Frances Itani - Requiem

I went next door and hauled up one of the long-buried boxes—a fabulous collection, from what I could see. And helped set up the turntable Lena and I no longer used. We played mostly CDs now, except for tapes in the car. Still, we’d hung on to our LPs, as had Miss Carrie.

Lena needed no persuasion to get away for a cottage weekend. Fall term was underway and she’d been reading essays for weeks. Student appointments had begun, but she could spare three days.

She announced that she would leave all work at home. She hadn’t been feeling well lately. She had a sore throat; she was tired and overworked. “I am definitely in need of a break,” she told me.

She packed lightly: jeans, running shoes, a bulky sweater, a three-inch volume of Collected Stories by William Trevor.

It was my job to choose the music: Beethoven for me, Goodman for Lena—nothing else would do. I took graphite pencils, paper, pen and ink. We packed the cooler with the green lid, and Lena washed a few leaves of romaine before we left. We took salmon steaks and cheese, fall tomatoes and fresh corn, a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine. Lena decided to bring the chequered oilcloth we used as a picnic-table cover, and threw it into the car at the last minute. We drove to the cabin late Saturday morning—I had found the ad in a weekend paper—and Lena, holding the directions in her lap and sitting in direct sun in the passenger seat, nodded off all the way there.

When we first sighted the cabin, we knew it was better, by far, than we could have hoped for. Basil, in the back seat, nose out the side window, released a wolf-howl he couldn’t contain as I pulled up. We stepped out and looked around in wonder. A range of hills lay in soft folds beyond the far side of the river. A series of valleys was ablaze: oranges and reds, yellows and greens, one hue blending seamlessly to the next. Oaks were spaced along the water’s edge, and chipmunks in the high branches chattered and tossed acorns to the ground. Squirrels darted in every direction. Brilliant clusters of red maples rose up behind the cabin. All of this, within the crisp, earthy aroma of fall. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the blaring of trumpets.

I heard the whoop of pleasure as Lena flicked off her sandals. She rolled up her jeans and waded into the water, with Basil close behind her. He stank of river afterwards, and his legs and belly needed a rinse, but he wouldn’t be held back. Nor did we try to restrain him.

Lena found a large, flat stone to stand on and rocked back and forth, barefoot in shallow water, testing for balance, surveying what she promptly named the realm of beauty that lay before her. Some of the rocks were slippery with moss, a vivid green that shone up through the water. But the rock Lena chose was moss-free, ancient grey and solid.

I began to unload the car and found a set of keys hanging inside the screened porch. I turned to look at Lena. Hands on hips, head tilted back, a soft curve of belly thrust forward. Her dark hair was tucked behind her ears, her skin paler than usual in the sunlight. Shadows had deepened down the lines of one shoulder. She was inhaling the scent of early afternoon, of leaves swirling down, of river itself. It was a moment of perfection in the midst of fall, one short-lived moment. I wanted to set down the cooler, the food, the chequered tablecloth. I wanted to drop everything to the grass while I drew this picture, but I didn’t. I have never drawn it, though every shadow, every curve, every feeling I had in that moment is stored.

I see the picture as vertical, despite the river flowing across the bottom of the mind’s frame. I see the structure of the whole. I see the shade of Lena’s faded jeans; the outline of what I knew to be black bikini underwear beneath; the shape of her calves; the distortion of her ankles where they disappeared beneath the waterline; her T-shirt with horizontal stripes in cream and indigo; the way the stripes held a diagonal, rumpled pull when she stretched her arms overhead for the joy of being part of this . She wanted only to sink into this , and be thankful.

And so did I.

We had brought along a cage for Basil and padded it with a rug-end, and left it in the porch with the wire door open so that he could come and go as he pleased. He liked to sleep in the cage at night when we travelled, as long as the door was open and he knew he could get out. At home, he had a small mattress in his basket. It was only after Lena was admitted to hospital that he began to shred his bedding. But that came later.

Good things , I remind myself. Only good things .

The river was full and peaceful in the late glow of sun. A family arrived at the second cabin next door, a couple in their thirties with an eight-year-old daughter named Florence, who had brought along a friend, Lise. The two young girls tossed their brown hair, jumped from stone to stone in the shallow river, raced in and out of long shadows thrown by the trees. They befriended Basil and tagged after him, and collected acorns, and hooted when he held the squirrels at bay. They broke off layers of shale along the river’s edge. They skipped flat stones in the water and glanced back every now and then for approval, waving to their parents and to Lena and me.

Lena settled into a canvas lawn chair, her head bowed over her book. A dragonfly dipped, rose, dipped again. With its miraculous double set of wings, it hovered above her shoulder on a current of air. Aware of me watching, she looked up, her fingers holding her place in the book.

“This man can write,” she said. “Really write. Look at his face on the cover.” She held out Trevor’s book for inspection. “This is the way I want to look when I’m—well, whatever he was when the book was published. Sixty, maybe. I have a little over a decade to work on the lines of my face.”

In the evening, our neighbours created a rock circle close to the water’s edge, lit a bonfire and invited us to join them. We talked and laughed; there was nothing noisy, nothing brash. We wrapped ourselves in sweaters and listened to crickets and the murmur of flowing water.

Lena said she was tired, and we went to bed early and lay side by side in the dark, my left arm around her as always, her head against my shoulder. The curtains were closed but we could hear night sounds through the screens: far-off calls across the river; a distant, eruptive laugh; the sizzle of the fire being doused by water before our neighbours retired. There was a cassette player on the bedside table; I put in a tape and Benny’s clarinet began, the volume low.

“You’d think the scale was oiled,” Lena said. “The way he glides up and down it.”

That was the night I told her about First Father’s readings of the fates.

“What!” she said. “All these years we’ve been married and you’ve never told me any of this? I could have died and never known.”

“You never asked,” I said.

She couldn’t stop laughing. The mattress shook, the bed shook. I smiled to myself in the dark.

“Did your father always start with Hiroshi’s fate—I mean, Henry’s?”

“First Father?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Hiroshi was number-one son. Stronger, according to his fate. He was skilled; he was given responsibilities as a child. I was less important, being number two. Also, I was shorter, smaller, scrawnier—then.”

“But more important than Keiko, Kay.”

“She was a girl. That’s how it was,” I said.

“Thank God that’s changed.”

“Not entirely. Not in some families. And not only Japanese families, I might add.”

“I’m a woman—must you be reminded?”

“Not at all. Never, in fact.”

“Henry, born in the year of the monkey, was told that he wasn’t supposed to marry a tiger—and he did?”