“Oh, I’m feeling that to the max, at my age,” she said. “Seriously, I know what you mean. It’s not like I want to act like I’m the only one who’s been through hard things, or look down on people who haven’t. But the things people say just seem so inconsequential.”
Our morale was suffering after that conversation, so we decided to head out to a bar five minutes away on Chazawa-Dori. The drinks weren’t cheap, so we only went there occasionally to treat ourselves to the fresh fruit cocktails. They were sweet and delicious as something in a dream, and as we sipped at ours under the dim lights at the beautifully polished bar, a feeling of strength seemed to rise from my throat, and the weight on my shoulders felt a little lighter.
I watched Mom pay as we left. From the back, I had the strange impression that she was looking older, but also the same as ever.
It was cold on the street. The smell of winter was faintly in the air. Mom’s early winter coat was a dubious black leather trench that she had apparently acquired at Chicago, the vintage clothing shop. It smelled of old leather as I walked beside her. It was a smell characteristic of old things, which I felt I knew from somewhere.
Time passes. The present is the present. I don’t want the nightmares to get the better of me. But sometimes, biologically, I just lose. I’m not grown up enough yet to appreciate the view as I fall and lie there, defeated.
Mom walked with small steps beside me, in the wind, looking normal. I’ll always remember the feeling of this happy night, when we walked slowly down Chazawa-Dori on a whim, like travellers, I thought, tipsily.
“MOSHI MOSHI? HELLO?”
In my dream, I was calling someone. I was in my room in the apartment in Meguro.
Desperately, I kept calling out. If I could get him to pick up, I thought, I could save him. The signal seemed to be unreliable, and I couldn’t tell whether or not the line had connected. The phone kept making a strange sound.
“Hello? Dad! Dad!”
I was shouting.
“. . . Yocchan?”
I heard his voice.
“Dad!” I said, and burst into tears.
His voice was brimming with genuine and unconditional love. I could tell—that Dad wanted to see me, until the very end. But wait, I thought. I thought I found his cell phone, last time I was here. I felt confused.
The signal got weaker again, and I couldn’t hear what Dad was saying.
Dad! I shouted again as the line popped and crackled.
Maybe it’s hard to hear among the trees, I thought in my dream. Even though it couldn’t have made a difference in reality. Then, at the other end of the line, something changed.
I heard a high, scratchy, woman’s voice, too faint to make out what she was saying.
I moved the phone away from me with a shiver.
Feeling a sense of dread as though something had entered in through my ear, I shook my head quickly.
“ARE YOU OKAY?” I felt Mom’s hand on me.
The force of this palm pressing on me was a good power. Fallible, uncomfortable, odious, and aggravating as it might have been at times, it was a fundamental energy that had held me, nursed me, and nurtured me.
Relieved, I opened my eyes.
“Mom . . .” I said, still crying.
“You kept saying, ‘Dad! Dad!’” she said, sadly. She had her hair down, and her silhouette was wavering in the light of the small lamp against the pitch dark of the tatami-matted room.
“I know,” I nodded. I couldn’t tell her—Mom, who I was going through so much with.
“You still miss him. Of course you do, and I’ve been so caught up with myself. I’m sorry,” she said, and patted my shoulder.
It’s not that, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. I was too afraid, too shaken. And if there really still was a connection open to something of Dad, it might not be open to Mom, and it might mean there was something I could do to help him.
Maybe I was still a little off. About as off as Mom, who’d lived with Dad’s ghost back at home.
I didn’t feel able to convey the feeling of my dream to Mom. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I’d had plenty of that before. But for the first time, I knew that sometimes love meant not being able to tell. And that it inevitably involved the question of trusting myself to tell sometime, when I could.
I didn’t know anything about how souls were supposed to leave this world and reach the afterlife, or about offering prayers and ceremonies so the dead could rest in peace. Nor was I interested—my life recently had been concerned with problems like finding the most efficient way to peel potatoes for the potau-feu we served for lunch. But I knew I had to do something, that I didn’t want Dad to be trapped in that place. What would it take to shift my dreams into something even just a little happier?
“Mom, stop,” I said. “You need to find your own life. I like what I have now, and there’s still more I can look for, too. But I have these weird dreams. We . . . we’ve seen a lot of scary things. Like the car in the forest, and . . .”
My throat closed up.
“The bodies.” Mom nodded. She said, “What we saw ruined everything. But we’re still here. You can’t compare yourself with when things were fine or good. It’s better to remember how far we’ve come from the worst time. Then your dreams will be nothing to be scared of.”
I looked into her eyes and realized that Mom was separate from me, but going through this with me. I felt safe. The pitiful safety of licking each other’s wounds in a low place, and the miserable contentment of not having been left behind—that was the warmth that consoled me now.
