Tutti’s voice turns strangely quiet.
“So you really like Ms Ice Sandwich, then?”
I play her words over in my head, in the same strange, quiet little voice. And I nod.
“Oh.”
I can’t think of any way to respond to her oh, and Tutti doesn’t say anything more either. We stand there in silence until we see someone walking towards us from the direction of Tutti’s house, and it’s Tutti’s dad. My dad’s coming to get me, Tutti says, I’d better go, and she smiles and waves goodbye. She starts to walk towards her father and then suddenly turns back as if she’s remembered something. Al Pacino! she calls out and waves again.
When I get home my mum comes out of the salon saying, It’s late, you had me worried. I thought she might be angry with me because of the time, but she doesn’t seem to be bothered at all and instead just says, Are you going to take a bath? I tell her not tonight and I go to Grandma’s room. I hear the salon door shut. Grandma’s asleep. I look at the time and I see it’s almost eleven o’clock, but I’m not even a little bit tired yet. I stand by Grandma’s bed and look at her face as she’s sleeping, then I pull up a zabuton cushion and sit on the floor, scratching the skin around the scabs on my knees until it turns red, then I stand up again and look at Grandma’s sleeping face. I check the clock again, but barely any time has passed at all.
In Grandma’s room, which seems to be floating somewhere in the noiseless night, in this room with just Grandma and me in it, I get out my sketchbook and open it up on the kotatsu table, and I pick up my pencil and start moving it across the blank paper. I draw a bunch of faint pencil lines round and round in a circle, and the lines become stronger and stronger until they finally become Ms Ice Sandwich’s face. Her big eyes. Her tight-fitting hair. The place where the front fringe bit and the side bits meet. But I notice that up until now I’ve had no trouble seeing her face in my mind, I’ve always been able to remember all the important parts, but now there are bits and pieces of her face that I’ve forgotten. I draw a little more, then a little bit more, but when I look at the whole thing, there’s something wrong with it—it doesn’t look like Ms Ice Sandwich. In other words, the Ms Ice Sandwich I’m drawing doesn’t look like the real Ms Ice Sandwich, but I can’t tell why that is.
I stare at the white part of the sliding-screen doors, and try to make the face of Ms Ice Sandwich, who I haven’t seen in a long time, come back to me. And I realize that I really have to concentrate now to make it come back. I flip over the page of my sketchbook, turn to a new page, and start drawing Ms Ice Sandwich’s face again from the beginning. This time I start with her head. Then I add the outline of her face, then… As I move my pencil, I remember the way she grabs the sandwiches with her silver pincers and slips them into the plastic bags. How cool she is. How skilful and strong she is. How she stood there and glared at that man who was yelling at her. Her long arms. Her sharp expression. And her big eyes. The dogs. The dogs who run along the road made of bricks. The dogs with the giant eyes who run around a castle somewhere. The princess—that’s right! Those dogs with the great big eyes like Ms Ice Sandwich are running with a princess on their back. They are running off to some place, carrying a beautiful princess with a long dress, the skirt flying in the wind. Ms Ice Sandwich is running off to some place. Her big eyes wider than ever, on her back the princess in the long dress, it’s Ms Ice Sandwich who’s running.
