Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

by Jennifer Tseng

  “Yes. I wish I weren’t so busy.” She glanced out the window. “I’m ashamed to say I haven’t even started Lolita.” Ashamed indeed.

  “Oh, you’ll get to it eventually,” I said. I was in no hurry to begin our discussion of Nabokov.

  “I hope so, I really do want to read it.”

  “You must be proud of your son.” I stamped his book eagerly. “My daughter is just learning to read.”

  “I am proud. It’s like a miracle when it happens. You’re lucky you have that to look forward to.” She wore the distracted expression of one following a long to-do list. “Well, thanks for the book, I’m sorry I have to run!”

  “No apology necessary!” None indeed! By all means feel free to exit the building! By all means leave me to brood!

  She turned to go and then turned impulsively back again.

  “Hey! Do you want to go for a walk sometime?” The burro in me balked but she pressed on, apparently unperturbed by my beastly withholding. “I go walking every morning around 8 if you want to join me. The trailhead’s right behind P.I.P.”

  “Sure, thanks. I love to walk in the morning, especially in the woods.” The sentence sounded vile when I said it.

  She picked up a summer reading brochure and tucked it into the book. “I hope you’ll come.”

  I was like a student with too many subjects to study, a slew of examinations pending, and the wretched fact was I could only concentrate on one subject at a time.

  Summer reading. Such dreaded words! They were yet another reminder that in all likelihood my youthful fountain would soon stop playing its music. Then again, summer as end date was a compelling argument. What difference did it make if one quit now or very soon? (I tended to use the language of addiction with regard to the young man.) Couldn’t I indulge in one or two months more of pleasure? Couldn’t I simply vow to quit when summer began?

  I stood up (as I often do when at the end of my tether) and resolved to shelve the red cart. A sixth grade science class had checked out over fifty books for various special projects and had just returned them. Thank God. I was not daunted in the least by the three solid rows of 500’s. I shelved ruthlessly, like a mercenary being paid to make each book disappear. My deliberations had exhausted me. All too quickly the cart was empty. I reseated myself—always a mistake at moments such as these—and immediately began to cast about for something reassuring to do.

  Unthinkingly, my hand clasped the mouse the way one might clasp a handrail for support and before I had time to fully ascertain my own movements I had entered the young man’s hyphenated name into Athena. I refrained from opening his account—I knew precisely what it contained. Instead I ventured to type in the second half of his surname, curious what it might yield. Perhaps he had paternal relations on the island. If so, it couldn’t hurt to learn what sort of books they read. Insatiably, maniacally curious, I would have settled for the borrowing history of a fifth cousin.

  What I found, contrary to his earlier claim, was that he had two accounts. The one I had generated was his second, the first, generated when he was a child in the company of his mother (the word CHILD in all-black caps shone after his name), long since forgotten, the first card long since misplaced. I sat looking at his first account as if at a holy text, the careful study of which would reveal forbidden truths and long-held secrets. First I clicked on Patron Status then Info, which informed me that his address was the same then as it was now. But of course I knew that fairly well, I knew he had been born in that house, the house of the Liberty orchard and the voluminous library. I paused before clicking on History. I was not wholly convinced that unearthing such a thing would be reassuring. But indeed I did click. I was hopelessly in thrall to the possibilities.

  It was a history befitting a child. There were only three items, all of them films:

  -Snow Day

  -Pocahontas

  -Swiss Family Robinson

  At the sight of the list, my heart closed the way it had in the woods. Black box shut. I stared at the three items. A few tears fell from the corners of my eyes and onto the keyboard. I clicked on the x in the uppermost right corner of the screen. Do you really want to exit Athena? she asked. I clicked Cancel. It didn’t matter that I then closed his account and didn’t open it again. The titles had been placed in my inner card catalog; they had become part of my permanent collection.

  For the rest of the day, I said the six words silently to myself. I said them while I was waiting for the computer to perform a function and later, while washing my hair in the shower, and later still, while reading aloud to Maria. (I confess I had mastered the art of reading aloud while engaged in my own thoughts. Had it been an official Olympic event I would have won a gold medal.) I too had watched films such as these (I too had read Ray Bradbury) but decades earlier—his close proximity to them was undeniable. My God, I thought to myself at last. He’s a child.

  * * *

  I had the week to contemplate his short history. For the first time I felt some hesitation about seeing him the approaching Friday. As a nun who contemplates a simple prayer that both uplifts and agonizes, my best self (Was it my best self?) understood the six words as a plea and wanted to grant it. The rest of me (Or was that the best of me?) found the words, the boy, the man, whatever he was, quite fetching and wanted to bargain. Bargain I did with myself, the toughest, most compliant of customers. We came to a cheerful agreement: I would quit him when summer began whether he stayed or went. My instincts told me he would go and if he did, well, then nothing would be lost in the bargain.

  The next question was, could I, with those six guileless words fluttering like kites in the sky of my mind, still make love to him? I thought it likely, but perhaps I was overestimating myself. If the boys in the woods had chastened me, the six words were belt-like, each one an iron barrier to my fulfillment. To add to the growing body of evidence against me, there was the unfortunate eavesdropping contretemps to consider and, of course, the precarious matter of Violet.

