Secrets of the Apple (4 page)

“I drew a picture and Kate made it for me,” she replied distractedly.

“
Fings!
” hollered Jack.

“Yay,
Things
,” Hannah seconded.

Kate picked up a book as Hannah carelessly grabbed the brush. Kate looked her in the eye. “Remember to be careful about the pulling, Hannah.”

“I will, I will,” Hannah said, rolling her eyes as if Kate could not be more ridiculous. She plowed the brush into Kate’s hair, back and forth, up and down, winding her ribbons in twists that would not stay put, Kate wincing at regular intervals.

Kate read
Where the Wild Things Are,
a story Ryoki’s mother had read him so many times that he still knew it by heart. Secretly he would have liked to read to the kids himself, maybe carry them around on his back. Growing up as the only child of two only children, the echoing silences in his vast empty house had made him promise himself a whole baseball team of children, ten at least. But he’d grown up, learned to be realistic, to want less.

Kate’s voice rose and fell, taking her time, giving life to the voices. When she finally read the last hopeful words, Hannah declared Kate’s hair not nearly ready and would Kate please read just one more. Kate read two.

In the middle of the second story Jack leaped up, handed Kate his cup, and began fighting invisible enemies, part knight, part ninja. “Fanks, Kate,” he said, resuming his seat and retrieving his cup.
“When you’re fighting bad guys, someone has to hold your juice,” Kate pronounced sagely.

It wasn’t until the third and final story, when Hannah finally wearied of her brushing, that Ryoki realized he’d been staring at Kate’s hair. It looked so different from the office. He didn’t consider the difference between bleached compact fluorescents and lively incandescent bulbs. He only saw garnet lights winking and shimmering through the shiny mahogany mass. He understood why Hannah wanted to brush and touch it. He wondered what it smelled like, whether it was coarse or soft like his mother’s. His mother told him that as a child he used to ask her every night if he could “hold her hay.” Though he never mentioned it, he did recollect the grainy softness of her curls twining through his fingers as she read to him. Odd to think of that now.

“The End,” Kate said significantly. “Time for B—E—”

“D,” the children said gloomily, hanging their heads before beginning the age-old dodge and weave designed to keep them from bed as long as possible, even accosting Ryoki who made his pinky ring vanish into his eye and come out the back of his head. After that Kate tackled Jack, and Tom snatched up Hannah, slinging them up off their feet and carrying them down the hall and off to bed.

R
yoki was left alone with Brian and suddenly the room felt overly still, as though individual atoms of nitrogen and oxygen had settled down to rest. “I guess Kate was here a lot growing up,” Ryoki said.

“Oh yes, as many summers as we could get her. Before we married, Grace told me how she wanted a girl, but we didn’t get a one. Fortunately my brother had four gals, so we just sort of borrowed Kate. That’s actually why she speaks Japanese.”

“
You
taught her?” This made no sense to Ryoki. Brian’s Japanese syntax and vocabulary were excellent, but his accent was Huckleberry Finn Goes to Yokohama. His father still supplied Brian with a translator if they had to meet with the board. Kate’s accent was excellent, and Ryoki would have pegged her teacher as an upper-crust Tokyo native. But her vocabulary was simpler, more circuitous than Brian’s, particularly in contrast with her precise English. She kept a Japanese business dictionary on her desk.

“Land, no,” Brian said. “But when she was just a little bit, she heard me speaking to your father on the phone. She got all excited and said she wanted to talk like that. A few months later my brother John and I helped sponsor a Japanese doctoral candidate to come to John’s university out in Utah and develop this revolutionary new method for teaching languages to children. My brother’s an English professor and a writer, very interested in language, so it was no trick to talk him into offering up Kate as a guinea pig. I believe Kate was one of her first students, studied with her for a number of years. Then of course, when they moved to São Paulo she had plenty of chance to practice. Big Japanese population there. I expect that solidified it.” He opened his mouth to say more, but got distracted when Tom returned alone.

“The kids unleashed the ‘We never get to see you’ shtick. I think Hannah even worked up a tear or two. Kate got suckered into one more story, which means at least two.” He rolled his eyes then looked at Ryoki. “So, Tanaka, I hear you’re heading down to Brazil soon. You know I spent some time down there with Kate’s family.”

“Did you enjoy it?” Ryoki asked politely, bracing himself for a Napa-esque onslaught.

