Crimson Footprints

by Shewanda Pugh

  Daichi stared at the floor, his eyes shadowed with worry. “I hope you can forgive me one day, Yoshi. I’ve been a terrible brother. Always have been.”

  Yoshi shrugged. “That’s not exactly true. A little rough sometimes, but not terrible.” He nudged Daichi. “You taught me a lot of things. How to tie my shoes, how to ride a bike and eat a taco at the same time, and how to get a girl to let me kiss them on the first date.” Yoshi grinned. “All very important.”

  Daichi stared at a far-off point, unblinking. “I don’t know how to forgive, Yoshi. I’ve been unable to forgive you for doing as you please with your life. And I’ve been unable to forgive my wife for having an affair.”

  “She had an affair? When?”

  “About eighteen years ago.”

  “Oh.”

  “But even that seems to be my fault. You of all people know how intolerable I can be.”

  “Yeah,” Yoshi said. “For fifty years now I’ve been trying to get through the door of Daichi’s approval. In that time I’ve found that not only is that doorway narrow, but sometimes it doesn’t exist at all.”

  Daichi rubbed his face as if to wipe away the self-loathing.

  “I’ve made so many mistakes. Left so many words unspoken. Every cross and thoughtless word, every moment of neglect and forgetfulness, it plagues me and convicts me, Yoshi.” Daichi dashed tears away. “I need a second chance. Desperately.”

  “We all do, Daichi. We all do.”

  A balding white physician with the face of a cherry pie stood before Deena and the Tanakas in the waiting room a full fifteen hours after the accident. He introduced himself as Dr. Frank Moore and offered a hand as ruddy as his face. He looked from Hatsumi, who continued to dab the corners of her eyes, to Daichi, red-faced and stiff, before turning to Deena, who held her breath, hands clasped in anticipation. He recognized her as the woman he’d thrown out of the resuscitation room hours ago.

  “Mr. Tanaka,” Dr. Moore began, “arrived with cardiac arrest after enduring blunt force trauma to the chest. This resulted in a massive hemothorax, or in laymen’s terms, blood in the chest cavity. After we performed resuscitation and an emergency thoracotomy, we located and stopped the bleeding. In addition, he suffered a break of the right fibula and tibia and several contusions and lacerations.”

  “So he’s alive?” Daichi said.

  Dr. Moore grinned. He loved being the bearer of good news. “And awake, no less.”

  Deena shrieked with delight and hugged first Kenji, then John. Hatsumi clasped a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Daichi stared at Dr. Moore distrustfully. It was his brother Yoshi who swept him into a bear hug, the first they’d shared since adolescence.

  “My God. Can we see him?” Deena asked.

  The doctor frowned, shaking his head. “He’s in ICU. Right now, what Mr. Tanaka needs is lots of rest. We’ll monitor him tonight, and we expect he’ll be able to see you tomorrow.”

  THE ICU ALLOWED two visitors every two hours, for a total of fifteen minutes. Visiting hours began at ten a.m. and ended promptly at eight p.m., allowing each patient a maximum of ninety minutes of company a day.

  At ten a.m., Daichi and Hatsumi rushed in, eager to see their son, and thereby relegating Deena to a spot in the waiting room. It was then that the influx of Tanakas arrived—Grandma Yukiko, in on the red-eye from Phoenix, Asami and Ken, who drove all night when they could find no flight out of Atlanta, and Mike, who made three connections to get from Seattle to Miami in eight hours of travel time. That was in addition to Kenji, John, Allison, Yoshi and June, all of whom had arrived within hours of the accident. By the time visiting hours ended at eight, Deena found herself still sitting in the cramped quarters of the waiting room, but this time considering the possibility that Tak wouldn’t see her.

  She returned the following day only to watch it unfold as the day before. She arrived early, resumed her spot in the hard-backed chair near the lone water fountain, and watched as Daichi and Hatsumi lead the usual procession of Tanakas. Tak was angry with her. He had to be. He had to know she was there. Why wouldn’t he ask for her?

  “Deena?”

