The Last Leaves Falling (37 page)

“All I need you to do is pop the blister packs and help me . . . I can’t lift them. But I’ll do the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Yes.” I have thought long and hard about the way to do this. I want it to be easy. No mess. No stress. Done. And I do not want to leave my friends behind in pieces. I need to leave them free of blame and free of guilt.

“What will happen then?” Mai asks.

I think it will be quick. Like eating too much food on New Year’s Day and falling asleep beneath a thick, warm blanket. “Then we’ll say good-bye, and you will leave.”

They protest. I knew they would, but I am firm. It has to be this way. I found a copy of the legal documents from a company that helps people like me; paperwork claiming my condition, and my competency, and I’ve already drafted my own, absolving my friends of responsibility. But I have to be sure. I want them halfway home before it happens.

95

The next day, I sit in the kitchen with my mother while she works. I want to soak the sight of her into my heart, and I do not want to be alone.

“Do you want your headphones?” she asks. “A book? Music?”

“No.” And it is true. I want to hear her breathing. Hear the scratching of her pen and the tapping of her fingers on the laptop keys. I want to see the way she shifts her weight from left to right, taps her foot impatiently when she answers the boss’s e-mails.

These things matter now, because suddenly my life is one of lasts. Last week, last days, last hours, and I don’t want to miss any of it.

Everything looks brighter now, sounds sharper, and I wonder, for a second,
Is it nerves, or a new lust for life?

But when I focus on the question, it’s there: the muscle cramps and tightened breaths, the fear and helplessness. It’s right. It’s time.

“Mama,” I say, when she looks up from her work. “What will you do when I’m gone?”

She physically recoils, pulls away from me. “Sora!”

“I’m serious.”

She sighs. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Will we?

I wish that I could tell her that it’s
always
later, and there’s not as much time as she thinks. But I cannot. Instead I say, “Those photographs . . .”

“Yes?”

“We haven’t taken any in a while.”

“No. I didn’t think—”

“We should.”

“Okay.”

And in the evening when she slides the laptop back into its case, that’s exactly what we do. In every room. Pictures of us pulling stupid faces, grinning, arms around each other. Serious portraits of us with books, and tea, and staring through the windows. And then we bake, and we take photographs of that, too. When the cakes are in the oven, my mother grabs a handful of flour and dumps it out onto my head, snapping my look of surprise amidst a cloud of white. I shake my head so hard that I see stars, and when I look up she is covered too. And the last picture of the night is of two white-haired, white-faced people with flour hanging off their eyelashes, grinning like they really mean it.

96

And then it’s here. The Night Before. My final evening.

I let my breath out slowly, and switch on the camera.

This is hard.

But I have to. I can’t just leave without saying good-bye. He’ll understand
this
, but he would not fathom
that
.

One. Last. Letter.

“Hi, Ojiisan.

“I don’t even know what to say. Except, there is a reason that they limit the number of extra innings to a game. Sometimes . . . sometimes you just can’t win.”

“I tried. I promise I tried. But this was one hell of a curveball.

“But I slid into base before the other team could stop me. I’m content with that.” I swallow hard.

“Mama will not understand at first. I know she won’t. But maybe you can show her how to hold a bat again and live. Just like you taught me.

“Look after each other. You’re my team. I love you always.”

I sit here for what seems forever, trying to convey everything I feel. All those memories. Every single one. And how I love him and I’m sorry and I wish that I could stay. And yet, this is exactly right.

Then I stop recording and attach it to an e-mail, scheduled to send out tomorrow night, when it’s all over. And I sit, staring at my screen. I don’t know where the week has gone, and I can’t remember what I did with it. Sure, there are photographs, and memories, and when I close my eyes I see them all, up close and personal, a slide show just for me. But what have I done? What will I leave the world except a sorry note?

•  •  •  •

“Oh, oh, oh! Yes! You’re here!”

“Hi, Mai!” I laugh, baffled by her cheeriness.

“Hi?” Kaito says too.

“I did it, I did it, I did it!”

“Did . . . what?”

