Chapter Twelve
The following evening, Mika hurried to meet Thomas and Penny at their hotel again. They’d planned dinner at a restaurant a block down. She’d managed to find a parking spot on the street right before the sky opened up and huge fat drops of rain poured down. By the time she skated through the lobby doors, her hair was plastered to her head. “I’m here,” she said to Thomas, rushing over and slipping a little bit. “Sorry, I’m late. Traffic was terrible, and I couldn’t find parking. Where’s Penny?” She searched the lobby.
“She should be down any minute.” Just then, Thomas’s phone buzzed. “Hold on,” he said to Mika. “It’s Penny.” He answered, “Hey, kiddo. Mika is here. You about ready?” He listened carefully for a minute. “You did? Did you bring anything with you? No, of course not. It’s no problem, you know that. I’ll run to the store right now. Want anything else? Okay, I’ll be up soon. Just hang on. Hey, it’s fine, it’s fine. Yes, I’ll explain it to her. Yes, I’ll be nice,” he said a little more quietly. Finally, he hung up. “Well, Penny isn’t coming. It’s that time for her.”
Mika’s brow darted in. “Time? Oh!” Understanding dawned. “It’s that time of the month.”
He scratched the back of his head. “She needs me to go to the store for her.”
“Um, there’s a Target down a block east. I’ll show you.” They borrowed a couple of umbrellas from the concierge. Ten minutes later, they were in the same Target Mika had been in when Penny first called. Is this Mika Suzuki? This is Penny Calvin. Penelope Calvin. I think I’m your daughter. Thomas perused the shelves and shook his head, just so disappointed in the selection. “Excuse me.” He flagged down an employee in a red shirt and asked about a particular brand of tampon. Supersized. The employee said they’d check and scurried off.
Thomas stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Penny is particular.”
Mika had to admit she felt a little charmed by the whole scene unfolding in front of her. “Is she?”
“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “She likes a certain brand. If they don’t have them, we might have to go to another store. What?” he said at her wide-eyed stare.
“It’s just . . . I’m very impressed. My dad never went to the store for feminine products.” Hiromi would buy them and slip them to Mika in a dark plastic bag as if some dark underworld bargain were taking place. Once, she’d sent Leif. He’d FaceTimed her, and they got into a whole thing about organic options. She’d hung up on him, content to bleed out on his couch. It would have served him right.
Thomas scratched his jaw. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I never want her to be ashamed of her body.” He paused as if considering if he should say more. Finally, he decided to keep speaking. “I threw her a period party.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
He laughed, focused on his shoes. “Yeah. She got her period a year after Caroline died, and I searched the internet. I think I googled ‘single dad, daughter got her period first time’ or something. All these suggestions popped up about a party welcoming her into womanhood. I invited some of her friends over for a surprise party.”
“And she liked that?” Mika had been mortified when she’d started her period—embarrassed and confused. Hiromi had never discussed that it would happen to Mika, so she’d been surprised, to say the least.
Thomas shook his head. “She didn’t like it. She wouldn’t leave her room. I sent her friends home. After a while, she came down and asked that I never throw her a period party again. I guess maybe the cake and streamers were too much.” He shuffled his feet.
The Target employee returned with a carton of tampons, the right kind. They paid and walked back to the hotel. On the eleventh floor, they knocked on Penny’s door. “Kiddo,” Thomas said.
Penny opened the door, bathrobe on, and television blasting in the background, some reality show about housewives. “I don’t feel like seeing anyone,” Penny said, holding out her hand. Thomas placed the bag in her open palm. She went on. “You guys go out to dinner. Don’t waste the evening because of me. I’m probably going to clean out the minibar of anything chocolate or salty.” Then she shut the door in their faces.
In the elevator, Mika said, “We can pass on dinner. I think I’ll just head home.”
Thomas folded his arms and scratched his jaw. “I’m that bad company, eh?”
“No. Of course not,” Mika sputtered, caught.
He stared at her. “How about a drink? In the lobby? I think maybe you and I should talk, get to know each other better. For Penny’s sake.” They reached the lobby, and the doors slid open. Mika searched and searched for an excuse, thought about just flat-out running away—but that seemed like the more humiliating option.
Thomas waited outside the elevator for her. “Mika,” he said flatly.
“Thomas.”
“Please have a drink with me.”
“Fine.” Mika inhaled and slipped past Thomas. “One drink.”
They strolled through the lobby to the hotel bar. As Mika had been conditioned to do, her eyes sought out the paintings. Typical abstract hotel pieces with monochrome swirls, something chosen for the aesthetic. Couch art, Marcus, her professor, used to call it.
