The Bride's Kimono Read online

  “Of course,” Yoshi said. I looked at him thinking how he’d seemed to recover from Hana’s death. He’d been quiet at first, but bit by bit, he’d emerged as a cheerful, rather mischievous man. I found myself wondering if, despite the tragedy, he felt free. Perhaps he’d escaped a path that hadn’t been the right one.

  “Is Hugh lying down?” my father asked me.

  “No,” I said quickly, lest he be trying to figure out whether I’d gotten into bed with him again. “I made him some tea, and then I left him. He said to tell you to have a good trip, and that he’s sorry he wouldn’t have a chance to see you again. I couldn’t see how we could all fit in that compact rental car.”

  “Oh, sorry for the confusion. Yoshi-kun and I are not riding in your rental car,” Kyoko said. “We want to give your parents the chance to say good-bye to you privately. Anyway, we’ve taken a lot of your time.”

  I made arrangements to call Kyoko and Yoshi that evening, in case they wanted to go out in Washington one last time, and then got in the car with my parents. I looked around as I got in, checking for the dark-haired man who’d seemed to be spying on Hugh and me earlier in the day. He wasn’t there, and again, I thought of Takeo Kayama. Maybe he was at his hotel innocently working on his laptop computer. On the other hand, he could have followed me to the mall, and learned the worst.

  32

  It was one o’clock, and nobody had eaten, but dropping the rental car off was a priority before we did anything in the airport. My parents had hoped to simply leave the keys in the car, but it turned out they had to go inside and sign some papers because they’d forgotten to refill the car’s gas tank.

  I felt bad because I’d been the one who’d necessitated so much driving around—and it seemed there really was a problem with the bill. My father told the clerk the bill was clearly four hundred dollars over the fee he’d been quoted upon arrival.

  “This total is completely wrong. I didn’t come in on the eighth, I came on the twelfth. You’re overcharging me.”

  “But our records show you did come on the eighth. You signed a contract at that time—” the agent said.

  “May I see that,” my father demanded. The agent handed the paper to him with a smug expression. I wondered if this was some kind of scam they played all the time.

  “Here, it shows it clearly. This contract doesn’t even say Shimura on it. Can’t you look up Toshiro and Catherine Shimura?”

  After a while everything was settled to my father’s satisfaction, and I thought privately that it was a lucky thing indeed that no accident had occurred when I’d been driving the previous night, because I’d never been listed as a driver on the rental agreement. In my seven days of bad luck, I had to remember to think of the small victories.

  “I think we did pretty well,” I said to my parents after we’d walked from the car agency to the main terminal. “You thought I was dead, but I’m alive. We were chased, but nobody caught us. Mom’s luggage was overweight, but we still had it accepted.”

  “Now, if only we had food in our tummies. Darling, is there anything you can eat at McDonald’s?”

  “They have more than that here,” my father said, carefully studying the airport map. “Starbucks. Au Bon Pain. Ruby Tuesday—or is that a jewelry store?”

  “I think it’s hamburgers,” my mother said. “Definitely off-limits for Rei. While you two go to the gate with the carry-ons, I’ll get some bready things from Au Bon Pain.”

  Au Bon Pain. I meditated on the chain’s name as my father and I found uncomfortable little seats in the American Airways gateway. Good bread. Good pain. As much as my parents had brought me trouble, they’d flooded me with love. And the hard thing was that, whenever I said good-bye to them, it never meant a few months. It would be a year or longer.

  “You look sad, Rei.” My father spoke in Japanese, the language we only occasionally spoke together.

  “It’s just that I’m wondering about when I’ll see you again,” I answered in English. I was more nervous about making language mistakes with him than with anyone in Japan.

  “Soon, I hope.” My father switched back to English, as if defeated. “Aren’t you stopping in San Francisco on your way back to Tokyo?”

