Mom cleaned pretty regularly, but not perfectly like she used to. The condo in Meguro had always been spotless, because Dad liked things tidy and went around putting things in order whenever he had a spare moment.
Mom didn’t peek at my cell phone or messages out of curiosity anymore, either. She played around on her own phone, and didn’t pry into my life. If I went to meet old friends over drinks on a day off and came home late, she didn’t seem especially interested or ask many questions. I finally realized that all the times she’d been strict about my curfew or had seemed much more interested in my life back when I was a student, she’d simply been carrying out a role.
In the mornings when I was running late and rushing to get dressed, Mom would send a cheery Have a good day! over my way. She said it differently from the way she used to say it as my mother. I couldn’t have said how, exactly. But it sounded more free, like she was thinking only of her own day as it lay ahead.
Another thing that felt new to me was how Mom, with her slightly tubby figure, took to dressing in a small selection of T-shirts and sweatshirts with jeans, her belly perched on the waistband of her jeans. At home, she wore a matching set of thick men’s sweatshirts and sweatpants that she’d bought at a boutique catering to young people, halfway down the main street. Some days it seemed like she lay about at home all day, while on others she seemed to go out eagerly, although I had no idea what she got up to during the day.
This was our new normal for a while.
Aside from her new wardrobe of youthful clothing, and a vintage Fire-King mug with a picture of Snoopy from Peanuts that she’d bought in the neighborhood, she didn’t even seem to be shopping much.
I’d expected her to struggle with all that free time, and be constantly coming in Les Liens, so I was a little taken aback.
I was seeing Mom outside of her role as mother for the first time.
For instance, she only bought one of the Snoopy mugs, for herself. That would never have happened before. She would have purchased a set of three, one for each of us, or a pair at the very least.
Was this what she was like when she was younger? I wondered. In college, falling in love, working part-time, had she lived frugally in a friend’s cheap apartment, and sat by the window looking up at the sky?
She’d placed the small antique table she’d bought at Yamada Shoten next to the low stools which had been in the apartment when I moved in, but instead of sitting on a stool, she was sitting on the floor with her elbows on the seat, perched by the window like a puppy.
“Mom, what do you even do all day?” I asked.
“Not telling,” she said, with a smile.
“Not fair! You know exactly where I go,” I said.
“There,” she said, and pointed out the window at the bistro with its old wooden door and triangular window.
“See?” I said. “I’m curious. I feel like the parent now, like we’ve switched roles.”
It might have been my imagination, but Mom seemed to have lost a little weight, and her skin looked younger, after having been dry and pallid for so long. Today she was wearing a pale pink I [HEART] SHIMOKITA! T-shirt designed by Keiichi Sokabe, a cool rock musician who lived locally and owned a record store and café a few streets away. The T-shirt was pretty tight on her, so I almost said, Mom, that color’s not the most slimming—but I restrained myself.
To go with it, she had on her usual vintage jeans, and bare feet, although it was getting cold. I couldn’t believe it—Mom, who used to wear pantyhose even at the height of summer.
“There are a few different ways my day can go,” she said. “But basically, I get up, and we have some breakfast, and take our time over good coffee, right? And I see you off, and watch you go through that door into the bistro. I can hear you say Good morning! as you go inside.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “It’s like parents’ day at school.”
“You can’t go wrong while you can still greet people confidently. This is a fact. So it always reassures me. I think, What a good girl Yocchan is, thank you god,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say.
“After that I space out for a little, then clear things away. Wash the dishes, since you don’t have a dishwasher. I put them in that basket, and, guess what, I leave them there. Drip-dry.”
“Fair enough, we don’t have that many dishes.”
“Next, I do a light clean, with a duster and a broom and a dustpan and a rag. Easy peasy. I clean the toilet as well. I wish it wasn’t Japanese-style, since I have to bend down more, but as a freeloader I can’t complain.”
“True,” I said.
“Then I go on my cell phone and check my e-mail, and let people who want to see me know I’ve moved in with my daughter. If there’s a package for me at the old place, well, I’ve asked the super to take care of it, but I still go back once in a while. Sometimes people send perishables and things. I don’t see Dad’s ghost anymore. I think it’s because I’m feeling happier. More like—living there feeling all shadowy, I might have ended up slipping into his world, maybe.”
“Let’s go back together sometime,” I said. “I miss Dad too, ghost or not.”
“Okay, let’s go back together when we have to, the next time someone sends us food, or there’s a residents’ meeting. I still don’t feel like staying there overnight, but you can take a boyfriend there if you want to. Just tell me where you are so I don’t worry. Well, I will anyway, a little, but I’m sure things will go fine once they taste your cooking. Feel free to open a good bottle of wine—I’ve left the wine cooler on. I brought one back the other week and drank the whole thing. I’m sorry, I didn’t even tell you,” she said.
“I spotted the empty when I took the trash out,” I said. “But you know, I’m too busy to be staying the night with anyone right now.”
“When I worked in a jazz café, back in the day, customers were always dropping in to see me, all day long. I went on a lot of dates,” Mom said, seeming disappointed. “Anyway, then at lunchtime I take my purse and my keys and my cell phone, and wander out.