  A nurse approached her, piercing her thoughts.

  Deena followed the nurse down a brightly lit hall and into a spacious private suite. Bright lights, stark white walls and polished linoleum illuminated the room. In one corner was a leather recliner, in the other a matching couch. A small table with magazines sat at the arm of the sofa. A twenty-seven-inch television was mounted on the wall. He was there, in the center of the room, as an IV and chest tube protruded from his body, and a medical monitor recorded his vitals. His face and arms were covered in bruises, his leg in a cast, but he was alive.

  She was eager to hear him, to feel him. But as Deena rushed to his side, a single bruised hand stopped her. She drew back, confused.

  TAK CLEARED HIS throat, attempted to shift his body for comfort, then thought better of it. The words he spoke were hoarse and wreaked havoc on his chest, but he would say them nonetheless. They would be the first words he spoke to her, in this, his new life.

  “I love you, Dee.” He cleared his throat and pushed on despite the pain. “I’ve never doubted that you were the woman for me.” He paused. “I want to share my love and my life with you, and if you’ll have me, I want you to be my wife.”

  With effort, he opened a hand to reveal the Tanaka family ring. His father purchased the band of white gold when he sought his mother’s hand in marriage. Perched upon it was a polished natural pearl more than seven generations old. The lone valuable of a once wealthy family, that pearl had seen the docks of America at the turn of the twentieth century, been buried in haste with the forced internment of Japanese Americans, and would adorn the finger of one more Tanaka woman, as long as Tak got the answer he desired.

  Her answer was a whisper, soft yet clear nonetheless. It was the word which had been in her heart all along.

  Yes.

  WHEN JOHN SLIPPED into Tak’s room, a day or so after his transfer from intensive care to the general ward, he found Deena snoozing in an armchair and Kenji by his brother’s side, flipping through an old and battered copy of Sports Illustrated.

  “I hear congrats are in order,” John said, closing the door behind him.

  Tak smiled. “Word travels fast.”

  “Man, you should hear Allison. You’ve got her ready to elope right now. She’s all ‘they didn’t even know each other when we started dating’!” John shook his head. “You try to make me look bad.”

  “Don’t have to try hard.”

  He leaned against the door and gave Tak a once-over. He had more beeping machines around him than the Starship Enterprise and looked like someone had hurled a can of whoop ass at him, but hell, he was alive, and for that, nobody was more thankful than John.

  “Enjoying your vacation?” John asked.

  “It’s great,” Tak attempted to shift and winced. “Just the break I needed from the monotony of life.”

  “You got a break all right. One for the leg, another for the ribcage.” He shook his head. “How many bones you plan on breaking this year?”

  Tak’s laugh was like wisps of smoke, thin and barely there. “The plan was all, but I think I’ll tap out now.”

  John looked up and spotted Kenji’s scowl. He knew the kid didn’t have the self-deprecating sense of humor that he and Tak shared, so he took Kenji’s red-eyed glare as a sign to back off the jokes. He’d never known Kenji to hit anyone, but he wanted no parts of that just the same. Something about being the test subject for a kid The Herald claimed didn’t hit balls so much as snipe them, didn’t exactly whet John’s appetite.

  He glanced at Deena. “She’s been here as long as I think?”

  “Longer, probably.”

  “Well, they’re excited out there. You should hear them cackling about spring colors and summer weddings and caterers from L.A. or some shit.”

  Deena stirred in her chair. “Are they really?” she said. />
  John laughed. “Go out there and talk to them. See for yourself. They’re ready to make you a Tanaka tonight if you’ll let them.”

  She sat up. “Are you…sure?” She lowered her gaze. “Maybe they’re being polite. I’ll bet they’re being polite.”

  John raised a brow. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention in California, but the Tanakas tend to be a blunt bunch.” He tilted a head towards the door. “Check it out. And take your new brother with you. I’d like to shoot the shit with Tak.”

  Deena rose, her smile shy. When Kenji stood, he balled up the old issue of Sports Illustrated and tossed it in the garbage. John raised a brow and he shrugged.

