The Crane Wife

by Patrick Ness

  But where to even begin with Kumiko? Had she really moved in, for example? And who the hell were all those people downstairs and were they going to be a permanent part of everyone’s life? And where did the images in the tile Kumiko gave her come from and why did they make her feel so helplessly, painfully, agonisingly hopeful? Why did she cry when she thought about it? Why had she stopped crying about everything else?

  And where had Kumiko been? Where had she been? Where had she been? Where had she been? And how could Amanda miss someone this much who she’d only seen once before?

  When she opened her mouth, though, all that came out, even before a simple thank-you for the tile, was ‘What’s that you’re eating?’

  ‘A kind of sweet rice pudding,’ Kumiko said, but held up a finger to check the knowing nod Amanda was giving her. ‘Not the kind you think. This is something from my childhood.’

  ‘A recipe from your mother?’

  She shook her head. ‘My mother. Not much of a cook. Would you like some?’

  ‘Oh, no, thank you,’ Amanda said, though she couldn’t quite take her eyes off the bowl. ‘Have you moved in with my father?’

  There was a pause in the rice-pudding eating. ‘Only a little. Is that all right?’

  ‘Of course it’s all right,’ Amanda said. ‘I mean, it’s quite quick, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But nothing. Just, you’ve really bowled him over. Our George.’

  ‘I hope that is exactly what I have not done,’ Kumiko said, taking another stab of rice. ‘George is like a rock in the ocean to me.’

  ‘And you’re the waves?’

  In answer, Kumiko merely smiled again. Then she frowned. ‘Your friend.’

  ‘My friend.’

  ‘The one you brought this evening.’

  Amanda made a worried face. ‘Well, she’s not exactly my friend–’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I know her from work. She seems to be having some sort of breakdown, so I felt sorry for her and invited her. I hope that’s okay.’

  ‘A breakdown.’

  ‘Yes. Like she’s been wound so tight the coils are starting to snap. It’s weird. I’m sorry, I should have asked.’

  ‘Do not be sorry, if it was a kindness. Are you sure you do not wish to have some? You keep looking at the bowl.’

  ‘It’s what fat women do. Stare at food.’

  Kumiko looked surprised and, oddly, angry. ‘You are not fat,’ she said. ‘You, who speaks the truth even when it harms you, how can you not see this?’

  ‘I was making a joke,’ Amanda said quickly. ‘I really don’t think I’m–’

  ‘This, I will never understand,’ Kumiko carried on over her. ‘The inability of people to see themselves clearly. To see what they are actually like, not what they fear they are like or what they wish to be like, but what they actually are. Why is what you are never enough for you?’

  ‘For who? Me? Or everyone?’

  ‘If you could only see the truth of yourself–’

  ‘Then we wouldn’t be human.’

  Kumiko stopped, as if slapped, and then looked strangely delighted. ‘Is that it? Is that what it is?’

  ‘To be human is to yearn, I think,’ Amanda said. ‘To want. To need. What you already have, most of the time. It kind of poisons everything.’

  ‘But it is a sweet-tasting poison?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘There, you see?’ Kumiko said. ‘Your frankness. It is what I like about you the best.’

  ‘Well, you’re pretty much the only one.’

  Kumiko held out the bowl again. ‘Please. I know you wish to. It is a sweeter-tasting poison than most.’

  Amanda waited for a moment, then stepped around the end of the bed and hesitantly peered into the bowl. ‘And I just eat it with my fingers?’

  ‘Like this.’ Kumiko took a little snitch of it and held it up to Amanda’s mouth. ‘Eat.’

  Amanda stared at it for a moment, felt the weirdness of eating out of Kumiko’s hand, but maybe it didn’t feel so weird after all, not any weirder than everything else about Kumiko, if she was honest. Besides, she found herself really, really wanting to. She enveloped Kumiko’s fingertips in the lightest of kisses and ate the bite of pudding . . .

