Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

by Jennifer Tseng

  “Wasn’t that easy?” he asked and pulled me up over the edge of the loft. As he let go of the rope, I crumpled like a sheepdog at his feet. Masterfully, he reeled the rope in and wound it into a figure eight.

  The mattress was there where we had left it, the workers had done nothing but destroy our means to ascend. I wondered uselessly whether, if we could have continued to visit the gray house, we might have eventually found the ladder restored, the loft beautifully refurbished. Just as likely we would have found someone in it. Still I was happy to see the slim mattress. I was certain it was thinner than when we first began, which made me feel at once guilty and truly pleased. For the first time, he led me to it. I took this as a sign that he was ready to leave me, that it would not have done for me to keep him here at the gray house on future Fridays.

  We lay there quietly marveling over the dark chocolate Violet had recently imported from South America and that he had pulled for the last time like a Boy Scout from his blue backpack. It was infused with orange—a concept I’d always put down—but it was weirdly good, heavenly, like eating sunshine and chocolate at once while surrounded by the fragrance of Valencia oranges. It melted in our hands as we ate it, it made our mouths delicious. I couldn’t get enough of those Valencian kisses. I dabbed my fingers against his face so that it was streaked with chocolate but it did nothing to diminish his late paternal aspect. Finally I succumbed to telling him my wish to pretend—just for this first and final time—that he was mine. Not only did he indulge me, he confessed to being aroused by the idea and so together we pretended possession. We discussed our upcoming travel plans, where we would stay and with whom, which sites we intended to see when we arrived.

  And then, when I felt I could bear the game no longer, when instead of cheering me the pretending made me sad, I asked, “How will we ever get down from here?”

  “Have you ever rappelled before?” he asked in that shamelessly cheerful tone reserved for fathers teaching their children new things, things typically more exciting to the fathers than to the children. I had no idea what he was talking about. “You’ll have to practice,” he said, handing me the rope. “You’ll be doing this a lot in California. You may as well start now.”

  SUMMER

  On the morning of his departure I lay with Maria in my arms, waiting for her to wake. I thought of him at some near yet unknown location, inside his grandfather’s house, I thought of Violet, perhaps in bed as well, distraught as I was. Then again, perhaps she had been up for hours, wearing some approximation of the green apron with yellow ties that I had imagined for her in the beginning, stepping softly in slippers from counter to counter and drawer to drawer, preparing, with her usual care, the last of his provisions.

  When Maria woke she asked, “What does pathetic mean?” And I thought of the way children taunt one another: “In the dictionary the word pathetic has your picture next to it!” I could see the photographic entry clearly in my mind—I’m wearing Aunt Tomoko’s flannelette nightgown and a pair of square, unfashionable glasses—as I answered her, “A pitiful person, a person one feels sorry for. Someone or something woefully inadequate.” One of my many faults as a parent was delivering encyclopedic answers to simple questions. Someone like me, I wanted to add but restrained myself. Why point out in advance that which she would someday figure out herself?

  She had gone to the window and was looking out. “We’re going to the boat,” I said cheerfully.

  “Why?” she whirled around. “Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere, we’re just going to take a look.”

  She returned her gaze to the window and slumped forward. “That sounds boring.” Perhaps, but boredom beat the void of not seeing him.

  “We’ll go to the beach and you can build a sand castle, all right? Quick like a bunny! We don’t want to miss the bus.”

  Yet as soon as we’d taken our seats, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I did not have to reread The Lover to know that the scene of the ferry’s departure was bound to be very Duras, pathetically Duras in fact, with a few ridiculous revisions. Exchange the randy, prepubescent nymphet for a perimenopausal librarian; replace the black limousine with a public bus; insert a restless five-year-old; replace the South China Sea with the Atlantic; remove the land that attaches the peninsula; make it an island.

