-So many times I was alone and couldn't sleep
You left me drowning in the tears of memory-
The road at night was pitch black; this far from home, there were no street lights, and I could scarcely see but a few feet in front of me with the headlights on. Hesitantly, I leaned back in the driver's seat and pushed the speedometer down to twenty, cruising lazily down the vacant country roads. My hands resting with only the slightest grip on the steering wheel, I pressed the button that opened my window just a bit, unable to stand the smell of animal crackers, broken crayons and apple juice that had come to inhabit my car in the past nine years. Frigid December air came seeping in through the crack, and I breathed deeply despite the cold. It shocked my senses back into believing, and that felt good.
-And ever since you've gone I've found it hard to breathe
'Cause there was so much that your heart just couldn't see-
Twenty years ago, sailing down an empty road at midnight would've felt like freedom. Fresh, icy air would have excited me, the darkness intrigued me, but not anymore. Now, the frigid cold felt like new coats for Toshi and Nara, and the darkness preceded a trip to the local drugstore for flashlight batteries. Twenty years ago, a diamond was jewelry; now, it was commitment. Now what used to be a golden oppurtunity had dissolved into a bitter loneliness, a dark void strung with guilt and regret. Twenty years ago, an envelope with an offhand note from a high-school classmate and a Kodak photograph had been something to cherish, something to keep next to your heart. Now, it was something to be ashamed of. Something to hide.
-A thousand wasted dreams are rolling off my eyes
But time's been healing me, and I say good-bye-
On an impulse, I wrenched off the glittering band and flung it out the open window, breathing hard as I watched the golden glimmer recede into the darkness. It was nothing but an empty promise. My home, my things, my children, all paid for with his money and nurtured with his love - I would have lived on the streets to be free of it all. All of it was meaningless, all of it a symbol of his commitment to me; all of it a glass half-empty, waiting for me to fill the other half with my gratitude. How could he do this to me? How dare he vie for a place in my heart, when it was already so full it could burst? How could he possibly expect me to cherish him, when the only thing I had ever truly cherished had always lain just out of my reach? How could he expect so much of me, when she expected so little... -wanted- so little? It hurt. God, it hurt worse than anything in the world. And I couldn't manage love when I was full of rejection.
-'Cause I can breathe again, dream again
I'll be on the road again-
It wasn't that I hated him. Koichi was a nice man; he wanted the best for me, always had. I had no one to blame but myself for all this - I had been the one who had agreed to it, when my parents pushed the subject. He was the son of a friend of theirs, looking for someone...and I was happy. I was happy buying goldfish at a hundred yen a pop, taking them in for check-ups every week or so just so I could see her face. I was happy walking past her office every day on my way to the caf?, or the drugstore, or just across the street and back again, hoping to catch a glimpse of her from outside. Even the racing heart, the cold sweat, the butterflies in my stomach were better than the dredge of predictability that came with every day, the nausea that welled up in my stomach at another grueling day of this charade. I didn't want this, didn't need it, not so long as I had her. Not so long as I had the fantasy of her in my head, not so long as my dreams kept me loving her. But what were they, in the end, but dreams?
-Like it used to be the other day
Now I feel free again, so innocent
'Cause someone makes me whole again...-
I had been weak. I had been weak, and now I was paying the price. As I - in a voice low and full of masked dread, on that fateful day almost ten years ago - had promised Koichi my everlasting love, another part of me had begun to melt away. It was as if my heart were being slowly and carefully pulled out, each nerve and vein separating bit by bit until nothing was left but an empty chamber and a puddle of blood. It was a feeling I later recognized as lost hope, and the melting was complete by the time Toshi was born. They called it postpartum depression, but they didn't know. No one had ever really known, because no one had ever really cared. Of course, it wasn't as if I'd have told them if they'd ask. She was something I liked to keep to myself, a secret pleasure that I could feel extravagant in longing for. My best kept, most indulgent secret, a blessed secret that traveled with me everywhere and kept me alive. A faded photograph, a pair of high-school-girls, an everlasting dream, and it was all I had to remind me that once upon a time, I had had something to live for.
