Fiction: Grever by Norie Suzuki

Photo Source: Unsplash

As Rin watered the poinsettia on her bay window, still partly covered by a brown cardboard box filled with French travel guidebooks she was translating, she noticed a boy approaching her son, Haruto, who was playing with his RC transformer car. The boy likely attended the elementary school three streets over, where Haruto would start the winter term as a new student. He watched the car circle Haruto and clapped when it stopped at Haruto’s feet. His front tooth was missing, like Haruto’s. The boy said something, extending his mittened hands toward the remote control. Haruto shook his head. When he pressed his palms together and pleaded, Haruto hid his remote under his parka and stood statue-still until the poor boy pouted and ran to join his friends, heading toward the park.

            “Why don’t you become friends with the kid down the street?” Rin suggested at the dinner table, spooning extra teriyaki sauce over Haruto’s lamb chops. “He might be a third grader, too. You could walk to school together. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

            Kazuma sat next to his son, sipping a can of coffee he’d bought from the vending machine by the park. There was no plate set for him, which he hadn’t expected. He’d planned to stop by before dinnertime to pick up his shoes, which had somehow ended up in Rin’s box. But as he was finishing the last touches on his architectural model, his boss asked him to update him on the new condotel project, and that was that. By the time he stepped into the entryway, which smelled of caramelized soy sauce, it was already dark. He meant to leave right away, but Haruto pulled him by the hand, begging him to see his new room, decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars.

            Haruto forked a piece of meat and moved it around on the plate. “Papa, do you want a bite?”

            “No thanks. I’d better get going.” Kazuma gulped down the rest of the coffee and stood up.

            “Can we play with the RC car before you leave? I can show you a new trick.”

            Rin set her fork down with a sharp clatter and sipped her wine. “Haruto, don’t pick at your food. Just eat. And you can play with your RC car tomorrow. Why not invite that kid down the street? I can talk to his mom.”

            Haruto pushed his plate away and tugged at his father’s belt loop. Kazuma tilted his head and studied Rin’s drawn face, waiting for a signal. But she ignored him.

            Kazuma sat back down and set the food in front of Haruto. “Isn’t Mama’s teriyaki lamb chop your favorite? Eat it all. Be strong like a Transformer. Surprise your friend.”

            “I have no friends.”

            “Not yet, maybe, but what about the kid your mother mentioned?”

            “No!”

            “What’s the matter?” Kazuma asked Rin.

            Rolling her eyes, Rin crossed her arms—her posture so familiar to him since she gave him the ultimatum. Her words: Unless you prioritize your family, stop dumping all the responsibilities on me, and cut back on your weekend golf outings with your clients, I will move out with Haruto. He thought his apologies, gratitude for her working from home, an explanation of his job situation, and his effort to spend time with Haruto would placate his wife. Like surviving a tornado, he stayed low and waited for the weather to clear. But in mid-December, a box truck pulled up to his front door.   

            Rin told Haruto what she had seen from the bay window and suggested he be kind to the boy next time. But Haruto was determined not to share his RC car. The more Rin tried to persuade her son, the more strained her voice grew, and Haruto’s “no” grew firmer. The teriyaki sauce thickened and glistened like tar.

            “Why don’t we take a time-out?” Kazuma suggested. “Want some water?”

            How many times had Rin heard the same phrase from Kazuma? Whenever they discussed sharing household chores, babysitter arrangements, and vacations in Carcassonne, Gordes, or other towns featured in the guidebooks she had translated, Kazuma made only half-hearted commitments, then offered excuses for why he might not be able to follow through. This frustrated Rin, caused her to raise her voice. Then came his request for a time-out. She felt like she was trudging on a dune—no progress forward, but pulled under.

            “Would you leave us alone? This is between Haruto and me. We live here. And you don’t.”

            “I don’t want new friends,” Haruto muttered, his voice barely audible.

            “What did you say?” Rin poured more wine into her glass, leaving a red stain on her placemat. Without looking at Kazuma, she pointed toward the door.

            As Kazuma put on his camel polo coat, Haruto yelled, “This is not my home!”

            Holding her glass in mid-air, Rin told herself to count down from ten at a slow, steady pace. Imagine droplets dripping from the tip of a melting icicle, the self-help book she had earmarked said. She closed her eyes to let that image expand, focus on the crystalline icicle hanging from a conifer twig. But at the count of one, when she saw Kazuma put his hand on Haruto’s shoulder, posing like a savior, the icicle broke away and shattered. “Is this what I get for all I did for my family?”

            Rin gathered the knives and forks and dumped them in the sink, where onion skins, potato peels, and apple rinds clogged the strainer. She ripped off a long strip of Saran Wrap, covered her lamb chop plate, and threw Haruto’s into the trash can.

            Kazuma knew he’d better not say anything. A single word would ricochet and explode over him like cluster bombs, causing collateral damage. He tightened his grip on Haruto’s shoulder.

            “If this isn’t your home, leave. Go wherever you want. But don’t take anything I’ve given you.” She turned the tap on full blast, cursing under her breath as water splashed onto her sweater.

            Haruto pulled away from his father and took off the Buzz Lightyear fleece pullover. Next, the matching jogger pants, and finally, the green socks.

            “What are you doing?” Kazuma picked up the fleece and tried to slide it over Haruto’s head, but he pulled away, nearly knocking over the wine glass.

            “These were Christmas presents from Mama, so I’m leaving them here,” Haruto said over the gushing of the running water.

            Kazuma hoped Rin would stop washing the dishes, turn around, say something. But she didn’t do any of that, even when Haruto slammed the front door. Kazuma scooped up the pile of Haruto’s clothes and ran after his son, calling for him to come back.

