All the Ways Home

by Elsie Chapman

  My brother isn’t supposed to be nice.

  I slowly stir my noodles with a chopstick, no longer hungry. “Yup.”

  For a moment, we don’t say anything. He drinks tea, and I just keep stirring. There’s a game show on the TV mounted on the wall, the wacky kind Japan can be known for. In this one, the loser has to strip to his boxers before getting a foam bat across the face. We’re both watching without watching.

  “Kaede, do you know the word kotodama?” Shoma asks.

  I shake my head. If Mom had taught me that one, I’d forgotten.

  “The kanji for koto means ‘to say’ and the one for dama means ‘spirit’ or ‘soul.’ Put together, kotodama means ‘the power of words.’”

  I shake my head again. I know each kanji on its own—they’re basics and form lots of words with other kanji—but this combination is new to me.

  “It’s from old Japanese mythology. If you watch enough anime or read enough manga, you’ll probably come across characters whose special abilities come from the power of words.” Shoma gives me a crooked smile, now looking unsure of bringing it up. “Anyway. I’m just thinking about your journal and how it seems you’re being asked to write your way through this.”

  “The way you might? With work?”

  “Sure. I mean, some articles are harder to write, but I still have to write them.”

  I think of my mostly blank journal, in my bag on the shelf beneath the counter. How, over three weeks, writing will help me change all the questions in my head into answers.

  I wonder if that’s why Shoma writes. If he had to work his way through stuff, too, to end up where he is now. Dad’s itchy feet didn’t get bad until after me and Mom were around, but he started getting into photography soon after Shoma’s mom died, when Shoma was eight. Whatever the reason for our dad being distant, maybe Shoma’s house when he’d been a kid had been empty in weird ways, too.

  “And, Kaede, about the driver of the other car, the one from the accident…” My brother gives me a look so gentle my eyes prickle. “The way you tried to set his house on fire—you’re lucky it didn’t end up worse than it was, you know? He could have made the police be harder on you, you being twelve or not.”

  I go stiff. My heart pounds. Disappointing Shoma had never been a thought, and now it feels like it matters too much. A part of me wants to erase my brother back into an outline, back into the distance, where I can keep him small. Another part wants to paint him true, let his blue hair be a blaze.

  “I wanted the police to make it harder on him,” I say. “For what he did.”

  “But you know the difference between negligence and intent, right?”

  I do. It’s about being careless instead of being on purpose. Everyone kept telling me, and I hadn’t cared. I still don’t want to now, even if I do understand it better.

  “I said this to your grandpa on the phone after I heard about the accident,” he says slowly, “but really it’s you I should have said it to. Kaede, I’m sorry again about what happened to your mom. She was always good to me, when she could have easily chosen not to be. There I was, this brand-new twelve-year-old kid she was suddenly expected to treat like her own, and she did. For three years I was hers, and I had a family again.”

  My brother’s voice has gone funny once more, full of gaps and broken up like a fence that needs repair. Still, the expression in his eyes somehow reminds me of my mom’s, those times she looked at me and I knew she would somehow make things right. Cooking my favorite dinners on Father’s Day, extra birthday presents for the ones that stopped coming in the mail. Not to make up for your dad not being around, Kaede, but because I am.

  “You about done?” Shoma pushes away his tray. “Home is just a ten-minute walk from here.”

  My mom had once loved him, yeah.

  And I know I must have, too.

  11

  I used to google my dad sometimes, back when I still let myself miss him.

  Tsubasa Hirano is a pretty big photographer in Japan now. After me and Mom moved away, he was finally able to really focus on building his career. And Shoma was already a teenager by then, so family was no longer a worry or a care. His name began to mean something when it came to galleries and art showings and studios. People wanted their share of him. On paper, on a computer screen, he felt more and more like a stranger and less like my dad.

  He does mostly landscapes and buildings and street scenes.

