by Kyoko Mori
“I was so mad at Yuko for confessing,” Toshiko says. “She had to be such a Christian about it. She wanted to be honest. She even felt guilty.”
“Not me,” I insist. “I still think Mr. Hayashi should have gotten a woman teacher to show the film. We were only fifteen. We never talked about sex, even with our parents.”
“But you two were always getting into trouble,” Yoshiko says. “If someone had asked me back then which of us were going to be teachers, I wouldn’t have chosen the two of you. Life is strange.”
Yoshiko says she might come to the States to visit her sister in Virginia. “Her husband is stationed there till next year. I’m hoping that my mother can look after the kids for a couple of weeks in the spring so I can make the trip. My husband can be on his own for a while, but the kids are too young.”
Hiroko says that her husband is applying to M.B.A. programs at American universities. If he gets admitted to one, his company will pay the tuition and give him enough money so he and Hiroko can live in the States for two years.
“What about your job?” Because they have no children, she has been working at an airline company. “Can you take a leave of absence?”
“No, I’ll just quit.”
“You’ll go back to school, then?” Hiroko is bilingual. Like me, she spent one year in high school in the States.
“I keep telling her to enroll in an English as a Second Language program,” Toshiko puts in, lighting another cigarette. “It’s a good degree to have if she wants to teach when she comes back to Japan.”
Hiroko shrugs. “I might be busy taking care of my husband. He scarcely speaks any English. Besides, I’ve forgotten how to be a student.”
“That’s nonsense,” Toshiko says, blunt as ever.
Yoshiko and Miya are smiling, sipping their drinks. Hiroko laughs. But the irritation in Toshiko’s voice is real. I turn sideways and see her frowning, taking a deep drag of her cigarette. I know, in that instant, that a line has been drawn that separates the two of us from the others. Yoshiko, Miya, and Hiroko have chosen to arrange their lives so that their plans will always revolve around their husbands’ needs and abilities: whether the husbands can be left alone for two weeks or not, how the husbands will adjust to life in a foreign country. Toshiko and I have chosen another way: our work shapes our lives, our sense of who we are. I think of myself primarily as a writer, not as a wife. I would never have married someone who did not understand that about me. I take it for granted that both my husband and I know how to cook and clean, how to be alone when we are not together. Toshiko has not married, perhaps, because she has not found a Japanese man with similar understanding or self-sufficiency. No wonder she is irritated by the way Yoshiko, Hiroko, and Miya choose to let their marriages influence their plans. Still, that difference does not have to be a barrier between us. After all, we have spent the whole evening together and this is the only time Yoshiko, Hiroko, and Miya have mentioned their husbands. The five of us have known one another since we were too young, even, to have boyfriends. Who we did or didn’t marry, in the end, is not important to our friendship.
“Well,” I say to Yoshiko and Hiroko. “I hope you will visit me in the States.”
“Of course.” They smile.
“You, too,” I turn to Toshiko, nudging her elbow. “We can go out for drinks and argue about books.”
She shakes her head and gives me a crooked smile.
“It’s almost ten,” Yoshiko says, finishing her drink. “My mother’s watching the kids. I’d better go home.”
We all get up. Kayoko walks us outside.
“I’ll be back soon,” I tell everyone as I get into Miya’s car.
Miya drives me back to Sylvia’s. I don’t have to say good-bye to her because she’ll be driving me to the airport tomorrow.
* * *
Through the night, I wake up every few hours. Except for the cats running around in the hallway, it’s very quiet. At four o’clock, I put on my glasses and walk to the window. The lights are still on in the city. The sky is a dark gray, the color of old stones placed in moss gardens. Over the water in the distance, there is a lighter band of gray, almost white, spreading slowly upward. I go back to bed one last time and wake up at eight.
An hour later, Sylvia and Cadine are walking me to Miya’s car.
“Thanks a lot for everything,” I say.
“Come back,” Cadine says. “I liked having you here. I felt safer with you here when Mom was working.”
“Stay with us again.”
As the car turns the corner, Sylvia and Cadine are still waving. Like all the people I saw in Japan, they keep waving until they can’t see me anymore.
During the half-hour drive to the airport, Miya and I continue talking about old friends.
“I didn’t tell you before,” Miya says, “but Yoshiko has been through a lot in the last couple of years.”
“How do you mean?”
“Last year, her husband was asked to resign from his job because he was embezzling some money from the company where he worked. It was a big scandal. In the end, the company agreed to drop the charges if he would just resign.” Miya continues as the traffic thins out a little past Ashiya. “So for a while, Yoshiko and her husband were very poor, and they have two children.”
“How terrible.”
Miya turns to me briefly and nods. “I think they are doing better now. Yoshiko’s father decided to help out. He took her husband in as a partner in his business, since no one else would hire him after what happened.”
“Is Yoshiko feeling all right?”
Miya doesn’t answer.
