Bicycle Days (14 page)

Mrs. Hasegawa didn’t seem to hear him. She slapped her hand against the steering wheel and held it there. The horn blared loudly. Alec noticed the man’s mouth had stopped opening and closing. The car was now less than thirty feet away.

“Mother!”

“That man is crazy!” Mrs. Hasegawa hissed.

Fifteen feet away.

“Mother!” Alec shouted.

Almost casually, she turned the wheel to the right. The man’s mouth opened again, this time to scream, as he dived to the other side of the street, the car missing him by only a yard.

Mrs. Hasegawa straightened the wheel. “See? It was not even close.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Stupid man. Eh, Alec? Stupid man!”

The kids, all three of them, were in the backseat, hysterical with laughter.

“She drives like a New Yorker,” Yoshi said. “All New Yorkers are crazy.”

Alec covered his face with his arms, trying to calm himself. He felt Hiroshi’s diminutive hands on his head, scratching his scalp.

“Don’t be scared, Little Monkey,” Hiroshi said, reaching over the seat. “Little Monkey, your hair is still very short.”

Yukiko grabbed Hiroshi by the arm, yanked him back in his seat. “Eh! Hiroshi! Leave Alec alone. You’re being a baby.”

Hiroshi hit her on the leg. “I’m twelve,” he said.

“You’re short.” She smacked him on the back of the head.

Yoshi said, “That’s enough.” The bickering stopped immediately.

Satisfied, Mrs. Hasegawa grunted. “We are going first to Mitsukoshi Department Store,” she said. “It is the best department store in the world. Did you know that, Alec? The best for shopping.”

Alec cleared his throat. “I brought many things with me to Japan, Mother. Perhaps I should not do any more shopping.”

She dismissed his words with her clucking noise. “We are going shopping,” she said. “And Mitsukoshi is the best in the world for shopping.”

* * *

Alec was right behind her as she led the way into Mitsukoshi. Her boxy pink skirt made her appear even more stocky than usual, and the uniformed women who greeted them at the entrance actually took small steps backward in fright. Mrs. Hasegawa paid no attention: she brushed by them without looking and, reaching past Alec to grab hold of Hiroshi’s arm, pushed and pulled her way toward the escalators.

She didn’t walk through the aisles of jewelry and cosmetics, of perfume sprayers and mud maskers, but stalked them, a predator. Full-waisted, low-set, with fleshy fingers and ears, fleshy nose and a wide mouth, she was the sort of woman from the provinces who might be found one evening dragging an uncooperative bull into its stall by the horns or wading through the murky waters of a rice field. Watching her, Alec thought that her short legs were designed not for strolling or shopping, but for hiking somewhere far from the city, moving with the sure, uphill lean of the farmers of the north. It seemed to him as if she had been picked up and set down in the wrong place for her, a foreign place. She rarely went out now. Her legs, probably strong once, had grown veined and heavy.

Today she looked formidable, though, and Alec followed her through the store. Single file with the rest of her children, past counters and counters of the most expensive beauty products from Milan and Paris and New York, past filmed demonstrations of the latest techniques in eye-liner application. The uniformed Mitsukoshi women were everywhere, an army of Mickey Mouse Club fanatics, appearing like genies from behind cardboard advertisements, rapid sales pitches flowing from their mouths in the high-pitched, cartoon octaves of people who have just inhaled helium. But they were no match for Mrs. Hasegawa. She bulled down the aisle and through them, scattering them without a thought. Her face set in a ferocious scowl, she put the threat of menace behind her bulk and stampeded across the great Mitsukoshi plains. She reached a single thick arm behind her and hauled her children to the safety of the escalator,
where the moving steps led steeply upward to the men’s clothing department.

“Alec! Do you like them?”

Mrs. Hasegawa’s words reached him through the dressing room curtains. He was looking at his reflection in the floor-length mirror, absorbing inch by inch the full effect of the black stretch pants she had made him try on. The pants hugged his legs like a wetsuit, pulled upward at his buttocks and crotch. The leather knee patches rubbed uncomfortably against his bare skin. Alec stared at himself and thought that his body had never looked so awkward, so knobby-kneed and gangly. He wondered briefly whether puberty might not be a single stage of development after all, but something he would have to go through over and over again until death.

