He clicked off, and somehow, I was left holding more than the phone.
I was a terror at the kanji game that night, surprising everyone. Granted, I’d had nothing to read except the dictionary in Shiroyama. I found myself drawing characters on Richard’s portable whiteboard with unusual speed. We played for a hundred yen coins, and by the end of the night I had collected twenty of them.
“Enough to buy a small piece of Roquefort cheese! You may serve it to me on a baguette next week,” Simone suggested.
“Or a ten-minute telephone call home. My parents would like that,” I countered.
“You could always spring for a five-pack of rubbers from Condomania!” Richard smirked.
“You are so vile,” Karen said, speaking for all the women. “It’s a wonder we let you stay in this group.”
It was odd we had all come together, I mused while washing out the pasta saucepan after Karen and Simone left for their train home. Richard and I were a natural team, struggling to teach English at Nichiyu. We’d met Simone selling Moroccan bracelets in Ueno Park. Simone had it tough, perpetually fleeing the Tokyo police with her briefcase of questionable baubles and sharing an apartment smaller than ours with three other French girls.
Karen, on the other hand, lived a life of relative luxury, As a magazine and TV model, she made enough to share a large one-bedroom with a Japanese boyfriend. It was true that blondes had an easier time than anyone in Tokyo, but I still liked Karen. She reminded me of the good-natured athletic girls who had taught me to swim, and she cut my hair for free. Above all, her earnest desire to learn to read and write Japanese impressed me, given that her career certainly didn’t demand it.
These were my friends, the people I belonged with. I reminded myself of that as I prepared for bed, but was unable to keep myself from dreaming that night about a mountain four hundred miles away with two men on it—one lame, the other probably dead.
11
When my parents telephoned the next morning, they received an account of my New Year’s trip that excluded murder, disappearances, and sex. I did mention that I had called Tom, which I thought would make my father happy—after all, he’d cinched my cousin’s medical fellowship in San Francisco. But I’d overlooked what mentioning my father’s family would do to my mother.
“I owe them a Christmas present,” she fretted. “Do you suppose it’s too late to send something?”
Even after thirty years with my father, my American mother remained deeply intimidated by Japanese etiquette. The handful of visits we’d made during my childhood always meant crash courses at Berlitz and tea ceremony school; when we reached Japan, she was understandably upset that my father’s family still treated her like a foreigner.
“People don’t usually give Christmas presents in Japan, Catherine,” my father said from the other extension, where he had been fairly silent up to now. “And I already sent a New Year’s greeting.”
“I could mail them some sun-dried tomatoes, the great big ones in extra virgin olive oil from Sonoma. When I brought them with me last time they seemed to like them. Rei, do you think that would be repetitive?”
“It’s a great idea. And send me some, while you’re at it. The dry kind. If olive oil leaks through the package, the post office will think it’s a bomb.”
“If you came home for Christmas you could have eaten all your favorite foods,” my mother sniffed, starting on a familiar theme.
“I know. I meant to come home. I just couldn’t afford it.”
“What are you talking about? We sent you a ticket last year that you still haven’t used,” my father grumbled.
“One way,” I reminded him. “You want me to come back and stay.”
“Every year that you delay work on a doctorate is a waste,” my father said. “You did so well with your master’s degree that you could resume your studies very easily.”
“Rei’s done enough graduate school,” my mother cut in. “She is going to work as an art consultant in my firm. It’s exactly what she wants to do.”
“If you want to see me, come here. You’re always welcome,” I said, striving for control.
“I don’t know, Rei. That terrible room you live in with that effeminate boy…” my mother’s voice trailed off.
“I’ll book you into the Prince Hotel! Come on, I could use some company at the shrine sales.”
“I’ll think about it. But I’ve got two new houses to do, and Daddy’s teaching at the medical school this semester so he can’t possibly get away. You know I can’t handle the Shimuras without him.”