When she said she would be going over alone, her mother—instead of grabbing her cane, hailing a taxi, and rushing to his side—had coolly responded, “Thanks. Would you?” Clearly she had no intention of making a show of penitence. Mitsuki herself didn’t want to see her mother go waltzing up to her father’s deathbed, but she wondered whether staying away demonstrated shallowness or the spirit of a rebel. A dozen years on, she still didn’t know.
Tetsuo had been at the university on some errand or other, and so she’d had to content herself with contacting his secretary. Her sister had been out for the day with her family, unreachable till late at night. Mitsuki had watched over her father all alone as cyanosis turned his legs purple from the toes up.
It was a quiet death.
“There’s no precise cause of death,” the doctor had told her, seemingly at a loss. “It’s as if he lost the will to live, that’s all I can say.”
After a while Tetsuo came and put an arm around her shoulders, staying with her while she consulted with the mortician. This was after she’d found out about his first fling and he had ended it, leaving them closer than before. Her father had repeatedly declared his disdain for monks, and Mitsuki had no intention of giving him a traditional and expensive Buddhist funeral with incense and chanting. The mortician looked disappointed on learning this.
Natsuki, having failed to be present at her father’s passing, wept incessantly at the crematorium. He had gone to his death after a lapse of more than two weeks when she hadn’t bothered to go see him; would that knowledge torment her the rest of her days? He had always been partial to her, whether because she was his firstborn or because she looked more like their mother. He had given her a father’s straightforward, perfectly ordinary love, a love all the more precious for that.
He had loved Mitsuki too in his way.
The temple bell tolled on, counting and forgiving human sins, while Mitsuki took her medicines: an anti-anxiety drug, an antidepressant, a hypnotic, and a sleeping pill. How could she, her sister, and her mother ever be forgiven for what they had done to her father? The bell’s slow, solemn reverberations conveyed the eternal sinfulness of the human condition: parent and child, child and parent, no one ever exempt.
MOTHER SITTING IN A WITHERED MOOR
The whirlwind of busy days continued into the new year.
One day Mitsuki went back home, and as she started to take off her coat, she looked down and saw that the large buttons were buttoned wrong. She was less embarrassed at the spectacle she must have made than struck by how busy and exhausted she’d been lately. Her mother would never be any happier no matter how much she tried to do for her, and this realization produced in her a sense of futility that added to her exhaustion.
Mitsuki thought of the women who materialized in Silkworm Park at night out of nowhere. Not prostitutes, but mature women who walked swiftly and stone-faced along the perimeter of the park in the lamplight, swinging arms bent at the elbow with the fists clenched, focused on building their physical fitness. Back when she first set up house with Tetsuo, she used to turn cold eyes on them as only a young woman could. Why did they knock themselves out to walk like that, she wondered, showing disgracefully shapeless bodies with no waist whatever? They could already walk in good health; why try to do more?
But along the way her viewpoint had changed. Women like that might well be caregivers for elderly charges, keeping themselves in shape so as not to succumb to discouragement. For all she knew, some of them might be looking after an old crone demented enough to eat her own feces—in which case they probably had no desire that someone like herself, who had never so much as changed her mother’s diaper, should feel a sense of solidarity with them. But she did.
The operation took place January 5. Beforehand, her mother reminded her, “Did you tell the doctor I’m a member of the Society for Dying with Dignity?”
“I did, I did.”
“No heroic lifesaving measures.”
“They won’t be called for anyway, not in surgery to fix broken bones.”
Her mother of course survived the surgery just fine, although it turned out to be more complicated than expected, lasting five hours. Mitsuki was thankful that she lived in a country where her mother, as a “latter-stage elderly” patient, was able to have major surgery virtually free, and she felt indebted to the doctors and nurses who, though fatigued, had surely done their best for her. At the same time, she was perhaps not as modern in her outlook as she might have been, since she found it hard to believe that her mother was entitled to have all these people devoting themselves to her care. The thought of Japan’s rising deficit made her somehow—absurdly—apologetic.
