by Kyoko Mori
Maya leads the way to her car without speaking. In spite of his bullying, she might pity or even admire him. Only a week ago, she hugged Dan at the courthouse. She could forgive him because he was well-meaning in spite of the wrong things he couldn’t help saying. The same might be true of Nate, but if forgiveness means seeing other people as handicapped—doomed to rudeness and insensitivity—what appears like mercy is motivated by harsh judgment instead of generosity. It means consigning others to a place of hopelessness forever. Maybe holding a grudge is more respectful. Maya isn’t sure anymore. She unlocks the passenger door and says, “Here. Get in. Let’s go find your car.”
* * *
Nate’s car is in another parking garage, on the other side of the hospital. After he gets out of her car and into his, Maya follows him back to the entrance where they left her mother. Parking her car behind his in the circle, Maya gets out to help him lift Kay out of the wheelchair into the car. Kay blinks, as if dazed. She puts her good arm around her husband’s neck. Maya stands ready, but she can’t offer her hand because if she touched her mother, it might hurt her shoulder more. The only thing she can do is to open the car door for them. Nate lowers Kay into the seat and is about to close the door when Kay raises her hand. She seems to be motioning to Maya, so Maya approaches and leans down toward her.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” Kay says, her voice scarcely audible.
Maya isn’t sure if she means the remark as an accusation or as a bizarre way of thanking her.
“You would have been gone if Nate hadn’t lost his car,” she replies. Her mother could have been killed last night, and they are already back to saying the wrong things.
“We would have left you a message,” Nate says behind her. “We knew you were headed this way.”
“That’s true,” Maya agrees. “I know.”
“Why didn’t you call back?” Kay asks. When she narrows her good eye, the other eye looks even more swollen.
Maya hesitates only a second. “I didn’t call because Nate telephoned Jeff’s house. I didn’t get the messages. I don’t live there anymore.”
“What?” Nate says.
“I moved out.” Maya shrugs, turning first to Nate and then back to her mother. “I’m getting a divorce. I’ve been living at the loft.”
“You never said,” her mother whispers.
“I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t seem to find the right time to tell you.”
“And you think this is it?” Nate yells. “Come on, Maya. Your mother doesn’t have to hear about this now. You’re upsetting her.”
Kay sits there without an expression on her face. It’s hard to say whether she’s upset or not. She has a bandage on her nose and her face is red with the abrasion.
“You are so inconsiderate—” Kay doesn’t stop Nate while he goes on upbraiding Maya.
“Look,” Maya interrupts. “I’m sorry I brought this up. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”
“Do you have a place to stay?” her mother asks.
“Yes,” Maya answers. “I just told you I’m living at the loft above the store.”
“That’s no place,” Kay says. She was only there once. She and Nate drove up to see the barn last year—after Maya had worked there for twelve years. They glanced at the space and left without a comment. “You need a real apartment.”
“I’m perfectly happy where I am. Believe me.”
“See, you’ve got her all worried about your fricking loft,” Nate says. “You should have kept your mouth shut.”
Kay sighs. Her face really looks terrible. When the car hit the stop sign, the airbag must have popped open, punching her nose and scraping her skin. Last fall, Yuko’s neighbor had a similar injury when his car hit a deer. His face has healed without a trace. Still, Maya imagines her mother’s face with scars, her nose permanently crooked from being broken. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
“Me too,” Kay mutters. It can be an apology or an accusation. Maya stands hovering over the passenger seat. She was going to suggest that she follow them to their house and visit for a while, but she can see that it won’t be a good idea.
“I’d better let you guys get home so you can rest,” she offers lamely. “I’ll call.” Neither Nate nor Kay responds. “Good-bye.” Maya walks to her car. “I hope you’ll feel better soon.”
The circle in front of the entrance is one-way. Sitting behind the wheel, Maya waits while Nate leans down into the car and kisses Kay. He closes the door gently and walks around to the driver’s side. As he pulls away, Maya stares at the back of their sky-blue sedan. This is how Nate must imagine the afterlife: he and Kay in the safety of their car traveling to the eternity of peace and love, Maya alone in hers, following her separate journey.
* * *
The sun is low in the sky, but there is still plenty of light. Peg has hung the clothes and tidied up the store. On the bottom of the steps, she has set Maya’s mail, separated from the store mail. Maya climbs the steps, opens the door, and catches Casper when he jumps straight up from the floor to her shoulder. He purrs and licks her face as she carries him to the couch and sits down. For a while, he bats her mail as she goes through it, but then he loses interest and starts chasing a piece of yarn across the floor. Her mail is mostly bills and newsletters with the yellow forwarding sticker from the post office. Every day, Maya still looks for a letter from Mr. Kubo, though she knows it will never come. She puts the mail on the floor, except for the envelope with Eric’s initials above the return address. It’s the only thing sent directly to the store.
