The Crane Wife(34)
Author: Patrick Ness

‘What is that?’

And before she even looked up, she was cursing herself for being stupid enough to bring it anywhere on earth that Rachel might see.

The tile had been a present, unasked-for and unexpected. After getting over her initial shock on that unlikely morning on the park bench – that here was Kumiko, in a forlorn, barely green square lined with scraggly bushes and the requisite statue of a forgotten man on a forgotten horse – they’d begun to talk. And how they’d talked. Of their shared hatred for cyclists (‘All that self-righteousness,’ Kumiko had said, allowing a frown to make her face even prettier, ‘and then they act like it is your fault when they run the red light and nearly knock you down.’ ‘And they smell,’ Amanda had said. ‘Just because you change out of your gear at work doesn’t actually mean you’ve had a shower.’ ‘And the fold-up ones,’ Kumiko continued, to Amanda’s increasing delight and astonishment, ‘they put it in your way on a train and it seems as if you are supposed to treat it with the respect of an elderly relative.’ ‘I know!’); how they both, contrarily, felt weirdly protective of those charity people with the clipboards who had turned eye contact into such a risk on the High Street (‘They are only trying to do a job,’ Kumiko said. ‘And they’re all so young,’ Amanda said, ‘and all probably out-of-work actors.’ ‘It is certainly better than being forced to watch them act.’); and Amanda had even ventured her opinion on the Animals In War Memorial. Kumiko, remarkably, hadn’t heard of it, so Amanda explained it to her.

‘Well, that sounds like an incredible waste of money,’ Kumiko said.

Amanda could have cried.

And then, too soon, lunch hour was nearly over. It was time for a ravenous but also somehow satisfied Amanda to go back to the office, and that’s when Kumiko said, ‘I would like to give you something.’

‘Can I eat it?’ Amanda asked, having suffered the loss of both her coffee and her sandwich. She’d declined Kumiko’s offer to share her rice and fish, but she was severely regretting that choice now.

Kumiko smiled. ‘You could eat it,’ she said, opening the small suitcase she carried instead of a handbag, ‘but the flossing afterwards might be lengthy.’

And handed Amanda the tile.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Amanda said, stunned. ‘I really mean it, I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Do you like it?’ Kumiko said shyly. Amanda was flabbergasted to see that the question was meant sincerely. She looked back down at the tile, at the improbable beauty of it, at its unlikely uplift, at the way she didn’t seem to be looking at it but already dwelling within it. She couldn’t help but try to decline it as a far too valuable gift, but her heart, oh, how her heart wanted it, wanted it, wanted it . . .

‘Do I like it?’ Amanda whispered, unable to take her eyes off it now. ‘Do I like it?’

She kept looking at it. And looking at it again. And more.

‘It feels like . . .’ she whispered. ‘It feels like . . .’

She looked up to say either ‘love’ or ‘forgiveness’, unsure of which was about to come out of her mouth, and was astonished to see that Kumiko had gone. A small cloth bag, obviously meant for carrying the tile, lay on the bench.

And somewhere, maybe even on the wind, was the permission to keep it.

Further meetings with Kumiko had been strangely difficult to come by.

‘She was just right here, Dad,’ Amanda had said in a call to George made as she stood up from the bench (after carefully, but quickly, putting the tile in the bag; it was already getting lingering looks from other bench-sitters). ‘I mean, how is that even possible?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ His words were a close whisper, over what sounded like a particularly unhappy customer in his shop. ‘But did you like her?’

‘Like her? I want to marry her!’

George made a sound of relief so boyish, Amanda felt momentarily overwhelmed by a need to somehow hug her father over the phone. ‘What’s going on there? Mehmet misspell someone’s order on purpose again?’

‘Just someone who had put down money for the next tile,’ he said, a bit of strain in his voice. He paused as the door of the shop was slammed so hard Amanda could hear it over the phone. ‘We were supposed to have a new one ready today, but at the last minute Kumiko decided she couldn’t sell it. It didn’t go down too well, as you might imagine.’

‘Does she often do that?’ Amanda asked carefully, holding the bag in front of her, trying to keep it from getting nudged as she weaved through the crowded pavement on her way back to work. ‘Decide not to sell?’

‘Not really,’ George said. ‘Well, never, actually–’

‘Did she think something was wrong with it?’

There was a surprised silence from George. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t actually see it. She just called, said she didn’t think it was for sale, and that was that. I tend to just trust her on these things. She didn’t say anything to you about it, did she?’

‘No, no,’ Amanda murmured. She kept looking at the bag as George talked on, giving monosyllabic but positive responses to his questions about Kumiko, all the while fighting her unexpected reluctance to tell him about the tile she’d been given.

‘It’s all passingly strange,’ she finally said, and ended the call.

Next time, she thought. I’ll tell him next time.

But she was wrong.

In the weeks that had followed, not only had Amanda been unable to arrange a further meeting with Kumiko, her father became harder to get hold of, too, even to look after JP. He was either on a brief holiday with Kumiko to the Highlands (of all places) or busy making his cuttings or buying new equipment for the shop. He did finally set a date for the party where he’d properly introduce her to everyone, including some of the art buyers – who’d apparently been applying increasing pressure about meeting her – and it was gratifyingly soon, but Amanda found herself hungry for more, though she was never quite clear on more of what.

‘He says he’s nearly made enough to pay off the last bit of his mortgage,’ she told her mother one evening, who sounded personally offended at the news.

‘How is that even possible? Are they that good?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, looking at her tile again. ‘Yeah, they really are.’