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granny ito (novella excerpt)
September From her tent in the bushes, Granny Ito watched the house on the other side of the highway, and the young, small-faced man who emerged from the glass door early each day in a tie and a short-sleeved shirt, munching on an apple. On two of the cooler days he wore a sweater, but never a coat or a jacket. She took this to mean that he must have a strong constitution, and for some reason this gave her a feeling of reassurance. She watched for three days and then she made her move. The garden gate unlatched lightly, and she stepped into a flat garden, bare except for a pear tree at the bottom. The back window clicked open and she stood on a patio chair and climbed in, her blue flip-flop making a sound like mud as she stepped into a sink. She slowly lowered herself backwards, her right leg dangling behind her towards the floor. The flip-flop on her left foot fell to the floor as she brought her leg over and she had to catch the edge of the sink to save her balance, banging her elbow on the tap. “Oww!” She leaned back against the sink and took a moment to rub her elbow, then her lower back and thighs. The past three days of living in the park had left her feeling lightheaded, hollow and stiff, as if she had stones lodged in her joints. As the blood started returning to her limbs, she realized that, for the first time in weeks, she wasn’t cold. The room smelled of warm dust, lemons and bleach. Plastic detergent bottles and boxes lined a single shelf above a chrome washer dryer. She walked up to it, eyeing her distorted reflection; her round face was stretched long like a balloon and her short, greasy hair looked like a smear of black ink. She drew away from her reflection and gathered up her flip-flops. It was 8:05 in the morning. She stepped out into a long corridor with doors lining each side and a tatami runner that ran along its length. Her toes nudged the edge of the runner. She was aware of her breathing, which sounded oddly amplified and coarse in the quiet. She listened for a scrape of a chair, a cough. All she heard was a low, flat hum of electricity. Still, she stood paralyzed with doubt; what if someone else were there, and she’d somehow missed them going into the house? She took a deep breath, turned towards the door on her right and slowly brought her fingers to the door handle. Bathroom. Empty. The next door revealed a thermostat. The door across the corridor opened onto an office. Next to that was a closet full of towels and bedding. The last door was for the master bedroom. She nodded with relief and chuckled, a little embarrassed by her faintheartedness. The end of the corridor revealed an open kitchen on one side and a living room on the other. The kitchen was spacious, with a preparation counter in the middle, and shiny orange pots and pans hanging on a metal rafter above it. In the living room there was a large, thin television mounted on the wall and a brown, L-shaped sofa facing it. The size and emptiness of the place roused in her feelings of awe and unease. She had never been in a home where everything matched so ceaselessly; it reminded her of a furniture showroom. The only suggestion that someone might actually reside here, over weeks and months and years, was in the sparse collection of framed photographs arranged along a side table in the living room. Granny Ito picked up a photograph of the young man in a graduation cap and gown. He had a small, pebble smooth face, and eyes that looked ready to flinch. “Ah, who’s been bullying you, son?” she said softly. He looked like a nice boy, the kind who had good manners. In another photograph, the young man was at a lake, wearing a baggy t-shirt and shorts and standing next to an older man with the same pebble-like face. With one hand, the older man held up a plump, chrome-colored fish the size of a boy, and with the other hand he squeezed the young man’s shoulder. They were smiling. No, the older man was smiling; the young man seemed to be squinting into the sun. Or about to cry. She became aware of a faintly sour, dark odor; she pulled some strands of hair across her face and gingerly sniffed them, then her shirtsleeve, her collar. The salty, earthy odors of the park and her lack of access to a public bathroom these last few days had left their mark. She suddenly felt slick with dirt and sweat, and seized with an urge to rid herself of it. She went into the bathroom, closed the toilet lid, removed her clothes and folded them in a neat pile on top. The shower was glorious. She’d forgotten how good it felt to stand under hot, steaming water. It was so soothing that she almost dozed off, and it was only the insistent, jabbing hunger in her stomach that jolted her to. Squeezing a towel around her, she frowned at the dirty pile of clothes on the toilet seat, gathered them in her arms and padded across the corridor into the office. This room had a desk, a futon sofa and a built-in closet with sliding wooden doors. Inside the closet she found plastic boxes stacked in threes, containing t-shirts, sweaters and jogging pants. The pants were too long— she had to fold up the ends three times—but the t-shirt fit nicely. In the kitchen, she found a roll of garbage bags under the sink. She pulled one out and started filling it up. First she put in some clothes from the closet: three pairs of thick socks, a sweater, two t-shirts. Then she went back to the kitchen and collected several tins of teriyaki eel and preserved vegetables, a few packets of ramen noodles, three eggs wrapped carefully in a dishcloth and two liter bottles of mineral water. She told herself she had what she’d come for, and should prepare to leave. But she was hungry, and decided that it couldn’t hurt to make herself something to eat there. She had all day, she reminded herself, and the prospect of hot food was too tempting to pass up. And while she was here, she thought, she might as well throw those dirty clothes into the washer. She cooked some ramen noodles in a saucepan, and ate on the sofa in front of the giant TV screen. She was relishing the warmth of the soup too much to pay attention to the screen, her eyes blinking and blurring at the flickering, bright images that moved across it. She fell asleep with the bowl in her lap and woke later in darkness with a shiver, then fell into a mild panic, momentarily forgetting where she was and then suddenly feeling cold and heavy with tiredness. In the kitchen, the microwave clock glowed at her in the dark: 6:45pm. The young man came home at 7. She grabbed the saucepan and started scrubbing at the noodles that had stuck to the bottom, then rinsed off the bowl and the chopsticks, dried everything and put them back in their places. Then she wiped the counters with a sponge and wiped them again with a paper towel to avoid leaving watermarks. 6:55pm. The sky was dimming outside; the branches of the pear tree at the bottom of the garden were retreating into shadows. Granny Ito headed to the back of the house toward the laundry room, took the damp clothes out of the washer and with some effort managed to pull herself onto the sink counter. Then she remembered the garbage bag full of fresh supplies. “Ah!” She searched the office, the kitchen, the living room—when she finally spotted it on the end of the sofa, she heard a young man’s voice approaching the front door. “Yeah, Friday is good for me too. What? Whatever you prefer. Okay, uh, wait a second will you, I’m just letting myself in.” At the clinking of his keys, Granny Ito grabbed the garbage bag, hurried back down the hall into the office, opened the closet door, crouched on the floor behind the plastic boxes and slid the door shut, breathing in the sharp, acrid smell of mothballs in the dark.