Earlier that day, we had received a sample of several lipsticks in the mail. Small circles of paste on a piece of cardboard, like paints on a palette. Meiko had brought it inside and put it on the table.
She didn’t wait even a moment before picking up a lip brush. Moeko was just playing around, smearing the lipstick on her lips with her finger. Yōko had her head tilted to one side, reading the text on the pasteboard under the title Six New Shades of Autumn. I sat watching my sisters fondly.
Mom had begun to sing “Fly Me to the Moon.” It was the kind of melody that hits you like a cold, wintry wind. And then I started thinking: What was she doing? Isn’t that the kind of song that a prostitute would sing? But I stopped myself. That couldn’t be right. If it were a prostitute’s song, she wouldn’t be able to sing it in front of her four daughters. And no sooner had I realized this than my memories all began to blur together.
Six years ago, Mom had come out with an announcement. “Listen carefully, you four. Your father and I have decided to get a divorce.”
Meiko immediately burst into tears. Moeko immediately went to hug her. Yōko wore a detached expression. I looked at my three sisters, completely exhausted, thinking that everything was going to descend into pandemonium all over again.
“That’s fine, I guess, if it’s what you’ve both decided. But you need to tell us why,” Moeko said, her voice filled with frustration. But why on earth was she so disgruntled? It probably wasn’t the fact that they were getting divorced that had upset her, but rather that news of it had made Meiko cry.
“There’s no one reason,” Mom said. “Is there ever really a single reason why you would break up with someone?”
Moeko was silent.
“All kinds of things happen between men and women, piling on top of one other, and people end up growing apart, you know? That’s just how they are.”
Hearing this, Moeko burst into tears too. Because what Mom had said was so true.
Mom had never treated us like kids. Most parents only start thinking about the budding sexuality of their children when it’s already too late. But Mom was different. She had treated us like women from the very beginning. So she was breaking up with Dad the same way that any of us might break up with a boyfriend, because things had just piled up until they had become unbearable. That’s what she had meant.
“Hey, Mom,” Moeko said. “Did Dad give you a hard time? Did he do anything to you? If he did, tell me. I’ll sue him. I’ll take him to court.”
“A hard time…?” Mom wiped away her tears. “Of course there have been hard times. But there’s been so many, I can’t even remember them anymore.”
A while after that, when I went into Yōko’s room one day, she said to me: “Dad’s got another woman. You know, apart from Mom.”
I was taken aback.
“But I can’t work out who’s in the wrong.” She was playing around with one of her desk drawers. “I’m going to see his new wife this weekend. I’ve already met her a few times, actually.”
“How can you put up with her?”
“She’s a good person. Dad said that he loved her, but that he loved Mom too. So it isn’t like Mom did anything wrong. That’s what he said to me.” She opened the window and lit up a cigarette. “You don’t like it when I smoke, do you?”
“I’m okay.”
I didn’t like it, but now wasn’t the time to admit that.
“Yōko, when did you start smoking?”
“The guy I’m going out with is a smoker. I didn’t like it at first either, but before I knew it, I’d picked up the habit myself.” She took one more long drag from the cigarette, before crushing it out. “Hey, Nanako. You don’t think very much of me, do you?”
I shook my head, taken aback by her question.
“It’s okay. I understand. You don’t like me, because I’m always letting these men change who I am.”
“It isn’t you I don’t like. It’s all this stuff that happens between men and women.”
“I hate it too, to be honest.” She lit a fresh cigarette. “You know, sometimes I get jealous of Meiko and Moeko. Like when they fight with each other. Or their idealistic view of men and all that. I’m just completely disillusioned with it all.”
But you’ll still keep falling in love, I thought. Yōko was made up of a lot of parts, parts that couldn’t be explained through logic or reason.
My sisters all picked out their favorite colors. For Meiko, it was pink, for Moeko, brown, and for Yōko, it was a clear gloss.
Moeko and Yōko took out a pair of small brushes and began to enthusiastically apply the makeup to their lips. The three of them all jostled with one another over a small hand mirror. It was like watching them pour their burning passions into a single point, a small point of lipstick. It was like the flowers fighting among themselves at Nezu Shrine, back when S had first appeared in town. They were all staring deeply into the mirror, as if each of them was spellbound with desire for themselves.
There was nothing unusual about that. My sisters did want themselves, desperately. But they knew that they would never be able to grasp what they saw in that image.
Meiko, Moeko, and Yōko scrambled over the colors, trying first one, then the next, glancing back into the mirror with each freshly applied coat. It was as if the three of them were staring into a stained-glass window filled with the faces of saints, as if they didn’t really care which of them they saw staring back.
“Meiko,” I called out.
“Sorry, I’m a bit busy right now,” she said without even glancing my way.
“Why don’t you go watch some TV?” Even Moeko wasn’t paying attention to me.
When I turned to Yōko, she didn’t even respond.
I approached Mom. “This is so boring!”
“Truly,” she sighed. “Those three really do go crazy about their makeup,” she said, sounding strangely happy about it.
The weather forecast was showing on the TV. “We can look forward to blue skies today, not a cloud in sight,” the announcer said decisively. The woman’s voice seemed to pierce the cloudless sky, to tear into my eardrums. The sound left me feeling like I was listening to a soprano singing an aria, to the cruel, enthusiastic cries of women.
“We’re done.”
Moeko appeared by my side, Meiko and Yōko tagging along behind her.
“What do you think?” she asked. She no doubt wanted to hear which of them I thought was the most beautiful.
Neither Meiko nor Yōko said anything to challenge that. They wanted to know too. All three of them wanted to hear what I thought.
“Moeko’s color is a bit plain,” Meiko said. “But then your sense of fashion has always been like that.”
“How rude,” Moeko replied angrily. “Yours is too gaudy. Why don’t you try picking something more suitable for your age, for once?”
“Come on, you two. Stop criticizing each other all the time,” Yōko said.
“You’re a nasty one, Moeko. Give me back that suede miniskirt I let you have last winter.”
“I thought you gave it to me. You know, seeing as it’s too gaudy for you these days,” Moeko responded defiantly.
“But I bought it at that secondhand store the first time I went to Paris. I’ve been meaning to save it, as a memento. Give it back.”
“A memento? Don’t be stupid. Besides, miniskirts don’t suit you anymore, not at your age.”
“What did you say?”
The two of them started scuffling with one another right in the middle of the living room.
Meiko had worn that miniskirt all the time when she had been a bit younger, matching it with a pair of long boots. The outfit had really suited her. But then she had decided to hand it down. And when Moeko had gotten her hands on it, she had gone looking for the exact same pair of boots too, wearing them all over the place as if trying to show her elder sister up.