“I think that’s true no matter where you go.”
“Anyway, this one time we were driving back from a mission conference in Omaha, headed north on Route 2. It was getting late, the wind was kicking up, whiteout conditions. And we were running on fumes. We spotted a gas station and pulled off. We had no idea where we were. But I remember that they still had Christmas decorations around the store window. And there were two cats curled up under the Budweiser sign. So we called it Two Cats, Nebraska.”
The horse snorted and nuzzled his hands. “Sorry,” Kevin said. “Out of carrots.”
“Two Cats, Nebraska,” Elly said.
“Yeah. Now that’s what I tell myself whenever I start to second-guess a place I’ve never been without going there first and seeing for myself.”
Elly nodded. Nebraska, she repeated to herself.
Melanie’s Accord hummed over Point of the Mountain and down into Utah Valley. Melanie glanced at Elly. “Kevin didn’t look like a jerk.”
“He was nice. He figured out who I was related to right off.”
“See, you always get the smart ones. I end up with the jock prowling for a trophy wife.” Another look. “Girl, sometimes I can read you like a children’s book. Other times you’re a cipher.”
“I’ve never been to Nebraska.”
“What?”
“Kevin went on a mission to Nebraska. He was telling me about how it wasn’t like anything he’d expected. He had that look in his eyes, the same vibe I get from gaijin missionaries in Japan. Chalmers Ch r has it. All those RMs who show up for 301 do. They’ve stumbled into this world they never knew existed. I think a lot of it comes from never having lived in a really big city before. But it’s the culture, the language, the geography, everything that is so not Idaho or Utah or Arizona or California. And then getting transferred to some little town where the people have never seen a real live white guy before.” She said to Melanie, “How about you?”
“It was different and it was interesting.” She shrugged. “I know what you’re talking about, Elly. But I think it’s more a guy thing. Every guy wants to boldly go where no one has gone before. El Dorado is out there, and he’ll be the one who finds it. That’s why they buy SUVs to commute to work in.”
Elly nodded. “Still, someday I’d like to go to Nebraska. Metaphorically speaking.”
Melanie laughed. “Elly, if you really want to go where no man has gone before, you can always get yourself married and get pregnant.”
Chapter 8
Brief Encounter
C onnor had the basement apartment of his Aunt Wanda’s cottage to himself. He was responsible for his share of the utilities, he mowed the lawn in the summer and shoveled the driveway during the winter, and took care of the odd jobs that were bound to pop up in an old house. A broken light switch here, a leaky faucet there.
He was handy at things like that. Like your grandfather, practically every one of his relatives had told him at one time or another.
Good with gadgets. Not so good with people. “You do take after my dad,” Wanda observed. “Makes me wonder if sharing a name—both of you being named Connor—means sharing character or personality. That’s what the old country Celts believed, you know.”
Connor didn’t care to know and the feeling must have shown.
So Wanda pointed out that his mission had polished his rougher edges and brought him out a bit. Made him more personable, pleasant even, to have around.
“Not that you weren’t before,” she added when Connor laughed. “But your mother worries about you living alone.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“I know that. I told her you would get all the sociality you required at the student ward. In your case, more than enough.”
Connor also enjoyed access to his aunt’s Toyota Camry with similar provisos. If they were both headed in the same direction, he was to chauffeur. But since the house was only a mile from campus, he usually walked.
Monday after lunch, Connor headed to the library to study. Passing through the security gates, he saw Larry Jackson running up the stairs from the periodicals reading room. “Hey, Connor! Good. I thought I’d find you here.”
“Hey, Larry. What’s up?” “I’ve got to register my car or I can’t get a parking sticker. Karen’s in no mood to be walking to school these days.”
“Pretty soon, huh?”
“Yeah, six weeks. Listen, can you take my shift for an hour?”
“Not a problem. I’ve got a class at three, though.”
“I’ll be back by then. How about I close for you Thursday afternoon?”
“Sure, that works for me.”
Connor continued on through the atrium to the JKHB. He jogged up the steps, pausing to grab a Daily Universe out of the newspaper box.
He could walk the route in his sleep. He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder. Loaded down with Kenstowicz’s Phonology in Generative Grammar and the thousand-page Seidensticker translation of The Tale of Genji, it was like hauling around a boat anchor. He unfolded the newspaper and glanced at the headlines. The polished aluminum handrail came up on his right. He took the steps two at a time.
“Watch out!” The warning rang out behind him.
A girl in a hurry had turned onto the landing and started up the second flight of stairs, hugging the railing. She raised her head a split second before they collided—he saw only her wide, brown eyes—then lowered her head. His weight was already off his back foot. He couldn’t stop. She was still moving forward. Her forehead thumped lightly against his chest. In a single motion, he dropped the newspaper, put his arms around her, and carried her backwards down the stairs to the landing.
They froze in the pose, as if waiting for the slow dance music to begin. She had a binder and folder under her right arm. The collision had jarred them loose. When Connor relaxed his grip, gravity took over.
