Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (22 page)

“Okay,” he said and laughed.

“Stop!”

“What’s in the bag?” He nodded at my camouflaged bucket.

“Oh! I thought we could do some spring cleaning today.” God knows the place probably needed it after Saturday’s shenanigans.

Absurdly, I unveiled my housekeeper’s surprise. Why on earth would he want to spend his morning scrubbing a toilet? At the moment it seemed unlikely that he would consent. Though I myself had misgivings, my best self (Was it my best self?) proceeded to explain. “I thought we would spruce up the house. If it were ours we’d certainly keep it clean, wouldn’t we?”

“But it isn’t.”

“Are you refusing to play house? I mean are you actually not saying okay?!” I felt weirdly triumphant. Free will! Agency! Freedom of choice! Equality!

“I’m not saying okay.”

“Oh, good for you!” I threw my arms around him and gave him a congratulatory squeeze. I had unwittingly administered a test he’d passed easily. He’d done beautifully, nothing less than an A. We were both adults, he had confirmed it.

I opened the door and was relieved to find that the smell of smoke, like all my good intentions, had dissipated. “Let’s go in,” I whispered, holding the door open.

“Okay,” he said and stepped in.

* * *

The following Friday we entered the gray house to find that workers had been there in our absence. White drop cloths covered the furniture and counters like shrouds, the walls had been sanded but not painted, the windows were lined with blue masking tape, the wood bin next to the stove was filled with short planks of wood that I recognized as formerly being rungs on the ladder that was now missing from the loft. The place was a complete wreck.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Shit,” he replied.

“How will we get our linens down from there?” I asked in a panic, though as I said it, I realized few people, if anyone, could possibly trace the linens back to us. They were not exactly monogrammed after all.

“Where should we go?” he asked rather pragmatically, impressively undeterred by the disaster at hand.

“I don’t know.” I was aghast. I walked over to what appeared to be the table and slowly lifted the drop cloth in search of the blue ceramic bird, the Italian cookie tin filled with Japanese candy, the green cross-stitched tablecloth, but found the table underneath denuded, our precious things gone. For the first time I took his hand and we walked around the house for a few minutes, surveying the wreck. We were like a couple at a funeral viewing, the corpse on display the battered interior of the gray house itself. “Wait, look there!” I said and ran to the kitchen to pick up the small postal box from which the bird’s beak under the green cloth protruded like a diminutive Anglo-Saxon nose. I lifted the colorful homespun shroud. Our things in a heap looked unremarkable, like the belongings of a dead person waiting to be given or thrown away.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I took the items out of the box and handed them to him. “Could you put these in your backpack?” It seemed a question a girl would pose to her boyfriend. I was afraid he would refuse, but he submitted.

Before we closed the door behind us, I paused to look up at the ladderless loft. How lovely it had been while it lasted, I thought, with the resignation of one destined to become a senior librarian. I felt grief mixed with awe for all that had happened. Our world was truly floating now, the site of our pleasure aloft. While I looked back, he waited outside, ready in the way of the young to change course.

We walked in silence to the waterfall and sat on the stone bench. I summoned from deep within my maternal line a sad housekeeper’s restraint and refrained from weeping.

“Mom has a summerhouse.” The young man stared at the waterfall as he spoke. I myself was too distracted.

“Does she?” I put in politely, absently. My mind was on the lost linens, the lost hours.

“Yeah, she rents it out to year-rounders for nine months during the year and then for three months to summer people.”

I was in no mood for idle chitchat about tenant shuffles. I’d always found the practice morally abhorrent, though the longer I lived on the island (not to mention the more morally abhorrent I became), the more I could imagine doing such a thing myself. It was difficult to make ends meet. The island’s opportunities by definition were limited and its economy was far from booming. Though even as I had these thoughts I railed against expressing them. There were more urgent (and morally abhorrent) matters at hand that required my attention.

“Every year after the tenants move out, she hires workers to clean and paint before the summer tenants move in.”