  We arrived early in part due to my longstanding compulsion, in part due to the bus, whose service, even at the height of the summer season, was not frequent. Maria asked intuitively for an ice cream and I, fragile, without resolve, complied. We spent about ten of the twenty minutes remaining strolling the shore. I avoided looking at the water, yes, I turned from that blue emblem of separation and concentrated instead on what lay in the sand at my feet: little orange shells, smooth white stones, indigo mussel shells, bits of abalone, seaweed labyrinths, the usual seaside rubble. I was attentive to my watch and undecided as to whether or not I should make my presence known, assuming of course that I could find him. I had never had to pick him out of a crowd.

  Nine minutes before his departure time I heard the boat arrive. I could not help but turn.

  “Let’s make a sand castle!” Maria cheered.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound unhurried. It seemed perfectly feasible that we could spend the next five minutes building the castle as I contemplated my dilemma. I sat facing the ferry and began digging with my hands. While Maria made a moat, I erected a tower, monitoring the ferry’s progress all the while. Cars and people disembarked for a few minutes and then the flow reversed. My heart tightened; if I was to make my presence known I would need to do it soon, if not immediately. I scanned the perimeter of the terminal, the walkways and parking lots. I watched the ramp for a dark-haired figure wearing a blue backpack, though Violet may very well have bought him a larger pack in a different color. There were very few solitary figures. I had the passing thought that I had made an error in timing but that was impossible—I had followed the calendar far too closely for such a confusion to arise. It was the last day of June, the day of the Mediterranean monk seal, there were fewer than six hundred of them left in the world. I picked up a piece of seaweed and pressed it into the top of my tower. “Voilà!” I proclaimed. “We’d better run along now.”

  And only then it occurred to me—I don’t know how I had overlooked it—that in all likelihood Violet would be with him (my inability to picture them together had become a troubling coping mechanism). Squinting at the sun, I looked again, this time for the two of them. “I’m burning up, love!” I complained, wiping my brow for emphasis. “Let’s go see the boat.”

  “But I’m not done with my castle!” Maria protested. “I want to finish my castle!”

  I got up and began to walk toward the dock then glanced back at Maria. She was digging her hands into the sand. “Come on, love.”

  “I’m busy,” she said firmly, shrewdly borrowing the words I so often used with her when she interrupted my reading. I kept walking, gambling upon the fact that once I established enough distance between us she would panic and follow. I shouted over my shoulder as I walked, “You can’t stay by yourself, love. It’s not safe!” I quickened my pace, determined not to look back, determined to spot him. Perhaps she saw me accelerate or heard the white thread of surrender in the red flag of my voice as I shouted, for just as I saw Violet’s head of curls, and next to it, waves of the same color, Maria screamed bloody murder.

  “Maaaaamaaaaa!” I made the mistake of turning to look at her. She didn’t move, only kept screaming, increasing her volume all the while.

  Mother and Son were standing awkwardly across from one another, talking quietly, shuffling, deferring the moment they would embrace and then have to part. It was their moment; I didn’t dare intrude. Had she been a stranger I still wouldn’t have dared. Across the parking lot, across the shore, the intimacy between them was palpable. Meanwhile, Maria’s screams were drawing attention, I strode towards her; she h
ad called my bluff. I prayed he would not embark while my back was turned.

  “Ave Maria!” I sighed and then sat on the sand next to her. She was crying but her hands continued their work, vexed in the way of the young to build, to learn, to go forth. I wrapped her in my arms. At last her crying ceased. She wriggled away and began a new tower. When I looked up, they were gone. I may have seen him disappear into the boat’s side entrance but I wasn’t certain and she, emancipated, against sentiment, had likely driven away.

  A few moments later I saw a dark-haired figure leaning Duras-like against the rails of the top deck. He would have had to sprint up the stairs to reach it so quickly. I was too faraway to be sure it was him. Still I kept my eyes fixed on the figure. Though he seemed to be gazing elsewhere, I held up my stricken hand in the event that it was him and that he too was watching. If I had been the sort of woman who carries a mobile phone, we might have confirmed our proximity to one another but alas, I was of another century.

