Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Our return journey was much more cheerful, thanks to the wine we’d had and the stories we’d just heard.

“I can’t believe we used to know someone who’s that loaded now.”

“And to think Papa played a part in it.”

“Did I ever tell you that he changed a lightbulb in my bedroom?”

“No! You should’ve saved it as a souvenir!”

Once we got out of the car, however, and started down the seedy sidewalk from the parking lot to Nanae’s loft, we were more subdued.

While we were getting ready for bed, she seemed downhearted, perhaps because I was going back to Michigan the next day and wouldn’t be coming back before my return to Japan. I was brushing my teeth and Nanae was wiping mascara off with a Kleenex when she sighed, “And me, I’m only getting poorer by the day.” I realized that she was comparing herself to Taro Azuma, which seemed both funny and sad. I felt sorry for her—and for myself, burdened with her.

IN MICHIGAN IT seemed as if spring would never come; then when it did, all too soon it was summer. One day I realized the cold was loosening its grip, and then overnight, the weather turned hot, with the sun whitening the concrete streets. As if to reward themselves for having endured such a long, harsh winter, everyone walked around wearing as little as they could get away with. I too wanted to reward myself, and put on a bright, snug-fitting little sleeveless dress and open-toed heels and proudly marched into town—a suitable way to say goodbye to my youth, I suppose, looking back on it now.

On my way back to Japan, when I changed planes at O’Hare in Chicago, I called Nanae. There was time to spare, so we chatted for a while about nothing in particular. Then, just before we said goodbye, I asked, “Do you want to come back to Japan?”

Having published my first novel, I felt willing to be more available. If my sister wanted to come back, I was ready to help. It was just possible that returning would open up new opportunities for her.

Maybe she detected something different in my voice, for she sounded different herself. “That’s a possibility. I’ll think about it.”

SEVERAL YEARS PASSED before I heard anything new about Taro Azuma. During that period, I managed to publish a second novel, yet my family absorbed so much of my energy that I felt as if that interval had stolen half my life. Nanae didn’t make up her mind for a while, but eventually when I repeated my suggestion, she gave in all at once and, with a burst of energy I’d never imagined she had, packed up her two cats and was back in Japan in a flash. Soon after, there arrived a large stack of boxes, a few pieces of quasi-antique furniture that she couldn’t bear to part with, and the Steinway, colossal for a Tokyo-size apartment. She would have been better off sleeping under it. She sold her loft in SoHo, the Accord, and the tools she used for sculpting, which left her with some money even after she paid her debts. Helping her find a suitable apartment took nearly one year; helping her find a way of making a living took nearly two.

Then, when I finally got Nanae reasonably well settled in Tokyo, my mother fell ill and had to be hospitalized. The old age she had succeeded in keeping at bay caught up with her all at once. She came out of the hospital an old woman with white hair and a cane, her back bent—a cruel turn for someone who had been beautiful. Naturally, I had to take care of her as well. Until then, she’d been spending more than half her time abroad, as her boyfriend was again transferred, leaving the task of visiting my father at the nursing home to her daughters, principally me. She used to justify her behavior by claiming that this boyfriend, being younger, would look after her in her old age. Now she conveniently lost interest in him—and perhaps he in her—and decided to move near where I lived, saying, “Oh, I’m so lucky to have daughters to look after me. Men are so useless.” She said “daughters,” but we all knew she meant me. My mother and Nanae never got along after Nanae gave up her music. More resigned than indignant, I didn’t complain: I somehow knew all along that things would turn out like this. The backstage daughter now had to be the backbone of the family. Not long after this, my unhappy father died. I was the only one with him at the end.

When it was all over and I was able, as if finally surfacing from underwater, to catch my breath, I realized how much had changed. Death had taken away not only my father but a whole stratum of those I’d always thought of simply as “the adults.” My peers by now were all thick around the waist and neck; the generation I had continued thinking of as children were taller than I was. Even Japan’s “bubble” economy had burst, and the country had entered what would later be called the lost decade, mired in stagnation.

Time flew over me, its black wings spread.

IT WAS AGAIN from Mrs. Cohen that I heard about Taro Azuma. The University of Michigan invited me back to give a lecture about my second novel; after my lecture, I flew to New York. When I called her from my hotel in Manhattan, she answered with a surprisingly young voice—“Oh, Minae, it’s you!”—and, on learning I was free that night, offered to pick me up in her car at my hotel. She chatted, hands on the wheel, telling me that her husband had had a mild stroke and that they now had grandchildren. Yet, like her unchanged voice on the telephone, she remained the same as ever, her brown hair cut short, her fingernails manicured and brightly painted. Time must have stopped for her.

“New York has changed a lot,” she told me as she took me to Flushing, on Long Island. Immigrants had always come to this unprepossessing neighborhood, deprived though it was of trees or charm. Reflecting the recent influx of Asian immigrants to the East Coast, this part of Queens had become a second Chinatown, or rather Asiatown, its main street lined with restaurants of every Asian nationality imaginable—Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai. Mrs. Cohen took me to a Korean place with a huge parking lot, saying they served good food. The restaurant was also huge inside, with glaring fluorescent lights that reminded me of Japanese convenience stores. I couldn’t help wondering whether white people with lighter-colored eyes would need sunglasses to eat there. The heap of red meat they served on an enormous platter to two small women was a clear reminder that I was back in America.

Conversation eventually turned to things connected with my father’s death about a year ago. Our family hadn’t held a formal funeral; we just asked people from his company to join us for the memorial service, forty-nine days afterward, when Buddhists believe the spirit makes its final departure from this world. I hadn’t seen these people for almost a quarter of a century. Their behavior and appearance suggested they had all led reasonably successful lives, which made me rueful, even envious as I thought of my father’s final years. I told Mrs. Cohen that I’d brought with me a picture of him when he was young, before he had even met my mother, and had taken it to Rockefeller Center, where I perched on a bench and pulled it out, as a way of showing him a view he himself had been proud to show his family. With Mrs. Cohen I was more talkative than usual, for I knew she felt sad about his death, in her own way.

She put down her chopsticks and looked at me.

“When I heard about your dad, I immediately thought of Mr. Azuma. Your dad helped him out quite a bit, and I thought he’d want to offer his condolences, so I tried to contact him.”

I remembered the mischievous smile on my father’s round, bespectacled face when he told us that he’d suggested to him, “If they call you Dr. Azuma, let them.” While it was true that Azuma might be one of the few to genuinely mourn his death, he had not been among other acquaintances in the States we’d heard from after he died.