Chapter Twenty
Monday morning at work, Gus, her boss, poked his head into her cubicle. “Knock, knock,” he said. “How do you feel about working some extra hours this week? I’ve got to finish putting together a collaboration model for one of our stakeholders. Shelly was working on it but had to take leave for a family thing, it got punted to me, and I could use some extra help!” He spoke with gusto and held up his hands to emphasize his point.
Mika set her phone away from her and straightened up. “Sure. That’d be fine.” She could use a distraction. She’d been a bit lonely without Hana. Focusing a bit too much on when she’d see Penny again, on Friday, when they’d have dinner at Mika’s parents’ house—the thought alone was enough to wind her up. How would she feel stepping foot in her childhood home again? How long had it been since she’d been inside? At least a decade.
And most importantly, how would Hiromi treat Penny? Mika thought of Hiromi lying in wait. She vowed not to let her daughter be cut by her mother’s sharp edges.
“Great! Everything should be on the shared server. Go ahead and take a look and let’s meet after lunch to go over it.” He took off, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of Mika’s mouth. She dove in. Even came in early on Tuesday and Wednesday to get a head start. But she did manage a lunch with Hayato, where they stalked Seth, the new guy he was dating, online.
Friday passed in a whirlwind. At 3:05, she emailed Gus to say all the completed documents were ready for his review. He fired off an immediate response: Good work, take the rest of the day off. You earned it.
So Mika was a little early to pick Penny up from campus. She expected to idle at the curb, maybe text Hana to say she couldn’t wait to see her next weekend. She did not expect to see Penny canoodling—Mika wasn’t sure she’d ever used the word canoodling before, but she was now and couldn’t be more surprised or unhappy about it—with Devon, the floppy pop star–haired kid. The two stood way too close. His hands on her hips. Penny’s hands on . . . his chest? Mika couldn’t believe it. And her first reaction was to make it stop. She laid on the horn. Pedestrians halted in their tracks. Penny pushed away from Devon, and he had the grace to step back as well, running an embarrassed hand through his hair. Penny mumbled something to him and stooped to pick up her backpack before walking to the car.
“Hi,” Mika said as Penny climbed in.
“Hi. You’re early.” Penny slumped down in her seat and covered her burning face with her hands. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that was super mortifying.”
“Sorry about that. My hand slipped,” Mika said a bit too quickly. “Old car, sensitive horn, you know?” Actually, the horn was really hard to push. She’d spilled something on the wheel who knows how long ago and ever since it’d been stuck. Good to know it still worked. Mika pulled away, keeping Devon in her sights in the rearview mirror. “So, um, new friend?”
Now off campus, Penny shifted in the seat to sit upright. She hesitated a moment. “He’s kind of my boyfriend.”
A yellow light changed to red, and Mika braked. “Boyfriend? Is this a recent development?” So fast, Mika thought. But who was she to say anything? She’d moved in with Leif after sleeping with him for only a month.
A smile flitted across Penny’s face. She sat on her hands. “As of last night. We made it official. We’re going out.”
Mika was unfamiliar with teenage dating rituals, but she knew enough to know “going out” meant serious. At least it did when she was sixteen. She chanced a glance at Penny. “That’s a big deal.” The light turned green, and Mika sped up to merge onto the highway.
“It’s really not,” Penny said, playing it cool. “Look, can we keep this quiet? Just between us?”
“You mean, not tell your dad,” Mika clarified as they went over a bridge.
Penny gave one nod, confirming. “He’ll be all weird about it since Devon and I are in the same dorm.”
“I don’t know . . .” Mika trailed off. She wanted to create a safe space for Penny. And Devon didn’t seem so bad. Puppy love, Mika would call it. It would either be over in a few weeks, or it wouldn’t. What would be the harm? Besides, she rarely spoke to Thomas. If he didn’t ask, she wouldn’t bring it up. Is a lie by omission still a lie? Mika wasn’t sure. She’d flunked philosophy. “Okay, I won’t say anything.” Mika wondered if Caroline and Penny had secrets. If Caroline had ever checked Penny out from school early and taken her for ice cream. Don’t tell your dad, she might have said. This will be just between us girls. A part of Mika yearned for the same. For that bond.
“Thank you,” Penny said. “I appreciate you trusting me.” Mika almost said, I trust you, not the world. But she clamped down on the urge. “So, tell me about your parents. Anything I should know before I meet them?” Penny asked.