  “I don’t know when I’ll go. I’m a bit hesitant to return to Tokyo given the debt that I owe the museum—”

  “We can help you with money,” my father said. “Whatever that Japanese museum asks—well, we’ll get a lawyer to look at the situation first. Maybe Hugh can help. He seems quite capable.”

  “But you hardly met him,” I said. “It was under the worst possible circumstances!”

  My father looked at me. “Yes, and your recent escapades are all the kinds of things a father never wants to hear. But when I saw the expression on his face, looking at you…well, that was all I needed to see. I understood.”

  “You really think he’s fine?”

  My father looked at me quizzically. “Judging from that question, it sounds as if you’re not so sure.”

  I put my head in my hands. “It’s—very serious. He wants to live with me on my terms, in Japan if necessary. But what would our future be? If we had children…they’d only be a quarter Japanese. What would that be like? How could they cope socially?”

  “What if you can’t bear children?” My father used the challenging tone that was familiar to me, in times of crisis, all my life. But this was one of the oddest things he’d ever said to me. Can’t bear children. I didn’t like it.

  “Are you telling me…you know something about my medical history that I don’t know?”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying…” My father trailed off and bowed his head for a second. The coldness inside me grew. Then he faced me again, gravely. “Your mother and I hoped to have three or four children. We understood that because of the way genetics work, some children might appear more Asian and others more Caucasian. We didn’t care if our children didn’t match. We were excited to start our family. The problem was, it didn’t happen.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t happen?” I asked, feeling even more confused.

  “All the children died.” I could see my father’s eyes start to water. “Your mother had four miscarriages, three in the first trimester, and one at the end of the second. To some people, the babies might have been fetuses, but for your mother and me, they were real babies. Babies we lost.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said, feeling tears sting my eyes. How sad I was now for never knowing. As a child, I’d been silently angry with my parents for what I assumed was their lack of interest in having more children. I’d thought that because I was a bad daughter, they decided not to have any more. I’d never suspected that I’d had these ghostly brothers and sisters.

  “During the years this was happening, I sometimes thought that if we’d each chosen a partner from our own countries, we would have had children that lived. It was as if, by mixing our cultures, we were trying to achieve the impossible. The idea made no medical sense—but looking at the flocks of children on either side of the family, it seemed that those who picked similar partners succeeded in reproducing. When your mother became pregnant with you, we had no hope. We didn’t have a nursery prepared for you until the last minute. And then you made it.

  “We’d wanted an energetic team of children, and we wound up with one. One perfect girl—as bright, exasperating, and loving as all of them could have been together. You were our Japanese girl. Or at least, my family said. You had the Japanese coloring and hair—but your mother swore you had her cheekbones, and her figure.”

  I wiped my eyes and managed a small smile. It was true that I had gotten my mother’s body. How else could I fit so well into her old clothes?

  “I don’t know how to tell you this any more directly, my daughter,” my father continued. “Race means nothing. All the scientific studies back me up on this—people are better differentiated by things such as earlobe shape than the color of their skin.”

  “I think I kno
w what you’re saying—”

  “Takeo Kayama is no more predisposed to being a loving husband and father than Hugh Glendinning. In fact, the opposite might very well be true.”

  “But they look so damn right. Like Colefax and Fowler. Osborne and Little!” my mother said.

  I jumped, and turned around to see my mother standing behind me, clutching paper bags of food. I wondered how long she’d been there.

  My father sighed heavily. “Catherine, do you mean to say you think it would have been a better idea for you to marry some white person?”

  “No, of course not! But how can I help preferring to see Rei with Takeo? Almost everything about him is familiar and beautiful. It’s true that he doesn’t talk much and seems a bit moody, but I’m sure Rei will perk him up—”

  I stared at them, thinking the situation was both funny and pathetic. Each of my parents preferred a different boyfriend. They were clearly looking for memories of each other in Hugh and in Takeo. And now I found myself wondering if I’d fallen for my two lovers in an unconscious attempt to replicate the two parts that had made me. I should walk away from the two men if I really wanted to get my head on straight. Start over, clean.

