Meeting Luciano

by Anna Esaki-Smith

“I switched majors today,” I announced.

  “What?”

  “I switched out of architecture. I’m getting a degree in accounting.”

  “Accounting!” Ben gasped. He sounded wounded, as though his lungs had very little air.

  “Don’t give me a hard time, Ben. I have to do this. I actually have a plan.”

  Ben laughed weakly. “Sounds very tidy,” he said.

  “Sometimes I think you and your friends are incredibly naive,” I told him.

  “Naive?” Ben exclaimed, his voice rising, his face flushed. He shook his head wildly. “Emily, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  He bit into his apple, but I could tell he wasn’t hungry. He looked at me, mouth closed, his jaw slowly moving, and when he leaned over the table to speak, his breath was sweet with fruit. “You can’t protect yourself. And the more you try, the more miserable you’ll be.”

  I wanted to explain to him the intricacies of my family, but I knew Ben would see their problems as only an excuse. What I couldn’t tell him was that I had difficulty infusing things with meaning, and that, devoid of meaning, all identities seemed equal to me. I might as well choose one that was practical.

  “I’m not afraid,” I replied.

  We didn’t break up until later, but Ben soon stopped staying the night. He never completely moved out of my dorm room. His socks and clean underwear remained in my bottom drawer, his shaving cream and razor on top of my dresser. I wasn’t sure whether he had forgotten about them or if he thought they were too trivial to retrieve. Then we both dissolved into the mass of other students roaming around campus each day, avoiding each other for the remainder of the semester.

  Senior year passed quickly for me, a blur of statistics and finance classes. Occasionally, when I sat by a window in the library, I’d see Ben on the arts quad, using his backpack as a pillow. By December, he was with a girl with thick auburn hair.

  MY MOTHER SPENT the next morning shopping and returned carrying two big plastic bags emblazoned with the words SYMS: AN EDUCATED CONSUMER IS OUR BEST CUSTOMER.

  “Can you believe that at Syms they call the sales clerks ‘educators’?” my mother said, dropping the bags to the floor.

  “You should buy quality,” I told her, looking over the open refrigerator door at my mother’s purchases before resuming my search for decent jam.

  “I don’t need clothes that last,” my mother replied. “I’m too old. At a certain age, quality doesn’t matter. Do you realize that my new vacuum cleaner is going to outlast me?”

  “I hate it when you talk like that.”

  “Death is part of life,” my mother declared brightly, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  After my mother turned fifty-five, she began talking about death in a strangely pleasant tone of voice. She returned from reunions at the Japan Women’s University in Tokyo and told me each time how fewer and fewer people showed up because many had died. She enjoyed the gatherings nonetheless. She would come back happy, calling herself a survivor.

  I peered into a jar of jam suspiciously, poking at its contents with a knife. “Why don’t you try on some of your new clothes?” I asked.

  She did. She paraded around in four different outfits as if in a marching band, pointing each foot in front of her before placing it on the ground. Her chin jutted out at an awkward angle, as if trying to sun itself, and she spun jaunty half turns on her toes. I pictured her twirling a baton.

  “They’re all by Italian designers,” my mother told me. The labels in her clothes did bear Italian names, but I had never heard of any of them—Carlo Andreotti, Nina Giacomo, Donatella Gotti. One of the blouses also had a tiny “Made in Indonesia” tag.

  “How would you like to go to a barbecue this Sunday?” she asked, collapsing into a chair.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The Kobayashis.”

  “The Kobayashis! You haven’t seen them in years. I thought you didn’t like them.”

  “I don’t. But I think it’s time to go out. Ever since Pappa left, I’ve been locked up in here like a hermit.” She paused. “I thought we’d take Alex, too,” she added.

  “Take Alex? We?”

  My mother’s pale face quickly darkened to red. “No, not we. Me. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I stopped buttering my toast and shrugged. “It’s your life.”

  “It’s a pool party.”

  The toast I was bringing to my mouth stopped in midair. “You’re going to swim?”

  My mother smiled. “Why not? Alex says he enjoys swimming. I haven’t gone swimming in years.”

