I glanced at Macy, who was sucking contentedly on her bottle—a tiny soul, still destined for great days to come. Becky and her strong-hearted faith, facing the future as she had faced her childless days: tender, yet unafraid.
Like Mom. The new Mom I wish I could have known. But would one day meet face-to-face in heaven, with a body that would no longer wear out and a mind that would never again know pain or depression.
“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies,” the apostle Paul had written to the people of Corinth. I’d learned that in church. “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”
None of us knew when God would call us home. And that would be the response of a believer in Christ: to bow our head and bend our will and gracefully say yes. No matter how new the stem or how bright the bloom.
Adam’s words in Dairy Queen: “I’d die for you,” he’d said. “Without a second thought.”
“I think maybe you’re right, Becky,” I said finally, tears stinging my eyes.
I chose two bright stems of freesia, one for me and one for Becky, and carried them up to the register to check out
Chapter 21
Quiz. Who won the last NASCAR race?”
I nearly dropped the phone, typing away at a larceny story at the Sprouses’ walnut kitchen table—post five-mile run on Faye’s ancient treadmill. Her sunny yellow kitchen walls and checked curtains gleamed back at me, all trimmed with new sunflower decor.
“Kyoko? Why are you asking about NASCAR at this hour?” I took off my old Prada glasses and rubbed my eyes. My sprig of yellow freesia smiled at me from a vase in the midst of my mess: notes, tape recorders, info printouts, and a tube of mod-red nail polish.
“Which race? The Quaker State 400 in Kentucky?” I shook my feet to dry my freshly painted toes. “I think Vic Priestly won that one because…”
The line fell silent. I groaned. I’d walked right into Kyoko’s trap.
“Okay, okay,” I snapped. “I only know because Tim told me.”
“But you REMEMBERED! Seriously, Ro, you’re disturbed. I’m sending you a spittoon as a late birthday present.”
“A…what?” I ran my hand through my damp hair, still grapefruitjasmine scented from my shower.
“Never mind. I give up. You’re past all hope.”
“Probably. I can send you the race scores if you want though. There’s a website.”
“See? The fact you know that is scary.”
I took my hand off the keyboard, sensing impending doom. Normally I’d push Kyoko’s buttons and rant about gun racks and Confederate flags, but I wasn’t in the mood. “You’re leaving Japan, aren’t you?”
“Yep. My flight’s this afternoon.”
I fell silent, imagining Kyoko’s empty apartment, stripped of its punk-rock records and posters, dark Indian elephant tapestries, and the purple lava lamp that bubbled. Her skull-and-crossbones purses. The weird smell of incense and musty books.
“Ro? You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“What, you’re going to let me waltz out of Japan without so much as a good-bye? You’re worrying me now.”
“I always worry you.”
“Good point.” She harrumphed. “By the way, you might be interested to know that my transfer request has been approved. It’s all set.”
“Really? To where?”
Please say Japan, Kyoko! Please, please tell me you’ve changed your mind! Or at least California, where you’re only a short flight away.
“Italy.”
“Italy?”
“Correct. Land of cappuccino and gelato. I think even you’d be proud.”
“Italy,” I repeated, imagining Kyoko climbing crumbly, ancient steps surrounded by fountains, snapping photos. Driving an old Fiat up narrow streets. Picking olives.
“That’s great.” I tried to sound excited.
“Dave said the housing’s better than in Germany, and they’re kind of short-staffed. They’d welcome me with open arms. I’ll stay in the US until August for training and then go straight to Genoa.” She yawned. “Birthplace of pesto. Can’t be all bad.”
“Congratulations.” I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, but it sort of came out that way. “I know you’ll do great there.” I swallowed, my throat tightening. “Just tell me, Kyoko, before you go—what will you miss from Japan?”
“Besides giving you a hard time about Carlos? Not much.”
“What? You mean there’s nothing you’ll miss?” It pained me to imagine my last link to Japan slipping away—and Kyoko not even appreciating her loss.
“Definitely not the pickled plums.”
“Umeboshi? I love those!”
“You’re sick. Those things are salty.” Kyoko grunted moodily.
“Okay. I guess there is one thing.”
