The Pearl Diver (11 page)

“No, it’s in Virginia. Charlottesville is the biggest town near it.”

“Great wineries nearby,” I said, then chided myself for my insensitivity.

“Restaurants, too,” Andrea said. “If I was closer to my father, I might have looked for work around there.”

“You say the relationship is bad. You could try to change it by going to see him,” I suggested.

“It’s not going to change. There’s no point.”

“You must press your father on some things.” I picked up the detective’s report. “I notice that the birth year for your mother on the detective’s report is different from the one on the marriage license. Someone didn’t do a very thorough job.”

“You saw it. I knew you were the right one to help!” Andrea sounded happier than I’d ever imagined she could be.

“I think you should go back to your father. Ten years have passed since your last meeting, you said. Maybe he’s mellowed. At the very least, he probably has a few more pictures or papers relating to your mother, which he could give to you.”

“Every time I’ve called, there’s some excuse for why they can’t see me. It’s not like a normal family. And besides, I don’t have a car, and the train doesn’t go out to those rural byways.”

I felt terrible for Andrea: the loss of her mother, the betrayal of her father, the loneliness of her adult life. No wonder she spoke to everyone as if she had a chip on her shoulder. The chip was a mountain the size of Fuji. “Andrea, I can’t help you with much. But I can give you a ride down there.”

“You would? I didn’t know you had a car.”

“It’s my boyfriend’s car. I’m sure he’d think it was a good reason for a trip to Virginia. Especially if I swing by a vineyard to pick up wine on the way back.” I gave her a serious look, the one I used to use on my students in Japan when I knew they were going to skip doing their homework. “I want this trip to be fruitful. I suggest you call your father to make sure he’s there.”

“If I call, Lorraine will answer the phone. And if say I’m coming, she’ll tell me that they’re going out of town. That’s what happened the last couple of times I tried.”

“Then don’t give him a warning,” I said. “And can you be more specific about the last contact you had? Surely it wasn’t just that meeting ten years ago. Any phone calls, birthday cards in the meantime?”

“Zip,” Andrea said. “I’d think he was dead if I didn’t keep checking the Internet. I also put in a request to Veteran’s Affairs for his military-service record. That was three months ago. I’m still waiting.”

“Call the VA again to remind them. And what did you dig up on your father on the Internet?” I was still flustered that she’d found out so much about me.

“There was an updated alumni directory for his high school, a mention of his restaurant in a community newspaper—that kind of thing.”

“A restaurant!” I wondered, instantly, if this was why she’d become a hostess.

“Well, it’s actually a diner. You know, pancakes and burgers and all that. He owns the place, but he cooks.”

“Can you look up the address for his diner?” I asked. “We might need to go there, instead of the house, if he’s working.”

“It’s on Route 47, just outside Orange,” Andrea said. “I know how to get there.”

Since Bento was closed on Mondays, that was our obvious choice of a travel date. I agreed to pick her up at seven the next morning. I also made Andrea promise to photocopy all the photographs and reports so that nothing precious would be lost.

As I parted from Andrea, I thought about how strangely things were turning out. Hugh had said I had no women friends; now I was helping two women about my age with serious problems. Both of them were “pieces of work,” to borrow one of Grand’s favorite expressions.

The image came to me then, of Win and Jacquie playing desolately on the Persian carpet in the large playroom where the TV blared footage of Kendall. I had only to close my eyes to imagine Andrea, a small girl of the same age, sitting by herself in front of another bright television screen, in a house that was not her own.

I couldn’t remake the lives of my nephew and niece, who were considered privileged, anyway. Andrea, on the other hand, had been alone as a child and still had nobody to call her own. And she was reaching out. I couldn’t turn away from her now.

Hugh was coming out of customs, the zone in Dulles airport that was always the most jammed and chaotic. He often took a taxi home, even though it was about forty minutes from where we lived; but there had been a garbled message from the night before, of which I’d caught only the tail end, a warning to make sure the Lexus’s trunk—” boot” in Hugh’s Britspeak—was completely empty.