They were outside Portland now, in the suburbs. They passed the Korean mart that didn’t check IDs. The twenty-four-hour Starbucks where Mika and Hana had huddled together to weep on 9/11. The junior high school where Mika used to walk carrying a cigarette in one hand and her dreams in another. She’d sit on the bleachers and wish herself somewhere else. Inhale and believe she was meant to do great things. That she could do great things. “I’m nervous,” Penny added as Mika turned down a side street. A few kids played in the road with a hose.
“Don’t be nervous,” Mika said, parking in front of her parents’ house. Seeing the forest green shingles, she felt a sudden acute pain, the sore spot of her childhood being poked. “They’re not huggers. If they bow or incline their heads, just do it back.” I love you was never spoken in Mika’s home. Loving was in the doing. Working to provide an income. Making homemade meals. Obeying your parents. “And if my mom asks if you want something to drink, don’t drink the bottled water. It’s not new. She refills old bottles and puts them back in the fridge.” Hiromi didn’t wash the bottles between refills. “In fact, anything bottled, always check the seal. One time she bought generic lemon-lime soda for my birthday and used it to fill an old liter of Sprite.”
“Okay,” Penny said carefully, eyeing the giant satellite dish on the side of the house. They walked slowly to the door and paused again in front of it. Mika saw the curtains move. Her mother was watching. “Did they ever ask about me?”
Mika studied Penny’s anxious face. She didn’t want to lie but knew the truth would hurt her. She decided on neither. “I never really volunteered any information. Talking about you was difficult for me.” She paused. “Ready?”
Penny dipped her chin. “Ready.”
Mika placed her hand on the knob and turned to Penny. “One last thing. Just remember we can leave anytime. You say the word, and we’re out of here. This is all in your control.” Was she saying it for herself or for Penny?
“Got it,” Penny said.
Mika opened the door. Shige and Hiromi were waiting on the other side. Mika toed off her shoes in the makeshift genkan, and so did Penny. Mika hurtled back in time. To when Shige had purchased the house. She held her mother’s hand while they toured it, the for sale sign still planted on the lawn. Hiromi’s nose inched higher and higher each room they peered into. Everything was wrong. The doors opened and shut instead of sliding in and out. Hiromi didn’t care for the shower-bath combo in the master bedroom, or the pantry in the kitchen, or that the backyard faced north—the laundry would never dry that way.
Now, Mika smiled uneasily, wondering if Penny could feel it, how the walls pulsated with Hiromi’s unhappiness. “Okāsan, Otōsan.” Mother, father, Mika said. “This is Penny.” She almost added my daughter but stopped short.
Hiromi and Shige bowed their heads, and Penny responded in kind. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said.
Silence then, as they all stared at each other. Her mother had dressed up. Wearing her nicest clothes, a semi-fitted dress, two pintucks at the waist. And her father in a suit. Both wore house slippers. The shag carpet had been freshly vacuumed, and the table was set with a dozen elaborate dishes—sesame tofu, rice scooped into perfect balls, asparagus in dashi—all of Mika’s favorites. Hiromi must have cooked for hours.
Her mother spoke first. She opened her hands. “Mi-chan says you a runner.”
“You’re a runner,” Mika corrected her mother.
“That’s what I said,” Hiromi said. “Shige, isn’t that what I said?”
“I am a runner,” Penny cut in. Hiromi fixed an assessing stare on Penny. “I’m here doing a summer training camp at the University of Portland. My school is a division one school. I made the varsity team my freshman year.”
“You’re fast?” Shige asked, a glint of approval in his eyes.
Penny nodded. “Fast and consistent, that’s what’s important.”
“You must be good to be in a program at the University of Portland. I read it’s a sister school of Notre Dame,” Hiromi said, impressed.
“I try,” Penny preened. Taut silence again. They could have been strangers on a bus, the interior filling with recycled air.
“Are you hungry?” Hiromi finally asked.
“Sure,” Penny blurted. “I mean, I could eat, or we could wait. Whatever you prefer.”
“Let’s eat, let’s eat,” Shige said as if he were behind the whole meal. They shuffled to the table. Penny, Mika, and Shige sat down.
“Do you want something to drink? Water, ocha?” Hiromi asked, watching Penny like some sort of curiosity.
“Water is fine,” said Penny. She removed the napkin from the table and spread it over her lap.
“From the tap,” Mika clarified.
Penny grinned, and Mika smiled back. Hiromi filled waters and brought them to the table. “I made all Mika’s favorites from when she was a little girl,” Hiromi said, sliding into a chair. Automatically Mika, Shige, and Hiromi pressed their hands together and said: “Itadakimasu.”
Shige picked up his hashi and began to place some teba shichimi, chicken with a seven-ingredient spice rub, on his plate.
“Go on,” Hiromi said. “Try the asparagus; I made the dashi myself.”
