After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  “No.” Yet his eyes appeared transfixed, staring off into the far reaches of the playground at nothing at all. Something secretive and fearful held within.

  “Are kids bullying you? I can speak to your teacher.”

  He shook his head. Snowflakes settled on his nose, melting, like teardrops.

  “Are you sure? What’s upset you then?”

  “It’s just that … there’s a man who comes here sometimes.”

  “Not the principal?”

  “No, a stranger. He stands over there.” Tom pointed to the corner of the playground. “Watches me at recess.”

  Kids were known to have vivid imaginations. “What makes you think he was watching you in particular? Maybe he’s just a nice man out for a walk.”

  “We talked. He said he knows you, Mommy, but I can’t say anything.”

  Her hands sprang to her cheeks — flushed, embarrassed, though she didn’t know why. Her fingertips grazed her scar, incapable of reading its intricate meaning. “What did this man look like, Tom?”

  “Tall. He needed a bath.”

  That didn’t say much. “Oriental?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t want you talking to him anymore. You hear me, Tom?”

  The truth was that she, too, had the unnerving sensation of being watched from time to time: a shock of jet-black hair on the periphery of her vision, a gaunt cheek that seemed all too familiar, a dim version of someone she’d once known and cared for deeply. But by the time she’d turned around, the face had always vanished.

  Although it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling to have an admirer, it was more than just admiration or desire she’d glimpsed. Something sharper — accusing — that left her weak and unmoored, as if her little life here were a conjurer’s trick. Of course, it was probably just her own mind playing tricks on her.

  When the doctor asked for Canadian food, what he really meant was that he wanted her to make something from the cookbook he’d given her for Christmas. It was a hefty, black book with a picture-perfect family on the cover; they were sitting around the dining-room table, a succulent roast in the middle. Father at the head saying grace, his little daughter smiling up at him adoringly. The book offered “recipes to delight the whole family,” everything from carrot Jello salad to Spam hash to chicken pie deluxe.

  Unloading the bags of groceries made her back ache. Poor chicken: naked flesh covered in goose pimples, loose skin flopping over the cavity where its head had once been. She wondered what had been running through its mind when the cleaver came down. Did chickens have memories? What did a chicken’s life consist of, anyway? Depositing the bird on the cutting board, she splayed open its wings and legs and began chopping, struggling with the joints that stubbornly held the creature together, the meat slippery and cold.

  At last she’d placed all the pieces in a casserole dish. She stared at the slimy, pink bundles and yellow pockets of fat. The minutes dripped by and she knew she was teetering on the edge of a black spell, so she had to pull back — she didn’t have time to go under. Not today of all days. She was in the desert, trying to run, but every step was a world of struggle. She blinked, rubbed her eyes. The recipe said to pour cream over the chicken. It fell like a shroud over the broken bones, oddly comforting to watch. And then she could feel herself slipping away on its velvety folds. The heavy layers of her kimono were dragging her down, something tight binding her knees together, an ache cutting in. The tightness jumped up to her chest, her throat. Sand surged up — spraying her eyes, filling her mouth with salty grit. A shower of bullets, a blast of fire across her cheek. Dogs barking across her brain. A puddle of blood, wilted petals congealed on the surface.

  Twenty-Three

  They slept mostly clothed on top of the crumpled duvet, their bodies full of strange electric twitches. At some point Mark spooned her in his sleep, and she surfaced to the warm, tickling mist of his breath against the nape of her neck.

  When she awoke the next morning, he was up already. The aroma of coffee — real coffee — filled the air. A belated flush of embarrassment about being such a mess last night. She worried he’d want to keep talking about it all. But when she ventured into the sunny kitchen, he had other things on his mind. He was up on a stepstool organizing her rows and rows of wine glasses, a throwback to the days when she and Cal had big, boozy dinner parties.

  “First deal with the things that are easy to fix, right?” he said.

