A New Relation
Chapter 1
"Oooaow."
I head the groan issue from the lap of a young woman, and supposed that there must be a head in her lap, as she was kneeling upon the ground and appeared very attentive to that which was resting there. Her back was to me, however, so that I couldn't see, and the fence separating her front garden from the street along which I was walking prevented me from seeing very much clearly.
"Hush," I heard her say as I moved closer. "However did you get yourself hurt like this anyway? Were you and Toto fighting again?"
"Meoawr," was the reply that I heard, but she must have understood it, for she gasped and answered to it.
"Why would Baron hit you? Is something wrong?" I could not help my curiosity, and stopped to peer over the fence, looking over her shoulder to see who – or what – was cradled in the girl's lap.
A very large cat was sitting there, very likely fatter than even the comic Garfield was supposed to be – the original fat cat of the funny papers. It was all cream fur – except for a spot of brown about one ear, and the girl was wrapping a bandage around the obese feline's head, matching the ones already covering the right foreleg and the tail.
"Reaow aang phft!" Perhaps I had been working to hard, to think that the girl and the cat were talking to each other. How could anyone understand that sort of meowing, yawning cat-talk?
"Alright, I'll come, if you really think it will help, but let me get you something to eat first," the young lady said. She had finished bandaging the blobby cat's head and, with her arms carefully wrapped around him, stood up and headed for the door of her house.
"Haru!" I had started to move on too, but the name arrested my attention – it was my name, and I turned to see who was calling, even though I didn't recognise the voice.
"Oh, hi Hiromi," I heard the girl say, her name must have been Haru too, and the person had called out for her. Shaking my head, I decided that I really must be working to hard, and kept walking.
Taking my diary out of my pocket – the kind of diary in which one keeps appointments, due dates and records the birthdays of friends and family – I checked again to see which of these houses I had to go into. I was supposed to meet my cousin Naoko for lunch, and meet her daughter. We had been close once, the two of us, but when my parents had inherited the ancestral home in Germany, we left.
I stopped and stared at the house number in my diary and turned once more to the house where the girl had been cradling the cat. The number was the same… I looked at the plaque beside the door – it said Yoshioka, Naoko and Haru. She hadn't told me in any of her letters that she had named her child after me. It was certainly a surprise.
Tentatively – I had never met the child before, after all – I opened the gate to the garden and approached her. She was still standing at the door; her soft brown eyes focused on her friend running down the street, so she didn't see me until I asked if she would like me to take the cat for her.
"Who're you?" she demanded. She had jumped at seeing me.
"Naoko's cousin," I said, pointing to the name on the plaque. "I'm in town for a while, and she said to come and visit," I explained.
"Oh," she seemed to think. "Yeah, I remember Mum saying something about a cousin coming over." I confess that it amused me, the way she asked the cat if he would mind my carrying him, and I didn't bother to hide the hint of a smile that tugged at my lips when the cat nodded. I just held out my arms and let myself into Naoko's house.
"Naoko!" I called, taking my shoes off just inside the door, still holding the fat cat. "Hey Cuz, where are you?" I added, moving down the hall in my socked feet.
"Loey!" the woman yelped, barrelling out of one of the doors and almost into me. Since we had moved to Germany, we had all changed our names, translated them sort of, so I became Louise instead of Haru, I don't know why exactly, that's just what the translation was. I liked it well enough that I started signing my letters Louise when I wrote to Naoko.
"You're still a maniac I see," I said, smiling at her. I was slightly older; maybe a year, but such things didn't really matter to us. "And messy," I added, seeing the kitchen she had led me into. It was quite obvious she had been working on a quilt, the patches were everywhere, cut up and spread out all over the floor and the furniture.
"I learned from the best," she answered, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and giving me a squeeze.
"Yeah, but I grew out of it," I might have gone on, I don't really know. I didn't have anything else lined up to say to her on the subject, but just then, the girl came in: Naoko's daughter.
"Thank you," she said, taking the cat back from my arms and heading for the kitchen. Naoko and I both watched as she took a throw away dish from the fridge, took off the cling-wrap and fed the fish, whole, to the feline in her arms. She ran her fishy fingers under the tap, dried them on her skirt, and turned back to us.
"See you later, I gotta meet a couple of friends," she said, kissing her mother on the cheek.
"Hold it, young lady," Naoko said. I had never heard her speak like that before, of course, the last time she and I had actually spoken was when we were eleven and twelve respectively, since then it had mostly been letters, then e-mails. It must have had something to do with becoming a mother that put that collection of harmonics in my favourite cousin's voice.
"You aren't going anywhere until you've had lunch with your aunt and I," Naoko said. Okay, so I wasn't really the girl's aunt, but Naoko and I were as close as sisters and figuring out my relation to the child would be complicated. I was her mother's cousin; that was enough.
"But it's urgent!" she said, her brown eyes becoming very large.
