A Girl Like You (41 page)

“Where are you, Abe? Come back to me,” she had shouted at the bird, frightening it away.

She had told Frances about it, as if Frances knew about such things, might translate some mysterious Morse code message for her.

“They dig in the putty for insects when the ground’s too hard to mine,” Frances said pragmatically. “It’s the same every year.”

Every bone in Abe’s body had been crushed, every organ bruised, but it is the tear in his heart leaking blood that is given as the cause of death. A small tear no bigger than a dime, no bigger than a dime. The thought of that little leaking hole breaks her own heart.

“I can’t go, Frances,” she had sobbed. “Don’t make me.”

Frances had pleaded with her at first and then insisted.

“You must go. It’s Abe’s funeral. It’s the right thing to do. The only thing left you can do for him. You will regret it always if you don’t.”

Weak with grief, she had given in.

Frances buttons up Satomi’s coat for her, advises gloves, and hugs her briefly. Satomi wonders how Frances can bear to worry about her, how she can think of anyone else but herself. Her mother-in-law’s shoulders are hunched, her mouth pinched; she seems smaller somehow, as though she is shriveling by the minute.

“It’s cold in that church, even worse in the cemetery,” Frances says.

A stony misery creeps through Satomi’s body. Time has run out, and she can’t remember when she last told Abe that she loved him, and she hadn’t yet told him of Haru. She will never, now, be able to tell him anything ever again.

The minister in his church is comfortable in his role. He enjoys the onstage part of his ministry, the sweetness of christenings, the joy of weddings, even the somber air of funerals. He performs well in front of his audience, as he sometimes guiltily thinks of his congregation.

“We think with great sympathy,” he says, “of Abe’s new bride, widowed after such a brief marriage.”

It was to be his only reference to her. He speaks of Abe’s history in Freeport, of the town’s love of Frances, their love of her boy. It seems to Satomi that he is saying their long knowing of Abe has the bigger claim to grief at his loss.

But she’s being unfair, she thinks, small-minded, possessive. Abe had been popular everywhere, always. No one knew better than her how easy he had been to love.

Abe’s friends, some holding hands, some with their arms around each other, make a space for her at the graveside. Without the glue of Abe to bind them, they seem already to be separating from her. Their parents, who have known Abe since childhood, stand around the grave too, ashen-faced, their eyes slipping to Abe’s father’s headstone nearby. They are touched by their children’s grief, secretly thankful that it is not one of their own, who might so easily have caught the Penn-to-Babylon that night.

The rain has come on, so that people begin opening umbrellas. Red and blue canopies, a yellow one with blue raindrops dancing on it, carnival colors, she thinks, as Abe’s best friend, Don, moves to her side, sheltering her under the shade of his black one.

It takes a while for the exaggerated moan of the fair-haired girl she hadn’t noticed before to reach her. Satomi has held herself back from giving vent to the animal part of herself and looks toward her with curiosity. People are embarrassed by the awful sound, they shuffle their feet, cough politely as though to cover it.

It’s Corrine, clutching a spray of snowberries to her chest, swaying uncontrollably. Nothing to be done, she has always been a bit of a drama queen.

“Shush, Corrine. Be brave for Frances’s sake.” A man Satomi doesn’t know puts his arm around Corrine’s shoulders, a bit too firmly for it to be thought comfort.

Abe’s colleagues from the hospital cluster together uncomfortably, their medical skills of no use here. The neighbors from Jackson Heights who had hardly spoken to her, but had thought him a fine neighbor, have come. They have all known and liked Abe. It is odd how she feels an outsider.

Joseph had phoned in distress, concerned for her.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m coming. You will need me.”

“No, don’t come. It wouldn’t be right. I don’t want you to come.”

He had been hurt at her dismissal, but she couldn’t picture Joseph among Abe’s people. He would have been a distraction, would have highlighted the fact that she is cut from a different cloth too.

At the sight of Abe’s coffin she is reminded of Tamura’s. Were they together now, Abe and Tamura, forever linked by their love for her? She shakes the thought away. She is already feeling the burden of ghosts.