Penny peered down at her lap. Hiromi had only set the table with hashi. Mika popped up from the table and opened the utensil drawer in the kitchen, fishing out a couple of forks. She handed one off to Penny, then kept one for herself.
“You never use hashi?” Hiromi said as if insulted.
“Okāsan,” Mika said in warning. She wondered if her mother blamed her for Penny not being Japanese enough.
“I will show you. This is how I taught Mi-chan.” Shige scooted closer to Penny. “Go on,” he said, his voice rich, warm, and coaxing.
After a beat, Penny picked up the hashi. Mika’s mind tripped, stumbled into a forgotten past. To when they still lived in Japan. In Daito, a small city inside the Osaka Prefecture. She’d been wearing a yellow jumper, kneeling at a low table. A bowl of edamame was in front of her, and she was practicing her hashi. Her parents were in the other room. Arguing. Mika stood and crept over. Her feet just outside the yellow blade of light streaming through the cracked door. I don’t want to live in America, her mother had said, voice thick with entreaty. She’d been dressed in a full kimono.
Once a month, she met a friend, a fellow maiko, for lunch in Kyoto. The two would don their best kimonos and bring their children. Mika remembered playing with a little boy on the restaurant’s floor, her mother’s feet clad in tabi and zōri. They’d returned to find Shige home early. His head hanging low.
You have to find another job with another company, Hiromi insisted, like it was a done deal.
Her father waved an angry hand. He’d been younger too. The lines on his face not as deeply etched. There aren’t any other jobs. This is our only option. We are moving. End of discussion.
Mika leaned against the wall. The house was steel-framed, built to withstand an earthquake or a wife angry with her husband. What will I do there? Hiromi asked plaintively.
You will do your job. You will be a good wife to me and a good mother to our daughter, Shige replied. And Hiromi shut up. She did not have the cultural permission to disobey her husband.
“See, you’re never too old to learn something new,” Hiromi said now, and Mika realized the comment was directed at her. It never failed. Hiromi could always make Mika feel small, as insignificant as a sneeze.
They ate, Penny using the hashi with all the finesse of a doe on ice. But she persevered, and Hiromi watched her with unblinking eyes as if trying to absorb her. In the living room, a phone rang and rang again. “Shige,” Hiromi scolded.
Shige retrieved his phone. “All day, I get calls from telemarketers. They want me to buy this or that.” He silenced it.
“You can block the calls,” Penny said. “Here.” Shige handed over his phone, and Penny tapped a couple of buttons. “You can also add your number to a do-not-call registry,” she said, handing the phone back to Shige.
“You are smart.” Hiromi smiled and squeezed Shige’s forearm.
After dinner, Mika paused in the paneled hallway, watching as Penny wandered through the house, her desire to open the doors Hiromi kept neatly shut burning in her eyes. Penny had come to uncover things. “Which one was your room?” Penny asked.
“That one.” Mika pointed to a door with a brass knob to Penny’s right.
“Can I see it?” Penny asked. Around the corner, Hiromi puttered in the kitchen to the tune of clanking dishes and running water. Shige retired to his armchair, watching the evening news at half the volume he usually did.
“Yeah, I guess,” Mika said because she couldn’t say no. Directly across from them was the lime-green-tiled bathroom where Mika’s father used to unclog the sink with a pair of hashi, all while muttering that Mika had too much hair and used too much mascara. Penny pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was the same. Puke green shag carpet from the living room and hallway. An old milk-glass light fixture that cast a warm yellow light. Just enough space for a futon shoved against a wall and a desk. Mika used to sit at that desk and draw for hours. “There’s not much to look at,” Mika said now. Years ago, Hiromi had stripped the Tiger Beat posters off the walls, the portrait drawings Mika had done.
Penny walked the meager perimeter. “This is where you slept?”
Mika watched her from the doorway, the sight of her old room grabbing her by the throat. “Yep.”
“But you had a bed, right?” Penny stopped near the lumpy navy futon. Above her was Mika’s kindergarten school picture. The first day Hiromi had stood off to the side of the classroom while the other mothers gabbed about their summer trips to Sunriver. She could not find herself at home with them, those moms with skin the color of milk who jazzercised and worked late hours and made meals in the microwave.
“That folds out into a bed,” Mika pointed out.
Caroline had shared pictures of Penny’s room. Cherry blossom wallpaper, which she’d seen in the background of their video chats, still looking pristine and perfect. White substantial furniture. A bed with a frilly canopy. Mika had imagined Caroline and Thomas would give Penny all the things Mika could not afford. But then she remembered Penny at the dining table with Shige, learning to use hashi. Some things money can’t buy.