  Mercifully, the boat did not give three desolate Durasian blasts but one proud bellow. I survived it. There were no tug-boats of course, it was a new ferry complete with modern conveniences and the best of engines. Its withdrawal from the dock looked effortless, smooth as that of a toy’s pulling away from the edge of a bathtub. I watched the dark-haired figure until I couldn’t see it anymore and then I watched the moonish crescent of the boat move across the blue sky of the water until the crescent became a sliver and then the blue was all.

  “There!” Maria clawed roughly at my silk blouse and beamed. I turned very slowly toward her to observe her handiwork, trying as best I could, for the duration of that inevitable gesture, to restore myself. She had lined the moat with tiny orange shells and placed a white pebble at the top of each tower. In my highly susceptible state, I was nearly moved to tears by the care with which she had executed her project.

  “Bravo, darling! You’ve done a lovely job of building your castle,” I said, trembling from the effort it took to dismiss all thoughts of him in favor of Maria.

  “I know!” she shrieked. And then, with chubby energetic fists, she smashed the towers down. I looked at her lips pursed with triumph, at her exultant, imperious eyes, and felt acutely that our days of symbiosis, of shared happiness over milk well drunk and a nap well slept, were gone.

  With that, I had had enough. I dragged her, kicking and slapping in a fit of rage, to the bus stop. She had wanted to build a replacement castle (if not thousands of replacement castles) but I could no longer withstand the beach charade. The perplexing truth was, despite my tendency to inhabit islands, I loathed beaches. The continuous motion of the sea nauseated me and I had an aversion to the many grains of sand that always found their way into our food, our bed, my books. I preferred the shelter of the woods, now more than ever.

  * * *

  The next day, quite miserably, was my birthday. There was nothing to celebrate. Of course I had brought such desolation upon myself by idiotically requesting from the young man the “gift of some other day” which, I realize now, did nothing but prevent me from seeing him on my actual birthday. Seeing him, even from a distance, would have been a gift, albeit a tortuous one. It was another unfathomable miscalculation on my part.

  Maria woke early and immediately began kicking me. “I want you on your back! Put your glasses on!!!” I had grown accustomed to such commands and was at a loss as to how to curb her tyrannical impulses. My primary concern was keeping her quiet so that Var would not wake. Hauntingly, overnight, I had been rematronized. How quickly the terms came back to me. When one marries one arrives with another on an island whose size, shape, flora, fauna, climate etc., one’s marriage defines. One may abandon the island, though in many cases this is quite difficult. Often there is no boat, nor materials with which to fashion one. Often there is a boat but no paddles, or paddles but no boat. More often still, both boat and paddles await at the shore but one has no life jacket, swimming ability, or provisions. My only respite was to be the hours during which my husband slept.

  When at last Var woke, he went to the restroom directly and I heard his torrential stream of urine spilling into the bowl. He came out, put his well-washed hands (he always washed well, one could always smell the soap) on my cheeks and kissed me. “Happy Birthday!” he said and smiled. I’m fairly certain he hadn’t smiled at me since my last birthday. Birthdays brought out some tender strain in him. This too I had forgotten. I was an amnesiac with no interest in being cured whose memory was all too quickly returning. Before Maria was born Var had pampered me like a child on my birthday. After she took her rightful place on the little girl throne, he maintained his yearly expression of tenderness though now it was more like that of a son towards his mother, the sort of tenderness one has for any old person on her birthday. Our slight difference in age seemed to grow more pronounced over time. Now when he smiled I felt him pitying me; when he held my cheeks I imagined he palpated my aging skin out of curiosity, my body always one year closer to death than his own.

  That evening he made his customary announcement. “I want to take you out to dinner.”

  “But how will you pay for it?” I asked as gently as I could. He had not worked in months (unless one counted his Etsy site and I, perhaps heartless, perhaps unforgiving, did not), there was no possibility of there being any money in his account.