I keep drawing Ms Ice Sandwich deep into the night. This is the most time I’ve ever spent, and it’s the most complicated, but of all the pictures I’ve ever drawn of her, this is the one that looks the most like the Ms Ice Sandwich that I know, or anyway that’s how it feels. After I’m done drawing, I take a blue crayon and carefully colour in her eyelids. I take the drawing, which isn’t finished yet, and slide it gently between two pages of my sketchbook, then I look down at my hands and see that they’re smudged with pencil and crayon. I try to rub them off, and start thinking about what happened today. It feels like a lot happened, but also that a lot didn’t happen. Tutti’s gunfight. Her being totally cool. The Christmas tree with the tilted star. The smell of curry. The piles of magazines. And then Tutti asking me if I liked Ms Ice Sandwich. The noise of the car driving past. Tutti’s dad coming out of the shadows to get her. And now I’m beginning to feel so drained and tired that I don’t think I can move. I don’t even wash my hands and face, I just curl up on the floor and close my eyes, and my eyelids start to get heavy and I can’t open my eyes any more. I wonder if when I wake up will I be on my futon, and how nice it will be if I am. I remember a long time ago, maybe before I could have any memories, so it could be a memory that I made up, someone like my dad, when I was half-asleep, picking me up and rocking me and laying me down on my soft futon, and it feels like a real memory that comes back to me at times like this, and maybe tomorrow morning I will find myself tucked up in my futon. I know it’s not going to happen, still I think about it because it feels like I am remembering my dad. I hear myself mumbling, Did you bring me here when I was sleepy? I realize that I am speaking to my dad who isn’t here, but he must be here somewhere. And I remember the sensation of being in his arms as I fall asleep with my head on the zabuton.
AT SCHOOL, whether our eyes meet or not, Tutti acts kind of cold and doesn’t seem to want to talk to me. It’s not that she’s being mean or anything, just cold, or like she’s avoiding me, not enough for me to ask her what’s up or anything, but there’s a new feeling of distance between us. But when I think about it, it’s not like up till now at school Tutti and I have always been pals, or chatted to each other, so maybe I’m misinterpreting her behaviour and I’m just overreacting. But even if this is the right explanation, I have no idea what to do about it, and every day ends up being one awkward day after the one before.
I don’t go to see Ms Ice Sandwich either. Even when I pass close by the supermarket on my way home from school, I never get the urge to go inside. Instead, I work a little every day on my Ms Ice Sandwich portrait. I experiment with coloured pencils and crayons and felt-tip pens to get the colour right, starting over many times, and gradually day by day, I remember her face and transfer the image I see inside my head onto paper. Mum’s the same as ever, in the salon with her ladies, talking and crying, and she’s always playing with her mobile phone or her computer. I keep on spending time sitting in Grandma’s room drawing my picture.
Things go on like this for about a month. One day I’m on my way home from school with Doo-Wop, and I’ve just said, See you tomorrow, and we’re going our separate ways when Tutti suddenly steps out from behind a telegraph pole, surprising me.
“Long time no see!” says Tutti.
“Yeah,” I say, “long time.”
The truth is it hasn’t been long at all, since we see each other every day at school, so it’s a sort of weird greeting that we say anyway.
“It really feels like it,” she says.
“Yeah, it really feels like it,” I say.
We start strolling in the direction of our houses, chatting about tests, and our teacher’s strange habits, and the fable that we studied in Japanese class. We get to the bench and for once nobody’s sitting there, and without saying anything we both sit down. Tutti hangs her backpack over one end of the bench, takes off her shoes and holds them upside down and shakes the grit out of them. A whole load of grit, way more than I expected, comes pouring out, and it makes me laugh. She tells me about her visit to the planetarium on Sunday, and I tell her about the video game that Doo-Wop is still obsessed with, and we talk about how boring morning assembly is. Then, after we’ve talked about all these different things, Tutti makes a sighing sound, and gets a determined expression on her face.
“Ms Ice Sandwich,” she says.
I’m startled by these words out of Tutti’s mouth. I turn to look at her.
She looks me straight in the eyes and says it again: “Ms Ice Sandwich.”
“Ms Ice Sandwich,” I repeat, exactly the way she’s just said
it.
“Ms Ice Sandwich, what’s happened about her?” she asks, very serious.
“What’s happened…? Nothing’s happened. Nothing at all’s happened.”
“So you haven’t gone to see her?”
“No, not once.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, I just haven’t.”
“The other day you asked me about the rumours and stuff about her face.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where the conversation ended, but you gave me the feeling you wanted to say something else,” says Tutti, looking right at me.
