Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto

Author:Banana Yoshimoto
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781640093706
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

The reason I was too cautious, and rigid, and couldn’t see myself clearly, and was terrified of being happy—maybe it was all because I didn’t remember.

But I didn’t know a lot of people who had memories from when they were three or four.

Of course it was sad to be estranged from my real mother, but there was a good reason, after all, and since she never tried to get in touch, either, she was obviously living a new life. As long as she was happy, that was probably fine.

I knew Grandma and Grandpa would never want to talk to her, even if I was getting married. She simply was no longer part of my life.

Those were the thoughts I’d lived by up till now—that bygones were bygones. I told myself things were good as they were, like I always did.

I always liked to think that I was allowed to have a happy, peaceful life after what I’d been through as a child—that life owed me that much, even.

But once I got a serious boyfriend, the kind who would call me from a business trip and try to get me to see that I mattered, I started to doubt whether I really deserved to be thought of in that way. I didn’t question why, for instance, I always went to bed when he did, no matter how busy I was.

I sometimes wondered whether this had something to do with my mother.

There was nothing I could do about it.

Maybe that was why I sometimes felt like I couldn’t breathe, and like I needed to get out. It seemed like even I didn’t know what to do with myself a lot of the time.

What would I do if I had another unexpected outburst? Or if I gave in to a self-destructive impulse, like Mr. Yamazoe had? If I had a child, would I lose control and hurt them? What if I said something terribly hurtful to Yu?

I drifted into thoughts about my vacation time and getting married, and life in general, and by the time I thought I should get up and turn the lights off before I fell asleep, I’d forgotten all about thoughts of my birth mother. I got up and switched off the lights.

My old room was disused and dusty, and making my throat hurt a little, so I opened the window. The fresh air came in and ran around the room, and in the sky I looked up at from the dark window, so many stars twinkled. Hey, it’s beautiful, I thought. The clear air filled my lungs, making my entire body feel cool, and somehow cleansed.

It must have been the stale air that filled me with doubts.

Whatever it was that still lingered in my liver must have come from the poison that had secretly lain dormant inside me all these years, and the poison that had been within Mr. Yamazoe, my former coworker. Unlucky coincidences like this one happened all the time. He and I had become entangled

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