Fog Island Mountains

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

  Tonight it is easier to listen because the wind has kicked up, the air is moving more quickly through the sky and passing over the tops of people’s heads, gathering up their words and their thoughts and carrying them around in its careful fast fingers, and so I turn away from the stand of trees, turn away from my longing for this kitsune and I sit down in the chair on the porch and let it all filter in. And I choose what I want because there is always too much, and tonight I am listening to the first contradictions, the first accusations, the half-spoken worries and gasps of surprise.

  This evening we are learning the first hints of their story and the people of Komachi are wondering what it all might mean. Where has she gone? What is she doing? Where are the children? What is at stake? How must we think of her? So many stories starting up, so many possibilities—we are writing her and rewriting her, forgetting what we know of her character, forgetting our many conversations and the times we praised her, forgetting his devotion as well, and how often we have admired his mind and his thinking, and it is amazing how easily, how quickly really, a person can be turned inside-out and rewritten completely.

  * * *

  It is amazing how busy a body can be, like Kanae on this evening with her fingers to change the radio channel and her eyes flicking up and around to read road signs, and her nose smelling the smoke from a brushfire a few miles off the highway, her highway, this smooth lane of concrete providing her shelter in flight—such a safe little space, and she’s buckled in and contained, constrained, a husk of metal and plastic around the seed of herself.

  If she can just manage—and she is trying, she is trying so hard—to engage all five of her senses, then somehow she’ll be fine, she’ll have nothing to worry about, nothing to decide, all of her will be occupied and filled with purpose, and everything else will all fall into place like the road beneath the tread of her tires and the air that gets pressed and pushed to each side of her bumper as she rushes and races through this darkening night.

  Just outside the first forests of the Fog Island Mountains her cellphone rings and it is not Alec, it is not one of her children, it is not the hospital, not one of her friends. She answers.

  “I wondered if you could have dinner with me. I’m in Miyazaki for tonight, just one more evening.”

  Our Kanae is crying now, for the first time, but she rolls down her window and lets the noise of the passing cars mask her voice, and in this way she agrees, telling him she can be there in an hour and a half, driving fast along the blacktop twist of highway, up into the mountains again but passing the exit for Komachi and continuing on down the other side, heading for the other ocean this time, the enormous emptiness of the Pacific where it kisses the long strip of shoreline.

  When she pulls into the parking lot where they have agreed to meet, Fumikaze is waiting for her outside his car even if it’s raining, standing there on the concrete with his black umbrella a perfect frown over his neatly-cut hair and his shoes have been shined and his hand is so neat and steady on that umbrella handle and even his jacket looks new.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she says, “I was with my daughter in Kumamoto.”

  “It must be hard having your children so far away.”

  She nods to his compassion, closes her eyes. Has she loved them enough? Does she miss them now that they live away from home?

  He drives her in his car to a restaurant on the north beach—Thai food—and he tells her it is supposed to be the newest thing, and she is humiliated for the trouble he is taking with her, but beneath her shame is the frightened beat of her pulse because she is not herself, she has shed something vital, a layer of her skin and the full current of her thought. Here now in this car, with this man, with this self that is no longer hers, she has achieved escape.

  The restaurant is a trendy one, all soft cushion-covered benches and exotic fabrics, the scent of spices and hot oil, and there are so many young people, the women with their flashy handbags and slender toes, the waiters with their spiked hair and surfer boy slouches and then she realizes with a snap that what she’s noticed has nothing to do with the atmosphere or the fashion but with the absence of a second look at her entrance—she has entered on the arm of a Japanese man and no one has noticed them, no one has made her aware of her couple.

  He is thinking of buying an apartment in Miyazaki he tells her, and they are seated already, snacks before them on the table, and he was looking at property, he tells her, and then he is munching on a piece of dried squid and so she does it, she speaks with a voice that isn’t really hers, she smiles and feigns interest.

  “The city is becoming very expensive,” she says.

  “Is it difficult to live alone again?” he asks.

  Kanae must blink now to bring him back into focus, to reverse his mistake, because he is the one who lives alone, this is what she should be asking of him, a chance to understand how to prepare herself, and the longer she waits to answer him, the deeper a flush of pink settles on his cheek bones and his nostrils flare just a little.

  “I didn’t mean . . . it was inconsiderate.”

  But Kanae is shaking her head, she is tasting her appetizer, watching her fork move from the plate to her mouth, quickly even, wondering how can she do this, how can she taste these spices and how can she be eating, how can she be sitting with this man at this table?

  “Did you find something that you like?”

  Fumikaze is fiddling with his food, hemming and hawing about his family and their criticism of his pending decision—why would he want to come back to Kyūshū? Why is he looking to the past? Nothing left for him there. What is he thinking?

  “I remember your brothers enjoyed telling you what to do.”

  “I don’t see them very often anymore. It’s difficult . . . family.”

  “My daughter this morning . . . she is a single mother. She won’t even tell me who the father is.” Now it is Kanae’s turn to look down at her plate, to fiddle with her chopsticks.