  In fact, she had never learned how to swim, and I had never seen her do anything more than bob nervously in the water while clutching a float. The image of her and Alex wading under the fascinated stares of her Japanese friends made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  “Alex says swimming isn’t just about swimming,” my mother continued. “It’s about being in the water, enjoying how it feels. I think that’s a nice thing to say.”

  I took a bite of cold toast. “So are you worried about what people are going to say about you two?” I asked.

  My mother looked at me blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, come on. You don’t think Mrs. Kobayashi’s going to be popping out of her skin seeing you with Alex? Even I think it’s weird. And I’m your daughter.”

  “What’s so weird about Alex and me as friends? For heaven’s sake, siamo adulti. It’s not like we’re doing something bad.”

  “With all due respect, Mom, he’s your contractor, not your friend.”

  “That’s not true. Alex teaches me about the house. I teach him about music, the opera, Luciano. We’re opening up new worlds for each other.”

  CARS LINED BOTH sides of Mulberry Lane in Scarsdale, mostly Japanese-made autos with Ivy League stickers pasted on the rear windows. We pulled up behind a silver Lexus with stickers from Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  “Do you know what MIT really stands for?” I asked from the backseat.

  Only Alex seemed interested. “What?” he said.

  “Made In Taiwan.”

  Alex laughed. The Kobayashis lived in a stone house with a gravel horseshoe driveway and a tiled pool in the back. There was a separate brick garage for Mr. Kobayashi’s cars.

  “They like to show their money,” my mother told Alex. He held his forearm out like a rail so she could grasp it while getting out of the car. He nodded and straightened his collar with his free hand.

  They walked ahead of me, Alex in khakis and a dark blue blazer and my mother dressed like an Italian movie star—large black sunglasses, a simple black shirt with matching black stretch pants. Despite my protests, she wore a flowered chiffon scarf over her head and tied at the chin, à la Sophia Loren.

  Alex looked as if he was moving in slow motion, his wide stride timed to my mother’s shorter gait.

  “Hanako-san. Over here.” Mrs. Kobayashi called to us from a slate path leading around the side of her house. She was dressed in a denim dirndl skirt and white blouse, an Hermès scarf draped over her shoulders and tied in front. She waved using her entire arm, as if we might miss her and move on to another house. From the street, I could hear people talking in the backyard, then a splash in the pool. My mother closed her mouth and smiled as she walked up the slate steps.

  BEFORE MRS. KOBAYASHI could bow in greeting, my mother leaned awkwardly toward her face to kiss her on both carefully powdered cheeks. Mrs. Kobayashi blushed and laughed nervously, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “My, Hanako, you’ve become so Continental,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I can’t fight it,” my mother replied.

  “And Emily, how are you?” Mrs. Kobayashi asked. “Takeshi is returning from college today. You remember Takeshi, don’t you?”

  I nodded at Mrs. Kobayashi unenthusiastically. When I was about twelve, I had played with Takeshi, a soft, uncoordinated boy with braces
, spiky hair, and thick glasses that made his eyes look huge. Charlotte and I had bossed him around, calling him “Takenoko,” Japanese for Bamboo Shoot.

  “And, and this must be?” Mrs. Kobayashi looked past me at Alex.

  “Signore Alex Pappadopolous,” my mother said.

  “Oh, buon giorno, signore,” Mrs. Kobayashi said proudly. My mother, Alex, and I gathered in a small group facing her.

  “I’m American,” Alex said. “I speak English.”

  Mrs. Kobayashi, her forehead tight with confusion, smiled.

  “Of course. How silly of me. Welcome, welcome to our home. Let’s join the party,” she said, leading us along the slate walk that led around to the back of the house.

  She offered Alex a crystal bowl of olives from a picnic table, and he pricked one with a toothpick.

  “We noticed your new door when we drove by a few days ago,” Mrs. Kobayashi said to my mother, watching Alex.

  “I’m fixing the house,” my mother said. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, sunglasses now perched atop her head. I had never seen her stand that way before. “Alex is helping me.”

  “Oh, really!” Mrs. Kobayashi exclaimed. “We’ve done some work on our house, too.”

  Mrs. Kobayashi put the bowl of olives down on the table and passed around a tray of crackers and cheese. “Do you do a lot of work in Westchester?” she asked, as Alex selected a cube of cheddar with his free hand.