  When at last Friday arrived, I brought a small bucket of cleaning supplies to the gray house. Ever the child of a housekeeper, I turned to spring cleaning as a diversion. The young man was sitting on the porch. We had plenty of wood, it would have been silly to chop more, every day was now warmer than the last. In light of my recent discovery, his habit of waiting for me before entering the house seemed slightly ridiculous, if not a bit foxy.

  “You don’t have to wait for me, you know,” I called out.

  “I want to.”

  “You want to wait for me or you want to sit outside?”

  “Both.”

  As I approached he stayed sitting there with his elbows on his knees, his eyes alternately watching me and scanning the ground, which was dotted depressingly with a cheerful array of wild violets and buttercups, a double reminder of his mother and summer’s golden approach.

  The blue backpack whose curved flap he usually kept shut lay open as a lake on the top step. I could see, floating within it, a round tin of chewing tobacco, a pale orange and white pack of cigarette rolling papers, a red, white, and blue American history textbook, the black father-wallet I had glimpsed once at the library counter, two raspberry-flavored Tootsie pops, a red guitar pick, a well-worn composition book with the words AP English scrawled in small letters on the cover, a silver CD player adjoined to the now familiar headphones he had worn at the library, and a black mobile phone. It was a hasty glance but it made its impression.

  How very real he was when we were apart, whether in solitude or in connection with others. I had never seen him use a mobile phone or heard him play guitar or observed him rolling whatever forbidden substance it was he rolled with those papers of his. He must have had so many habits that were unknown to me, ways of moving and speaking; the Saturday previous had merely been a sample.

  “We don’t have to go inside,” I said, afraid the house would smell dis
tastefully of smoke and perhaps prevent me from venturing further.

  “Okay.” He picked up a rock and threw it at the woods.

  “Do you know I bloody hate that word!”

  “Why? Is it not proper English?”

  “I could care less about proper English. It’s just so bloody agreeable.”

  “Would you rather I be disagreeable?”

  “If I did, then would you be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If I asked you to drink poison would you drink poison?”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “The appropriate answer is no.”

  “Okay.”

  I sighed. “You have to understand I’m in a very awkward, some might say, compromising position. When you say ‘okay’ I’m never sure if I’m forcing you along or if you’re truly in agreement. Does that make sense?”

  “Okay,” he said and laughed.

  “Stop!”

  “What’s in the bag?” He nodded at my camouflaged bucket.

  “Oh! I thought we could do some spring cleaning today.” God knows the place probably needed it after Saturday’s shenanigans.

  Absurdly, I unveiled my housekeeper’s surprise. Why on earth would he want to spend his morning scrubbing a toilet? At the moment it seemed unlikely that he would consent. Though I myself had misgivings, my best self (Was it my best self?) proceeded to explain. “I thought we would spruce up the house. If it were ours we’d certainly keep it clean, wouldn’t we?”

  “But it isn’t.”

  “Are you refusing to play house? I mean are you actually not saying okay?!” I felt weirdly triumphant. Free will! Agency! Freedom of choice! Equality!

  “I’m not saying okay.”

  “Oh, good for you!” I threw my arms around him and gave him a congratulatory squeeze. I had unwittingly administered a test he’d passed easily. He’d done beautifully, nothing less than an A. We were both adults, he had confirmed it.

  I opened the door and was relieved to find that the smell of smoke, like all my good intentions, had dissipated. “Let’s go in,” I whispered, holding the door open.

  “Okay,” he said and stepped in.

  * * *

  The following Friday we entered the gray house to find that workers had been there in our absence. White drop cloths covered the furniture and counters like shrouds, the walls had been sanded but not painted, the windows were lined with blue masking tape, the wood bin next to the stove was filled with short planks of wood that I recognized as formerly being rungs on the ladder that was now missing from the loft. The place was a complete wreck.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Shit,” he replied.

  “How will we get our linens down from there?” I asked in a panic, though as I said it, I realized few people, if anyone, could possibly trace the linens back to us. They were not exactly monogrammed after all.

  “Where should we go?” he asked rather pragmatically, impressively undeterred by the disaster at hand.

  “I don’t know.” I was aghast. I walked over to what appeared to be the table and slowly lifted the drop cloth in search of the blue ceramic bird, the Italian cookie tin filled with Japanese candy, the green cross-stitched tablecloth, but found the table underneath denuded, our precious things gone. For the first time I took his hand and we walked around the house for a few minutes, surveying the wreck. We were like a couple at a funeral viewing, the corpse on display the battered interior of the gray house itself. “Wait, look there!” I said and ran to the kitchen to pick up the small postal box from which the bird’s beak under the green cloth protruded like a diminutive Anglo-Saxon nose. I lifted the colorful homespun shroud. Our things in a heap looked unremarkable, like the belongings of a dead person waiting to be given or thrown away.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I took the items out of the box and handed them to him. “Could you put these in your backpack?” It seemed a question a girl would pose to her boyfriend. I was afraid he would refuse, but he submitted.

