See Loss See Also Love: A Novel

破裂 (haretsu): rupture

Missing: adjective; absent—see: lost

IN JAPANESE, WE HAD NO actual translation for i miss you. the direct translation had become extinct, no longer a part of our conversations, existing only in romance novels. The sentence that we substituted was I’ll be lonely without you. But when we said it, we reflexively abandoned I and without you, leaving Will be lonely. Which of us became lonely because of the other’s absence wasn’t explicit. We left it to the air to take care of the rest, as if releasing the words was enough to understand one another. These three words floated like bubbles between two people, sharing the moment until the bubbles burst and blended into the world.

I’ll be lonely without you was a mistranslation because missing someone didn’t necessarily mean you would be lonely. Missing someone came from the outside. A momentary fact. It was innocent and healthy. Once you moved from the moment, you stopped missing, while loneliness stayed within you like a virus. It mutated, and only distractions allowed us to survive.

When I explained this to my mother-in-law, Bubbe, she shook her head and said, Japanese people––so specific yet so vague.

At least we make reliable cars, I said.

Cars have nothing to do with human emotion.

I laughed and told her our conversation should go into the story that I was writing for my class.

Do you ever miss me? she asked.

Yes of course.

Oh please. You left Boston for San Francisco after five months. You’d rather be alone than have us around to help you. You couldn’t stand it here. You can tell me the truth.

Then no, I don’t miss you, I said.

She brought her hand to her forehead, her predictably dramatic gesture.

I laughed louder, now clapping my hands. We were watching reruns of her favorite TV mystery on her bed, eating dark chocolate truffles. It was past two in the morning. We’d already gone through two boxes in four episodes.

My son was sleeping on the living room sofa bed, waiting for me to lie down beside him. He was at the age that’s old enough to fall asleep alone but young enough to long for my warmth. We visited my extended family every winter break. Yesterday and today we stayed with Bubbe in Lynn, north of Boston. Tomorrow we would leave to see my father-in-law and his wife even farther north, by New Hampshire.

Will you miss me tomorrow? she asked.

Let me think about it.

You’ve had eight years to answer this question. How much more time do you need?

Until you are gone.

Are you saying until I’m dead?

Yes.

How dare you! I’m going to have to teach you how to be polite.

No, I’d rather stay honest, I said, holding back my smile.

Come. Give me a hug. She beckoned me, so I put my arms around her and tapped her back. No no no, that is not a hug. Don’t pat me. I am not your dog. Keep your arms in one place, rest your head on my shoulder, and stay still, for five seconds. Hug me like you love me.

I can’t, I said.

Why? Don’t you love me? Not even a little?

It’s not that. I can’t hug like you said.

How long have you been in this family?

All right, I said, and I put my arms around her once more, and stayed still, my fingers spread on her back. She was wearing a nightgown made of thin cotton, and I could feel her sagging skin between my fingers. She was hugging me just the way I was hugging her. Her hair tickled my cheek and I heard 1920s jazz, a cornet solo, coming from the TV. I didn’t know if I should close my eyes or where I was supposed to look.

There, she said as she moved away. See, I told you, it’s not that hard.

You know what, I said. We don’t have ‘hug’ in our language either.

No ‘I miss you’ and no hugs. How do you know love?

We read the air, I said.

I see the father in the corner of my right eye every day at my son’s elementary school as parents and students gather for morning exercise assembly. He has twins, one who stays next to him until the bell goes off and the other who walks by me, and that’s how I know that the father has arrived. I knew his wife too; she died a year ago: cancer. I remember seeing her at the kids’ soccer games. On kickoff day, she wore a knit cap. It was September, Indian summer; the temperature had hit eighty degrees. I noticed her eyebrows were too perfectly drawn yet slightly out of place, and her eyes, to me, seemed bare and somehow incomplete. She was extremely pale, to the point that I could see green veins just below her skin.

Her cancer came back, a mother next to me whispered.

I didn’t know she’d had cancer before. Our kids weren’t in the same class.

As the soccer season moved on, her health deteriorated, and by the middle of the season, she sat in a camping chair that they brought, wearing a ski jacket, the knit cap, and two scarves while the other parents wore lightweight sweatshirts. I carried a blanket with me just in case she needed one, but someone always stood by her, giving her a hot drink from a thermos. So I laid the blanket on the grass and watched my son play, alone.

Shortly after the soccer season ended, I received an email from one of the mothers telling me that Patty Langton had passed away, surrounded by her family, with an attached sign-up sheet for weekend dinner shifts to help Patty’s husband. I didn’t sign up. The shift was already filled five months in advance; besides, I knew the hardest time would be a year and a half after her death. The first year we are too busy adjusting to our new reality, emotionally and practically. The grieving comes after three years, four years, much later, like when we are in the car on the way to work after dropping the kids off at school; the tiny gaps in our lives, that’s when we realize there is something wrong with us.

