Leftovers
First published in Northwords Now, 33 (Spring 2017)
It took him most of the morning to haul everything outside. He started in the bedroom, waking up a few minutes before five when the bird choir rose sonorous and lilting from the forest that surrounded their cottage. Through the loose weave of the curtains sunlight danced as if on rippling water. Dashes of light caught the screen of her phone on the bedside cabinet. The dust had collected on it, like everything else, glinting like sand in the dawn. He watched it for a moment, as if he expected it to ring, to vibrate, shaking the dust into a cloud. Behind the phone two paperbacks sat stacked, the cover of the top one curling slightly where the damp air had stroked it. Bookmarks stuck like tongues at roughly mid-point in both. Her phone, her books. She’d chosen the curtains.
In the shed there was a long white plastic box that had served as a tank for the pet turtles Naotaka got when they first moved here. They’d each been no bigger than a five hundred yen coin when they took them back from the pet shop, shyly peeking out from their shells on the moist tissue in the open plastic bag she held on her lap as he drove down the dirt track to their new home. She’d always wanted a pond full of turtles in her garden but with that tabby cat lurking and the greedy hawks around, it had been safer to keep them inside until they were old enough to look after themselves. The box now held plant pots, canes, twine and a trowel. He dumped them on the ground and returned to the bedroom, a strand of sticky willow trailing from his slipper.
He jerked the curtains back and stood for a moment looking at the view. On either side taller mountains rose before dipping into the valley. The river lay like a tentacle, fat and heavy in the midst of ancient evergreens. They’d loved this place since the first moment they stood here, gazing out, his arm around her, cheek on her head. They’d found their paradise, their retreat from the world, their last home.
The books and the phone went into the box, then the contents of the bedside drawer: the steroid cream from her ear infection three winters ago; the notebook with the pencil slid through the spirals; a packet of tissues; the watch he’d given her on their tenth anniversary, back in its box since the funeral. He worked methodically from one corner to the other. Behind the unit her phone charger was still plugged in. He yanked it out and added it to the pile. Socks, pants and bras followed. A coat hanger full of scarves. Her manky slippers half under the bed. When the box was full he manoeuvred it through the narrow cottage doors and carried it down the path between the vegetables, by the pond where the now full-size turtles basked in the sun, legs stretched out like they were tanning.
The cottage had been built as a holiday home by some rich Tokyo doctor but he’d got sick, his kids had shown little interest in roughing it in the mountains, so they’d sold it. Naotaka and Atsuko had long dreamed of escaping the city and valued peace above convenience. Over the years they had resculpted the surrounding land to suit their needs, growing enough rice and vegetables to make themselves all but self-sufficient. He caught wild boar and deer, fished in the river, and they kidded themselves they could grow old in their idyll. Heaven only exists for a moment. A diagnosis ended the dream.
As they had cleared the overgrown land, frequent bonfires had left a permanently charred circle and they’d turned it into an official fireplace marked by a line of red bricks that had been stacked in the shed when they moved in. Atsuko had fashioned a series of barbecue grills so they could bake potatoes, roast marshmallows or broil fish above smouldering branches. In the centre of this circle he poured the contents of the box and returned to the house.
When she died he’d had to collect her things from the hospital. He’d taken her pyjamas and gowns home and, not knowing what else to do, washed and dried them, put them away. Now he pulled them back out, dropping them in the box. Each item had some part of her personality, some story from her history stitched into it. The sleeves of her jumpers were creased into bands from her habit of folding them while she worked. The hood of her rain coat still hadn’t been mended after she’d caught it on a branch the last time she’d hiked up the mountain to the shrine before the illness made it too difficult. Her trousers, all too long, turned up at the bottom. Everything went into the box. It all went onto the pile. The pyre grew.
When he’d cleared everything of hers from the bedroom, he stripped the bed, added her pillows to the mound, threw the bed clothes in the machine. He beat the futons, dusted every surface, opened all the windows and doors in the cottage to let the stiff mountain wind batter through the rooms. He vacuumed up every morsel of her.
He worked all day clearing each room, cleaning as he went, erasing with a damp cloth and a duster. Records, books, box after box of paper, pens, paper clips, her bags and suitcase, her university mug, her travel guides and hiking maps, her toothbrush and floss, her flannel and towel, he smashed the bookcase she bought from the second hand shop and the chair she painted and by the time the sun was at its peak above the mountain, every possession of hers, every scrap of her life, every skin cell had been cleared from the cottage.
On the doorstep he sipped a cup of tea, warming his frigid core, the bitter, brackeny taste comforting, like an old friend. They had two rows of tea plants up the mountain behind the house, enough for their own use, enough to sell through the local market shop. That had been her idea as well. She’d grown up in Shizuoka, the steps of tea a familiar sight on the hills as she cycled to school. He pictured her, satchel stuffed carelessly into the basket, a charm from a local shrine jangling from the bike lock, smiling at some secret thought, some idea or story she’d sketch later. Atsuko as she was, before Kanazawa, before him, before coming here, before cancer had spread through their memories, turning everything.
The cup shattered against the cedar, shards spraying like hail.
He returned to the bedroom and from the doorway surveyed the room, his shirts hanging in the cupboard. His underwear in the drawer. His t-shirts folded like they did in the shops, something he’d never mastered.
They all contained traces of her.
They all contained memories.
He got the box and started again. Anything she’d touched. Anything she’d interacted with.
He dragged it all out. Plates, pictures, lamps. Everything went on the fire.
As the sun set, singeing the tops of the trees on the mountain behind the house small landslides sent frames and pans and belts tumbling outside the brick circle.
He took an axe to the kitchen table, threw it on.
He dragged the futons out, threw them on.
The TV.
The full-length mirror.
The sun lounger and the watering can.
He emptied the house, room by room, from light fittings to door mat, the bedroom, the bathroom, living room, kitchen and utility room. He emptied the shed and the car, even rolling the spare tire into the stack.
He couldn’t get the washing machine outside. He didn’t have enough strength to move the fridge-freezer more than a few metres towards the door. The house, empty but for appliances and carpets, still wasn’t silent. It hummed and murmured, her voice seeped into the wood, her scent imbibed by the foundations. By the pond he sat, sweat musty under his arms, down his back. She was still there, her ghost over his shoulder. He wanted to stop. Wanted to forget. But everything reminded him of their life together, reminded him that it had ended but he still had to go on.
The car, she’d chosen the colour.
The cottage, she’d found the advert.
He got the bucket and hose, went to the car, syphoned the tank. Fumes cold and harsh, he trailed petrol through the rooms, drizzling it like dressing over the white goods, the carpets, the walls. He tramped down the path and pulled a T-shirt from the pyre, the striped polo neck she’d got on sale at Shimamura. He circled the stack, pouring petrol over his life, her life, the accumulation of existence. He trailed petrol up the path, connected the thin stream with the house, snaked it to the car, soaked the T-shirt and stuffed into the open petrol tank. With the dregs he spun a final thread, a fuse that ended at his feet.
The match sparked to life, hung in the air for a second after he released it. The turtles dived from their rocks into the chilling water as the explosion shivered down the mountain, thick black smoke pluming into the soft June sky, memories breaking as the wind caught them over the pines.