  It was weird to see him touching all her things, relics from her life with another man.

  Perhaps he realized he was being a tad presumptuous. “Don’t worry, I’m not moving in or anything.”

  “I didn’t say that you were.”

  He was wearing plaid boxers and a T-shirt, one foot perched on the counter, an arm extended overhead in an almost balletic motion, tufts of middle-aged body hair and the beginnings of love handles exposed in the morning light. A Rodin sculpture he was not. The awkwardness softened into a rush of sudden, ridiculous joy. Was he always this fucking energetic in the mornings?

  “Mind passing them up?”

  “Mark, you really don’t have to —”

  “The glasses?”

  By the time he left in the early afternoon, the place looked a lot more livable. They’d managed to unpack most of her boxes. The coffee table was crammed with scented candles and a mermaid-shaped ashtray she couldn’t bear to part with. Towers of books teetered on the floor. Tackling the bookshelves would be her next task, but just now she wasn’t up to it.

  With Mark gone, the silence thickened. She surveyed all her junk. What a pack rat she was, no different than her mother. As she fanned herself with a magazine, her thoughts drifted, ruminations creeping in.

  What had become of Kaz at the end of the war?

  What happened when he arrived in Toronto?

  Who was he?

  She called Tom’s office. She still wasn’t quite sure what her brother did for a living, something complicated and obscenely lucrative in the finance industry. His secretary had been given her message to deliver: Tom was in back-to-back meetings all day. It was a family emergency, Rita said. But no one, not even family — especially family, maybe — was to get through.

  The afternoon passed in a blur of chores and explosive emotions. The cheap-ass washing machine at the laundromat mangled her favourite pair of jeans.

  The streetcar was packed with sweaty bodies. As a kid, Rita had developed a habit of searching the faces of strangers. Maybe Kaz was out there somewhere, riding streetcars, strolling down the sidewalk, and maybe one of these days he was going to walk back into their lives. “I don’t know — he was a bum.” Was that all Tom was ever going to tell her? Was that why she couldn’t bear to make eye contact with the greasy old men who seemed to follow her everywhere, lugging their trundle buggies? That gnomish guy with a matted beard, hunched down across the aisle right now. Layers of dirt gave his skin a silvery patina, as though he’d just climbed out of a chimney, the surliest of Santas.

  They pulled into Spadina station. She got on the eastbound line to Bay.

  In the sunset, the cement overhang of the Manulife Centre looked like a cliff, bleak and desolate. Aside from a few pinstriped men running to catch their trains back to the suburbs, there weren’t many people around. The sleek bank towers that dominated these blocks filled her with awareness of her own smallness, aloneness. At least Round Records was still here to liven things up. A punk from the old days hung around outside panhandling, yet he was likely to get spit on now. Rumour had it the shop was about to be closed, thanks to some luxury department store that had bought up the entire block.

  Speed-walking across the street, she headed into a building that looked no different than an office tower. Who in their right mind would want to live in the heart of this cement jungle? She called up on the intercom.

  The beeping went on forever. S
he hung up and tried again. Stared at the broken veins in the marble tiles.

  Just as she was about to leave, in he strolled — looking all too relaxed, a bag of takeout in hand.

  Then Tom saw her. “Uh, Rita, what’re you doing here?”

  “Did they cut off your phone line at work?”

  “Oh, sorry I couldn’t get back to you. You have no idea the shitstorm I’ve had to deal with today.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  A look of mild amusement faded to irritation. Tom was assessing the best way to get rid of her. But then, in his usual Jekyll-and-Hyde fashion, his face broke into a casual smile and he hugged her. One of those weird, businesslike hugs that never felt like a real hug, more like a clap on the back.

  “Any news about Mom? Want to come up for a drink?”

  His detached, moderately concerned tone turned her stomach. Tom had shoved the whole matter of Lily’s disappearance right to the back of his mind so he could get on with his life. Well, Rita wasn’t going to let him. Like it or not, he was a part of this family, too.

