The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike Page B

“frolic among the gravestones,” as well. In fairness, though, that was exactly what the people outside Misao’s window appeared to be doing at that very moment.
    Just as Misao finished hanging the week’s accumulated laundry out on the sunny, south-facing balcony to dry, Tamao and Teppei returned from taking Cookie for a walk.
    â€œI only ran a few laps, but look at me—I’m covered with sweat,” Teppei said, swiping at the perspiration that gleamed on his forehead. “It’s really warm out there. Not just that, but you know the little road in front of the temple? There are so many people coming in from outside that it looks like rush hour on the train platform. We saw lots of folks laying out their lunches on the grass at the entrance to the graveyard, too.”
    â€œI guess visiting your ancestors’ graves on the first day of spring is the next best thing to a picnic in the park,” Misao said. She filled a dish with water for Cookie, then set it on the floor. The dog’s pink tongue splashed water in every direction as she began lapping eagerly from the bowl.
    Tamao showed her mother a fistful of dandelions that she had picked along the way. The buds were still tightly closed.
    â€œMama, do you think these dandelions will bloom if I put them in water?”
    â€œThey might,” Misao said. “It’s certainly worth a try.”
    â€œOh goody. I’ll go stick them in a cup.”
    As she watched her little daughter flying toward the kitchen sink, Misao spoke to Teppei with consciously feigned casualness. “Speaking of visiting graves, do you have any thoughts about how we should spend the day?”
    â€œYou’re talking about Reiko’s grave, right?” Teppei asked as he blotted his sweaty neck with a towel.
    Misao was relieved to hear her husband address the subject so directly. Taking a cue from his decisive manner, she said lightly, “Well, it has been quite a while,” as if she were talking about nothing more fraught than, say, visiting the last resting place of her own grandmother—who had died ages ago, when Misao was only two or three years old. “I remember you were busier than usual at work during the autumn solstice, so we didn’t pay a visit then.”
    â€œWell, then, shall we go today? Hey, what if we brought lunch? We could join all the picnicking hordes. No, what’s the word they use on TV—‘droves’?”
    â€œJoining the droves sounds good to me,” Misao said with a grin, and Teppei, too, seemed pleased that the decision had been so easily made.
    This is a perfect plan, Misao thought, still smiling with satisfaction. If we just keep doing normal things, we’ll eventually be able to put the past behind us completely and move ahead with our lives, one step at a time …
    Misao and Teppei were acquainted with a couple who had lost their precious three-year-old son when he wandered into the street and was run over by a three-wheeled trash truck. The bereaved parents had lived in a realm of perpetual grief—a literal vale of tears—and to an outside observer they appeared to be in very real danger of dying themselves, from unbearable sadness. The father was so devastated that he wasn’t able to bring himself to do any work, while the mother spent every day obsessively praying at the family’s Buddhist memorial altar from morning to night. Every month on the anniversary of their son’s death, the couple would make a pilgrimage to his grave. This continued until they had another child. After that, their visits to the graveyard dwindled rapidly, until they reached the bare minimum: once a year. In Misao’s experience it was almost universally true that with the passage of time, the living feel ever more distant from people who have died. Surely the same thing would happen eventually with Reiko.
    â€œBy the way, the occupants of 201 seem to be moving