Chapter Six
Mika barreled through the house. First stop, Hana. “Excuse me.” She yanked Hana’s arm, separating her best friend from the blue-haired woman she slow-danced with.
“Hey.” The woman frowned. “You told me you were single.”
“I am,” Hana explained sheepishly.
Panic inched up Mika’s spine. The words from Penny’s message flashed across Mika’s mind like warning signs before a cliff. I’m coming to see you. Two weeks. “Emergency. Code red. I need you.”
Hana’s brow hiked up. “I’m intrigued. Lily—”
“It’s Lola.” The blue-haired woman’s frown intensified. Hayato was still in the living room and engaged in an animated conversation with Tuan plus some other dudes.
“Lola,” Hana said, giving her a salute. “It’s been real.”
Off they went, Mika steering them toward Charlie’s bedroom. Inside, Mika shut the door, muting the party. “Listen.” Mika turned the volume up on her phone, hit play on Penny’s message, and set it on the king-size bed. Penny’s sweet voice filled the dim room. As they listened, Mika’s stomach plummeted. She should’ve known this would happen. She had years of experience of everything going right and then suddenly wrong. Nothing was ever certain.
“Penny’s coming to visit. This is great!” said Hana. Then at Mika’s expression, she amended, “This is not great?” Hana’s brow darted in. “Hold up. Did she say your gallery? And what was that about Leif?”
Mika sat on the bed, more of a collapse, really. She cupped her knees, flexed her hands. It didn’t make anything better. “That’s what I need your help with. I may have improved the truth in our conversations.” She pinched her fingers together. “A little.”
Hana squinted her eyes. “How little?”
“You know . . .” Mika brushed her shirtsleeve, started to sweat anew. “I said I graduated from college with an art history degree.” Once, long ago, she’d dreamed of finishing her art degree and backpacking through Europe or South America. Instead, she’d gotten a degree in business. It had taken her eight years instead of the usual four.
“Okay.” The set of Hana’s face made it seem not so bad.
She sucked in her cheeks. “Maybe with honors.”
Hana laughed, the bitch. “What else?”
“I dunno. My own gallery and house, traveling the world, super-successful boyfriend, I think I even said I bike everywhere.”
Hana’s eyebrows inched up. “So, you’re a lying liar who lies?”
“Again. I prefer the term ‘improving the truth.’”
Hana screwed her face up. “But why?”
It was hard for Hana to understand, Mika supposed. Other than terrible housekeeping skills, Hana really had nothing to hide. She had a great job. Women threw themselves at her. How could Mika explain? “Safe space?” Mika asked.
“You know it,” Hana answered immediately.
“It’s who I want to be. Who I thought I could be . . . before.” A safe kind of hope existed in fiction. The possibilities were endless. Her life different. A more positive timeline. If only. If only . . . Plus, she wanted to give Penny what she had to outsource sixteen years ago to Caroline—a good mother, a fit mother.
“Mika.” Hana sighed. Finally, she stood, approaching the door as if to leave.
Panic sliced through Mika like a santoku knife. “Where are you going?”
Hana turned. “I’m getting Charlie. We’re going to need backup.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Charlie, Mika, and Hana sat in Charlie’s bathroom—because Hana had her best ideas in the tub.
“You told her you were backstage for the opening performance of Hamilton?” asked Charlie. She sat on the closed toilet, laptop and Excel spreadsheet open. And because Charlie was Charlie, she’d decided to sort Mika’s lies by category—School and Career, Hobbies, Love Life, etc.
Mika frowned. “It’s not like I said I was in the production. Just that Leif whisked me away to New York and surprised me with backstage passes to meet the cast on opening night.”
Hana sprawled in the clawfoot bathtub, wineglass in hand. “That is oddly specific.”
“The devil’s in the details,” Mika replied.
“I’m filing it under Hobbies,” said Charlie.
Someone shouted in the living room. Apparently, board games were happening. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be out there with your people?” Mika asked Charlie.
“You are my people,” Charlie said pointedly. “Besides, it’s fine. Tuan is covering for me. He totally understands.”
“Tuan is awesome.” Mika wished she had a partner like Tuan. He had once entered some bicycle race across California. He was in position to win some big money but had quit because he missed Charlie “too damn much.” To be loved like that, Mika thought, a little melancholy. Once, she believed she was in love. Freshman year of college. She’d been foolish then. So naïve. So easily taken advantage of. With a shake of her head, Mika squashed down an image of Penny’s biological father. No, she didn’t like to remember him.
