Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (11 page)

Occasionally, amid all the clanging, merry filler music that played between songs, two voices emerged: one high and whispery, the other comically low, like a barbershop bass, which chanted a jumble of syllables we could never make out. It was like one of those ink blot tests: what you heard depended on your state of mind. “His sky crime fell over the land,” they sang to me once, and another time, “This crying will end in her hand.”

Nozomi went in on her own a lot toward the end, and even started outscoring me on “Bullet Train (to My Heart).” I didn’t think about it too much: Miho’s mom had started volunteering in the afternoons, leaving behind an empty house and Miho’s pink-ruffled bed. Nozomi didn’t mind singing alone, she said; she enjoyed it because she could repeat songs without being a bother. Later, kids
who were in choir with her at school would say her voice had gotten stronger, that they had noticed. But I think they only noticed afterward, you know?

THERE WAS ONE INCIDENT
during those last couple weeks that’s never left me. I was walking out of school for lunch with a couple guys from my homeroom, and Nozomi was coming up the path. I prepared to say hi, tell her I’d see her at karaoke later, but just as we got close enough to speak, she veered toward me and leapt, flinging her arms around my neck. I stood frozen for a second until she fell off and stumbled backwards, laughing. “You were supposed to catch me!” she said. My friend Naoki flexed his bicep and said, “Try me next time.” She made to jump at him and he crouched, arms extended, but she didn’t actually do it. She swatted his hand and turned toward me.

“I didn’t know you were gonna do that!” I said, grabbing her shoulders. I was desperate to touch her, desperate to affirm what she’d initiated.
Do it again,
I pleaded silently.
I won’t drop you
.

THE WAY I IMAGINE IT
—and I’ve spent a lot of time imagining it—she rides over on her purple bike, schoolbag in the basket, her school blazer knotted around her waist. The frogs are deafening. She does one of her tiny fist-pumps when they tell her Room 17 is available, the news ensuring she won’t have to forgo any of her favorite songs. She jogs up the stairs, tapping each step, though the
incline is so shallow she could take them two or three at a time. The door with the handwritten “17” in red marker (someone had ripped the placard off and they never replaced it) is wide open. She drops her bag on the couch and punches
31121
on the remote. In fades the familiar scene: a girl walking among falling cherry blossoms. She sings through “Sakura” three or four times, first crosslegged, then while standing up straight to push the air out smoother. After warming up, getting her scores over 90, she really lets it rip, boogeying on the plastic couch and going through all the classics. Sometimes a waitress passes in the hall without seeming to notice. The waitresses in that place were experts at not noticing.

She can tell her voice has grown stronger from all the after-school workouts, and she finds that she’s able to hit notes a step or two higher and lower than usual. She sings both parts of the “Ryozenji” duet; she nails the harmony on “Sounds of Silence,” a song our English teacher had taught us. She’s never sung better; she’s in the zone. On the screen, which is taller than she is, cartoon dolphins splash and mermaids play in the surf. Cram Island draws closer.

When it happens, she’s singing “Sakura” for the seventh time, and as she hits the final note, her voice clicks into a new, secure place in her throat. She rides the pitch out to its full crescendo, her eyes shut in concentration, her shoulders back and abdominals tight. Then she opens her eyes, and there it is.

The words, “Welcome to Cram Island,” scroll slowly across the screen. A simple, five-note melody plays. “It
is high time for you to come,” whispers the high voice, echoed by the barbershop bass. In unison they chant, “We want you, only you. Don’t get lost now. We’ve been waiting so, so very long... you... only you...”

Palm trees shimmy; there’s a light breeze on Cram Island. A coconut wobbles down a sandy slope toward azure water, where smiling fish burst from the surface. Nozomi steps toward the screen, her expression a mix of pride and contentment. Maybe she’s brought her bathing suit that day, even worn it under her school uniform. I’d like to think so.

KARAOKE LIVE! CLOSED DOWN
right around graduation. The building sat dark during the summer, and kids went there to drink and try to scare themselves. It was still there when I left for college, but by the time I returned home for the semester break at New Year’s, it’d been turned into a swanky fitness club, the rice paddies paved into parking lots. For a long time, I thought about where all those frogs went.

