We were already late getting to the station, but I knew I had to visit that shrine before leaving Osaka. I just did. My feet kept going, and Shoma didn’t even say anything as he followed, as though he knew I had to visit, too.
Going to Sensoji Temple the other day, I only went for my Summer Celebration Project. To find something for my topic of home and then write about it for Mr. Zaher. I’d expected souvenir booths and tourists and old buildings. As for stuff about gods and spirits, I wasn’t going to be interested.
But then I bought some bad luck. And I tried to get rid of it. I was being chased by something invisible, something that’s not supposed to be real, but still I felt it, at my back like a cold wind, an ugly shadow. I guess being in a place where things like fortune and power and kotodama are parts of everyday life, you can believe almost anything.
I don’t know if that bad luck still follows me, and I didn’t stop at this roadside shrine in Osaka because of it.
But I did stop for some kind of luck, it turns out.
Because even though they didn’t sell omikuji there, they sold ema.
For five hundred yen, you write your wishes on the back of a small wooden plaque, and then you hang it at the shrine with all the other ema. Then you wait for a god to come along to read it and make it come true.
Most of the ema to choose from had drawings on the front, like geishas, or tidal waves, or samurai. But I bought a blank one. So I had both sides to write on.
I had a lot of things to wish for, Jory. To try to make right. Even gods can’t fight science and turn back time, but I still had to try. I’ll always keep trying, even if I’ve already hung up my ema for a kami to come along and read.
The words didn’t come at first. I was full of wishes, but they were afraid to show themselves. In my head, they match up to what it’s in my heart; but in ink, in words, I was afraid they wouldn’t be enough. It’s the same as how Perry freezes up during a shootout, how his hands of gold turn into concrete with all the pressure. His relief to get off the ice—we could always feel it from the bench as he skated by, remember?
Jory, that relief—I understand it, too. Now that I’ve decided hockey isn’t for me. Not the way it is for you.
I’m really sorry for having taken it away. As though I’ve torn down your home, made it unsafe. And I’m beginning to know now how horrible it must be, to possibly lose it for good.
Here is what I eventually wrote on my ema. It’s not as long as I thought it would be, needing to explain everything.
But I think it reads okay.
I think it gets down to what counts.
See you when I get back, all right?
Jory, I wish I were way better with words. The way good songwriters are, or Shoma and his interviews, how they’re like invitations right into someone’s brain, someone’s heart. I wish this ema I’m writing on could be as powerful as Light’s notebook in Death Note except that it saves instead of dooms. So I’m sorry if all this ends up sounding stupid anyway.
First of all, I wish for your eye to get better so you can keep playing hockey. I wish that you’ll jump right back into the game like you haven’t missed out at all. I wish that it’ll still be there for you, and built even stronger, a home that’s sticking around. And if that doesn’t happen, I’ll still wish we could be friends again one day. Your buddy, Kaede
34
Dear Mom,
Here are some things that would make you happy to know, if you were here.
Shoma’s not hiding who he is anymore.
Before I got here, he never talked about family. People he knows—bands, the stage crew and security guards at all the venues he’s usually at—had no clue I even existed. They say he can talk to them for days about lives and music, but about us, not a word.
Last night, though, he introduced me to everyone we saw. He told them all I was from Canada and how I’m here for the rest of the summer. The way he said it, you never would have guessed he was only babysitting me until Dad came back. Which was cool.
One of the people he introduced me to was Eriko, the singer of the band who played last night. I know Shoma won’t mind if I tell you I’m pretty sure he likes her a lot, and that she likes him that way back.
You’d also be happy to know that he’s a pretty important guy when it comes to his work. He’s found a place to fit.
At first, when I saw how he had this whole life outside of the brother who’d gone silent on me, it made me mad. It was almost like he shouldn’t have had the chance to succeed, not after disappearing. But now I see it differently. I see how he had to work really hard to push us out of his mind so he could be someone else, not be in the shadows of his half-ghost family. How he wasn’t just the kid with a constantly missing dad, with a stepmom who decided he was okay without her, with a brother who didn’t ask for him.
And about hockey … I’m not so sure it’s really for me. I’ll still play sometimes, but it’ll just be for fun. I think I wanted it to mean something special to me, and when it didn’t, I couldn’t figure out how to start looking elsewhere.
This morning, me and Shoma were in a guitar shop, and he showed me how to play.
It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, Mom.
So I’m going to keep trying. Keep doing my best to learn how to play it for real, make it mine. I want to see if it’ll become one of those parts that I can drop in that well Shoma says is home.
Playing shouldn’t be about getting people to say you’re the best, anyway, but to play just because you want to. Dad was never around to tell me I was doing okay, except I convinced myself I needed him there, just to believe I was.
When I get back to Canada and to school, I need to remember I can be okay whether he’s around or not.
Home will be a really hard place for a while. But Grandpa will become less of a stranger over time. He’s still too big on news radio all day long, so I’ll work on getting him to switch up stations once in a while.