Thomas stopped at a little table in the corner and pulled out a chair for Mika. At the sound of wooden legs scraping against the tile, Mika remembered Marcus’s office again. The first day she’d met him, the easel made a similar noise as she had dragged it out to set it up with a blank canvas from the closet.
What should I draw? she’d asked over her shoulder. Sunlight streamed in through the window, dust particles suspended in it.
If you’re asking me that, you don’t belong in advanced painting classes, he answered.
She nodded vacantly and chose a piece of vine charcoal from the shelf. Placing it against the canvas, she drew an arching line and winced. Too heavy. Too broad. No purpose. She erased it with her hand and started again, summoning her anatomy knowledge from the books she used to get at the library. Marcus smoked while she worked. Halfway through, he turned on music, some soft folksy ballad. An hour later, she was done, fingers black, bloodless, and aching.
Marcus cut the music off. Who is she? he asked.
My mother. Mika found a towel and wiped her hands on it. She’d sketched Hiromi. Her hair set in a smooth dome, eyes brutal and unforgiving, double lines bracketing her mouth like parentheses of disappointment.
Don’t ever ask someone what you should paint again. A crinkle of paper, and Marcus handed her the signed form. Enroll in my Painting III class. I’ll teach you.
Mika grasped the form and left his office, sat on a bench for a while. It was the first time anyone had said she showed any promise. She felt powerful. Fully alive. Marcus loomed large in her memory.
Now, Mika settled into her chair, Thomas adjacent to her. He flagged down the bartender and ordered a scotch neat. Of course, he did—anything to make more hair grow on his chest. Mika’s heart raced, and she ordered a glass of cab. Awkward silence descended as they waited for their drinks.
“Will Penny be okay?” Mika asked.
Thomas eased back in the chair, spreading his legs. “She’ll be fine. The first day is always the worst for her.”
“That’s good.” It occurred to Mika how much she didn’t know about Penny. Once upon a time, she’d convinced herself it would be okay never truly knowing her daughter. It was enough to know Penny was alive and well. She’d been a fool. Now, Mika was greedy and jealous of Caroline and Thomas, all those moments they’d had with Penny. She tried to muscle down the envy, but it refused to stay pinned. The thought of never seeing Penny again, not being a part of her life as Mika anticipated might happen, seemed unacceptable now. The waiter returned. With a flourish, he placed two cocktail napkins down and their drinks on top of them. They sipped and listened to the man playing the piano—a famous sonata by Mozart.
“Will you tell me more about Penny?” Mika played with the base of her wineglass, turning it halfway around, then halfway back.
Thomas tilted his head. There was a small votive candle on the table, and it cast shadows underneath his sharp cheekbones. “We sent letters every year.”
The packages from Caroline burst with photographs, drawings, even a clay dish Penny had made in elementary school. And the letters were long and descriptive. Mika had no trouble imagining her daughter’s life, how well she was doing, how well she was being taken care of. And she was always comforted by Caroline’s words, written with the familiarity of one mother to another. But then Caroline had died. Thomas’s letters were short, straight to the point—a razor’s edge of uncertainty. “You did,” she said carefully. “But I’m sure you couldn’t put it all down.”
Thomas sucked in an uneasy breath. “Well, you already know about the period party gone wrong. What else?” He shifted in his seat, thinking. “Her letter-writing phase.”
“Letter-writing phase?” Mika warmed and leaned in.
“I took her to a counselor after Caroline died. The counselor suggested Penny write letters to express her feelings. She’d write something like: ‘Today I feel sad, I miss Mom.’” Thomas tipped his drink to his mouth. Mika watched as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple working. “Then I’d write back: ‘I’m so sorry, kiddo. I miss her too.’ It was kind of this safe space where we could talk. We used the technique for a couple of years off and on. It was pretty effective. One day, I think she was thirteen, maybe, I asked Penny to shower and tidy up her room. Pretty innocuous.” He waited for Mika to nod in agreement. “She came back to me a few minutes later with a letter that said something like: ‘I’m feeling really mad and sad right now, so please leave me alone until further notice.’” He paused and sipped his scotch.
Mika smiled. “Did you leave her alone?”
Thomas sucked in air through his teeth. “That probably would have been the smart thing to do. But I followed the counselor’s advice and wrote her a note back. Something like: ‘Thanks for communicating with me. It’s okay to feel mad and sad sometimes. I’m here if you want to talk.’” His eyes clouded with humor, and his mouth twisted into a smile.
