Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  She puts the phone away. Maybe she ought to go back to L.A. Rachel has things more or less under control. Laura will take care of the legal stuff. Drew shakes her head, remembering what Rachel said. Basically, her sister is letting her stay here to lick her wounds. Because Rachel feels sorry for jobless Drew. She won’t abuse her sister’s goodwill.

  Besides, Rachel could call her anytime and Drew would come right back down. Maybe if she works with Jonah again, she won’t have to touch her father’s money. She’ll give it to Quincy for a wedding present. The thought makes Drew feel better about the situation.

  She’ll put everything all right.

  Alan comes back with a fruit tart anyway, and a cup of steaming coffee. Not tea, Drew notes. “I’ll take the leftovers home to my girls. Don’t worry.” He puts in two Splenda and a ton of cream.

  Drew laces her fingers around the cup and decides to be direct. “Do you take care of the girls by yourself?”

  Alan takes a sip. He looks down at the fruit tart. He coughs a little, his face screwing up in distress, then has a little coughing fit that he can’t stop.

  “Are you okay?” Drew asks. Should she pound his back?

  Alan gives a final cough, sniffles. “Excuse me. That coffee went down the wrong way.” He tries to smile, but his eyes don’t. When he speaks, it’s soft, almost apologetic. “Sophia, my wife, is no longer with us.”

  “Oh.” Drew sits up ramrod straight and puts her hand on his arm. He nods, no emotion at all on his face, and somehow Drew knows he’s used to this question. Used to not reacting. Not crying. “I’m so sorry.”

  He digs into the cheesecake. “Of course—you’d wonder. With the girls. Silly of me. I always forget to say it.” He waves his hand around. “Not that I do this very often. As you can see, I’m a complete imbecile at dating.”

  Drew allows herself a small smile even as she feels his sorrow for his late wife. So this is a date. But his girls are so awfully young. “When did she . . .” She’s reluctant to say it.

  “Three years. She passed away when our littlest was born. Childbirth.” He takes another bite of cheesecake.

  “I’m so sorry,” Drew says again. She feels a surge of sympathy. And admiration, for raising two little girls who seem so obviously happy. “Are you here all by yourself? Do you have family?”

  “Sophia’s parents live here.” He sips his coffee. “And I thought it would be important for them to know their mother’s family. So we stay here. We’ve visited my family.”

  “Do you miss England?” Drew tries to imagine England. She’s never been. All she can think of is a photo of a library at Oxford, and the Tower of London.

  He takes another bite of cheesecake. “I don’t miss the weather, honestly.” He closes his eyes. “And I’d certainly miss this cheesecake. Have you tried it? It should be outlawed.”

  “Well, maybe we should vote Bloomberg mayor and he can outlaw cheesecake here like he did soda in New York.” Drew smiles.

  “Yes. Only bite-sized pieces should be allowed. Actually, I’ll get another piece to take home, otherwise I’ll feel too guilty that the girls didn’t try it.”

  “You know, I make a pretty wicked cheesecake. I’ll make you one sometime.” Drew likes baking. She’s better at cakes than she is at regular food.

  “Oh. Perhaps I won’t bother with this, then.” He chews on the cheesecake and smiles, his eyes truly crinkling this time. She can already tell his true smile. Warmth floods through her. She wants him to smile. Drew digs her fork in next to where his just was and lifts it to her mouth.

  MIYANOKOSHI FORTRESS

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Summer 1177

  One day in late July, Tomoe came into the house from cooking breakfast. Yamabuki moaned as the light hit her face. “Close the door!”

  Tomoe could not stand another second of this nonsense. She left the door open. The day was fine. It wasn’t too humid or too hot. The pregnancy was going well now—the girl was perfectly healthy. She needed fresh air. “Get up, Yamabuki. You missed breakfast.” Tomoe refused to bring Yamabuki food—she figured the girl would get hungry enough to rouse herself. But this was the second day she’d stayed in bed. Chizuru had made her drink hot fish broth last night.

  “I am too tired.” Yamabuki still had her eyes closed.

  “If I could have the baby for you,” Tomoe said, “I would.” She touched Yamabuki’s belly, imagining the life was inside Tomoe instead.

