SPRING IN WINTER      (3,651 words)

   Mizue dragged the vacuum cleaner through the hall into the kitchen. She stooped to plug it in, eyeing the crumbs under the table, the dead peas like bullets, the rice stuck to the table legs, the plastic lids and bits of cellophane and paper that her family dropped and never thought to pick up. She switched the vacuum cleaner on and began plying the nozzle under the table, hearing the satisfying rattle as bits of debris flew up the plastic tube. She had just begun on the area in front of the refrigerator when the phone rang. Wearily, she switched off the vacuum cleaner and went to answer it.

    “What is it this time?” she asked, sighing.

    “Is this a bad time?”

    Of course it’s a bad time! she wanted to scream.

    “What do you want?” As if she didn’t know.

    “I want to explain. You wouldn’t let me finish earlier and I just wanted to –”

    “Mother, we’ve been over this already. I do understand. He’s my father, right? I know what he’s like. I’m not saying that you should just ignore all the things about him you don’t like, but I’m married too! I know that you make certain sacrifices, as a mother, a wife –”

     “Yes, fine. You go right ahead and make the sacrifices if you like. I’ve made them too, you know. While you and your brothers were little, I made all sorts of sacrifices. Because I felt – and I still feel – that children need two parents to raise them.  But you two are grown up now, and while I’m still young enough to –”

    “Mother, you are sixty-four!” And I know damn well that I only had one parent raising me.

    “Yes. But even though that might seem terribly old to you, I am still young enough not to want to spend the rest of my life – my life – like some kind of robot, an unpaid servant, never thinking of what I want, always trying to read the moods of others so I can satisfy their needs. I don’t even want to spend another month like this!”

    “So take a break, then. The Kimuras won’t be back for months, right? You can stay there until you’ve thought things through, then you can talk things over with Dad, try and find a way –”

    “Mizue. We’ve been over this before – how many times? You say you know your father. Well, if you do, then you’ll know that talking things over with him isn’t an option. You can’t talk with your father. I certainly can’t. He’ll pretend to hear me out, but in the end, nothing changes. Because what he wants is his own way. He doesn’t know how to compromise, never has.”

     A sparrow was picking at the bread crumbs Mizue’s daughter Mari had scattered under the clothes line this morning. Mizue watched it brightly hopping about, picking at them. Another sparrow joined it, its beak wide open, begging to be fed. She cast a quick glance at her watch. Almost lunchtime. The washing cycle might be done in another thirty minutes and if it didn’t rain  –

     “…you listening?” came her mother’s plaintive voice over the line.  Mizue sighed.

     “Yes, mother.”

     “Well, it’s not too late for me, then. Because really, If Hattori-san could find someone that refined, that compatible –”

      “What?!” cried Mizue.

      Her mother sighed. “I said, if Hattori-san could find someone like her lovely Yamano-san – such a gentleman! So refined! – there’s a chance I could too. And even if I don’t, even if I end up just spending the rest of my life on my own –”

     “Mother, what are you saying? I thought you wanted a divorce to get away from Dad, from marriage. What is this business with Hattori-san?”

      “I told you last night!  Hattori-san is even older than I am – you know her, surely! Remember, with the tight perm, a rather dark complexion? Short too, just a little stout, but pretty, very good teeth. We ran into her in the park that time a few months after her husband died, she’d been shopping in town, was on the way to her calligraphy class –”

     “Mother, I know who she is, I’m asking what she has to do with you, or what this Yamano-san fellow does, for that matter.”

     “They have nothing at all to do with me, Mizue, other than the fact that they’re my friends. I was simply saying that if Hattori-san can meet someone at her age –”

     “Oh, I get it. So not only do you want a divorce, you want – what? – romance. At your age.”  It was hard to keep the disgust out of her voice. In fact, it was impossible.

     “Actually, yes.”  Her mother’s voice was coldly dignified. “That is exactly it. I want a divorce and – yes. At my age, I would like –  romance. Spring in winter.”

    After that, there was nothing for Mizue to do but hang up the phone.

