I Called Him Necktie

by Milena Michiko Flašar

  The doctor.

  Smoothly shaven.

  Small eyes behind thick glasses.

  There is no doubt. We are sure. Your son is handicapped. A heart problem, as well. No, it can’t be corrected. It’s not something that can be corrected. You must understand. He will be like that. It can’t be operated on. Do you understand? Ohara-san? It is important that you understand. Your son will never be like the others.

  I did not understand a word he was saying. When he asked me if I was ready to see him now, I shook my head and went out, without saying goodbye. I think I was afraid he might look like me.

  85

  A week later they came home. They, I mean Kyōko and Tsuyoshi. I didn’t count myself as one of them. The word family, which once had so mellowed me, now stuck in my craw in a hard lump. I chewed on it, it choked me. The taste of it made me sick. I stood in the hall with a hand in front of my mouth and couldn’t bring myself to go across to them in the baby’s room.

  Tsuyoshi didn’t cry. In my heart I had the image of a crying baby. The image of a mother rocking it to and fro, laying it to rest. The image of myself looking down, gently smiling on them both. That’s good, I had wanted to say, that’s good, to pat him on the back, and her on the arm. But I held myself apart. The silence allowed me that. In those days our house was silent. All sounds seemed muffled, suffocated by the silence. Hardly bearable. I longed for an earsplitting bang. For a door to slam shut, a pane of glass to shatter, for any sound similar to the crying of a baby as I had imagined it. The longing drove me away. I got up earlier than I needed to, left the house earlier than I needed to, sat at my desk in the office earlier than I needed to. The desk chair squeaked, the typewriter clicked. I did enough overtime for two. Close to dropping dead from exhaustion. Went drinking afterwards in a karaoke bar, stammered songs of sadness and beauty, the microphone close to my mouth. Stumbled out. Past rowdy streets. Obsessed beyond help by a person who had never been born.

  86

  Kyōko on the other hand!

  She got up out of bed. I watched her as she rose, growing more beautiful by the day. That special glow in a mother’s eyes as she bends over her child’s bed, entranced by his every movement, even when it’s so small as to be hardly noticeable. Just look, he can grasp hold of things already, she’d say. Just look, he’s smiling. Just look, he has your eyes. Don’t you think? Papa’s eyes, she said to him, since I didn’t answer. You have Papa’s eyes. From the hallway I felt envy. I envied her the ability, against all reason, so I thought, against all normal human comprehension, to regard it as ours, to accept it as it was, without mentioning its deficiency, this silent, silent child. Moreover: Not to be aware of any deficiency in him. But she must see that it’s a mistake. Surely, I thought, she’s just pretending. Yes, surely she’s putting on an act. I told my colleagues in the firm our son had arrived in the world hale and hearty. Ten fingers, ten toes. They congratulated me, applause broke out. I remember the sound of hands that didn’t want to stop clapping. And I remember that for thirty seconds time I experienced something like joy.

  Our parents came to visit. Kyōko’s. Mine. A dutiful glance into the baby’s room, afterwards, over tea and cookies, we spoke of rising prices, the typhoon in the south and an actor’s affair with a singer. It was a strained conversation, kept faltering, maintained only to prevent it from turning to Tsuyoshi if at all possible. I went into the garden to smoke a cigarette. Oppressive humidity, a thunderstorm was coming. My mother followed me out. I heard her behind me sniffling into a handkerchief. Poor son, she said. She meant me. It’s impossible to know how such things happen. The Matsumotos. Perhaps. Okada-san kept something from us. We should have done more thorough research. It’s not from our side, she whispered. I let it go. Heard comfort in her whisper: It is Kyōko. Definitely. So ill-mannered, she was then, one should have seen it in her bad manners. Enough of that. Not loudly, I said it quietly: That’s enough.

  87

  Could you hold him? Kyōko pushed him into my arms. I have to check on the water. She was already in the kitchen. I was alone with Tsuyoshi for the first and last time. His weight surprised me. As did the warmth of his body. In my imagination he was light and cool, like something you cannot grasp: A gentle breeze. Hardly there, already gone. He stared at me, his fists stretching up. I held his head. Silky hair. Flat little nose. Open mouth. You. Just cry. A little. Can’t you cry for me? Babies do that. They cry all day. It’s enough to drive you mad, their crying. But you. Why don’t you cry? I pinched his cheeks. First hard, then harder, until my fingers hurt. His cry was a wheeze, shocked, I put him down. No babies cry like that, only old people. I need some air. When Kyōko came back I was already outside under the maple tree, lighting a cigarette. Today I think: If I had stayed, just a moment, waited for his smile. I would have discovered that his handicap was a minor one compared to mine. My hardness prevented me from feeling the softness of his cheeks deeply and sincerely. Of the two of us I had the serious heart defect.

  Kyōko didn’t reproach me. She knew my unspoken feelings and feared I would express them. All the people who came to convey their best wishes. She called them jokingly, agonizingly, condolence visits. They came to express their regret. How sad that he is not healthy. And what a misfortune. Could it have been prevented? Kyōko was afraid of hearing the same helpless regret from me. As if he were dead. She snorted in disgust. She raged against the world instead of me.