-For sure
I'll find another you.-
Reaching into my flannel-lined coat, I withdrew the scrap of paper from an inside pocket, and flicked on the overhead light. Drawing in my breath ever so slightly at the sight, I ran my fingers over the dusty surface, cradling her face with a fingernail. As the car ambled smoothly along the desolate country road, I lost myself in a haze of memory. How it felt to be impassioned, how it felt to care. How it felt to devote yourself to someone without regret, without denial, and make yourself about them. -Who am I without you?-
-Could you imagine someone else is by my side
I've been afraid I couldn't keep myself from falling-
The age-old question rang in my ears. Who was I without her? An empty shell, going through the motions. A shameless failure, in love with a woman who had never cared for me, and cared for by a family that I had never wanted. A miserable wreck in denial, a plaster smile painted onto a straining face, a time bomb that kept ticking but could never quite feel the release of explosion. As I had defined myself by her, without her I had no definition. I was but a ghost, a shade of a woman called Kaori, who felt nothing and everything all at the same time. A woman called Kaori, who did not know rejection when it stared at her with beautiful blue eyes, who could not accept love when it welcomed her with open eyes. A rebel without a cause, a lesbian without a lover, and someone who was apt let everyone down. Someone could not listen to her heart, because it had always been consumed with a woman called Sakaki.
-My heart was always searching for a place to hide
Could not wait for dawn to bring another day-
"I tried, dammit!" I screamed to the starless sky, "Don't you think I've tried?" Falling back in the seat, livid at the world, I felt tears stream down my cheeks and didn't bother to wipe them. It wasn't as if I had meant it to be this way. I found alternate routes through town, without passing by the veterinary office. I kept the photo in my dresser, rather than in my jacket pocket. I kept the memories tucked away, put the longing aside, and tried to channel my love into something new. And when I couldn't...well, I tried to make the lie convincing. But for all my efforts, the memories still haunted me, and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to me, it wasn't fair to her, and most of all, it wasn't fair to them. Koichi, so enchanted with a woman he didn't know could never love him; Toshi and Nara, counting on a mother's love that didn't exist. Even Maeko, so little, who had barely seen the passing of a week on this planet - I was letting Maeko down, even now. Last week in the hospital, when they'd brought her in swaddled and pink-cheeked in a gingham fuzzy blanket, when I'd felt her weight in my weary arms for the first time, all I could feel was revulsion towards her. I wanted to hand her back, tell the nurses they'd made a mistake, that she wasn't my baby and I didn't want her. I hated myself for it, but I didn't want her.
-You're not the only one, so hear me when I say
The thoughts of you, they just fade away-
Poor little Maeko. She deserved so much better than me. They all did. When it came to that, I should have left them ages ago, but somehow I had thought this might be good for me. Having this...this semblance of a family, it might help me to pick up the pieces. Might help me emerge from her shadow after all those years; help me get over the relationship that would have, should have, could never have been. Yet the more I tried, the more I found I had liked being her shadow. Even if I couldn't so much as touch her hand, lingering at the sidelines of her life was preferable to losing her completely. But what was I supposed to have done? -I'm sorry, Koichi, but I'm leaving you to obsess over a girl I went to high school with.- It was too late. It had been for some time.
-'Cause I can breathe again, dream again
I'll be on the road again-
I slowed to a stop at a fork in the road, switching on my high beams to better read the road signs. To the left, a short, squat sign decorated with colorful images - supposedly in that direction lay a shabby motel, a few fast-food restaurants, and a gas station. That road extended for miles into the distance, and far away I caught a glimpse of a few pairs of headlights and a lit restaurant sign. But the sign on the left was wooden, tacked onto a plank nailed into the ground, most likely put there whoever owned this vast land. The words -Dead End- were scrawled onto the splintering surface of the wood in a paint that had begun to chip, and the road it advertised curved sharply at a patch of scruffy trees, its ending unforseen by the likes of me. For a moment, I considered it; turning to the left, that is, high-gearing it towards a bright future in a land unknown. Perhaps checking into the little motel, having a quick meal at a diner in town, and calling up my old friends in Osaka, Kawasaki, and Nagoya to see if I could stay with them. Chihiro always had room for me. I could stay with her, just until I got on my feet again. I could move somewhere exotic, maybe travel, see the world. Or I could move back to my hometown, drive past the veterinarian's office eight times a day, because there would be no Toshi and Nara to complain about the long car ride. I could hang the photograph on the wall in a frame, because there would be no Koichi to wonder why. I could dream my lovely dreams of her without being awoken by Maeko's fire-engine wail in the middle of the night. It would be wonderful. I would be free again.