“You studied here.” Penny was at the desk, fingers trailing over the fake painted grain.
“‘Studied’ is a generous term.” More like plotted her escape. Now, she felt embarrassed she’d ever reached so high. It was the folly of youth, she supposed, to think you were bigger than you were.
Penny gave Mika a half-smile, then pulled open a drawer. Inside were Mika’s notebooks. Her sketch pads. “Can I look?” Penny asked. In her hands was an Arches drawing pad. Mika had paid in change for the sixteen-page notebook. In it was a series of gouache portraits, mostly profiles of people she knew. The first was of Hana, hair twisted back in braids, cheeks turned up to the sun. “Oh my god, are these yours? Did you paint this?”
Mika took the notebook back, snapped it closed, and shoved it back in the drawer. “It’s not that big of a deal. The proportions are all off.” She heard the echo of her mother. Who is that supposed to be, your friend? You made her face too full. She looks fat.
This is why she hated coming here. The walls held too many memories, too many words Mika never wanted to hear again.
“I knew you loved art and painting, but I thought you just, like, appreciated it, not that you could actually do it,” Penny said, gesturing at the closed drawer. “Those are insanely good.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“You should have been exhibiting in the gallery.” Penny folded her arms and her face twisted into a frown.
“I don’t paint anymore.” A knot rose in Mika’s throat, and her eyes stung.
“Why did you stop?” Penny’s gaze cut to Mika, cut through Mika.
Mika looked at her feet and crossed her arms. “I grew up. Money became a thing.” Life beats you down and forces you to discard foolish pursuits for more practical ones. Penny chewed her cheek. She opened her mouth to say something, but Mika beat her to it. “I gave it a go for a while and took some classes freshman year, but it didn’t pan out.” What’s your story? Marcus had asked her.
“You had me freshman year,” Penny said. Mika saw the conclusion her daughter was drawing. That Mika had quit because of Penny.
“I quit before I had you.” Mika touched an end of Penny’s hair, let it slide through her fingers. “Then after, I didn’t want to paint anymore. What can I say? I gave all my colors to you.” She leaned in so they were inches apart, sought to assure Penny that her mother’s failures weren’t hers to bear. “I’d do it again.” Penny smiled. Mika sighed, tired now and emotionally wrung out. “We’d better say goodbye. It’s getting late.” She slipped from the room and found her mother in the kitchen. “We have to go,” Mika announced.
Hiromi set down a tray of milk puddings. Her cool, disappointed eyes trained on Mika. “I made dessert.”
Mika wiped under her nose, saw Penny approach out of the corner of her eye. “Traffic might be bad, and I’m tired.”
Penny stepped forward. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Suzuki. Thank you so much for having me over for dinner. I really loved it.”
All at once, Mika felt guilty. “We’ll come back,” she promised.
“Next Saturday,” Hiromi blurted. “I’m making tsukemono. I could teach you.”
Penny’s chest swelled with excitement. “Really? I’d like that.” She cocked her head at Mika.
“Next Saturday? Your dad is coming into town,” said Mika. And I am going to get balls-to-the-walls drunk with Hana, she mentally added.
Penny frowned, thinking. “Shoot. That’s right.”
“What about a weeknight?” Hiromi said. Mika had forgotten her mother had the tenacity of a bulldog when she wanted something. She remembered her mother white-knuckling the wheel while driving across town in twelve inches of snow to take Mika to dance practice. “Shige would pick you up.”
Penny perked up. “Yes, I want to do that very much.” Too late, Mika realized she hadn’t been invited.
Hiromi’s lips twitched into an almost smile. “I’ll give you my phone number. I know how to text now. I’ll wrap up dessert for you.” Hiromi and Penny exchanged phone numbers, then Hiromi packed up a milk pudding in a sour cream container for Penny.
In the car, Mika drove, winding through the suburbs. She flicked on her blinker to turn onto the main road leading to the highway. “How was that? Okay? Too much?” she asked, staring straight ahead. It was dark now, the brightest stars twinkling in the sky.
“They’re great,” Penny said as she opened the sour cream container and peeked inside. “Your dad is so sweet, and your mom is intense but in a good way, like my running coach back home. Is it really cool if I go there on my own this week?”
Mika paused. She worried Hiromi might trample Penny’s fragile spirit. But Mika’s mother had been different with Penny. Warmer. Lighter. More willing. Mika sped up to get on the highway. She swallowed back her hesitation and said, “Sure. Of course.” Who knew? Maybe this time would be different.
Mika focused on the road, the sky, the infinite dark. She wondered about starting over. If it was possible to begin again. More than anything, she wanted it to be true.