  88

  Once, Kyōko’s idea, we were guests at the Sun House. It was a house where parents of children like Tsuyoshi met to share their experiences. To belong. Suddenly that was a suffocating thought. To be part of a group. I arranged a proper smile, put it on, and wore it, as a sign that said: Please don’t touch. I barricaded myself behind it. In the round of introductions I said with a smile: I’m pleased to be here. Five children, I counted. Nine fathers and mothers. One was missing. Me. Yet I was welcomed in: The pleasure is all ours.

  Tsuyoshi was the youngest. Five months old. The other children were three, six, ten, one was sixteen. I was amazed. The sixteen-year-old, I think he was called Yōji, was busy painting a picture. He sat bobbing up and down with excitement, a red crayon in his hand, squinted covertly over at us, then bent over his sheet of paper again. Meanwhile the ten-year-old Miki eagerly declared that she wanted to build houses when she grew up. Her father caught her proudly by the shoulders: So, an architect. My daughter will be an architect. What a madman, I thought. My smile was still fixed. The three-year-old crawled between my legs. Tachan, come here! His mother enticed him with a plastic duck. They talked over each other and stumbled over scattered toys. A doll with twisted limbs lay on an eyeless teddy bear. The six-year-old struck at it wildly.

  Uncle.

  I jumped. A red hand, red as fire, nudged me.

  It was Yōji. He had difficulty speaking. He forced out each word as if he’d just learned it: I have painted a picture. Here. Please. It’s you. He held the sheet of paper under my nose.

  I saw a face. Angular. The mouth was a line, the ends turned down. The eyes two holes, with two bolts of lightning coming out of them. No ears, but horns. The face of a demon. Yōji’s father apologized: It’s not a very good likeness. And to him: You can do better than that. You see, Uncle is smiling. Yōji sighed and went back to his place.

  89

  He was sighing as well. To think that this boy had seen into my soul. And he was not the only one. He wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. This heat. The grass is drying out. Of all the seasons I like summer the least. A little silent cough. We were in the park. I noticed that he hadn’t put his briefcase down between us as usual. I noticed, it didn’t worry me. Our bench was a waiting bench. Together we were waiting for something that would not happen.

  Tsuyoshi!

  A cry.

  It echoes between the walls of our silent house.

  I rush into the baby’s room. Kyōko is there. Crying. Over his bed. Lifting him up. His head falls heavily to one side.
He’s not breathing. He’s cold. Come quickly. Hurry up. To the hospital. A slightly sour smell. I think of the teacher. Start the engine. The car, a moving cry. In the mirror I see Kyōko’s face distorted by crying. Tsuyoshi is lower down on her lap. I can’t see him. Tetsu, please. Drive faster. For heaven’s sake. Drive as fast as you can. And that moment, abrupt, when she stopped crying. Instead she whispered: He’s not breathing. He’s dead. Blue traffic light on Kyōko’s face. Drive slowly. Slower. You should drive slowly. I want to keep him with me as long as possible. I take my foot off the pedal. Brake. I feel this awkwardness, I admit it, a hot wave. Who has died? I don’t know him. Behind us there is honking. Someone shouts an insult. A feeling, no feeling: He doesn’t. It’s not me they are talking about when they when they say: We are sorry, there’s nothing to be done.

  90

  It’s pointless, I know. But I wish, I really wish I could say that I recognized right away what a loss I’d suffered that day. I recognized the loss of my son. I recognized the loss that meant I had never called him by his name, the name I’d given him. Tsuyoshi. The strong one. That’s how I had imagined him. Strong as a fist punching me in the belly, like in the movies I never watched with him. Yet the recognition of who and what I lost only came later, years later, and when it came, it was a double loss. The forcing open of a scar. And you reach in and understand, it cannot be corrected. It’s not something that can be corrected.

  We two returned home. A rattle lay in the hallway. Kyōko bent down, picked it up. I said, out loud: Perhaps it’s better like this. Kyōko turned around towards me, rattling. Her eyes widened: For whom was it better? For you? She left me standing there with that question, went into the baby’s room, locked the door behind her. I listened for a sign, heard nothing but the watch ticking on my wrist. After an hour I gave up, sat down in front of the television and turned up the volume.

  91

  Years later.

  Kyōko, catlike, curled up on the couch and spoke into a cushion. Always the same: You know what? That night in August. When you said: Perhaps it’s better like this. I’ve never in my life experienced such enmity towards you as then, when you said that. In your suit. Your tie was crooked. Dark patches at your armpits. I sat on Tsuyoshi’s bed and felt bitter enmity towards you. For six long months I struggled not to feel it, not when you came home drunk, not when you, in your drunken state, complained that your life was a dead end. But then it consumed me. Finally. It was the mournful longing to join him, on the other side. Friendly Death. I wanted him. In the midst of the enmity he appeared to me as a friend who would welcome me fondly, enfold me in his heart. Blessed night. I wanted to count sheep until the last one jumped over the fence. But. What do you think? What stopped me? Listen carefully! The simple thought that I have to get up at six o’clock and prepare your bento. Absurd. Isn’t it? An unparalleled absurdity. The thought that you need me. Me, who one day, today, will say to you: I see through you and your inability. Behind all your inability I see a person who suffers. This was the thought that saved me. All at once I saw you, how you travel to work and back, work and back, and all at once I saw that you’re rolling a rock, I’ll roll it with you. On and on. We’re rolling together up a steep mountain path.