Charlie made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “You’re not missing anything. Every time he walks past me after I’ve gotten out of the shower, he goes ‘boobies.’” She held her palms aloft as if handling two melons. “And then I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to hit him in the genitals with his own arm.” She grinned, the lovesick fool.
“Focus.” Hana lounged in the bathtub again. “What else?”
Mika scrolled through her memory. Another hour passed. The party quieted, the front door opened and shut. Tuan knocked and said he and Hayato were headed to a bar down the street. The list grew.
School and Career
Majored in art history
Internship with a local art museum
Hired by a local art museum
Slowly advanced to a curator
Saved enough money to become an art gallery owner
Grand opening (two weeks from now!)
Hobbies
Travel (has been all over Europe and South America)
Bicycling
Love Life
Boyfriend: Leif, entrepreneur
Leif proposes regularly, but Mika isn’t ready to settle down
Charlie offered to make some sort of flowchart. Mika declined. Finally, Charlie drew in a deep breath. She shut her laptop with a decisive click. “The way I see it, there are two options.”
“Okay,” Mika said gravely.
“One, you tell Penny the truth. Come clean.”
Mika considered it for less than a second. “Yeah. I’m not super jazzed about that.”
“Or two. We create this life for you.”
“I’m listening,” said Mika. Her throat knotted. A wanting grew in her chest, making it ache. Since placing Penny for adoption, Mika had dreamed of meeting her someday in person. Granted, the fantasy usually involved Mika on her way to some fabulous destination, maybe the installation of her first piece of art at the Met, with a brief stopover in Dayton. Just enough time to have lunch and see Penny’s face glow with pride at having come from Mika—to be made of her. Penny would never look at Mika like that if she knew Mika’s life resembled a late-stage Jenga tower.
Hana piped in. “How are we supposed to do that?”
Charlie puffed out her cheeks. “Well, most of this seems kind of manageable. Like the house—”
“Mika lives with me,” Hana helpfully added.
Mika blinked, saw Hana’s house. The lawn with weeds and assorted thorning plants. The inside full of boxes and stacks of dusty magazines. The fridge with an odd smell. Mika’s level of shame hit an all-time high.
“Yes, and you live in a house,” Charlie enunciated slowly. “Or I’m pretty sure it is. Is a condemned building still considered a domicile?”
“Hardy-har-har,” Hana deadpanned.
Mika lay her cheek against the cool tub. It reminded her of slipping her hands between the cold sheets in the hospital the day she surrendered Penny. Touch has a memory, it turns out. She concentrated on something else. The here and now. Hana’s gold hoop earrings. Tuan’s razor balancing on the edge of the sink. Charlie shaking her head.
“Forget it,” Charlie announced. “We’ll call it a house. All we need to do is tidy it up a bit.” Charlie had always been an optimist. “Hobbies-wise, Tuan bikes, and I’m pretty sure he can give you some pointers, some terms to use.”
“What about the gallery space?” Hana asked. Contrary to Charlie, Hana had always been more of a pessimist.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “But we can figure it out. Now, about the Leif situation . . .” Charlie pursed her lips, thinking. Penny had seen pictures of Leif. There was no way Mika could hire an escort, even if she could afford it, which she couldn’t. Charlie inhaled as if preparing to summon some sort of ancient demon. “You should call him.”
Mika screwed her face up. “Boo.” Leif didn’t know about Penny. She’d been careful to keep that part of her life secret. She’d have to tell him. She’d have to see him again. Preferably the rest of her life would pass without Mika speaking to Leif.
“Easy,” Charlie said. Two words described the relationship between Mika and Leif best: scorched earth. All their friends knew not to enter that hostile territory lest they be burned. “Tuan sees him all the time.” Mika said nothing about Tuan’s friendship with Leif. She knew the two were still buddies. Tuan made friends like pants picked up lint. Charlie continued, “He’s doing really well for himself since weed was legalized. He’s got his own store and everything.”
Mika hoped Leif was doing good in the same way she hoped to get genital warts. Just then, her phone rang. An unknown number flashed on the screen. “It’s from Ohio,” Mika whispered, recognizing the area code.
“Is it Penny?” Hana asked.
Mika shook her head. “No.” She’d filed Penny in her contacts.
“Don’t answer it,” Hana said.
“Answer it,” said Charlie.
Mika slid the button to accept and put the phone on speaker. “Hello?”