You’d think Nozomi’s disappearance would’ve brought Miho and me closer, but it didn’t. In fact, after the day Nozomi disappeared, nothing romantic happened between us again. It was an unspoken and mutual extrication. By the end of the year, after the talk had subsided, we each had a new group of friends and shared nothing more than the occasional passing nod in the halls. Nozomi’s parents kept up an ongoing, fruitless investigation that even I stopped following once I moved away.

It still haunts me, of course. It’s as if some subtle change took place that day that only I perceived. Like wearing this great thick sweater and having someone point out a hole in it. If only she’d left a note, or some sign for us she wanted it this way. But all we know for sure about that day is what they found during closing rounds: an empty room and a persistent melody straight out of a dying music box.
Welcome to Cram Island!
They couldn’t figure out how to get the machine off that final screen, so they just unplugged it. I heard when it was plugged back in, it wouldn’t turn on. I have a feeling they didn’t call up the manufacturer for repairs.

I still have hope that she’ll turn up: I’ll run into her on the subway, or it’ll be her voice on the line when I call to order takeout. Sometimes I even think about trying to hunt down that old karaoke machine—to what end, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s long gone, though, like so many things. Like those frogs and their babies and their babies’ babies, generations of frogs, those relentless singers.

THE LETTER ARRIVED
in a handmade envelope sealed with red wax. Flipping through the bills and junk mail, Aya Kawaguchi saw her name penned in perfectly shaped characters, tore open the seal, and read:

Dear Kawaguchi-sama,

I feel I must bypass the convention of commenting on the weather as I begin this letter because a more pressing matter is probably concerning you, that of my identity and purpose. I write in the spirit of greatest hope, and am aiming to reach the Ms. Aya Kawaguchi who was a student of Keio University in 1969. If this is not she, please ignore this letter.

My name is Shinji Oeda, professor of psychology at Keio from 1960 until my retirement in 1991. From 1969 to 1970, I ran a series of experiments, the goal of which was to design and perfect a device—dubbed the
Amorometer
—capable of measuring one’s capacity to love. (Amor, of course, being the Latin root of the word “love.”)

In 1969 there were no departmental regulations regarding the debriefing of experimental subjects. I assume you had no understanding of our research, let alone the extraordinary gifts these tests revealed: of all the subjects (439 in total), yours was the highest score in lovingcapacity. In the empathy measure, you scored an astounding 32 points— more than two standard deviations above the mean.

I must come to my point: I would very much like to meet you. As a widower of two years, I have found the companionship available to me (my tomcat and my memories) to be inadequate. The cat is unreliable and cantankerous, the memories often the same.

It may be true that regardless of a man’s age, there remains inside him a kernel of youth. As I have aged, my curiosity has not lessened, but has migrated from my brain to my heart. It is not such a bad thing.

With much hope
,

Shinji Oeda

P.S. This letter has taken me many years to write; the hypothetical results of my test on a Cordometer
(cord
the Latin root for “heart,” or “courage”) would likely be dismally low. I urge your quick reply, if possible.

Aya raised the letter up to the lamp at her desk, revealing the watermark. The thick paper, and the surprising space it created between her fingertips, made her feel somehow important.

She had never been a student at Keio University. Since marrying Hisao all those years ago, she’d hardly visited Tokyo at all.

She ran a fingertip over the seal. She imagined the professor dropping the thick wax onto the envelope’s flap and pressing his stamp there. She imagined the wool of his jacket and the creased leather of his shoes as he slipped out of the house, and the long, slim fingers with which he carried the letter to the postbox in his tasteful Tokyo neighborhood. Now that envelope was here, its wax like an exotic fruit, cut with a stranger’s name.

A stranger who believed her to be—what had been his word?—
extraordinary
.

She glanced at the clock above the stove. Hisao would be another hour, and dinner was already prepared. There was still some ironing to be done, but it could go another day. She brought the stepstool to the closet and brought down the box with the good stationery.

She set to work:

Dear Oeda-sama,

How nice it was to receive your letter, and quite a surprise! For the record, the rainy season has begun here, but I will spare you the details of the weather since, as you say, our correspondence is a strange one.

