* * *
—
HER FINAL tomato came to her by chance. She didn’t discover it until it blossomed and ripened at the edge of the yard where the weeds gripped the ground and did not permit much growth.
The stalks were feeble and the fruits sparse, but so was she by this time, alive closer to the end of the century than she’d ever imagined possible. She never learned the name of the tomato, which yielded only once, exhibiting their spectacular rainbow colors before they were plundered by crows and other small animals that lived in the woods behind the yard.
* * *
—
IN THE fall, her very last, her daughters rented a minivan to take her west to tour the place she had once lived. The drive was long, spread over seven days and six nights, and her daughters took turns fussing over her comfort and pointing out signs—MOOSE CROSSING, CAMPGROUND—in loud cheery voices meant to snap her attention. “It’ll be worth it,” they kept reassuring her. Certainly, it was worth it to them.
Haight-Ashbury. Chinatown. Golden Gate Bridge. The daughters moved her closer to the car window where sunlight, crosshatched with wind, clawed at her face and stung her eyes. When her daughters noticed her tears, they stopped the car and watched her look. She gazed at the water, shimmering with boats. She gazed at the sky, twiddling the sun. After a moment, sharp-eyed Marjorie said, “No, Mother. Angel Island is over there.”
She remembered the overcrowded immigration building, the gloved fingers prying her eyelids, the cheap falling sleeves of the kimonoed picture brides. She remembered the miracle of her walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on Pedestrian Day. Then she remembered Dr. Kerr, a small man with slim fingers, who had talked Edward into a pessaire (as he said, delicately, in French). How they’d fought, she and Edward! Not that she wanted another child—Miriam, at three, was a horror, with her doughy obedience and costly appetite—but it was her body they were conspiring to plug.
In the end she submitted to the trespass, opening her legs for Dr. Kerr’s fingers, which probed and groped for an eternity, intent on finding the “slant” he wished to detail in his new book. When at last he conceded that she was no different from any normal woman, he jammed the pessary (as she insisted on calling it, in English), locking her in.
But her body refused to be sealed, and she gave birth to their second daughter a year later. Marjorie-Keiko. She announced the name and refused to retract it. Not for another dead ancestor who had helped spread Edward’s family line.
She did not fight the device after that and appreciated its practicality during the Depression. It would be ten years before she’d be pregnant again, and after that—the Caesarean, infection, and fever—it would strike her that she hadn’t wanted any of these children—not Miriam or Robert, or even Marjorie-Keiko, her sole successful act of mutiny.
* * *
—
NO! THAT wasn’t true! She had coached Edward to make the argument—better education, more opportunities—to persuade her idealistic father to leave her behind.
* * *
—
SHE LAY in the bed she’d slept in every night since Edward’s death. At the foot of her bed was her trunk. The trunk was packed. In the morning her daughters were taking her to a new home. She stood by her window. Something had woken her, compelling her to draw back the curtains.
Not much had changed over the years: the square yard barren in the wintertime, the bare flowerbeds empty of the colors that spilled from them in the summertime. She touched the windowpane; she knew by the feel there was frost in the beds. High in the sky, the moon radiated luminous rings of yellow and pink.
At this hour between night and morning, her fingers were stiff, but she swept them through her empty drawers. Where were her letters? Her thoughts drifted with the clouds that passed over the moon. When was the last time she’d left the house?
A few flakes squeezed themselves from the sky, and she felt weightless, illuminated by moonlight. In this luminescence she was light.
She had taken these stairs many times before; as usual they were cold, but today there were no specific memories attached to them, and her feet were fluent over their surfaces.
Outside, the air was clear, and it gave incredible range to her eyesight. Here was the pebble walkway, here the low wooden gate with the rusted latch. The gate creaked when she opened it.
No lights were on at her neighbors’, and the street was latticed with shadows. When she peered down, she saw the road zooming into the sky. The openness delighted her. She was delighted by the dark and the quiet that had conspired to make it so.
A breeze fluttered her nightgown. She had not dressed properly. In this light, her nightgown was translucent, the naughty hem uncovering her knees. But what did she care? This morning, she was utterly careless, her thoughts and feelings flapping as though teased by a miraculous gale. Later, they may settle into their hard, familiar forms. But for now there were only sensations skimming her skin and scattering her memories. Today, her heart was flying, and so were her feet. She ran into the crisp horizon just beginning to break.
TWO
LUNA
Luna hadn’t slept all night. She hadn’t slept because she couldn’t get the feeling of water out of her ear, the left one, which felt numb, rubbery and dense, as if it no longer belonged to her.
All night she conjured birds and fields, then roads to bisect the fields, then cars to put on the roads, cars with rolled-down windows, and, in one, pigtails that belonged to her sister Katy. Then there was the ticking car; the rustling shade; a pair of hands setting out all her favorite things—chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes. She saw her own fingers elongate across the picnic blanket, then the sudden flash—her sister covered her mouth—and Luna heard it again. That plugged sound. Like the sound of water underwater. It flung open her eyes.
Then it was morning. The room was milky with sunlight, and her father, who had come to wake her, was disappearing into the seam of the half-open door. She pulled on her clothes and was sitting at the dining table staring at a plate of scrambled eggs, two sausages grinning like a clown. Her mother said, “Your shirt’s backwards.”
Katy laughed. But when Luna opened her mouth, her sister’s laugh muted on one side, and she remembered her ear; her protest shriveled back down her throat.
* * *
—
THE PROBLEM with her ear had been coming and going all week—Luna knew exactly where it started. Shōnan-kaigan. Her father had pointed out the beach on the map. See, here? A nick on the belly of the seahorse: the eastern shore of Japan. Katy, as she was prone to these days, rolled her eyes, but Luna liked this about her father, the way he spoke to her as though to his university students. That morning, when he looked up from the map, he’d said, It’s important to remember where you’ve been.