Life Ceremony, page 4
“Yes, Mom, that’s exactly what I mean,” Keiichi said happily. “We don’t have to eat out of the same pot to understand each other.”
“You think?” Eiji seemed to have more to say, but seeing the disastrous state of the table, he appeared to resign himself to the situation. “I guess our ideas are obsolete now,” he muttered. “And even if Kumi did carry on our family’s traditions, maybe it doesn’t really matter when you’ll only eat sweets or potato fries anyway . . .”
“Right!” Keiichi shouted.
“I agree!” I couldn’t help shouting. “I think eating something is a matter of trusting the world that produced it. But there’s also sincerity in not trusting something and refusing it. I myself wouldn’t eat these products if my husband didn’t buy them. They’re weird colors, they feel like plastic on the tongue, and they smell like air freshener. Garbage, as you put it. But I like the way my husband feels about eating them, so I end up just going along with him.”
“I see . . .”
“How about a toast?” Keiichi shouted excitedly. “Here’s to all our uniquely disgusting food!”
My sister nodded enthusiastically and stood up, saying, “I’ll go get you some french fries from McDonald’s!”
Keiichi stopped her. “No, don’t bother. I’ve got some Pringles, macadamia nut chocolate, and Pepsi in my bag. That’ll do for me.”
“That’s just like you to be eating that sort of thing, Keiichi,” said Sachie. “We always struggled with your eating problem ever since you were little. But I suppose that’s who you are.”
Everyone seemed strangely excited, babbling away and not making much sense. But I felt some kind of emotional harmony prevailing, and I went to get some beer from the refrigerator.
“Well then, everyone, how about some beer? There’s also mineral water and a Happy Future Foods drink for anyone who doesn’t want alcohol.”
“I’ll have a beer,” said Eiji.
“Mineral water for me,” my sister said.
“May I have some more barley tea?” said Sachie.
Everyone took what they wanted, and we raised our glasses high.
“Well then, kanpai!”
“Here’s to everyone’s disgusting food!”
We were just getting into full swing when I heard the sound of a key in the lock. The living room door opened, and my husband poked his head in.
“I’m back . . . ah, so everyone’s still here, I see. I’m sorry for barging in like this.”
“Not at all,” Keiichi said, bowing his head. “Please excuse us for being here.”
My husband smiled and shook his hand, then sat down in the chair I’d been sitting in. I went to the refrigerator to get some of that blue drink he liked so much, and I heard him cry out, “Wow! What a magnificent spread you have here! Please do let me join you. This is the epitome of cross-cultural exchange!”
My sister came in and whispered in my ear, “What’s he going on about?”
“Beats me . . .”
As we puzzled over this unexpected development, we heard him speaking eloquently.
“You know, today I’ve been at a conference for exchanging business ideas. I was invited to join a seminar on food. It was amazing! Life-changing! Food is an excellent means for cultural exchange. The things you can learn from each meal! And not just nutrition. When you eat, you ingest culture, too. I realized that’s where the future of our alimentary lifestyle lies.”
I somehow got the idea where he was coming from and whispered to my sister, “That seminar really got to him, huh? He’s so gullible.”
My husband had always aspired to a higher living standard, so he was easily taken in by study groups and seminars that used it as a lure. He was especially susceptible to expensive things, so I was sure he must have paid a high fee for the seminar.
“Look, there are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year,” he went on in a rapturous tone, “and at three meals a day that makes a total of one thousand and ninety-five meals. Every single one of them is an opportunity, you know. You keep learning about different cultures through those meals, and that’s the key to being successful in life. People who always eat the same food are constantly missing out on the opportunity to learn, you see.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Sachie, who looked completely lost.
Ignoring her, my husband picked up a small plate off the table. “Wow, this looks so delicious! The whole table is glowing! What sort of bread is this?”
Kumi jumped up and ran over to him. “Oh! That’s from the magical city of Dundilas. It’s—”
“Oh, you made it, Kumi? It’s wonderful. May I have a piece?”
“Um, well, sure . . . but I don’t know if you’ll like it . . .”
“Eating things you don’t like—that’s what enriches our existence, Kumi,” he said, and winked at her.
Kumi smiled wanly and sat down. Since my husband had taken the chair I’d been sitting in, I perched on the stool in the kitchen. I felt kind of scared to go back to the table.
“This is something I’ve never seen before too. Looks tasty!” he said, putting a small caterpillar on the bread from the magical city of Dundilas. He added some Happy Future Foods freeze-dried vegetables and picked up Keiichi’s Pepsi.
“Look at this! A perfect fusion of cultures! The number of cultures I can learn about in this one meal!”
And with that, he folded the piece of bread in two and bit into the unholy mix.
“Urg . . .” Sachie held her handkerchief to her mouth.
In my husband’s mouth, the magical city of Dundilas bread and the caterpillar and a Happy Future Food product and the Pepsi all blended together. Nausea rose up in me, and I had to look away.
Everyone had gone pale and was staring at my husband. He carried on chewing, oblivious to the consternation around him. His cheerful voice rang out, “Mmm, this is sooo good!” The sound of him chomping in the silence of the room grated on my eardrums. “What a magnificent spread! Absolutely delicious!”
