How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [61]
When Craig began staying out with his friends and sleeping in instead of getting up with our baby, I knew it was coming. When he told me, when Helena was two, that he was quitting college to be an actor, I didn’t do much to stop him. When he said it would be easier to live in L.A. than commute from San Diego, I agreed. The relationship petered out as quietly as it should have when we began.
THERE WAS THE SOUND of movement to my right and a male voice. “Excuse me?”
I looked up from the airline magazine. A young Japanese man inclined his head and smiled. Though historically I had been attracted only to all-white Wonderbreads, I couldn’t help noticing that he had beautiful straight teeth and skin like Werther’s cream toffees. I blushed.
“I believe I’m sitting next to you,” he said in accented English, sliding his slim frame into the seat on the aisle.
He had to be twenty-five, tops. I hadn’t been twenty-five for a hundred years. I smiled briefly at him and concentrated on the magazine.
Helena leaned over me. “I’m Helena and this is my mom. We’re here to find our Japanese relatives.”
“Really?” The man smiled. “Have they been lost long?”
“Since before I was born,” I said quietly. My tongue felt thick from fatigue.
He extended his hand. “Toshiro.”
“Suiko.” I almost never identified myself by my Japanese name, not even in college, when doing so would have been chic.
We shook hands. His was very warm.
“Your English is great,” Helena said. “Does everyone in Japan speak it?”
“We learn it in school. And I took classes from an American. Now I work for an English-teaching company.” He buckled his seat belt. “I’m going home for a visit, like you.”
Like me. “We’re from the States.”
He inclined his head. “Your ancestral home. I see you are mixed. You are part Japanese and part what?”
Somehow his question wasn’t intrusive, the way it would if an American like Marcy asked it. Japanese ask personal questions to get to know you, I recalled from the little guidebook I’d brought along in my purse. It had also said that Japanese didn’t talk to strangers unless they were introduced; yet this man was. Perhaps it was because he taught foreigners. I relaxed. “Irish.”
“Ireland.” He clapped his hands. “I’ve always wanted to go. Have you been?”
I shook my head. “My father’s family came to the States generations ago. We don’t have any family there.”
Helena nudged me. “That’s a good idea, Mom. Ireland next year. We can find our long-lost relatives on the Internet.”
Toshiro and I laughed at this. “Your daughter is bright, yes?”
“That’s what they tell me,” Helena said. “Bright as a button.”
Toshiro rested his hand on the armrest between us. His fingers were touching my arm. “Tell me how these relatives of yours got lost.”
I inhaled. Talking to strangers made me uncomfortable. I could talk about the weather or the high price of fuel, but nothing of the real me. The real me was a horrifying swamp of insecurity. “It’s complicated.”
“You have a captive audience.” He grinned. “Perhaps I can help.”
I glanced at him. He waited. Whether he was genuinely interested or only mildly bored, I suddenly didn’t mind telling him everything. Perhaps it was because I wouldn’t see him again. I told him all about my mother, my uncle, and me. My job and my wishes to teach. I talked until I needed a glass of water and Helena was staring at me with complete surprise at all I was revealing.
“Taro sounds like a difficult case.” He kept asking questions whose answers I didn’t know. Where my uncle lived, why he wouldn’t talk to my mother after all these years had elapsed.
His eyes flicked from my gesticulating hands to my face. The flight and this conversation would end in one hundred