Secrets of the Apple (3 page)

“Brian, we’ve raised a pack of savages,” Grace said, looking apologetically at Ryoki, but he was distracted. Why did
Kate
and
vacation
keep coming out in the same breath?

“What do you mean, Tom?” he asked.

“Oh, Mom called Kate a few weeks ago and talked her into coming to stay for a couple of months, to get out of the snow in Salt Lake. But the minute she got here, their bilingual paralegal quit without notice—”

“I was asked to assist Mr. Tanaka,” Kate chimed in, “only to discover I’d given up my vacation for this punk kid in a bespoke suit who speaks perfect English.” She looked slantways at Ryoki with a raised eyebrow and quirky smile that made his stomach flip. In that dress she could have called him a lap dog without offending him.

Tom sat back, snickering. “Classic bait and switch,” he said.

Ryoki looked at Kate sitting next to dark-haired, carelessly handsome Tom and suddenly the obvious clicked into place. This had to be the famous Kate
Porter
, Brian’s niece, whose visits to her uncle’s house had never happened to coincide with his own. He’d always known she existed in a blurred theoretical way, still retained scant memories of the Porter boys mentioning a cousin who appeared to hold the position of sister in the family lore. In fact, he vaguely remembered tuning out as his mother clattered on about the lovely Miss Porter, or was that her Pretty American Friend, some other anonymous girl she would have just loved for him to meet? But the memory was thin and smoky, a lifetime ago, another existence, before his marriage and the ensuing fiasco. Ryoki tried not to squirm in his chair. That little first day chat would have been exceedingly helpful right about now.

“Did your father get tangled up at work? I think I would’ve heard if he was sick,” Kate said.

Ryoki shook his head and opened his mouth to elaborate, but there was a burst of laughter from the other end of the table and Kate turned to hear the joke. Ryoki concentrated on his plate and unpacked the memory of their first meeting, when she had called him “Ryoki.” How had she addressed him since? He realized he had no idea; he had paid absolutely no attention to what impression he might have made.

“Ryoki.”

He looked up at Tom’s wife Claire, the least familiar voice at the table. Even after all the time he’d spent in America, it still jarred him when someone he hardly knew used his first name.

“Your English is so beautiful. How did you learn?” Claire asked.

“Except that he calls me ‘Pink’ half the time, not sure what
that
is,” Kate mumbled, almost to herself.

Ryoki busied himself with his napkin, trying to remember when he might have called her Pink out loud. He vowed to be more careful, though he would catch himself three more times before finally breaking the habit.

“Ryoki’s always had an amazing vocabulary, even when we were kids,” Tom said. “Hey, do you remember that time—”

“Tom!” Grace said, giving both Tom and Ryoki the mom’s glare of death. Clearly she hadn’t forgotten the day she’d caught him teaching her boys to curse in three languages. He could have pointed out that Tom had taught him a couple of interesting things, but now was not the time. He smiled at Grace, all innocence and saccharine before looking at Claire to explain his English, a question he had been asked a hundred times. Unfortunately, Kate cut across him.

“His English is actually much more sophisticated than my Japanese. He uses clichés like a native,” Kate said. Ryoki wasn’t sure if she meant that as a compliment or not. “He really doesn’t need me to translate,” she added.

“I don’t speak Portuguese,” Ryoki said seriously. “Some of the documents are in Portuguese.” She may not feel the same obligation to him as to his father, and he couldn’t afford to let her wiggle out.

“I remember when you were born. You know that?” Grace said. Ryoki cringed. “Your mother was here visiting us in her sixth month and there were complications, so she stayed. You spent your first month right here in this house. We all took turns walking the floor. I’d never seen a baby with so much bendy black hair.” Grace smiled at him fondly, closing her mouth, story finished. Ryoki let out a breath. That wasn’t too bad. Last time she’d regaled him with all sorts of delivery room drama, details of which he could have spent his entire life in gleeful ignorance.

“I speak English because my mother was a half, born and raised in the United States,” Ryoki said, looking at Claire. “I grew up speaking English and Japanese at home. She was very adamant about that.”

“What’s a ‘half’?” Claire asked, the question itself containing an innate sense of democratic superiority that Ryoki often encountered in the United States. He looked at Claire’s heavy gold necklace and soft manicured hands and wondered if Americans recognize they participate in a fictitious egalitarianism.