  “Boarding,” the PA system said. “American Airlines flight boarding to San Francisco now. First class and preferred customers—”

  “Are you going on? I know you’re business class,” I said.

  My mother enveloped me in her soft pashmina and the scent of Shalimar. “The hell with business class. We’re not anything but your mummy and daddy.”

  My father joined the embrace, and I cried against both their bodies. “I wish I could spend more time with you. I’m just getting to know about things. Daddy told me about the babies you miscarried.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I don’t like to brood on the past,” my mother said, weeping.

  “I’ll explain why I told her,” my father said, picking up the shopping bags my mother had dropped. “Catherine, we really do have to go. The sooner we’re off, the more quickly Rei can finish some very important business.”

  There was a Metro station right at National Airport, so I was able to travel quickly to Dupont Circle, where I rode up the long escalator, for once wishing the ride would never end. My plan was to go to the Sofitel, where I’d sit down with Takeo and talk. I’d tell him the truth that he deserved to hear.

  Inside the hotel, I called up to his room and asked him if I could come up.

  “I’d rather talk to you over lunch. Let’s meet in the bar,” he said.

  “Good idea. I’ll go in there now and start looking at the menu.” My mother had forgotten to give me a croissant at the airport, so I was starving. I found a nice table near the front of the restaurant so Takeo would get a glimpse of the city beyond the hotel’s glass doors. He had hardly been out of the hotel, I realized; just to the Museum of Asian Arts. What a terrible trip. And I was going to make it worse.

  I would offer to pay the lunch bill, so I emptied my jeans pockets to check out my financial situation. I had about thirty dollars—not a fortune. I would eat French onion soup with a roll—to leave enough money for Takeo to order something nice. From now on, though, I was going to coax him into the streets of Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan to eat more cheaply.

  I put away the money and was left with a piece of paper that I planned to throw away—the note Mr. Shima had given me about the book of Central American embroidery. I doubted I’d ever look for it; as I began to crumple the paper, I saw what was typed on the back. The paper he’d given me was a receipt for a rental car; he’d rented one from the same agency, Swifty, that my parents had used. The specifics of the order were too light for me to read, but the receipt made me think. Mr. Shima was the rare Japanese tourist who was brave enough to rent a car. Why? Was it to see local sights, or to follow me?

  Since Takeo still hadn’t arrived, I jumped up from the table and hurried to a side hall near the rest rooms where I’d seen a pay telephone. When I called 411, the operator asked if I wanted the number for Swifty at Reagan National Airport or Dulles. Dulles, I said firmly, because that was where international flights landed. But when I reached the rental agency, asking if they had rented a car to a Mr. Shima, there was no record of a customer by that name. They suggested that I check Reagan National and the Baltimore-Washington International airports.

  Feeling irritated, I dug around in my pockets for more quarters. Damn, but this was inconvenient. I struck out with Baltimore, wasting fifty cents, but when I reached Reagan National I had some satisfaction. Yes, a Mr. Shima had rented a Geo Prism on October 8. When I asked the car’s color, the person on the phone confirmed that it was blue.

  I hung up, wondering how I was going to get the answer to the most important question of all—had Mr. Shima rented a car, and followed me, upon orders of the Morioka Museum? Or was this a task he’d taken upon himself?

  My credit card was about to hit its limit, but maybe I could manage one last long-distance call. It was the middle of the night in Japan, though; I’d have to wait until eight that night to make my call to the Morioka Museum. This time I’d ask for the man at the top, Mr. Ito, and lay out all of my suspicions.

  “Rei, there you are!”

  Takeo jarred me from my thoughts by taking me by the shoulders and turning me away from the telephone. “Oh, hi. Sorry, I had to phone someone.”

  “Well, let’s eat now. My stomach’s totally empty.”

  “Okay,” I said, putting the receipt, which now had new telephone numbers scrawled all over it, back into my jeans pocket. “But you know, we don’t have to eat here. Maybe we can get out of the hotel and eat somewhere less formal.”