I texted Jory again, even though he’s still not answering—asking about his eye, about him, saying I’m sorry and that I wish we can hang out again one day. His eye might never get better, Mom, but I’ll keep hoping it will.
I’ll eventually move on to junior high, though it might not happen this year.
And maybe, one day, the phone will ring. And it’ll be Shoma calling.
35
I’m in my room, lying on my stomach on my futon and flipping through yet another magazine from my brother’s collection. They’re in piles all around me, like sandcastles grown tall around kids at a beach. Shoma’s working at Rock in Japan tomorrow, and I’m reading about the festival out there in Ibaraki, trying to find a definition of home somewhere. Four days, hundreds of bands, thousands of people gathered together—there must be something in a year’s worth of words (a lot of them my brother’s).
Last night, after getting back from Osaka, I stared at the still-mostly-bare family tree section of my project and decided to lie.
Ms. Nanda would never know. Neither would Mr. Zaher. I’d tried not to think about how I promised him I’d really, really try. How leaving his office that last day of school, it was the first time since Mom’s dying that the counselor hadn’t had sad eyes saying good-bye to me.
Shoma had watched as I made up a family for us. I sat down in the front room and wrote down the names of strangers, picking them randomly from articles from the newspaper. He hadn’t pointed out I was cheating. Instead he’d helped me create relatives, helped me invent whole branches of people who cared.
I have a feeling he’s done this before.
So I’ll make up for it with the rest of the project. I’ll have to. I’ll add more brochures, drag Shoma to more tourist sites, and save tickets stubs from lives we go to. Along with my journal entries, I’m going to believe I’ll figure out home soon.
Only my dad’s absence continues to gnaw, my box of questions still heavy.
I call him when I can, whenever Shoma’s not going to not
ice. But nothing always answers, just that same void. And Sapporo is beginning to feel beyond far (according to an online dictionary, far is over a great distance, across much time), while Shoma’s bass is just sitting here right in the closet, the very definition of near (at hand, soon, immediate).
This time, the dictionary seems to have it right.
I flip through more magazines—if my brain’s too busy reading, it can’t keep going back and forth, telling me to choose.
Sapporo or Tokyo.
Dad or Shoma.
Answers to old questions, or new memories made. Hurt now or hurt later.
Pages suddenly drift out of the magazine I’m reading. They spin their way onto the tatami mats beside the futon, landing with a swish.
I lean over and pick them up. They’ve been sliced out from a different magazine and then saved between the pages of this other one. My mom had done something like this, cutting out recipes from magazines and papers to try one day. She kept them all in a binder above the stove, never remembering to look at them again.
At first I think it’s one of Shoma’s articles, or something he’s saved for reference.
It’s supposed to be anything but what it is.
A reporter’s print interview with Tsubasa Hirano. It’s from a Japanese photography magazine. The date on the corner says it was published nearly three years ago, fall 2012.
My stomach (which has been feeling more than fine lately) begins to ache as I read about our dad’s plans to leave us:
His voice is full of energy over the phone, despite the fact that for the past two months, he’s been living in a tent in the middle of a forest.
“Rest is going to have to wait,” Hirano declares. “I already need to be back out there, somewhere, wherever that might be. Whatever place or subject wants me next. The world’s a big place, too big to fit into my apartment. Which means going out there to see it.”
And then:
Anyone who knows the photographer also knows he hates staying still. Rest? Routine? Home?
Hirano says he and such words aren’t a healthy fit.
His laugh is a boom through the phone, excited for a future still to be imagined. “The next time I’m gone, it could be anywhere from a month to six, from a year to five. It could be anywhere in the world. Whatever decides to call me, I’m listening.”
My pulse is a drum, beating hard in my ears.
Five years?
Dad would have been okay being gone that long? Not even okay but excited?
I wish I could believe my kanji is bad enough that I’m reading the clipping wrong, but I know it isn’t. Mom had been so careful checking it during those years at our kitchen table, the language one of the few things about Japan she hadn’t let herself leave behind.
Shoma had probably saved the interview to read a bunch of times, trying to believe it.
Or, maybe, trying not to. He wouldn’t have been a kid anymore, and Dad would have already been mostly missing.
But … kids are supposed to stay kids to their folks forever, aren’t they? Gemma’s parents always say this to her older sisters, whenever they talk about moving out and finally being independent. Her folks tease they’ll call all the time to check, to make surprise visits and always be close by. They promise to never forget about their kids.
Three years ago, I wouldn’t have been around for our dad to ditch and disappoint.
Only Shoma would have been.
My stomach swims, and I feel sick for my brother.
If I’m ever a dad, I’m never going anywhere. I’ll stick to my kids like the world’s strongest Krazy Glue. I’ll be the most annoying and clingy dad ever.
Still holding the clipping, I leave the room to find Shoma.
I want to know where Dad went after the article was published. How long he ended up staying away. If he came home afterward and actually stayed for a while, wanting to catch up with his oldest son. Or if he only came back to do more interviews, each about disappearing for even longer, before taking off again. Six years, kids! Seven! Let’s just make it ten so we can call it the Decade of Dad!