He must have gone on a shopping binge, I thought as I parked in the open lot across from the curved glass-and-steel terminal that looked like a cross between a space colony and a mid-twentieth-century high school. Hugh was the only man I knew who truly enjoyed shopping. What had he brought me? I began to fantasize pleasantly about objects that came in large boxes. I hoped he hadn’t gone for something electronic; usually the newest and neatest things for sale in Akihabara weren’t adaptable for U.S. electric voltage. Hugh had brought home from his last trip a Toto electric toilet seat with a built-in bidet. Unfortunately, it was sized incorrectly for our vintage toilet bowl.

Hugh’s flight from Tokyo had landed ten minutes earlier, the arrivals board said by the time I’d walked in. Normally, he was off
the plane pretty fast, thanks to business-class privilege, but luggage collection would take time. I pulled from my bag the mail I hadn’t had time to read, given the last few days’ excitement. The Washington-Japan Friendship League had sent me a quarterly newsletter. There’d be a potluck dinner on Children’s Day in a few months, and volunteers were needed to help with decoration. I had some carp kites that I could lend them; it would mean a long Metro ride, but it would be worth going in early, especially if I could ask them about Andrea’s mother. The WJFL’s stated mission was to help Japanese immigrants, and it had been around forever. Maybe they would remember a Sadako Tsuchiya Norton…

“Darling!”

Hugh’s shout broke through my meditation. I searched the crowd and spotted his red-blond head bobbing in a sea of dark ones. I’d missed him. I couldn’t wait for the skin-to-skin reunion, but experience had taught me that it would probably come the next night, when he wasn’t so tired. In any case, we’d have a wonderful dinner. The trout was clean and resting on ice in the fridge, the asparagus was done to Jiro’s specifications, and a crisp baguette and a bottle of pinot noir were waiting on the counter. For dessert I would cut up strawberries and serve them with clotted cream.

I couldn’t wait to hug Hugh, but there was a woman just in front of him, hampering his progress: a small, Japanese-looking woman with the perfect unlined face of Asian middle age, a face that looked almost like my aunt Norie’s. I looked again. It
was
Norie.

I gasped aloud as Norie caught sight of me, too, and charged forward, rolling her suitcase over another traveler’s feet.

“Obasan,” I said, falling into the Japanese honorific for aunts, the term I always used to address her. While locked in an embrace with my aunt, I gazed over her shiny black hair at Hugh, trying to communicate my shock. “This is a wonderful surprise!”

“You heard my message about it, didn’t you?” Hugh asked as he came up. “I asked you to leave plenty of room in the boot for her luggage because she’s packed enough to stay for a year.”

“Oh, my goodness,” I said.

“I hope you have room for me in your apartment,” Norie said, sounding shy. “I didn’t ask you myself, but Hugh-san said you had agreed that it was a fine idea.”

I smiled, searching my memory for what I might have said to Hugh. I’d been so distracted when we’d spoken. Well, it didn’t matter now. I had a more pressing problem. My aunt didn’t know that Hugh and I were living together, and I couldn’t imagine that she’d feel comfortable staying with us sharing a bedroom in an unmarried state. It wasn’t proper by Japanese standards; even my father, who’d been in the U.S. for over thirty years, wouldn’t tolerate Hugh in my room until after we’d become engaged.

I took the handle of Norie’s huge Samsonite suitcase and began pulling it quickly through the crowd. I had to get ahead of her, to get space to talk with Hugh.

“Rei, what are you doing?” Hugh caught up with me, just as I’d hoped. “Norie’s a good ten meters behind you. It’s not polite to go faster than she can—”

“Did you tell Norie we are living together?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer.

“Not exactly,” Hugh said. “I thought that was better coming from you.”

“She must not know that we live together. She’ll lose face if she is forced to be a party to it. She’ll insist on moving out, and our whole relationship will be ruined!”

“But we lived together in Japan.” Hugh’s tone was bewildered.

“That was just for a few months, before I got my own place. And she didn’t like you very much at the time, do you remember? She thought you were taking advantage of me.”

Hugh whistled softly. “What are we going to do? It’s obviously my flat, full of my gear. Not to mention, I need somewhere to sleep. Especially after this last flight, when I normally would have drifted off but she kept me up the whole time, practicing English conversation—”

“You could go to Win and Kendall,” I suggested desperately.