“The cream puffs?” My ears perked up as I remembered Beard Papa’s and the moist, delicious little puffs covered with powdered sugar.
“No, doofus. I can’t eat that stuff,” she crabbed. “My hips are plenty wide as it is.”
“Stop it. So what will you miss then?”
The front door opened, and I turned around to wave at Earl Sprouse. Covered in grease and carrying his toolbox and an armful of wrenches and pipes, his gray hair a mess. He grinned and waved back, and I heard Faye’s footsteps from the laundry room as she came (ahem—rather quickly, I noted) up the stairs to meet him.
“Hello? Kyoko?” I faced the table again to give them some privacy.
“I answered you. The thing I’ll miss most from Japan is the wa.”
“You mean, like the balance?”
“Yeah, sort of.” Kyoko heaved a cranky sigh. “I know it’s weird, but life here is very ordered. To a fault. I mean, sometimes it’s nice to know what to do in each and every situation ahead of time. Like picking out your dinner from a row of plastic models that look just like the real thing, and you know exactly what you’re going to get. You say all the preprogrammed phrases, and everybody’s happy. Nobody disturbs the wa. If you do what you’re supposed to, you never really make mistakes. It’s all anticipated—even the compliments. If only real life could be so gaffe-proof!”
I didn’t know what to say. Kyoko was so free and unordered that this revelation surprised me.
“On the other hand, though, it’s what drives me crazy. I hate walking out of the bathroom in my toilet slippers so everybody stares and gasps at me. ‘Oh no! She’s done it wrong again!’ ” Kyoko grunted. “We foreigners crash all over the wa and stomp on it.”
“No, you do. I always remembered my toilet slippers.”
“Kiss-up. I bet you were teacher’s pet in school, too.”
“That goes without saying.” I smirked.
“Ugh. Excuse me while I go throw up.” Kyoko made gagging sounds.
“I am kidding. My teachers hated me because they always had to buy me lunch.”
Silence. “Ouch.”
“I know. But I’ll have you know I eat very well these days. Especially at Faye’s.” I pictured the crispy country-fried steak she’d served at dinner, complete with mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and buttered yeast rolls. Maybe staying over at someone else’s for a while wasn’t…such a bad thing.
“Good for you.” Kyoko heaved a long sigh. “Okay, since you forced me, I admit I’ll miss the subways. They’re so pristine. And of course I’ll miss the anime.”
“Those creepy comics? Yuck. Not me.”
Kyoko fell silent, and I sensed something emotional coming. Like tremors before an earthquake. “Once I visited my homestay family after almost a year, and when I left, they walked out to the train with me. Stood on the platform until the train came.” Her words came out almost husky, completely un-Kyoko-like. “The mother’s tears made streak marks on her cheeks. And they waved as the train took off, until I couldn’
t see them anymore. When we came around a bend, they were still bowing and waving—even the little tiny grandma. Just specks in the distance.”
She made a sniffling sound. “I saw cherry blossoms on the hillsides behind them like snow.”
I looked up at smooth walls and framed photos of Faye’s wedding, barely seeing any of it. “You finally get it, Kyoko.”
“Get what?” Kyoko barked, hastily backpedaling from anything remotely sentimental.
“Japan. That’s what I miss, too.”
She didn’t answer for a long time. I heard her bumping and moving stuff and doing what sounded like folding clothes. Taping more boxes.
“I miss my brothers more,” she said in an “I-don’t-care” tone. “And that San Francisco smog, doggone it. Never thought I’d miss that.” I heard the click of her suitcase latches, as if to close up the memories.
“What are you taking from Japan?” I sniffled, reaching for a tissue in my purse.
“Books. CDs. Some ugly gargoyle from Okinawa.” I heard the crows again outside her window, crying from bicycle-and-pedestrian-crowded streets. Venders probably putting out their bunches of green onions, round nashi pears, and imported bananas for the day. “It’s not like I have space for a lot of stuff. My whole apartment here could fit in my carry-on bag.”
I stayed quiet, listening to Kyoko’s last day in Tokyo.