  Before we closed the door behind us, I paused to look up at the ladderless loft. How lovely it had been while it lasted, I thought, with the resignation of one destined to become a senior librarian. I felt grief mixed with awe for all that had happened. Our world was truly floating now, the site of our pleasure aloft. While I looked back, he waited outside, ready in the way of the young to change course.

  We walked in silence to the waterfall and sat on the stone bench. I summoned from deep within my maternal line a sad housekeeper’s restraint and refrained from weeping.

  “Mom has a summerhouse.” The young man stared at the waterfall as he spoke. I myself was too distracted.

  “Does she?” I put in politely, absently. My mind was on the lost linens, the lost hours.

  “Yeah, she rents it out to year-rounders for nine months during the year and then for three months to summer people.”

  I was in no mood for idle chitchat about tenant shuffles. I’d always found the practice morally abhorrent, though the longer I lived on the island (not to mention the more morally abhorrent I became), the more I could imagine doing such a thing myself. It was difficult to make ends meet. The island’s opportunities by definition were limited and its economy was far from booming. Though even as I had these thoughts I railed against expressing them. There were more urgent (and morally abhorrent) matters at hand that required my attention.

  “Every year after the tenants move out, she hires workers to clean and paint before the summer tenants move in.”

  “Do you think we should go back to try and fetch the linens?” I interrupted, forgetting momentarily that the workers would likely be arriving soon if they hadn’t already.

  He didn’t answer me but doggedly resumed his explanation.

  “They only work during the day though,” he said and then at last was silent.

  I was trying to devise a method of accessing the loft from the outside when it occurred to me what it was he was alluding to, what it was he was making possible for me to suggest. I felt a bodily joy, the rush of feeling wanted.

  “Why, you’re brilliant!” I said, feigning decisiveness though in truth I was, as always, filled with fear. “Absolutely brilliant. Let’s say 9:30 next Friday night. Will that work?” I added doubtfully, readying myself for the blow of his refusal.

  He nodded then startled me by putting his hand on my knee. The morning, like the man, was still young! I placed my perspiring hand upon his. Where would I take him now that our house had been entombed, our loft suspended? I cast my eyes about until they alighted upon the first set of wind chimes.

  But of course! I would take him to the place for lovers and children! Pleased now with my own brilliance, I tapped the chimes lightly with my fingertips as we went. I hummed while I walked. He followed. He sat on the bench and I climbed on. I found his lap to be a most comfortable seat (flanks larger and more muscular than last time I was certain). With a few minor adjustments it was superbly, surprisingly doable. Like an eager new father he endured my weight, while I rode him in full view of the Buddha.

  * * *

  The children’s librarian, for whom I had become a paltry if not offensive substitute every Wednesday and Sunday, had a nunly aspect. She was vivacious yet remote, silver-haired and silver-spectacled, and her spectacles hung on a string of red beads reminiscent of a rosary. Despite her preference for wearing brightly colored fabrics (which somehow brought to mind the clothing of children before they brought to mind the exotic countries in which they had been painstakingly hand woven) it was easy to imagine her in a white habit, her clean flat fingers and their clean flat nails quietly turning the tissuey pages of a King James Bible in earnest search of the answers to difficult questions.

  The sin for which she could never forgive herself and for which she daily did penance was a sin the staff r
eferred to as “The $300 Mistake.” She herself had rather good-naturedly coined the phrase. I’m certain we would have all forgotten about it by now if not for her habitual references to the costly escapade. I no longer remember when it occurred but one year she dutifully ordered, as she was annually expected to order, a “Corduroy” costume (which in lay terms is a life-size, stuffed yet hollow bear with detachable head) in which she was also annually expected to sweat for the duration of a thirty-minute story time. The spectacle was always well-attended. Indeed it seemed to please everyone but the one inside the bear, who inevitably spent the remainder of her day with perspiration-marked clothing and matted hair, made mysteriously more bearlike by the experience.

  Perhaps it was the nuisance of such unfortunate details that distracted her from her next task: return the woolly bear to his enormous coffin-like box and arrange for a pickup. One distracting detail led to another and somehow the cardboard coffin was delivered to its destination sans its furry corpse. The cost of redelivery combined with what must have been an unreasonably stringent late fee amounted to a total of $300. Several years must have passed since the incident but I found myself thinking about it again. In light of my recent transgressions, I felt a new sympathy for the children’s librarian and her expensive mistake. I too had been distracted to the point of idiocy; I too had made an unpardonable error, though I counted myself lucky that no one had yet thought to tally up the damages I had incurred.

  * * *

  All week I plotted precisely how I would exit the apartment undetected and arrive in the most expedient way possible at the gray house. Rather ridiculously I did a trial run the night previous and after landing upon the grass realized that I had not dressed warmly enough. This only made the trial run worthwhile, another cause for rejoicing. My plan was approaching perfection.

  When finally Friday arrived, I was overcome with fear of the risks involved: What if Maria woke to find me gone and in turn woke Var with her screaming? What if I fell off the roof or was hit by a car en route? I was stricken by thoughts of all that could go wrong. A foolish, reckless plan I suddenly thought it.