Women On the Other Shore (32 page)

As she had done with the others, Aoi joked her way lightly through the broader details of her tale, then fixed her eyes firmly on Sayoko.

"Satisfied?"

Sayoko had been listening with her face set in stone. "Yes, I'm glad I asked," she murmured.

"Since we don't have any cleaning jobs on the docket, why don't you just go on home for today," Aoi said with her usual smile. "And let me know as soon as you can about what I proposed a while ago.

I'd even say tomorrow, if possible. I've got loads of stuff I'd like to ask you to help with."

"Thank you. I'll be going then." Leaving her coffee untouched, Sayoko stood up and moved into the front hall. After putting on her shoes at the door, she turned. "If you're giving up t h e housekeeping, I think I'll hand in my resignation, too," she said in a squeak of a voice, then made a quick bow and went out.

Silence filled the room. Aoi lifted her feet onto the chair and cradled her chin on her knees, staring at the closed door. When the sound of Sayoko's footsteps on the stairs died away, she got up to open the kitchen window and lit a cigarette. Standing in the light of the midday sun, she inhaled deeply. T h e smell of spices and cooking oil from a nearby restaurant filled the air.

Like Junko and Misao, Sayoko had probably gone out that door never to return. Yuki was scheduled to leave for Canada with her husband, and Mao would not be staying long either. Recruiting new staff would take some time, so meanwhile she needed to figure 246

out what she could and couldn't do by herself. What she could and couldn't do... Stubbing out her cigarette in the sink, she slid down the wall to the floor and buried her face against her legs. Once she started contemplating all that had to be done before she could actually begin working with a new team—placing ads and interviewing applicants and teaching them what they needed to know for their jobs—it seemed like all she had in store was headaches.

Wanting to cry, Aoi hunched her back and put her face in her hands. When tears failed to come, she tried to prompt them by raising her voice in a childlike wail, Waaaah! Still the tears refused to come. She lay face down and peered through her fingers at the kitchen floor. All of a sudden she was remembering the moment on that red clay road in Laos when she stepped into the path of the oncoming pickup truck and waved her arms high over her head. The burning sun. The colors. The smell of the dust. The quaking of her knees from still fearing the worst.

"I quit!" she exclaimed, and quickly got to her feet. She strode into her office to pick up the cell phone she'd left on the tatami and began scrolling through her phone book.

"Hello. Hana? What're you doing tonight? You're free? Great!

Let's go drinking. My treat."

As she cheerfully made plans with the person on the other end, Aoi glanced about the former two-bedroom apartment.

Boy, am I pooped! How would you rate today? A sweet-tooth five?

Welcome back! You must be tired. Cakes? Oh, goody. That's exactly what I need! The voices of the women who'd worked in these rooms echoed in her ears. The sun on its way to the top of its arc quietly beamed down on the dining table surrounded by empty chairs in disarray.

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The end of the year drew near and the nursery school closed for its winter break. With Akari at home every day, it was easy for Sayoko to feel she'd made the right decision.

Since quitting her job at Platinum Planet, she'd spent all her time at home, never going anywhere but the grocery store. She filled her days cleaning the house, polishing every surface to a spotless sheen.

Since it was the season for the customary year-end cleaning anyway, she felt no pangs of guilt; she simply told herself that giving the house a thorough buffing-up for the new year took priority over taking Akari on outings to the park or the children's museum.

She'd started work at the beginning of June, so the house had suffered more than six months of neglect. Her quick, weekly once-overs had missed many pockets of accumulating dust and grime.

Now, between frequent interruptions from Akari for attention, she degreased the vent fan and scoured the stove, waxed the hardwood floors, shined the dish buffet, washed all the window screens, and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, and yet she still found more dirt lurking about. Even after going methodically through the house, checking room by room and taking care of each problem she found, she was sure there must be other spots she'd missed, and continued to wander about with her cleaning rag poised at the ready.

At about four o'clock each day she bundled Akari up for a trip to the supermarket, where she threaded her way slowly through the crowds of other young mothers with small children in tow to pick 248

outt what she needed for the elaborate dishes she prepared each night. On days when Shuji was out late, she put Akari to bed and then busied herself sewing things for when her daughter would go back to school. The simple tote bag and shoe pouch she'd slapped together in those hectic days before Akari's first day betrayed the rush in which she had made them. Now she pored over the manual for her sewing machine and learned how to use the embroidery functions, trying her hand at Peter Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh and neatly spelling out Akari's name on her towels and handkerchiefs.

She knew she would have to withdraw Akari from school unless she found another job, but she felt she had to be doing something.

From time to time she thought of Aoi. Or more precisely, of the story Aoi had told her on that last day at the office. Aoi had said she and the girl she leaped off the roof with never saw each other again. The girl had promptly transferred to another school, and they had neither written nor called each other after that. Hearing this gave Sayoko a certain satisfaction: she'd been correct to imagine Aoi quickly forgetting the friend she ran away with. But having once been envious of the unknown girl from Aoi's past, Sayoko also felt a measure of disappointment in this ending. "That's too bad," she had said quietly, to which Aoi had twisted her lips in a self-deprecating smile and replied, "What can you expect? We were only kids."

She was probably right, Sayoko thought as she cleaned house and embroidered handkerchiefs. No matter how close they may once have been, when two friends go their separate ways the relationship quickly ends. No doubt she herself would soon forget about the offbeat little company called Platinum Planet and the woman her own age who ran it. And that woman would forget about her as well. Even though they weren't "only kids" anymore—maybe, in fact, all the more because they weren't—their memories of the time they had spent together would quickly be lost amidst the day-to-day minutiae of their lives.

