The Appetites of Girls (13 page)

In preparation for Toru’s arrival, my parents converted the library into a boy’s bedroom with navy curtains and a poster bed with a matching navy quilt. Over the bureau they hung an enormous framed poster of Mozart, Toru’s favorite composer.

“We should try to make Toru feel as welcome as possible,” my mother said when I watched from the doorway as she folded boys’ shirts and pants into the bureau drawers. “You understand, don’t you, Setsu? We have to expect that it may take him some time to feel comfortable.”

“Yes.” I nodded solemnly, eager to show my readiness to help. Then I remembered the leaden Mozart figurine on my bedroom wall shelf. I had bought it with my birthday money the year before. After dusting its tiny painted red shoes with my fingertip, I carried it to Toru’s bedside table, carefully choosing a spot where he could easily see it.

My parents left early on a Sunday morning to pick up Toru, leaving me at home with our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Biddleman. While Mrs. Biddleman’s knitting needles moved through skeins of yarn, I hovered at the windows flanking the front door, where I could view the driveway and my parents’ returning car.

Despite my mother’s concerns, from the moment he walked in with
his canvas duffel bag and his violin case, Toru seemed not to feel the least bit out of place. When my parents introduced us, he marched directly to the far end of the hall where I stood, stopping just inches from me.

“This is your sister, Toru. She is a violinist, also. A very accomplished one, like you,” my mother said, making me blink with embarrassment.

Toru’s teeth flashed in a flickering smile. “They told me all about you in the car. I heard you are adopted, too?” Then before I could answer, he shrugged his shoulders and, whistling, turned down the hall where my father had explained he could find his room.

That evening, long after I’d climbed into bed, through my bedroom wall, I could hear Toru arranging and rearranging his possessions—the zipping and unzipping of his duffel bag, the creak of opening and closing drawers, and once or twice a dull scraping sound, as if something very heavy were being dragged across the floor. Later that night when I passed his door, waking to use the bathroom, I saw that he had repositioned the room’s desk and chair and shifted his bed several feet to the left. On his nightstand he had placed a thick stack of music books and a chrome-sided digital clock, so that I could not be sure he had noticed the Mozart figurine.

•   •   •

O
ur house with Toru in it soon seemed alive with noise. His heels smacked the floors as he dashed from room to room. And when he spoke, his voice seemed to echo through the air even after his words had ceased.

“Toru, you have the most marvelous self-assurance!” my mother said to him after he had been with us for a few days. She clapped her hands beneath her chin, her eyes widening. “We’re glad to see how easily you are making the transition to your new home.”

Though he was not fat, we soon learned that Toru had an enormous appetite, and my mother began to buy far greater quantities of food. She
would return from the market with bag after bag of cheeses and spreads and bulky packets of deli meat for Toru to snack on. At dinner he surprised us by taking second, sometimes even third, helpings of roast beef or green squash or applesauce, flicking impatiently at the wisps of dark hair that frequently fell across his brow.

“What a healthy eater you are!” my parents would exclaim.

“Mmm, mmm.” He would nod with laughing eyes, his mouth too full to speak.

I could not remember ever having met anyone as bold as Toru. During our meals, I could not take my eyes from him—from the brave way in which he asked for the things he desired, without a single stutter or blush of shyness—so that often I would neglect to finish the food on my own plate. Then I would find myself longing for another chicken wing or spoonful of potatoes, but only after it was too late, the table already half-cleared, my mother packing leftovers in plastic containers.

When the dishes had been rinsed, my parents retired to the living room with their papers and books, and Toru disappeared into his room. Through his door, which he left partially ajar, I could see him seated cross-legged on his bed, sifting through sheets of music or making notes to himself with a black marker and lined yellow pad. After some hesitation, I would cough softly, hoping he would hear me in the hallway and invite me in. Already I had planned the questions I would ask him if he ever did, imagined the things we could talk about. One night, as I watched, he shuffled through a pile of photographs, sorting them into small mounds on the quilt of his bed. And, overcome by curiosity, I forgot myself and tiptoed so close to the entry of his room that my nose poked through the door frame.