“First, I stop by One Love on Pure Road, just over there, and browse the old books—I can never quite tell what’s for sale, and what’s the owner Hacchan’s personal collection—and chat to Hacchan a little. Stuff like our hopes for the future, or how baffling the modern world can be, that kind of thing.
“And gardening. How to get lotus to bloom. He says he’ll have some tubers to share at replanting time, early next year, so we’ll be able to have lotus flowers here by the windowsill, too. There’s a cool local gardener called Mr. Tanba who’s an expert on lotus, and he’ll come out and plant them up for you, with the right mix of fertilizer in the soil and everything. Doesn’t that sound exciting? How refreshing would it be to have big lotus flowers right there by the window once summer comes around? Anyway, that’s the kind of thing we gossip about, and Hacchan always makes some good strong English tea, and sometimes I tidy up around the place for him as a thank-you,” she said.
“Since when are you so close with that old guy?” I asked, slightly reeling from the revelation that Mom planned to still be here next year.
“We’re neighbors! And we’re around the same age, you know, so I couldn’t help getting to know him if I passed by.
“Anyway, after that, I either go to the traditional tea house and say hi to Eri-chan the manager and the pet tortoises, and order the Japanese tea of the day along with some rice crackers or sweet dumplings, and take my time over refills, or I go to the coffee shop and have cinnamon toast, with strong coffee and lots of whipped cream on the side. Or, if it’s a day when the Thai restaurant’s open for lunch, I have their papaya salad with sticky rice. That chef Miyuki’s Thai food is something else! She grinds up the spices and things right there in front of you. I never really liked Thai food that much until I tasted hers. She and your chef, Michiyo, are definitely the standout cooks around here.
“So that’s about how my afternoon usually g
oes. I love getting pizza at Rokusan, or La Verde’s is good too. I can easily polish off a whole one on my own. Occasionally I splurge and get a traditional full-course lunch at Asuka. And the whole time, I’m slowly making my way through In Search of Lost Time, which I never got a chance to read. I got the books from Hacchan’s—I rented the whole set for two thousand yen; well, actually, he said I could borrow them, even though his shop’s a bookstore and not a lending library, so I kind of just left some money with him.
“Speaking of books, and I know this is pretty fannish of me, but whenever I hear the writer Osamu Fujitani’s got a new book coming out, I go to the bookstore called Ficciones that he runs himself, upstairs near the hamburger place, buy the book and get it autographed, and then run to the café above your bistro and read it from cover to cover. Then I compose a letter with my thoughts on the book and slip it through the letterbox at Ficciones. How very decadent! Mr. Fujitani’s not only a fantastic writer, he’s also incredibly good-looking. He has a great voice, and tells such funny stories, is so sophisticated and—most importantly—whip-smart, plus he has lovely big hands. He’s just as intellectual and funny as the main characters in his books. I’m a huge fan. He just gives me such a thrill! He’s the kind of man I wish I could have married, to tell the truth.
“Further inside the building where Mr. Fujitani’s shop is, there’s also a Thai massage salon, run by a studious young man called Hirota-san. I saw an ad and decided to take a chance, but what do you know, getting stretched by a young person really makes you feel rejuvenated. I don’t indulge that often, but I sometimes go when I’ve got a headache, because that can clear it up instantly. I know you’ve been saying you get back pain. I bet Thai massage would really help. I’ll bring you there any time.
“What else? Sometimes I go to Taimado, the hemporium, and buy an outrageous T-shirt, or some lotion, or something. The people there are all really nice, even though they look quite outlandish. Then I’ll go to their restaurant, and have some hemp food. It really clears you out, that stuff.
“The day passes pretty quickly when I go for one of these options. And it costs hardly anything.
“Otherwise, I walk down to Sangenjaya to the big Tsutaya to browse magazines, or get bread from the famous sourdough bakery. You know the soft raisin loaf we sometimes have for breakfast? After that I go to the cute café round the back of the Carrot Tower, and have a cup of coffee and a bean-based dessert. I like acting as if I’m on vacation like that. It helps me feel like I’ve achieved something.
“The main thing I’m careful of is to really take my time when I’m walking. Go slowly, like I used to when I was a student. Because that’s all I’ve got now. Time.”
“It sounds fun. Like a life of leisure,” I said, impressed.
“You know how the flow of time through a day slows down around late afternoon, and then quickens again after the sun goes down? I finally recovered my ability to sense it, recently, and now I can get in touch with that flow each day.
“I can sense the border between when time dribbles on and stretches, like a warm rice cake, and when it suddenly pulls in tight, and speeds up again. I love being able to do that. I look forward to it every day.
“I’d forgotten about it, you know? Even though when I was a kid, I sensed it no problem, even if I stayed inside all day.
“That’s the kind of phase I’m in right now. I want to let myself take in the flow of time again, without having to think or worry about anything.
“I feel like if I was back at the apartment, I might spend my days like Dad was still there. As though I was married to a ghost. Lining up shoes in the entry, cleaning, making something to eat, putting the leftovers in the freezer, throwing them out after a month. Feeling like a robot.