I don’t talk to him. I just watch him doing jumping jacks with his boy from the corner of my eye. When the bell goes off, I merge into the crowd and walk behind the father, looking at two deep horizontal creases on his tanned neck. Then I do the same the next day. The boy passes me by. I catch the father and his other boy doing jumping jacks, find more wrinkles on his neck, and leave.

The Death of the Fish

THE DAY AFTER ALEX’S FIFTH birthday, he asked me if he could have a fish for his sixth birthday. I said yes. A boy his age changes his wishes every hour so I assumed he would change his mind by his next birthday. He not only remembered but also began writing about the fish in his school journal. It started with one simple line, I want a fish. As his birthday neared, it turned into a story called How to Teach Guitar to My Fish. Alex won a school writing contest with the story.

The weekend Alex turned six, we were at a pet store.

In less than five minutes, he spotted a fish and said, I want this fish.

He pointed to a shiny blue body with a long, wide, and red tail. A sign read BETTA: SIAMESE FIGHTING FISH. The description said that if it stayed alone in a fishbowl, it would live for a long time without much care. Before my son could change his mind I placed the fish container in my basket. We walked around the store and chose a small fishbowl, marbles, water solution, fish food, and some decorations, and went to the cashier.

I want to hold it, Alex said to the cashier, who was about to put the container into a plastic bag.

Of course, she said and handed it to him.

Alex cradled the fish container the way he would hold a kitten.

It is easy to take care of, right? I asked.

Oh yes. This is a fighting fish. They need to be alone in order to survive, but other than that all you need to do is be careful with the water. They like lukewarm water, the cashier said as she put the rest of our things into the bag.

His fish, named Coodybug, was placed in the center of the dining table. Inside the bowl, the fish seemed to love the single leafy plant very much. He often hid in its rolled-up leaves. Alex said that Coodybug was playing hide-and-seek with us.

Before Alex left for school, he said goodbye to the fish, and when he came home, he gave him five tiny nuggets. We watched the fish suck up the floating nuggets one by one like a vacuum while we ate afternoon snacks together.

After three weeks, the water was dirty so I suggested we change it. Alex carefully scooped up the fish with an empty yogurt container and dumped the rest of the dirty water into a sink. I cleaned the fishbowl with a brand-new sponge, then filled it with warm water. Alex dropped in exactly seven drops of water solution. We waited five minutes, then we put the fish back into the bowl. He happily splashed around for thirty seconds, then we saw him sinking to the bottom. I shook the bowl, but the fish was no longer scared of the shaking. He swayed right and left, with the water. No way, I thought. I rolled up my sleeve and put my hand into the bowl. The lukewarm water was not luke but warm.

Is he dead? Alex asked.

Looking at the poached fish in my palm, I groped for how to explain this to my son.

The summer he turned four, it was a baby blue flower. I cannot recall the type of plant, but Alex named it Fluffy. He often squatted on the ground, trying to smell Fluffy. He listened to my warning about touching the flower, If you touch the flower it will die. The tip of his nose came so close to kissing the flower, but he had never tried to touch it. After a vacation to see my parents in Japan, we found Fluffy in the garden turned into a dried flower.

Is it dead? he asked.

I nodded, looking straight at him.

Alex and I buried Fluffy in the dirt there. We gave a short Buddhist prayer.

The first time we visited my parents’ house in Japan was the fall before Alex turned two. My husband, Levi, had to work, so he stayed home in San Francisco. Levi, who couldn’t stand for a day to go by without talking to us, did not call for three days. He had not answered the home phone, his business phone, or his cellphone, so I called my mother-in-law, and she called the police. This is how they found him, under the Impala. Back then a 1964 Chevy Impala, as big as a boat, occupied our garage. I’ll never know what Levi was trying to do under the car. The jack slipped and the five-thousand-pound Chevy crushed his chest.

He lost consciousness instantly. Within three minutes he was dead. He did not suffer, my mother-in-law told me at the airport, where his entire family waited for us to arrive back from Japan. After the autopsy, the medical examiner told us Levi was in no condition to be seen just then. Despite the suggestion, I pleaded, then went to see Levi. I left Alex with my mother, who had flown to the U.S. with us for support.

The gray-walled hallway continued as far as I could see; then a cold metal door appeared in front of me: Room 4. I opened the door, and in the corner of the room, I saw a body covered with a white sheet. Except for the bruise on his left eyelid, he looked in good condition. He might have been sleeping, I thought. With my ring finger, I touched his cheek. He was cold. It was not the coldness that sinks into your bones and not the coldness that children bring after coming back in from a snowball fight. It was a coldness I could never warm.

