The Crane Wife(64)
Author: Patrick Ness

He hadn’t even been able to kiss her goodbye.

Except, of course, he had.

‘I’ll say it again, George,’ Mehmet said, as George continued to quietly cry. ‘Take more time off. We can run this place while your feet heal properly and you look for a new house and you know, whatever, grieve.’

George considered this for a moment. There was wisdom in it. Clare and Hank had, with unhesitating kindness, picked him up from the hospital and deposited him immediately into a far-too-swanky room in Hank’s hotel. Though George had an embarrassing pot of money in the bank from all the tile sales, they had refused to entertain a penny of it, seeming genuine when they told him to stay as long as he needed. He assumed they wanted to keep an eye on him, and for once he found he didn’t really mind that they did.

The nights had been hard, of course, but the days even harder until he started coming back to the shop, limping in on his crutches, much to Mehmet’s scandalised surprise. Mehmet, despite his moaning, had done extremely well on his own, and George had no doubt he could keep it up until things became easier, particularly as Mehmet didn’t actually seem in that much of a hurry to leave.

But no.

‘No,’ George said now, wiping his eyes. ‘I need to do something. I can’t just sit around all day. I need to keep busy.’

The bell on the door chimed and a customer came in.

‘Go help him,’ George said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Mehmet and Nadine watched him a moment more, then left to deal with what looked like another order for stag-night t-shirts. George could already hear Mehmet setting a terrible customer-service example for Nadine, but he let it slide.

Because he was staring at the crane again.

It was impossible. He had never cut this. Had he? No. It was too skilled, for one thing. Too sharp, too tight, too much of a crane. It was impossible that it was his. It was impossible that it was here.

But a live crane in his back garden with an arrow through its wing was also impossible. So, too, was the almost accidental creation of the tiles and their inexplicable success. In fact, Kumiko in her every particular was frankly impossible.

Did he really believe she was the crane? Did he really believe she had come to him and brought him happiness until he grew too greedy to know more of her? Did he really believe what happened in the garden after the fire? That that was the way their story ended?

If any story even had an ending. If every ending wasn’t just someone else’s beginning.

But no, of course, he didn’t believe it.

And yes, beyond anything he’d ever felt, he knew it to be true.

A crane, made of paper. Made of blank paper.

If this was a message, he thought he knew what that message might be.

He placed the crane down carefully, making sure not to crimp it. He’d put it under glass later, protect it with the utmost care, but for now an urgency had taken over. He would no longer make cuttings, no, that was clear, but this crane, however it had arrived, had been cut from a page without words. A page without a story on it.

A page waiting to be filled.

He grabbed the first pad of paper to hand. It was a freebie from a supplier and had their name and details across the top of each leaf. He threw it out. He kept looking, opening drawers, rolling his chair to the supply cupboards. There was an unimaginable stock of paper in this shop, from ultra-cheap scrap to stuff you could probably sleep on, but to his increasing disbelief, no proper notebooks, not even lined ones like students used in class. Actually, he thought, did they even still do that or did they just take in laptops or smartphones and record everything?

‘Mehmet!’ he barked, surprising them and the customer. ‘Where the hell are all the notebooks?’

‘I have one,’ Nadine said. She pulled her rucksack from a cupboard under the counter, took out a green notebook and handed it to him. ‘I was going to use it for class.’

‘A-ha!’ George said, triumphantly. ‘You do still do that!’

‘What are you going on about?’ Mehmet said, a little alarmed, as if he’d been waiting for George to crack and was less prepared than he’d hoped to be now that the moment had finally arrived.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ George said, opening to the fresh front page. Nadine hadn’t even started using it yet. No matter, he’d buy her a new one. ‘Thank you,’ he said to her and ‘Sorry’ to the customer and used his body language to indicate he was to be left alone now.

He took out a pen, held his hand over the page and hesitated a moment.

He wrote, In her dreams, she flies.

He felt his heart surge, as if a golden light was flowing from it.

There was a distant sound from somewhere, and a less occupied part of his mind told him a phone was ringing. He ignored it.

Because this was it. Yes. He knew it somehow, knew it as he’d known every right thing about her. This is where he would remember her. This is where she would live. He would tell her story. Not her whole story, of course, but the story of him and her, the story he knew, which were the only stories anyone could ever really tell. It would be only a glimpse, from one set of eyes.

But that would be why it was right, too.

In her dreams, she flies, he read again.

And he smiled. Yes, that was the beginning. A beginning, rather, but one that would do just fine.

He brought down his pen to write some more.

‘George, seriously,’ Mehmet said, holding out the loudly ringing phone to him.

George blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment. But of course the phone was his. The new one from the phone company after the fire. No frills, a ringtone he didn’t recognise, and carrying all of three contacts. His daughter, his ex-wife and his shop’s main assistant.

Amanda, the small screen read.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it.

His daughter was calling him, as she had at least twice a day since the fire. But yes, this was right, too. He was eager to talk to her. More than eager, excited, excited to speak again of Kumiko, excited to talk about the book he had realised, just this moment, he was going to write.

More than anything, he was excited to speak of the time that had just passed. The time of his life he would look back at with pain, yes, but also with amazement. Amanda was the only one who would understand, and though he could never tell her the whole truth, maybe he could write it in a book.

And maybe that way the Kumiko he knew would live on and on and on.

Yes, he thought, tears in his eyes again.

Yes.

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.