On the walk back, Frances takes her hand as though she is a child. People arrive at the house. Women fuss in Frances’s kitchen, food appears as if from nowhere. It is as though a party has broken out. She goes upstairs, and Frances follows.

“You need sleep,” Frances says, undressing her.

“I’ll come down soon, Frances. I just need a little time.”

Sleep is the only thing that holds attraction for either of them. Satomi would sleep forever if she could, but as though an alarm is set in her she can only manage an hour or two at a time. She lies on the bed and buries her head in Abe’s pillow. Even the scent of him is fading, she thinks.

“I’m sorry, Frances, it should be me helping you.”

“We’ll help each other, Satomi. Abe would want that.”

“I can’t say his name, Frances. It feels like my heart is ripping too when I try.”

“Day by day, inch by inch,” Frances says, without belief herself.

“Yes, day by day,” Satomi repeats mechanically.

“You will stay with me here for a while, won’t you, Sati, just for a while? I want to be with someone who loved Abe, someone he loved,” Frances says.

“Come back to the apartment,” Joseph says. “Let me take care of you, just until you put the pieces back together.”

She considers briefly living on her own in their house by the salt marshes. But the thought of occupying their bed without Abe, of taking down a book from the shelves that he had made for their living room, is too painful. She will never live there now, not without Abe. Hope has been eaten up there, sent packing.

She stays with Frances, holed up in Abe’s room, breathing him in as her mother had breathed her father in all those years ago. She will look after Frances, make her eat, make her go for walks, act like a daughter-in-law is meant to.

She finds herself either full of a terrible nervous energy or so tired that she can’t lift herself from the bed. Sometimes she shuts her eyes and prays that when she opens them she will find herself ten years into the future, ten years away from the misery that runs through her blood, contaminating everything. She can’t pray, as
some do, for it all to have been no more than a horrible dream. To close her eyes and imagine Abe returned to her wouldn’t save her from the pain of opening them to the knowledge that he never would be.

Frances’s friends come to comfort.

“Be grateful for the wonderful summer you had here together, for the precious time you shared,” they say. “It will get better.”

Like Frances, they are the best of women, the best of American mothers. Unlike Frances, though, they rarely say the right thing.

Her days are filled with what is needed next, as though Abe is directing her in some way. Sleep when you must, eat when you remember, sit with Frances, look at the photographs with her, cry with her, make her laugh, and lie with her so that she can sleep a little. And Frances does the same for her in return.

She dreads the nightmares that come in her troubled sleep, black featureless landscapes where she can’t find who she’s looking for. She doesn’t dream in color anymore.

Frances lets her fuss, acquiesces in the game while looking herself for a reference point back to the routine of her old life, which seems to have escaped her.

They find comfort in focusing on Abe’s dog, it is the only thing they can do for him now. Wilson won’t eat, not even the delicious stews of marrow bone that Frances cooks for him. He lies across the door to Abe’s room, head on paws, his body curled around one of Abe’s old shoes that he found on the porch, as though he is made for misery.

“Come on, old fella,” they imitate Abe. “You can’t go on like this, now, can you?”

They go through Christmas in a daze, no decorations, no tree, but “merry Christmas” slips from Frances’s lips as Satomi appears at breakfast. Some atavistic memory has triggered the words without her consent.

“I don’t think that I will ever be able to cook a turkey again.”

“It doesn’t matter, Frances, I couldn’t eat it anyway.”

They walk the two-mile strip alongside a distant canal without seeing anyone, returning home to soup and cornbread. In bed by nine, they have survived their first Christmas without Abe. They are both glad to see the back of it.

Frances rallies first. Perhaps because she knows what her life will be like now, knows what to expect from it. There are no decisions for her to make, the cycles of grief are familiar to her, there will be bad and better times, times so completely terrible that she will look back on them and wonder how she has not been made mad. And even when she thinks that she is better, she knows that the pain will come slicing out of nowhere, catching her off guard. The thought of it exhausts her, but she must start the living of those times, or walk into the sea and be done with it. She tells herself that she doesn’t have the courage for that. She isn’t made for Greek tragedy.