     It had all started when her mother had gone to America to visit Mari. Mizue had been glad when she suggested it, during Mari’s second to last summer in Philadelphia. She had been nervous about Mari and the American boyfriend they’d been hearing so much about – this was before they’d actually had the chance to meet him –  and it was a relief to know that her mother would be able to give them a good idea about what Mari’s living arrangements were like, as she had left the dormitories to share a flat with some fellow students. Mizue’s father was, at the time, off on one of his many work-related foreign trips, and it seemed like the perfect solution to her mother’s ennui and Mizue’s anxiety about Mari.

     The problem was that her mother hadn’t wanted to come home.

     At first it had been funny, but when the weeks turned into months, Mizue had been forced to make a trip there herself to convince her mother to come back. This was the sort of thing, she’d thought to herself, that mothers did for their daughters. Not at all what a daughter should have to do for a mother! Mothers were supposed to be wise, patient, strong –  past all that nonsense.

    Once in Philadelphia, Mizue had been astounded by how different her mother had been from her usual self, how happy she seemed. She had been sitting in on lectures at the University of Philadelphia and had even developed some basic fluency in English, prattling on in a bewildering fashion to Mari’s friends and neighbors. Everybody loved her, Mari said, all her friends called her ‘Yoshiko’ instead of ‘Mrs Fujiyama.’ For Mizue, it was profoundly embarrassing.

   Mari wasn’t bothered by her at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. She liked having her grandmother around; there was a spare room in their flat at the time, and her grandmother paid her share of the rent and bought groceries too. And she cooked. Her flat-mates thought it was great to be able to come home to sushi and tempura for dinner, and had declared that having Mari’s grandmother for a flatmate was terrific.

    At her mother’s goodbye party, after Mizue had finally persuaded her to come back to Japan, she’d been horrified to see her mother sobbing and hugging all of Mari’s friends in a very American (and most un-Japanese) fashion. Great bearded young  men and young women with pierced belly buttons and nose rings bear-hugging her dumpy little mother and her mother hugging them back, calling them ‘James’ and ‘Karen’ and ‘Steve,’ kissing them and inviting them to come visit her in Japan. ‘Oh Yoshiko, you’re such a super lady!’ they’d all gushed, while her mother beamed and dabbed at her eyes with a hanky. Her mother doing this!

    On the plane ride back, her mother had been quiet, contained. She hadn’t asked about Mizue’s father and how he had managed on his own for two weeks (badly) or even how Mizue’s other two children were doing in school. She hadn’t been interested in hearing about the earthquake they’d just had in Yokohama or the typhoon that was off the coast of Okinawa, or the latest political scandal, for that matter. She said she couldn’t care less which singer had divorced which actress or which model had just had plastic surgery on her eyes. 

    That had been a year ago. Ever since she’d come back from America, her mother had been a changed woman. Before, at least she’d waited until he was out of the room to bad-mouth her husband, but now, she’d snap back at him straight away, and she wasn’t inhibited about doing it in front of neighbors or family members, either. Years ago, when Mizue and her brothers were children, their mother had been somewhat quiet around their father. Never submissive, but quiet. But now it just seemed as though she never stopped criticizing him, complaining about him. And how she nagged! Every time she was around her parents, Mizue was struck by the almost palpable tension in the air, how irritated her mother seemed to be with her father. Since he had all but retired from work and was now home most of the time, the atmosphere at her parents’ house was positively lethal.

     And then a few months ago, her mother had gone on strike. She’d moved into the house of friends who had gone abroad indefinitely, leaving Mizue’s father on his own. The family had humored her at first, imagining that it would blow over shortly. But it hadn’t. And last night her mother had dropped the bomb. Separation wasn’t good enough, she wanted a divorce. She’d done her bit, now it was her turn to live her own life. What about her family? They’d get used to the idea. What would their friends and neighbors think? Who gave a damn?  What about her husband? Let him do things for himself for a change. He had retired, hadn’t he? Well, now she had too.

