Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (34 page)

And then, I don’t know exactly when, this too changed. One morning, it was as if he had died again; I felt everything afresh. Twenty summers have passed since that summer and yet I find it excessively easy to remember his moods, his darting, downcast eyes, the energetic, athletic hand gestures that incongruously accompanied his shy yet sly sentences, the clean laundry smell of even his filthiest clothes, the slow metal chain of his voice dragging its well-oiled length across the silent winter air, the hard-packed snow, my unclothed skin.

After all these years, that sleeping loft holds my desire. I no longer visit it, it isn’t necessary. I love any loft made of crude wood. Barns, garages, bunk beds, children’s forts, they all produce a similar effect. Now I fixate most not on any of his physical attributes (though he was rife with beautiful aspects) nor on any particular exchange that occurred between us, but on the very feeling of secrecy that I once found so constraining: the sensation of being alone and aloft with him, a voluptuous entity existing apart from the main.

I don’t say his name. Not ever, not aloud. It’s a trick of mine, very effective, a way I have of keeping him alive. If it weren’t for my memory, that mysterious, benevolent under-self within, it might seem as if he never existed. As if there was nothing out of the ordinary about that year.

Sometimes months, even years, go by without anyone referring to the young man (our beloved Violet is maddeningly taciturn) and then it is up to me to conjure him. Though I’ve found that remembering him alone isn’t the same as remembering him in the presence of another. In the end, without the sea there is no island. Being an island, one tends to forget this. When someone outside myself refers to him, directly or otherwise, they reanimate him for me. It is different than my solitary conjuring. It is a gift.

Why, it happened just this morning while I was helping Maria address her wedding invitations. She’s going to be married next spring, under Aunt Tomoko’s
kanzan
tree. I had hoped she would marry in the back garden as we did, if only so that Violet and I could manage the food. But she is a different young woman than I was, very much her own. We had got halfway through the addressing when she asked, “Have you ever been in love with someone other than Papa?”

“Yes, of course,” I said rather perfunctorily, unprepared for the force with which the young man’s image then assailed me.

“What was his name?” she asked, pursing her lips to a point and lifting her eyebrows slightly.

After a brief hesitation, wherein I slid an invitation into its proper envelope, sealed it, stamped it, and set it lightly on the pile, I smiled. “His name was Oscar,” I said, selecting at last the name of a much older boy whom I’d loved as a child, a boy who was surely an old man by now if he wasn’t already long dead.

A view of the sea to Thaisa Frank who taught me that stories are everywhere. Wampum necklaces to the lovely people of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, the MacDowell Colony, the Creative Writing Program at University of Houston, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, in particular King-Kok Cheung, Jinqi Ling, David Wong Louie, Valerie Matsumoto, and Roger Skillings. A pair of large sunglasses to Elena Ferrante whose work led me to Europa Editions and in whose shadow I happily exist. A Muji travel diary to Sara Levine whose book
Treasure Island!!!
led me to Emily Forland. Tea Lane dahlias for Mayumi advocates Amy Hoff, Katia Merriam, Mathea Morais, Maia Morgan, Ann Quigley, Sarah Durham Wilson, and Emma Young. Blue hydrangeas for longtime encouragers Chi-Wai Au, Samantha Barrow, Susan Burmeister Brown Lauren Buckley, Kathy Garlick, Alice Y. Hom, Syma Iqbal, Brian Kay, Lilly Kuwashima, Robin Coste Lewis, Donald Nitchie, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Linda Swanson-Davies, Diep Tran, Eric Wat, and Meg Williams. A lei of green and white flowers for G.E. Patterson. Peonies for all the librarians. Not Your Sugar Mama’s chocolate bars to early readers Heidi Ganser and Jill Jupen and a hefty sack of black jellybeans for Beth Kramer. A lavender eye pillow to Laura Coit for reading and seeing so much. An endless roll of ferry tickets to Amanda Tseng, Danzy Senna, and Fanny Howe. A special ahoy to Sarah Bowlin. Many sunlit swims at Ice House to editor Michael Reynolds for steering me toward clarity. Sea salt caramels to agent extraordinaire Emily Forland for boldly and with kindness, staying the course. Daily swan sightings to Sue and John Coyle for their steady love. To Maceo Senna, for meeting me as an artist, an eternal walk down an ancient way and the same gold ring. A library in the woods to our daughter Xing for giving me Maria, a life beyond myself, and a life beyond the page. To my father, an island postcard:
Wish you were here
.

Jennifer Tseng’s first book,
The Man With My Face
, won the 2005 Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s National Poetry Manuscript Competition and a 2006 PEN American Center Open Book Award. Her second book,
Red Flower, White Flower
, winner of the Marick Press Poetry Prize, features Chinese translations by Mengying Han and Aaron Crippen.
Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness
is her debut novel. She works at the West Tisbury Library on Martha’s Vineyard.