“That was…” I start to say, but I get stuck.
Tutti patiently doesn’t say anything.
“That was… well… about her face, I mean, those girls in the class were saying if they had a face like that they wanted to die, or they couldn’t live any more, you know, that sort of thing, and I was shocked, and I was thinking what did they mean by that, you know, I was thinking about that…”
“And it made you angry?”
“No, I don’t think that was it,” I say. “I think that when I heard them saying things like that about her face that I’d been looking at for a long time, I was surprised.”
“Just surprised?”
I sit and think some more about this. Yeah, I was surprised but I also felt sad and maybe frightened, and on top of that, I was… I was worried about Ms Ice Sandwich, like was she all right, and I start to say to Tutti, “When I thought about them talking about Ms Ice Sandwich that way…” and I still can’t finish the sentence.
“OK then,” says Tutti, who unexpectedly slaps me on the shoulder. “Do you never want to see Ms Ice Sandwich again? Is that what you want?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, stunned.
“What I said.”
“You mean, never see her again forever?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Tutti looks amazed that I don’t know why.
“You haven’t gone to see her, not for ages. And if it goes on like that forever, then you’ll never see her again.”
I’m speechless.
“I’m right, right?” Tutti stares at me like she thinks I’m dumb. “Because that’s what’s going to happen. When you say see you tomorrow to someone, it’s because you’re going to keep seeing them. It’s like at school you see everybody because they go to school every day. But when you graduate and you don’t go to school any more, it stops and you don’t see everybody any more. If you want to see somebody, you have to make plans to meet, or even make plans to make plans, and next thing you end up not seeing them any more. That’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t see somebody, you end up never seeing them. And then there’s going to be nothing left of them at all.”
I’m listening, still not saying a word.
“The worst thing is, you never know when somebody’s going to just disappear.”
“Huh?”
“Yes, disappear, like go away and never come back. You never see them again. You want to see them but it’s too late, they’re gone.”
Tutti pauses, kind of smiles.
“And the ones who disappear, they don’t know that they’re going to. They disappear without knowing. Just like that. They go away and then nobody sees them any more.”
I sit there, maybe nodding.
“I stopped doing that kind of thing a long time ago,” Tutti says. “You know—putting off stuff and not doing anything, and not going and seeing somebody when I really wanted to. I stopped that. It’s too risky… You should just go and see someone when you can, right?”
“When did you figure that out?”
“When I was in first grade. And I wrote it down.”
“Really? You’re smart.”
“Nah, not that smart. But there’s loads of hard stuff in life, and maybe when we’re grown-ups, there’s going to be tons more hard stuff to deal with. And when that happens, I’m going to tell myself I can’t give in or freeze up and get discouraged and do nothing. I have to believe that. Because I’ve already had to deal with the hardest thing in the world. You know what that was?”
“What?”
“It was to try to meet someone who’s already disappeared.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”
“Right?”
Tutti looks at me and forces a kind of laugh. We sit for a while without speaking. A woman I’ve seen around comes by, walking her Yorkshire terrier, pausing to say hello as the dog sniffs around Tutti’s feet and Tutti pets its small brown head. The woman tugs on the dog’s leash, and Tutti says, See you later.
“So,” Tutti says, turning back to me, “you really have to go and see Ms Ice Sandwich.”
I don’t say anything.
“You have to.”
I still don’t say anything.
“You understand why, don’t you?”
“I do. I do, but…”
“But what?”
“No, it’s nothing,” I say, inhaling through my nose and staring down at the toes of my trainers.
“And you have to go and not just look at her, you have to see her, and that means you have to meet her.”
“I’m not just going to buy a sandwich from her?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You have to meet her,” Tutti says firmly.
“How am I going to meet her?” I ask, already feeling butterflies in my stomach.
“You can start with nice to meet you.”