  “Credit card,” he said emphatically, sounding sure of himself as always, my cautious question an insult to his intelligence.

  “Great!” I assented at once to increasing our credit card debt.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked and our debate, annual and tedious, ensued. Var disliked my favorite restaurant (freshly baked muffins and cakes, locally grown produce and meat just down the road) and I was averse to his (BBQ joint down-island) and so, despite it being my birthday and not Maria’s, we settled on her favorite (Brazilian cafeteria near the post office) which Var and I both felt tepid toward but not opposed to.

  There was no menu to inspect so we were at least spared the tedium of that ritual. What are you getting? What should we get for her? She won’t eat that. She never eats that. Yes, she does. Yes, she will. She ate it with me last time, et cetera, et cetera. We stood speechless in a line with our sickly, yellow trays and shoveled food onto our own plates and onto the plate of our child with the public spoons. I took the rice and beans and some pickled cucumbers. There was no cooked vegetable that evening. It was not, I was reminded, my lucky day. The food was tasty enough, not fresh but tasty. I quite like Brazilian food but could do without cafeterias on my birthday.

  As fate would have it, in the rear of the restaurant, there was a little girl in a red dress having a birthday party. From where I sat I could see a bouquet of balloons and her impressive heap of presents. Our meal was accompanied by children’s shrieks of laughter and adults praising the children and clapping. At the end of the meal a yellow frosted cake ablaze with hot pink candles was brought out and the whole restaurant, even Var, sang “Happy Birthday.” Maria was thrilled by the coincidence and kept saying, “Mama! When are they going to bring your cake?!”

  The happy scene reminded me of the young man’s impending birthday. What would he look like on the 4th of November? Would he have cut his hair or would he have let it grow? Would he be tan? Would he have facial hair? If so, would he have shaved? And what of his voice? Would it have grown deeper still? And what about today? Where on this earth was my seventeen-year-old lover on the day that I turned forty-two?

  I did not know how long I could endure the sensation of being once more married to Var. Certainly nothing had changed with regard to his schedule; he was in the apartment day and night as he had always been. But my eyes, which had been turned elsewhere, swiveled back to our life in the apartment and were sharply in focus. I saw bits of his moustache caught in the bathroom faucet fixtures, his bottle of dandruff shampoo in the shower stall bubbling over with blue shampoo, coffee grounds on t
he counter, used filters in the sink, dribbles of the black liquid in a trail from the sink to the garbage pail, a snowlike dusting of dandruff on the black hills of the sofa, wood shavings upon the floor, knives lying about like toys on the coffee table within Maria’s reach. Everywhere I looked I saw Var.

  And then, like the view through the enormous metal machine at the optometrist’s office, what I saw changed. Not quickly of course; alas, there was no kindly man in a white coat to press the lever that would make the view immediately more pleasant for me, but soon enough, quite magically really, Var’s presence receded once more to a tolerable level. Indeed I found ways to occupy myself.

  * * *

  Once I had faced squarely the fact that the young man had crossed the sea and would not, even if I were to plead, turn back, I resorted to following his course on the large noncirculating maps kept in thin wooden drawers in the Reading Room. For the first week of our separation I spent my lunch breaks poring over various physical, political, and road maps which I took the liberty of spreading out on one end of the long table despite the continual presence of patrons working quietly at their laptops. The maps crackled loudly when I set them down and I had to take my glasses off to read them but I didn’t care. It became a compulsion, something I both looked anxiously forward to and deeply dreaded. Always, when the maps cracked like lightning I was filled with anticipation, as if, when I put my index finger on the place where he now was, rain would fall from the ceiling, thunder would sound, and, like a god, the young man would materialize. And always, after I had placed the maps in their proper drawers and shut them, I felt a sharp sense of disappointment at my own failure to conjure him. Each of these sessions was marked by a vague sense of idiocy and hopelessness for I knew how very old the maps were and had to wonder if the many streets and highways I studied so closely even existed any longer.