The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (21 page)

"No! This was left from the cherry blossom viewing parties, I'm sure."

"It's terrible for a religious place to be littered! The partiers are allowed to drink on the streets only, not in here. We'd better clean up."

The one small trashcan near the temple entrance already overflowed with cherry blossom party leftovers. This was evidence of Tokyo's philosophy on waste collection: the unwritten rule that everybody carried his or her refuse home for disposal.

At my aunt's suggestion, we carried an odious collection of garbage home in the clean, used, shopping bag she always carried folded in her purse. My building had a small area behind it for trash collection, so we threw the garbage on top of what was already there. Uncle Hiroshi hefted the largest bags up and over, making me worry about his back. The Shimuras tended to have weak backs. But Hiroshi and Norie were very satisfied to have performed their act of environmental do-gooding.

"Leave a place cleaner than when you arrived. That should be your guideline, Rei-chan," my aunt said.

"Well, it's certainly yours!" I was thinking of how she'd cleaned out my storage compartment and stolen my haiku evidence.

We slipped out of our shoes in the entryway, went inside, and washed our hands thoroughly. I put the water heater on to boil for tea and set out some rice crackers.

"Your apartment is very comfortable, Rei-chan. Did you find it by yourself?" Hiroshi asked.

"Well, Obasan was kind enough to sign the lease," I answered. "A foreigner can't rent an apartment without a Japanese citizen to vouch for her."

"It's a ridiculous law, considering all the good things Rei has done to the place," Norie said. "When I first saw it, the walls had peeling paper, the tatami mats were infested with bugs, and there was no bathtub. Our niece is a good home designer."

"It's certainly nice and clean," Uncle Hiroshi complimented as he accepted his cup of tea.

"That's Obasan's hard work. Since she 's been here, she 's done so much cleaning, all the way from the windows to the yukashita." I was speaking in a way that seemed metaphorical, but also expressed an awareness that my aunt might have snooped in the kitchen's underground storage.

"I did a bit of spring cleaning. It was necessary because of the visitors during her illness. She is barely recovered—in fact, I really shouldn't have asked her to carry the park garbage." Norie sounded nervous. "Please forgive me, Rei-chan!"

Uncle Hiroshi, blithely unaware of the conversation's subtext, sipped his tea with relish. "Ah, I haven't had a tea like this in a long time. Is it from the beefsteak plant?"

"Yes, Obasan brought the tea during my illness—one of the many kind things she has done for me. Obasan, I have something small to give you in thanks for all you've done." I handed her the wrapped bouquet of flowers, only slightly the worse for wear.

"Oh, you don't need to give me anything!" Norie said, unwrapping the package anyway. "Is this mock orange? What an original combination, with the lotus leaves and cosmos." She smiled at me. "How nicely your taste is developing."

"I thought it would look great in one of the earthenware containers you have in Yokohama," I said.

"Yes, we can arrange it together there. Bring your lesson book, so I can check off another step toward your first certificate."

I was upset at the implication that the flowers were going to be treated like mine, not hers, and that I would go to Yokohama. I asked in my politest voice, "Obasan, you're returning to your home, aren't you? Now that Uncle Hiroshi is here, you need to take care of him."

I beseeched them with my eyes. All the organizing Aunt Norie had done couldn't change the fact that there wasn't much room for three people in two rooms the size of fourteen tatami mats, total.

Aunt Norie put her cup down with a click. "Tsutomu says that the journalists are no longer outside the house, and we have a free bedroom waiting for you. Please come home with us tonight. Spend one night and see how you feel tomorrow."

"The problem is that I have a meeting tonight with Mr. Ishida! You know how I've been neglecting my business. Its very important that I see him as planned."

"Why can't you do business during daylight hours? It is not safe for a young woman to be walking alone at night," Norie countered.

"Mr. Ishida is Rei's mentor. It's true that Rei cannot show him disrespect," Uncle Hiroshi said.

"Yes, it's just like your situation, Ojisan," I said, seizing the argument. "You want to live in Yokohama with Norie, but your company ordered you to Osaka, so you went. There was no choice."