“Pretty girls,” Tom said noncommittally. “I think Kate really enjoyed it. She knew the people better than I did.”

“So, didn’t care for it then,” Ryoki said.

“You go there, keep your eyes open,” Tom said, his face uncharacteristically serious. Ryoki snickered. A veteran traveler, he understood how to protect himself in a foreign country, and São Paulo wasn’t exactly a war zone. “You laugh,” Tom said, “but I was robbed twice and I was only there a couple of months.”

“Twice?” Brian said. “How is it I didn’t even know about once?”

“Kate was afraid of losing her freedom, so she made me promise to keep it to myself. You know how her mother was. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“Well, what happened?” Brian asked.

Tom laughed sheepishly. “All over the place they have these big shanty neighborhoods—
favelas,
they’re called, makeshift houses cobbled together out of whatever they can scavenge, dirt floors, the whole nine yards. One night we were standing with our backs to a big
favela
and this little guy comes up waving a big knife and talking a mile a minute. I didn’t speak much Portuguese, but I knew what he wanted. I figured I could take him if I had to, so I got between Kate and that knife and handed over all our money. Then I realized that we had no way home, so I got him to give us bus fare. He was reasonable, as thieves go.”

“Kate should’ve known better than that,” Brian said, frowning.

“You know Kate, always so busy people-watching she pays no attention to where she is.”

“What about the second time?” Ryoki asked.

“Yeah, well, the second time was less dramatic. We were just pick-pocketed one night outside a movie theater, just a shove-and-snatch and they didn’t get much. But that time actually bothered me more because I never saw anything. It was probably a group working together and I never saw one of ‘em. They could have had any number of weapons, done whatever they wanted and taken off. I was powerless.” Tom’s eyebrows wrinkled together. “Not seeing them, that knocked the wind out of me. I mean, overall the people there are really warm, some of the nicest I’ve ever met. But there are some desperate ones too, so like I said, keep your eyes open.”

Tom paused, twisted his hair as he always did when he was thinking. “I regret not ratting Kate out, though. For months I woke up sweating from a dream where there’s someone with a knife and I’d start yelling for her to run, but she always just walked along, oblivious. I swear, that girl could be snatched up and locked in the trunk of a car before she noticed a thing.”

“Technically, that could happen in any country,” Ryoki said.

“True,” Tom said, “but São Paulo averages one kidnapping a day.”

“If you know what’s good for you, don’t mention this to your mother,” Brian said, more solemnly than Ryoki thought was warranted. He turned to Ryoki. “Keep your eyes open, son.”

Kate returned to the room, smoothing her hair from the apparent aftermath of a wrestling match. “I had to blow raspberries on their tummies,” she said. “Your kids are getting more spoiled every year.”

“That would be partly your fault,” Tom said.

“Tom was just telling us about your adventures in São Paulo,” Brian said, the twinkle back in his eye.

“‘Adventures’?”

“Said you were robbed at least twice that we know of,” Brian prompted.

“Did he also tell you he used his five words of Portuguese to negotiate a ten-percent discount on our mugging? I knew right then he’d be a good lawyer.” It struck Ryoki strange, even disturbing, that she seemed to consider the whole ordeal a silly prank, didn’t mention the knife, didn’t even appear to remember it.

Grace and Claire returned from the garage, bringing with them the faint chilly smell of outdoors. “Did we miss anything?”

“Tom was just saying he wanted to play cards,” Kate said, looking a gauntlet at Tom who took it up at once.

“House rules, three out of five,” Tom said enthusiastically, already on his feet and moving directly to the game table.

“I have a new strategy,” Kate said. “You have no chance.”

Claire looked at Ryoki. “Don’t let them scare you. This started when they were little over a crucial bout of Chutes and Ladders. Before that I think they mainly used their fists, but Tom kept getting beat up, so Grace made them play board games, battle style.”

“We’re still hoping they’ll grow out of it,” Grace said resignedly.

“Care for a wager, Kate?” Tom asked.

“Nope, just want to beat you.”

“If Tom wins, Kate has to play and sing for us. If Kate wins, Tom has to whistle the national anthem while tap dancing in his boxer shorts,” Claire said firmly.

“Bit harsh, honey,” Tom said. “Why can’t I just sing like Kate?”

“Because your singing peels the scum off the shower, sweetheart.”

