The Last Leaves Falling (8 page)

Hello?

Are you there?

What do I say?

Ok, never mind. I just wanted to say hi. I’m not a creep, btw, I just . . . I like to see who’s signed up to the forum and welcome people.

It can be a bit terrifying when it’s busy.

I hope you jump in though, everybody’s really nice.

Okay byeee!

In the background, MonkECMonkEDo joins in the conversation:

MonkECMonkEDo:
I have to go too.

KyotoQueen:
What, now? U just got here!

MonkECMonkEDo:
My parents are home. I have to study.

KyotoQueen:
Tell them you’re studying in your room.

MonkECMonkEDo:
I wish! Byeeee! xx

And MonkECMonkEDo is gone.

12

I cannot stay online. I’ve been seen. Compromised. And I don’t know what to do.

But before I go, I just have to:

USERNAME

TAGLINE

AGE

GENDER

INTERESTS

•  •  •  •

Dear Ojiisan,

I am doing well. The city is ready for autumn now; the sun sets gold, just tempting the trees to join it. Have the fork tails flown through yet, or are they late again this year? Has Bah-Ba deemed it cold enough for honey cake?

And how do you talk to girls?
I can’t send that. Can I?

No.

My grandfather and I used to talk about
everything
, but somehow I can’t. Once, we talked of grades and universities and far-flung places. Now all I have to report is the latest ache or shaking muscle, and we don’t say much at all.

Hope you are well,

Your grandson, Abe Sora

•  •  •  •

“Sora!”

I look up from my half-full dish of salty miso, and see my mother has already finished. “Sorry, Mama.”

She lays her chopsticks carefully across her bowl, then rests her chin on her hands, leaning toward me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding. I hope she cannot see my thoughts—of Ojiisan and MonkEC—I do not even know exactly what they are, and they would only make her sad.

She studies my face for a moment but says nothing.

“There’s a letter for Ojiisan in the hall,” I say, to change the subject. “Will you mail it?”

“You don’t
have
to write to him,” she frowns. “He has a phone.”

I shrug. “He likes them.”

I do too. I like the sense that our conversations can withstand time and distance and still reach each other. But my mother is forever on her smartphone, plugged into the latest news, e-mails at her fingertips in seconds, and she does not understand.

“You’re so like him, you know?”

“Ojiisan?”

“Yes. The pair of you are like two peas . . .”—she pauses, and for a second her frown disappears—“two nature-loving peas. Sometimes I think you were both carved right out of an old tree trunk or dug out of the earth.”

“Mama, I was born right here. In the city. In the hospital, with you.”

She almost smiles. “Quite a day that was.”

I’ve heard the story a thousand times. How Ojiisan and Bah-Ba faced the big tall buildings of the city trying to reach their daughter, to be there for the birth, but the big city travel-gods thwarted their attempts and in the end it was just the two of us. Mama and me. Just the way it’s always been.

My father, who whisked Mama away from the countryside, whisked himself away from her, long before I came.

But we don’t really talk about him. We don’t need him. We’re a perfect team.

“Mama . . . how did Ojiisan get lost that day? The trains are labeled. And they do not wander off.”

There it is again, that almost smile. “That’s not the way your grandfather would tell it.” No. Willful trains with feet, he’d say. Dragon-bellied transport. Mama shrugs. “The city befuddles him. Too much going on and not enough sky.” I can almost hear the words, unspoken this time:
two peas
. And for a moment I think we might talk about the endless summers we spent every year at Ojiisan and Bah-Ba’s, underneath that open sky, or all the other things she sees in both of us. But she rolls her eyes and starts to clear away the dishes, and the conversation’s over.