“I told her! I told her I want to study art, and, I used you, Sora, I hope that you don’t mind—”

“Me?”

“Yes! She looked at me like she was going to yell, and it just came out. I begged her to listen, and I told her about you, and how you taught me that dreams are important because time is short, and sometimes, even when it’s hard, we have to take control of our own destinies.”

She
actually
did it?

“And?” Kaito beats me to the question.

“She went tight-lipped and quiet, and I thought that she was going to send me to my room, tell me again that I’m too young to know what the important things in life will be . . . but she didn’t. She just asked to see my
art
.”

I can see Kaito on the screen, holding his breath exactly as I am.

“She looked at it all. And then we sat, and talked, and
I’m not going to law school!
I’m going to write to the dean and explain. And I’m hoping that he’ll let me switch, but if he doesn’t it’s okay, I’ll go somewhere else. I don’t care.
I’m
not going to be a lawyer!
”

“Yesss!” He punches the air victoriously, “And she beats the Mega Boss. Mai takes the win!”

“You,” Mai giggles, “are such a dork.”

I watch them, so close that even though they’re halfway across town from each other, they might as well be in the same room. And I am glad.

•  •  •  •

All the way through dinner, I can feel the tears, hot and heavy just behind my eyes. Every time my mother asks “Is that all right?” or “Water?” my throat cracks beneath the awful truth. This is our last evening meal. The last time I will sit, unhurried, at the table with my mother. The last time she will cook her soba broth for me. I breathe in the scent of it, rich with spinach, and I wonder whether she will ever eat the dish again, or whether it will always be our
last meal
in her mind. Forever tainted sour.

I’m glad that it is broth tonight and there are no chopsticks. I don’t have to imagine my mother placing bones—my bones—into an urn.

She knows something is wrong, offers to get me extra pain relief or make me an appointment to see Doctor Kobayashi, and I almost tell her, but I do not have the words.

97

I wake up in the dead of night, and for the briefest moment I’m confused. There is no light, no noise, no pain. Why am I awake?

And I remember. The last day. The ending.

Nerves jump like crickets on my insides. I lie here, listening to sounds that are not there: imagined wind, the ticking of time, a fox rummaging through dustbins ten stories below. And I think of Yamada-san; would he have ended it like this, if he had the choice?

And the man who spoke to newspapers about the day he died; was that
real
?

And this:
I cannot mourn, for I have lived.

The whistle of the sword, sings; frees
me with a final kiss.

I’m scared, and I’m excited, and relieved. Because today, whatever it is that will follow this, I take control. Today everything changes.

Tomorrow there will not be that awful stomach-sickening moment when my mother has to wipe me clean, or the guilt as the baggage beneath her eyes grows larger, darker, every day. There will not be the promise of a ventilator, a machine that reads your roving eyes and translates movement into t.h.e. s.l.o.w.e.s.t. e.v.e.r. w.o.r.d.s.

There will be only memories, and freedom. In the next room, my mother lies asleep as though nothing is different, but today everything changes.

I almost made her a video too, but I could not. She would play it on repeat until my image warped and my words took on meanings that were never meant.

I still don’t know what I will say to her. Or how. Or when. I wish that I could take Mai’s victory—my part in it—and share it; make my mother proud. And I wonder about telling her at breakfast, but I do not want to bring Mai into it. Breakfast is for us and us alone.

98

We eat in almost silence, but I do not mind. I let my eyes trace her hairline, the wrinkles around her knuckles and the way she draws a breath every time I close my mouth around a bite-size square of toast, her lips mimicking mine in miniature as though she’s willing me to eat. And I remember. I remember all the times she’s dealt with cuts and scrapes and bruises, all the times I ran out the door without saying good-bye.

And here I am, almost grown, doing it again.

When lunch is over, she sets water on the stove for tea. Only this time, she does not drop tea bags into mugs. She reaches for a tin, pulling out an orange teapot I have never seen before.

“I thought,” she says, turning to me with a smile, “that perhaps it was time you and I lingered a little.”