Their house in Tennoji was old and run-down—in other words, it was a very spacious house with many rooms, but it was dark. Hideo’s boys seemed to be amazed by how small yet bright his and Eriko’s modern apartment was. They ran around the apartment, opening each and every door and making a huge mess. That was why Hideo decided to give them a bath. Once he got out of the tub, he put in his boys, who started splashing with joy and giggling. They were apparently starving for attention from their father, and when it was time for them to go back home to Tennoji, the younger son was on the verge of tears.
“Why don’t you let them stay the night?” suggested Eriko.
The boys’ faces briefly lit up with joy.
“No,” Hideo flatly replied. “Go home. You know what train to take.” Then he added, “Oh, and make sure you don’t lose the money I gave you.”
“Why don’t you walk them to the station?” Eriko asked instinctively.
“They’re boys. They can find their way home on their own.”
The children began putting on their shoes in resignation, then walked out the door and said good-bye. Whether they were saying it to their father or Eriko was a mystery.
When they were frantically squealing with joy in the bathtub, Eriko noticed the metallic taste of jealousy at the back of her throat, but she still felt bad for them when they gave up and left. She was overcome with the feeling that she’d stolen their father from them. Hideo, on the other hand, seemed to be in a good mood.
“You gotta give them opportunities to be independent from time to time,” he said. It sounded like he was trying to keep his life with Eriko separate.
A year had gone by when one morning, Hideo mentioned, “I’m going to Tennoji. A carpenter’s coming over today…”
“Oh. Fixing the place up?”
The house in Tennoji was old, so Hideo usually had to do any repairs when something broke, which he always did a good job at. But seeing as they hired a professional, perhaps it was something more complicated than usual.
“The annex needs a lot of work.”
“Are you going to have it rebuilt?”
“Yeah.” Hideo was in a bad mood. “She’s back.”
“Who’s back?”
“Who do you think?!” Hideo shouted, clearly irritated.
Yelling at me isn’t going to fix anything, Eriko thought as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re talking about Kyoko.”
“I am.”
Kyoko’s second marriage had fallen apart, and she had nowhere to go, so she returned to Tennoji and moved in with Hideo’s mother. His mother was getting a little too old and tired to raise the children, so of course, she welcomed Kyoko with open arms.
Both of Kyoko’s marriages had ended in failure. Maybe she was just a victim of fate, but it was hard not to see her as someone who was impulsive and never thought things through.
“Why do you want to get a divorce?” Eriko had asked Hideo that day years ago.
“She’s a lazy cow. She’s dense and stubborn, and once she’s made up her mind, she won’t move whether you push her or pull her. She’s always nagging and splitting hairs over the most ridiculous things, and then she’s weirdly laid-back about random stuff and loves to ‘fool around,’ ” Hideo answered, disheartened.
Eriko had never met Kyoko, but she’d heard rumors about her from her cousin once. Apparently, Kyoko was an irresponsible slob. She didn’t use clothespins when hanging out laundry to dry, so the wet clothes would get blown away by the wind. She would also forget to go pick them up until later that night or even the next morning from time to time. Sometimes, when she ran out of clean clothes, she went shopping for new ones instead of washing the dirty ones. She constantly forgot to pay the phone or electric bill, and whenever you opened the refrigerator, there would be something in it that had already gone bad.
Eriko and Hideo never talked about Kyoko ever since they got married, but Eriko always had this vague image of her in the back of her mind—this “lazy cow,” as Hideo had described.
“When did this all happen?”
“Half a year ago.”
“Oh. I had no idea,” Eriko said. She became strangely annoyed. If Kyoko had moved back to Tennoji half a year ago, then surely, Hideo would have seen her at least three or four times, since that was how many times he had gone back these past six months to see his mother and children.
“So Kyoko moved back in six months ago? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to upset you.”
While it wasn’t a pleasant thing to find out, Eriko always imagined that her husband was living another life with just his kids while she wasn’t around. Never did she imagine that the ex-wife was back in the picture. Eriko had seen Hideo with his children countless times; it was a part of her life. She had seen him bathe with his boys as they squealed with glee; she’d witnessed his young daughter seated comfortably in his lap, his arms around her. Eriko imagined it was like that whenever he went back to Tennoji. But adding his ex-wife, Kyoko, to the equation made it impossible for her to envision what kind of life he was living. And the fact that he kept this to himself for half a year made it all the more shocking.
“Why not tell me? You could’ve just said that Kyoko got a divorce and was back.”
“What would that have solved?”
“Your mother didn’t tell me anything, either.”
“Why would she? It has nothing to do with you.”
He may have been right, but Eriko could no longer tell him to “enjoy himself and have dinner with his family” now that she knew Kyoko was there. Nevertheless, that hang-up slowly faded over the years. After spending so many years with Hideo, his life with her probably started to slightly outweigh his old life—time-wise, at the very least. That was how Eriko started to feel. The only time she thought about Tennoji was when she sent money to the house there every month. After a while, Hideo’s mother had to be hospitalized, and his oldest son started college, so they ended up needing even more money.
Kyoko didn’t work, but she was apparently doing chores around the house.
Why do I have to work my ass off to take care of someone else’s family? Eriko thought from time to time, but when she thought of the payment as if she were paying for her time with Hideo, she figured, I guess this isn’t all that expensive.
The children stopped clinging to Hideo so much, perhaps because having their mother around pacified them or because they were simply at that age where they wanted their distance. As a result, they basically stopped coming to Toyonaka. People were gradually able to live grander lifestyles the past few years, so Eriko and Hideo started going on small vacations as well. While it was in a slightly inconvenient location in the suburbs, they moved to an apartment in the mountains in Nishinomiya. They got the place in Eriko’s name, since the house in Tennoji was under Hideo’s name, which he always had on his mind. Whenever the roof was leaking or a shutter broke, Hideo would pay for it as if he ran two households.
Nevertheless, Eriko found her life with Hideo great. They got to “boogie” together in her mind. Hideo worked hard and a lot, which was hard to believe if he were judged only by his massive body, and he always cleaned the bath, wiped the glass doors, and took on various other chores without ever complaining. He was also the one who would come home and immediately try to make whatever unusual, tasty side dish he found when he was out drinking with Eriko.