box labeled “father on a business trip”—for his own good—and she was desperate not to let him think anything else.

  Hoping it might be written down somewhere in the house, Wataru had leafed madly through address books and phone books. He could find it nowhere. He wondered if it was programmed into their telephone at home, and one night when Kuniko wasn’t looking, he pulled out the operating manual. There was nothing. Maybe she knew I would look, and erased it? It was more than probable.

  His next target was Akira’s company. But, as Wataru realized with some embarrassment, though he knew the name of the company where his father worked, he knew practically nothing else. He didn’t know if his father worked at the main office, some branch office, or even at some subsidiary.

  He tried calling the main office’s service centers as listed in the phone book, going from the first to the last. That’s when he encountered a new problem. At a big company such as the one where his father worked, you could call a number from the telephone book (or from directory assistance), and ask for Akira Mitani—and even if he worked there, they wouldn’t just connect you. They always asked for a division or department name, if you were family, or a client, and what your business was. If he couldn’t answer their questions they would probably tell him to stop making crank calls, or ask to speak with his mother. He’d be worse off than if he had never picked up the phone.

  I’m really Akira Mitani’s son, I just want to talk to my dad.

  Speaking slowly, Wataru told Katchan everything that had happened from start to finish. The whole time he spoke he didn’t tear up once, nor did he get excited. He was calm. Or maybe just exhausted.

  Katchan’s round eyes went even wider. He listened without saying a word. When Wataru had finished talking and reached out for his mug, he looked up to see Katchan staring at him with his mouth hanging wide open.

  “Whoa.”

  Wataru wasn’t sure why, but suddenly, convulsively, he laughed like a madman. “Pretty out there, isn’t it?”

  Katchan nodded vigorously. “I only know like one other person whose parents got divorced, and that was a long time ago!”

  “Me too. Hey, but aren’t Yutaro’s parents divorced? And I think there’s another kid in cram school whose parents got divorced.”

  “Maybe we’re thinking of the same person? Tanaka, that guy in Class Two?”

  “No, no, it’s a girl, Satoko-something. She doesn’t go to Joto.”

  “I know one kid whose parents died in a car crash,” Katchan said solemnly. “I never thought it would happen to someone I knew! I mean, uh, it’s not like he died or something, but still!”

  Wataru felt the exact same way.

  “So why do you want to talk to your old man now?”

  “If I don’t, how will I know what happened? I don’t like this not knowing what went wrong. It ticks me off.”

  “Yeah, I hear that.”

  Katchan peered into his empty glass and belched again. This time he didn’t smile. “Shouldn’t you just leave it up to your grandma? Sounds like she’s pretty hardcore about fixing him.”

  “You think my dad will come home if I do?”

  “Sure. Married people are always gettin’ into fights and then gettin’ back together.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Oh, they talk about it at the bar all the time. My dad and mom, they’re great at ironing out those marital disputes. Lots of people come to them for advice.”

  “You mean customers talk about their private lives like that? At the bar.”

  “You bet.”

  “Wait, so, even if my dad has this woman on the side, you think I should just wait it out and he’ll come back? You can’t guarantee that!”

  No one could. Katchan chewed his lower lip in thoughtf
ul silence.

  “I just don’t want to leave it like this,” Wataru said at last. “There has to be something I can do.”

  “You’re bright, Wataru. That’s why you don’t like it when people do dumb things,” Katchan said. “If all you need to do is call him, I might be able to help you out.”

  It took Wataru a few seconds to process what his friend had said. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously. His number’s in the call list.”

  “The call list? What’s that?”

  Last year their neighborhood held a fire prevention day, with all the local community boards participating. Katchan’s dad had been one of the committee members.

  “See, we gathered a list of emergency contact numbers for everybody in the town. Your dad wasn’t on the committee or nothing, but he was like this emergency contact for when there’s an earthquake or fire or something like that, so his name, his company, the address, and the phone number are all on that list. I remember seein’ it there.”

  Wataru grabbed him by the shoulders. “Show me!”

  Katchan raced to get the book. It was a sheaf of stapled photocopied pages, with a simple piece of colored paper as a front page. The numbers were there, as promised.

  “Akira Mitani…got it!”

  The book listed both the name of his division and the direct phone line.

  “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Sure, but you won’t get him today. It’s Sunday. Companies are closed.”

  Oh, right.

  “Come over after school tomorrow. I’ll call for you.”

  “You’ll call?”

  “Yeah. I’ll pretend I work at a shop, and that a Mr. Mitani left something, and get them to the phone. I do that kind of thing all the time. You gotta throw ’em a bit of a curve ball, or they’ll just ask to talk to your mom.”

  “Good thinking, Katchan.”

  Katchan grinned. “Hey, you share your homework assignments with me and all, but this kind of stuff is my specialty,” he said with evident pride. “Also, what if you said you were a Mitani calling, and he didn’t even answer the phone?” Katchan looked at Wataru’s face and his smile faded. “Sorry. Got a little carried away.”