DURING THOSE DAYS WHEN I found myself at work serving customers, keeping those murky, unresolved feelings out of sight, seeing Shintani-kun come into the bistro was always a breath of fresh air. It was like coming home after a long day and petting your dog or cat, although I felt guilty about thinking of it this way. When I saw him, I felt like my eyes, my hands—all of me reverted to the old me, and my body breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a sensation like sinking into a tepid bath at exactly the right temperature—no need to get tense or overwhelmed. Or like wading into the ocean in the evening and watching the sun go down in lukewarm water. The tiredness and the tension in your shoulders melting away into clean seawater, and feeling rocked and lulled by the rhythm of the waves, more thoroughly than in any hot spring.
By then, I knew I didn’t want to let him go.
But it wasn’t because I liked him. I just didn’t want to go through losing him. Whether that was love, I couldn’t tell.
“The pot-au-feu’s back on the menu today,” I said. If he hadn’t seen me here, standing tall, working hard, being competent, would he even have liked me? I wondered, and doubted.
I’d been through too much too intensely recently to feel comfortable calling the paltry flow of feelings between us love. Thus my goal was simply to keep things between us light and pleasant.
“I’ll take it, then, please. This is nice, it’s like coming home,” he said, taking off his coat and taking a seat at the bar.
He says the cutest things, I thought, as I poured his wine. Lately, Michiyo-san had finally laid off the smirking, but had taken to praising me for not neglecting other customers even when my boyfriend was here. Of course not; this isn’t a hostess bar, I thought. At the same time, I knew it was a testament to her food and the restaurant that customers kept me busy right up to closing time.
Shintani-kun still ate beautifully, and the pot-au-feu disappeared into his mouth with dreamy alacrity. As he ate, he looked out the window peacefully. He always wore nice shoes.
I felt joy. Working at the bistro, Shintani-kun feeling at home there. Seeing my apartment across the street. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever—things changed and moved on, and if you thought they could stay the same, they got ruined, like our family had done. Still, I desperately wanted all of this happiness to stay, just the way it was.
If someone I was dating came to pick me up from the
restaurant where I worked, the usual thing would be for them to walk me home after my shift. But since I lived literally across the street, there wasn’t much walking that Shintani-kun could do, so we usually ended up having a drink somewhere. We’d talk, but not too long, so he could catch the last train back to Shinjuku.
That night was no exception. We headed to a basement izakaya near the station, and ordered some side dishes and a small flask of sake.
The izakaya was close to closing, but the owner was a friend of Shintani-kun’s, and accommodated us happily when we said we only wanted one drink. Stepping inside was like going several decades back in time. The clientele was mostly a generation or two older than us, men and women glowing from drink and rounding off their evenings with dessert. It was another place that was living proof of the diversity in Shimokitazawa, how welcoming it was to so many people.
“I’ve never met a woman who ate bakurai with so much relish,” Shintani-kun said.
“I work in food,” I said, “I’ll eat anything that’s good.” Bakurai—an orange-colored food made of sea pineapple dressed with salted sea cucumber intestine—was a well-known delicacy, and the one they made here was exceptional. It went so well with the sake I was drinking, I felt invigorated. The staff were cheerful, and so alert and lively it made me forget we were underground. It genuinely inspired me to work harder myself, even though at times I got so tired I thought my legs might cramp.
“Hey, Shintani-kun,” I said. “I keep seeing my Dad in my dreams.”
“Of course you do,” he said confidently. I liked that.
“He doesn’t seem very happy,” I said. “Like he wants to say something, something he needs to say . . . And Mom also says she sees his ghost when she goes back to the condo. Do you believe in that kind of thing? I started thinking, what if his soul’s still hanging around, because he can’t get to the afterlife, and now I can’t stop thinking about it,” I said.
“Music venues can be quite scary in that way,” Shintani-kun said, “and I know some tragic stories. I mean, musicians don’t tend to all be able to make a good living and live happily ever after, if you know what I mean. They die from drugs, from drink, from getting sick and not taking care of themselves, or they have to give up music and find different work, or they get into fights and have feuds and make enemies—lots of things. Some groupies kill themselves . . .
“It doesn’t happen often, but it does. You hear about them turning up on stage, musicians seeing dead girls in the audience while they’re playing, that kind of thing,” he said quietly.
“Terrifying,” I said.
“Personally, I’m not sure yet whether I believe in it all, as such,” he said. “But if I was in a band, and someone who was a big fan killed themselves, I could understand feeling like they might still be following us around. Maybe thinking you’d seen them. And if a member of the band died, and someone new joined, but when you looked over while you were playing you thought you saw the dead person instead? I can picture that, too. Even if it was only a trick of the mind.
“So what I do is put aside the question of whether it’s real or not, and get the place cleansed just in case. We even have a shelf shrine, in the back. You have to, when you run a business, I think. Sometimes I get to feeling like I’m carrying a lot of it on my shoulders—not the spirits themselves, but the responsibility for a space where different people bring in different energies, and keeping it clean, I guess,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, feeling relieved in a more mundane way. When someone else made the effort to open up, that made it easier to sense the motions of my own heart.
“So I know what you mean,” he said. “The important thing is that the people who are alive feel okay about things. More important than trying to serve or help the dead. In that sense, I can see the value in visiting his grave, or going to the scene, if you feel the need.”
“To Ibaraki?” I said, surprised. “The forest? That terrifying and heartbreaking place?”