  . . . and felt suddenly swept away, suddenly on air, of air, the wind rushing past her, the earth far below, ancient yet young, covered in bursts of cold steam, the sweetness on her tongue light as a wish, as an eyelash, as the wash of spray from a nearby wave . . .

  . . . and Kumiko was flying by her side, was offering something . . .

  (Or wanting to be offered . . .)

  ‘Amanda?’ Clare’s voice cut through the bedroom and Kumiko’s fingers were leaving Amanda’s mouth (as was the longing, the strange, milky longing, not of lust, not for the flesh, not even for love, but for what? For what?) and Kumiko was asking, ‘Do you like it?’

  Amanda, in a daze, swallowed. ‘It’s not what I expected.’

  ‘It never is.’

  ‘Everything all right here?’ Clare said, eyes bright, questioning.

  ‘Perfectly,’ Kumiko said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I–’

  ‘I must get back to the party,’ Kumiko said. ‘Even if most of them are strangers to me.’

  She nodded farewell to them both, set down the bowl, and then moved past Clare and down the stairs to the noise of the gathering. Amanda felt cool but also flushed, as if after a brisk hike up a mountaintop. She breathed through her mouth, the lingering taste on her tongue confusing, drawing her thoughts away.

  ‘So that was her?’ Clare said. ‘What on earth was all that about?’

  But Amanda could only pretend to check on JP again as an unfathomable blush started rising from her neckline.

  ‘You’re avoiding me,’ Rachel said, cornering him outside as he carried a tray of dirty glasses.

  ‘Of course I’m avoiding you,’ George said. ‘What else would I be doing?’

  They were slightly away from the rest of the party-goers, some of whom had started, thankfully, to leave, now that a couple of hours had passed and no new artwork had been displayed or auctioned or whatever it was these mysterious people thought was going to happen. The announcement was still coming, but no one leaving would be interested in it or even know it was on its way. Though right now he’d have traded a dozen of them in exchange for not having to talk to Rachel.

  ‘I’m not going to cause trouble, George? If that’s what you think?’

  ‘That actually is what I think,’ George said, trying to sound calm. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

  ‘Well, I’m not?’

  He regarded her again for a moment, trying to really see her there. That freakish trick of the light from the kitchen window was making her eyes glow green again. ‘Rachel–’

  ‘Look, I know,’ she said. ‘I know you’re with Kumiko and Amanda says you’ve moved her in and there’s this really camp Turkish guy who keeps going on about some big announcement on the way–’

  ‘Rachel–’

  ‘I’m just saying I know, okay? I’m not trying anything? I can see how close you are to her? How she must give you everything I couldn’t? Everything I can’t seem to give to anyone?’ She made a face, looking above George’s head at the cold moonlight, and he could see, with a shock, that she was trying not to cry. ‘I’m just so confused lately, George? I couldn’t give myself to you when we were together, like you gave yourself to me. I can’t do that with anyone? And that’s why you left me, I’m sure–’

  ‘You left me–’

  ‘And now here’s this exotic new woman and she’s just everything I’m not. Everything I want to be, obviously? Beautiful–’

  ‘You are beautiful, Rachel, don’t pretend–’

  ‘And smart and talented–’

  ‘You’re those things, too–’

  ‘And nice.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘And clearly she can just open
herself up to you.’ Rachel was looking at him hard now, unblinking. ‘Clearly can give back to you all the things you give her.’

  George found that his mouth had gone dry. He mumbled something.

  ‘What’s that?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I said, she doesn’t give me everything of herself.’

  ‘She doesn’t? But I thought you two looked so happy?’

  ‘We are happy–’

  ‘I thought you’d finally found someone to match all that was wonderful about you, George.’

  ‘I have–’

  ‘But she holds something back?’

  ‘Rachel, I am not having this conversation with you– ’

  She stepped closer to him. He remembered too late that he should step back.

  ‘But how is that better than me?’ she asked.