  92

  Three rice balls. Tempura. Seaweed salad.

  If Tsuyoshi were alive he would be thirty-one years old. A good age. He separated the chopsticks. An age when you can look back, and forward too. Would you like some?

  I nodded.

  Here, take a rice ball. Is it good?

  Yes. It’s the best rice ball I’ve ever tasted.

  He laughed, wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. Invisible tears. I wish I could sit with him like this and eat Kyōko’s bento together. I mean. Like with you. Don’t you think? He indicated with the chopsticks in one direction then another. In some way they are all here in the park. The man there with the young woman on his arm. That’s Hashimoto. The old woman with the walking stick who is limping behind them: His wife. The one with the book over there, pen in his mouth, is Kumamoto. In the shade of the tree, pulling her skirt over her knee: Yukiko. The man sitting by the fountain feeding the pigeons. He could be the teacher. All of them here. Under this sky. You only have to look.

  If that’s so, I wanted to say, then I would like to be your son. But I didn’t say it. Instead I asked him a favor. There is something, I began.

  What is it?

  There is something you could do for me.

  Well, tell me.

  Please tell your wife the truth, this very evening, that you have lost your job. You owe her that. After all that has happened, all that has not happened.

  I promise you, I will do it. And you, you promise me that you’ll cut your hair short, this very evening. I’ve waited long enough, not saying it, you look dreadful with that shaggy mane.

  I laughed with him: Good, it’s agreed.

  On Monday we won’t recognize each other.

  Will you come?

  Yes, of course.

  And then?

  A new beginning.

  93

  That afternoon I was the one who fell asleep. I fell asleep and dreamed: I was in my room. Cold sweat on my hands. I lay stretched out on my bed, a corpse. With all my strength I tried to move. Then I heard Father’s voice: Nothing to be done. The boy is dead. I wanted to call out: No, I’m alive! But I had no mouth. Above me was a mirror. I saw I had neither mouth nor eyes. With eyes I didn’t have, I saw that my face was a white wall. Mother’s voice: It’s too bad, about him. He never found his face. At this moment the curtains opened. A harsh light came through the window and fell on the white wall, which was me, and suddenly in the mirror I saw the wall crumble, and then the four walls of my room crumbled away too. Wide open space all around me. Someone touched me. I ran after him. As I ran I got back my mouth and eyes. A stinging on my cheeks. I noticed I was crying. My tears were red threads, flowing down me. I have not forgotten, I cried, how to weep for you, my dear child.

  When I awoke he was no longer there. Beside me, over the bench arm, hung his tie. I put it in my pocket and felt the material, warm silk. A new beginning, he said. I dragged myself through the park, over the intersection, past Fujimoto’s, home. My parents were standing looking worried in the doorway. There you are. Thank God. We were going to. But I was too tired to respond with anything more than my weary, thoughtless: Tadaima. I am home. My parents, with one voice: Okaerinasai. Welcome back.

  94

  This very evening. We had an agreement. I kept to it. With the scissors in my right hand, I cut strand by strand, until my head felt light and cool. Once cut, the hair all over the floor was no longer mine, and I thought, it would be the same for him. Once spoken, the burden of the truth would fall away and afterwards he would not be able to explain why he had put it off for so long. Like me he would stand in front of the mirror and find himself strange and familiar at the same time. He would think of me and say to himself: To cut your hair is to admit the truth.

  Yet the familiar prevailed. The question: How should it continue? Our friendship was the larger space into which I had stepped. I decorated its walls with pictures of the people we described to each other, and the thought that I might have to leave it, through a door leading I knew not where, to expose myself to the unknown, that thought hovered dangerously. I almost hoped he would postpone his confession again, turn up on Monday and imply silently that he had failed. It was a mean hope. I pushed it away. I spent the whole weekend pushing it into a corner. On Sunday evening there was only the feeble wish that I had taken the chance to tell him I wished I were his son.

  95

  Nine o’clock. That must be him. Short-sleeved shirt, Hawaiian pattern. He came towards me, his face strangely youthful. No, a mistake, it wasn’t him. That one there behind him though. Shoulders bent forward. Stealthy walk, as if he wanted to avoid someone. Yes, that was him. Then: No. And again: Yes. Then: No, it’s not. And: Wrong again. How could it be? Surely somethi
ng must have detained him. A delay. Surely. He would be here any moment now. The figure by the bushes. Was that a man? Or a woman? Or a child? What if he? I waited. Eyes scanning. Surely it was a misunderstanding. So many people, they came and went. I hadn’t noticed them before. What if something happened to him? With every false sighting I discovered a reason for his absence. Once it was a headache, then it was the death of a distant relative, a summer flu, someone urgently needed his help. With the tie grasped between my two fingers I waited, it was no longer clear for whom.