I’d been thinking I’d never even make it back to the lovely aquarium in Oarai, which we’d visited several times as a family years ago. Dad loved going to aquariums, and whenever we took a family trip, he always planned it so he could take one in.
I cast my mind back to that terrible day at Tokyo Station, surrounded by happy people about to set off on or just returned from their travels, people meeting up and finding each other at the promised hour, when Mom and I felt like the only ones there who’d been dropped into pitch darkness, and the summer sun was so bright it seemed to burn us. The day we waited for the bus to take us to Ibaraki to identify his body and claim it.
If only we could jump back in time, to the day when all three of us got on the bus to the aquarium in Oarai, I’d thought. I’d wished it so hard my temples had started to hurt. We were heading to the same place, so why did we have to feel so much pain?
“I could come with you, if you’d like. The venue’s doing fine these days, so I can take some time off,” Shintani-kun said.
“No, it’s okay. I don’t even know whether I could do something like that, yet,” I said. “But I’ll think about it. How do you get a place cleansed?”
“I ask someone from our local shrine, so there’s a whole ceremony to it, but I think something like offering flowers would help, too,” he said. “Let me think about it. Remember, rituals are more important than we think. Not for the dead, but I think it’s the best way to help ourselves accept what happened, and draw a line under it. In my experience, it puts musicians and our venue staff at ease, and stops their feelings from feeding back and dragging on.”
“Thanks. I don’t feel ready to take that kind of action yet, but I don’t want to keep having these awful dreams, so I need to look into it. I’ve thought about getting counseling,” I said.
“Whatever you do, don’t rush yourself,” Shintani-kun said. “If you do that and try to take shortcuts, it’ll come back to you, later.”
“How did you get to know all this? You’re still young,” I said.
“I’ve been involved in the alternative music scene since I was young, and I’ve seen a lot of tragic things, things that don’t feel right. You meet so many people, but you say good-bye to so many of them, too. We’re a venue with a long history, but small; the kind of people who play with us haven’t made it big yet, or aren’t ever going to, or have and come back for old times’ sake—by which I mean we’re the kind of place acts pass through in the course of their careers. There are some groups that are stable and play with us regularly, like your Dad’s, which is reassuring, but they’re the exception,” he said. “I’m an ordinary man, without any talent. But I’ve seen much more than I can tell.”
“That’s why you’re so grown-up,” I said.
“When you’ve seen so much that’s chaotic, you feel drawn to things that are distinct, and certain. Like you, Yocchan,” he said.
“You mean, when you’ve been gazing at muddy swamps you get blinded by the beauty of a lotus flower?” I laughed.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Shintani-kun said, and laughed. “I listened to Prefab Sprout, the band you like. I like them a lot, too. Is that where the name of your Dad’s band came from?”
“I wonder. I never really asked. But I know he liked them, and he played their records a lot at home. Maybe they’ve been an influence—their use of female backing vocals is similar, for example. Some of their CDs are out of print now, but I can lend them to you if you’d like,” I said.
My heart felt warm.
It was a warmth that the town, and the atmosphere in the izakaya, had given me space to hold.
The tone of the energy that flowed through the bar, probably unchanged over the years it had been in existence—the unobtrusive but priceless foundation that its owner and the staff, along with their customers, had spent decades building up and burnishing, quietly but steadily.
The time that Shintani-kun and I were spending was starting to grow in the same way. It wasn’t a flashy ki
nd of romance—we hadn’t even slept together yet—and we were both a little serious, like schoolchildren, or characters in a Korean teledrama. But I felt like the town was showing me that I didn’t have to hurry.
The old wooden beams, the glazed ceramic dishes, and the wrinkles on the reddened faces of the customers seemed to say: Everywhere else in this country seems to tell you Go faster. So just while you’re here, take your time; hesitate; lose your nerve; give up, sometimes. Everyone has troubles and weaknesses, and you can only try so hard. You’ll be who you are. We’re all of us different from one another.
I felt like Shintani-kun’s advice not to rush also applied to our relationship, and that reassured me, since I didn’t want to rush anything just now.
The dilapidated bar was laden with half-eaten dishes and half-empty drinks. Even that unglamorous sight seemed only to underline my new confidence that things were okay as they were.
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER that that I discovered that Mom had a job.
One evening, I’d been able to take a short break, and went to a tea house to pass the time. There, I found Mom at work, in a traditional-style apron.
“Mom? What are you doing? Minding the shop?” I couldn’t see Eri, the manager, anywhere, so I thought Mom had agreed to watch the shop for her.
“Nope, I work here. Since two days ago. I was always waiting for you to get home, and I used to take sencha lessons as a hobby before you were born, so I thought I could even manage to brew some tea in a pinch, with some training,” Mom said, calmly.
“Oh, right, wow . . .” I was taken aback. Had Mom written up a resumé? Had an interview?
I took a seat and said, “May I have a yuzu-kombu tea, then, please.”
“And what would you like to go with it?” Mom asked, bringing me the small tray holding samples of the sweet and savory accompaniments.