  She stepped closer again, close enough now for him to smell her, her perfume triggering all kinds of memories of kissing that neck, that too-young neck that made no sense at all for a man like him to be kissing. He could also smell the wine on her breath. That weird green glint in her eye hadn’t faded, but she was still Rachel, beautiful and brutal.

  ‘I’m trying to change,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I want to give. I’ve never given, George? I’ve only taken? But now that I want to give, there’s no one I can–’

  She lunged forward to kiss him.

  He leaned back, though perhaps not as far or as quickly as he could have (he instantly, guiltily thought), and it became less a kiss than a glancing blow. There was only the one attempt, but when Rachel stepped away, he could see Kumiko over her shoulder, leaning out the back door, looking for him in the dim back garden.

  ‘George?’ she called.

  But in the low light, he couldn’t tell whether she’d seen anything at all.

  ‘I wonder if we could have everyone’s attention?’ George said, standing near the doorway of the kitchen so that everyone could hear him, Kumiko by his side.

  ‘About time,’ Amanda heard from a man who introduced himself only as Iv. (‘As in short for Ivan?’ she’d asked, to which he’d answered ‘No.’) He’d spent his entire conversation with her talking about ‘interplays of medial and indeed medium dynamics’ in George and Kumiko’s art while ignoring every bit of Amanda’s scoffing incomprehension.

  ‘Kumiko and I just want to thank everyone for coming,’ George said, putting his arm around Kumiko’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s Kumiko?’ a woman in a suit whispered nearby. ‘I thought she was a maid.’

  ‘We welcome our friends and family,’ George said, raising his glass towards where Amanda was standing with Clare and Hank, Mehmet a foot or two behind. ‘And all our new friends, too.’ He paused, coughed. ‘We have a little announcement to make.’

  There was an almost audible creak of tension in the room, Amanda thought, as all the well-dressed strangers simultaneously straightened their postures a quarter of an inch.

  ‘It’ll be the tile series,’ Amanda heard, in another whisper.

  ‘It won’t be,’ someone immediately contradicted. ‘That’s only a rumour.’

  ‘What series?’ a third person whispered.

  The first two tutted at the third’s display of ignorance.

  ‘I know this will come as a shock to some of you,’ George said, specifically looking at Amanda.

  ‘He’s not,’ Clare said, behind her.

  ‘Not what?’ Hank asked.

  And just as Amanda realised what her mother meant, George said the actual words.

  ‘Kumiko has graciously agreed to be my wife.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Amanda said, standing almost aggressively close to him.

  ‘Good night,’ George said to the slightly disgruntled faces filing out. He could hear some muttering, particularly among all those who had approached him after the announcement, asking with stricken faces when the sale would start. They’d been almost universally disbelieving when he’d said he had no intention of selling anything tonight.

  Though, in hindsight, he could probably have made a mint.

  ‘George,’ Amanda insisted. ‘You nearly gave Mum a heart attack.’

  He looked at her, and had to blink several times before he could properly see her. Which was strange, as he didn’t think he’d drunk that much.

  ‘Why would she be upset?’ he asked. ‘We’ve been divorced for–’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Amanda again, and the angry hurt on her face was almost too much for him to bear. She looked exactly as she did as a twelve-year-old, when he and Clare had used what little extra cash they’d had to replace a badly worn-out cooker without even knowing how much Amanda had been counting on finally getting contact lenses to replace her glasses, a wish neither of them knew existed up until the moment Amanda burst into furious yet extraordinarily sorrowful tears behind her spectacles. They’d found contact-lens money the next month, but the cloud of worry they shared over their difficult, unexpected daughter was never quite manageable again after that. He still worried the same about her now.

  So why hadn’t he told her?

  ‘I just . . .’ he said. ‘It was all very sudden.’

  ‘She’s moved in, though, and you didn’t mention that either.’

  ‘She hasn’t really moved in. She’s still got her flat–’

  ‘And I’ve only met her once. Once.’

