After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  “D’you consider it unusual behaviour for your mom to go off like this on her own?” Davis said.

  The cuckoo clock appeared a welcome hiding spot. Family business was private business, Grandpa had always made clear.

  “Mom’s just a bit absent-minded.”

  “Absent-minded how?”

  “Forgetful.”

  “Everyone gets forgetful as they get older.” Gerald pulled at a loose thread on his trousers.

  “Let’s be clear: has Lily ever gone missing for several hours before?”

  “Never,” Gerald said.

  But the officer was looking at Rita.

  A pungent odour worked its way into her nostrils, something burnt to a crisp. One of Lily’s casseroles hadn’t turned out so well. A lot of things hadn’t turned out so well, like the state of their family. Rita’s face had become hot and prickly; the acrid smell turned her stomach.

  She used to live in fear that her friends would find out something was funny with her mom. It was bad enough being Japanese — one of only two Oriental girls at her school and the other girl wasn’t at all outgoing or pretty. The last thing she wanted was to be seen as both the Japanese girl and the girl with the crazy mother.

  “When I was growing up, Mom would get distracted and wander off for maybe half a day, tops. We always knew she was coming back.”

  “Like she needed some alone time?” Davis said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Fair enough. Every woman needs alone time. Ever find out where she went?”

  “Once, when I was a kid, we couldn’t find her.” Actually, there’d been many times. They smeared together into a dark, murky shape that had left its stain across so many of Rita’s childhood memories. “It turned out Mom had wandered past a dry cleaner that must’ve reminded her of her dad’s old shop in Little Tokyo. Guess it stirred up some stuff.”

  “Stuff? Could you be more specific?” Lee said.

  “Stuff about the past. She got confused. About where she was. She thought she was back in her father’s store and tried to take over at the cash register, from what I was told.”

  “What happened?”

  “The owner kicked her out. Later, he called our house when he found her crouched in the alley out back, crying. Grandpa was out, so I talked to the guy. I walked over to get her.”

  “And how was she?”

  “By the time I got there, she seemed back to her old self.”

  “Did she remember what she was doing there?”

  “I’m not sure. She was upset, so I didn’t push it.”

  “D’you read in the paper last year about that chick that showed up at a homeless shelter, no purse, no ID, nothing?” Davis’s cheeks had turned rosy, almost. “Not even an old lady — young, blond, decent looking. Just walked straight out of her life. Fugue amnesia, they were calling it.”

  Knife handles protruded from a wood block on the counter. Rita imagined their steel blades narrowed to perfect points. Weren’t the police supposed to be trying to reassure her that Lily was all right — everything would be all right? She’d wandered off before and had always come back, so wasn’t the same pattern bound to repeat itself? In a couple hours, Lily would be sitting at this very table, and they’d laugh about the incident and order a pizza. Yet the police weren’t acting like everything was fine; they were taking amusement in the possibility that she might be batshit crazy. Sleeping in a homeless shelter or in a ditch on the side of the road. Shame, sharpened by fear, crept around Rita’s stomach. The kitchen felt cramped as though there wasn’t enough space for them all to stand at the counter or enough air for them all to breathe. Didn’t these people have more pressing things to do than hang around yakking?

  “I hate to break this up, but maybe you guys should get out there and find my mother. I agree she has her problems. That makes it all the more important that you bring her home immediately!”

  “We appreciate what you’re going through,” Davis said. “We’ll be on our way just as soon as we’ve finished interviewing you and Mr. Anderberg.”

  Rita pinched her lips, not trusting herself to speak. She couldn’t afford to alienate the police.

  “Well, this is the first I’ve heard ’bout any of … my wife’s memory problems.” Gerald looked so blindsided that Rita couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  They’d been married for less than a year. They’d met at a dance for the Electricians Association of Canada, where Lily had been brought as someone else’s date, but had somehow managed to hook up with Gerald. Whenever she introduced him to anybody, she liked to emphasize that he was a retired electrical inspector, like that made all the difference. Rita thought he seemed like a decent enough guy, if a surprising match for her mother. Funny how after all Lily’s years spent preaching the virtues of marrying your own, she’d succumbed to a classic case of yellow fever.

  Rita had only partly taken the advice: Cal was Korean, but at least that was Asian. Not that it did jack shit to keep them together.

  Poor Gerald. He’d been so eager to get Lily to the altar. How long had they actually dated? He had no idea of the full extent of her … eccentricities.

  “Did your mom ever receive psych treatment?” Lee asked.

  It was a question Rita had tossed around with her brother from time to time. Their mother needed help — professional help. Tom never denied the point. But they both knew she’d never go for it, so what were they supposed to do? Have her committed?

  “My grandfather considered shrinks on par with witch doctors. Mom just has weak nerves.”

  “Weak nerves, huh?” Davis laughed. “Nothing that smelling salts won’t take care of?”

  They wanted to know whether Lily was on any meds. Gerald mentioned some pills she took for her thyroid. They went upstairs to the bathroom to search through the medicine cabinet and then moved on to the bedroom. The pills were nowhere to be found; it seemed she carried them in her purse. Everything of any importance was in that purse: reading glasses, makeup, facial cleanser, half-eaten sandwiches, vitamins. A survival kit, it was her life in miniature.