We were transfixed by the monstrous sight of my husband eating.
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Summer is the season for kissing. That’s what her friend Kikue used to say, Yoshiko suddenly remembered as she took in the strong fragrance of the summer’s night through the screen door.
Yoshiko had just turned seventy-five. She had never had sex and hadn’t kissed anyone either. She had never even once had intercourse with her older husband, who had died five years earlier. Both of their daughters had been conceived by artificial insemination, and she was still a virgin when she became a mother. Both daughters were now married, and she was thoroughly enjoying living alone in the house her husband had left to her.
In all other respects she had lived an absolutely normal life, marrying, having a family, and getting old. Even so, the moment she let drop in some conversation or other that “I have never had that experience, you see,” she would get a shocked reaction: “What? Why? I mean, what about your children? Eh? Artificial insemination? Why on earth would you do that?” Everyone would start nosily inquiring into the details of Yoshiko’s sexual orientation and sex life, and ultimately she got fed up with this and made sure to keep quiet about it. When she said nothing, everyone treated her as an ordinary person. Yoshiko thought this kind of response from people was shallow, cruel, and arrogant.
She was just thinking it was about time to run her bath when her cell phone rang.
It was Kikue, who lived nearby.
“Hello, it’s me,” she said. “Won’t you come over tonight? My little sister just sent me a box of peaches, and I don’t know what to do with them. You were good at making that stuff, weren’t you? You know, that boiled fruit thing.”
“Compote?”
“That’s the stuff. Come and make some. I get off work at ten, so come and meet me at the store. About an hour from now, okay?”
“Come on, you’re not trying to take an elderly woman for a night stroll, are you? Not that I mind, though.”
She’d come to know Kikue, who was the same age as she was, in a club at the local community center. Kikue had this wayward side to her that Yoshiko didn’t dislike. She had remained single her whole life, and after retiring from her job she’d been living off her pension and the wages from her part-time job at the local convenience store. Yoshiko had been taken aback by her working a night shift where she had to briskly carry around heavy cardboard boxes, but Kikue coolly boasted, “I grew up on a farm, so this is nothing. It just takes a kind of discipline.”
Yoshiko walked through the residential area to the store where Kikue worked, arriving just as Kikue was leaving.
“Don’t you have a date tonight?” Yoshiko asked teasingly.
“Don’t be silly. I only go on dates when it’s raining. Nights as pleasant as this feel too wholesome for kissing on the street,” Kikue replied primly.
Kikue had never experienced marriage, but she loved sex, and even now she was always chatting up men in the store, and she often went to bed with boys forty or fifty years younger than herself. She bragged about how even the manager was scared of her, calling her a nymphomaniac.
The two elderly women walked along the dark street together. In this residential area at night, with hardly a soul in sight, the noise of traffic echoed like the sound of waves.
Kikue took something out of the convenience store bag she was carrying. “Would you like one of these?” It was a plastic package of sweet warabimochi dumplings. “They were near the sell-by date and about to be thrown out, so I bought them. They’re nicely chilled and delicious.”
As she walked, she poured some molasses syrup over them and put one in her mouth.
“You know, warabimochi resemble a boy’s tongue. That’s why I wanted to eat them. I feel like I’m kissing someone.”
“Really? Well, I don’t want one then,” Yoshiko said, and shrugged.
“Oh dear, I shouldn’t have said that.” Kikue laughed.
Despite being polar opposites, they really were very alike. When Yoshiko had confessed that she was a virgin, all Kikue said was, “Really?”
“Well, just one then,” Yoshiko said, taking one. Putting it to her mouth, she tore off a soft lump with her teeth and felt a rush of satisfaction.
“Such a passionate kiss!” Kikue laughed again, and their footsteps rang out brightly in the hushed night streets.
Two’s Family
Yoshiko arrived at the hospital ward to find Kikue’s bed empty. She must have gone to the bathroom or something. A women’s weekly magazine, headphones, and various other items were strewn across the bed. Just the same as at home, Yoshiko thought drily and started putting them away.
“Visiting again today?” asked the woman in the next bed. “Coming every day must be quite a chore.”
She must be in her fifties or so, thought Yoshiko. She herself was now seventy years old, and the woman seemed quite young to her. Yoshiko smiled at her, the corners of her eyes crinkling.
“It’s not like I have anything better to do. It’s boring being home all alone when you’re elderly.”
The woman didn’t look any less impressed. “That’s more than most people would do. Are you sisters? It’s a great comfort at times like this to have a sister you still get along well with at an advanced age.”
“No, we’re not sisters. But we’ve been living together for about forty years now, so we are family.”
The woman suddenly looked confused. “Oh . . . is that so? I see . . .” she said vaguely, then clammed up and didn’t speak any more.
She was probably thinking there must be some complicated family issues, or that they were an aging lesbian couple. Yoshiko couldn’t be bothered to explain, so she gave her a smile and bowed, then got back to tidying up Kikue’s bed.
