Unending Nora

Chapter 16

Julie Shigekuni 139 Chapter 16 It felt similar to watching a boat’s wake—tiny crests that danced like flames on the water’s surface, the mind playing tricks. Love that had begun in the imagination now took shape in its failure. Naoko would grow up not knowing her father, she missed him at night and her wailing rattled the thin wall that separated the bedrooms, forcing Elinore to perform her magic; the baby’s cry a snake charmer’s flute causing the mother to rise into her skin, to coil around what was perfect and invisible. Elinore knew her mother anticipated the drama—the tears that signaled her exodus into the garden. Hideko had always hated sorrow and, too, its consolations. It might have been different had she been the mother, Elinore’s tears once propelling her into action. But her daughter’s failings were not something she could face. The way Elinore saw it, Naoko’s difficulty adjusting was to be expected, and controllable to the extent that energy and patience allowed. But Hideko’s retreat felt unbearable. Once quiet had been restored to the house, Elinore stood over the kitchen sink watching through the window for signs of movement in the garden, imagining bamboo reeds jutting into the sky to be her mother until one night, staring into the fading light, her eye lingered on the sego palm in the ornamental clay pot. It sat near the pond in the spot it had always occupied, but its sharp fronds seemed spindly and thirsty-looking. Opening like a yawn, they pointed at something just beyond reach, which was how she located him. Unending Nora 140 Jun stood beside the palm, the slight stoop and bald patch in the back giving him away, and Elinore bolted from her spot at the kitchen window, leaving the sliding glass door open behind her as she ran the length of the stone path to greet her father. “What a nice surprise!” she shrieked over her mother, who held the garden hose, running water over a droopy stand of ferns near the fish pond. “When did you get in?” “Your mother didn’t tell you?” He looked at Hideko, perplexed as the water that leapt off the stone path caught his pant legs. They’d always been such a secretive couple, her parents, existing for months with lives that seemed not to conjoin at all, then managing somehow to fall back into each other’s company. “I told you, Elinore,” Hideko scolded. “Mom!” Elinore glared at her mother, not knowing what she was talking about, then wondering if the perceived omission wasn’t just a simple miscommunication. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for days.” Jun cocked his head sideways, sending a secret signal to Hideko before facing Elinore with a grin that beamed his pleasure. “Let me turn this off,” Hideko said, and Elinore watched the hose water spilling over a planter as her mother disappeared behind the house. “Why didn’t you come inside and meet Naoko?” Elinore asked, hurt that her father who had taken so long to get home hadn’t yet made it inside to see his granddaughter. “I’ll wait until morning,” he said, “when she wakes up.” Elinore knew that her father and she had never seen eye to eye when reading events and their importance. Called to the site of disasters, he spent his time trying to restore order to the lives of victims. But in his professional capacity, she’d seen him assign deep psychological impact to simple things, and dismiss momentous events as trivial. Where her daughter was concerned, she felt sure he had his reasons for waiting to meet her, but whatever they were they weren’t good enough, and her happiness over seeing him turned quickly to resentment. Julie Shigekuni 141 Hideko reapproached, stumbling over a tangle of hose and breaking the silence between them. “You should feel honored, Jun,” she said, “Elinore hasn’t come out to the garden at all since she got home.” “Really?” he said. “Your mother has been working so hard to keep it watered. I’m surprised to hear you haven’t been helping her!” Could it be true? Elinore retraced the path that had led to her conclusions. What if her mother’s leaving the house each evening was not a way to stand in judgment of her; what if...