So many questions, all spilling out of that small box.
With only my brother around to answer them.
36
There’s a gyoza-eating contest happening on the television, and the stereo’s turned up loud and playing something with lots of bass.
Shoma’s in the kitchen, his head deep in the fridge.
I want to tell him there’s no food in there, but before I can, he’s already shut it, looking uncertainly at the packages he’s holding. It’s the same hamburg steak and kimchi from before, when I first got here.
“I wouldn’t eat those if I were you,” I tell him.
He glances up, mock scowling. “Expiry dates don’t mean much.”
“Or they can mean a lot.”
He laughs and sets the food down on the counter. “How’s the research going? Find anything you can use for your project?”
“Some stuff, yeah.” I hold out the clipping. “Shoma, I found this in one of the magazines. It’s an interview with Dad.”
My brother takes it. His face changes as he begins to read. From confusion to impatience to being tired. He hands it back before I know he’s done, and by then his face shows nothing. “Yeah, I remember this. What about it?”
“You didn’t finish reading it.”
“I read it a long time ago, Kaede. I don’t need to read it again.” He carefully opens the container of hamburg and sniffs it. “I’m going to run to the konbini and grab something. Want to come along?”
“I’m still full from dinner. Hey, this interview—Dad says he wouldn’t mind going away for as long as five years.” Saying it out loud doesn’t make it seem more reasonable, doesn’t shrink down time.
My brother shrugs and tosses the hamburg into the garbage. “Like I’ve said, Dad’s Dad. The disappearing act is second nature to him.”
“It’s from three years ago. Haven’t you ever asked him about it?”
“Ask him what?”
“Whether or not he meant it.”
Shoma shrugs again, and now he’s dumping out the leftover kimchi. “There wouldn’t have been any point to ask. Him saying it is him meaning it.”
My fingers are colder than they should be as I place the clipping on the kitchen counter. “Didn’t you want him to not mean it?”
Shoma’s face has a bit of the coldness that’s in my fingers. Even his blue hair manages to look nearly unfriendly, the blue more of deep ice than the sky. “I don’t think Dad really cares what either of us want when it comes to his work.”
“So after you read it, you just … left it?”
“Even if I’d asked him, it would have been the same answer he’s always given. He goes where the work goes.”
“But—” I look at Shoma, sad for the kid he’d been, the kid that’s crept back into his eyes, turning his voice funny again. “You’d still be here.”
“That’s never mattered. Look, I’m hungry, and I don’t want to talk about Dad anymore. Let’s go. I’ll buy you something.”
“You kept the interview, though. It must have bugged you.”
Shoma picks up the clipping and drops it into the recycling bin. His expression is grim and angry, full of thunder and clouds. It’s too close to how a lot of people have looked at me lately. “Talking about the past isn’t going to make him come back any faster. You know Dad. You know what he’s like.”
Suddenly I’m more mad than upset, maybe even as mad as he is. “You might know what he’s like, but I don’t. How can I?”
“Actually, him not being here is how you know,” Shoma says quietly. “Better get used to it.”
My eyes tear up, so my brother becomes a huge, messy blur. “He’ll be here soon.”
The sight of me starting to cry makes him go still, and quiet. Just the way he did on the train, when he said he was trying to be a better brother.
He sighs like he’s never been more exhau
sted, then reaches over and roughly scrubs his knuckles over my hair.
“I really hope so, Kaede,” he says, his voice all gentle now, and I wish he’d stay mad so I could. “And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. But you know, it’s the truth. Finding that old article changes nothing. We’ll go to the festival tomorrow, we’ll finish your project, and we’ll still have lots of time to hang out afterward before you go home.”
I nod, my neck stiff, blinking hard.
I can tell his we doesn’t include Dad.
“You okay now?” Shoma’s still feeling bad. His eyes are dark with it.
I nod again, not okay at all. It’s gotten hard to take a deep breath. That box of questions suddenly feels too heavy to wait any longer. It’s starting to sink my whole boat. Water’s coming in over the top so there’s a waterfall right at my feet. I can’t bail fast enough.
Shoma would never understand to help. He once had his own box of tough questions for our dad, and the answers he got weren’t good enough. Why would he care that I still had mine to ask?
And just like that, I make up my mind.
For days I’d been stuck, lost because of it. I’d gone back and forth like a compass with a broken needle, the direction north no longer a sure thing. Like Mom’s radio sometimes getting caught between stations, so she had to jiggle the dial to make it decide.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me to the store?” Shoma’s gaze stays watchful, uncertain. “There’s mochi ice cream.”
I shake my head. My stomach’s twisting, and a weird hollowness has taken over my brain, just like the dead air that came between those radio stations. “I’m going to go to bed, since we have to catch the train so early in the morning.”
“Right, we do.” He can’t hide his relief to talk about something safe, something he knows—little brothers, ones who come with too much baggage, are neither. “Don’t forget to set the alarm on your cell.”
All the Ways Home Page 12