RUTS

Kitchen voices bouncing off the metal door of the refrigerator.
“He’s hurt himself!”
“Good.”
Money well spent in his mind.
“He’s still your son, Toshi.”
“He stopped being my son, our son, when he went in there and nailed the door shut behind him. Now he’s just ‘your’ son, Mika. How do you know he’s hurt?”
Careful Father, that almost sounds like caring. Would you like a refund?
“There’s blood on the spoon.”
“I don’t care, I don’t want to know what sick things he is doing in there. Probably violating himself somehow. Nothing would surprise me anymore.”
This from a man who takes a risk by wearing a suit in a slightly lighter shade of gray.
“Masayuki. His name is Masayuki. He will always be our son.”
“Your son, woman, his name means nothing to me anymore. For me he doesn’t exist. This apartment stops at the end of the hall, one room less for you to clean every day. You should get out more. Go for coffee, take up tennis again. One less room means more time for you. You should make the best of this.”

He never understood his wife as my mother. In his mind, he always came first for her, but he didn’t ever think to ask her where her affections really lay. Lying together was an end for him but a means for her. I was her outlet, her filler of lonely days, her motivation. It has been so long but there is still guilt when I think of her. Memories of childhood caresses and maternal sweat cannot be easily erased. She must understand that I am doing this for her as well as me. The landscape is scored with more ruts than a powdered slope on the first day of snow season. So easy to fall into them and follow them all the way to the bottom, never seeing what is around you, only what is behind and ahead.

Racing down the ruts with no room to turn the skis to stop, onwards and downwards, enjoying the speed and the certainty of direction but sacrificing all independence. She found her rut when she married Father, proud in lilywhite at the Western show ceremony, the stack of cash-filled envelopes from guests the foundation of their future. She told herself that she wanted this life, this certainty, these guardrails. He had me because that was what was expected; she because it was what she truly wanted. Now the post-natal depression has returned for her, another void that she wishes was still filled. Worse because she can still hear her son breathing through the slot, can feel my half-gaze, can cry and know that I will think of her. I think she weeps because I was her future, and she knows that her rut has no end.