  “But I like the food here. There’s a salmon plate that I’ve been thinking about ever since you called.”

  In the dining room, I tried not to blanch at the price of Takeo’s lunch entrée and the bottle of California Chardonnay he ordered. I ordered onion soup with a glass of tap water on the side. A platter of rolls was set out between us right away, so I had something to do with my hands as I began my awkward conversation.

  “Takeo, I want first of all to thank you for coming to Washington. I’d hoped, from the very start, that you’d come along to keep me company. I didn’t expect my parents and—everyone else.”

  “It’s been a hard trip,” Takeo said, looking slightly impatient as the waitress served me the onion soup, and then served him his poached salmon topped with tomato-and-basil sauce.

  “Yes, the trip has been full of unexpected things,” I said, after the waitress left us and he’d had a few bites. “On my first day here, I was having lunch at Pan Asia, the restaurant inside the museum, and I met an old boyfriend.”

  “Oh, really? You mean someone your father’s age?” Takeo laughed at his own joke.

  “No, I mean old in the sense that I used to know him. His name is Hugh. I told you a little about him before.”

  “Oh, of course,” Takeo answered, sounding relaxed. “Hugh Glendinning, the lawyer you used to date. How bizarre that he’s here. Well, coincidences do happen.”

  “It turned out that it wasn’t really a coincidence. Hugh is part of the museum’s advisory comittee—sort of a high-powered volunteer group,” I explained, when Takeo raised his eyebrows at the English-language term I’d used in our Japanese conversation. “Apparently he suggested me as a possible lecturer on kimono. The museum doesn’t know that he knew me personally. And I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d known Hugh suggested me.”

  Takeo chewed his salmon, then spoke. “Well, I don’t see why you’re so worried about my reaction to this. It’s unfortunate that this favor from an old friend resulted in so much bad luck, but you can hardly blame him for that.”

  “I’m not blaming him. I’m blaming myself.” I took a scalding mouthful of soup, followed by a sip of cold water. This course of revelation was truly painful. “Takeo, I slept with him. I feel really terrible about it—”

  “Why? Listen, I know I’m a little more libera
l than others about these things, but I believe your past belongs to you, and I don’t really care to know about it. What counts is that we’re together now. I’m not talking about marriage, or anything old-fashioned like that, but I like having you as a girlfriend. It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not listening!” I said in frustration. “I’m trying to explain that I did it last Friday night. Here, in Washington. I’m so sorry, I had no idea this was going to happen—I never meant to deceive you, but it was like a tsunami, a giant wave of feeling that came back. I think…I think I’m in love.”

  After the torrent of words, I fell silent. Takeo’s complacent expression was gone. He understood.

  “Don’t talk about love,” he said in English. “The correct term is ‘cheating.’”

  “I understand that it was a terrible thing to do.” I stared into the murky brown depths of my bowl of soup, too miserable to eat another spoonful.

  “I want to know exactly what you want,” Takeo continued in his new, cold English. “Is it forgiveness, or a convenient good-bye?”

  “I don’t know what I want. I just felt that I had to be honest with you—”

  “How can you possibly talk about being honest and good after what you’ve done? That slut who was killed—yes, I can understand why she did it, and how she was punished. But you, a girl with a doctor for a father—I can’t believe it! Aren’t you ashamed of what you’ve done to your parents as well as to me? To think that your contaminated body could have—touched—mine yesterday, if we’d gone to bed—it makes me want to vomit.”

  He was obviously very upset, and he’d had a glass and a half of wine. I had to treat him carefully. In my calmest voice, I said, “Takeo, I am ashamed of myself. Yes, I did something that my father, and most of society, wouldn’t approve of. But I won’t let you talk about Hana like that. She deserved to live just as much as you and I do.”

  “I know you thought I’d marry you someday, but it will never happen. Thank God that I found out about your true character now. To think I had to fly halfway around the world to learn this!”