She scrutinized me for a while, as if I were some machine running on a previously unheard-of power source. Losing interest, she stared up at the ceiling, and the conversation petered out. No use talking to him about
Sumire was born in Chigasaki. Her home was near the seashore, and she grew up with the dry sound of sand-filled wind blowing against her windows. Her father ran a dental
11
clinic in Yokohama. He was remarkably handsome, his wellformed nose reminding you of Gregory Peck in
Sumire’s father was an almost mythic figure to the women in the Yokohama area who needed dental care. In the examination room he always wore a surgical cap and large mask, so the only thing the patient could see was a pair of eyes and ears. Even so, it was obvious how attractive he was. His beautiful, manly nose swelled up suggestively from under the mask, making his female patients blush. In an instant—regardless of whether their dental plan covered the costs—they fell in love.
*
Sumire’s mother passed away from a congenital heart defect when she was just 31. Sumire hadn’t quite turned three. The only memory she had of her mother was a vague one of the scent of her skin. Just a couple of photographs of her remained—a posed photo taken at her wedding, and a snapshot taken immediately after Sumire was born. Sumire used to pull out the photo album and gaze at the pictures. Sumire’s mother was—to put it mildly—a completely forgettable person. A short, humdrum hairstyle, clothes that made you wonder what she could have been thinking, an ill-atease smile. If she’d taken one step back, she would have melted right into the wall. Sumire was determined to brand her mother’s face on her memory. Then someday she might meet her in her dreams. They’d shake hands, have a nice chat. But things weren’t that easy. Try as she might to remember her
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mother’s face, it soon faded. Forget about dreams—if Sumire had passed her mother on the street, in broad daylight, she wouldn’t have known her.
Sumire’s father hardly ever spoke of his late wife. He wasn’t a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life—as though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid catching—he never talked about his feelings. Sumire had no memory of ever asking her father about her dead mother. Except for once, when she was still very small, for some reason she asked him, “What was my mother like?” She remembered this conversation very clearly.
Her father looked away and thought for a moment before replying. “She was good at remembering, things,” he said.
“And she had nice handwriting.”
A strange way to describe someone. Sumire was waiting expectantly, the snow-white first page of her notebook open, for nourishing words that could have been a source of warmth and comfort—a pillar, an axis, to help prop up her uncertain life here on this third planet from the sun. Her father should have said something that his young daughter could have held on to. But Surnire’s handsome father wasn’t going to speak those words, the very words she needed most.
*
Sumire’s father remarried when she was six, and two years later her younger brother was born. Her new mother wasn’t pretty either. On top of which she wasn’t so good at remembering things, and her handwriting wasn’t any great shakes. She was a kind and fair person, though. That was a lucky thing for little Sumire, her brand-new stepdaughter. No,
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came to choosing a mate, he knew what he was doing.
Her stepmother’s love for her never wavered during her long, difficult years of adolescence, and when Sumire declared she was going to quit college and write novels, her stepmother—though she had her own opinions on the matter—
respected Sumire’s desire. She’d always been pleased that Sumire loved to read so much, and she encouraged her literary pursuits.
