The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (3 page)

Without bowing, Sakura moved on to the next person. Unfortunately, I knew that she was right: I'd been admitted because Aunt Norie had sweet-talked Mrs. Koda.

But my aunt couldn't let things go. In a pleasant but firm voice, she called after the teacher, "Sakura-sensei, is there a problem?"

Without turning around, the head teacher said, "I'm afraid I must discuss the next student's arrangement. If you have questions, please see me after class."

"The school's teachers certainly have changed their attitude since I was a young student. I apologize to everyone present for you," Norie called out clearly. With her falsely courteous manners, Aunt Norie was picking a fight. Everyone knew it. The other women in the class started studying the floor.

Sakura finally decided to face my petite aunt. She had a six-inch advantage and a voice that carried a cool, menacing authority. "Shimura-san, you know the motto for the school is truth—"

"Truth in Nature!" Norie interrupted. "Flowers should be the focus of our class, not personal situations."

All the women began murmuring as if to cover up the breach of etiquette that had occurred. Only the sharp crack of a wooden stick stopped the verbal explosion.

"Be quiet, please!" Mrs. Koda returned her cane to her side and spoke up in her quavering voice. "It is time for our class tea break. Everyone please be quiet and drink tea!"

"I'm not going back. It was like a Wild West showdown, only the gun-toting cowboys were replaced by ladies wearing silk and carrying scissors," I told Richard Randall later that night at the Mister Donut near Sendagi Station. In the time I'd taken to tell the details of my dreadful class experience, I'd accordion-pleated my paper napkin into something like origami. I was still upset.

"Your aunt sounds like she has a split personality!" Richard mused. "Why else would she speak out like that? Japanese people have the best manners. They would sooner die than cause a scene."

A teenage boy two tables away suddenly decided to stand on his chair and begin singing an Oasis song.

"You were saying something about the Japanese?" I reminded Richard, indicating my head toward the boy.

"He's not the norm. He's drunk and sixteen," Richard said, looking the boy over a little more fully. "Mmm. Think he's interested in improving his English?"

"He's got a girlfriend." I inclined my head at a teenager with dyed red hair and a Hello Kitty lunchbox.

"How do you know? They could be like us, a pair of asexual soul mates."

When I'd first arrived in Tokyo, Richard and I had shared a miserable apartment while we taught English to kitchenware salesmen. We drifted apart when I'd become romantically involved with a Scottish lawyer. Like most foreigners, Hugh Glendinning eventually left Japan for home. He became deeply involved with organizing the new Scottish parliament, and with the Honorable Fiona Somebody, according to the gossip pages in
Tatler
. I'd called up Hugh's international toll-free number to find out the details, but the number had been disconnected.

Feeling abandoned, I'd plunged into work. Eventually I had enough money to rent a small one-bedroom apartment in a historic inner-city neighborhood called Yanaka. The apartment was on the ground floor of a seventy-year-old, barely renovated wooden house. To most Japanese, it appeared to be a nightmare dwelling, but I thought it was charming. I had painted the walls the color of dried persimmons, laid fresh tatami mat flooring, and installed a brand-new peach bathtub and matching tiled wall and floor. There was no central heat or air-conditioning, but I loved the place, which had the benefit of proximity to Richard's language school in Ocha-No-Mizu. After Richard finished teaching he often dropped by for dinner, and even occasionally could be persuaded to spend a Sunday morning shopping the antiques flea markets with me. I valued him more for his company than his muscle power. At five-feet-four inches, Richard was exactly my height, but skinnier. His slight frame, combined with white-blond hair and blue eyes, gave him the look of a delicate angel, the kind of doll that filled Tokyo department-store windows at Christmas. Ladies would beg to help carry his load, which worked out well for both of us.

"I think you should go back to that flower-arranging school just to see what happens next week. And it could only improve your social life."

"What do you mean? It's all women, except for one lazy young man who might have been a florist. If the worker could have found Sakura some more cherry blossoms, maybe she wouldn't have gone off on such a tear in the classroom."

Richard raised his eyebrows. "Think he's gay?"

"Just because a man works with flowers doesn't mean he's gay. You, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself for your stereotyping." I couldn't help admitting, though, that I'd wondered the same, since the florist had looked right through me.