  “Babe Ruth, all-time greatest player.” Kenji rolled his eyes. “Gimme a break.”

  John grinned as they disappeared into the hall, and as Kenji continued to mouth off about Ruth’s impressive stats in a league that was all white.

  With the door closed behind them, John turned back to Tak. He eyed his cousin with interest.

  “Now how are you?”

  Tak sighed. “Tired. Sore as hell.”

  “The other guy, the one that hit you, he showed up with flowers back when you were still in ICU. It took security and every orderly in the building to get our dads off him.”

  Tak rolled his eyes. “Your dad, maybe. My dad was probably just trying to find an exit. I’m sure he had a flight somewhere.”

  Silence filled the room. In it, John ventured over to the floral arrangements stacked on the nightstand with overflow on the floor. He lifted one and admired it. They were lilies or lilacs or something like that.

  “He offered me a job,” John said.

  “When?”

  “When we were in California. In-house tax attorney for the firm.”

  “You gonna take it?”

  John shrugged. “I’m thinking about it. It’s more money than I’ve ever seen. Good even for an Ivy League grad at the top of his class. And I wasn’t at the top of my class.”

  Tak sighed. “He talks with money.”

  “You know, you’re right. Problem is, he can’t get you to listen.”

  John gave his cousin a wink, took the remote from his hand and tossed it to the far side of the room. With a grin, he closed the door to the sound of Tak’s pained laughter.

  DAICHI SAT IN his home office poring over drafts and notes for a single project he'd become obsessed with over the last few weeks. It should've been a simple enough task, a public library, but something about the designs bothered him. There was simply—something left to be desired.

  Lately, concentration was something else left to be desired. Daichi’s mind insisted on wandering to the moments after his son’s accident. The feelings of helplessness, of inadequacy, of despair. Never had he felt so impotent, so desperate. But when his son regained consciousness, Daichi failed to do as most fathers would. He didn’t rush to his son’s side, embrace him, and whisper words of fondness. Instead, their encounter was brief and awkward, and when they parted, he was left feeling empty and feeble. To that day, the feeling remained.

  AFTER A SERIES of strengthening exercises in the full-service weight room in his parents’ home, Tak thanked his therapist for the visit, showered and dressed, and went in search of his mother. In the hospital, he’d spoken candidly with her about her drinking and the need to quit. With the doctor’s promise that Tak would live came his mother’s commitment to detoxification. A somber bit of reality coupled with Alcoholics Anonymous meetings had given her two months of sobriety.

  After a brief run-through of the house, the family maid told Tak that his mother was out walking in the garden. Their ‘garden’ was closer to arboretum than the patch of field most people toddled around in planting herbs and lilacs. He would not go in search of her. He headed for the door.

  Tak didn’t know what made him stop to speak with his father. Maybe it was the way his office door was cracked instead of welded shut. Maybe it was the glimpse of him doing nothing save staring at the wall that caused Tak to pause and tap on the door.

  Daichi told him to come in.

  His father’s home office was pretty big. The desk he sat at was broad and made of cherry wood, the chair behind it leather and ergonomically correct. He’d pushed back his PC’s flat-screen monitor as if it had annoyed him, and piles of paper were stacked neatly in its stead. On the far end, against the wall, were a series of double wide cherry wood bookshelves, polished to gleam. In one corner was a drafting table and the various supplies his father used when he went old school—pencils, a T-square and a compass. At the back of the office was a leather couch, black and soft.

  “Got a sec?” Tak said.

  Daichi nodded. He pushed away from his desk and turned to face his son. Tak hesitated. His father didn’t usually stop working just because someone wanted to have a word with him.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  Daichi shook his head.

  “Are you all right? You don’t look well,” Tak said after a brief but awkward silence.

  “I’m fine. How is your rehabilitation going?”

  “Good.”

  More silence. The two glanced at each other, then looked away.

  “She liked the ring,” Tak said suddenly.

  Daichi nodded. “She should. It’s three hundred years old.”