“No! It would be an imposition on them, not to mention that I want to be in my own bed at night, with you.” He looked at me significantly.

“Then you’ll have to go along with the plan that I suggest,” I said.

“Which is?” Hugh sounded wary.

“To start, you can drop me off with all the luggage at the building, but don’t you dare let her out of the car. You can drive her around to see the sights on the Mall. I’ll need about an hour to de-masculinize the place. You’ll join us for dinner, and then you’ll go out again. I’ll call your cell after she goes to sleep. Then you can sneak back in—oh, Obasan, I wish I had cleaned up the apartment for you!” I changed my tone as Norie caught up. “Anyway, Hugh is going to take you on a short drive while I organize a few things.”

“But I’m a little tired,” Norie started to protest.

“Don’t you know that when you arrive in a different time zone it’s important to spend time in the bright sunlight? That will help reset your body clock,” I advised. “Our car’s just across the way. Let me take another of your bags, Obasan.”

“I brought my own sheets,” Norie said. “Please don’t worry about a bed. I am used to sleeping on the floor.”

“There’s a fold-out futon in my study,” I said. It had been my bed once, in Japan.

“A study! My goodness, it sounds bigger than your last place, Rei-chan. You must be doing very well economically to have such an apartment. Of course, I will also have to see your parents’ lovely home in San Francisco. Your parents invited me to stay there for as long as I like. But I’m here to work, to help you with the wedding preparations.”

“Actually, I haven’t been thinking about the wedding much. I’ve been so caught up in the opening of this new restaurant, you see.”

“Yes, yes, Hugh said so. How is it?”

“Well, the food’s wonderful,” I said. “But there was a problem opening night that they are still trying to live down.”

“‘Live down’? What does that mean?” Norie asked.

I’d been speaking to her in English for Hugh’s benefit. I tried again. “The restaurant, it suffered an embarrassment on the first night, which they hope will be forgotten.”

“What kind of embarrassment? Some problem with the food?”

“Actually, my cousin Kendall was kidnapped from the place.” Seeing Norie’s shocked expression, I quickly added, “She was safely returned to her family the next morning. Unfortunately, the kidnapping was mentioned in the newspapers, which made the restaurant appear unsafe.”

“Newspapers can be terrible for the image. We know that from our experience, don’t we, Rei?” Norie nodded sagely. “I am not afraid to visit this restaurant. Shall we go there tomorrow?”

“Actually, tomorrow I’m driving to central Virginia. But on Tuesday we can go to Bento, if you like.”

“Sightsee in Virginia? You are making such nice plans for me from the very start!”

“Actually, don’t you want to rest tomorrow?” I asked.

“Oh, no. I am eager to, how do you say, adjust to American life. I will see the sunlight today, reset my body clock, and spend a full day of travel with you.”

I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself that I should be happy. Norie had been my surrogate mother all those years I’d spent in my early twenties in Japan. She wouldn’t stay with us forever; it was worth it to keep her approval during the time she was with me.

Hugh dropped me off with the bags, and I lugged them upstairs, then set about in a whirlwind of de-guying the apartment. Although I’d moved in plenty of antique Japanese furniture and placed a few woodblock prints on the walls, the apartment in general did not look like mine, chiefly because it had been painted and decorated by Hugh in the primary colors of blue and ochre. There was a leather sofa in the living room, which also had an elaborate stereo and high-tech-looking CD towers that housed every compact disc Hugh had collected from his college days on.
No point in doing anything about the CDs, I thought; Norie wouldn’t know the difference between Grace Jones (mine) and Norah Jones (his). But I would sweep all the law journals off the coffee table and under his side of the sleigh bed. Hugh’s mahogany sleigh bed in itself could be a problem, because Norie might remember that I only owned a futon. Well, I’d just have to tell her that I bought it, and the handsome Biedermeier armoire as well. Once the living room was done, I went to the bathroom and swept all of Hugh’s shaving paraphernalia into a basket that I added to the underbelly of the bed. Then, Hugh’s coats and shoes had to move from the hall closet to our narrow bedroom closet, which was already stuffed to the rafters. His rowing machine I couldn’t hide—Norie would just have to believe that I’d taken up that form of exercise.