“I mean my mother is only half Japanese. My grandmother eloped with an American Air Force pilot and they moved to the States.”

“That’s a relief,” Kate said. “You made it sound like she’d misplaced some crucial body parts.” Her joke did not reach her eyes, making Ryoki wonder if she understood what it meant to be “half” in Japan. His mother flaunted her half status, always pronouncing Ryoki with her hard American “R,” a tease that stuck, continually goading his grandmother into correcting her with a tightlipped smile, “
Lyoki,
his name is
Lyoki.
” His father took the middle ground, generally calling him Son. Early on Ryoki learned to answer to anything.

“I understand your grandfather was a tall man,” Brian said. “Gave your mother her blue eyes and I’m guessin’ your height too.”

“He was six-foot four. I’m only six-two, same as Tom.” Ryoki had never met either of his maternal grandparents. For him they existed merely as figures in a black and white wedding photo, dead before his birth. In the picture his American grandfather towered over his tiny Japanese grandmother, almost floating in her pouffy Western-style wedding dress. Because of that picture he’d always envisioned his grandfather as a gentle, slow-witted giant, protecting his miniature princess.

“When you were four, I remember you throwing all your weight against the doors at the mall, to hold them open for your mother and me.” Grace said. “Your mother said she was raising you to be a gentleman just like her father. I thought it was darling, but she said a few Japanese mothers had told her off for making a little boy work so hard.”

“How did your parents meet?” Claire asked, her eyes shining, perhaps anticipating a grocery store romance, soulmates defying distance and culture.

“An arranged marriage,” Ryoki said simply.

Claire’s head snapped back an inch. “Oh.” She cleared her throat, clearly aware she’d been rude, but not sure how to proceed. “I didn’t realize—advanced nation—I imagine parents know their children best,” she said, her cheeks pinking.

“It still goes on,” Kate said. “We hadn’t been roommates a week before I knew you were perfect for Tom, so the first chance I got I dragged you on a road trip to Stanford. Before we got there, I called to make him get a haircut and told him exactly what to wear, practically gift-wrapped him,” Kate laughed smugly. “If it weren’t for me, Tom would still be spending Friday nights chugging beer with a bunch of smelly guys.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tom grinned wickedly at his wife, but Ryoki caught a certain softness in his eyes and quickly looked away, embarrassed to have seen such naked affection in the face of his old friend.

“Well, Ryoki, I don’t believe you’ve ever been up through Wine Country,” Brian said.

Ryoki had never been to Wine Country because he didn’t care about it.

“Unfortunately not,” he said.

“Well, you need to do that while you’re here. Kate, why don’t you take him tomorrow?”

Kate dropped her fork, flinching when it clattered onto the china plate. For a rare instant her face was wide open and Ryoki could almost see her reaching for a dentist appointment or a major surgery before her expression closed up. “Tomorrow would be good, if you’re free,” she said, looking hard at Ryoki, giving him an out.

He could have easily worked through Saturday and Sunday too, had actually intended to, but he was acutely aware that he hadn’t shown Brian’s niece proper respect and he seriously needed to make it up. Besides, that morning he’d awakened for the third time with his keyboard waffled across his cheek. Eventually the drool was going to make the keys stick.  Suddenly spending a few hours with a pretty girl, even an off-limits one, felt like too great a temptation. “That works,” he said. “Ten, maybe?”

“I’ll pick you up,” she said. Ryoki pursed his lips, tried to form a tactful response. He preferred to drive, loved it when he had the time. On the off-chance he could squeeze in the opportunity, he’d rented a sporty little BMW coupe just for the sheer pleasure of speeding through the Northern California hills. That coupe would be reason enough. But there was also that other element, the one you weren’t supposed to mention in the U.S.

He thought of all the little old ladies with their shrunken heads and teased hair barely poking over the steering wheel as they chauffeured their aged husbands around town.
I’m the man. The man is
supposed
to drive.

He opened his mouth to offer his own car, but she had already turned to talk to Tom, whose enthusiasm for Napa Valley burbled large right up until the plates were cleared and Ryoki had missed his chance. Kate invited Tom and Claire, twice, nearly wheedling the second invitation, but sadly they were returning to L.A. early in the morning and couldn’t be delayed.