  A great clattering, shouts, and then the gong sounded. Arrows fell from the sky as abruptly as a sudden downpour. Attack. Tomoe stood up and shut the door quickly. She strapped on her arrows and sword.

  “What is it?” Yamabuki pushed herself upright.

  Tomoe handed her a dagger. “Stay in here. Bolt the door. Don’t come out no matter what.”

  “And if they come in?” Yamabuki trembled like a tear balanced on the end of a nose.

  Tomoe regarded her silently for a moment. “End it with honor. Jigai.” Jigai referred to the female method of suicide. A woman used the long-bladed kaiken to deliver a quick cut to her jugular. Jigai was preferable to being raped or hauled off like a bag of rice.

  Yamabuki calmed. She nodded.

  Tomoe slid the door closed and heard it bolt. The rain of arrows had stopped. Yoshinaka’s men were engaged all over the grounds—mostly concentrated at the gate, as they tried to hold off the forces. Taira. These were no better than raiders, Tomoe thought. Kiyomori Taira would love to weaken the Minamoto by doing away with Yoshinaka and his power.

  Tomoe ran across the yard, whistling for Cherry Blossom. Almost without stopping, Tomoe grabbed a hank of mane and pulled herself onto the horse.

  The enemy had gotten inside somehow. She chased down a samurai on a brown stallion. A beautiful animal. Tomoe wanted to spare it.

  The samurai shouted, noticing Tomoe too late. Tomoe brought back her sword and swung it forward, feeling the contact of metal connecting to bone reverberating through her hands.

  His head fell cleanly onto the ground, its mouth moving in some silent prayer.

  Yoshinaka picked up the head Tomoe had cut off and held it aloft by the black hair. Already the skin was turning an unnatural blue. “The next head I hold will be Kiyomori Taira’s!” he shouted, and threw the head into the crowd.

  Tomoe’s stomach lurched.

  “Tomoe?” Her brother trotted up beside her. Kanehira’s face was filthy, covered in a mixture of brown and red and black splotches whose origins Tomoe didn’t want to know. “Where’s Yamabuki? Some enemies may have gotten around us. Didn’t you stay to protect her?” He was accusing. And rightly.

  “Inside.” Tomoe began moving toward the building, her brother following with raspy breath. “Are you hurt?” she said to him.

  “Of course not,” Kanehira snapped. He took an especially deep breath.

  Yamabuki’s door was open. Just inside, the girl knelt in the shaft of light, staring out into nothing. She held the bloody dagger, and red covered her front in a thick dark wash.

  Tomoe’s breathing stopped, her brother thudding into her back. Yamabuki did not move. Tomoe froze in place, watching, waiting for the girl’s chest to rise.

  Yamabuki was still.

  Twelve

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  After Alan bids Drew good-bye, she sits there in the coffee shop a while longer. She ought to go to Rachel’s and look for a job on the computer. Instead she remembers a local music shop where she used to buy sheet music, and where she’d taken viola many moons ago.

  It’s in Pacific Beach. Drew doesn’t know if it’s still there. They sold sheet music and rented instruments and provided lessons in small rooms in a basement. This is also where Quincy and Chase took cello and violin lessons. Drew doesn’t know if they still do. She hasn’t thought to ask.
All she has are broad overviews of the children’s lives.

  Well, she’ll always ask in the future.

  The store’s not there. A small dive shop is in its place. Drew parks in front of it. Nothing’s the same, she thinks. What did she expect? That the world would stop while she lived her life?

  Kind of. Because being back here makes her feel like she’s a fifteen-year-old girl again, still stuck in a difficult relationship with her mother, standoffish from her father.

  She walks in the store anyway.

  An assortment of snorkeling masks and signs proclaiming “Scuba Lessons” line the walls. Rachel used to go in the ocean often—her high school swim team sometimes trained out there, meeting in the early hours to swim in a formation.

  When Drew was ten and Rachel fourteen, her father took them to Honolulu on a business trip. Their mother came along, though she hated the sun, and spent her time on the beach covered in a gigantic hat and a man’s long-sleeved shirt.

