Women On the Other Shore (18 page)

Aoi burst out laughing. Not quite sure whether she should join in, Sayoko sat moving her head up and down in tiny nods.

"Some people and their guidebooks. Sheesh!" she went on, her tone taking on a new edge. "Have you ever been on a group tour?

They give you these little pamphlets filled with lists of dos and don'ts—how much tip to leave in this or that place, what kind of shops to avoid, that sort of thing. I heard about a tour to Southeast Asia recently where they handed out pamphlets saying don't eat at street stalls, don't drink iced drinks, don't eat uncooked vegetables, and so on—down to the tiniest detail. Well, come free time, some of the people decided to try the fare at a street stall anyway, and they all got sick, every one of them. Of course, you're going to figure the place had a sanitation problem. But I actually think it was the power of suggestion. Seems like people take off their thinking caps when 137

you give them a
manual
to follow.
And when they stop thinking,
they stop seeing
things, and stop experiencing things in any sort of way that's going to stick in their minds. I mean, something like tips, you're not even gonna remember who you gave them to, let alone how much. But the experiences that make you want to say 'Thank you, thank you, thank you' from the bottom of your heart—those you're not going to forget."

Aoi was in full rant mode now. Sayoko gazed out the glass doors at the laundry fluttering in the breeze on the balcony as she listened.

"The way I see it, you can divide travel basically into two kinds depending on whether your objective is
seeing
or
doing.
Are you tour-ing to visit ruins and museums and such in the area, or to take part in something going on there, like a festival? But the basic premise in either case has to be that you're looking for fresh encounters. Without that, what's the point of going anywhere? Every country's different. All that happy talk you hear about understanding one another and people everywhere being basically the same, it's all a bunch of crap. Everybody's different. And if you don't realize that, you're never going to experience anything truly new. Pamphlets and guidebooks can tell you 'Do this' or 'Do that,' and they can explain local customs for you, but beyond that, I think they actually get in the way of letting you connect with something different from yourself."

Aoi fell silent. She blinked her eyes as if she was surprised at herself and looked at Sayoko.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to go spouting off like that," she said sheep-ishly. "I guess I do it a lot. Takeshi and the others are always teasing me about it." She reached for the newest printouts of the fliers, which had long since finished printing.

To Sayoko, listening to Aoi hold forth was a bit like listening to a salesman going on at length about the features of some newfangled washing machine. About all she really understood was how different the two of them were. What they saw when they looked at the world around them, what they yearned for, even what they ultimately sought in life—everything about them was different.

But to take what Aoi had just said, it was precisely those differences that made it so satisfying to be sitting here talking like this.

She noticed Aoi's glass was empty and was about to see if there was another can she could open, when she heard a key turning in the front door. Startled, she hurried into the hall instead and found Shuji coming inside.

"What're you doing here?" she blurted out.

"What about you?" he said, no less surprised. "I thought you had to work."

"We're working here."

"Here? Doing what?" Shuji said, then added, "Who's 'we'?" He slipped by Sayoko and opened the door to the living-dining room.

Sayoko shuffled quickly after him.

"This is Miss Narahashi, my boss. Sorry about the mess. I didn't expect you h o m e so soon."

"It's good to finally meet you," Aoi said warmly. "I want you to know what a tremendous asset your wife has been to us at Platinum Planet. This is what we've been working on today—fliers for the new venture that she's heading up for us. We'll be launching it in earnest the first of the month." She was meeting this man for the first time, yet spoke with poise and an easy familiarity, turning their latest printouts around for him to see.

"Ahh, yes, my pleasure." Shuji was the one who seemed more flustered as he gave only a curt response, then abruptly pushed past Sayoko in the doorway and turned down the hall toward their bedroom. A whimper came from the tatami room: the commotion had apparently awakened Akari.

"Since your husband's home, I suppose I'd better be going." Aoi got to her feet. "I'll just straighten things up a little." She gathered their numerous printouts into a single pile and shut down her computer.