“Pictures of Japan,” Toru said suddenly, making me start; I was unaware that he had noticed my presence. Quickly he waved his hand over the piles before him, gesturing, I assumed, his permission for me to take a look.

“Oh!” I gasped, glimpsing a photograph of a jagged mountain, its
pointed crest glistening with snow, and another picture of a very young boy standing on a wooden bridge, behind him a shallow waterfall streaming between moss-covered stones. “Oh, so beautiful!”

“My parents’ house,” Toru said, tapping the snapshot of the boy on the bridge. “Gardens like this don’t exist in America, only in Japan.”

“I was born in Japan, too. I lived there for three years,” I said, embarking on one of the conversations I had long envisioned we would have and had often rehearsed in my mind. “Just like you.”

“Hmm?” Toru said, still studying the photographs. “Where?”

“The Osaka Blessed Children’s Orphanage.”

“Oh. Then you have probably never seen the Temple Gardens in Kyoto or been to Shinjuku in Tokyo?”

“No.”

“At the orphanage did you eat ebi tempura or okonomiyaki with squid?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, trying to guess the meaning of these words and to recall more than my few fuzzy recollections of the children’s home.

“I guess an orphanage is different.” Toru shrugged, then continued to sort through his photographs.

For some time I watched him in silence. But he did not offer to show me any more pictures, and though I thought and thought, I could find no way to reintroduce the conversation that had ended so soon.

After a few weeks, once my parents felt Toru had grown accustomed to his new routine, they asked if he would like to resume his music lessons. “Setsu has a very good teacher,” they said. “She has agreed to take you on, as well. You could have joint lessons twice a week if Setsu doesn’t mind.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind,” I said, smiling at Toru so that he could see my willingness to share.

He pushed back his shoulders then nodded his consent. And in my gladness that Toru wished to spend this time with me, I pressed my hands to my mouth to hide my broad smile.

•   •   •

T
oru carried to our first shared visit with Mrs. Dubois an armload of his own music books. After we had completed our scales and arpeggios, he asked if he might play for her the piece he had been working on most recently. Before starting, Toru plucked his strings to be sure they were in tune. He rubbed his bow with the rosin he kept in a bottom square pocket of his violin case, then, shaking the hair from his forehead, he signaled to Mrs. Dubois to begin the opening measures on the piano. Notes burst from his instrument the moment his bow met the strings, reminding me of the firecrackers I had once heard on the Fourth of July. As he played, he rocked on his feet; he dipped his violin forward and back. His sound grew louder and louder, until it seemed to shoot to the far walls and as high as the ceiling.

“Well done! Well done!” Mrs. Dubois said when he had finished. “You have talent, just like your sister.” Toru silently swatted the hair from his brow as if he were waiting for her to continue. “There is much strength in your playing!”

“That is what my last teacher told me,” he said, but he turned to me as he answered her, his mouth curving into a funny expression I could not understand.

It was not long before Mrs. Dubois invited my parents in for conferences about Toru, just as she had held for me. She confirmed what my parents had been told by Toru’s uncle. Toru, too, Mrs. Dubois hoped, might have a future as a soloist or with a significant orchestra. With consistent practice there was every reason to think we would both enjoy such successes.

One Saturday, as we descended Mrs. Dubois’s front steps, my mother grabbed Toru’s wrist with one hand and mine with the other. “Who could have imagined
two
such talents in one house! In one family! Isn’t it a thrill!”

My cheeks rushed with warmth. Being praised with Toru was even
nicer than being praised alone, and I turned to him. But his eyes were fixed on the pavement before him, and he did not glance back.

•   •   •

I
n the afternoons, when Toru and I returned from our lessons, my parents asked us to demonstrate what we had learned. Bashfully I would hesitate, but Toru would flip open his violin case and play passages from the pieces Mrs. Dubois had taught us.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” With every one of our parents’ compliments Toru’s bowing arm seemed to weave in larger and larger arcs, his notes building to crescendos. And each time, he played more passages than the time before, giving my parents more to be proud of.