“Hi. Mika Suzuki?”
“Speaking,” she said, an awful knot of dread forming in her stomach.
“This is Thomas Calvin. Penelope’s father.” His voice was deep, a little forbidding. Too severe, grave. An antidote to Penny’s liveliness. This was the man who raised Mika’s daughter?
Mika said nothing. She stood abruptly. Wine sloshed from her cup, and she licked her fingers clean while balancing the phone in her palm.
“Hello. Are you there?” said Thomas.
“I’m here,” Mika replied, cheeks aflame.
“Can you speak now? Is this an okay time? It sounds like you’re in a tunnel. There’s an echo.”
“I’m in my gallery.”
Hana gave her two thumbs up.
Charlie hid her face in her hands.
“Look, I apologize for calling out of the blue. Penny informed me she’s planning on visiting you. I didn’t even know you two had been speaking. I didn’t even know she knew your name.” Mika winced. Oh, Penny, what have you done? It had never occurred to her to ask what Penny’s adoptive father knew, how he felt about them talking. Their conversations had been singularly focused on each other. Their similarities, how they were both emotional eaters—happiness, sadness, boredom: all of them deserved pie. How they loved dogs but were allergic, even to the ones with hair instead of fur. They’d blocked out the rest of the world, only existing for each other. “Forgive me, but I’m shocked. It’s not like her to keep secrets from me. And now she’s purchased a plane ticket to Portland. I’m . . . well, I’m concerned she hasn’t thought things through.”
“What’s there to think about?” Mika said, automatically defensive. Her cheeks heated with insecurities. Was Thomas questioning Mika? Who she was? Her qualifications to be in Penny’s life, to be a mother?
“Everything,” he answered sharply. “She spent all of her birthday money on the ticket. She was supposed to be putting that money toward her college fund.” He paused, words hanging in the air. “I’ll just . . . I’ll tell Penelope we’ve spoken, and now isn’t a good time for her to visit. Okay?”
“Yes,” Mika said.
“Excellent,” Thomas said, and then he was quiet.
“I mean no,” Mika said abruptly, surprising herself.
“I’m sorry?” It was clear people did not disagree with Thomas often.
“It just so happens my schedule is clear,” Mika said brightly. Penny wanted to come to Portland. And Mika wanted to meet Penny in person. “I’d love to meet Penny. Get to know her better in person.”
“You’re serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Ms. Suzuki—”
“Mika, please.”
“Ms. Suzuki, I appreciate you wanting to help. But with all due respect, you don’t know my daughter. Penelope is impulsive. She needs direction. She had other spring break plans, other plans for that money . . . Like I said earlier, I just don’t think she’s thought this through.”
You don’t know my daughter was the only thing Mika heard. And it cut her deeply. She struggled to conceal the hurt, to maintain an even tone. “You know, when people are running toward something, it often means they’re running from something.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She thrust out an arm. “It’s just a general life observation. Maybe it’s more than impulsivity. Perhaps Penny is working through some things.” Mika remembered herself at sixteen. Drawing, hanging with Hana, searching for a better life. Isn’t that what everyone does? What Mika’s parents had done when they came to the States? What Mika did in college? Mika had yearned for more. So did Penny. And Mika understood deeply the emotional pull of something greater, how irresistible it could be.
He sighed, softened the teensiest bit. “That may be true. She . . . I thought everything was okay. But her mother”—Mika swallowed against the word mother—“wrote her this letter to be opened on her sixteenth birthday. She won’t let me read it, but ever since, she’s been acting differently. This trip . . . seeing you, meeting you, could raise a lot more questions than it answers.”
“Thomas. May I call you Thomas?” Mika began to pace the length of the tiny bathroom. Three steps forward. Pivot. Three steps back. “I appreciate your concern. But I won’t turn Penny away.”
“If she comes.” His tone changed. “She won’t be alone. I’ll be accompanying her.”
“Wonderful,” Mika said, feeling perversely good and sporting an outraged gleam in her eyes. “The more, the merrier. Please give Penny my best. I look forward to meeting you both. Have to run now.” Mika was sweating. So much. “Nice talk.”
“Wait—”
She hung up.
“Whoa,” Charlie breathed out.
“Holy shit,” Hana said.
“So, option two?” asked Charlie, smoothing her hands over her laptop.
“Option two,” Mika said, still staring at her phone.
Hana held her wineglass aloft. “I’ll cheers to that.”