Rainfall

engagement tonight.”

    That’s when the name struck me. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said slowly. “What happened?”

    “Heart attack on Tuesday morning, right on the Yamanote. Kawamura-san told me it wasn’t a complete surprise — her father had a heart condition. We have to be grateful for every moment we’re given,
ne
? Oh, here she comes.” She patted me on the hand again and slipped away.

    I turned and saw Midori and her trio walking briskly, expressionless, toward the stage. I shook my head, trying to take it all in. I had come to Alfie to get away from Kawamura and everything associated with him, and instead here was his ghost. I would have gotten up and left, but that would have been conspicuous.

    And at the same time there was an element of curiosity, as though I was driving back past the results of a car accident I had caused, unable to avert my eyes.

    I watched Midori’s face as she took up her post at the piano. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and had straight, shoulder-length hair so black it seemed to glisten in the overhead light. She was wearing a short-sleeved pullover, as black as her hair, the smooth white skin of her arms and neck appearing almost to float beside it. I tried to see her eyes but could catch only a glimpse in the shadows cast by the overhead light. She had framed them in eyeliner, I saw, but other than that she was unadorned. Confident enough not to trouble herself. Not that she needed to. She looked good and must have been aware of it.

    I could feel a tension in the audience, a leaning forward. Midori raised her fingers over the keyboard, levitating them there for a second. Her voice came, quiet: “One, two, one two three four,” and then her hands descended and brought the room to life.

    It was “My Man’s Gone,” an old Bill Evans number, not one of her own. I like the piece and I liked the way she played it. She brought a vibrancy to it that made me want to watch as well as listen, but I found myself looking away.

    I lost my own father just after I turned eight. He was killed by a rightist in the street demonstrations that rocked Tokyo when the Kishi administration ratified the 1960 U.S./Japan Security Pact. My father had always approached me as if from a great distance when he was alive, and I sensed that I was the source of some strain between him and my mother. But my understanding of all that came later. Meanwhile, I cried a small boy’s nightly tears for a long time after he was gone.

    My mother didn’t make it easy for me afterward, although I believe she tried her best. She had been a State Department staff lawyer in Occupation Tokyo with MacArthur’s Supreme Command of Allied Powers, part of the team MacArthur charged with drafting a new constitution to guide postwar Japan into the coming American Century. My father was part of Prime Minister Yoshida’s staff, responsible for translating and negotiating the document on terms favorable to Japan.

    Their romance, which became public shortly after the new constitution was signed into law in May 1947, scandalized both camps, each of which was convinced that its representative must have made concessions on the pillow that could never have been achieved at the negotiating table. My mother’s future with the State Department was effectively ended, and she remained in Japan as my father’s wife.

    Her parents broke with her over the cross-cultural, cross-racial marriage, which she entered into against their command, and so my mother, in reaction to her
de facto
orphanage, adopted Japan, learning Japanese well enough to speak it at home with my father and with me. When she lost him, she lost her moorings to the new life she had built.

    Had Midori been close with her father? Perhaps not. Perhaps there had been awkwardness, even fights, over what to him might have seemed a frivolous career choice. And if there had been fights, and painful silences, and struggling attempts at mutual comprehension, had they had a chance to reconcile? Or was she left with so many things she wished she could have told him?

    What the hell is with you?
I thought.
You’ve got nothing to do with her or her father. She’s attractive, it’s getting to you. Okay. But drop it.

    I looked around the room, and all the people seemed to be in pairs or larger groups.

    I wanted to get out, to find a place that held no memories.

    But where would that place be?

    So I listened to the music. I felt the notes zigzagging