“Not the right thing to do?” Mika asked.
“Not even close. She came storming out of her room. I swear she was gathering dark forces to descend upon me. She slammed the note down and had revised it.” He paused. “She’d underlined the ‘really’ and crossed out ‘mad’ to add ‘angry.’ Then over the whole thing with a Sharpie, she wrote: ‘Go away’ in capital letters.”
“Wow,” was all Mika said quietly. Sometimes the whole thing, the pregnancy, the birth, and even now, seeing Penny, felt unreal. As if Mika were watching someone else’s life unfold. In a way, she was, she supposed. She couldn’t quite get a grip on the fact that this was her life.
Thomas knocked back the rest of his drink. “Yeah, she’s always been this way. Small but fierce, scrappy. I’d bet on her in a fight. What were you like as a kid?”
“Me?” Mika straightened. She thought of the Mika before. Hiromi called her daughter oversensitive. She viewed Mika as strange, foreign, her differences as betrayals. “I was shy, I suppose, but with visions of grandeur.” She wanted to be something great someday. “Until I met my best friend, Hana. I took more risks then.” Felt like she was indomitable. In high school, they went to house parties on the weekends. Getting drunk with students and their parents who subscribed to the “if my kid is going to drink, they might as well do it under my roof” philosophy. Then she doubled down in college. Lost her virginity the first week there to some guy whose last name she couldn’t remember. She had fun and liked having sex, the feeling of a body against hers.
Mika blinked.
Marcus was there again, just on her periphery. They were alone in the classroom, the door shut. She was nearly halfway through her freshman year. Aside from painting and art history, she’d enrolled in philosophy. She was in the midst of existentialism. Sartre and Kierkegaard—Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. And studying ancient arts, the Greeks, the Romans, Byzantine to late antiquity. Icons. The Virgin Mary. Under Marcus’s tutelage, she’d mastered traditional techniques—scumbling, wet on wet, glazing, chiaroscuro.
Your paintings lack life, Marcus was saying. He dipped a brush in black ink and slashed a line through her study of an orange. There is no story. What is your story? It was a kind of agony, disappointing Marcus. Look at Peter’s painting—he gestured to a canvas leaning against the wall, his graduate student’s art, a portrait of a pop star, holding an apple in the Garden of Eden—it’s derivative as shit, but it still has a narrative. Come on, he said, can’t you see? The story is your power.
“Penny was anything but shy,” Thomas said, pulling Mika back to the present. “She . . .” He shook his head.
“What?” Mika leaned forward. Somehow, they’d drifted closer to each other, their knees bumping.
“I forgot about this, but when she was a toddler and potty training, she liked for us to watch her poop.” Mika burst into a laugh. Thomas answered with a grin. “I don’t know. It was probably because we made a big deal out of it. Caroline had read this book about how you’re supposed to celebrate when they go. We did this whole cheering thing. But Penny would get super serious when she had to shit, and she liked to lock eyes with one of us. She’d say, ‘Watch me, watch me.’” He grinned. “It got to be a thing, and finally, Caroline was like, ‘We have to stop this. We’ll be watching her poop when she’s in college.’ Penny hates this story, but it’s one of my favorites.”
Elbow on the table, Mika rested her chin in her hand and studied Thomas in repose. “What else?”
“Well, in fourth grade, she got seriously into ventriloquism.” He mock-shivered. “So creepy. I’m glad that’s over. She got into magic soon after.”
“Naturally,” said Mika, and they shared a smile, a half-laugh. She sighed. She’d been wrong about Thomas. He didn’t have the emotional range of a potato. “You guys were good parents. You’re a good dad.” Mika hadn’t meant to say it, but the words came pouring out.
Thomas huffed out a laugh. “Thanks. I operated without a manual for a while. I look back at after Caroline died, and I’m ashamed of how much I didn’t know. I pretty much relied on Caroline to do most of the parenting. Then when she passed away, I felt so out of my element . . .”
An ache speared through Mika’s chest. “How bad was it?”
He frowned. “I did her hair. It wasn’t too bad for the first time. She cried at the end of the day when I tried to take the bands out, so I used scissors and ended up lopping off a section of hair. I had to take her to a hairstylist to get it fixed. She pitched a fit when they suggested cutting it into a bob to even it out. So, we made a compromise, short in the front and long in the back.”
Mika made a face. “That sounds an awful lot like a . . .”
“A mullet,” Thomas said, light eyes intent on her. “I gave my daughter a mullet.”