“Maybe it’s silly to expect anyone to be faithful at that age, but he still took his life because of me. You’ve never had to live with that knowledge gnawing away at you all your life.”
“Nozomi . . .”
Her eyes turned glassy. “You always support me, Sedge. But I wish you’d help me face my guilt more.”
“How am I supposed do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe by dropping me into the fire for once instead of holding me safely above it. It might hurt me, but if it burned away the guilt I feel, in the end it’d be worth it.”
He’d moved closer to her, worried by what she was saying. “You didn’t push him off those rocks. And the guilt you’ve felt all these years is worse than anything you might have done to him. Maybe he was wired to jump. If he hadn’t done it then, something later in life probably would have triggered it. Couldn’t it be as simple as that?”
She moved away from him. “I only know that my selfishness made him do that.”
“It was a fifteen-year-old’s selfishness, if it was even that.”
She turned from him toward the water. “For you it was only a fifteen-year-old’s selfishness. But for me that doesn’t diminish the significance of what happened.”
Sedge wasn’t sure why he asked the next question, but it caught them both by surprise. “If you could go back in time, would you do things differently?”
She didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think I’d choose differently, except to do whatever I could to help him through his pain. But maybe every person is born to bear a certain burden, and that’s mine. Maybe my life is wired to be exactly like this. And this is who I am.”
“Are you saying you could do the same thing to me? Now, when you’re twenty years older and we’re married?”
“If I was simply wired that way . . .”
She stepped toward the lake, stones crunching beneath her feet.
He winced at her answer. “So it doesn’t matter if I’m more critical with you or not. Isn’t it better to be how I am? Even if that means wanting to support you?”
“I only know the situation we’re in. And for some reason I find it inadequate.”
Off to the side, a mass of tall grasses and reeds exploded with the chatter of twenty or thirty birds.
“Does it worry you hearing yourself talk like this?” he said.
“It worries you, doesn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“I’m sure it will pass,” she said after another long moment. “After all, I haven’t always had these thoughts. I feel better having told you, though.”
She tossed into the water a twig she’d been turning between her fingers. Returning to where Sedge stood, she pressed herself into him. He held her, gazing beyond the lake. The color of the sea blended perfectly with the sky, creating the illusion that the horizon had plunged and the world was tilting downward.
That moment, he realized now, was when she began to put distance between them, though she had already started her affair with Kōichi. If so, and if she had really felt responsible for Tetsuya’s death, wouldn’t she have worried just as much over him? And if not, was he to infer that Tetsuya had meant more to her than he ever had?
The memories hit him with increasing clarity. Even now, he could remember the smell of the sea in her hair where he’d pressed his lips, and the softness of her cheeks when he’d touched her and turned her to meet his eyes. His disappointment that day returned, too, along with the troubling sense that she’d been preparing to make him suffer in a way he never had before.
In the pond behind the tea lounge window, what looked like a red-and-white Kutani-ware decanter floated through the water. As his eyes adjusted to the distance, what he’d momentarily mistaken for a piece of akae-kinrande was in fact an orange-and-white carp. Every day, no doubt, it swam slowly, almost aimlessly, in the same pointless circle. It soon disappeared beneath a footbridge, carrying on its back a lily pad it had flitted under.
4
The next day it rained. Sedge spent the morning and afternoon in the tea lounge, reviewing his lesson plan. For his first class he would emphasize introductions. The lesson only required polishing, but he stayed in the lounge for nearly four hours.
The heron had returned to the pine tree out the window, and his attention kept drifting to it. Had he not had more to do, he would have stayed even longer. The heron perched there bravely again in the wind and rain.
That night Mariko and a coworker wheeled his dinner to his room. She smiled broadly at him and asked if they could bring anything else. She held out a small menu on which appeared a choice of coffee, green tea, orange juice, or beer, and a paper cup of either vanilla or red bean ice cream.
He ordered a beer and red bean ice cream. After Mariko and her coworker conferred with each other, her coworker left to get them.
“I hear you’ll be our English teacher,” she said after an awkward silence passed.
“For a while, anyway.”
She looked around the room, her eyes lingering on the decorative objects in the tokonoma alcove.
“Will you come to my classes,” he said, “or do you already speak English? You never told me, and I didn’t think to ask.”
Her face reddened slightly. “I don’t know English at all. And I’d like to come to your classes, but I need to be home on my free evenings to take care of my stepson.”
“What’s his name? And how old is he?”
“His name is Riku. He just turned sixteen.”
“He should be fine if you leave him at home for a short time. I thought he was probably younger.”
“If I don’t come back when he expects, he often causes trouble. But I’ll see what I can do.”
He assumed she lived far away, and that the distance deterred her from attending his class. “Is your house far?”