The binder seesawed over his forearm. She managed to grab it. The folder caught air and sailed away. Connor missed the folder but snagged most of the contents. A handful of sheets fluttered down the stairway like falling leaves.
By now they were both laughing.
“Sorry about that,” Connor said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“That’s okay. I’m used to driving on the left.” They stepped apart. “Oh—” she said. She recoiled, her eyes dark and wide, her face flushed against the peach tan of her skin.
Connor felt himself physically start, as if touched by an electric spark.
A guy came up the stairs and handed her the folder. “I think you dropped this.”
The girl took it wordlessly, her eyes still locked on Connor’s.
The bell rang. They both flinched. She spun around and ran up the stairs.
Connor stood there on the landing. Finally his brain kicked out of neutral. He sprinted after her, two steps at a time, and raced into the lobby. She was nowhere.
He walked back down the stairs, picking up the scattered sheets of paper. He looked at one of them. Gibberish. His higher cognitive functions were fried. She was the girl on the Nakamozu Nankai, and he knew when he looked into her eyes that she dreamed his dreams.
Connor walked into the Writing Center, still flying on automatic pilot. He paused at the counter to catch his breath and give his cerebral cortex time to start producing rational thoughts.
“Hey, Connor,” said Alicia. Louder: “Connor!”
“Hey, Alicia.”
“You’re not on now, are you?”
“What? No. I’m taking Larry’s shift. He had to register his car.” He
perused the sign-in sheet. “You’re not on either.”
“I’m taking Eddie’s shift.”
“He’s going to graduate in August?”
“That’s the plan. Amazing how biology can motivate the male mind.”
She patted her stomach.
“You’re pregnant too?”
“You didn’t know? Oh, yeah, you’ve been out of town. I
finish my
course work in December. The little bundle comes out a month later.” Connor shook his head in disbelief.
Alicia said, “If you’re subbing for Larry, you’ve got the desk.” He walked around the counter and sat in the swivel chair behind the
supervisor’s desk. He dumped his backpack on the floor and placed the rumpled papers on the desk in front of him. “Um—” A student approached the counter. “Is this where you get help with assignments and stuff?”
“Yeah, sign up there, on that sheet.”
“I got it, Connor,” said Alicia.
“Thanks.” Connor returned his attention to the papers he’d pick up off the stairs. Quiz sheets. A simple kana test. Twenty questions, phonetic readings only. He fished a pen out of the desk drawer, shrugged, told himself, Why not? and filled in the blanks.
The phone rang. The caller wanted to know the difference between a colon and a semicolon. After a brief explanation, Connor referred him to Section 38 in the English 115 textbook: “End Punctuation.”
He returned his attention to the kana quiz. Japanese 101. Then she must be a Japanese TA. The Japanese TA office was right down the hall. That’s why she’d been coming up the steps. Connor glanced around the room. Alicia was still working with her student. He walked to the doorway and looked down the hall. Nobody was coming. He set off at a brisk walk.
A handwritten sign on the door said, “Nihongo TA Office.” He scanned the list of faculty schedule cards posted next to the door: Murata, Packard, Kasamatsu, Nakamura. Packard? The name sounded familiar. He checked her card. One section of Japanese 101. Mon–Fri 2:00–3:50.
So it was her.
Packard, he repeated to himself. He hurried back to the Writing Center. Xiaojing from the English Language Center was waiting for him. She had to raise her TOEFL score to 550 to get into BYU, and her grasp of the definite article was still definitely wanting.
Connor worked with her for the rest of the hour. Xiaojing had to meet a friend at the library. He returned his attention to the kana quiz. Elaine Packard, the faculty schedule card said. Unusual name for a Japanese girl. He rocked back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. Then it came to him: the Kobe Mission president, President Packard. His wife was Japanese.
Holy cow, Connor whispered to himself.
The quiz sat there on the desk, the line for his name still blank. He wrote: “Connor McKenzie.” Larry should be showing up any minute now. He added: “1010 JKHB.”
Classes were letting out. He strolled with the flow. The door to 1054 was propped open. He walked in and began checking the nameplates on the partition dividers.
“Can I help you?” an older Japanese woman asked him. The nameplate on her cubicle said Tomoko Kasamatsu.
“I’m looking for Packard Sensei’s cubicle.”
“Elly’s got Noriko’s carrel.”
“Thanks.” He circumnavigated the room and ended up at the cubicle across from Kasamatsu Sensei’s. The nameplate said “Noriko Tsuruoka.” A Japanese 301 text sat on the upper shelf. A sheet of paper was wedged under the cover. He lifted the cover and recognized one of Oh Sensei’s kanji tests. At the top of the page, “Elaine Packard.” She’d made one mistake, used a sanzui radical when she should have used a ninben radical.
The three o’clock bell rang. Connor jumped. Then remembered that Japanese 101 was a two-hour class. Palpable relief. He left the quiz sheets on the desk, shook away his second thoughts, and returned to the Writing Center.
Larry was twenty minutes late.