“Oh, you’re already here?” Kikue came back into the ward dragging a drip stand along with her. “It’s such a pain going to the toilet. And I have to take a urine sample every damn time too,” she grumbled as she lowered herself onto the bed.
“Here, some underwear and a towel,” said Yoshiko. “I’ll put them in this drawer for you. And you’ve been moaning for some time now about wanting earphones with a longer cable, haven’t you? I dropped by the electronics store and got you some.”
“Thanks. Sorry to put you to so much trouble,” Kikue said, taking the plastic bag containing the earphones and listlessly turning on the TV. “There’s nothing worth watching.”
Yoshiko put a cardigan over her shoulders, catching sight of a notebook and ball pen lying by the pillow. “You’ve been writing again?”
“Yes, I have. I’ll read it to you once it’s finished.”
“No thanks, it gives me the creeps. It’s not like we’re schoolgirls or anything.” Yoshiko was frowning, but deep down she was relieved.
Just after the cancer had been discovered, Kikue had grown quite haggard and, between tests, had started writing her will in her notebook. Yoshiko kept telling her to stop being so gloomy, but she wouldn’t listen.
Kikue had always been in the habit of keeping a diary and composing poems when she felt down. But the will was the most depressing thing she’d ever written.
Then she’d learned that she could be cured by an operation, and, her spirits clearly lifted, she started writing trashy poems to pass the time. She’d once shown them to Yoshiko, but they all appeared to be about her sex life, although it wasn’t clear whether she was making fun of herself or being serious when she wrote lines like, “My wrinkled fingers traced the lines of your bones beneath your shirt before undoing the white buttons” and “I put on my reading glasses and looked up at you, to see your watery pitch-black eyes gazing down on me.”
“Do you mind if I go to take my bath?” Kikue asked. “I’m sorry to go when you’ve only just arrived, but I reserved the bath for this time.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll read a book or something while I’m waiting for you. Are you okay going alone?”
“Don’t be silly, I’m not that weak,” Kikue said with a frown. She called the nurse to remove the drip, picked up a change of clothes and a towel, and left the ward again.
Yoshiko and Kikue had been classmates in high school. They had made a promise to each other that if they hadn’t married by the time they reached thirty, they’d live together. Lots of other girls said similar things, but they were the only two who actually went through with it.
With Yoshiko being too guarded and Kikue too promiscuous, it seemed unlikely that either of them would ever find a marriage partner. And so, on Yoshiko’s thirtieth birthday, they had started living together.
The following year, Yoshiko was artificially inseminated with sperm she’d bought from a sperm bank, and she gave birth to their eldest daughter, followed by a second daughter the next year. Then, when they were thirty-five, Kikue gave birth to their third daughter. They bought a condo in a suburb of Chiba and lived happily as a family of five.
The children were a lot of work, but they were adorable. Yet everyone around them seemed uncomfortable with the arrangement.
“Ms. Yamazaki, um . . . you share an apartment with Ms. Kojima, don’t you—Nana’s mom, from class two, year two, right?” said the homeroom teacher, looking uncomfortably around the living room on a home visit. Their eldest daughter had been in the final year of elementary school at the time.
“Nana is our youngest daughter. We raise them equally, regardless of who gave birth to them.”
“Ahh . . . but children are easily confused by such complicated home environments. You should simply explain to them that you are two single mothers sharing a flat together. It’ll be fine! Mizuho’s a bright child, she’ll understand.”
“No, Kikue Kojima and I are family. We are raising our children equally, as sisters. Is there anything wrong with that?”
The teacher’s expression alternated between wondering whether it was her responsibility to do something about this troublesome pupil or whether she could let it slide. “Ah, well . . . I guess there are all kinds of families . . . and Mizuho’s grades are good,” she answered evasively.
When Yoshiko told her daughter upon her return from cram school about the teacher’s visit, Mizuho replied, unperturbed, “Well she’s an ordinary person, after all. Of course ordinary people are going to respond like that.”
Yoshiko pressed her, concerned. “Do other people at school say things too? You should tell me if they do.”
But Mizuho looked untroubled and, sounding mature beyond her years, simply said, “Mom, do you really expect society to understand? As long as we’re okay with things, why should it bother us? If it does, I don’t think we can carry on like this.”
Yoshiko’s friends had also said things to her. Are you two actually lesbians? Why don’t you just come out and say that you’re only sharing an apartment because you can’t afford to live on your own? She could hit them! Hadn’t they themselves always said they would live together if they didn’t find partners in good time? She and Kikue had simply carried through on that promise. Yet hardly anyone understood this.
There were nights when she wept silently, worried that they were burdening their children with the arrangement. Kikue’s self-assured attitude never wavered, however. “Having two mothers makes for a fantastic family environment, doesn’t it? The children are super happy, you know,” she would say, but Yoshiko knew that she sometimes secretly wrote about her fears in her notebook.
They had been encouraging and supporting each other for forty years now. The three daughters had grown up to be mutually supportive sisters. The eldest had married and had moved to Oita, in Kyushu, when her husband was transferred there for work, and now had two children. The second had moved to France and was studying to be a translator, while the youngest had gone to university in Kyoto and upon graduation had found a job in the city. Each was living happily in her own way.