  ‘And you said you liked her. Good night, now! I think he made a rude gesture at me, did you see that?’

  ‘I do like her. She’s . . .’

  Amanda stopped and her eyes seemed to focus on some internal image with an expression he could only describe as unnerved reverie. And then he wondered why he was feeling so hot all of a sudden? His skin was shedding sweat like a natural spring.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I really am. I just . . . I have so little of her, do you see? So much of her is just completely unknowable. And I get greedy for any tiny bit of her I can have.’ He looked down at the wine glass he still seemed to be holding. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be something only I knew. A part of her that was only mine. I’m sorry if that sounds awful, but she’s so–’

  ‘I understand, Dad,’ Amanda said, but gently. She looked past him over to where Kumiko was handing Clare, Hank and a woozy-looking Mehmet their coats. ‘I think I actually do a bit.’

  He touched her gently on the arm. ‘I like it when you call me Dad.’

  She turned back to him, and he caught a glimpse of such heartbreak in her eyes that he wanted to take her in his arms and never let her leave this house again, but then she gave a brittle smile and it was gone. ‘I’ve got to get JP,’ she said.

  ‘Bring him by tomorrow, will you?’

  ‘I will, Dad,’ she said and started to ascend the stairs.

  ‘Amanda,’ he said, stopping her.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did your friend leave?’

  A that’s-a-good-question expression crossed Amanda’s face. ‘She must have got a lift or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Weird. But kind of typical.’

  She carried on up the stairs, and George moved to his last remaining guests, all of whom, mercifully, he knew and, in their own different ways, loved.

  ‘Well, you’re a dark horse,’ Clare said. ‘Actually, you’re completely not a dark horse, ever, which is why I’ve found this all vaguely upsetting.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy for me?’

  ‘Ecstatic, darling. I haven’t the slightest idea how you managed to get her to look at you, but now that you have– ’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Hank said, shaking George’s hand in that too-hard way George suspected was reserved for his wife’s ex-husband. ‘Maybe fewer guests next time?’

  ‘I know. We’re a little baffled as to who exactly–’

  ‘Art junkies,’ Mehmet interrupted. ‘Like those starling murmurations. They rise up out of nowhere in their millions, dazzle you for like seven minutes, then gon
e again into oblivion.’

  There was a silence at this. Then George said, ‘Mehmet, that was–’

  ‘I told you there was something on the way,’ Mehmet said to Hank, wavering slightly from the vertical. ‘Something wonderful.’

  ‘You said it would also be terrible,’ said Hank.

  ‘Well,’ Mehmet says, looking back at George, ‘I’m sure that’s on the way, too.’

  ‘Gosh,’ George said, collapsing onto the settee after the final stragglers had left.

  Kumiko sat down next to him. ‘We made it.’

  But – unless George was imagining it, which was entirely possible – there was an awkwardness between them somehow, a new one, as if now that they’d made their announcement to his family and a roomful of bastards, they were strangers once again. He desperately hoped it wasn’t anything to do with Rachel.

  ‘Is there anyone on your side we need to tell?’ he asked.

  She smiled wearily at him. ‘I have said to you many times. There is only me. Except that now, there is only me and you.’

  He breathed out through his nose. He was still unfeasibly warm. His sweat had soaked through three layers to drench his blazer. ‘Is there really me and you?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He was surprised to find himself near tears. ‘You keep so much of yourself from me. Still.’

  ‘Please do not get too greedy, George,’ she said, and he was shocked by her use of greedy, the same word he used with Amanda. ‘Can we not have what we have now?’ she continued. ‘Even as husband and wife? Can you not love me with all my closed doors?’

  ‘Kumiko, it isn’t a question of loving you–’

  ‘There are things that are hard for me to answer. I am sorry.’ She looked unhappy, and he felt as if there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do to stop her looking like that, murder, destruction, betrayal, if only she would pour sunshine on him again.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I actually don’t feel all that great. I wonder if I have a little fever–’