“Do you think we should go back to try and fetch the linens?” I interrupted, forgetting momentarily that the workers would likely be arriving soon if they hadn’t already.

He didn’t answer me but doggedly resumed his explanation.

“They only work during the day though,” he said and then at last was silent.

I was trying to devise a method of accessing the loft from the outside when it occurred to me what it was he was alluding to, what it was he was making possible for me to suggest. I felt a bodily joy, the rush of feeling wanted.

“Why, you’re brilliant!” I said, feigning decisiveness though in truth I was, as always, filled with fear. “Absolutely brilliant. Let’s say 9:30 next Friday night. Will that work?” I added doubtfully, readying myself for the blow of his refusal.

He nodded then startled me by putting his hand on my knee. The morning, like the man, was still young! I placed my perspiring hand upon his. Where would I take him now that our house had been entombed, our loft suspended? I cast my eyes about until they alighted upon the first set of wind chimes.

But of course! I would take him to the place for lovers and children! Pleased now with my own brilliance, I tapped the chimes lightly with my fingertips as we went. I hummed while I walked. He followed. He sat on the bench and I climbed on. I found his lap to be a most comfortable seat (flanks larger and more muscular than last time I was certain). With a few minor adjustments it was superbly, surprisingly doable. Like an eager new father he endured my weight, while I rode him in full view of the Buddha.

* * *

The children’s librarian, for whom I had become a paltry if not offensive substitute every Wednesday and Sunday, had a nunly aspect. She was vivacious yet remote, silver-haired and silver-spectacled, and her spectacles hung on a string of red beads reminiscent of a rosary. Despite her preference for wearing brightly colored fabrics (which somehow brought to mind the clothing of children before they brought to mind the exotic countries in which they had been painstakingly hand woven) it was easy to imagine her in a white habit, her clean flat fingers and their clean flat nails quietly turning the tissuey pages of a King James Bible in earnest search of the answers to difficult questions.

The sin for which she could never forgive herself and for which she daily did penance was a sin the staff referred to as “The $300 Mistake.” She herself had rather good-naturedly coined the phrase. I’m certain we would have all forgotten about it by now if not for her habitual references to the costly escapade. I no longer remember when it occurred but one year she dutifully ordered, as she was annually expected to order, a “Corduroy” costume (which in lay terms is a life-size, stuffed yet hollow bear with detachable head) in which she was also annually expected to sweat for the duration of a thirty-minute story time. The spectacle was always well-attended. Indeed it seemed to please everyone but the one inside the bear, who inevitably spent the remainder of her day with perspiration-marked clothing and matted hair, made mysteriously more bearlike by the experience.

Perhaps it was the nuisance of such unfortunate details that distracted her from her next task: return the woolly bear to his enormous coffin-like box and arrange for a pickup. One distracting detail led to another and somehow the cardboard coffin was delivered to its destination sans its furry corpse. The cost of redelivery combined with what must have been an unreasonably stringent late fee amounted to a total of $300. Several years must have passed since the incident but I found myself thinking about it again. In light of my recent transgressions, I felt a new sympathy for the children’s librarian and her expensive mistake. I too had been distracted to the point of idiocy; I too had made an unpardonable error, though I counted myself lucky that no one had yet thought to tally up the damages I had incurred.

* * *

All week I plotted precisely how I would exit the apartment undetected and arrive in the most expedient way possible at the gray house. Rather ridiculously I did a trial run the night previous and after landing upon the grass realized that I had not dressed warmly enough. This only made the trial run worthwhile, another cause for rejoicing. My plan was approaching perfection.

When finally Friday arrived, I was overcome with fear of the risks involved: What if Maria woke to find me gone and in turn woke Var with her screaming? What if I fell off the roof or was hit by a car en route? I was stricken by thoughts of all that could go wrong. A foolish, reckless plan I suddenly thought it.