Regardless of how she felt about it, the hospital staff religiously followed procedures to promote her mother’s healing. The day after the operation, the catheter came out, and they sat her on a bedpan. Remarkably, the very next day they wheeled her to rehabilitation.
Little by little, her mother recovered physically. The damage to her psyche, however, only deepened. The humiliation and inconvenience of not being able to relieve herself unassisted was stressful, exacerbating her tendency not only to constipation but also to frequent urination, as dread of having to ask for help made her think constantly about her bladder. She was too distraught to eat much of anything and, although for some reason her stomach remained bloated, the wrists lying on top of her covers became as thin as chicken bones.
She wanted her daughters with her in the evening from mealtime till bedtime, so reluctantly they took turns sitting with her at dinner. They would sit beside her bed and scold her when she tried to use her good left hand, urging her to make the effort to use the right hand for rehabilitation. At the same time, they would pick up dishes that were hard for her to reach and place them directly in front of her, trying to get her to eat even a little. When she broke her other hip a dozen years ago, she’d kept them busy bringing her gourmet items from the food court in Isetan’s basement: tangy pickled plums from Wakayama Prefecture; sweet and salty simmered beef from a famous old Tokyo shop; flaked salmon fillet from Niigata Prefecture. This time she picked at the foods she was offered, showing little enjoyment. She exhibited no sign of wanting to recover—or of wanting to live, for that matter. Nor of course did she exert herself in rehabilitation.
After a few days, classes resumed at the college where Mitsuki taught. She also continued to accept a few patent translation assignments. If she turned down too many, offers would stop coming in, but knowing she would have less time now, she cut back. Just as she had feared, her mother’s demands slowly increased, a resurgence not of her will to live but of sheer habit.
First, she said she wanted a little hand mirror.
Mitsuki had taken her a comb, facial cream, and other items she used frequently, but had purposely not taken a mirror. At home her mother never tired of looking at herself in her vanity-table mirror, so it was hardly surprising if she should want to see her face now; but what was the point of looking at her mottled complexion without benefit of foundation or lipstick, without even her teeth in place? The hand mirror of lacquered wood that she normally used would take up too much space and was too heavy for her chicken-bone wrists anyway. Mitsuki had done nothing about getting her a new one, out of equal parts pity and laziness.
Not feeling quite up to a trek to a Muji shop, where everything sold was simple and of good design, on the way home she stopped at a place specializing in items for girls. Half dazed by the plethora of glittery, fluffy goods that greeted her eyes, she snatched up a mirror with a light purple frame topped with little glass diamonds in the shape of a tiara. It just fit in her palm.
The next time she went to the hospital she handed the mirror to her mother, who took one look at her reflection, said a toneless thank-you, and handed the tacky thing back.
Even on days when she never set foot out of the house, her mother had always carefully applied her makeup. Doubtless it had been one of the few small pleasures left to her in o
ld age. Now even that had slipped away.
“Mitsuki, can’t I watch DVDs here?” she asked peevishly one day—knowing full well that it was impossible. She showed no interest in the television in her room. Even at home she used to mock television, saying things like “NHK is trashier than ever.” Apart from the evening news, the only programmed TV shows she ever looked at were ballet, opera, or orchestral performances on satellite TV, events she would never attend live again. The TV screen at home was primarily for movies—foreign movies, naturally, on DVDs that Mitsuki ordered for her from an online rental service that sent them through the mail.
If she couldn’t watch movies, then she craved music. Mitsuki brought her a portable CD player, but on top of her other diminished faculties, her right arm was useless; even the simple operation of opening the lid was beyond her. Nor could she press the buttons of a portable radio.
“This is no fun!” She spoke accusingly, as if her plight were Mitsuki’s fault. She kept asking for all sorts of things—every request either impossible to fill or absurd. When she asked for a large-print paperback, Mitsuki brought her one, but she lacked the energy even to put on her glasses, and complained again, “It’s just no fun.”