I was just changing the sticker on the buzzer downstairs from Glendinning to Shimura when Norie and Hugh came back.

“All set?” Hugh looked anxious as I crumpled up in my fist the old sticker bearing his name.

“Of course.” I smiled encouragingly at him. “Welcome home, Aunt Norie! And, Hugh, now that you’re back, won’t you come up and have a cup of tea?”

When Norie entered, she exclaimed happily over the size of the place, and didn’t seem fazed by anything, though she wondered aloud why Hugh had taken his own suitcase and carry-on upstairs.

“You can’t leave anything in parked cars around here, Obasan, there’s so much crime,” I said smoothly. I showed her into the study, where she’d be sleeping, and offered her the chance to have a hot bath before dinner. The fish was delicious—I’d only bought two, so I cut them up beforehand; that way it didn’t look as if someone had been counted out. I felt terrible for Hugh, who gobbled his portion promptly and then practically nodded with exhaustion over his plate.

“You’d better go home to your own place, but I’m worried about you driving. Where is it?” Norie asked kindly.

“Closer than you’d expect,” Hugh said, then swept out with a long look, but no kiss, for me.

I chatted with Norie until she made her departure to the futon in the study. Twenty minutes later, I called Hugh on his cell phone. He was at the Irish pub near Union Station with his rugby friends, who were making bets on how long the single-girl apartment ruse would work. I reminded him to tell his friends to call him only at work or on his cell phone, and he groaned.

“Frankly, if living together unmarried is such a sin, we should marry posthaste,” Hugh said. “Tomorrow I’ll apply for a license. The hell with fancy weddings.”

“But that would disappoint our parents,” I said. “Darling, just come home. She’s asleep now. We can talk about it.”

But Hugh returned too exhausted to talk. He washed up quietly in the bathroom, put on the pajamas I’d laid out for him, and was snoring within a minute of hitting the pillow. I tossed and turned for a while, thinking about how hard the situation was going to be, but eventually fell asleep. I was still tired when Hugh kissed me awake the next morning. So he wasn’t angry with me. I was relieved.

“Here. Your present,” Hugh said. He was still damp from his shower, and was wrapped up in a terry-cloth robe.

Sleepily, I tugged the box open and saw what he’d given me: an impossibly tiny pink-and-black cell phone.

“It looks like a sex toy,” I said.

“It could be.” He grinned at me. “But really, it’s high time you got one of these things. If Kendall didn’t have one with her that night, where would she be?”

“Thank you. Do you know if it will work in the U.S.?”

“Yes, it’s an export model. The thing I like about it is that you can use it all over the world to make and receive calls, so I can get in touch with you wherever you are.”

Of course, he was the traveler, not I—though I still cherished my little dream of returning to Japan. I put the phone on the bedside table and slunk back down under the duvet.

Hugh shed his robe and crawled in after me. From the feel of him, he wasn’t after a catnap.

“We’d better not. My aunt might overhear—”

He cut me off with a long kiss, then said, “I left the shower running in the bathroom. She won’t hear a thing over that. And by the way, I’m armed!” He held a brand-new, microscopically thin Japanese condom for me to inspect.

“That’s awfully wasteful,” I sighed, as he disappeared under the covers again.

“The condom? Not really. I think we can afford them more readily than a baby, at the moment—”

“No, the water.” I could hear it pattering against the tile, just as my body was starting to tighten in anticipation.

“There’s no drought. Not in Washington, not down here either,” Hugh said suggestively.

He was right. He was too good. All the things any normal woman would have thought of during first-thing-in-the-morning sex—lack of tooth-brushing and showering—flew out of my head. Hugh didn’t care, obviously. His mouth was all over me in all the ways I loved, and he’d picked up an amazing new trick with his hands.

Sex with Hugh was perfect because it kept changing, growing, just as the feelings in myself, as I headed toward thirty, became more powerful. I was more responsive now, more daring. The days that Hugh had been gone had been full of work, but almost every night, once I’d gotten in bed, my mind had turned to what I was missing. I didn’t change his pillowcase until just before he came home because I wanted to inhale his scent.