Hiroshi and Norie looked at each other for a minute, and I wondered if I'd said something inappropriate.

Norie said, "Actually, that is no longer the case. His company is closing its Osaka operation."

"You'll be back in the Tokyo office! That's wonderful." It took me a few seconds to realize that I was the only one who seemed excited about that. Uncle Hiroshi looked as unhappy as he had at the temple, and Norie was staring into the red-brown depths of her tea.

"Well, it certainly will be a change," I continued.

"It is not our desire to put a burden on you when you have enough troubles already," Aunt Norie said.

"You're upsetting Rei," Hiroshi chided Norie. But he touched her hand, which I thought was a good sign.

"Rei is part of the family. She deserves the truth," Norie insisted.

"It's not so bad, really. I'm sure I'll find something new," Hiroshi said in a brisk voice. It was the way businessmen talked to one another on the subway: cool, dispassionate.

Now I suspected that Hiroshi's problem had something to do with work. Maybe the Tokyo move meant that he was getting demoted to a desk by the window. I looked at my uncle, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

Aunt Norie walked across to the bathroom and turned her head, signaling for me to join her. I did. When she had closed the door and turned on the bathtub taps, she spoke in a voice so low that I had to strain to hear it.

"Ojisan cannot say it aloud to you, because he did not even say it to me. I found out from his supervisor that due to the economic crash, the bank is closing. Your uncle no longer has a job."

A salaryman without a salary is Japan's unspoken nightmare. Hiroshi had joined his bank in the 1960s. My father had told me that these were tough years, when people still used hibachis instead of space heaters to warm their houses and babies wore diapers made from old yukata robes. And for the men who worked at reorganized or new companies, the order of the day—and the night—was work. Hiroshi debuted as a junior executive working sixty-hour weeks that turned into eighty-hour weeks as he progressed in responsibility. Three years ago he had left his family because the company wanted him to oversee a new office in Osaka. Now the institution he'd given his life to was no more.

There was nothing shameful about the layoff, Aunt Norie said. He wasn't being fired because he had embezzled money or sexually harassed anyone. But given his age, fifty-eight, he would probably not be hired by another bank.

"Have you saved a lot of money?" I asked. Like most housewives, Norie paid all the bills and allotted her husband an allowance for daily necessities.

"Of course. I invested your uncle's extra salary along with my family inheritance in many different stock accounts. But the Asian stock market is so bad that our funds have lost over fifty percent of their value. We must leave them untouched and hope that they will regain their value." As she looked at me, the woman whose skin I'd recently admired was suddenly showing crow's-feet and shadows. I knew why she and Hiroshi had stopped to pray at the temple before coming to the apartment.

"Ojisan must not give up. I'm sure an employment agency would have something for him, maybe even in the same field—"

"Yes, perhaps he can work in a different bank as a floor walker, the man who directs customers to the correct place," she said without irony. "We must go back to him and be sweet and cheerful. Please don't ask him anything about the exact details of his job loss."

As she made a move to turn off the water, I said, "Before we leave, please tell me why you took that letter from the yukashita."

Norie sighed. "That haiku was meant not for you, but for me."

"How do you know that?"

"I have received such poems for many years. The haiku are all famous classics, so they could not possibly be perceived as threats. But the messages!" She shuddered.

"The one you took applies to me," I said, feeling stubborn. "The message is about somebody wishing I would drink enough to go to sleep permanently."

"It is about death, but not yours. Don't worry."

"Don't worry? I reported it to Lieutenant Hata. He thinks it's worth worrying about!"

Norie took a shaky breath. "You shouldn't have done that. Say that you won't talk to him again."

I objected, "But there might be something about the notes that could identify Sakura's murderer."

"I'm sure there isn't!" she snapped. "Don't you understand that this has been going on for a long time? It has everything to do with me and my reputation. Nothing else."

"Why don't you let Hata-san see the other haiku that were sent to you? He might be able to catch whoever is doing it and save you a lot of future misery."

"I don't have them anymore." Norie sounded almost smug.