    Mizue knew her father had plenty of faults. He had affairs, and he wasn’t always discreet about it. He’d been a tyrannical father and a dictatorial husband, but when they were growing up he was almost never around, as his work took him all over the world. So even though he hadn’t been a positive, benevolent force in their lives, they hadn’t had a lot to do with him. And because he was good at his job, he earned an enormous salary and they lacked for nothing. Their house, for instance, though not in a stylish part of Tokyo, had a large garden and was spacious enough that they could actually put up guests. Not many of her friends could say the same about their homes! They’d always been able to go on foreign holidays, too, though seldom with their busy father, and she and her brothers had never wanted anything. Being a good provider had to count for something, didn’t it? Lots of men had affairs, especially in Japan. That was just par for the course, surely. A good wife learned to swallow her pride and pretend not to see.  After all, she herself –    

    Mizue leaned over the sink, where she was chopping onions. Her eyes stung with tears. In five months’ time, Mari would be getting married, and she, Mizue, would have all the business of making the hotel arrangements, organizing the guests, getting the family together – for an international marriage, too! Why could her mother not have waited until after the wedding, at the very least?  Now she had all the fuss of explaining to friends and acquaintances at the wedding who were bound to have heard about her parents’ separation... The shame of it! And she had her father to contend with, too.

      Her father. She remembered her Aunt Kimiko, her father’s youngest sister, telling her how, as a student, Mizue’s father had brought home his dirty laundry. Every week. Kimiko’d had to do it for him, he was that busy with his studies at school, aiming to be number one in every subject, climbing the ladder to success even then. He’d come home at weekends, said Kimiko, and lord it over the rest of them. His student digs were a two-hour train trip away, and after he’d gorged himself on his mother’s food, he’d be sent back with clean, freshly ironed and folded clothes, vegetables his womenfolk had peeled and chopped, frozen meat they’d cut into pieces for him, packages of noodles. And yet he’d complained about what a hard time he’d had, how he’d had to look after himself while he was at university. Kimiko hadn’t been able to go to university, not even to a two-year girls’ college:  the family hadn’t had any money left over after educating her brother. But she’d had to go to his student digs and clean for him, air his futons, buy his clothes.  He didn’t have a clue about what it really took to get through life, her father.

     But that was just men, wasn’t it? So busy with the practical business of earning a living, providing for their families, that they didn’t have the time to mess around with things like housework or cooking. Mizue’s husband Koji was a little better, maybe – he could cook, after all, even if he did refuse to wash up – but her brothers were certainly old-fashioned. And now she, Mizue, had him on her hands.

    Take a sixty-six year old man who is set in his ways and with an ego that has been massaged and inflated out of all proportion, and absolutely no life skills whatsoever. Deprive him of his support system and then watch what happens. She had!

   First of all, the bluffing and bravado: he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her mother, must be the menopause, a delayed reaction maybe. Never mind, he said. It’d blow over, she’d soon see the error of her ways. Meanwhile, he’d care for himself, it was no big deal, he was doing what he’d had to do as a university student, after all: roughing it, fending for himself. Which meant, Mizue knew, that he lived like a slob and ate his meals out, seeking restaurants with sympathetic, motherly waitresses. So meals were taken care of, but then there was the problem of laundry. And keeping the house clean. And managing the garden, doing the finances, shopping for clothes and household supplies, taking out the trash, sorting the recycling, which was mandatory in their part of Tokyo, and carrying out any small repairs that needed to be done.  

   Gradually but surely, the absence of a wife told. Little signs were everywhere: missing buttons, a frayed collar, pilled up sweaters, a strong, stale smell of tobacco and alcohol that followed her father everywhere like bad luck. Before, he’d looked like the sharp, cutting-edge-of-technology success story that he was. Now he looked like the sort of down-and-out middle-aged fellow you’d shy away from on a train.  Mizue knew for a fact that he no longer changed his socks – he didn’t even launder them – and he had begun to complain about the meals he ate in restaurants Nothing was to his satisfaction: you couldn’t get cooks to do things just the way you wanted them to, he said. Mizue remembered how changeable her father’s tastes were, how he had often berated her mother for failing to read his mind. About so many things, too. How he liked his eggs done, for instance – and his preferences changed from month to month! –  which shirt and tie he wanted for whatever occasion, exactly how she packed his suitcase or folded his underwear.