139

"I have no idea why he's home so early," Sayoko said, "but there's really no need for you to rush off. Please feel free to stay."

"We were basically finished anyway. I'll take this final version to the printer's first thing Monday morning." Akari was crying harder.

"There you go, Chief. Sounds like somebody needs you."

As the pitch of Akari's cries rose higher and higher, Sayoko went to pick her up. When she came back, she again urged her boss to stay, but Aoi quickly packed her computer up and took the empty beer can and glasses to the kitchen sink.

Carrying Akari in her arms, Sayoko rode the elevator down with Aoi and saw her to the steps in front of the building.

"We really should do that hot springs thing sometime, don't you think?" Aoi said after the automatic door had closed behind them.

"Yes, we should," Sayoko nodded, sounding wistful.

Aoi hurried off at a trot under the beating sun. After going a short distance she turned to wave her arm over her head. Akari was still crying in fits and starts, but Sayoko lifted the girl's hand and waved it for her, telling her to say "Bye-bye."

"Thank you!" she yelled.

Trees flanked the entrance to the building and continued on down the street, casting deep shadows on the glaring pavement.

Aoi's white blouse moved in and out of the shadows as she hurried into the distance. Sayoko stood gazing after her until she could no longer see the flicker of sunlight on the fabric.

Back upstairs, Sayoko found Shuji on the sofa flipping through a magazine.

"What was that?" he snorted. "Your student activity group?"

Sayoko walked past him without a word and set Akari down in the tatami room. The child was still sniffling, having missed several chances to let her tears dry.

"It's not like you're making posters for the campus festival," he added.

140

"I wasn't expecting you back so early. How's your mother?"

Akari clung to Sayoko's back as she knelt to gather up the picture books scattered on t h e floor.

"What's t h e point of going by myself?"

Sayoko was t a k e n aback. "You didn't go? Where've you been all this time?"

"Nowhere in particular. Just wandering around the shops down by the station."

"But wasn't your m o t h e r expecting you?"

Still flipping t h r o u g h his magazine, Shuji did not answer. Instead he said, "There's no beer in t h e fridge."

Sayoko sighed a n d lifted t h e clingy Akari into her arms.

"How would you like to go shopping with Mommy, sweetie?

Daddy's in a bad m o o d because we're out of beer."

"What's t h a t supposed to mean?"

"I n e e d to shop for dinner anyway, so I might as well go now."

She t u r n e d down t h e hall toward the front door.

"Want me to come along?" Shuji called halfheartedly after her, but she pretended not to hear.

"Are we going out, Mommy?" Akari asked several times as Sayoko helped her into her shoes.

Sayoko pedaled her bike wondering if she might overtake Aoi on her way to t h e station. She watched the shadows of the trees ahead for any sign of her, but all she saw were other mothers with small children in tow and some older kids coming back from the swimming pool.

141

8

Aoi and Nanako traveled from Izu to Ito, from Ito to Atami, and from Atami to Odawara, getting off the train wherever the spirit moved them as they gradually made their way toward Yokohama. They saw no vacationers anywhere, and a yawning end-of-summer still-ness hung over every place they went. As they hopped from town to town, finding cheap hotels where they could stay for around ¥3,000

each without meals, Aoi's thoughts drifted repeatedly to the day she visited Nanako's home just before the start of summer vacation.

People were saying Nanako and her family lived in a two-room apartment in a prefectural housing project, but it turned out to be an old complex put up by the Japan Housing Corporation. Boxy, four-story buildings stood in orderly rows, separated by decaying play parks that obviously hadn't seen a child in quite some time. Small sandboxes were littered with empty chip bags and soda cans. Wooden swings with rotting seats hung on rust-covered chains. Brown tonic-drink bottles and cigarette butts were scattered here and there on the ground.

Walking a half step behind Nanako, Aoi thought of the picture she'd had in her mind when talking to her on the phone. With the handset from the hall pressed to her ear, listening to the rhythms of Nanako's breathing at the far end of the line, she had imagined a spacious and immaculately kept home. But the housing complex they were now making their way through seemed a closer match to the description going around at school.

