Banana Yoshimoto - The Lake

The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom.

Maybe it was having him in the room that did it, after having been alone so long.

I hadnt slept next to anyone since my dad and I stayed in my moms hospital room.

I kept waking up and then, relieved that she hadnt stopped breathing, going back to sleep. The floor was dustier than youd expect in a hospital, and I lay staring at a ball of lint that was always in exactly the same place. I didnt sleep well, and whenever I drifted into wakefulness I would hear the footsteps of nurses moving down the hallway. And it occurred to me that I was surrounded by people who could die at any minute, and in some odd way their presence made me feel more at ease here, in the hospital, than I did outside.

When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.

I hadnt dreamed of my mom since she died.

Or rather, sometimes she would appear in disconnected fragments of dream as I drifted off to sleep, but until that night she had never been there so clearly or for so long. Somehow I had the feeling, when I awoke, that I had been with her again, for real, after a very long separation.

Thats an odd thing to say about someone whos dead, but thats how it felt.

You could almost say my mom had two different faces. Two selves that came and went inside her, went and came, like distinct personalities.

One was sociable and upbeat, a woman of the world who lived in the moment and seemed like a really cool person to be around; the other was extremely delicate, like a big, soft flower nodding gently on its stem, looking as if the slightest breeze would scatter its petals.

The flowerlike side wasnt easy to recognize, and my mom, always eager to please, tried hard to cultivate the feisty, easygoing side of her personality. Watering it, rather than the flower, with lots of love, fertilizing it with peoples approval.

My mom wasnt married to my dad when she had me.

My dad was the president of a small import-export company in a large town on the outskirts of Tokyo, and my mom was the reasonably beautiful owner, the Mama-san, of a ritzy club in the entertainment district of that same town.

One night, a business associate invited my dad out drinking and took him to my moms club. My dad fell for my mom the moment he set eyes on her. She had a good feeling about him, too. When it came time to close up shop, they went to a Korean restaurant and ordered all sorts of dishes, laughing like crazy and having a ball, sharing their food like old friends. My dad went back to the club the next night, and the next, and so on, even when it had snowedhe went so often that in two months they were a couple. Considering how they met, two months seems like a pretty long time. Thats what makes it seem like the real thing.

They always gave the same answer when I asked what made them laugh so hard.

Because it was a restaurant with no Japanese customers, just a place wed stumbled across, wandering around in the middle of the night. And since we couldnt read the menu, we ended up ordering a whole bunch of things at random, and the waiter kept carting out one dish after another, foods we didnt recognize at all, some of them incredibly spicy, and the portions were much bigger than we had expected it was hilarious.

I dont buy it, though.

I think they were just so happy to be sitting across the table from each other that night that the excitement made them giddy. Im sure they had to endure all kinds of social pressure, but in front of me they were always very sweet to each other. They used to quarrel all the time, its true, but even that was kind of cutelike little kids having an argument.

My mom really wanted a baby, and she got pregnant with me immediately; but even then my parents never officially married. It wasnt the usual story, though. My dad didnt already have a wife and family, and he doesnt have anyone else now.

His relatives were the problem. They were dead set against the union, and my dad didnt want to drag my mom into a fight. So I grew up as an acknowledged but illegitimate child.

You hear a lot of talk about families like ours. In the end, though, my dad was home more than he was away, and I wasnt miserable at all.

Except for being totally sick of that environment.

Sick of the town, sick of the situation, sick of everything. I was dying to get away from it all. I could almost convince myself it was a good thing my mom had died, because now I would never, ever have to go back there. Except for the fact that I no longer saw my dad as much as I used to, I didnt regret anything. He had already sold the apartment where my mom and I used to live, to keep it from becoming the epicenter of an all-out dogfight among his relatives, and hed put the money in my bank account. I felt like I was being awarded damages for her death or something, and I didnt like that; but on the other hand, the cash was my inheritance from her. And that was all I needed to be free. There was nothing left in my old hometown now to show that I had ever been there. I couldnt say that made me sad, though.

Take my moms club, for instance: When you went in during the daytime, the place looked dark and a little dingy, and it stank faintly of alcohol and cigarettes. I felt utterly, totally blank there. And when my moms flashy outfits came back from the cleaners and I saw them in the daylight, they seemed so cheap and flimsy it was pathetic.

All those emotions, balled up, were how I felt about the town.

Its no different, even now that Im going on thirty.

Last time I saw my dad, he stared at me with moist eyes.

Ive come to resemble her.

Its such a wastethe best times of our life were still to come. We were looking forward to old age, relaxing, traveling together. We were planning to go on a round-the-world cruise. If Id known things would end this way, we could have gone and done all that stuff instead of making excuses about my job, about how your mother couldnt spare the time, couldnt afford to leave the club.

Im sure my dad must have played around when he was younger, since he could hold his liquor and loved to socialize, but as far as I know he was never seriously involved with another woman after he and my mom got together.

My dad has this notion that he has to come across as a playboy, and even though he tries to act the role, its obvious that its just a pose. Hes the sort of guy who looks like a dweeb no matter what he doesand whats more, hes the perfect image of a balding, middle-aged hick. Theres nothing even remotely sexy about him. Hes totally uncool. So earnest that a real, bona-fide playboy would burst out laughing at the sight of him.

At heart my dad is an uncomplicated guy, but his position, the need to take over his fathers business, put a lot of strain on him, and he never seems to have felt any desire to break out of that. So hes muddled through life, going through the motions, doing whatever it takes to fit into a recognizable mold. The son of a rich, land-owning family. The president of an import-export company in a provincial town. That, at any rate, is my take on him.