  “My nieces tell me life is tough for women now, harder than when we were children, they say the lines of responsibility are all blurred, no one wants to take care of anyone anymore.”

  Her face growing hot, her stomach rebelling, she clenches her throat muscles. “Do you think this is true?”

  “People need to establish strong connections, that is what’s important.”

  “My other daughter is too shy to tell me anything, I don’t know much about her life.”

  “That’s what I should have done. I forgot about other people for too long.”

  “She might be terribly unhappy for all that I know . . .”

  “I didn’t ever forget about you.”

  It is strange, the feel of this man’s fingers on her knuckles, the slide of his skin against her own, brushing the hollow between her first and second fingers, and she closes her eyes to let the feeling slip up her arm, opens her eyes, leaning forward now, looking at a vein pulsing on Fumikaze’s smooth brow; she squeezes his hand in return just to feel the roll of his finger bones beneath her own and she watches him turn bashful, this gentle man, this ghost from her childhood, her youth.

  Then she is standing, choking on the words, calling herself an idiot and telling him that she cannot only imagine this—has she said this out loud?—because pretending will not make this any easier and so she is reaching for Fumi’s arm and saying that she’d like to leave, she is saying that she must finally practice. He is startled and fumbling with his wallet, throwing money on the table and together they are exiting the room, arm in arm, people will think of an emergency, two older people gripping each other’s wrists and racing from a nice dinner—surely there was a phone call, someone, maybe one of their children has been hurt.

  In the car she keeps a hold of his hand, she looks straight ahead, giving him directions to a love hotel on the outskirts of downtown and he only looks at her twice, he says nothing, and when they arrive they dash across the parking lot, they pay at the machine in the lobby and get their key,
then they are sneaking along the hallway to their room.

  Of course the room is in bad taste, all red velvet and animal prints, and the bed has curtains around it, the lights are pink and red, but this is an older hotel and only barely vulgar, what is important is that it’s clean and that they do not speak, she couldn’t bear to speak.

  In the dimly lit bathroom they wash each other and Fumikaze is excited almost immediately, and here is Kanae holding his penis between her hands while he closes his eyes and he is reaching for her breasts and she waits for the moment when she’ll feel his fingers but there is nothing, there is only the half-light and this object in her hands and the sound of his pleasure and then he is reaching between her legs and she surprises herself with the sound of a moan, with the push of her pelvis to get closer to him.

  It is a surprise to find that she cannot get close enough to his body, and they are moving backward into the room, onto the bed, into each other and she hears nothing, feels only her skin against him, her mouth against his neck, the swollen friction of him moving inside her, but the minutes stretch out and then come together until one minute is bursting against another minute, and there is a second that feels like an hour, and he is panting against her even if the ache in her does not explode, it throbs as she waits for him to relax, she could move, just a centimeter and probably her body would release its tension but she holds herself rigid because none of this is for her, this sex with this man is too easy, too wonderful, too consuming, she will lose herself in it.

  UPWELLING

  A curious thing has occurred—the sky over our island has heated up and even though the early night is spread now over the town and the last pink rays of the setting sun have vanished in the distance, even with this darkness the sidewalks are warm to the touch, the breeze, still only a breeze, brings only a sodden warmth, and even the windows, when we stand too close, offer little protection against the heat outside. Alec is standing with his forehead pressed against the big plate glass window in the upstairs common room of the hospital, his hands spread flat, his fingertips seeking the heat from the outside; he is like a fallen tree trunk, the smooth line of his body marking the angle from the floor to the window while the cool trickle of an air conditioner whispers against the skin of his neck, and the warm and the cold are battling within him as he seeks the heat and knows his body should just accept the cool embrace of the hospital’s sterile air.

  Behind him two teenagers are playing a game on a low table, swearing at each other in their sickness and subsequent freedom from parents and nighttime supervision, and one of the boys has a perfectly smooth and hairless skull and we all know he is far too young and Alec thinks again of that moment when he wondered whether he might not exchange his everywhere with Mr. Nishi, with this inadequate specimen of humanity—he scolds himself for the thought, but this is not a day for using up his inner hoard of mercy—but Alec knows there are no exchanges, there is no balance sheet somewhere and no great omniscient finger tallying up the number of fair deaths versus unfair deaths; he touches his body, hands pulled back from the warmth of the window and crossing over his chest, his fingers now pressing against his biceps, feeling the tendons roll under his touch and the healthy muscle resisting and he wonders if given the chance he would exchange, for this young man, for another worthy soul, for his own child, for Kanae . . . ah, here it is, such relief to suddenly glimpse this inner ladder of who-goes-where and where-am-I and yes, thank god, I have put someone above me, because it must be an ugly thing indeed to find oneself alone at the top of that list.

