How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [62]
The last time I went on a date had been two years earlier, with a man who rented the house across the street from my parents. Thank God he moved soon afterward.
Mom had called me up, eager. “You never guess who in Larramie house. Good-looking guy. Single!”
“And?” I had closed my eyes in dread.
“And I go over there, tell all about you. You most beautiful girl ever. Could marry big-time businessman if live in Japan.” Instead of Craig, I heard silently.
“Mom, of course you say that. You’re my mother.” I imagined her chasing the poor man around his cement front patio, moving boxes still in his hands. Date my daughter.
“I show him picture. He interested. Eyes get big.”
I was afraid to ask which picture. Probably her favorite, from when I was nineteen. I had long hair down my back and a seductive smile. The best photo I’d ever taken, or ever would take. “Girls most beautiful at this age,” Mom had said when she saw it. “Then go down the hill.”
“He gonna give you call, okay?” Mom was excited. “He own Internet company.”
I made a skeptical noise. “That could mean anything. Anyone can open an Internet company.” I agreed to go out with him anyway.
Jake met me at the sushi restaurant he had suggested. He was unremarkable: dark brown hair, medium build, brown eyes. “You’re even prettier than your picture.”
I laughed. “I was afraid she showed you my junior high school portrait with the bad perm.”
“She did.” He pulled out my chair. “Just kidding. No, as soon as your mom came over and started talking about her daughter, I knew I had to give it a shot. I have a thing for Japanese women.”
Oh. He was one of those. “You otaku?” It meant someone who was perhaps unhealthily obsessed with Japanese culture. The word had negative connotations, but I used it anyway. I had met men like him before, who thought my mom had raised me right, that I would trail behind them in public and be some sort of sex slave who also kept an immaculate home.
He blanched. “No. Well, maybe a little. Wasn’t your dad?”
That gave me pause. Dad had pursued a woman who couldn’t speak his language. I didn’t want to date anyone like my father. “Maybe, but he knows better now. I’m American through and through. So’s my mom.”
“Didn’t seem that way.” He smirked. “I can tell.”
I got up. “A real Japanese girl would have sat here, pretending to like you. I prefer the American method. Direct.” Then I left.
My mother wouldn’t speak to me for a week. “I no can go outside,” she moaned. “No want see Jake.”
“Mom, he’s a renter. Don’t you want me to date someone with his own house?” I knew that would get her to leave me alone.
“That true.” Mom sniffed. “Maybe no good anyway.”
THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT BROUGHT coffee, tea, and hot chocolate packets. I chose a coffee and powdered hot chocolate to make myself a mocha. It tasted like thick, powdery chocolate sauce, and something else I couldn’t place. “This is different than what we have at home.”
Toshiro dipped his tea bag up and down in hot water. “No offense. You must be butter-kusai. Not used to things with no butter.”
I smiled. “Helena, remember Obāchan saying, ‘Butter-kusai! Get in shower’?” We smelled like butter because we ate so much of it.
“Obāchan is butter-kusai by now, too.” Helena stuffed her sandwich into her mouth.
I still couldn’t place what was in it. It must have been an ingredient I was unfamiliar with, or a slightly different way of making the hot chocolate mix.
“But do you like it?” Toshiro pressed.
I nodded.
“Then that is all that matters.” He sipped his tea.
I realized Toshiro was correct.
KUMAMOTO CITY WAS in Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. We bade good-bye to Toshiro, who handed me his business card. “If I may be of assistance, do not hesitate.” He bowed. I bowed back. Then he extended his hand and shook mine. “I mean this, Suiko-san.”
“Thank you.”
“Best of luck.” He looked toward the ground. I wished for a moment that the Japanese were cheek-kissers. Instead, with another bow, Toshiro disappeared