“I know there are shops and restaurants I could go to, back in Meguro, and people I could see. But those are people who met me when I was married with one daughter to a musician who played keyboards for singers who were well respected, if not famous. In Shimokitazawa I’m no one, just a washed-up middle-aged woman. And that’s okay, here.
“That said, it’s not like I always feel fine. There are times I want to rip my hair out, wondering what I’m playing at. Plenty of days when nothing feels right, and I’m frustrated, and my feet feel like lead, or when I don’t see the point in anything and I spend the whole day here in bed. But on better days, I can feel it—time stretching and shrinking. Anyway, the fact I can talk about this means I’m doing pretty well. I was lucky enough to meet and marry the man I loved without ever having had my heart broken, and once we were together, I didn’t have too much trouble with my mother-in-law or anything, so I’ve never felt low for this long without being able to get out before, except maybe when my parents died. But I wasn’t living with them at that point, so even then it wasn’t like my daily life was destroyed, like now. It’s almost like my body had totally forgotten how to grieve.
“You know, I’m not a real resident, and it’s not like I’d campaign against it, or anything, but I worry that if they built a big new building by the station, the people who ended up working there would keep disappearing and getting replaced with new people all the time, even if we said hello and got to know them just like we do with our neighbors now. They could get moved to a different branch of the chain store, or quit because they were only temping anyway. And the ingredients they’d use might get delivered frozen from some central factory, and you wouldn’t get to hear those interesting and relatable stories about what was good at the market that morning, or how the new dish they were developing didn’t turn out, that kind of thing? I’m just making all this up in my head, I know, but this is what I picture.
“It takes time to get to know people, let alone to tell whether you like each other, so it really makes me wonder, you know, what you’re supposed to do if they just keep coming through like a revolving door, in one day and out another, and you don’t even have time to figure out who they are?
“It seems like there are a lot of people in this town who’ve been here a long time. And those people are mostly around my age, give or take half a generation, which takes the pressure off. I don’t have to pretend to be anything, so I can just step out the door as I am.
“Of course, I know this is all an illusion. It’s not like I work hard to make a living and live in this neighborhood.”
“It’s not just an illusion, Mom,” I said. “You’ve got your feet on the ground this whole time, even while you’re also slightly floating above things. I feel like after you spent so long taking care of Dad, and raising me, managing the finances and running the house, being solidly in that role, it’s okay for you to keep living like this for now. For me, too, even living with you as though we were just friends, I feel like you’re giving me a lot of strength.”
“How kind you are, Yocchan,” Mom said. “I should be grateful for you listening to me whine for so long. When I was alone I thought my head would explode with all the regrets I have.
“Because—if I’d really done all those things as well as you say, how could he have left us like he did?” Mom said.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I’m saying it again and I’ll say it as many times as it takes. Dad was a good person, and I loved him, and he provided for us, but what happened to him was in no way your fault. I don’t know what he was really thinking, but never having drunk, or partied, or gambled, and on top of that never having wanted to be famous or anything like that, I think the problem was that he took everything too seriously. And because of that, when he had an affair, he got in too deep, and ended up where he did,” I said.
“None of his friends knew he was so seriously involved with anyone,” Mom said. “At first I thought they were all trying to cover for him, or spare my feelings, but it seems they’re all telling the truth. Never seen her, they said, not at a gig, not at an after-party. So who on earth was she? They might have gone back a long way, for all we know.”
“I guess since she was a distant relation, they
might always have known of each other,” I said. “But maybe they reconnected recently, and went too far too fast? We packed away all his diaries and notebooks and letters without looking through them, so it’s a possibility.”
“I still can’t believe he died without even giving us a call. Was it bad luck that he forgot his cell phone that day? Or did he leave it behind on purpose? I know there’s no point wondering, but I can’t help it.
“He was always a little clumsy, or maybe unlucky, when it came down to the important things. Even so, I think—even if he was having a love affair, even then—how could he die, just like that? Did we really mean so little to him?”
I nodded.
“When I start thinking like that, I know living like this is what I need to be doing,” Mom said. “But I’m not trying to punish myself. It’s like physical therapy. Plus, I’ve got you. If you weren’t here, or if you’d refused to have anything to do with me after leaving home and starting out on your own, I might have got even more down. So thanks for having me.”
I would have refused, if I hadn’t been afraid you’d kill yourself, I thought but didn’t say. In Mom’s eyes I was probably still a child—a child who accepted and loved and wanted to spend time with her mother no matter what. Even if she might claim not to think of me that way anymore, she’d probably never truly accept it, deep down. I was scared, too, to look beneath the surface of my new independence and find out just how deep and wide the seams in the rock that connected me to her went. For now, it was best to live in a way that let me avoid having to confront it.
“MOM, WHAT ARE YOU going to do with the condo?” I asked.
“I can’t even begin to think about that right now,” Mom said.
Her long eyelashes, which in Meguro she’d always kept groomed by going to the salon, were now unkempt and devoid of mascara. But the shape of her face somehow looked clearer and younger now than it had before.