“She didn’t know’ that her husband was doing anything wrong, did she?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It isn’t hard for her to be married to him now?”
Miya turns her head and looks at me.
“Well,” I say, feeling flustered. “I would have a hard time if I suddenly found out that my husband had been a thief and I didn’t even know about it. Wouldn’t you? You’d start wondering if he’d been dishonest in other ways, too.”
“I don’t know how I would feel,” she says, turning back to watch the traffic.
“But how about Yoshiko? How does she feel?”
“I don’t know,” Miya says. “We never talked about her husband’s troubles.”
“Not at all?”
“Of course not. The details were in the newspapers, so she must know that we all know. But I never let on that I knew. How could I? Poor Yoshiko. She would be so embarrassed.”
“You didn’t say anything because she didn’t bring it up.”
“That’s right.”
We drive on in silence. Perhaps eight weeks ago, I would have been stunned or even appalled by what I might have considered a superficial politeness on Miya’s part. Back then, I thought that friendship always involved full disclosure, no secrets. But why should Yoshiko be expected to confide in her friends about what is most painful or embarrassing in her life? Knowing that your friends would never force or even expect you to talk about painful subjects is as satisfying as knowing that you can talk about them if you want to. It’s just that my Japanese friends emphasize the former (at the risk of avoiding too much) while my American friends emphasize the latter (at the risk of prying too much). I am not sure, any longer, which emphasis I prefer. Before I came here, I had assumed that all Japanese politeness was false—an attempt to create a smooth, fake surface, the way I acted toward Hiroshi and Michiko. I didn’t understand that there was this other, genuine politeness—an attempt to keep the conversation smooth and calm to honor the other person’s dignity. Because I didn’t know that, I had preferred assertiveness and confrontation, what I call “honesty.” But I realize now that if I have been irritated at times by my Japanese friends’ indirectness, I have also felt oppressed by American friends who wanted to know and discuss too much, who would ask point-blank, “So do you really feel accepted and at home in Green Bay?” “How
do you feel when your colleagues make sexist comments?” Why should friendship always be about discussing personal pain rather than about taking our minds off it? I look out the window and then turn back toward Miya. I’m sorry that I have said the wrong things, but I know that she will let it pass if I change the subject now.
“The traffic’s not so bad, is it?” I say.
“No.” She turns back to me smiling. “I like driving on the highway. Machiko thinks I drive too aggressively. She says people in Tokyo don’t even drive like I do. Did I tell you about her last visit?”
“No,” I answer. “Tell me now.”
* * *
We park her car at nine-forty, but by the time I’ve stood in the various lines to check in my bags, it’s almost ten-thirty. The lobbies are crowded with people going on group tours. Miya and I stop for one last iced coffee, but as soon as we take our first sip, my plane to Tokyo is announced. We finish the coffee and hurry to the boarding area. Already there are two separate gates: one for domestic travelers and the other for those continuing on to international destinations. No visitors are allowed beyond the gate. A man stands ready to check my passport.
“Oh, I forgot about the picture.” Miya pulls her camera out of her purse and holds it out to the man waiting to examine my passport. “Would you mind taking our picture?” she asks him.
The man reaches out for the camera as if by reflex.
“Thanks,” Miya says, letting go of the strap. She’s already stepping back. I follow and stand next to her. “Ready any time.” She nods at the man.
We smile, the man snaps the picture, and Miya takes back the camera.
“Thank you for everything,” I say to her. “I wish we’d had more time together. I’m sorry I didn’t give you time to write back to me before I left Wisconsin.”
“Don’t apologize.” Her eyes are wet.
“I’ll see you soon. You can come and visit me, too.”
She tries to smile. “You’d better go,” she says. “You’ll be late.”
“I know.”
I hand my passport to the man, who looks at it quickly and gives it back. I have nothing to do but proceed down the narrow hallway. I wave back to Miya one last time and then turn the corner toward the customs gate.
The customs officer waves me through without opening my bag. When I board the plane, everyone else is already seated. In a few minutes, it taxis onto the runway and then takes off. As it gains altitude, I look back to the west toward Ashiya and Kobe. Framed in the small round window, the landscape turns into a rock split open, a sunburst of glass and metal glittering below the dark moss-colored mountains.
* * *
A few minutes before one in the afternoon, we land at the Narita International Airport. My connecting flight back to Seattle and then to Minneapolis leaves at five. In the waiting area, there are no empty chairs. People are clustered around the food booths and around the telephones against the wall.
I know I should have called Michiko last night to ask about my father’s surgery. But when I got in, it was late, and I felt good about seeing my old friends. I didn’t want my phone call to her to be the last thing I did on the last night of my stay. If I call right now, I will still have hours left here so it won’t be the very last thing I did in Japan. Better late than never, I say to myself in the halfhearted way I try to get motivated about tasks and obligations. I don’t want to go away from here being at fault, not having fulfilled my part in demonstrating superficial politeness, which is all I can hope for—more than I can hope for—with them.
