Chapter 7 - Closing the Door Part 1
The sky was a clear, pretty blue, the bright sun contrasting with the chill in the air. Amber and maroon leaves fell from branches with each little gust and scattered about aimlessly along the sidewalk. Makoto frowned at the number of dead leaves piling up into the small, dormant patch of flowers outside their new apartment building. Someone needed to come rake it properly, like her daddy used to.
When David realized she had stopped walking and was just staring back at the squat brick building, he knelt down in front of her and zipped up her hoodie, giving it a little tug for good measure. "Are you sure you want to come with me? I can still take you to school. Or you can stay here."
Makoto shook her head. She scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the sidewalk, looking like she was embarrassed to say she wanted to go home one last time. "I wanna make sure stuff is right."
David nodded. "Let's get going, then."
Makoto climbed into the passenger seat of the beat up yellow Honda and buckled herself in. It was a short ride, and they'd only gone a few blocks before she started to recognize the houses and roads. Like the block they'd just turned onto. Sarito-san lived in the middle house with the crooked fence. It was just her and her three cats, and she would give Makoto and Shinozaki juice when they rode by on their bikes. On the other side of the block, at the end of the street, was Jinji's house. He was a grade ahead of her and was the only one who didn't mind that Shinozaki always had to be on her team when they played ball. Another block, and Sato-san's son was sweeping his father's steps. He waved as she and David pulled up outside her house, then went back to his task.
Makoto watched in silence as a woman in a skirt suit tapped a small 'For Sale' sign into the ground. It was an ugly brown and yellow sign, and it got lost in the fading colors of the dormant grass and dried up leaves. That was how the house looked now, too - cold and colorless and dried up. Makoto frowned, the hard set of her features reflecting back at her in the window.
David's hand touched her shoulder. He didn't say anything, just motioned his head in the direction of the woman now waiting for them by the steps. After he got out, Makoto climbed over the console and slowly got out on the driver's side so she could follow behind him.
The real estate agent greeted them pleasantly, but not too pleasantly. It was the same uncomfortable way everyone talked to her now. Everyone but her uncle and Shinozaki.
"Hey," said David as he gave her a gentle push forward, "why don't you go ahead inside and do what you wanted to. I'll take care of the paperwork, and I'll bring the boxes when I come inside to find you."
Makoto nodded, then walked up the steps and through her front door.
The first thing she noticed was how still and quiet it was. There was a noticeable layer of dust collecting on everything, and motes stirred up in the beams of sunlight filtering in around the curtains as she took her shoes off and slid them into their old spot.
Moving slowly and almost tiptoeing, Makoto eased her way from the foyer to the living room. The room was dim, the curtains drawn to keep curious eyes from peering in. Most of the big furniture was still here, covered in heavy cloth, all of it looking like it had been abandoned and forgotten.
Makoto laid a hand on the back of the couch and slowly ran it along the length. Uncle David had brought his couch from his apartment when they moved. It didn't have the pretty flower pattern like her mommy's did, but he was a boy and it was a boy apartment, even if she did live there, too. So they just had a plain couch.
An idea formed, and Makoto lifted the cloth, letting a small grin form. The new people wouldn't notice if she took just the little pillows. And the blue kinda matched Uncle David's couch, so maybe he wouldn't mind the flowers.
After laying the pillows in the middle of the floor, she moved slowly through the room looking for important things they hadn't taken when she'd started living with Uncle David. When she was done there, she stepped over to the partially open kitchen door and inched it fully open.
This room was brighter than the living room. No one had thought to pull the curtain across the big window over the sink, and sunlight poured in. If it wasn't for the dark refrigerator with its open door and the withered plant hanging in the window, the room would have been kind of cheery. Makoto let out a sigh, then started looking around in cabinets and drawers.
They didn't really have a kitchen in the new apartment. It was more like a square at one end of their living room with the cooktop, sink, and tiny oven all built into a big nook. The few cabinets they had were on one side of the island where they ate, two bar stools always tucked neatly under it when they were done because there wasn't room for a table and chairs. Uncle David said having two bedrooms squished out all the space for a real kitchen, and that was just the way it was.
There wasn't much left in the bottom cabinets and drawers except cleaning supplies and paper stuff, so Makoto used the open drawers to climb up onto the counter. Stepping carefully, she shimmied her way over to the shelves. Her mommy's cookbooks were here, and she wanted those. One by one, she awkwardly bent to place each one in a pile on the counter. She took the little pink square clock, too, and the grocery list notepad that lay beside it.
Satisfied she had what she wanted, she turned to the cabinets to get her cereal bowl and milk glass. One corner of her mouth turned up as she opened the cabinet on the very end and the faint, familiar scent of coffee drifted out. She didn't know why her mommy kept a bag in here, because they never drank it, but every month she would go buy a new one. It would get put all the way in the back - so far back whoever cleaned the food out must have missed it - and left there until it was time to buy a new one. It always made the cabinets smell like coffee no matter how her mommy sealed it up.
Tongue sticking from the corner of her mouth, Makoto stood on her tiptoes and reached up high, trying to find the bag.
"Damn, Makoto, what are you doing?"
David had his arms around her and was pulling her down before her fingers could grasp the bag enough to pull it towards her. He set her back on the ground and let out a breath.
"You could have waited for me to help you get up there."
Makoto frowned. "I can do it myself."
In spite of himself, David chuckled. "I see that. What were you trying to get?"