She reread her opening, then pulled out a fresh pink sheet and rewrote it, replacing “nice” with “lovely” and “strange” with “most unusual.” She continued,
I have not thought of Keio in a long time, and I am delighted that you had the courage to find me.

She thought a second, then added,
I’d think your readings on the cordometer would be quite high!

She sat up, aware of Hisao’s arrival. After all these years, the ritual of his entry was well-known to her: the yawn of hinges, the slam of the metal door like a detonation, her husband’s gravelly call of “I’m home,” not to her but to himself. The only missing element was the punctuation of his briefcase hitting the floor.

She tucked the letter in a drawer and sighed. It was just like Emiko had warned her: now that he’d retired, her husband was always underfoot. She’d had the run of the house from six in the morning to six at night for thirty-one years. Hisao was a good man, had provided a home to her and their son, but she never considered she’d have to spend this much
time
with him.

“You’re home early,” she said, standing to greet him.

“Driving range was packed,” Hisao grumbled. “Too many kids. This time of day, kids ought to be in school, or at work.”

“Mm,” she said. “Would you like dinner now? Or how about a cold drink?”

She glided toward the kitchen as he fell into his blue recliner. For as long as they’d been together, he’d come home from work, collapsed in this chair, requested food
or drink. Now, however, he often wasn’t tired upon returning, and though he was still drawn by habit to the chair, he no longer looked comfortable there.

SHE PUT THE FINISHING TOUCHES
on her letter that night while Hisao slept, ears defended against his own snoring by green foam plugs.

I am flattered that you should recall me and would love to meet you,
she wrote, and took another sip from the heavy glass into which she’d poured some of Hisao’s good whiskey.

She printed the name “Aya Kawaguchi” at the bottom of the letter, marveling at how much nicer this woman’s handwriting was than her own.

HIS SHORT RESPONSE
arrived three days later.

I’ll open this letter with the weather in my heart, and tell you that the sky is clear and warm, and the quality of light is thick and sweet like honey! I am pleased and surprised (good news does not often come my way these days) that you are in a position to meet me. I could travel to your town, or, if you like, we can meet here in the “neon jungle.”

Thick and sweet like honey! Aya smiled, amazed that there were such people in the world. It was time, she thought, that she met them.

SHE TOLD ONLY EMIKO
, who’d divorced young and never remarried, about her plans.

“I’m not going to
cheat
on Hisao,” Aya said. “I just want to... bask. This man thinks I’m extraordinary. I want to know how that feels.”

“Oh, shut it! You’re a lovely woman.”

“Lovely, schmovely. I want to be
extraordinary.”

Emiko rolled her eyes.

“Besides, the timing of it, with Hisao retired now and Ryo just moved out—it’s like a chance to reinvent. See what I’ve missed.”

“What if he’s rich and handsome?”

“He could be poor and crazy,” Aya said, but did not believe it.

“An
amorometer!
Whoever heard of such a thing? Wonder how I’d score.”

“Me too,” Aya said, recalling every selfish, unloving act of her lifetime. The time, as a teenager, she’d stolen an umbrella; the gossip sessions with Emiko that often turned catty; the way she’d stopped breastfeeding Ryo after two weeks because she couldn’t stand her raw, chapped nipples.

“Exactly—what if he can tell it’s not you?”

“I’ll come home,” she said.

“Only if he’s poor and crazy. If he’s rich and handsome, stick around.”

Their meeting had been set for noon on a Sunday on the top floor of Tokyo Station, in a restaurant famous for its view of the city. Though Shinji had repeated his offer to travel to her small town, Aya had insisted on
coming to Tokyo. The person she was hoping to become could not exist in Iida; she could only transform with distance. And though it terrified her to think of herself lost on the streets of an unfamiliar place, she felt certain that once she arrived, she could be anyone she wanted. Anyone she
might have been,
had her life gone differently. She’d read enough books. She felt a long line of Ayas inside of her, ready to be called upon. The thought made her feel like an adventurer, and while Hisao was out golfing, she spent half the morning pawing through her closet, trying on clothes she hadn’t worn in years.