And at the same time there was an element of curiosity, as though I was driving back past the results of a car accident I had caused, unable to avert my eyes.
I watched Midori’s face as she took up her post at the piano. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and had straight, shoulder-length hair so black it seemed to glisten in the overhead light. She was wearing a short-sleeved pullover, as black as her hair, the smooth white skin of her arms and neck appearing almost to float beside it. I tried to see her eyes but could catch only a glimpse in the shadows cast by the overhead light. She had framed them in eyeliner, I saw, but other than that she was unadorned. Confident enough not to trouble herself. Not that she needed to. She looked good and must have been aware of it.
I could feel a tension in the audience, a leaning forward. Midori raised her fingers over the keyboard, levitating them there for a second. Her voice came, quiet: “One, two, one two three four,” and then her hands descended and brought the room to life.
It was “My Man’s Gone,” an old Bill Evans number, not one of her own. I like the piece and I liked the way she played it. She brought a vibrancy to it that made me want to watch as well as listen, but I found myself looking away.
I lost my own father just after I turned eight. He was killed by a rightist in the street demonstrations that rocked Tokyo when the Kishi administration ratified the 1960 U.S./Japan Security Pact. My father had always approached me as if from a great distance when he was alive, and I sensed that I was the source of some strain between him and my mother. But my understanding of all that came later. Meanwhile, I cried a small boy’s nightly tears for a long time after he was gone.
My mother didn’t make it easy for me afterward, although I believe she tried her best. She had been a State Department staff lawyer in Occupation Tokyo with MacArthur’s Supreme Command of Allied Powers, part of the team MacArthur charged with drafting a new constitution to guide postwar Japan into the coming American Century. My father was part of Prime Minister Yoshida’s staff, responsible for translating and negotiating the document on terms favorable to Japan.
Their romance, which became public shortly after the new constitution was signed into law in May 1947, scandalized both camps, each of which was convinced that its representative must have made concessions on the pillow that could never have been achieved at the negotiating table. My mother’s future with the State Department was effectively ended, and she remained in Japan as my father’s wife.
Her parents broke with her over the cross-cultural, cross-racial marriage, which she entered into against their command, and so my mother, in reaction to her de facto orphanage, adopted Japan, learning Japanese well enough to speak it at home with my father and with me. When she lost him, she lost her moorings to the new life she had built.
Had Midori been close with her father? Perhaps not. Perhaps there had been awkwardness, even fights, over what to him might have seemed a frivolous career choice. And if there had been fights, and painful silences, and struggling attempts at mutual comprehension, had they had a chance to reconcile? Or was she left with so many things she wished she could have told him?
What the hell is with you? I thought. You’ve got nothing to do with her or her father. She’s attractive, it’s getting to you. Okay. But drop it.
I looked around the room, and all the people seemed to be in pairs or larger groups.
I wanted to get out, to find a place that held no memories.
But where would that place be?
So I listened to the music. I felt the notes zigzagging playfully away from me, and I grabbed on and let them pull me from the mood that was rising around me like black waters. I hung on to the music, the taste of Cao Lila in my throat, the melody in my ears, until Midori’s hands seemed to blur, until her profile was lost in her hair, until the heads I saw around me in the semidarkness and cigarette haze were rocking and hands were tapping tables and glasses, until her hands blurred faster and then stopped, leaving a moment of perfect silence to be filled with a burst of applause.
A moment later Midori and her trio made their way to a small table that was left open for them, and the room was filled with a low murmur of conversation and muffled laughter. Mama joined them. I knew I couldn’t slip away without paying my respects to Mama, but didn’t want to stop at Midori’s table. Besides, an early departure would look odd no matter what. I realized I was going to have to stay put.
Admit it, I thought to myself. You want to hear the second set. And it was true. Midori’s music had settled my roiled emotions, as jazz always does. I wasn’t upset at the prospect of staying for more. I would enjoy the second set, leave quietly, and remember this as a bizarre evening that somehow had turned out all right.
That’s fine. Just no more of that shit about her father, okay?
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mama walking in my direction. I looked up and smiled as she sat down next to me.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked.
I picked up my bottle, which was considerably less full than it had been when I arrived, and poured us each a glass. “An angry Thelonious Monk, just like you said. You’re right, she’s going to be a star.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Would you like to meet her?”
“That’s nice, Mama, but I think I’m in more of a listening mood than a talking mood tonight.”
“So? She can talk, and you can listen. Women like men who listen. They’re such rare birds, ne?”
“I don’t think she’d like me, Mama.”
She leaned forward. “She asked about you.”
Shit. “What did you tell her?”
“That if I were a little younger, I wouldn’t tell her anything.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook with silent laughter. “But since I’m too old, I told her that you are a jazz enthusiast and a big fan of hers, and that you came here tonight especially to hear her.”
“That was good of you,” I said, realizing that I was losing control of the situation, and not sure how to regain it.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Well? Don’t you think you should introduce yourself? She told me she wants to meet you.”
“Mama, you’re setting me up. She didn’t say anything like that.”
“No? She’s expecting you — look.” She turned and waved to Midori, who looked over and waved back.
“Mama, don’t do this,” I said, knowing that it was already over.
She leaned forward abruptly, the laugh disappearing like the sun behind a cloud. “Now don’t embarrass me. Go say hello.”
The hell with it. I had to take a leak anyway.
I got up and walked over to Midori’s table. I sensed that she was aware of my approach, but she gave no sign until I was directly in front of her. Then she looked up from her seat, and I was struck by her eyes. Unreadable, even looking right at me, but not distant, and not cold. Instead they seemed to radiate a controlled heat, something that touched you but that you couldn’t touch back.
I knew instantly that I had been right about Mama setting me up. Midori didn’t have a clue who I was.
“Thank you for your music,” I said to her, trying to think of something else to say. “It rescued me from something.”
The bass player, super-cool in his head-to-toe black threads, long sideburns, and rectangular Euro glasses, snorted audibly, and I wondered whether there was anything between them. Midori conceded a small smile that said she’d heard it all before, and simply said, “Domo arigato,” the politeness of her thanks a form of dismissal.
“No,” I told her, “I mean it. Your music is honest, it’s the perfect antidote for lies.”