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When Sayoko told her husband she had quit her job, he didn't seem the least bit surprised. "Yeah, I figured you would," he'd said matter-of-factly. "I think it's better that way."

If Sayoko wasn't working, she would have to withdraw Akari from school by the end of January. But partly because the girl was almost at kindergarten age and now completely used to school, and partly because Sayoko herself enjoyed the friendships she had struck up with some of the other mothers, she really wanted to keep Akari enrolled. That meant she needed to find a new job right away, so she spent time going over the want ads and recruitment inserts in the newspaper, folding down page corners and circling items of interest with a pen. But Shuji's voice saying
I figured you would, I think it's

better that way
kept echoing through her head. Unable to make up her mind one way or the other, she simply went back to cleaning the house, and so the year came to an end.

According to their annual custom, they all went to visit Shuji's mother on New Year's Day. As usual, nothing Sayoko did seemed to please Grandma Tamura.

"I don't suppose you cook for New Year's, do you, Sayoko? But really, New Year's isn't the same without the traditional treats, don't you agree? I stayed up late last night making all these things, and I'm completely bushed, so maybe you could make us a salad or something."

As Sayoko set to work in the tiny kitchen, her mother-in-law hovered over her shoulder offering a constant stream of instructions.

"Don't use the cabbage," she said as soon as Sayoko opened the vegetable compartment. "And I'll need those carrots, too."

Sayoko took out some
komatsuna
greens and began rinsing them.

"My goodness, a salad with
komatsuna?
That'll certainly be different," her mother-in-law said dubiously. After a pause she went on: "I'm thinking we really ought to have some sashimi, too. The 250

supermarket by the station is open, so maybe you could go pick out a few things, whatever you like."

Here we go again,
Sayoko bristled, but then in a sudden inspiration she raised her voice and called out to Shuji,- who was draped lazily across the sofa in the living room: "Honey, your mom says we need some sashimi. Could you go to the store?"

"Hunh?" he grunted, sluggishly pulling himself to his feet.

"What'd you say you wanted me to get?"

"Some sashimi. Pick out whatever you like. And take Akari along, if you don't mind. I'm getting ready to fix these greens, so I'll have my hands full for a while."

Sayoko braced herself for a sharp rebuke, but to her surprise her mother-in-law grabbed her purse and quickly shuffled over to Shuji.

"Tuna or sea bream, maybe. Or flounder would be okay, too," she said, then added, like a mother sending her child shopping for the first time, "Do you even know what sea bream and flounder look like?"

Shuji laughed his mother down and turned to Akari. "Come on, kiddo! We're going to the store!"

The girl had been bored and starting to fuss, but she leaped to her feet. "We're going to the store!" she echoed.

Sayoko went back to the refrigerator and promptly began removing anything she thought she could use in a salad, including the cabbage and the carrots.
How hard was that?
she thought in pleasant surprise.
I don't always have to be the one to do everything. I just have
to ask.
As she checked on the water she was heating for the greens, she realized she was humming—here in the house where she always got nothing but grief.

Dinner was ready at six. Grandma's traditional New Year's foods arranged in lacquered boxes shared the center of the table with the sashimi Shuji and Akari had brought back from the store and the salad and boiled greens prepared by Sayoko. On TV a raucous New Year's talent show was in progress.

"These New Year's specials are all so noisy," Grandma said.

"Oh, that reminds me, Mom," Shuji said, getting to his feet.

"I brought a video. From Akari's first Field Day. I thought maybe we could ail watch it together. I've been looking for a chance to show it to you."

He got the tape from his bag and squatted in front of the TV to load it into the VCR.

"I got to be a ninja, Nana! I danced the ninja dance!" Akari said, leaning forward eagerly in her chair.

"Oh, my, you don't say," Grandma replied. She didn't sound particularly enthusiastic.

The loud voices on the TV abruptly broke off as the screen went blue for a moment, and then the video started to play. Sayoko cast a glance toward the screen but turned right back to her food and continued eating, not saying a word. She had watched the part showing Akari's dance a few times, but nothing more. T h e video inevita-bly brought back other memories of the day Aoi had shot it.

Music crackled from the speakers, and a teacher yelled a cheer into the microphone. Each time the scene changed, Akari piped up with a comment, and Shuji explained to his mother what was going on.

Sayoko reached for a prawn from one of the lacquered boxes and deftly peeled off its shell. Leaving that for later, she picked up a piece of tuna sashimi with her chopsticks and dipped it in the soy sauce on her small dipping plate.

"The picture's so clear," her mother-in-law observed.

"Yeah. Just like real TV, isn't it? Oh! There's Sayoko."

"Well, look at that! But, who's filming then?"

"Mommy danced with me, Nana. 'Yo-he-ho, the peach t r e e . . . ' "

Akari started singing the dance song.

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friend of mine came," Sayoko explained. "Unfortunately, Shuji couldn't make it."

"I said I was sorry. You know I hated having to miss it."

"Oh, dear. That little girl's crying. Look at her, the poor thing." In a rare show of amusement, Grandma laughed out loud.

"Sakura's a crybaby," Akari said, also laughing.

"My goodness, how old are these kids that just came on? They look a whole lot bigger than the last group."

Sayoko looked up from the table to see. The video had changed from the parent-child dance to a group of older kids gathering at the starting line for their dash around the track. Aoi had even filmed events Akari wasn't in. All of a sudden, the children at the line took off running.

"I think they're the five-year-olds," Sayoko said, her eyes lingering on the screen. Lively music played in the background as the children raced around the track. Suddenly one of the boys took a nasty tumble and landed on his face. Making no effort to pick himself back up, he burst into tears.