"I'm looking to meet someone, okay? Don't be so uptight," Richard said, his mouth full of bean-paste doughnut. "So what's the reason for the long-simmering vendetta? Did your aunt ever explain?"

"Of course not. She went into the ladies' room for ten minutes and came out with red eyes and a little white mask stretched over her nose and mouth. She said she had to go home because her allergies were acting up."

The excuse had been almost plausible because a sizable number of Japanese people wore gauze facemasks to avoid cedar and cherry blossom pollen. However, Aunt Norie had planted both kinds of tree in her home garden, so I doubted her allergy. She probably was carrying the mask around in her purse because it was left over from the last time she suffered a cold.

"Sakura seems more involved than Norie in school politics. That could be cause for friction," Richard said.

"But Sakura's already on top. Her behavior to my aunt and the others before her was incredibly rude. I don't know why the school lets her carry on that way."

"You could complain to the headmaster."

I laughed in astonishment. "Richard, I've only been to the school twice. I'm not even supposed to be in the advanced class, but my aunt convinced Mrs. Koda to allow me to work at my beginning lessons with my aunt at my side. Given such privileges, I really have no right to complain."

"Maybe my cousin could say something." Richard sipped his coffee, staring pensively at the young couple kissing each other at their table.

"Don't tell me you have some secret Japanese relatives," I teased.

"No, but my cousin Lila takes classes at the Kayama School. She moved here a year ago, but you were too busy with His Hugeness for me to introduce you."

I decided to overlook his cruel joke about Hugh's name. "Lila Braithwaite, the president of the foreign students' association? There's not much resemblance between you two."

"Her father was French-Canadian. She inherited dark hair, and a taste for Hermes scarves. She's also got three little kids who are a riot. She recruits me to baby-sit when her nanny can't take it anymore."

I didn't know Richard was a baby-sitter, but it made sense, given his playful nature. I asked, "What does Lila tell you about the Kayama School?"

"Not much. She started studying flower arranging when she got here. Her husband's pretty high-ranking at some Canadian steel company, so she gets asked to chair various ladies' committees. But for expat society, she's not bad. She shops a lot."

"Antiques?"

"Rei, they have a cost of living allowance. Of course she buys antiques. Actually, she inhales them. You should hit her up."

I would do as he suggested. Newcomers to Japan were wonderful customers because their apartments were bare and their sponsor companies often provided generous expense accounts. That had been Hugh's situation. I'd transformed his apartment into a veritable showplace. When he gave up his apartment, he asked me to sell everything. Then he wouldn't take the money. Unable to bring myself to spend it, I threw it into the U.S. stock market. It was a smart move. But as the dividends grew, so did my sadness.

* * *

The next morning I left a message on Lila Braithwaite's answering machine about the interesting assortment of antique Japanese china I had for sale. Then I called a country auctioneer about an upcoming sale I needed to attend. When the other line beeped, I switched lines.

"My dear niece!" It was Aunt Norie.

"May I call you right back? I'm on a business call. Are you home?" I knew my aunt's morning schedule, and since it was only 9 A.M., she probably hadn't yet hung out the day's laundry.

"You don't want to talk to me." Her voice broke. "Well, I can understand that, after my appalling performance yesterday! You must want to disown me."

I told Norie to hold on while I got off the phone with the auctioneer. When I came back, she sounded cheerful.

"Rei-chan, we are going to make amends. This afternoon we will go to the Kayama School and present some gifts to Mrs. Koda and Sakura Sato. We have to do it. The school is going to invite its top members to do a big exhibition at the Mitsutan department store, and I cannot have bad feelings during that time. I also want to save your chance to make a good impression in the school."

"Sakura was being honest when she said l didn't belong in that class," I reminded Norie. "I'm no good at ikebana. Let me work in your garden or something. I like flowers, but I don't want to stay in the Kayama School."

There was a long silence. "You mean you want to quit your study of ikebana? To quit is unlike you."