“I’m not
that
bad.”

“Baby, I’m still with you in spite of that noise. That’s proof of my undying love,” she said. Tom tried to look hurt, but you can’t fight truth.

“For the greater good, I accept the terms. Kate?”

“Agreed,” she said.

Ryoki had recently developed a great sympathy for any man caught in his underwear, and took his seat silently rooting for Tom.

“Cards” may have begun its life as Rook, but Porter house rules had gradually transformed it into a noisy, fast-paced, three-deck game that required four players and a minimum of one referee to throw fuzzy dice at anybody getting out of line. The first game was a disaster for Ryoki, who entered play carefully and conscientiously, trying to memorize the rules and remain polite in an impolite game. But by the second round he had caught the rude logic and began to think the game could be easily marketed. Brian played with an amused smile, more often than not giving up his cards to another player, like a father handing out treats to his kids. Kate and Tom played for blood.

At the end of four games, Kate and Tom had two apiece. “There’s a tutu in the dress-up box. I for one am not keen to see your shorts,” Kate said.

“What makes you so confident?”

“I am about to shock and awe,” she said, fanning herself with her cards.

By the middle of the fifth game, Kate was beating everyone soundly with a new tactic that would likely affect games from then on. But, inexplicably, Tom began to gain, pulling it out of the fire for the win.

“Shenanigans!” Kate hollered when the last card was thrown.

“What?” Tom said innocently.

“Your right eye is twitching.”

“Did you catch me cheating?”

“The numbers don’t add—”

Tom cut her off. “Purely circumstantial evidence, Kate. Innocent until proven guilty.”

Kate narrowed her eyes before exchanging a
look
with Claire
.
The two women started to giggle with the sweetness of a talking doll in a horror flick. Ryoki wondered if Tom would have been better off losing.

“Tom, I have a picture of you naked in the tub,” Kate said.

“I was three,” he said, still basking in his victory.

“Actually, five, and I’m friends with your boss’s daughter,” Kate said.

“So? What could she do?” Ten percent of the color drained from Tom’s face, but he soldiered out a grin.

“I have the general email for the whole office. That picture would make a dandy screensaver,” Claire said.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Kate said delightedly.

Tom was done in, but he didn’t dare back down, not entirely. “How about we split the difference. I’ll tap dance and whistle with my pants on, and Kate will play and not sing.”

Claire was the toughest sell, but reluctantly gave in. Tom let out a long, grateful breath and stood in front of the fireplace where he half whistled, half hummed an atonal “Star Spangled Banner” while dancing a sleepy foot, knee jerk shuffle step. Ryoki laughed until tears welled in his eyes. He was still trying to slyly brush them away when Kate settled down at the piano.

She played a couple of scales to limber up her fingers before looking up. “Would you like to hear what the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ really sounds like?”

“Surprise us,” Brian said, leaning back, almost burrowing into his chair. Kate’s gaze swept over the room, resting briefly on Ryoki, whose palms turned moist for no reason he could fathom. Without taking out any music she turned her eyes to the keys and began to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Ryoki rubbed his hands on his knees, sitting back and smiling—don’t be too critical, he told himself, just enjoy the ambiance and the little family show. She played the childish tune without pretense or fanfare, pausing at the end. Ryoki would have started to clap and laugh at her joke, but her hands stayed on the keys and her expression remained detached as though listening to some inner voice. Her fingers moved again and the melody began to unwind, embroidering around itself until Ryoki recognized Mozart’s
12 Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman,”
a favorite of his father’s.

Ryoki had always been moved by music, humming the correct intervals almost as soon as he could talk. He inherited his perfect pitch from his father, Hiroshi, who sang to his son before bed whenever he was home, and listened to music every day of his life, only the best from classical to jazz, most particularly on piano.

Unaware of his son’s musical interest, Hiroshi enrolled Ryoki in a rigorous judo program at the age of four, over the years insisting on a broad mix of martial arts training both to protect him and help him develop the mental and physical discipline that would prepare him for adulthood. Ryoki worked hard and excelled, as was his nature. When Hiroshi discovered his son picking out simple melodies on the piano at the age of five, he found an exacting teacher with a morning and evening practice strategy, and again Ryoki worked hard and excelled. This time however, Ryoki practiced out of pure fascination for the magic sound of notes rubbing together.