  Together, those three things have taken him around the world, to places far away from us. But it’s like he leaves a piece of himself behind each time, wherever each photo shoot takes him. So when he comes back to Japan, not all of him is here anymore. I think it’s kind of the same way with Jory and how he lives at the rink as much as he can. When he’s away from it, he can’t hide he’s missing something.

  The difference is, Jory’s found his home at the rink and is happy there—my dad’s happiness comes from the search.

  I found this one online interview three years ago; the publication date was one year earlier.

  Reading it, I’d been so proud of him, how he sounded like a celebrity the way he touched so many people with his photos—That’s my dad! That’s his work! But afterward, my stomach was shaky, all hollowed out. As though his answers to the interviewer’s questions had opened up these cracks inside me, and all my pride was seeping into them even as other things leaked out.

  I had questions.

  Like why did my dad’s search for satisfaction have to take him away instead of bringing him closer?

  Why did the people he most wanted to make happy with his photos seem to be everyone but family?

  Why didn’t his being my dad mean most of him wasn’t for sharing?

  I’d been nine when I read that interview.

  It’d been nearly a year since I last heard from him.

  This part is the worst:

  “I’ll never stop looking for new places. It’s the best way I know how to keep feeling inspired, to stay feeling young.”

  Does Hirano think he has more than just a slight case of wanderlust?

  Another laugh. “Home is … complicated, that’s for sure. I can’t deny that for me, personally, the concept of home often feels more stifling than comforting. On occasion, when a location is particularly tough, there will be a moment or two where I think feeling that way is more a curse than a blessing. But then the light turns just right, and I manage to capture something special in a photo. And I remember all over again why I’m there—why I do what I do, no matter the cost.”

  12

  The name of the all-night café Shoma lives upstairs from is Irusu. It means “pretending to not be home,” which is kind of perfect for a place that never closes, always there for those who need somewhere to be. I would wonder about his sleeping because of noise from the café at night, but noise—music—is his life, so it works out all right.

  Rows of plastic food line the front display window, shiny in the late afternoon sun: omurice, mixed sandwiches, doria. Past them I see leather booths, wood floors, brass lamps, a clerk at the till by the entrance. There’s a second floor, too, Shoma tells me, with more booths and a walled-off smoking section that still lets smoke billow everywhere.

  I follow him as he navigates the tiny path between the café and the building next door, an acupuncture clinic. The slabs of pavement are uneven beneath my steps, and cracked. But someone’s kept them swept. The weeds have been cut back and thrown away. There aren’t any cigarette butts, smoking section or not.

  There’s a door at the back of the café building. A planter of bright-yellow flowers sits beside it. Beside that, there’s a small white lucky cat figurine, its paw raised. It’s the motion-sensitive kind, so it waves its paw as we get close. A bunch of five-yen coins lay scattered at its feet. The five-yen coin is supposed to be the most important one when it comes to praying. I remember my mom telling me it’s because it’s pronounced the same way good luck is in Japanese. Looking at them, I wonder if any
are Shoma’s, from when he might have wanted something, or had something to wish for.

  My brother unlocks the door, and inside we start climbing the stairs. Three steep flights—his rental apartment is on the top floor. The walls are close, the light dim—the banister is cold beneath my hand.

  “Shoma, you know those old Japanese horror movies?” I’m practically whispering, but I can’t help it. “Like The Ring and The Grudge?”

  He laughs. The sound echoes. It’s kind of cool—that I can make him laugh, despite his being so much older, his experience in so much. “Yeah, why?”

  “Just asking.”

  Another laugh as he fishes out a second key once we get to his front door. He’s already given me a spare set for both doors. For when you’re out on your own and want to come home.

  “Are you talking about the Hollywood versions or the real thing?” he asks.

  “Hollywood. I’ve never seen the originals.”

  “Seriously? Okay, add that to your list of things to do. ‘While in Japan: define the concept of home and learn the source material.’”

