‘Maybe,’ I grated out from between clenched teeth, ‘if you actually trusted that I can manage my own shit, I wouldn’t have to work so hard to prove it to you.’
Isamu’s nostrils flared. ‘Sato—’
‘Excuse me.’ I stood, snatching up my glass of Condrieu. ‘I need some air.’
It was nearly the summer solstice, so even though it was after nine pm, the sun had only just set, a few early stars speckling the sky. I sank onto the front steps, which were so low my knees almost ended up around my ears. I wanted to yell my frustrations out, tolisten to them echo back to me off the vine-covered slopes, but that would only worry my mother, so I settled for a long, extended exhale instead, which did nothing to ease the snarl of feeling in my chest.
I had sat on these steps the night Otosan died. He had collapsed in the vineyard, his heart giving out after decades of hard work and long days. Isamu – aged twenty-eight, but in everyone’s eyes a man, not a boy – had stood stoically, arms folded across his chest, dealing with the paramedics, but after they’d taken the body away, he’d left, striding away through the vines. Noriko had gone after him, and Okasan had retreated into the house, but I’d sat out here on the steps, and I’d looked up at the stars, and I’d cried.
I had cried tears of grief for my father, whom I had loved. But I had also cried tears of guilt and tears of relief, because this time he had gone somewhere he could not make us follow.
I wasn’t like him. Iwasn’t. I would never do what he did: drag his family around the world in fanatical pursuit of glory, denying them any sense of stability. Hadn’t I come back to do just the opposite? To build a home in Tsundoku, one that would make others feel at home too?
‘Sato?’
I looked over my shoulder automatically, although I didn’t need to. ‘I’m sorry, Okasan.’
My mother sat down, two stairs above me, knee just brushing my upper arm. ‘You’re having a tough time at the moment, aren’t you?’
There was no point lying to her. ‘Yes.’
‘And your brother’s not making it easier.’
I let out a long breath. ‘He’s trying to. I know that. But no, he’s not.’
‘Oh, my sons,’ she said. ‘My poor sons.’
She put her hand on my shoulder. I had to resist the urge to rest my head against her knee like a child.
‘He’s so lonely, you know,’ she said, after a long moment. ‘Out here by himself, with only me for company. Ever since she left.’
‘That doesn’t mean he needs to come and check up on me all the time.’
‘Would you prefer he didn’t?’
I didn’t say anything.
My mother didn’t say anything either. She’d always been good at that, at holding space open when it needed to be held.
‘I don’t want to be someone he checks up on,’ I said. ‘I want to be someone he visits. Someone he trusts. Someone who could even check up on him sometimes. I want to feel like his brother, not his son.’
That was at the heart of it, really. There were plenty of people who loved me. I had no illusions about that. But they never quite loved me the way I wanted. Isamu would never quite love me as an equal. My father had loved me, but not more than his work. Fiona… god, there was so much I could say about Fiona. Hell, even my cat didn’t love me the way I wished she would.
I looked up at the stars. ‘I don’t want to be like this, Okasan. I want to be taken seriously.’
‘So that’s it.’
I glanced over at her.
‘The exam,’ my mother said. ‘That’s why you’re so desperate to do it.’
‘No. Well – yes. The exam’s part of it. But not all of it.’
I looked back up at the stars. ‘There’s… someone,’ I admitted. ‘Someone I like very much. And I started to hope that maybe I could have her. But it’s complicated. She’s older than me. She’s got children. And…’
And I’ll never be more than her dirty little secret, I could not bring myself to say.
‘That is complicated.’ Okasan squeezed my shoulder. ‘Children make it especially complicated. No matter how much you love each other, children always make it complicated. Look at what happened with your brother and Noriko.’