As he moved over to the counter to reach up, Makoto answered, "The coffee."
David froze. His voice suddenly hard, he asked, "Why would you want that?"
Makoto shrugged. "For the cabinets, cause that's what they're supposed to smell like."
David shook his head, then closed the cabinet. "No. With the way it's laid out, we'd have the whole apartment smelling like that." When Makoto just looked at him like that wasn't a big deal, he reiterated more harshly than he intended, "No."
"But…"
"I said no!" Then he ran a hand over his hair and took a deep breath. "What else did you want? This stuff here?"
Makoto nodded, her eyes becoming watery. "And my bowl."
David gave her a soft bump with his hip. "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get loud. Let's put these in the boxes I brought in, and then we'll go through more stuff together, okay?"
"Okay," answered Makoto softly.
As Makoto began exploring what was left of her home, David started going through papers in her mommy's desk. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she moved about, ready to reach shelves or lift her up when she couldn't get to something herself. When she found her daddy's ball cap between the wall and washing machine, she put it on her head and climbed up under the cloth covering his chair. Knees pulled up to her chest, she sat for awhile, eyes closed in the silence and not caring how heavy the air was. She was glad David pretended he didn't know where she was and that the dust was what kept making their eyes sting.
And then there was one room left.
Makoto stood in front of the door to her parents' room, her hand resting against the wood beside the doorknob. David was behind her, and they had been standing here for a long time. It was weird, how she wanted to go in but also didn't. And how her head kept talking over itself, making her feel like they would be in there waiting for her but then telling her not to be stupid because she knew they wouldn't.
The ball cap drifted slowly down into her face as the minutes ticked by, and she finally reached up to push it back, swiping at her eyes as she did. When her hand didn't go back to the door, David held his out for her.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Makoto looked at his hand in uncertainty for several moments. When she finally took it, he gave it a squeeze and smiled at her. She nodded at him and took a deep breath, then reached for the doorknob.
Like the rest of the furniture, everything in here had been covered up. David opened the curtains, the sunlight brightening the room without offering any kind of warmth. Makoto stood in the middle of it, arms wrapped around herself.
"There's no hurry," said David as he began uncovering the dresser. He did the same with the bed, rolling up the dust covers and piling them in the corner.
She went slowly at first, her choices unfocused, because even with David's permission, it felt wrong to go through her parents' things. So she started with the easy things. A pair of her mommy's high heels that she had played in before. Her daddy's thick scarf, hanging on a hook in the closet and waiting for it to snow so he could wear it outside to shovel the steps. One of the hair ties looped over the knobby post on her mommy's side of the bed. She got David to tie her hair up with it before she opened the first dresser drawer.
A few hours later, with most of the clothes in 'give-away' boxes and all of the randomness from the closet shelf scattered on the floor around them, Makoto sat hugging David's arm as they leaned against the side of the bed. She was barely visible beneath the ball cap and the cable knit fabric of her mommy's oversized sweater as David pulled letters from a shoebox and read them to her.
"Oh my god, I can't believe she kept these. We were so dumb."
He stared at the square pictures that had been wrapped up in the envelope. It was him and her daddy in all different poses - in a doorway with her daddy giving David a bouquet of flowers, them sitting at a table feeding each other cake, sitting on the edge of a fountain lightly splashing each other with crooked grins on their faces, beneath a lamppost with their faces close and lips puckered like they were going to kiss.
Makoto's eyes widened in fascination. "Why did you get flowers from my daddy? Did you date him?!"
David laughed hard. "No, no." He handed her the pictures so she could look more closely at them. "You know they met when your dad brought me home to Japan with him for summer break. Then when it was over, we went back to England and your mom had to stay here. But he was convinced she was the one. He got the idea that to keep her interested, he had to show her how incredible their future dates would look. I have no idea why I agreed to that."
Makoto giggled. "You both had big hair."
He smirked at his friend's fluffy David Cassidy locks and his own perfectly rounded afro. The pictures may have been silly, but they had definitely been the best styled men on campus.
Laying the envelope aside, he fished around in the bottom of the shoebox for some loose pictures. He pulled out what he thought were the best ones from that summer they'd all met, and traded Makoto for the foolish ones.
"Now those. That's what love looks like, Makoto. That's as perfect as it gets. I couldn't say no to that, and Yuriko made it clear she wasn't leaving Japan. So instead of me and Hiroki being the best in Europe," he let out a small sigh and handed her another picture, "I came with him here instead."
"Because you're brothers," grinned Makoto.
One corner of David's mouth turned up, not really a smile or a smirk. "Yeah, something like that."
Makoto leaned her head back against his arm as she looked hard at the photos, her fingers running over the rounded corners as she studied the details. Her parents weren't really doing anything, they were just together. Smiling, laughing, making funny faces, always touching in some way. Their eyes were happy. She thought their eyes were what made it really special, because the ones where they looked at each other were just a bit different, and it showed the most in their eyes.
She felt David shift, then shake his head before he put the old pictures back in the box. He gave it a shake for her to do the same, promising they'd look at it all again later.
They cleaned up, and David stacked the boxes going back to the apartment in the hallway so the moving people wouldn't mix them up with the give-away stuff. Hugging the shoebox of letters to her chest and still wearing her mommy's sweater, Makoto stood in the doorway of the darkened house and took one last look around.
"Bye," she whispered before stepping out and closing the door behind her.