“I see,” he said. He poured a shot of sake and asked me to help him finish a small bottle.
“Okay,” I said. “Look, I can try switching out the motherboard, but Astro would lose his memory, everything your wife programmed into him.” He waved the idea away, said he’d rather the dog die with that part of his wife still inside than lose her entirely. We took turns pouring without saying a word. When the flask was empty, he thanked me and told me everyone missed Ayano. I didn’t see him for two weeks after that and when I finally did, the flickering light from Astro’s eyes had already disappeared.
“Have the Kirin autumn brews come in?” I ask. Kigawa-san sets down his newspaper. His baseball team, the Yakult Swallows, has lost again.
“You’ll have to wait two weeks. Do you want me to save you a case?”
“I’ll stop by,” I say. I hate the stuff and only asked because I was scrounging for small talk that didn’t have to do with his dog.
“Okay then.” He scratches Astro’s head, silent and dead still, and returns to his paper. I can tell he’s waiting for me to leave.
*
After two years of transplants and gene therapy and experimental trials, Ayano’s will to live was stretched about as thin as her skin, which looked as fragile and translucent as rice paper. In the hospital waiting room, Aki was working on his final assignments. It was the eve of his middle school graduation. He hoped to attend in person, not just virtually.
“Don’t you dare have the doctors keep me alive,” my wife told me, struggling to speak. “This is no way for him to grow up, waiting for me to die.” And maybe part of Aki hated me for that, even though he knew it had been his mother’s decision.
“Do something. Why aren’t they doing anything?” Two days later, Aki ran from her room, screaming for help. Hollywood was beeping and barking from all the commotion. I dragged my son back to her side and told him it was time to say goodbye. A nurse handed us masks and gloves and opened the quarantine curtain that surrounded my wife’s bed. The sting of antiseptics filled the room, mixing with the strong scent of her body odor. She hadn’t had a proper shower in days.
“I want to see you,” Ayano whispered, pointing at our masks.
“It’s for your protection,” Aki said.
“Little late for that,” Ayano said. “I want to see you.”
Aki looked at me for a moment before both of us slipped off our gloves and masks. We reached over to hold her hands as she struggled to take a breath. I placed Hollywood on her lap, noticed her gaze drifting to the night table. She reached for a paw and pressed three times. “I love you,” she said through Hollywood. “Take care of each other.” She sang a lullaby she used to sing to Aki, one of the only recordings we haven’t heard again since that night, no matter how many times we’ve tried. She tugged on his ears, more songs followed, and we sat listening to her sing as her body succumbed to the morphine, and the beeping of a heart rate monitor rang flat.
At Ayano’s wake, Hollywood sat front and center between a row of photos, flowers, and the vases she sculpted. He lit up and looked around whenever the altar bell rang. We charged him with entertaining the children outside when the service went long. Aki didn’t cry once. He sat silently, excusing himself early to join Hollywood outside. He said these people didn’t have the right to be there—these aunts and uncles and cousins he hadn’t seen in years. No phone calls, no cards. Suddenly everyone is talking about how his mother was such a great person.
“Did you even bother to tell them she was sick?” he asked after the ceremony. “Did they know how bad it was?”
“Yes, they knew,” I said. This was, of course, only partly true. I hadn’t told anyone that Ayano was quite so close to death. I was worried her relatives would try to move in with us or always be at the hospital, that I wouldn’t have the chance to care for my wife. Aki and I stood beneath the leaking wooden roof that covered the cement basin where people washed their hands before entering the temple. Outside, a light mist seemed to envelop our conversation, as if we had stepped out of Ayano’s memorial and into our own bubble. “But you know how things are now. Everyone has their own problems. A lot of people are dealing with this sickness. Your cousin Reo died in the first wave. Uncle Yosuke isn’t expected to make it through the week.”
“So, you told them the truth,” Aki said. “And you said she was getting better.”