  He shook his head. “Not too much. I work mainly in Putnam County. I live in Brewster.”

  “Oh. A lovely area.”

  Mrs. Kobayashi’s smile quivered, and she turned to me. “And what are you doing now? You must have graduated recently, no? Any marriage proposals?”

  I felt myself break into a difficult smile, my upper lip disappearing over my gums. “I’m waiting for the right man.”

  “And how can it not happen?” Alex interrupted. “She’s a catch.”

  I looked at him in surprise. He smiled, still holding the toothpick with its olive impaled on the end, the cube of cheese in his other hand.

  Mrs. Kobayashi clapped her hands together once, a diamond winking in the sun. “She is!”

  I scanned her bosky backyard, filled with people, and recognized faces from years ago, from parties in our own backyard when my parents were active in Westchester’s Japanese community: Mrs. Honda, whose husband worked for Toyota; the Arakis; the Takitanis; the Ozakis. Many were looking our way. At first, I assumed they were curious about Alex, but then I realized that most hadn’t seen me in years. They probably remembered me as a polite little girl, standing by my mother’s side, as I was doing now. My parents had arrived in America before all these friends, and for a time our family had been the centerpiece of Westchester’s tight-knit Japanese community. The tiny world they created was like Japan all over again.

  Mr. Kobayashi was grilling steaks and burgers at a large brick barbecue pit, and Mrs. Kobayashi waved when he looked up. His face brightened and she motioned for him to join us. He came over, still wearing an apron.

  “Well, it’s been a long time,” he said, patting my mother’s back. “So good to see you.”

  Alex thrust out his right hand. “Hanako’s told me a lot about you,” he said.

  “Alex is a builder,” Mrs. Kobayashi told her husband, who was shaking Alex’s hand vigorously.

  “Well, carpenter really,” Alex said, flushing slightly. “Nothing as big as a builder.”

  “A man who works with his hands,” Mr. Kobayashi said kindly.

  “That’s right.” Alex nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I’ve always admired men who can do things with their hands. My hands, on the other hand, are soft and weak,” Mr. Kobayashi said, holding them out, as if for inspection, his nails as pearly as the inside of a shell.

  MR. KOBAYASHI EXCUSED himself to tend his grill while Mrs. Kobayashi announced she wanted to show my mother her new kitchen.

  “Nice people,” Alex said, before finally inserting the olive in his mouth and pulling it off the toothpick. We watched Mrs. Kobayashi, talking animatedly, lead my silent mother back toward the house.

  “I haven’t seen them since Pappa left,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “My mother was sort of embarrassed, or ashamed, something like that.”

  “You’re kidding. Your mother carries herself with such confidence.”

  “She does?”

  “Very much so.”

  “She worried a lot about what the Japanese thought after the divorce. Since then she’s preferred being with Western friends, partly because of her European interests, but I think mainly because they don’t know her past. She always says she wished Pappa had died, and how much easier it would be to tell people she was a widow.”

  “Oh, she has no idea,” Alex said, chewing on the toothpick. “My wife died. Breast cancer. It was a terrible thing.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” I said, suddenly aware of him for the first time as a person beyond his role as a contractor.

  He removed the toothpick, slipped the cheese square he had been holding into his mouth, and ate it silently. “It’s good your mother feels comfortable here again, with her old friends,” he said, twirling the toothpick in his fingers. “Old friends can’t be replaced.”

  A boy in red swimming briefs ran past and jumped into the pool, spraying us with water. Alex turned his face away and laughed, opening his mouth wide, his teeth square and even.

  “EMILY! ALEX! WOULD you like to come inside and have a look at our house?” Mrs. Kobayashi called out from an open kitchen window.

  Alex looked at me. “Shall we?” he asked, sticking out his arm, elbow first, in my direction. After a slight hesitation, I hooked my fingers on his arm, and we walked up the back steps.

  Mrs. Kobayashi apologized for the inadequacy of her house, her poor decorating skills, and dirty windows when, in fact, the house was huge, the rooms tastefully, if showily, appointed, and the windows as clear as air.