“Listen, is there anything else you want me to send you from here?” Kyoko abruptly switched subjects. “I’ve already mailed you some seaweed paper, miso paste, and a bunch of stuff.”
“You’re really great, Kyoko. Thanks. I’ll love whatever you send.” I remembered the throwing star and caught myself. “Let me rephrase. I’ll love whatever you send that’s not illegal or gross or a hazard to myself or society.”
She snickered. “That does constrain me a bit, doesn’t it?” I heard a thump. “Hope you like yukata fabric.”
“Huh?”
“You know. Fabric for making yukata. Girly colored stuff with bunnies and flowers and other nasty things. Mrs. Oyama gave me a ton of it as a going-away present, and I have no idea what I’ll do with it. Have you ever seen me in sugar-pink with cherry blossoms and lavender? Geesh.” I heard her shudder. “A nice thought, of course, but I get the creeps just looking at it.”
The two green and navy-blue yukata my homestay mom made me still hung in my closet: pretty, cotton kimono-style robes in cheerful patterns, with wide, colorful obi sashes tied in the back. Girls wore them to festivals in sandals, hair pulled up, fanning themselves with bright paper fans. “I’d love it. I’ll use the fabric to make bags and pillows and things.”
“That’s actually a good idea,” said Kyoko in admiration. “Wow. Did you think of it yourself?” She paused. “Or did you download it off the Internet, copy it, and hand it to your former editor Dave Driscoll with your name at the top?”
My eyes popped. “Of all the—!”
“I’m kidding, Ro. Take it easy.” Kyoko laughed lightly. “Really. Maybe it’s bad taste, but…I just couldn’t resist.” She grew surprisingly sober. “What’s done is done, and I’m leaving in a few hours anyway. Your plagiarism goof-up is actually putting us on the same continent for a while.”
“Are you ever going to forgive me?”
“For making me share a work space with Nora Choi, no. But for getting fired, yes. We all do things we shouldn’t. We make mistakes. We…you know. Learn that way.”
I heard her clip another suitcase closed. “Water under the bridge, my friend. You’ll do things differently next time. And I think…” Her voice trailed off.
“Think what?” I pouted.
“You’ll be okay there with Adam.” Her voice softened. “If you can just stop putting yourself in harm’s way for five minutes.”
“I’ll try.”
Neither of us seemed to know what to say.
“Well, my flight’s in a couple of hours,” said Kyoko, grunting as she stretched. “I’m just calling to say sayonara.”
In the distance I heard the roar of a little delivery moped, probably taking ramen noodles or a bento (premade lunchbox) to someone in her building. The faint ping-pong of the doorbell, distinctively Japanese.
“It’s not sayonara for good-bye. It’s mata ne. See you later,” I corrected, trying to swallow the lump that had formed painfully in my throat.
“Yeah. But it’s…well, sayonara to an era.”
“Did you have to say that?” I flared.
“I know, I know. But…it’s true, Ro. I’m sorry.” Kyoko could be brutally honest. “But it was good while it lasted. And…”
I waited.
“And I wouldn’t have enjoyed it half as much without you.” Her voice turned uncharacteristically husky. “You made it fun. And when I think of Japan, I’ll always think of you.”
My eyes burned. I glanced over at the severed stem of freesia, its cheery yellow petals already starting to wilt a bit on the edges. One leaf curled at the tip.
Yet they raised bright faces, crocus-like, in reckless golden joy.
“Well, you know where I live. We can pick up where we left off.” I cleared my throat.
“Of course. And now it’ll be easier for me to send you stuff and harass you about your budding redneck roots.” Kyoko paused. “If you’ll forgive my cliché, the best is yet to come. Even that Jesus of yours saved the best wine ’til the end, didn’t He?”
The best is yet to come.
Trading the old for the new. My top-of-the-line Japanese cell phone for Adam’s simple old gray one. My single days for married ones. My will for God’s way. And my brash independence for a life spent yielding and growing with someone else.
Strange and scary paradoxes, all of them. Mingled into one astonishing life called mine.
I glanced around at the house that had been my second home all these difficult months, filling my Japan-aching heart with fresh and tender memories. In the town that had started all this, taking me away from Tokyo in one swift phone call.