  Shoma’s place is pocket-sized—two bedrooms, a bathroom, and the tiniest kitchen and front room I’ve ever seen, all fitting into a space that’s about half the size of our house at home. Seeing it reminds me of something Gemma had told me, after I told her where I was spending August and she’d gone online to read about Tokyo. Did you know Japan is around the same size as California? But while thirty-nine million people live in California, one hundred and twenty-seven million people live in Japan?

  The bedroom that’s mine until I get to Dad’s is a tiny corner of that pocket. The floor is covered with tatami mats that smell like grass. The walls are covered with white paper with the texture of woven fabric. My Western-raised feet appear oversized on the mats, my fingers clumsy and careless as I stretch out, nearly able to touch opposite sides of the room at the same time. Then I stop and drop my arms, wary of all the shelves and racks just at my fingertips. There’s not enough buffer room between me and this space that’s not mine—I don’t want to damage something. Or have something damage me.

  I drop my backpack onto the tiny futon left out on the floor and carefully look around at my brother’s stuff.

  There’s a bookshelf shoved full of old manga and music magazines. Vinyl records are stacked on top of a turntable on the floor, and there’s a plastic yellow crate full of CDs beside that. A bin is full of anime figures still in plastic bags, ones from Naruto, One Piece, Bleach. Roan would be in heaven if he could see, and I grin to myself. Shoma doesn’t really seem like an anime geek, but that’s the foreigner in me talking. We read and see things and decide what is normal, when really we can’t know much at all. Coming here and observing doesn’t mean I suddenly understand.

  I have to admit I like seeing how my brother is also a collector, though. Just like me. One more way we’re alike, outside of having the same dad. I keep limited edition quarters and hockey cards; he keeps CDs and magazines. This spare bedroom of his feels about five times smaller than my room in Vancouver, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped Shoma much.

  If I’d had such little space growing up, would I have bothered to keep anything? If Shoma had had my room, would he have gone wild and brought the world home, saved it as his own? If I’d grown up here, would I still be the kind of person who could hurt his best friend? Would Shoma be a writer if he lived in Vancouver? Maybe we’d just be more like each other, or different in ways that aren’t so big.

  I open the closet door, shaking the questions away—I won’t be around long enough for the answers to matter.

  Jackets are stuffed along a rail. There are shoe boxes lying on the floor. Behind all of this, partially hidden, are an electric guitar and a small amp. Both look like they’ve been used a lot, and that they’d been expensive, but I can’t tell for sure. And then that corner of my brain squeaks again, and I’m thinking about that plane ticket to Sapporo and how it can’t be cheap. I’m thinking how Shinjuku is a city that dwarfs Vancouver—and even Vancouver has its share of resale shops.

  Guilt burns my ears, and I back away, shutting the closet door with click.

  There’s a knock, and it’s Shoma, standing in the hall just outside the room.

  “Hey, you okay in here?” he asks. “Sorry about the mess. You can just shove everything around if you like.”

  “I’m fine.” My answer half surprises me, because it’s mostly true. Shoma’s hiding how much he hates having to babysit, and if I’m careful, he’ll stay a stranger. The next three weeks might not be as bad as I once thought, with only a missing Dad left to solve on this side of the ocean.

  Only.

  Relief instantly turns into dread. The sharp lump of it sits in my throat.

  Meeting my dad has become a waiting game now, when all along I’d meant to get it over with. That box of tough questions is getting heavier. My boat will sink if I let leaks take over—if I wait too long out on the water.

  And Shoma—can’t he see he’s only making it harder, pretending to care? He’s been gone for nine years with barely a word, and nine years is kind of a long time when I think about how long some school days can feel. People sometimes think rebooting a computer that’s crashed is simple, just a flick of a switch and everything’s back the way it was. But programs get wiped out. Work gets lost. It can get really messy. Some of it might not be recoverable.

  You can’t become brothers overnight.