  “The house from the outside is postmodernist,” Mrs. Kobayashi said, her tone confidential, as if disclosing a family secret.

  “What does that mean, postmodernist?” asked Alex, as we stood in the kitchen.

  Mrs. Kobayashi looked at him blankly for an instant. “Historical details integrated with contemporary design,” she said and gave us a smile.

  She laughed lightly, her arms floating as she gestured to the loveliness around her: Lustrous wooden floors, stained the color of chestnuts, met seamlessly with the creamy walls; tiny recessed lights dotted the ceiling. “You can imagine the challenges that presented on the inside. My architect and interior decorator both had different ideas. And matching what they thought with what the contractor could do! Such trouble!”

  “Alex has been able to do everything so far,” my mother said. “Of course, my needs are far simpler than yours,” she added. She stood back to take in a small Baccarat chandelier glittering mightily overhead.

  She and Alex exchanged a brief glance. I thought they might both be embarrassed, my mother by Mrs. Kobayashi’s obvious talent for decorating, and Alex by the quality of the work that had been done. It was as if the limits of both their worlds had been rudely delineated. But I detected nothing more than simple acknowledgment between them, my mother smiling and Alex nodding in response.

  MAYBE IT’S A blessing that children don’t see their parents courting. It’s rarely as pure as children would like to think. Relationships can burst into existence for flimsy reasons—when a furtive glance leads to physical attraction or when friendships combust into lust. Some people look to each other to save themselves from overpowering loneliness. Thinking of my parents today, such different individuals, I can’t fathom why they got together.

  “YOUR SKYLIGHTS ARE wonderful,” my mother told Mrs. Kobayashi as we walked down the steps into the backyard. Mrs. Kobayashi nodded, adjusting the scarf on her small, sloped shoulders.

  “They add so much warmth to the
kitchen,” she said, and looped her arm in my mother’s.

  My mother turned to Alex. “Should we have put skylights in?” she asked.

  “We still can if you’d like,” Alex replied, a thin sheen of perspiration coating his forehead. He shifted into the shade of a maple tree.

  Overhearing the conversation as he walked up behind them, Mr. Kobayashi glanced toward Alex and smiled. “Women,” he said.

  Alex laughed uneasily and speared two pieces of cheese with a fresh toothpick. He laid one piece neatly on a cracker and offered it to me off his dry, coarse hand.

  As I watched my mother at the party, I could see an eagerness in her face as she tried to read how she was being judged even as each guest tried to disguise a deep curiosity about her. While she always seemed above humiliation, infused with authority, she could be like me—craving companionship or approval, vulnerable to rejection.

  She had put her sunglasses on again, and I imagined her envisioning how exotic she must appear compared to the conservative, corporate types here at the party. (“And to arrive with a mysterious, handsome man—they must all be shocked!” I imagined her thinking.) After so many years of absence from this group, I knew she sought their admiration and approval. Yet she also seemed to want to show she was no longer really one of them.

  Her Japanese friends greeted her with careful, guarded courtesy, and I watched them whisper as soon as my mother and Alex moved on. I wanted to see some reaction that my mother could relish, but there was none.

  Still, Alex was a natural, making loud pronouncements about the necessity to cook hamburgers until they were well-done, chatting pleasantly about the weather, laughing about the swimming trunks he had brought.

  I could see she enjoyed the companionship. And as I stood watching them, sipping a cold drink by myself, I felt something like envy.

  “Oh, here comes Takeshi,” Mrs. Kobayashi said, turning to me. “Takeshi!” she called out, gesturing with her hand. “He’s really our guest of honor today. Come here, stand beside me.” She beamed. “I am proud to introduce Takeshi, graduate-student-to-be at the California Institute of Technology. Is that the correct full name?”

  Takeshi came to his mother’s side and smiled. He stood over six feet tall, but his large, soft face was still the same as when he was a child, lips only a shade darker than his pallid skin, his nose broad at the base and speckled with perspiration. A crewcut tamed his stiff hair. The only thing that was different was his clothing; instead of the white shirt and shorts, he wore loose blue jeans cinched at the waist with a black belt and a T-shirt with a large question mark on the front. The thick glasses were gone—replaced, I assumed, by contact lenses.