Naoko shook her head, the cat meowed something, and the girl slumped her shoulders. The girl looked as though I'd told her she had to eat month-old, slimy asparagus – or whatever her least favourite vegetable was.
"Now, introductions," Naoko said, a wicked smile on her face. "Haru, I want you to meet Haru," she announced.
The surprise on her face was obvious, but I had been prepared – I had heard her name called in the street.
"But to save on confusion, you can call me Louise, or Loey. I spent twenty years being called Louise in Germany, so I'm used to it," I said with a smile, extending my hand to the girl who had – obviously – been named after me.
It was a nice lunch, and Haru was very curious to know about Germany, why I was called Louise, and so many other things, but when she had finished eating, she was up like a flash, reiterating that it really was urgent that she be going.
When she was out the door, I told Naoko that I had brought presents for them both, and fished out the parcels from my bag. She tore the paper off, right there, just as I had expected her to. It was comforting to see that she was still so impatient with wrapping paper, a little bit of something about her that had never changed.
"Oh, it's gorgeous Loey," she said, running her fingers over it in awe. I had done that too, the first time I saw it. It was a silk scarf, hand painted. I had found it in a little nowhere place, just hanging in a shop window, like it was waiting for me to buy it, but it had been the one next to it that had suited me, so I bought them both.
"You can wear it to your next convention," I suggested, hinting that she ought to try wrapping it around her neck, not just her fingers. It really looked stunning on her.
"I don't know how to thank you," Naoko said, still in awe of my gift.
"Let me crash on your couch for a couple of nights? I'm so sick of hotels – you can't cook your own meals, everything is so clean… After a year of nothing but one hotel after another…" I had been travelling around the world, living out of an extremely well packed suitcase, and fantastic though it was to see the world, seeing hotel rooms every night was a bit wearying. Naoko seemed to get the idea and smiled. It's great knowing that I have someone like her – that I have her.
Haru announced her return just as I was starting to make dinner – I had gotten as far as wrapping an apron around myself and taking a saucepan from the cupboard.
"Welcome back," I said. "Your mum's searching for a bit of fabric upstairs, but that box on the table there is for you. I didn't know what you would like, so I guessed. I hope it's alright," I added, pointing to the other gift I had brought for the occupants of the house.
Haru just nodded and flopped down on the couch. I noticed that she didn't have the fat cat with her any more.
"Everything alright?" I asked, concerned and curious. I got no response. I tried another tack. "So what was the big emergency at lunchtime?"
"That's what I had to find out," Haru said, moving to lean on the bench rather than just flop on the couch. I may never have had kids, but I recognised a teen that needed to talk when I saw one, and since I wasn't her mother, that made me fair game – not that I minded.
"I'm listening, if you want to tell me that is."
"It's kinda complicated," she started, just watching me cook. I shrugged and said I didn't mind. "Well, about a year ago, something weird happened, and I got to meet this really great guy because of it…" Yes, this was very complicated.
"Skip to today, that's where the problem is," I said, smiling. It was the kind of quirky smile I always wore when people found out just how good I was at listening, and helping them with their problems.
"I really like him, and he really likes me back, but he's kinda promised to someone else, or something, so he's going mental because he isn't allowed to like me, or perhaps because he doesn't want to like me like he does," she blurted out.
"So he's in turmoil – torn between his promise to this other person, and his feelings for you. Right?"
"Yeah," Haru sighed. "It doesn't help the matter that he doesn't even know if this other girl is still alive or not."
"Oh dear," I said. I turned down the heat under the pot and came around the bench to give my "niece" a hug. It was even more complicated than I had thought it could be. "I'm sorry that I don't have an answer for you, just a good meal in half an hour, and a present you haven't opened yet. Go on, it might take your mind off things for a little while," the gentle push in my words was mimicked in a slight nudge towards the box.
Haru pulled the wrapping off with greater neatness than her mother, and opened the white box inside. She just stared for a few seconds, and then the tears started to come. I wrapped my arms around her again, cooing softly, wanting to know what was wrong.
"I said I had no idea what to get you, but I didn't expect this kind of reaction," I said, wiping away the tears.
"Where did you find this?" she asked, looking up at me. She was clutching at the box, I could see that her knuckles were white, now that I looked.
"In an antique and restorations shop… the story is that somewhere she has a partner, but they got separated just before WW1 broke out, somewhere in Japan he's supposed to be… I only got them to sell it to me when I promised that I would look for the partner in Japan, but I haven't found him anywhere," I explained, staring also at the feminine cat figurine in the box. She had fine white fur and shocking blue eyes. That she was wearing a red dress seemed a shame to me – it didn't suit her, she looked lovely anyway, but a lavender gown would have been a better choice.
"I have," Haru breathed. "I guess I'm going out again tomorrow."
"May I come too? I'm curious to see what her partner looks like," I said.
"I'd really appreciate that Aunt Loey."