The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [8]
“Yoshi,” I said. “I think I will go see my family, after all.”
Chapter 2
TWO DAYS LATER, WE LEFT FOR THE STATION BEFORE DAWN, the wheels of my carry-on bumping along the cobblestones in the early morning mist. We walked along the curving lane, past the fruit seller and the vending machine that sold sake and beer, past the temple with its garden of little statues and the shop where they made tofu by hand. Yoshi was dressed in his salaryman attire, white shirt, black suit, which I’d once found amusing, but which had begun to seem like a true part of his identity over these past months. Was it just my imagination that with every day we stayed in this place Yoshi was pulled a little further from the person I’d known? Or was he simply becoming more himself, a self I hadn’t seen when we lived in that country of our own?
The trip into Tokyo took about an hour, and we were pressed closer and closer together as the train filled. Yoshi slipped his arm through mine so we wouldn’t be separated when the doors opened and we poured out with the crowd. We’d been very kind to each other, very formal and polite, but on the platform, in the flow of impatient people, the unending river of mostly men in dark suits, Yoshi stopped and turned to face me, slipping a little package into my purse.
“A Webcam,” he explained. “So we can talk while we’re traveling. I’ll see you there in two weeks.” He took my shoulders in his two hands and kissed me, right there, amid the streaming people. “Travel safe,” he said. “Call soon.” Then he entered the river of commuters and was gone.
I found a seat on the airport shuttle. Though I tried to hold on to the memory of Yoshi’s touch, it faded gradually as the rainy landscape flashed by the windows. I settled into the seat and turned my thoughts to the trip ahead, my family. I tried to visit every year, but the move to Japan had interrupted things, and I hadn’t been back in almost two years. Wanderlust was in my blood, I suppose, at least according to the stories I’d heard all my life. My great-grandfather, Joseph Arthur Jarrett, was sixteen years old when Halley’s Comet returned in 1910. Despite the worldwide panic around the comet’s return, he had a clear head and an adventurous spirit; that night he snuck out of the house and walked to the church on the hill, determined to witness history. He was young, a dreamer, and he had a gift that, like his unusual eyes, he would pass down through generations: he could listen to a lock and understand its secrets. The cylinders in the bell tower door turned and clicked in response to his seeking wire. They fell into place, the door swung open, and he climbed the worn limestone steps to the roof. Above, amid the familiar stars, the comet arced across the sky. He lifted his face to it. Like a blessing, is what he thought. Like a gift. The word orbit came from Latin—from orbis, meaning wheel. To my great-grandfather, destined to be a wheelwright like his father and grandfather before him, this strange light seemed to him a sign.
The days that followed turned in familiar cycles of work and meals and sleeping, yet the memory of the comet remained, hidden but present, like a star at noon, like a bright coin in a pocket. When a huge elm was felled by lightning later that summer, my great-grandfather touched its trunk and a dream bloomed, bright and urgent, spreading its leafy arms around him, its thick blossoms luminous, incandescent, soft against his skin. Build a trunk, he seemed to hear, and so he took a section of the tree and hid it in his neighbor’s barn. For a year he measured and cut and planed, in secret. He bound the new boards with strips of