And Wilson has perked up, pleading for walks, dropping his ball at their feet, hanging around the kitchen before his mealtimes, his big begging eyes full of expectation. He has a better sense of timing than them, knows instinctively when to let go.

Letters have come from Dr. Harper and Eriko. They are worried about her, shocked at what has happened.

It is too cruel
, Dr. Harper writes.
A terrible thing.

It must be borne, Satomi. You don’t deserve it
, Eriko says.

Her answering letters are brief.
I’m fine, getting better
, she lies.
Don’t worry about me.

She has refused to see Joseph. It’s ridiculous, she tells herself, but seeing him would feel like she was betraying Abe.

“Not yet,” she says when he phones, his voice all hurt. “I’m not ready to see anyone yet.”

By spring she has taken to spending her days on the boat. She
doesn’t sail, never releases it from its moorings, but in its narrow confines her grief feels contained. She lies on the bunk and reads all day, books from the Freeport library, novels and biographies, books about fishing and the care of dogs, anything that her eyes settle on. She knows now a little about fly fishing, about trees and plants, and Emma Bovary, and Tiny Tim.

She hides in the boat’s cabin, unseen, but hearing, outside, the lapping of the water, the voices of Freeport’s sailing community.

“Shh,” she hears, when someone remarks on the permanently anchored boat. Freeport knows she is there.

When Satomi’s tears are no longer a release, when sleep overtakes reading as her choice of escape, Cora inches her way into her grief. She goes through the box of trinkets, touches the little hairbrush, the charm bracelet, the ribbons. And suddenly self-pity is replaced by shame. She is ashamed of herself. It’s obvious to her now that if anything good is to come out of Abe’s death, she must find Cora. She must give her all to the search, go to California herself. She can’t hide from it or begin again until she does. But she’s so horribly tired, and how can she leave Frances? It’s hardly fair.

Frances, noticing the change in Satomi, the worrying way the girl has now of watching her, takes it to be a turn for the worse in her daughter-in-law.

“Satomi, honey, you can’t go on like this,” she appeals to her. “Asking me all the time if I am better, when it’s obvious to me that you are not. You are too young to let your life just drift. You have to think about what you want to do with it.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

But she does worry. It is time for Satomi to go, but she will have to be the one to move her on, Satomi isn’t able.

“This isn’t what Abe would have wanted for you. It isn’t respecting his memory to just fade away, you know?”

“Well, Abe isn’t here, is he? He left us, didn’t he?” Her voice is
shaking, she is furious. It surprises her, she had no idea she was so angry.

In the silence that follows her outburst, they realize they are both angry with Abe, that they have been simmering for months.

“How could he leave us, Frances? How could he do this to us?”

“He didn’t do this, honey, it was an accident, we can’t help accidents.” Frances tries to regain some equilibrium, it’s horrible to find herself angry with Abe.

“I know. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry, Frances. I’m going to bed now. I didn’t mean that about Abe, of course I didn’t.”

“Honey, this is what I mean. It’s six o’clock. You’re sleeping your life away.”

Next morning, with her decision made, Frances watches Satomi make a poor breakfast of coffee and a single slice of toast. She watches her absentmindedly push her toast around the plate, leave the coffee to go cold. The look of the girl never fails to surprise her, she is gloriously striking even though she has lost weight and isn’t taking care of herself. It’s a waste.

She would like to keep Satomi with her, a companion in grief. It would be wicked, though. Satomi has years ahead of her to find someone else to love, to love her. She has held herself back from saying as much for too long. And if she’s honest, between them they keep the pot of grief for Abe constantly on the boil, neither willing for the other to heal.

Dear Mr. Rodman,

I believe that Satomi has asked you not to come to Freeport, but I think that she needs you now and I would like you to come.

I don’t seem to be able to help her and I don’t think that we are good for each other at present. Grief is always stronger in one or the other of us at any given time, so that there are few lighthearted times in this house anymore.