  Killian took them to Hanauma Bay on Oahu, a protected cove southeast of Honolulu. Once used by ancient Hawaiians for fish farming, it now holds a protected coral reef that serves as a natural barrier, populated with plenty of colorful fish for tourists to admire. They rented snorkel equipment on the beach and headed out.

  There were fish everywhere in the knee-deep water, and Rachel and Drew had been content with sticking their faces in and watching the bright pink-and-green parrot fish eat frozen peas out of their hands (which you weren’t allowed to do anymore).

  Killian kicked water at them. “Come on. We’re going out to see the real fish. This area’s for babies.” He dove in and began swimming, the big black flippers splashing.

  The girls didn’t protest, but followed mutely. Rachel held on to Drew’s hand tight; Drew wasn’t as strong a swimmer. They wove through a flock of Japanese tourists in black full-body wetsuits, others with pasty white tourist legs eggbeating underwater.

  Killian swam over the coral reef wall that was only inches below the surface. You had to swim against the waves to get over the wide reef, into the open bay. Rachel let go of Drew’s hand so they could both hang on to the coral. You weren’t supposed to touch it—both to preserve nature and because it was sharp in places. The coral scratched her bare stomach, stinging it, drawing blood. She raised her head out of the water, clearing her snorkel, and saw that her father and Rachel were already on the other side of the coral. Rachel waved.

  She also saw the gaps, marked with flags, where you could swim through the coral unobstructed. If only they had thought to look first. A wave hit her in the face, washed over her head. She couldn’t get there. Drew’s first instinct was to cry. But she couldn’t. She gritted her teeth, determined.

  Then Rachel was at her side again, grabbing her hand. “Come on. Let’s go in,” she said, and pulled Drew to shore.

  It’s funny, Drew thinks. At the time, she felt scared. Panicked. But as she remembers it, the first feeling she recalls is the thrill. Her sister helping her. How she didn’t cry, and how brave that made her feel.

  She wants to do something that’ll make her feel that way again.

  She plunks down her credit card and points to a basic mask and snorkel set. “Two of those, please.”

  • • •

  Joseph waits for me outside a coffee shop in a strip mall near the bookstore Tom and I frequent. I walk as fast as I can through the parking lot, carrying the plastic box. “Are those the pictures?” He eyes them doubtfully. “We should get you a better box. This kind of plastic isn’t good for prints.”

  “I’ll worry about that later.” I hand over the photos. “There’s Japanese writing on the back. I’m hoping they’re names.”

  “I had a colleague look at the samurai book.” Joseph opens the plastic box with a click and peers inside. He looks up at me. “I’m afraid it won’t get you onto Antiques Roadshow. It’s from the early twentieth century, we think. The prints are just reproductions.”

  I sit down. “I’d never sell the book anyway.” Perhaps the woman who sent my mother the book inherited it from her family. Whatever the truth is, I keep expecting Joseph to translate a sentence that reads, “Here is my big secret . . .” But of course there is nothing so obvious. We string together pieces to make a narrative.

  I rest my chin on my hand and watch Joseph study the printing. These photos might tell me what I need to know, but they don’t look like they’re pertinent to what my father said about having something to tell that could harm my mother.

  Joseph pushes his glasses back up his nose. From his laptop briefcase, he produces a pen and some address-sized labels in a plastic sleeve marked ARCHIVAL.

  I get him a coffee as he begins taking out photos, labeling each one. I notice he’s looking at the picture with the baby, turning it over in his hands, and I can barely keep myself from jumping out of line to ask him what he’s learned. When I return, I pick up the photo of my mother with the baby, turning it over to read the label. With Yoshimi.

  “That’s it?” I say, turning the photo over again as if I’ve missed something. I squint at the woman. I’ve never seen a photo of my mother when she was in her twenties, so maybe she looked different—I’d just assumed it was my mother. “Could it be her sister, and the baby’s my mother’s niece?” I guess.

  Joseph places his cup down carefully, away from the photos. “It only has her name.”

  Who is Yoshimi? I’ll have to take it to my mother. Her lucid moments are increasingly random, but I have to be optimistic. My phone tells me it’s already four o’clock. I won’t have time today. I gulp my coffee, burning my taste buds. The pain shocks me back to reality. “The others?”