I haven’t found the words to describe this sensation, yet when I think about that moment, my now empty finger feels the chill.

Even though he’s a child, it’s always better to tell the truth, my therapist told me, so I explained to Alex what had happened to his father. I even brought him to my therapist a few times. Alex loved the tiny figures in the sandbox so much that he wanted to take them home and refused to leave the office. The therapist gave him a red lollipop at the door. I asked her if it was some kind of medicine to ease his sadness. She said no. I licked it once just to be sure before I gave it to him.

Alex, the water was too hot. I killed Coodybug. I am so sorry. I told the truth.

Yeah…

You can be mad at me. You can scream at me or hit me. Anything.

Okay, Alex said, looking at the fish in my palm.

What do you want to do?

Return him to the water.

The ocean?

In the toilet. That’s what you do. I saw it in a movie.

We walked to the bathroom together and returned Coodybug to the water in the toilet and said a short prayer.

Goodbye, Coodybug. We waved at him in the swirling waves.

Are you sad? You know that you can be, I said.

He nodded.

Let me read you a book. I held his cheeks in between my hands and kissed his forehead.

This brightened him up. Yeah! He jumped twice. Books always comforted him.

I brought a book my therapist had given him. We sat on my bed to read. The story was about a leaf on a tree losing his friend in winter, but gradually accepting the death of his friend and happily going back to the soil when it was his turn.

This was a beautiful story that I often read for myself after Alex went to bed. It told the virtue of life, the law of nature, the things we all go through; we were part of the big tree. I could believe it. I felt kinder to all humanity.

Do you know my friend Sophia? She can touch her nose with her tongue, said Alex, stretching out his tongue as far as he could. He then fell on his back. His arms and legs spread nice and long, and he began to move his arms up and down.

Look, mama! he said.

He was making a snow angel on the sheets.

My Father

MY FATHER IS A CITY worker who manages the entire sewage system in Tokyo. According to my mother, he is the happiest man that she has ever known.

Once in a great while, when he was drunk though not enough to pass out, he would scribble in the air for a scratch pad and a pen. We bounced up and down because that meant he was going to draw. My younger brother and I were around three and six years old then.

What do you want? he’d ask, and I would say, A koala! and my brother would say, No, a robot! Then he drew a koala robot on a building which looked like a tree. After that, he asked for more paper but stopped asking us what we wanted. He just drew one animal after another as my mother sat next to him, ripping junk mail into quarters with a ruler to make scratch pads. A giraffe on a trampoline. A jaguar juggling three black balls. The three wise monkeys drinking beer in a hot tub served by dogs who were supposed to be guarding the shrine. Snakes who dressed up as dragons, saying, It’s not easy to pretend to be strong. By the time he ran out of the scratch pads, we had a collage of animal cartoons. My brother and I made up stories that went with each drawing as my father smiled, showed his crooked teeth, lit a cigarette, and drank more sake.

There is nothing he cannot draw, my mother said as she brought him another bottle of hot sake. I remember the dusty orange light shade above our living room, the smoky air, and my mother gazing at my father with her melting eyes.

That’s all for today, he would say, gathering his cartoons together before taking them to the trash can. And that was that. We went to bed.

When I told my father that the steam from the coffee cup looked like a ballerina dancing, he told me to write a poem.

We had no art in our house. Our house was too small to fill with luxuries. The single painting in the hallway had always been there, but I didn’t notice it until I was in junior high school.

Your father did it. He used to paint a lot, my mother told me.

A village in front of a mountain, the different shades of green, the red houses, and a river––typical of northern Japanese scenery––like a painting that I might see in the bathroom of a run-down restaurant. I couldn’t say it was beautiful or memorable.

At the time, I was undecided about whether I should become a nuclear power plant worker, a guide dog trainer, or just quit living.

Where are his other paintings? I asked my mother.

Gone. They took up too much space. We threw them away.

Twice I discovered my parents’ old journals. Once, when I was twenty-five, I found my mother’s with a list written to us: where she hid the code for the safe box, the life insurance company’s phone number, and the address of the medical facility to donate her body to. The other time was right after high school. In the bathroom, a small blue notebook lay on the floor. If there was a hole in the wall, you’d look through it. If there was an unlabeled notebook, you’d open it. So I picked it up and opened it as my instinct pleased. In the journal, my father had written, Day 1: I have failed the college exam two years in a row. It’s cold outside. I am destined to wander and to paint, on this mountain. No job, no money, no love, just me and a pencil. My father was twenty years old, alone on a cold mountain in winter. I closed the notebook and sat