  “Any recent disturbances or fights that might’ve pushed her to leave?” Davis said.

  “’Course not, we’re newlyweds.”

  “Rita, what about you? Anything you can think of?”

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “Were you guys close?”

  “I don’t know. Things have been a bit bumpy since I split with my husband.”

  “She didn’t approve?”

  “My mother’s pretty old school. It’s like, if your husband’s not beating you, you should go back and give it another go. Particularly if he happens to be Dental Surgeon of the Year.”

  Rita still remembered Lily’s ecstatic smile when she and Cal had first announced their engagement. All Lily’s features had sharpened and jumped up, rosy clouds diffusing across her cheekbones. That hunger in her face. Rita could see she was surprised to discover that her dreamy, dishevelled daughter had it in her, too. That hunger to have a man sweep her off her feet, take care of her. How it had irked Rita to give in: to be brought face to face with this thing inside her. This inner weakness she’d been ignoring all her life but, it turned out, she’d inherited from her mother. The truth was that she was just so fucking exhausted. Even back then, she knew she didn’t love Cal. She’d never loved Cal. It was a terrible admission. But he’d come along at a time when she was tired of being broke and adrift and her latest show at the co-op had only sold three paintings. What he offered was a chance to sell out, to trade in her sorry existence.

  The only thing that could have pleased Lily more would have been Cal’s being a doctor.

  “My mom pushed me toward dental school, too,” Lee said. “She said no good woman would marry a cop.”

  “Any regrets you don’t spend all day in people’
s mouths?”

  “Just that I’m single.”

  With a hesitant laugh, Rita wondered if this guy might be flirting. It had been a long time since anybody had flirted with her. A sudden rush of emotion, hot moisture bursting behind her eyes — not because she was glad she hadn’t lost her groove, but because the moment made her feel strangely close to her mother. As if Lily, having vanished, were all the more present, whispering tips in her ear about how to snag a good man and avoid the deadbeats. “I guess your mom knew best then.”

  “Asian mothers.”

  Two

  As it started to rain, the windshield turned into a watercolour. Rivulets trickled down, caught flecks of coloured light, smeared into nothing. Cars honked, tires slid across the damp asphalt with a faint sizzling. Everything felt faraway and insubstantial, as if all of Rita’s senses had faded to the point they might fail altogether.

  The thought that Lily was outside in this made Rita shiver. At least Lily had her car — if that was any comfort. Had she spent the night huddled in the back seat, parked in some dark alleyway? Where was she? Why weren’t the police doing more to find her?

  Maybe she would burst through the door at any minute, lipstick smudged, hair fallen flat, confused about what had happened but unharmed and relieved to be home. Maybe she was there already.

  But as soon as Gerald opened the door, it was obvious nothing had changed.

  Their living room had aspirations culled from the pages of Good Housekeeping. A thick border of ivy and violets had been stencilled along the wall tops; needlepoint cushions adorned the floral chintz sofas. Dishes of potpourri that Gerald’s first wife had made herself had long since turned brown and brittle.

  Strewn all over the coffee table: notepads, lists, dog-eared copies of the Yellow Pages and White Pages. A pizza box full of crusts. The place was starting to look like a call centre.

  There was one trace of Lily’s presence, at least: a celadon ceramic dish full of white pebbles covered in water. Branches, leaves, and irises sprung up in an oddly intriguing, asymmetric pattern. Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. The twilight petals were already wilted; by tomorrow, it would all be dead.

  Gerald looked wilted, too, purple-grey pouches under his eyes. For the past three days, they’d been on the phone with neighbours, friends, Lily’s dentist, hospitals, homeless shelters. They’d received a good deal of sympathy, but no real information. And no one had a clue how to get in touch with the Japanese ladies she saw once a month at the Nisei Women’s Club.

  So far, the only thing the police had told them was that Lily had withdrawn six hundred dollars on the day of her disappearance.

  “It’s a joint account, could’ve told them that days ago,” Gerald said. “They should hand over their badges and lemme do their job!”

  While Rita wasn’t quite as cynical, she had to admit she had doubts about how high a priority their case was. Officer Davis had mentioned that the Canadian Criminal Code didn’t prohibit a person from walking out of her life, provided no crime had been committed.

  It was all so confusing. The officers urged them to call everyone under the sun, yet they also wanted a list, complete with addresses and phone numbers. Were they going to contact these people, too? Or would they only call if Lily turned up dead in the trunk of her car?

  A press release had been issued. That morning while Rita was on her second Coke, the CBC news announcer devoted all of ten seconds to “Lily Takemitsu Anderberg, a sixty-year-old woman of Japanese descent, five foot four, 110 pounds, last seen at her home in Willowdale on Friday night.” The kind of bland filler news that usually didn’t even register on your groggy consciousness.

  “These things take time,” Davis said. “It’s important for family not to get overwhelmed. Get rest, eat regular meals, and if you need to, don’t feel bad about going back to work.”