     What made it doubly frustrating was the fact that her father had the money to pay for a cleaner, but refused to do this. In fact, when she’d suggested this to him, when she’d asked him if she could put in a word to a friend who knew about how to hire a good, discreet woman to come and do general housework and cooking, he’d hit the roof. No way was he going to pay for something like that! Paying for someone to come in and cook? Clean? Nonsense! Who did she think she was, asking him to throw away his money like that? Because her father had never managed their money before, it had always been their mother. She’d bought what needed to be bought, made all the financial decisions and arrangements. He hadn’t even been there to see how his money was being spent.  And the problem was, the one thing her father really did know, coming from a home with little money, was how not to spend it.

    It was provoking, really, thought Mizue. The way he talked, the way he demeaned women’s work. Throughout his married life all his domestic affairs had been looked after by his wife.  So now, he maintained, there was no way he was going to pay good money for something as trivial as housework.  All his talk about housework and how ridiculous it was to pay for it – when you thought about it, it was really downright provoking! And the nerve of him going on about how he’d managed on his own all those years he was at school, really roughed it. When, in fact, his mother was doing his laundry, chopping his vegetables and his meat, even cleaning his rice for him. And his sister was buying his clothes, tidying his apartment, cooking for him. It was just like Koji bragging about what a modern, caring husband he was just because he cooked once in a while. He used every single dish in the kitchen when he did and he always left her with the washing up. So where did he get off bragging like that?

    And now, thanks to her mother and her ridiculous romantic notions, Mizue had all her own housework to do and her father’s. If she didn’t want him to end up looking like a bum. If it bothered her that every time he came over, he left a sharp, musty, almost feral smell behind. If she didn’t want his neighbors complaining about the garbage never getting put out properly or noticing what wasn’t getting done in the garden. You’d think her brothers might step in and lend a hand, but no. They didn’t see it as their responsibility. And Koji, her own, husband – you’d think he might see what a strain she was under with her father on her hands. But no, when he got home from work, all he wanted to hear about was when dinner was going to be on the table. Then, he’d drop like a lump in front of the television and stay there until it was time for bath and bed. Day in and day out. Week after week after week…

   Mizue stood at the sink, tears running down her face. She was still young! Her mother was sixty-four, but she, Mizue –  she was only forty-three!  She had decades of this in front of her. Picking up after people, washing, peeling vegetables, bundling up trash, going to PTA meetings and mother-teacher conferences. All for – what? Children who slammed into and out of her life?  A husband who came home, wolfed his dinner, plonked himself down in front of the television and grunted monosyllabic responses to her attempts at conversation?  A father who took all her hard work for granted? Laughed at it, even. Housework?  Pah! Who’d pay money for that? And a mother who wanted her own life, who obviously didn’t give a damn about anyone other than herself anymore?

    It used to be that whenever she had troubles, whenever things were really getting to her, she could turn to her mother, talk it over with her. She was lucky, her friends had always said, in that her mother really listened. Most mothers were just trying to push you to do what you had to do:  to fit in, do well, marry above yourself, if possible, make your parents proud, work hard to raise your family.

   Her mother, it was true, was not like that, had never fit into any mold. ‘I want you to be happy,’ she’d always said, ‘and to do what’s right – for yourself, not just for others. I want you to be successful, but by that I don’t mean rich, I mean content.  Able to realize your own potential. Marry if you like, but choose someone you like, someone you can talk to.’ Radical words to hear from a Japanese mother, Mizue knew.

    And yet where was her mother now? Off on a ridiculous quest for romance – at her age!  When surely she, Mizue – surely she was the one who deserved a break! Surely she was the one who deserved a little romance in her life!

   Blinded by tears, Mizue suddenly realized that the doorbell was ringing. Blotting her eyes hurriedly with tissues, she made for the door. She’d left it unlocked, and if it was the man with their kerosene delivery, he’d come right on in like he usually did. Onions, she muttered to herself. I was chopping onions, after all, I’ll just laugh and say that’s why my eyes are all red. But when she got to the door, there was her mother, standing in the entrance-way, a shopping bag over one arm and an anxious look on her face. ‘Mi-bon?’ she said, using Mizue’s childhood name. ‘Mi-bon?’ she repeated sadly, looking at Mizue and instantly taking it all in, as she always did, always had – the swollen red eyes, the crumpled tissue bunched in her fist. Mizue willed her heart to freeze as she glared back at her mother angrily.

   But her mother put down her shopping and opened up her arms and Mizue felt her heart break as she shed her pride and stepped into them.