As soon as he finished, my parents would insist, “Now it’s your turn, Setsu.” So, blushing, asking what they wished to hear, I would lift my own instrument, resting it beneath my chin. But always, after my first few measures, I noticed that Toru snapped his violin back into its case. Then, tucking it under his arm, he would tread with clacking footsteps down the hall toward his room. So while my parents clapped their approval, I could not help wondering if there was something I was doing wrong, whether there was something in the way I played that my brother did not like.

So after supper when Toru practiced in his bedroom and I in mine, I would pause, listening to the strains of music coming through his wall, trying to discern the ways in which our sounds differed. Then I would continue where I’d left off, playing concertos and lullabies and waltzes as beautifully as I knew how, hoping that I had merely imagined his displeasure.

“How well you played tonight, Toru,” I told him if I passed him later emerging from the bathroom after washing his face for bed. “Just like a professional on the radio!”

Toru’s lips curled into a half-smile, and he would thrust his hands
into the pockets of his dark green bathrobe. “Oh? My uncle used to tell me it was in my genes.” He lifted his arms questioningly. “Ha! Who knows?” Then, with no mention of the pieces I had played, he plodded back to his room, his slippers slapping the tiles.

But, with my own ears, I could not hear what my playing lacked. So when we had returned from our lesson one afternoon, I approached Toru. He was reclining on his bed, his head propped against a pillow, taking notes once again with his yellow pad and marker. Softly I tapped on his door.

“Toru, I’m sorry to interrupt. It’s only a quick question I have. Would you mind, please . . . Could I ask your advice?”

Toru made another note on his yellow pad, then shrugged. “I don’t think my method is something I can teach. I’ve been told the way I play was born inside me.”

“Oh,” I whispered, tucking my chin to my neck with disappointment.

Toru cleared his throat, then blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief. “But if you really want, I guess I could try.”

“Yes, please. Oh, yes, please.”

So each day I would watch Toru and then try my very best to copy his techniques, attempting to make my fingers flit, my bowing arm slice as his did.

“How was that, Toru? What did you think?”

But Toru would only squint, observing me from across the room, one arm folded over the other. “Hmm. Well, maybe you have made a little improvement. As soon as I see more, I promise to let you know.”

Every afternoon and evening I practiced the things Toru had shown me, hour after hour, sometimes stopping only when my mother called me for dinner. As I took my seat, I would glance at Toru, knowing he’d heard the pieces I’d played. I studied his face for hints of his opinions. But Toru seemed to see nothing but the dishes before him, especially now that my mother had enrolled in a new cooking class and began to make meals from her two new Japanese cookbooks—chunks of fish covered with
sticky rice, dumplings filled with shrimp, deep bowls of soup with shredded egg floating on the surface, and long noodles as sheer as glass.

“Toru is more fond of these recipes,” my mother explained as I helped her to set plates and napkins on the table and, at Toru’s place, a pair of bamboo chopsticks, which he insisted made his food taste better. “Do you mind?”

“Oh, no.” I shook my head, worried she would stop making the things Toru liked most and that I would somehow be responsible.

Presented with his favorite meals, Toru’s hunger seemed to grow even greater. He heaped his plate with tangy beef and strips of pork in brown sauce. He finished large mounds of white rice in the wink of an eye. Every few days he remembered another dish he especially liked—tuna with wasabi, ginger chicken, vegetables fried in thick batter. It was not long before his shirts began to stretch across the middle and his ankles to protrude below the cuffs of his pants. Since moving into our house, Toru had grown two inches.

“Good for you, Toru!” my father said. “What a healthy boy you are!” And he took him to the city to purchase a new wardrobe of larger clothes.

When they returned, laden with shopping bags, my father teased, “And what about you, Setsu? Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat?” He laughed, patting my head. “Such a string bean! Isn’t she a wisp of a thing!” he said, turning to Toru. “Maybe your sister should take lessons from you!”

I smiled to join in the joke, but as soon as my father and Toru walked away, I stretched my arms out before me, inspecting the skinniness of my wrists, the knobbiness of my elbows, wondering if the thinness of my limbs was partially to blame for the flaws in my playing.