How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [88]
Dad was still at work, but he called and told my mother to grab a few clothes. She did not comply. Mom ran around, crazed, throwing stuff into boxes. Mike came home to help.
“Take this next,” she barked at him. He moved everything to a neighbor’s yard—all my mother’s Japanese possessions, suitcases, some food, my garbage bag full of stuffed animals. The neighbors watched benignly.
The last load consisted of only a Japanese-English dictionary. Mike took my hand and walked me across to where the neighbors had set up lawn chairs to watch the fire’s progress, amid all of our stuff.
A TV news reporter and cameraman caught up with him. “Here we have someone escaping with only the few possessions he could grab,” the reporter intoned, thrusting the microphone into my brother’s face. “What do you have there, sir?”
Mike hefted aloft the book. “A dictionary.”
The reporter looked startled. “And what will you do if your house burns down?”
Mike shrugged. “Rebuild. We’re insured. Maybe it’ll be two stories this time.”
“Oh,” the reporter said, turning back to the camera.
Even I was old enough to giggle at the absurdity, us standing in the middle of the street holding a dictionary while a fire raged on the mountain.
I LOOKED AT MIKE, the mystery, here once again when family was required. “Do you like your new job?” I ventured.
“It’s all right.” He nodded. “Except for people buying reptiles and not knowing how to take care of them. Idiots.” He shook his head. “How was Japan?”
I listened for jealousy, but heard mild curiosity. “We saw Taro.”
He nodded again. “The uncle who hated Mom? She told me that’s why you went.”
“Yup.” I smiled. “Has it been crazy here?”
“A little. But it’ll be all right.” He sounded convinced. “Mom’s too stubborn to give up, you know?” He slurped down half his coffee in a gulp.
“I know.”
Dr. Su appeared, wearing pale blue scrubs and paper shoe covers making whispery rustling noises.
Dad was alert immediately, his eyes bright.
“It was successful.” Dr. Su sat next to Dad. He went on about recovery and infection and how she wasn’t out of the woods yet. “She’s in the recovery room.” He put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. “You can go in and look at her if you like. She’s not awake.”
“I’ll go see her.” Dad got up and limped down the hallway. We followed, overtaking him. Mike and I slowed our pace so Dad wasn’t walking behind us. Whenever we went anywhere as a family, Mom would creep along, and Dad would walk quickly in front of her, saying, “Hurry up, Mommy!” as though she were a dawdling toddler.
“Go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Dad was embarrassed, exactly as Mom had been.
“No hurry, Dad.” I smiled at him. “You’re going in first.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, Mom became more alert. She had oxygen tubes up her nose and wires everywhere. Monitors showed her heart beating at a steady, reassuring rate. I settled into a chair and pulled a blanket over my legs. A nurse asked if I needed anything.
“Sue?” Mom’s voice came hoarsely.
I bent over her. She opened one eye, her pupil trying to focus. “I’m here.”
“You see Taro?”
I nodded. It felt hard for me to speak, too. “He gave me what you asked for.”
Mom’s hands reached for mine, her rounded nails stripped of coral polish. Our hands were alike, with long, straight fingers. A surgeon’s hands, or an artist’s, she would tell me. Not the knobby short fingers of my father. “Only for just in case. No worry.”
I nodded again. I reached into my big tote bag, touching the smooth lacquered box. “Taro sent this to you.” I showed it to her.
Her eyebrows went up. “I thought thrown away! Where find?”
“I don’t know how he had it.” I set the box on the bed and took out the photos, holding each one up. “These are pictures he sent you.”
“Who all these people?”
“Family.” I tried to name them all. “Here’s Suki and her son, Yasuo.”
She closed her eyes again. “Taro tell story of Ronin?”
I couldn’t think of who that was. “Is that a cousin?”
“No. Not cousin.”