She was right. Since I'd come to Japan, I'd never quit studying kanji characters. I'd never stopped learning new dishes, new vocabulary, and new ways to survive and thrive. I mumbled, "I'm just not talented, and it's so expensive for you to pay my way. I'd pay for the classes myself if I wanted to go on, but I really don't want to!" As I made my excuses, I was aware of how lame they sounded.

"I prepaid your classes through July," Aunt Norie said flatly. "That's how I managed to get you enrolled in that special class with me."

"Let me reimburse you."

"Inside a family there is no such thing as reimbursement. Tell me, what would your father think about you quitting your studies prematurely? I believe he would be very disappointed."

My father, who practiced psychiatry in San Francisco, had emigrated to the United States in part for a greater sense of personal freedom. If I told him what Aunt Norie was putting me through, he'd recite a soliloquy on the manipulative power of Asian families and then tell me to come home—that is, to the United States.

"I cannot force you to go," my aunt continued. "However, I would like you to speak to Mrs. Koda. Otherwise she may think you were pressured to leave the school, and that would be very bad for morale."

"I'll go with you," I said at last. "But not today. At three I've got to see a client."

"We'll meet after your appointment, at five o'clock inside My Magic Forest in Roppongi. I'll pick up the gifts there. I'll be wearing my yellow Hanae Mori suit, so please dress yourself accordingly."

With that fashion directive, my aunt rang off.

* * *

That afternoon I made some quick yen appraising the porcelain collection of an old woman who was handing her house over to her children, minus its contents. As I admired Mrs. Morita's pieces of old Imari porcelain, I listened to the story about how she had acquired them as trousseau gifts in the I920s.

"I can photograph the pieces, if you like, and try to find some buyers," I said. "It's much nicer that way—no chance of damage or theft, the way you would have in a shop.

"What kind of people are these buyers?" Mrs. Morita sounded suspicious.

"High-class ladies who want to treasure Japan's past. I have many contacts in the international community," I said, thinking of Lila Braithwaite.

"You should find a Japanese buyer, not a foreigner," Mrs. Morita told me.

"Foreigners are the only people who would buy a set like that," I said, indicating four dinner-size round blue-and-white plates decorated with a little bit of red, green, and gilt overglaze. The plates were pretty, showing a rock garden with a plum tree, small chrysanthemums, and bamboo. The china wouldn't attract Japanese buyers, who usually insisted on buying plates in sets of five. Foreigners didn't know the importance of having a good-luck number like five for their dishes.

"Yes, I know it's an odd number of dishes," Mrs. Morita said, grimacing. "I had them buried away, so I'd almost forgotten about them. You may as well take them with you. If you can sell them, I will consider giving you the chance to sell my other things."

That was a pleasing bit of serendipity. I carefully wrapped the plates in tissue paper and placed them in their original container, a sturdy pine box. Then Mrs. Morita surprised me by wrapping the box in a pretty pink scarf, creating a furoshiki carrier that I could take with me on the street.

"Keep the furoshiki," she told me. "It is cherry blossom pink, and you can always use it as a scarf around the neck of that lovely dress."

Having taken Aunt Norie's fashion hint, I was wearing a dress, pale pink pique with white collar and cuffs. The A-line shift came only to mid-thigh, but the white collar and cuffs made it almost school-girlish, a perennial hot look in Tokyo. I caught a few glances while walking through Mrs. Morita's expensive neighborhood. The dress was one that my mother had worn at the end of the swinging sixties. I imagined she was a startling vision of glamour to my father, a young resident struggling hard to stay awake at Johns Hopkins Hospital. My father's parents had been unhappy when he announced his plans to many an American woman, but his younger brother, Hiroshi, who eventually married Norie, had been supportive. Beginning when I was very young, Uncle Hiroshi and Aunt Norie had invited me to stay with them in Yokohama every summer. These regular visits made me fall in love with my father's country, something that ultimately backfired on my parents. I'd gone home to San Francisco only once in four years—and that was because I needed knee surgery.

I glanced down at my left knee, which looked sturdy under the sheer nylon stockings I was wearing. A car had hit me the previous summer, but my knee had healed well. Otherwise I never could have managed the many flights of stairs involved in Tokyo living. I was slightly out of breath when I climbed out of the correct subway exit at Roppongi Station and set off for My Magic Forest.