I stand in line at one of the phone booths. After twenty minutes or so, it’s my turn. I dial their number in Ashiya.
“I just got back from the hospital,” Michiko says, immediately recognizing my voice. “I’m going back there again in a few hours, but I needed a break.”
“How is Father?”
“Yesterday he was in surgery for nine hours while you were visiting Akiko. The chairs were very uncomfortable. Most of the time, he didn’t even know I was there. I thought you might call last night or this morning.”
“This is the first chance I had. Is he okay?”
“The operation went without a problem. Now he’ll be recovering for the next couple of months. He says I don’t have to visit him at the hospital every day, but he just says that. He fully expects me there.”
She keeps talking. Behind me, two men are waiting to use the phone.
“I wanted to give you some money,” Michiko goes on. “I know your father gave you some when you came to the house the other day, but it wasn’t much. I saw what he gave you. Right now, we have to be careful. We’re not sure how much the insurance is going to cover. Maybe I’ll send you a check when things settle down.”
“I don’t need any money,” I say.
“It’s hard to do right by you,” Michiko says. “You came to our house only once, as if we weren’t even related. I told your father he shouldn’t expect much from you. You and he were never close because he was seldom home when your mother was alive. Jumpei’s different. He’s close to me but not to your father. You never appreciated anything I did for you even when we lived together. We were always strangers. Well, that’s fine. I never expected more. But at least I wanted to give you some money.”
“Thank you for the thought. But it’s not necessary. Look, I have to go now. People are waiting to use the phone. Tell my father that I wish him a speedy recovery.”
I hang up, collect my change, and start walking, relieved to be done with this final obligation. There are still over three hours before my flight, but not a single seat is open on the benches along the walls. Even the floor around them is covered with luggage. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel much like sitting around anyway. Checking the map of the airport, I head for the duty-free shops. What I would really like to do is to change the Japanese money I have left into dollars, but according to the map, the place for that is on the other side of the airport, past the customs offices. The duty-free shops, though, are scattered all over the airport, several in every wing. Carrying my overnight bag because there are no lockers in sight, I continue on in what I think is the right direction toward the nearest set of stores.
In front of the stores, a crowd of people is milling around, coming in and out, staring into the large display cases that contain cassette players and cameras. Two guards in black uniforms are stationed at the doors, periodically checking people’s bags. A week before he came to New York last year, my father called me from a store like this at the Osaka Airport. He wanted to know what he should bring me as a gift.
“Do you want a camera or a walkman?” he asked.
It was eight in the morning in Wisconsin. I had just gotten back from running.
“I don’t need either. You don’t have to bring me a gift,” I said.
“You must want something. Which could you really use? A camera or a walkman? Do you have either one of these things?”
“No, but I don’t have a preference because I don’t need either.”
He bought both and presented them to me in their hotel room after he asked me how much money I made annually and told me he was disappointed because I knew nothing about Japanese literature. I thanked him and put the gifts in my bag, but I never used either of them once I got home.
I pull out my wallet and count the money inside: almost ten thousand yen. Even after eight weeks here, I’m not sure exactly how much that is in dollars because I can’t do simple math in my head. Still, I step into the nearest store, ready to spend it all.
Slowly, I walk down the first aisle where a young man is looking at cotton kimonos stacked up on the bottom shelf, each kimono folded and wrapped in a plastic package. I kneel down next to him to look. The patterns are too flashy: huge blue and purple flowers, indigo and red cranes the size of my palm, black fish jumping all over the white background. Nobody I know would wear such patterns. I stand up and continue on down the aisle, bumping into other customers or their bags every few st
eps. After the kimonos, the shelves continue on, full of books, records, folk toys. Three older women are going through the records. I stop and watch what one of them puts back on the shelf—popular Japanese ballads and love songs sung by young men and women photographed in flimsy shirts with collars open.
The next aisle has dolls and children’s costumes and games, and the one after, foods and ceramics. Every aisle is crowded with people who look vaguely anxious. These people have that worried look we all get in shopping malls near Christmas: there’s something we have to buy, but we don’t know what, so we grab whatever’s nearby and hope for the best. But even as we head for the cash register, we can’t get over the feeling that we are forgetting something essential.
All around, people are lining up to make their last-minute purchase in this way. Because most of them are Westerners and don’t know how to count the Japanese change, they hand the attendant all their money and trust her to do the counting. I’ve looked at all the aisles by now, of things thrown into bins, wrapped in plastic, or protected behind glass doors. There is nothing I want or need. I hesitate, watching the line of people. It’s two o’clock now, three more hours before I am lifted into the sky between here and where I am going. Because I am traveling against time, I will arrive in Green Bay only a few hours from now. This same minute I am standing here will happen again on the plane, somewhere over the Pacific.