How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [40]
“Was it her heart?”
I nodded. “Poor little Suki. Always she was happy one.”
“That’s terrible.” Sue put her hand on mine.
She did not know how terrible. Sue did not know the bond of a sibling. Not with Mike. For this I would always be sorry. Nonetheless, I did not want to upset her with my sadness. “Tokidoki, huh? We know coming for long, long time.” I smiled at my daughter. “Now you take me Commissary or what?”
MIRAMAR WAS RIGHT DOWN the road from where Sue worked, past car dealerships and furniture wholesalers. I looked at the disabled jets on show from the street. “I live here so long and never go single air show or museum.”
“I didn’t know you were interested in jets.” Sue drove my car carefully, unused to the controls.
“Nobody ask me, do they?” The gate guard saw my decal and waved us through. Exhaustion tried to take over, but I resisted.
All the way there, past Marines playing softball and washing their cars on lunch breaks, I tried to find the right words to tell her about my worsening illness and Japan and found words for everything else instead. My heart beat unsteadily. Deep breaths. Sue chattered about this and that, sneaking glances at me.
Perhaps I should simply say it. I am probably going to die in the next few weeks.Will you go to Japan for me? She would crash the car.
We parked in a handicapped space, me hanging up my blue placard. “People give me dirty look all time,” I said as we got out. “Think I not in wheelchair, nothing wrong me. Look nothing wrong with you, either.” I looked at Sue’s arms, her biceps so well toned. Like that Madonna singer. Elegant women never used to have muscles like that. “Your arm big like man.” I squeezed.
“That’s what happens when you don’t have a man around the house.” She laughed shortly. “Maybe that’s why I’m single.”
I had not meant to insult her. My head spun a little and I took hold of a cart, leaning hard on it.
It seemed I could barely open my mouth without Sue taking it the wrong way. For Sue’s senior prom, her father had bought her a treat: a big makeover. Hair, manicure, makeup. The works. I was a little jealous. It had been at least thirty years since I’d had anything like that done. Me, who used to visit the hairdresser weekly, had been fending with home perm and color kits since Charlie left the Navy, saving money for the family.
“I do your hair. Save hundred dollars.”
“No way, Mom. The last time you permed it, it looked like I stuck my finger in a light socket.”
Her expensive hairdresser did her hair in a style unsuited to her round face, which was shaped just like mine. I took one look at it and blurted out, “Make your face fat.” Maybe I should have told her before she put on her ice-green Cinderella dress and was all ready to go, but I thought she still had time to fix it. I wanted her to look nice. Of course, I didn’t think she was ugly—that would be like calling myself ugly. Mothers were the only ones you could depend on to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.
Sue’s eyes had filled with tears. I hoped her mascara wouldn’t run. For a second I thought she would curse at me. Instead she sniffled, her tears drying up even as her face reddened under the makeup. “Thank you for your kind advice.” She left the house without another word as her date, Craig, came up the front walk.
“You’re too harsh, Shoko,” Charlie had said. It was as close to criticism of me as he would get.
“What matter? Nobody listen.” If my own mother had told me this, I would have taken her advice in the spirit in which it was meant.
I THOUGHT once Sue was grown, I’d stop being scared for her. But I couldn’t stop. She still wasn’t happy, fretting over unseen worries. I wondered what secrets she carried that she kept from her mother. I doubted she thought about what secrets I had.
The Commissary cart had a squeaky wheel. I had to push down harder on one side to make it stop. “You come dinner tomorrow?”
“Sure. Why don’t we get a frozen lasagna so you don’t have to cook?” Sue walked beside me, slowly.