Finally Mitsuki spoke up, on the verge of tears: “Mother, have you got any idea what you’re doing to us? My health isn’t great either, but I manage to come visit you, so could you please try to bear up a little? I have my work to do, too. This isn’t fun for me either!”
Her mother was momentarily chastened. “Mitsuki, you’re angry!” Then, “If you get angry, what shall I do?”
The two women stared at each other.
Her mother repeated, “I only have you, Mitsuki, so if you get angry, what shall I do?” There were tears in her voice. She sounded theatrical, yet her words had the ring of truth. In fact, by giving up on Natsuki (and frequently reminding her of it), she had put herself in the position of having no one to truly rely on but Mitsuki.
Ever conscious of the ears in the neighboring bed, Mitsuki said loudly, “That’s what I mean—just try to bear up a little, would you please?”
Her nerves were so jangled that she left the room on the pretext of going to the restroom and wandered down a series of corridors till she came to the library and sat down on a sofa. She had poked her head into the library before, realized that nobody ever used it, and kept it in mind as a place where she might get some work done. The moment she sat down, tears came. She was always on her guard around her mother and so could never cry in front of her, but now everything she had been holding back came pouring out.
As she was holding a handkerchief to her eyes and quietly crying to herself, someone came in. It was the dark-suited, middle-aged man she had first seen in the hospital store. Startled at the sight of her, his face reflected his discomfort as he turned on his heel and fled. Tears that Mitsuki had kept hidden even from her husband, this man had now seen—yet for some reason she felt consoled.
Senility is virtually indistinguishable from madness. As her hospital stay lengthened, Mitsuki’s mother grew more senile; she also slipped further into madness. Approximately a month after the operation, she was moved to a rehabilitation hospital where every morning she was helped out of her pajamas and into normal clothes for the day and where she took her meals in the dining room, surrounded by other old people. This new environment was more like the outside world, requiring a certain amount of sociability. The brand-new hospital had a sunny dining room with all the spaciousness and cheerfulness of a children’s play area. The sight of a stream of old-timers hobbling in there was disconcerting, but none of them had the fierce look in their eyes that her mother did.
Dining room meals were accompanied by a buzz of conversation and laughter. While some patients ate silently and alone, the air was filled with tension only in her mother’s vicinity, as if being out in public laid bare her self-pity. Her sorrow was palpable.
She inevitably attracted notice. She would sit and stare into space with a stony expression. Other people saw her but she did not see them. It was as if she sat alone in a withered moor, a cold wind soundlessly scattering dry leaves around her. Why was it so hard for her to accept her fate?
Mitsuki’s exhaustion and irritation increased.
REMNANTS OF FRAGRANT DREAMS
The land in Chitose Funabashi was sold with unexpected speed to a developer who said that the plot, hardly large to begin with, would be split into two even smaller parcels. The developer wanted the land vacant, and in return for their bearing the cost of demolition, granted them a little longer to clear out the house. When Tetsuo heard the selling price, he suggested they negotiate, but to Mitsuki the main thing was making sure they could pay the deposit at Golden without having to go into debt.
Their mother had once mentioned in passing that Natsuki and Mitsuki could split any extra money—but this Mitsuki had no intention of telling Tetsuo. Her sister, with the easygoing attitude of the rich, never brought it up. And as there was no way of knowing how many more years their mother might live, the money was impossible to divide anyway.
She and Natsuki took turns visiting their mother in the hospital, and together they traveled to Chitose Funabashi to pack up the house. Until now the house had belonged to their mother, even though they knew that one day it would be sold. Now that it was actually sold and scheduled for demolition, going there felt strange, as if they were visiting a ghost house already vanished from the earth. But this was no time for sentimentality. They worked like beavers.