***

            Twenty years later, Haruto has forgotten about that night until his mother brings it up while helping her sort through Kazuma’s clothes a month after his funeral. It was a sudden death, a heart attack while playing golf with his clients on a sunny Saturday in May.

            Haruto holds up Kazuma’s suits, one hanger at a time, and lays them on either side of the pile of neckties on his parents’ bed. With mechanical efficiency, Rin decides—left, right, no nostalgic pause—and Haruto follows her instructions.

            “Too bad these suits are too small for you.” She brushes the navy-blue jacket with fine white stripes and says it’s 100% silk from Paris, a city she has long dreamed of visiting. “Are you sure you don’t want any of these?” She picks up the green paisley tie and holds it against Haruto’s chest. “Green has always been your color.” She grabs all the green neckties and hands them to Haruto. “Take them as your father’s keepsake.”

            “What makes you think green is my color? Wouldn’t I look like the Green Giant?”

            “Who’s talking? Don’t you remember begging me to buy you that green Buzz Lightyear pullover?”

            Haruto’s clueless look rubs her the wrong way. Ever since he left the general hospital and started working as a nurse at a memory clinic, she has grown defensive about her recollections. She elaborates on that December evening when he ran away in his underwear and returned home with his father, well past bedtime. Between each detail, she interjects, do you remember, not as a question but as an assertion.

            “I’ve never asked before, but what did you do with him that night?”

            The room darkens as light rain taps the window. Haruto rolls each necktie like a gauze bandage and lines them up at the foot of the bed. “Denny’s. Had dinner there.”

            He doesn’t recall much. Not how they arrived at the diner, what they ordered, or why he was so stubborn that night. But he remembers waiting for his father to speak up, to say something so he could make sense of what was going on in his family. Not much was said, though. When his father opened his mouth, he asked questions like—are you full, aren’t you cold, do you need to use the bathroom? Meanwhile, the vanilla ice cream in the next booth melted. The glass bowl sat in front of a teenage girl, who kept tapping on her cell phone. The ice cream, slowly losing its shape, saddened him. Noticing Haruto staring at the ice cream, Kazuma said he’d order a scoop if Haruto kept it a secret from his mother, and extended his pinky. Haruto clasped his hands in his lap until his fingers went numb.

            “What did you talk about?” Rin smooths and folds Kazuma’s suits, which she plans to sell at a designer thrift boutique. She tosses the rest into an oversized cardboard box labeled “donation.”

            “Not much.”

            Rin dumps Kazuma’s underwear into a plastic bag and taps the bottom of the drawer. A few dust particles drift onto the carpet. “Really?”

            Haruto knots the plastic bag and leaves it by the window. “For sure, he didn’t tell me you were getting back together.”

            So much went unsaid then. With his father gone, Haruto wants to leave it at that. He didn’t tell his father he’d put the derby shoes in his mother’s box. Not because he was afraid of being scolded, but because he couldn’t explain why he’d done it. At Denny’s, his father didn’t ask about the shoes, didn’t ask why he didn’t want to share his RC car. Instead, he showed Haruto a trick. His father scrunched a drink straw wrapper as tightly as he could and placed it on his coffee saucer. “Watch,” he said, then dripped water onto the wrapper. It came alive with each drop, crawling like a caterpillar, wiggling its head as if searching for a way out of the well. When the wrapper stopped moving, his father put his coat over Haruto’s shoulders and said, “Let’s go home.”

            That night, while his parents talked downstairs, Haruto gazed at the stars glowing on his wall. By the time we see stars shine, we’re looking at their past, not their present, his mother told him as they decorated his room together. So far away and unreachable, but there, there, she said as they stood against the opposite wall, studying the universe they had created.

            With Kazuma’s side of the hinged wardrobe emptied, Rin gently closes the door, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her eyes staring back. Doe-like eyes, Kazuma said on their first date when he confessed it was love at first sight. Since she received a call from Kazuma’s colleague that Saturday afternoon, she hasn’t shed a tear. Not at the hospital. Not during the service. “In shock,” she heard others whisper at the funeral reception as she moved around, pouring rice wine and beer into strangers’ glasses. They were Kazuma’s acquaintances from work, men she’d probably heard about in passing over dinner.

            Grief and grievance are not the same, she read on a website she stumbled upon while searching for a crematory. Somehow, the phrase stays with her, beating like an earworm. Aren’t both derived from Old French grever, meaning “to afflict, to burden”? Doesn’t grievance feed on grief, and grief on loneliness?

            Rin would have liked to ask what Kazuma might have thought. Most likely, he would have scratched his head and said nothing. That was him.

            “Lost in thought?” Haruto asks in a muffled voice, his final consonant trailing off, the way his father did. For a brief moment, Rin thinks it’s Kazuma speaking. 

            “I was wondering,” Rin says. In his eyes—resembling hers—she sees that eight-year-old boy, that stubborn yet fragile look. “Wondering if you can stay for dinner tonight. I can cook teriyaki lamb chops if you want.”

            Haruto nods, but neither leaves the room. They sit on the edge of the bed and watch raindrops streak down the window glass, washing away pollen and yellow dust from afar.

Norie Suzuki (she/her) was born and educated bilingually in Tokyo, Japan, where she writes and works as a simultaneous interpreter. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Cutleaf Journal, The Offing, Best Microfiction 2026, and elsewhere. She received third prize in the T. Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence in 2024, and her work will be included in the Coppice Prize anthology and Profiles 2028. Her microfiction, “What We Do When We Don’t Talk About Grief,” has been nominated for Best of the Net 2027.