  Rita almost wished it weren’t summer break. Toxic armpits, challenging stares, baseball caps on backward. Forget about getting anyone to answer a question about Surrealism; getting them not to throw pencil crayons at each other was enough of a feat. But she liked chatting with the kids about their problems and views on the latest MuchMusic videos, and occasionally a surprisingly good drawing would surface from the sea of hormones. What a welcome diversion all that would be from the silence of Gerald’s living room.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched him search through the White Pages, his cheeks suffused like overripe tomatoes. You could tell he’d done some hard living in his time, a suspicion that had borne out at his wedding. His friends came in all stripes, but they had one thing in common when Rita asked, “So how do you know Gerald?”

  “We met in AA, ten years back.”

  “Oh, how nice.”

  An awkward lull. “I’m going to the bar. Can I get you a mineral water or anything?”

  So that explained why Gerald was toasting everyone with a goblet of cranberry juice.

  Maybe he’d fallen off the wagon since then. Had a reunion with his old friend Jack Daniel’s drawn to the surface a dark, violent side? It’s not a crime to walk out of your life. Maybe Lily had come to her senses and hightailed it. Rita had noticed Davis eying Gerald with suspicion at one point, questioning him about the state of his marriage. Wasn’t the husband always the prime suspect?

  But the more she thought about it, the less she could see it. The wild flush of Gerald’s cheeks was from worry, not rage. Wasn’t it? She’d seen the way he looked at Lily with little boy enchantment in his eyes.

  Still, you never could tell.

  “I’m going to search around upstairs again.”

  “Sure thing, kiddo.”

  Her roots were growing in. That was the first thing Rita had noticed. Although Lily was usually meticulous about her hair, now a thin, silvery horizon peeked out along her part.

  A hand reached out to rub a smudge off Rita’s cheek. She’d squirmed away, as though she were a little kid again. Now she thought of that simple, motherly gesture with a pang of longing. Why couldn’t she have just stood still, for God’s sake?

  That was the last time Rita saw her mother, a week ago. Moving day.

  Rita had been in a hurry, the rented U-Haul parked outside. She was swinging by to pick up her old boxes, stored in Lily and Gerald’s basement. At last, she’d be able to use all those ceramic dishes she’d made back in art school, clay oozing through her fingertips, massaging her palms. How malleable — how full of possibility — life had seemed back then. Cal had never liked the dishes, calling them part of her hippie-dippy phase, and this made unearthing the old treasures all the more fun and delightful.

  Maybe Rita had been so excited about her new place that she’d neglected to see her mother was in trouble. More likely, she’d been aware of what was going on but had looked the other way, as she always did, because she couldn’t bear to face it.

  Burnt brown sugar lingered in the air, sweet and needy. Lily had baked an apple crumble. Yet Rita was busy, her skin covered in sweat and grime, more than her mother could ever wipe away, and she just wanted to grab her boxes and immerse herself in unwrapping wine glasses and popping bubble wrap in the quiet of her new apartment. Besides, as she’d come to tell herself over the years, keeping their relationship on an even keel meant managing their time together very carefully. Too much chit-chat would only fill her with irritation or worse yet, that gnawing, empty feeling: they’d never see eye to eye on anything. She’d been cheated of that natural mother-daughter closeness.

  But Lily had insisted, and as she poured the tea, it sloshed on her hand. Rita sprang up to run the faucet until the water was ice cold. How thin and frail her mother suddenly seemed, her eyes distracted and adrift, lost in some internal landscape that hemmed her in and filled her with a nervous, fluttering energy. It was a look that Rita and Tom had learned to recognize over the years. Whenever they saw it, they both felt an impulse to run.
/>   “You okay, Mom?”

  A dip into silence. “Where’re you moving to, again?”

  “Kensington Market.”

  “Oh, we used to live not far.”

  Actually, Margueretta Street was a fair bit farther west.

  “We always owned our own house, though,” Lily added.

  Here we go again, Rita thought. Her slide down the social scale. The shame of being a single mom living in a crappy rental. Next Lily would reminisce about the beautiful Tudor that Rita and Cal had once owned on Golfdale Road, the Mercedes she used to drive, the cottage in Muskoka. The cleaning lady who’d ironed Cal’s shirts while Rita pushed her Peg Perego pram past the WASPy neighbours, who probably mistook her for the nanny.

  But Lily’s eyes remained fixed on the cream wall; it might have been a movie screen and she was waiting for the film to begin. “Before your grandfather bought that house, we moved around quite a bit.”

  “We did?”

  “Oh.” Lily had a flush of confusion. “Was that before you were born?”

  “I only remember that one house.”

  “Yeah.” Lily nodded a little frantically, like she was trying to convince another person in her head. “The house on Margueretta was the only place we lived.”

  What memory was she struggling to push from her mind? Memories of the internment? Excitement rose in Rita’s gut: she might have been teetering at the top of a roller coaster, wind tearing through her hair, before the inevitable plunge. Though it never came — of course it didn’t. Lily’s expression smoothed over, as always, everything hidden behind that placid mask.

  “Our house was the best on the block. With a bit of money, I could’ve fixed it up into something special. In that neighbourhood, though, why bother? Not after all the black folks moved in and ruined everything.”