Inside, Maya finds a piece of construction paper. It’s covered with white cloth cut into squares like small windows, some of them painted over with black brush strokes. There are twenty squares, arranged in five rows like the panels of the painting Eric showed her. The squares on the bottom have more black than those near the top, but the one at the top right-hand edge has a lot of black again. The impression is of the black strokes falling to the bottom, but in a shaky, jumpy motion. Some of the squares are frayed. There is a bubble of air caught behind one of them.
Underneath the squares is a message written in blue ink. The words are visible in the lattice-shaped space left uncovered by the squares, and also underneath the squares that are white; the faint blue lines look like veins under the thin skin of wrists. She recognizes a part of her name, May, and several other words, some of them crossed out. She switches on the lamp that hangs above her loom. Holding the paper up to the light, she reads the words. Dear Maya, I miss you. Then there’s something crossed out and the squares begin to darken. All she can see are scratch marks of blue ink, scattered like broken twigs or kindling. I wake up every morning thinking of you, the sentence must read. In the yard, the crows—and then she can make out nothing more under the dark squares, except at the very bottom, Love, Eric.
On the back of the construction paper, he has scribbled another message in pencil—the writing is so thin it’s almost illegible. I write you a dozen letters every day and tear them up. I don’t know what to say except that I love you. E. She reads the message over and over and then turns the paper again to the cloth squares. The room is beginning to darken. She keeps staring at the squares, at the words underneath. It doesn’t matter that she can’t read half of what he has written. She is looking right through a thin skin of sadness into his heart. This morning, she was twenty yards away from his mother’s trailer, where they had kissed in front of the refrigerator that contained nothing but cold air and a pitcher of clear water. If she could pour herself a glass of that water, it would be as pure as loneliness itself, but it isn’t enough to live by.
I miss you, too, she wants to write. I wish you were here. I wish we had met years earlier. Maya stands in the dark, thinking of all the years she could have spent with him. Nate is luckier than he can ever imagine. He has only to worry about being reunited with Kay in the next life and in all the other lives to come. Maya will never see Eric again even in this life. In the light from
the lamp, the words keep floating toward her like fragile petals of ash after the fireworks. I miss you, the ashes keep falling. I miss you.
20
When the sun hits the window in the eastern corner of the loft, Maya wakes up thinking about the aquarium light outside Jeff’s bedroom window. On her loom, the blue cloth is almost finished. After she cuts out the patterns, there will be scraps left on the table, strips and slivers of blue. Like the white squares Eric painted black, they will remind her of the shapes of silence that border unspoken words, their frayed edges unraveling.
As she folds and pushes the futon against the wall, she cannot remember her dream except that she was in a house that was a combination of all the houses she ever lived in, starting with her father’s house in Osaka and ending with Jeff’s. The resulting structure felt both rambling and caved in, spaces jutting out every which way, like a shipwreck that refuses to go down. Lately, her dreams resemble still shots of empty places. They bring her back to the houses of her past; only there is nothing happening there, nobody is home, not even herself.
On Eric’s letter, the white windows illuminate and obscure the words at once. She will call him in a week to say she has not changed her mind. That will be the last time she will hear his voice. For a while afterward, he might write, but already his letters are like leaves clinging to oak trees in November.
Maya places the letter in the kitchen drawer, on top of her bird-watching notes. After her phone call to him, she will sit alone under the midsummer constellations, burn everything that has accumulated in the drawer, and fill the empty space with blank paper to draw on. Then she will invite Yuko for their ritual of moving on. With a star chart, they will find Vega, the solitary weaving star, and ask its blessing. Even then, she won’t tell Yuko about Eric. The secret is the only thing Maya can hold on to: inside her silence, as under the invisible net she once imagined, she and Eric will always be alone together. She will never be able to forget him, but letting go has more to do with remembering than forgetting. Once a month, under the stars, she will allow herself to recall everything about him and every moment they spent together so that she can look at all the pictures that remain in her mind and put them aside. Over the years, she will come to remember less and less. In the end, her memory of him may be reduced to only a handful of details. That was what her father was doing when he drew a picture of her in the tunnel: he was allowing himself to recall one small image in exchange for all the rest he had let go. A long time ago in their neighborhood, old men and women brewed bitter black teas and drank them down for their health. The teas contained dried-up leaves and hard berries that, in large quantities, might have been poison. The old people had seen their houses burned by bombs and their sons lost on islands that were tiny dots on the map. They boiled down their memories to a bitter, bracing liquid and drank it without flinching.
Maya goes downstairs and sits at the counter next to the telephone. She has to call Jeff because Jeff is never going to call her. Dialing the number, she wonders how long it will take her not to remember the familiarity of their sequence on her fingers. Jeff answers before the machine comes on. He might be sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, with Nancy smiling across the table at him. Faintly, she can hear the radio in the background.
“Jeff, it’s me. Maya.”
He doesn’t answer.
“I left some sweaters in the linen closet by mistake. I’d like to come and get them. We need to talk anyway.”
“I know,” he replies.