A little after eight everyone adjourned to the large family room, preferring big leather chairs and comfy sofas to the arch formality of the living room. They had just gotten settled when a low rumble radiated from the depths of the cavernous house. At first Ryoki thought they must have an entire kindergarten in full stampede, complete with clouds of dust and get along little doggies. Instead two children appeared, a girl and a boy, Hannah and Jack, four and three respectively. A month ago Tom had emailed Ryoki a photo of his children at Disneyland, yanking Goofy’s ears while two desperate security people tried to drag them away without traumatizing anyone.

“He was jumping on me and kicking me and biting me and pulling my hair—”

“I didn’t bite,” Jack said flatly.

A harried-looking teenager came running up from behind, clutching a plastic sword that hummed and lit up blue as she handed it to Jack, who made a face at his sister. “I towd you you can’t hide it fowevoe.”

The babysitter had what looked like grape juice on her white sweater and the twist in her hair had tipped precariously to one side, giving the overall impression that she might fall over if she strayed too far from the wall. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They really wanted to say goodnight.”

Tossing her blonde curls, Hannah looked like a magazine angel, but no one who knew her was taken in. All business, she marched to the center of the room, carrying a stack of books, a hairbrush and a few ribbons. Her dark-haired little brother followed behind, wearing a horned Viking helmet, holding a sword in his left hand and carefully balancing a green frog cup in his right. Jack looked at Ryoki very seriously. “If I spilw, I have to stay in da kitchen,” he said, gently placing his cup on an elaborate inlaid chess table over which Ryoki and Tom had spent many happy hours locked in mortal combat. Claire hurried to move it to a more suitable location as both kids commenced chanting, “Story! Story! Story!”

Such perfect unison did not come without practice.

Claire went toward her children, holding up her hands for quiet and trying to look stern, but Ryoki recognized a soft touch when he saw one. “Have you been giving Melanie a hard time?”

“No,” Hannah said, shrugging her shoulders, eyes wide and blue as the sky.

Ryoki caught a moment of indecision on Claire’s face; to punish or not to punish?

“We just want a story.” On cue both children pulled out the hundred-watt grins, exposing Jack’s big front gap, the most lethal weapon in his arsenal.

“One story, then bed. Deal?” Claire said quickly.

“Deal!” they cried in unison.

Claire looked at the sitter and took pity. “I’ll take you home, Mel. Tom will read to the kids and put them to bed.”

“No.
Kate.
We already decided,” Hannah said.

Hannah looked up at her mother, face set, the very image of Kate, despite her blonde hair.

“Okay,” Kate said. “One story, let’s go.”

She took their shoulders to usher them down the hall as Claire and Grace led the sitter in the opposite direction. Ryoki, fearing Tom’s promise to describe all the haunted hotels in Napa Valley, suddenly declared a keen desire to hear a bedtime story and hastily produced two silk handkerchiefs, making one vanish into the other so the children would cut and run in his direction. “That’s prolonging,” Kate said, looking betrayed. Brian and Tom kept quiet, eyes flicking from Kate to Ryoki to see who would win.

“Do you want to see five dollars turn into twenty?” Ryoki asked, keeping his eyes on the children. He’d actually brought a couple of tricks on the off-chance he got to see Hannah and Jack.

“You gotta see this, Kate,” Hannah said, snatching Kate’s hand. “After that we can read our story. But we have to sit in our club because we need to do your hair.”

As he performed his trick, Ryoki saw Brian flip Tom a quarter. “Knew he’d pull it off,” Tom whispered.

“Openin’ skirmish,” Brian answered. “Long haul, my money’s still on—”

Jack squealed and Ryoki missed the clarifying word.

Kate and the children moved to the floor to sit in the crook of the grand piano. Hannah carefully arranged her books around the piano leg, laying the ribbons neatly side by side. She noticed Ryoki watching. “This is our club, Kate’s and mine.” Having made that clear, she returned to her work, placing the brush diagonally over the ribbons. At last she settled with her knees tucked to the side, her princess nightgown frothing all around her, yards and yards of satin and sheer, practically a ball gown.

“That’s quite a nightgown, Hannah,” Ryoki said.