The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [143]
“I guess we could look around,” he said. “Surely there must be some good a couple of science geeks could do.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
I pushed the paddle into the reeds, seeking to float into deeper water, and the motion startled two herons, who rose up suddenly from where they’d been hidden in the marsh, lifting on their powerful wings, their legs trailing behind them as they gained purchase on the sky. We watched them soar, and rise above the trees, and float away.
“This is such a beautiful place,” Yoshi said.
It was beautiful a few hours later, too, when we got into the Impala and drove through the countryside I knew by heart, down the low ridge between the lakes to the outskirts of Elmira, going to meet Iris. I’d expected a house something like the historical society house: nineteenth century, full of heavy furniture and antimacassars and little glass dishes with stale hard candy. It was Iris’s voice, I suppose, its querulous quality, that had me picturing this. So I was shocked, driving up, to find myself traveling down a long gravel driveway toward a contemporary house, full of windows overlooking a wooded lot. I parked beneath an ancient ginkgo tree with its fan-shaped leaves, and admired the clean lines of wood on the patio, the stone walls and endless glass.
The woman who opened the door was about my mother’s age, thin, her hair dyed a light, even brown.
“Are you Lucy?” she asked. Her hand was dry, fleeting, in mine. “Come in, please. I’m Carol, Iris’s daughter-in-law. And this is my husband, Ned.”
Ned was tall, genial, with sparse gray hair and a warm smile and no trace of the family eyes. His were brown, and shadowed.
He shook my hand, too. “I’m the oldest,” he said. “My brother, Keith, is in Florida. My mother lives here; she has a separate apartment that’s attached to the house. She spends part of the winter down south with Keith. So it works out.”
He was talking fast, nervous, I realized, and Carol put one hand on his arm, a gesture that seemed to travel through him like a wave, calming him. He looked at her and smiled.
“This is Yoshitaka Aioki,” I said.
To my surprise Ned gave a slight bow and said, “Konichiwa,” and Yoshi, after a moment’s surprise, replied in Japanese, and then the three of them were conversing in an easy, delighted way, the language moving too quickly for me to follow very well. But I gathered that Ned and Carol had spent many years living just outside of Kyoto.
“Ned was sent there by his company,” she said, turning to me, switching to English. “We thought we’d stay four years at most. But we fell in love with the place, and ended up being there for fifteen years, right up until Ned retired. Come on in,” she went on, gesturing to the living room, which opened off the stone foyer, a room with a tall ceiling and a sweeping wall of windows overlooking the trees. “As you can see, we brought home a lot of souvenirs.”
At first, though, I couldn’t see. The room was furnished very simply, with low white couches and wooden tables. Then I noticed the beautiful collections of tea and sake sets on the shelves that flanked the fireplace, and the Hiroshige prints framed and hanging on the far wall.
“Have a seat,” Ned said, settling himself on one of the low stuffed chairs as Carol left the room.
Yoshi and I perched on the edge of a white sofa. “Thanks. This room is beautiful. So simple and elegant.”
Ned smiled. “Believe it or not, we have a tatami room upstairs.”
We talked about Japan for a few more minutes; mostly Ned talked while I watched him, looking in vain for any family resemblance. Like my father, Ned had been drafted, but the war had ended before he was sent to Vietnam. He had stayed on in the army for four years, learning to repair airplane engines, which fascinated him so much he got a degree in engineering once he was discharged. He met Carol the day before his thirtieth birthday when she sat down next to him on a bus. They had three children, all grown; only the youngest, Julie, who was about my age, was still living in the area.