"Surely you tucked them away somewhere—"

"No, I flushed them down the toilet, just as I flushed the one that you tried to hide from me in the yukashita. It's the safest method of disposal, and the only way I can put the issue to rest."

Water washes everything away.
My aunt's favorite saying was coming back to haunt me. I was so angry that I couldn't look at her. I stared into the tub, where the stream of water was being sucked down in slow, lazy circles, just as one of the few clues to Sakura's killer had been flushed away.

"Do you treat your own children this way, or do you do this because I'm the outsider? The one who doesn't know enough to take care of herself, despite her pathetically advanced age?"

"Don't talk that way." Aunt Norie had edged all the way to the door, as if she was trying to bar my exit.

"You want to take away my freedom of speech along with everything else? I won't let you." I grabbed the doorknob, yanking open the door and storming out of the bathroom.

I took my raincoat, backpack, and umbrella, not looking to see what was going on with Uncle Hiroshi. As far as I was concerned, Norie and he could have my place to themselves.

I still had four hours until my meeting with Takeo and Mr. Ishida, which was a good thing, because I felt too shaken to be with anybody. I wanted to curl up alone in a quiet place and sob my heart out. But finding a public place to be alone in Tokyo is a tall order. The only thing I could think of was going to the movies, where it would be too dark to see people.

The Yebisu Garden Cinemas was showing a revival of
Mabaroshi no Hikari
. The film, the title of which meant "phantom light," told the story of a young woman struggling to build a life after her husband inexplicably kills himself. The action shifted from a depressed Osaka neighborhood to a beautiful fishing village. The woman struggled out of her sorrow and into a feeling of belonging in the new community.

When the lights came up, the mostly female audience gathered up their purses and raincoats. I stayed in my seat, watching the credits on the screen, hoping to delay my return to the reality of busy, noisy Tokyo. I knew very little about the old-fashioned places where people fished for their dinners and dried their own seaweed in the garden, but that fishing village looked like a far better world than the one I was living in. If Uncle Hiroshi and Aunt Norie sold their house and moved to the countryside, they too could have a second lease on life. Hiroshi could spend his days fishing and Norie could tend a garden. They would worship at a small country temple with no litter problems. And if the new home was hundreds of miles from Tokyo, my relatives would never interfere with my life again.

I smiled sarcastically to myself, but my expression froze as I saw a willowy figure pass my seat. The woman was slightly hunched in the way girls are when they want to hide their height, or their developing chests, from the world. But I recognized her right away as Mari Kumamori, the shy fellow student I'd met at the Kayama School.

The moviegoers behind Mari must have thought I was smiling at them, because they bowed briefly, which forced me to bow, and in the end caused a lot of confusion. I cut into the aisle behind them so that I wouldn't miss Mari.

I spotted her outside the theater, moving slowly toward Ebisu Station. I didn't want to scare her, but I was worried that I would lose her in the evening rush-hour crowd. I ran through the misty rain, not wanting to pause to stop to remove the compact umbrella in my backpack. I hadn't worked out much in the last week, and the exercise felt good. When I caught up with her, I wasn't even winded. "Kumamori-san," I called, and she turned around.

"Miss Shimura." She looked startled.

"I think we were at the same film."

"
Mabaroshi no Hikari
?" When I nodded, she said, "I've spent my day watching three films. It's a very lazy thing to do, but there was no ikebana class today, and I didn't have the heart to make any pottery."

"I'm sorry you've felt discouraged about working. Sometimes I have a bad day when I can't bring myself to get anywhere close to selling antiques. Its good to take time off."

"I'm thinking about quitting pottery forever," she said. "You saw how the headmaster broke my ceramics. Most of my work should be broken up like that. Sakura Sato once advised me that if I wanted to make good use of the pottery, I should smash it all and place the bits at the bottom of potted plants for drainage. "

I could have told her that Sakura was just being nasty, but by now I understood Mari's style. She would never let herself feel like anything but the lowest garden worm. I thought carefully about how I should phrase my request. "I'm in a bad situation, too. The only thing I can think of is asking you for advice."