At 8:00 I climbed into bed with Maria as usual. I kept my eyes closed while I waited for her to fall sleep. Once she was asleep I waited the twenty minutes it takes for a sleeper to enter deep sleep (a handy fact gleaned years ago from a parenting book). Then I dressed (I could not allow him to see me in Aunt Tomoko’s lace-trimmed flannelette), raised the window (the screen of which I had discreetly removed earlier that day), placed my feet first on the dryer vent, then on the rain gutter, and finally on the frame of the downstairs window before leaping to safety onto the soft grass.

A moonlit walk was one of the many famously beautiful things about the island that I had never experienced firsthand. Once I had left the state road and was walking down Music Street, I relaxed a little and began to appreciate this stunning novelty. The birth of Maria had meant the death of (among other things) my acquaintance with the night. Granted, I had never been terribly intimate with the hours of darkness, tending as I had since childhood to rise and retire early, but I had known moonlit walks down piers and avenues, I had beheld the reflection of ships’ lights on the surface of the sea, and more than once I had encountered a starry sky upon exiting a late night concert. One summer there was even a boy with whom I would lie on the grass at night, each of us reading a book by the light of our own torch.

It also happened that Maria’s birth coincided with our settling into a house surrounded by tall, leafy trees. When on occasion I remembered the moon’s presence and wanted to see it, I had difficulty finding a gap in the dense foliage that would allow me a glimpse. I would flit from room to room, press my face to this window and then that one, craning to see a portion of the moon’s face. (I found myself in a similar predicament that year with regard to the school bus, its vanishing gold flashing red through the trees as fleeting as any fall leaf.) Indeed there were likely more trees on the island than there were books in the library.

To be out walking on a moonlit night was magnificent, seeing the nearly full moon ringed by a bluish-yellow light akin to seeing a world-famous painting whose existence I had never doubted and yet had never confirmed. It didn’t bother me to be strolling in the moonlight alone. The utter darkness of an island night, even with a moon, affords one a snug feeling of anonymity and the silence of a rural town after dark is rather breathtaking. What an extremely pleasant sensation it was to feel alone in a hushed world, all the while moving closer to the young man.

When I reached the dirt road, I sprinted to the trailhead then walked the remainder of the way in order to regain my composure. The journey from apartment window to gray house doorstep took eleven minutes. He was already inside the house when I arrived. He had opened and laid upon the floor a green sleeping bag whose tan flannel lining was decorated with hunting scenes, as if we were children playing a camping game. The room was lit by a lantern and smelled of the beef jerky he was eating. He undressed me slowly, as had become his habit, beginning with my shoes and stockings then turning to my blouse and bra, saving, as always, the skirt and underwear for last. Then he kissed me until, unaware of my own cries, I felt his hand gently cover my mouth. We made love quickly. I was tired and aware of the possible peril of falling asleep.

“Do you prefer making love at night?” I asked.

He shrugged and then ever so slightly nodded. “It’s better,” he mumbled, shaking the hair out of his eyes, “it feels more like you’re mine.”

“I am,” I said, at once touched and ashamed that I had ever induced him to feel otherwise.

Then, in a voice in which I heard the desire to know competing with fear of the very same, he asked, “Do you do this with your husband?”

“No,” I said, relieved to be telling the truth but afraid he would not believe me.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I can’t explain it. We’re like two puzzle pieces that don’t fit together anymore.”

“But you used to?”

“Yes, we did.”

“The puzzle changed?”

“Yes, I suppose we’re like pieces of some ever-changing puzzle. Like all the outdated globes in the world. One can feel nostalgia, even affection, for an old globe but there’s no disputing the fact that it’s no longer accurate. It doesn’t tell the truth, it doesn’t match up with reality.”

“So what do you do with two puzzle pieces that don’t fit together?”

“What does one with an old globe?”

“Wait for the world to change?”

“One can wait quite a long time for the world to change or one can…”

“Go out and buy a new globe?”

“You sound as if you’re sympathizing with him.”

“Maybe I am.”

“I’m sorry everything is so imperfect, so morally corrupt. I truly am. You deserve better.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

“The part about the world changing isn’t my fault but the part about buying the new globe is.”