  His unit was up on the twenty-third floor. She wasn’t so good with heights, and a vertiginous sensation grabbed at her stomach. So many grey, tumescent forms shot up out of nowhere, and the farther off you looked, the more ominous things appeared, the CN Tower like a sword in the distance. Beyond that there was only water: a dull, blue-grey smear stretched out into eternity. That was where even homeless people didn’t want to live, where dead bodies got dumped.

  Tom handed her a beer. “So what’s up, kiddo?”

  Fizz burned the back of her nostrils. She didn’t know where to start. Mr. Fujita’s photo project? Gerald’s bender? The Newsweek article? Like he’d care about any of that. Oh and by the way, Tom, did you know our father led a riot that landed him in prison?

  His apartment was virtually empty even though he’d been here five years. There wasn’t a single painting or even a poster on the gleaming white walls. No framed photo of a girlfriend smiling at him teasingly. She couldn’t remember the last time Tom had introduced her to anyone.

  A guilt-ridden feeling wrapped around her: she was complicit in condemning him to this strange, solitary existence, simply by being part of the family that had made him this way. While he’d borne the brunt of Grandpa’s coldness, she’d gotten off easy, perhaps.

  “So some stuff about our father’s come to my attention.”

  “Oh?”

  She explained about the article, the riot. This was the first time they’d really talked about the internment, let alone their father’s fate. Pumped up on nervous adrenalin, her heart began galloping. Her hands chopped through the air, as though she were refuting his constant objections. But Tom was silent — nodding even, after a while. A small, tight expression, a sheen of fragility. He appeared shaken, but not altogether surprised. Not surprised enough.

  “Did you know about this already?” It would be just like him to hoard the information.

  He moved over to the window. At last, he said, “Not exactly, but I always thought Kaz had been incarcerated for something. Where else could he have been all that time?”

  “All what time?”

  “Kaz didn’t live with us.”

  “What? Sure he did. He must’ve lived with you guys before I was born.”

  “No, Rita. You always asked me why there were no pictures of him around the house. He was never there.”

  “What? Where was he then?”

  “Maybe he had to stay at the prison camp longer than the rest of them. Or maybe he chose to remain out west after the war and keep his distance. Wouldn’t surprise me, considering Grandpa would’ve disowned him after that riot.”

  Things in her head were shifting, like layers of sediment about to cleave and crack.

  “Kaz must’ve knocked her up when they were at camp, I guess?” he continued. “Who knows whether he even knew I was on the way when he got hauled off to prison.” Tom spoke so calmly, matter-of-factly, as his brain drew a Gantt chart around the new data.

  “Kaz — never — came to Toronto …?”

  “Of course he did. You think you were born by immaculate conception? Yeah, Kaz came to find us when I was five. Stayed for a bit. Knocked her up again. Then took off. And that was it. That’s the only time I ever met him.”

  It was as though someone had slapped her so unexpectedly the pain wouldn’t register. “How … long did he stay?”

  “I don’t know. Two weeks, two months? I was just a little kid.”

  It didn’t make any sense. “Why would Kaz track the family down, only to up and leave?”

  “Search me. All I can say is the guy looked like a bum. He probably needed money and thought Grandpa would take pity on him. Maybe things had gone south out in California. Take your pick. But in the end, whatever hell his life had become, he found that preferable to living under Grandpa’s thumb on Margueretta Street.”

  Grandpa and Kaz at each other’s throats all the time. Lily caught in the middle, unsure which man had a greater claim on her affection. She would have waffled, wanting to have it both ways. And in her own little demented world, maybe she could.

  “Hey.” Tom placed a hand on Rita’s shoulder. “What’s the big deal? I wouldn’t have wanted to have that loser in my life anyway.”

  “Well, that’s you. What about me?”