Nanako led the way into a building with a large E painted on its 142

side. Aoi trudged up t h e dark, narrow stairs with her eyes fixed on her friend's back. T h e apartment was on the third floor.

The door N a n a k o inserted her key into had peeling blue paint and no nameplate. " C o m e on in," she said unceremoniously as she opened it and went inside without looking at Aoi.

Aoi would never forget her first impression on stepping into Nanako's a p a r t m e n t . It was unlike any other apartment she had ever seen. Not t h a t t h e rooms were particularly cluttered or badly in need of cleaning. T h e y simply did not look like a place anyone made their h o m e . Immediately inside the door was the kitchen with enough room for a small dining table, beyond which were two four-and-a-half-mat tatami rooms, side by side. It was the sort of floor plan you might see almost anywhere, and was no doubt repeated in every other unit in t h e building, yet the space within its four walls lacked t h e feeling of a home. It felt more like the waiting room in a train station somewhere, or like the deserted play parks she and Nanako had walked by on their way through the complex. Aoi was startled, even frightened a little, by what she saw.

Instead of t h e lived-in coziness of a home, it had a stark, institu-tional air. Both t h e sink and drainboard were piled high with instant noodle cups, box-lunch containers, and juice and beer cans—not one dish in sight. A swarm of little flies circled three black trash bags heaped in t h e corner. Except for a refrigerator, the kitchen had none of the usual appliances or furnishings: no table, no dish cabinet, no sideboard, no microwave, no rice cooker. From the middle of the low ceiling h u n g a single naked light bulb.

Nanako strode across the open space where the dining table would normally stand and went into the tatami room on the left.

Aoi followed. This room, too, was nearly bare. On the far wall was a window that let in little sunlight, thanks to the proximity of the next building. Beneath the window sat a low tatami desk, the only furnishing of any size in the room. A cassette player, some women's 143

magazines, a
black
telephone, a
pair of shoes in
an open box, a 14"

TV,
and an
athletic
bag
were scattered haphazardly about the worn and faded tatami.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Nanako said, still not meeting Aoi's eyes as she dropped her yellow shoulder bag on the desk.

When Aoi said nothing, she returned to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to see what she could find.

Aoi took the opportunity to peek into the second tatami room.

A pillow and terrycloth blanket lay in disarray on the floor, and a rainbow of gaudy outfits adorned an entire wall. A half-eaten bag of chips and several crushed aluminum cans were strewn on the floor.

Nanako came back from the refrigerator with two cans of orange juice.

"One more room than everybody thinks," she said. She looked at Aoi for the first time since entering the apartment and smiled, then continued in what was for her an unusually belligerent tone. "So, now you've seen the much-talked-about poorhouse. Are you happy?"

But Aoi didn't think poverty had anything to do with the unsettling, even eerie, feeling she got from the apartment. It was a bewildering puzzle to her what life had been like for Nanako growing up in these rooms—or for that matter, what life was like for her living in them now. How exactly did she spend her days here, and with whom—in these rooms that seemed so utterly out of keeping with family meals and togetherness.

Aoi recalled her earlier impression of Nanako, of someone growing up among nothing but pretty things, protected by loving parents taking the utmost care not to expose her to the seamy, ugly side of life. That's what she'd thought. But what a laugh. This was the exact opposite. Nanako had grown up in this place effectively on her own, protected by no one and almost certainly exposed to countless things she should never have had to see. Aoi stood dumbfounded.

144

"I know people are whispering all kinds of stuff about me, but it doesn't bother me," Nanako said, sitting on the tatami and taking a sip of her juice.

"Because stuff at school isn't what matters to you?" Aoi asked, remembering what Nanako had said before.

"There's that, too, but more than that, what people are saying about me right now, it's not really about me, it's about them. It's not my baggage to carry. Why should I want to shoulder everybody else's burdens and beat myself up over their problems? I'm not that big-hearted."