  He isn’t tired, even after today’s surgery when they opened him up and looked around and determined what they had already suspected and so they closed him again, resealed his skin and stapled and pressed it together to hold his organs and blood inside, and the incision feels like a scratch now, it pulls a little, it tickles because his body is still misguidedly trying to heal in any way it can. They have told him to rest but he prefers walking, slowly, up and down the corridors of the different floors, into the common areas and around all these other people. He keeps waiting for someone to tell him he isn’t allowed here, or here, or over here, especially when he walked through the children’s wing, but no one even seemed to worry that he wasn’t where he belonged; everyone is bowing to him, smiling at him.

  And here at the nurses’ station on his own floor, no one scolds him for his nightly ramble, these two women, one middle-aged and the other young, are deep in discussion, they don’t even appear to notice he’s arrived, and so he can’t help it, he stands beside the desk because being unnoticed, passing unseen, is a feeling he’s nearly forgotten about over all these years in our small town. Such a tall man, his shoulders stooped because this is how he has tried to make himself small to fit in and the women do not see him, and this is when he notices that one of the women is crying, the younger one, and her face is a wreck of worry and fear.

  “But I can’t stop visiting, it’s my duty.”

  “If his parents say no . . .”

  “They say I am putting pressure on him.”

  “Are they sure he is even aware? Has he shown any sign of improving?”

  And here the young nurse trembles, her face becomes something else entirely, there is no thinking behind her features, only animal emotion, only lack of control, and it is bad timing because right at this second the older nurse has noticed Alec’s presence and now they are both staring at him, and the younger nurse must duck her head and turn away, but it is too late, Alec is reaching forward with a hand and a few careless words come tumbling out of him, “Are you okay? What is wrong?”

  But everyone can see she is not okay, and the older nurse frown sat him, because what business is it of his, why can’t he pretend he hasn’t seen . . . but she is quickly refashioning her face into its professional mask and asking what he needs and standing and walking toward him and before he even realizes it, she is leading him back to his room, she has a hand on his arm, like a mother would, a broad palm steady on his forearm, her fingers blunt and firm. The only sound is the slap of her working slippers on the empty linoleum and the hum of a fluorescent light bulb about to flicker and go out, and the nurse eyeballs it while they walk and Alec lowers his head even further because he has got a glimpse of something he understands all too easily. No one needs to guess at Nurse Noriko’s situation—even Alec will learn the details when two nurses stop to talk outside his room later this evening when most people assume he is asleep.

  A motorcycle, a slick patch of pavement, a young man not wearing a helmet. Young Nurse Noriko’s boyfriend is in another hospital, in another town further south on our island, his body intubated and still covered in bruises, for the moment the machines are keeping him alive.

  “Is Mr. Chester comfortable?”

  They have reached his room and the last thing Alec wants to do is go inside, no matter what time it is, no matter what schedule of treatments and discussions they have planned for him tomorrow, and so he thanks this kindly nurse and only pretends to go through the door, because she can’t make him go in there, she can’t make him face that single hospital bed and that limp magazine lying half-open on the extra chair, so he waits until she walks away and then he’s off again, this time toward the main entrance of the hospital, which is quiet at this time of night, there are only a handful of people sitting in those stiff-backed plastic chairs, and the night receptionist is reading on an iPad and the lights from the computer have made the lenses of her eyeglasses glow green.

  He could walk outside right now, he could, even wearing this bathrobe and these slippers, and maybe he’ll do it, watch him, he is hovering near those sliding automatic doors, he is practically dancing on his tiptoes, this tall man, this gentle giant of an English teacher who has loved us all so much, been more than kind to our difficult children and been so patient with our unworthy tongues—no, he won’t go out just yet, this is still too soon.

  “Alec?”

  His head is down. He won’t answer his fr
iend. Shingo Ishikawa.

  “Alec, listen . . .”

  Alec is turning now, head up, arms at his sides, those claws have fallen from his fingers, the tension is falling from his shoulders, this is Alec giving up his anger and his restlessness because here is a friend asking him to keep control and Alec has always been ready to answer to this kind of request.

  Side by side now, looking out the window, looking past their reflections, one short and white-coated, one tall and gray-haired, looking over the few shadow hulls of car in the parking lot and further onward toward the mountains, toward that black line of ridge and the almost purple sky that sets it alight behind our Komachi.

  “I’ve got a chess board in my office . . .”

  Alec smiles, of course Shingo has a chess board in his office, this is how his friend has managed to beat him all these years, all those times when an English lesson turned into a chess match, each man struggling over the words at first, but in most recent years, each man talking swiftly to the other—in English, in Japanese.

  So off they go, one short man, one tall man slumping only a little now, and they will spend the next few hours moving those chess pieces around and not talking, for the first time, their game will not be played to the backdrop of an easy conversation, to questions of translation and expression, they will silently move their chess pieces around and Shingo will take comfort in the fact that he is helping his friend keep busy through these awful hours, and Alec will move each pawn, each knight, his bishops several times, and he will be wondering, with each gentle pick and settle of Shingo’s heavy chess pieces on the wooden board, Is this all? Oh, my God, this is all.