  “I just realized you should probably call your grandpa, now that you’re here,” Shoma says, still standing in the doorway. “It’s the middle of the night in Vancouver, so he’ll probably be asleep, but…”

  I’d forgotten, and I feel guiltier about it than I thought I would. Which is weird because I’d only be calling to speak to a machine, while Grandpa and I barely speak even when we’re face-to-face. “It’s okay, he told me to just leave a message this time. I’ll call in a second.”

  “Okay, sounds good. And you should try to stay up for a bit longer, or it’ll be harder to get over the jet lag. How about call home, finish unpacking, and then we’ll head out again?”

  “What would we do?” It’s nearly seven in the evening here, but back in Vancouver I’d be sleeping, just like Grandpa is sleeping now. I’d be having bad dreams about fires or car crashes or hockey accidents. The house would be dead quiet all around me, most of the city just as quiet.

  My brother shrugs, gives me a grin. “It’s Tokyo, Kaede, and we’re in Shinjuku—there’s going to be something. And there’s always food, too—dessert, if you want. I bet you can’t get good taiyaki in Vancouver. Or kakigori.”

  It takes me a few seconds to connect the words to the right food. Taiyaki: fish-shaped pastry filled with bean paste, sometimes with shiratama, too. The World Food Day fair has them, but that’s only once a year, and they probably can’t compare. Kakigori is shaved ice Japanese style. A store in a mall in Burnaby claims to sell them, but they ended up being more like American snow cones, the ice in hard crystals instead of soft flakes, the flavoring brightly colored sugar syrups you squeeze from a bottle instead of fruit and condensed milk ladled on top.

  Shoma’s still waiting for an answer by the time I’m done thinking all this, and I stare up at him, uncertain. The idea of seeing Shinjuku at night—it’s just going to be another memory I’ll regret. Giving my brother a chance means that on the other side of these three weeks I’ll probably look back and wish I’d been smarter.

  But on that other side is also Vancouver, a city halfway across the world. Regret feels about as far away. So does my dad.

  And I do want to try taiyaki and kakigori.

  “Sure, okay. I just need a few more minutes to finish putting my stuff away.” I point to my backpack, and then gesture with my cell. “And to call.”

  As soon as Shoma leaves, I call home. I’m surprised when my grandpa picks up, instead of it being voice mail as he’d said it would be.

  “Hello? Kaede?”

 
I’m even more surprised that he sounds wide awake. Has he been waiting up this whole time? I feel even worse now about forgetting. “Hi, Grandpa. Yeah, it’s me. I’m here at Shoma’s place. Um, sorry it’s so late—you should go to bed now.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. I just decided I wanted to hear from you before sleeping.” There’s three seconds of silence—if he’s listening to the news on the radio even now, it’s too quiet for me to tell. “How was the flight?”

  “Fine.” Grandpa’s used to one-word answers from me by now, so I don’t know why I keep going. “They had some pretty good movies.” I can’t remember what I watched, though. My brain had been too busy worrying.

  “Ten hours in the air—I hope you managed to fit in all you wanted to see.”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “Call again in a few days, just to keep me updated?” He laughs over the phone, the brief sound of it a gruff, rare thing. “And let’s try for anything but the middle of the night.”

  “Sure. Good night.”

  “Kaede?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really hope you enjoy this time away, to be spending it with your father and brother. Your mother would want you to. She’d be happy about this.”

  Something pinches in my chest. It’s the mention of my mom and Shoma and Dad all at the same time, as rare a thing as my grandpa’s laugh. It’s being pulled in a bunch of different directions with no idea which one’s safe.

  “Okay, I will.” I hope my voice isn’t as wobbly over the phone as it is in my ears.

  “Well, thanks for calling, Kaede. Good night.”

  After he hangs up, I flop down onto the futon, yawning as I open my backpack. I’m tugging out my clothes when my journal falls onto the bed. I wonder if I have time to squeeze in another entry before Shoma comes for me. My pages are looking awfully blank, and the idea of not doing a good enough job to pass makes me feel like throwing up.