“Alec!”

“Yes.”

“He likes them!” It was Yukiko’s voice.

Alec sighed. “No. I said ‘Yes, I’m here.’ Not ‘Yes, I like them.’ ”

“He doesn’t like them,” Yukiko said, softly this time.

Mrs. Hasegawa was clucking. “Alec! Come, stand here. So we can see.”

Alec looked at the price tag, converting the yen into dollars. The total was somewhere around three hundred. He added this to the rest of the clothes they had already picked out for him: another pair of pants, two shirts, socks. Hundreds of dollars. “I think the pants are too small, Mother.”

“Hiroshi,” she commanded. “Bring Alec here.”

“Okay. I’m coming.” He stepped through the curtains.

There was a moment of silence while they studied him.

“Alec looks very smart,” Yoshi said finally. “Issey Miyake is the best in Japanese fashion.”

Mrs. Hasegawa looked at Yoshi. “Smart?”

Yoshi nodded. “The best. I have the same pants.”

“Very handsome,” she agreed. She looked at the rest of her family. “Alec looks smart in Yoshi’s pants. Eh? Very handsome.”

“Handsome
and
smart,” Yukiko whispered.

Hiroshi said, “Alec is a movie star. A big American movie star.”

“Okay. Good,” Mrs. Hasegawa said, and pointed to a wizened man with a tape measure coiled around his wrist. The tailor stepped forward, gesturing with his hands for Alec to turn around.

Alec ignored him, turned to Mrs. Hasegawa. “About these pants …”

She looked surprised. “You don’t like them?”

“They are expensive.”

“Not expensive,” she said firmly. “It is a gift. This is a Japanese custom.”

“Please, Mother. It is too much.”

Yukiko said, “I like them. I think they are very smart.”

“Maybe Alec likes Italian clothes better,” Yoshi suggested.

“Both,” Mrs. Hasegawa declared. “Alec will have both Japanese and Italian clothes.”

Yoshi pointed to a nearby rack of clothes. “These pants go with that jacket over there. Hiroshi, bring that jacket here.”

Hiroshi returned with the jacket.

“Why are the shoulders so big?” Mrs. Hasegawa said, her lips pursed.

“Big shoulders are very smart,” Yukiko explained. “All the rock stars wear jackets with big shoulders.”

Yoshi held the jacket out to Alec. “Try it on.”

Alec shook his head. They were crowding around him, getting closer. The tailor already had his hand on the hem of the stretch pants.

Yoshi said: “The pants and jacket are also in brown.”

“I think black is better,” Yukiko said.

Yoshi nodded. “Yes, black is better.”

“Please turn this way,” the tailor said.

* * *

“Mother,” Alec said. “Come and look at this.”

It was almost an hour later. They were on the ground floor again, slowly making their way toward the exit. Alec stood beside a glass-enclosed jewelry counter, marking the place of something inside it with an extended fìnger.

Mrs. Hasegawa had stopped a few feet ahead of him. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to check on the children, who had continued walking.

“Eh! Yoshi!” she called. “Wait at the exit! And hold on to Hiroshi!” She turned to glare at several women who were looking at her with expressions of disapproval and mild horror. They quickly went about their business.

“Come and look,” Alec said. “It is very beautiful.”

She came up beside him, peered into the display case. “Do you like jewelry?”

“Not for me. But look, that thing there. What do you call that in Japanese?”

“A ring.”

“No. To the left.”

“A brooch. It is made from jade. Perhaps it is Chinese.”

“Yes. Do you like it?”

Mrs. Hasegawa fogged up the display case with her breath. She laughed loudly and wiped it clean with the sleeve of her blouse. “Eh! There it is! Yes, it is very beautiful. I will buy it for you, and you will give it to your girlfriend.” She looked at him. “Do you have a girlfriend yet?”