  Tak nodded.

  “And the therapy? You said that it’s going well?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, yeah. Pain management. Breathing techniques, strength and endurance. That’s the gist of it.”

  “And is there much…pain?”

  Tak shrugged. “Sometimes. The incision site bugs me. You know, where they had to stick the chest tube. And it hurts to cough. That kind of thing.”

  “I see. Well…let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Tak cleared his throat.

  “You know, Mom—Mom has stopped drinking.”

  Daichi turned back to his desk. “Is that right? Is that what she’s saying these days?”

  Tak’s gaze narrowed. “She hasn’t had a drink since the day of the accident.”

  His father unraveled a draft. “Perhaps.”

  Tak stood, scowling. “There is no ‘perhaps’. She’s not drinking. She says she’s not drinking, and I believe her.”

  “The woman is a drunkard, Takumi. She revels in the feel of intoxication.”

  “She’s trying. Why can’t you even give her that? Why can’t you give anyone anything?”

  Daichi sighed. “I don’t know what that means, Takumi.”

  “It means that I’m sick of you. I’m sick of you being so damned crass and indifferent. I’m sick of you not giving a damn.”

  “And what would you like me to give a damn about?” he said quietly.

  “Your wife! Your kids! Me! I mean, come on, Dad. I nearly die, and for you it’s just an inconvenience in your schedule!”

  Daichi swiveled to face him. “Is that what you believe? That I care for no one? For nothing?”

  “I know you don’t!”

  Daichi leapt to his feet. “How dare you. How dare you come into my home and speak with authority about what matters to me.”

  He began to pace with the heat of his fury.

  “When you lay dying in that hospital it was me who was so overcome with grief that I could neither eat, nor sleep, nor function. It was me who tortured himself with every decision, every unspoken word, every measure of affection I ever withheld from you. Me who spent the night weeping, even after hearing you were alive, as I lay there convicted by every cross word I ever spoke to you. It was me, Takumi. Your father, and no one else. And you have the audacity to tell me that I don’t care for you? That I don’t love you?”

  “And Mom? Does she have to die for you to love her, too?”

  Daichi turned on Tak, enraged. “Who the hell do you think you are? You’ve crossed the goddamned line.”

  “Well, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know we had lines! Not since you h
abitually encroach on mine!”

  “You think I didn’t love your mother? You think I didn’t ever love your mother? You wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t love your mother. Why don’t you sit down and shut up about things that you know nothing about?”

  Tak crossed his arms defiantly.

  “Goddamn it, Takumi, I said sit down!”

  Reluctantly, Tak lowered himself onto the couch. Daichi faced him.

  “I loved your mother. I loved your mother more than anything. She was beautiful, smart, compassionate—she was everything I wanted in a woman. I worshipped her.”

  Tak’s eyes narrowed. “So what the hell happened?”

  Daichi sighed.

  “When I met your mother, she was a freshman at Harvard and I was in the last year of my graduate studies. She was curled under a tree, reading Emily Dickenson. Back then, Emily Dickenson consumed her. I walked up to her, took the book from her, and recited Lord Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’.”

  Tak blinked, trying his best to conjure an image of his father, underneath a maple, wooing his mother with poetry. The image never came.

  “We dated for six months and then married. At our ceremony, she was already six weeks pregnant with you.”

  Daichi slipped his hands in his pockets, leaned against the edge of his desk and sighed. “She left school to marry me and have you. She was so full of potential and so brilliant, the guilt from that plagued me. I wanted so badly to give you both a better life that I lost sight of what constituted better. I thought that ‘things’ meant better. So, I pushed for bigger contracts and worked longer hours. And by the time I accomplished what I set out to do, well, your mother and I were strangers. The distance brought the alcohol, and the alcohol, animosity.”

  Tak lowered his gaze. “And what about Kenji? Most days it seems you can hardly stand to look at him.”

  “I don’t know. When I look at you, there is so much of me, and of my father, that I see. But when I look at Kenji, I just see—your mother—timid conformist, crestfallen wife, adulterer.”