At this stage of life, friends and acquaintances began to share all kinds of stories about their mothers. Reports of hoarding were typical. They heard about one woman’s mother who used the second floor as a storehouse she didn’t open for decades; then the first floor too began to overflow with hoarded articles, until her bed was piled so high with layers of coats and scarves that she had no place to sleep and ended up spending her nights curled in an armchair. This mother never allowed her daughter to throw anything away. There was no place to walk but a narrow pathway like an animal trail formed between stacks of possessions against the walls on either side; she used this only to go from her bedroom to the mouse-infested kitchen and back.
Fortunately Mitsuki’s mother remained fastidious in her habits. No matter when Mitsuki went to see her, she always found her seated primly in an orderly space with her face made up. And even in old age, she had no qualms about discarding things.
“Is it okay if I throw this away?” Whenever Mitsuki asked this, pointing at some item not in use, most often the answer would be “Sure.”
They didn’t expect cleaning up to be very much work. And yet, once they began emptying drawers and clearing shelves, an amazing amount of stuff turned up, even in that tidy house. She and Natsuki were stunned. Their mother’s possessions spoke eloquently about her old age and the sort of person she was, all the more so because parting with things generally came so easily to her.
They were moved to pity and at the same time rather amused.
What first struck them was the amount of medicine she had stockpiled. The prescription drugs included Chinese medicines, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety drugs, tranquilizers, expectorant, rash salve, medicine to control finger tremors, eyedrops, tonic, hypertension medication, and something for osteoporosis. Showing her usual organization, she had labeled each drug in her large round handwriting with its use and the date, but some were a decade old. There were also a goodly number of over-the-counter drugs. The never-ending stream of medications they uncovered revealed what poor health she had been in these past few years.
Mitsuki used to call her every night at eight, and she would complain, “I’m just so tired. I don’t want to go on living.” Mitsuki would make some perfunctory reply without even trying to sound sympathetic. Her mother’s acupuncturist said that her mother had a particularly good constitution with strong powers of recovery. Sure enough, even if she caught cold and ran a fever, she recovered faster than either of her daughters ever did; so quit
e apart from the way she’d treated their father, Mitsuki had never felt much sympathy for her—especially given her own precarious health. Now for the first time, faced with her mother’s medicine hoard, she felt a twinge of regret.
Her mother must have harbored the illusion, as so many old people do, that one day she would get well again. Besides medications, all manner of other things that had become increasingly superfluous were carefully stored away in drawers. She kept a well-stocked sewing box even after her fingers were no longer able to do her bidding and would never hold a needle again. Her collection of fine stationery, envelopes, and cards must have seemed equally indispensable, although for some time Mitsuki had been handling all her correspondence. The same went for her slips with elaborate lace trim at the neck and hemline. Over the past few years, since becoming sensitive to cold she’d taken to wearing trousers even on dressy occasions, but she must have clung to the hope of being able to wear a nice dress again someday.
And the stockings! She would have nothing to do with pantyhose and always wore the old-fashioned kind that fastened at the thigh—but when had she accumulated so many? Back when she was still able to go shopping at Isetan by herself, no doubt. With so many unopened packages of hosiery—finest quality, no less—they could have gone into business as street vendors. Trying to find anyone old-fashioned enough to wear such stockings would be a chore, so with many a sigh they ripped open one package after another, sorting the packaging and contents into burnable and unburnable trash.
The pantyhose Mitsuki bought simply didn’t come in such thin, gossamer silk.
The closet too was full of useless items their mother couldn’t part with: costly shoes the wrong size for either of them, along with several floor-length gowns custom-made for chanson recitals. The cream of the collection was a mink coat whose very existence they had forgotten, bought back when the family was relatively flush. At first she had looked stiff when she wore it—less with excitement than with lingering shock at the price tag. This was of course long before animal rights activists took to raising their voices on behalf of the poor creatures made into coats. But in no time she started slipping it on at the least opportunity and would set off as proudly as a young girl in her first high heels. Faced with the heap of dark fur that emerged from a large wrapping cloth, Mitsuki and Natsuki were at a loss. The smell of mothballs stung their nostrils.
Inheritance from Mother Page 6