“No,” Alec said, thinking of Kiyoko. “Not a girlfriend. There is someone I like, but I am not with her.”

“When you give her this present, she will want to marry you. And then you will move away and leave me all alone. I will be very sad, Alec.” She laughed again. “And all because of Mitsukoshi!”

A saleswoman with her hair in a bun walked toward them, but Mrs. Hasegawa waved her away.

Alec lowered his voice. “But Mother, you do not understand. I want to give it to
you.
As a gift.”

He saw her glance toward the exit, looking for her children.

“That is impossible,” she said finally.

“You don’t like it,” Alec said, thinking that it was the sort of thing she would say.

She studied it through the glass. “It is beautiful.”

“So, a gift.”

“I give
you
gifts. That is the custom. When I am in New York, you give me gifts. But this is Tokyo.”

The saleswoman was still hovering nearby. Alec asked to see the brooch. Looking relieved, she unlocked the display case and brought it out.

“He speaks such fine Japanese,” she said to Mrs. Hasegawa.

“I
am
Japanese,” Alec said.

Mrs. Hasegawa let out a guffaw.

For a moment, the saleswoman looked as if she might fall down. Then her mouth tightened up like a clam and she went away to another counter.

“That is bad, Alec,” Mrs. Hasegawa said, trying to be serious. “Very bad. You should not do that. You are American.”

Alec looked down. “Yes, you are right. Please excuse me.”

“But it is also very funny. She is a stupid woman, that one.”

“About the gift …”

She picked up the brooch, weighing it in her hand. It was a miniature frog made of jade, with eyes of black onyx.

“It is very heavy,” she said.

Alec touched it with the tip of his finger. “I do not know why, but I like it very much.”

“Yes, I like it, too.”

“I want to give it to you, Mother.”

“You should give it to a young woman. So you can get married.”

“It is a frog,” Alec said.

“Women love frogs.”

“Please, Mother. Will you accept this gift? It is important to me.”

“Yes, it is important to me, too,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

And then she laughed and grew merry again. She waved the beleaguered saleswoman over and, watching her come, whispered to Alec: “You told her that
you
are Japanese. You are very funny, Alec. What a good day of shopping!”

A
lec had never bathed so much in his life. It was the first thing he and Masako did when he went over to her apartment after work. It was the last thing they did before he left to go home. Bathing had become as important a part of their evenings as anything else, even taking precedence over the ritual snack of miniature hot dogs.

They had just bathed again, and he lay on her enormous futon, his head propped on a pillow. Above the sounds of the television, he could hear Masako blow-drying her hair, the noise fading in and out. They had been together just over a week.

Naked, she jumped on the bed, sprawled out across him. “Does Alec really want to watch television?” She was batting her eyelids up and down.

Alec found it hard to look at her. He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to act flirtatious all the time, like some bad Japanese idea of how an American woman would behave with a man. But he didn’t say anything.

She lay back beside him, resting her head against his shoulder. They were quiet for a while, watching a dubbed episode of “Dynasty,” her fingers gently moving over his body.

When a commercial came on, she said in English, “I rubbu you.”

Alec sat up, looked down at her. “What?”

She giggled, pointing at him. “I rubbu you. Rubbu you.”

Alec wanted to shake her. “Love is complicated,” he said in Japanese.

“I rubbu you,” she repeated.

“No, you don’t. I know you don’t.” He was getting up, practically pushing her away from him.

She said it one more time, I rubbu you, but her expression was already changing, collapsing. She looked as if she might cry.

“I have to go, Masako.”

Alec turned away from her. He watched himself in the mirror, noticing how quickly he dressed, as if this were the way he always dressed, running like a thief from a woman’s apartment. She was crying softly on the futon behind him. He angled his body so that he couldn’t see her. He could see only his own reflection now. And the television. Both of them lifeless images that moved. The commercial had ended, and another had taken its place. A blond-haired American woman in a high-cut leather skirt stroked the hood of a red Toyota sports car. She didn’t say anything about love.