  He hands me the photo of the young woman with my mother. “This is her mom, all right. Emiko. And her father, Jun.”

  “Okay.” I’m waiting for more. There seemed to be a lot of writing on the back for just names. But Joseph only shrugs.

  “The others don’t tell us much, either. A pretty fall day. Hatsuko and friends. Things like that.” He finishes labeling and puts his pen away. “I’ll send you more of the translated story tonight. What do you think so far?”

  Mentally, I replay parts of Tomoe Gozen, and how she had to obey Yoshinaka at all costs. “I don’t think I could have coped in her place. They treated women like chattel.” I trail off, unable to imagine it. “I wish that Tomoe and Yamabuki would leave that place, leave Yoshinaka.”

  He peers closely at me. “You only exist in the time in which you’re born. We can’t impose our modern viewpoint to disparage her choices. It’s like armchair quarterbacking, nine centuries later.”

  I sit back, heat on my face. He was right. Do any of us, even today, have unlimited choices? I certainly have the privilege of many options—but I concede that some paths are closed to me, due to my age.

  Joseph continues. “Anyway, like I said, even some scholars think Tomoe was a legend. Exaggerated for dramatic effect.”

  I blow on my coffee. “I think she was real.” I want to point to Tomoe and say, “Look at what this woman did—you cannot dismiss her accomplishments.” Disappointment wells up in me as I consider the possibility that Tomoe is only a story. As mythical as Athena. I shake it off. “What does it matter if Tomoe is history or fiction, if her story feels true? If it teaches us something we need to know?”

  Joseph opens his coffee lid, pours in sugar. “You’re getting a lot out of it.” He smiles.

  I think about the years the story encompasses. Seventeen so far. “They spent a long time doing basically nothing while they geared up for the war.”

  “But that’s life, right? Occasionally, interesting things happen, but mostly it’s just day-to-day living.” Joseph spreads his hand out to encompass the coffee shop. “Even famous heroes don’t spend every day in battle. Look at Odysseus. Ten years getting home, and maybe five big things happened. It’s just that people like t
o skip over the other parts.”

  I tilt my head. “So, do you have any other books about the culture or Japanese history I can look at?”

  He writes a few down for me. “You’re getting into this. Catching the history fever.”

  This is true. I haven’t been so enthusiastic about learning anything since I was pregnant with Quincy and read all those terrible pregnancy books that told you every possible thing that could go wrong. Or maybe that one year when I learned how to decorate cakes, made frosting roses and disguised pound cake and ice cream cones as a castle for Chase’s tenth birthday. I thought I was just doing this for my mother, but I realize—it’s mostly for me. “I guess so,” I say.

  • • •

  Later that afternoon, Drew crosses the field by the local rec center, heading to the pool to watch Chase’s water polo game. This afternoon a group in Renaissance knight costumes, complete with armor and swords, spar next to soccer practices and a dog agility class, as they often do at this community park. Drew wonders how they don’t all collide.

  She stops for a moment to look at two sparring knights, clanking their broadswords together, unsteady in their armor, holding their shields in their free hands. Rachel, in her research, told her that the samurai sword was lighter and supposedly stronger than these types of swords, that the samurai sword had one edge for cutting and one edge for defending, so they didn’t need a shield.

  Tomoe Gozen, with her lighter sword and greater skills, could conquer all of them. First she’d shoot them with her arrows, then she’d leap off her horse and fight them, hand-to-hand.

  Rachel said that once a year, the Renaissance people hold a festival with welders and sword demonstrations and roasted turkey legs, and everyone speaks in fake English accents. Drew pictures her whole family dressing up like samurai, pulling up in the minivan, and challenging the Renaissance people. Like one of those TV shows, Who Would Win? Samurai or Knight?

  She enters the pool deck and finds a seat on the metal bleachers in the front row. From here, all the water polo players look the same. Chase’s team has dark green swim caps and the other team has blue. The goalies wear red caps. Finally Drew locates Chase and keeps her gaze fixed on him as the game begins.