“When’s a good time?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’d like to do it soon, if you don’t mind.” Now is the warmest part of the summer. She won’t need those sweaters or hats for months. But when she thinks of the black camisole and boxer shorts on the closet door, Maya wants to hold the sweaters in her hands and touch the stitches she had made. People who survive a flood or a forest fire must feel the same longing when they think of the possessions they left behind.
Jeff clears his throat but says nothing.
“How about this afternoon? I can come after work.”
“Hold on a second.” She hears him walking away from the phone. For a while, there is nothing except the voices on the radio. The footsteps come back, and Jeff says, “This afternoon is fine.”
“I’ll be there at five.” Maya hangs up, thankful to get the conversation over with.
* * *
His station wagon is the only vehicle in the driveway. Maya parks on the street in front and goes up to the door. In the flower bed against the house, the lavender she planted three years ago is blooming. The petals have unfurled all the way out, the stalks are past picking and drying; the mature flowers will fall from the calyx, shedding blue specks of dust on the floor. Last year, she cut the stems when the buds were on the verge of opening and braided them into wreaths. Next to the lavender, delphiniums and hollyhocks are blossoming too. Most of these plants will die out before long. Perennials, too, have their life span; they are not permanent.
Jeff comes to the door in an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt he bought last year. The color, called watermelon, is a shade between red and pink. He was going to send it back because it turned out closer to pink than was shown in the photograph in the catalog. Maya loved the color and talked him into keeping it. She wonders how long it will be before he has no clothes she can recognize—two years, three, maybe more.
He pushes open the screen door but does not step back. She is standing in the doorway in the white sundress she sewed and embroidered with flowers, but he will not remember it. Once, as they were leaving a party in winter, Jeff went to the host’s spare bedroom and returned with a blue coat she had never seen. “But that’s not mine,” she said, too surprised to keep her voice down. “My coat is handwoven and it isn’t this blue—it’s teal.” Everyone in the room laughed while his face reddened. That was the last time he offered to fetch her coat. For all she knows, right now she is already just a woman in an unfamiliar dress.
“Thanks for letting me come over.”
He moves aside from the doorway. “Do you want to come into the living room?”
“Yes.” In the foyer, he has stacked two large cardboard boxes, taped over with heavy masking tape as though the contents might come bursting out otherwise. “Are these my sweaters?”
“I’ve had them ready since the afternoon you took the other stuff. I noticed right away that you forgot them.”
“You should have called. I would have come sooner.”
He shrugs but doesn’t reply. She follows him into the living room and takes a seat on the couch, while he walks past her and sits down in the armchair. The couch feels larger than before; alone on it, she is a castaway adrift on a raft. Something looks different about the room, too; it seems brighter. The blinds are gone and the windows are bare. Jeff must see her looking. “We’re getting some drapes,” he explains. “Those blinds kept getting bent.”
Maya pictures a child’s fingers bending down the metal slats. “I’m sure the drapes will be nice.”
For a long time, they sit, neither of them saying anything.
“I went with Yuko and Dan to their divorce hearing.” Maya forces herself to start. “It was very simple. I’m ready to work on ours.”
“Are you?” He wrinkles up his nose.
“You’re ready too. Don’t pretend you’re not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” she replies. “I don’t mean to start a fight. All I’m saying is that we’re both ready to move on.”
He leans forward for a moment, as if to stand up. But he slides farther back against the chair instead. “I’m not the one who left. All this time, you’ve told me nothing. You called me from Yuko’s and said you were never coming back. You got your stuff, threw the keys into the garage, and didn’t even leave a note. Then you didn’t call for a month. Now you’re in a hurry. You don’t think that hurts my feelings?”
“I’m sorry. I didn
’t know what to say. I felt awkward about writing you a note and sticking it in the garage.”
“You’re just making excuses. Why not at least admit that you really hurt me?”
“You couldn’t have felt that bad. How hurt could you be when you had someone to turn back to?” She thinks of the way Dan talked as he was leaving Yuko. “It’s over between us,” she tells Jeff. “That’s the only thing we have to agree on now. We don’t have to go on about how bad we feel.”
“I went back to Nancy because I realized how much better it was to live with a person who loved me, no matter how unpredictable she was or what she put me through in the past. You come across like such a polite, peaceful person, but that’s just your facade. You’re cold and calculating. I never met anyone so unfeeling. You care only about yourself. You don’t want to get close to people. You’ll never be happy in your life.”
Maya holds up her hand as if she could bat his words away. You are this, you are that—that’s all anyone says at the end of a relationship. You will never be happy. These words are a bucket of ice water thrown in parting, a curse to reduce you to something horrible but pathetic—a witch melting like a cube of sugar. “I don’t want to know what you think about me,” Maya says. “Whatever opinions you have, just keep them to yourself. I’m not interested.” No matter how angry he made her, she could never spit out a list of everything she thinks might be wrong with him; the word you, that open sesame of accusations, wouldn’t come out of her mouth.