Then Tutti and I discussed how to do this (to be honest, it was mostly me listening to her) and the plan was to go to the supermarket the next day. I said that it was too soon but she ignored me, and before I knew it we had a time set up.
The next day I walk into the supermarket just behind Tutti, feeling really nervous. I haven’t been here in over a month, but it feels as if I’ve entered a time warp, and it’s just like the summer holidays again when I used to come here every day.
I peek at the sandwich counter from the eggs, but I can’t see Ms Ice Sandwich. She’s not here, I whisper to Tutti, and she whispers back, Has this ever happened before? Me: No, never. Tutti: Maybe she took the day off. And so that day we give up and go home. The following day is exactly the same—we go to the supermarket and watch from behind the eggs, but there’s no sign of Ms Ice Sandwich.
We go across the road to the chemist’s and I sit down on the steps by the entrance.
“You were right—she disappeared,” I tell Tutti, feeling very let down.
Tutti stands there, like she’s thinking. I don’t have any strength left in my body, my head feels all fuzzy like when I catch a cold, and my feet feel weird, kind of wobbly on the ground. Then, without saying a single word, Tutti turns and walks back towards the supermarket. I think she must be going to get pop from the vending machine, but she doesn’t stop there and goes right through the front door. I sit and watch the door and see mostly people I don’t know go in and come out, and then every so often a face I recognize. But none of them notices me, and for some reason I feel a little bit relieved.
Tutti’s been gone a while, and I’m staring at the ground when a pair of trainers come into view. I look up to see Tutti.
“I did it,” she says.
“Did what?”
“I went in and asked. About Ms Ice Sandwich. Why she wasn’t there.”
I jump up from the step. “Wh—who did you ask?”
“One of the people who works there,” she replies. Then after a pause, she says, “Ms Ice Sandwich doesn’t work there any more.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and I stare at Tutti.
“But they told me she’s coming back to pick up her stuff,” she explains.
“Did they tell you when?”
“Monday, they said. Next Monday.”
“Next Monday,” I say, as if it’s a new word.
“Right. Next Monday,” she repeats after me. “I told them I had something for her, and they t
old me she was going to be here next Monday evening.”
“Next Monday.”
“Next Monday evening.”
Tutti and I start walking back under a heavy cloud of feeling, silently. At the point where we have to go separate ways, Tutti suddenly says, It’s good you found out today. Then in a much quieter voice, You’re going on Monday, right? I don’t have an answer so I say nothing. Tutti looks at me, waiting, then she gives up. She sighs, presses one hand to her forehead, then raises her other hand in goodbye, and without a word turns towards her house. She walks so her backpack bounces, and her heels scrape the ground as she gets farther along her way. I call out, Tutti! She slowly turns around, and I wave and shout, Al Pacino! Tutti is gripping the waist belt of her backpack, and she doesn’t respond or do anything, then she turns and starts walking again. I shout, Al Pacino! once more. She turns around again, starts walking backwards, very slowly, her eyes on me. After a few moments, in a kind of small voice, she calls out Al Pacino, and disappears around the corner.
I’LL SEE MS ICE SANDWICH on the day after the day after tomorrow, and that’ll probably be the last time I ever see her. I think about this as I do my homework, watch some kind of boring TV, eat dinner, talk to Mum a bit, and then go into Grandma’s room to work some more on my picture. I keep thinking, Monday will be the last time I ever see her, but I can’t come to grips with what Monday will be the last time I ever see her means.
I stop thinking about it and concentrate on drawing Ms Ice Sandwich’s picture. At one point, I thought I was finished with it, but I see now there are still lots of things left to do. I take my pencil and draw in every hair on her head, and with a fine-point pen I draw her eyelashes in one by one, rub them out with my fingers, then draw them again, then I take bright electric-blue watercolour and paint over the blue crayon on her eyelids, kind of filling in the gaps. The blue crayon repels the paint, but I keep on patiently painting.
Ms Ice Sandwich Page 5