  She was determined not to cry, yet her throat seized up. Kaz had never been here at all. They’d never been a family — there hadn’t been anything for him to wreck in the first place. He’d breezed into Lily’s life when it suited him and then left her high and dry, not once, but twice. The whole thing was just too humiliating.

  “What was Kaz like when he came to Toronto?”

  “God, Rita. I can’t do this anymore!” Tom’s eyes bored into her, drifted toward the window and ricocheted back. “What do you want me to say? That he was some kind of TV dad? Just tell me what you want me to say and I’ll fucking say it.”

  She tried to respond and failed, her chest heaving.

  “I know nothing about the man,” she said at last. “I … I don’t even know how he died. What kind of daughter doesn’t even know how her own father died?”

  For a second, Tom’s eyes softened, as though he wanted to tell her something, something that might be balm to her nerves. Or make the situation that much worse. Whatever it was, he brushed it aside and turned away. “Look, Rita, I have a lot of work to get through tonight.”

  Twenty-Four

  The man on the porch was smiling at Lil knowingly, like she ought to recognize him. The street lights cast a wan halo about his head. He’d combed his hair, slicked it back with too much oil that was probably just the natural secretion of his unbathed body. The smell of something faintly rusty, like dried rain on an old car, stirred an impulse that made her feel she might start crying at any second.

  “Lily.” He leaned in to embrace her. The collar of his shirt oily against her cheek.

  She didn’t back away — didn’t do anything. Just stood there. Paralyzed. Rustlings in her head.

  “Kaz.”

  He smiled at the sound of his name on her lips.

  Things were getting a bit easier for the Japanese. Employers were more open to giving them a chance since they were, after all, willing to work for lower wages. So Mother Saint John had fewer people to send them. After wishing to have the house empty for so long, Lil found its quietness now haunted her.

  One day after breakfast, as she flipped through the newspaper, her eyes fell upon an ad in the classifieds: Clean, furnished rooms for rent in respectable boarding house. The price per room wasn’t very much, but multiplied several times would make a nice bundle. She thought of the boarding houses farther east, full of greasy, leering men. Surely, not all houses were like that. The keyword was respectable.

  She called over to Aunt Haruko, who was dust
ing a potted plant, and showed her the ad.

  “Oh, no.” A grey tendril slipped out from under her handkerchief. “Strange men under our roof?”

  “We’ve already had strange men living here.”

  “That’s different. They’re Nihonjin, ne?” She dragged her rag along the mantle. “Why should we take in boarders?”

  “We need the money.” Sometimes Lil felt like she was having a conversation with a two-year-old.

  “God will take care of us.”

  “God’ll pay our bills?”

  After he’d put the down payment on this house, the doctor hardly had any savings left. Although he’d started helping out at Dr. Chong’s office, he still wasn’t a licensed doctor; the pay was a fraction of what they needed. And the pittance Mother Saint John gave them was barely enough to cover the utilities and groceries, let alone the mortgage. Now that she hardly sent anyone to stay, would that money dry up, too? Clearly, they needed another source of income and if Aunt Haruko couldn’t see that, she was as dumb as a doorknob.

  I did know him once, from somewhere … before … before what? Before everything. Just before. What a beautiful word, before. Turning back, always turning back to a state of bright white blankness. Like the flash of a camera — that yellow-white chrysanthemum of light hovering in the mind’s eye, blinding, promising everything. To the Cherry Blossom Queen. That was who she was destined to become. The girl she was in the beginning.

  The ad Lil posted on the message board at the Buddhist church only received one response. Daniel Sugimori was a stout, shiny-faced man in his fifties; an easy, dreamy smile framed his chipped front tooth. He was a shoe salesman who specialized in women’s shoes — or perhaps, more accurately, in charming women.

  The day after he moved in, he came home from work, carrying a shoebox. Gesturing at Lil to sit down, he kneeled in front of her and his callused hand cradled the arch of her foot.