This was where I belonged. Where my heart had settled, even against my will.
A death of sorts. To all I once wanted.
I traced my ring, the color of moonlight and tears. Remembering the rattle of dirt on top of Mom’s casket. The door closing for the last time in my Tokyo apartment. Kyoko’s good-bye as I boarded at Narita International Airport last summer, until I could no longer see her.
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
My freesia trembled in the breeze.
“Can you hold the phone up to the window?” I sniffled.
“What?”
“Can you hold the phone up to the window? So I can hear?”
Amazingly, Kyoko didn’t make a wisecrack. Didn’t say a word.
The next thing I heard was the raspy caw of a crow. Faraway, distant, over the muted noise of traffic. Car horns honking. The ring of cicadas. The roar of a delivery truck pulling away from a shop, and the faint chirp-chirp-chirp of the crosswalk, bird-like. Haunting.
The opening and closing of a door, like the opening and closing of our days in Tokyo.
Women’s voices, drifting up from the street. “Domo arigatou!” they were saying, probably bowing, faces lit with smiles. “Mata ne! See you later!”
Mata ne, old Mrs. Inoue and your shop. The handfuls of ginger candy you used to give me when I bought green onions and cold jasmine tea. Mata ne, Momiji fried pork and noodle stalls and whir of the subway, blowing my hair. Mata ne, Tokyo. Mata ne, Japan.
The best is yet to come.
Kyoko waited respectfully almost ten minutes and then informed me that her hand was about to fall off. Told me she’d charge me the ticket if I made her miss her flight.
But I was okay. I’d listened to the city I loved and said good-bye.
>
“Thanks, Kyoko,” I said in a steadier voice. “You’re a good friend. I’ll miss our Japan days.”
“I’ll miss them, too, Ro. Come to Italy. We’ll make more memories there.”
“I’d love to. And you’ll be in Europe now, so I can still send you NASCAR races on DVD,” I sniffled. “I’ve downloaded a whole bunch for you.”
A pause while Kyoko decided if I was serious. “I’m not gonna ask,” she finally said. Then, “I’ll see you in August.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Mata ne, my friend.”
“Mata ne.”
Chapter 22
It’s too crowded up front. Let’s get these out of here.” I pulled at the side of a table while Jerry pushed, making a new walkway between the entrance of The Green Tree restaurant and the alcove we’d opened up in the back.
I stood back and surveyed our work, my old apron wrapped around my waist. New paint gleamed from floor to ceiling—a bright, pale blue-green somewhere between earth and sky tones—and Jerry’s gorgeous, sand-colored flooring glistened with a fresh coat of wax. All the mirrors of different sizes Adam had hung to the side of the alcove in a thick scatter and around the bare walls reflected back golden spangles as if the moon and stars had come unglued and gotten stuck in a restaurant in Staunton, Virginia.
And the most amazing part of all: the smell of fresh herbs and clean plants. Potted plants. Living plants. Adam had tossed the idea of cut flowers (which had to be replaced daily) with dollar-friendly potted plants on the tables: Mini sweet-bay trees. Basil plants. Rosemary shrubs trimmed in circles like topiaries. Each in a hammered metal pot.
Besides that, he’d convinced Jerry to use real trees instead of the dusty old plastic ficus—placing them in pots near the windows and under strategically lit spaces. Their branches stretched up toward the aqua sky, and the whole place felt like we’d magically stepped outside.
As for the menu, Jerry and I studied gourmet cooking magazines and restaurant recipes until our eyes crossed. Rewrote trendy recipes. Taste tested.
I’d written my restaurant contacts back in Japan and Thailand for Asian noodle and rice recipes with exotic ingredients like coconut milk, ginger, and curry that packed loads of flavor in a little (inexpensive) punch—and Jerry threw in an unexpected Southern twist. Why? Because locally grown produce and poultry trumped imported ingredients in the cheapness department. So: Japanese fried tempura eggplant and Southern squash with dipping sauce. Shenandoah Valley goat cheese instead of Jarlsberg on crostini with red onion and rhubarb marmalade. Hominy polenta. Local greens and pine nuts.
'Til Grits Do Us Part Page 21