-Like it used to be the other day
Now I feel free again, so innocent
'Cause someone makes me whole again...-
Freedom. What a cruel jest. If I were gone for even a day without notice, Koichi would have the entire town out searching for me. He'd think I was abducted, possibly raped, beaten, killed. I'd be on the news, in the paper, on fliers stapled to telephone poles all across Tokyo. They'd find me, and I'd be taken home in shame, subject to the disapproving stares of neighbors and friends. I would break Koichi's heart, I would, and destroy his family, and no matter how detached I felt from them, I couldn't do that. Love blinds you from the strangest of things, but this was one thing it couldn't shield me from. Their pain would be palpable, and I would be responsible, and no amount of sweet dreams could fix that. And yet the thought of turning the car in reverse sickened me to the point that my stomach stirred, and so I had but one option, one dismal venue for the end of this farce. A bittersweet idea that I had toyed with for some time, and had pushed itself to the front of my mind a week earlier at Maeko's birth. A shift in my seat, a hand on the wheel, the flashing dim of the headlights, and a turn to the right.
-For sure
I'll find another you-
Slowly, ever slowly, the numbers on the speedometer rose from twenty to forty to sixty, and I cleared the curve ahead to meet with a stretch of open road flanked by trees on either side. As I flew down the road with steadily increasing speed, a sense of calm overtook me as I thought of Koichi. I could leave my husband and children innocent - sad, but innocent, and oblivious to the truly shameful nature of the one they so loved. They would not know my core of desperation and denial, but my fa?ade of cheerfulness and courage, and it would be better for all of us. If I was lucky the minivan might combust on impact, leaving no incriminating traces of an event staged and planned. In my idyllic state, it didn't even concern me that I was combing over the details of my suicide, blissfully unaware of what consequences lay ahead; all I could think was that it was finally over, and there would be no more lies. No more hiding, no more secrets, no more longing for what I could not possess. Only an endless sea of darkness and flame.
-Sometimes I see you when I close my eyes
You're still a part of my life-
Rounding the last corner at a speed close to one hundred, my eyes fell upon what I had been so longing for: a solid stone wall at least five feet high, a segment of the barrier that divided this farmer's land from the fields neighboring his. But even as I flew over the cracked pavement, past the sagging trees and tattered shrubs at a speed that would normally have terrified me, I felt as if I were floating. Similar to the feeling of the tender touch of her hands, akin to the warmth of her occasional smile, likened to the soft sweetness of her voice, the sensation was wonderful, and left me wondering why I hadn't done this sooner. Every one of my last moments swelled with my memories and my love for her, the deep enchantment that had led me to so many years of longing. But somehow, while I was floating, it was all right. Somehow, even when the pain hit like a tidal wave, even when the sounds of shattering glass and screaming tires filled my ears, even when blood rose and spilled from my mouth, the pain of the last ten years blurred and left me to my beautiful dreams.
-But I can breathe again, dream again
I'll be on the road again
Like it used to be the other day
Now I feel free again, so innocent
'Cause someone makes me whole again...-
Even as my heart slowed to its ultimate stop, it was as deeply in love as ever. As the final rush of air left my dry lips, I whispered her name into the rising inferno. "I'll always love you, Sakaki-san," I murmured before the darkness closed in, "Even if it kills me."
-For sure
I'll find another you...-
-I'll find another you.-