Chapter 9
Grammar Lessons
E lly sighed like a properly exasperated schoolmarm. Her head hurt. She’d spent the last two hours trying to keep two thoughts in her head at the same time. Actually, she’d only been trying to keep one thought in her head—the lesson plan—but the other one kept barging in.
It wasn’t possible.
If she let her mind wander for a moment, she’d start replaying the scene over and over like a close call in a football game. The next thing she knew, she’d be gazing blankly out the window until one of her students piped up and said, “Um, Packard Sensei?”
It was just a dream.
Darlene said, “I’ll turn the assignment in tomorrow.”
Elly had only four years on the girl but suddenly felt middle-aged. The I’m-disappointed-with-you attitude that took the average parent a decade to master, she’d gotten down in a matter of days. “Okay, she said. They’d been-there-done-that and nothing was going to change as far as she could see. Right now it simply wasn’t worth the grief. “Tomorrow.”
Just her imagination. Just a random coincidence.
Darlene looked sorrowful enough. As long as she kept up the act until she was out of the classroom, Elly wouldn’t hold it against her.
Think about something else, she told herself.
Darlene belonged to the group of students drawn to the idea of studying Japanese, but not so much to the hard reality of learning it. Or had boyfriends on missions in Japan, hence the initial motivation. And the lack of it, now that the shine was off. Elly wished they would drop the class. Less work and worry for her.
At the opposite end of the spectrum were the students who were only too happy to be there. They weren’t necessarily the smartest and didn’t always get the best grades. She’d seen the same thing on her mission. Every zone had a couple of slacker missionaries who got the most baptisms. And a couple of diligent true believers who never got off the ground. There was something profound in that fact, though she wasn’t sure what.
She should exploit her authority as sensei to challenge the slackers like Darlene, for their own good. Next time, she’d run things like a Japanese high school classroom, establish that aura of absolute authority around herself. Maybe the proper cultural context would bring out some of the Oh-ness that the males in the family (on both sides) had in spades.
Among her star students was one Bradley Preston, an anime devotee who had become a groupie of all things Japanese, including herself.
Bradley followed her down to her office, his palmtop PC at the ready. “Sate, komatta koto ni natta,” he said.
He recited the line fluently enough that Elly almost replied, “What has?” And then realized he was reading off the screen. Bradley had found a bilingual script of Princess Mononoke on the Internet and was working through the grammar. She’d agreed to help him as long as he understood that other students’ needs had precedence.
He asked, “But isn’t komatta the past tense?”
“Yes, but it’s being used as an adjective.”
There was a stack of papers on her desk. At first she thought, shimatta, yet another late assignment. Did they think leaving overdue homework on her desk would make her any more forgiving? Unfortunately, it probably did. “Your students will figure you out quicker than you’ll figure them out,” Uncle had promised her.
“So it modifies koto,” Bradley said.
She nodded. No, not homework, but the quizzes she’d dropped in the stairwell earlier. She looked again. One of them was filled out, and not by a student in her class. The hand was practiced but gaijin. She glanced at the name. “Connor McKenzie.” He wasn’t in the class.
She realized Bradley had asked a question and was waiting for an answer. “Sorry,” she said. “What was that again?”
“It’s translated here as a worrisome situation.”
“Yes, that works.”
Deep in her brain, who Connor McKenzie was and how he’d gotten hold of the quiz flashed through her mind. The blood drained from her face. Her breath caught in her throat. The scene rushed back to her—the few, fleeting moments when it was funny, struggling for balance on the landing, wrapped around each other like a game of Twister. And then his face, his eyes staring into hers, the familiarity of his touch—
“Bradley,” she said faintly, “I need to get started on these quizzes.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Ja, ashita, Packard Sensei.”
“
Yeah, see you tomorrow.”
She collapsed into the chair and hyperventilated until her head swam. Her pounding heart gradually washed the panic from her veins. She rested her forehead on the white Formica and examined her shoes. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind. He was the man standing on the Nakamozu Nankai station platform on that bright summer morning. The man in her dreams. But he was supposed to be a fantasy, a symptom of some deeper sickness.
She raised her head and rested her chin on her hands and stared at the quiz. Under his name he’d written, “1010 JKHB,” the room number of the Writing Center at the end of the hall. So their meeting had been less coincidental than inevitable. A small bubble of anger grew in her gut. So this was all her responsibility? She was supposed to go see him? She returned to the examination of her shoes. To be honest, if he walked into the room right now, she’d freaking die.
How like him, she thought. A man she’d slept with should know better. She groaned aloud. No! He’s just a dream! She slammed her fist on the desk, and then stopped and listened, praying that no one else was in the room. Don’t do this to me, she said to herself, conscious of her sudden familiarity with him and all the more embarrassed because of it.
Elly stuffed the quizzes into the folder and the folder into her backpack. She left the TA office, heading away from the Writing Center. She did not look back and was prepared to run if she heard her name called.
She walked home, her shock and disbelief evaporating in the hot summer sun. She sat at the kitchen table and graded the quizzes. At the bottom of the pile was Connor’s. No mistakes. She wrote “100” next to his name in red ink and added a very good in Japanese before she could stop herself.
When Melanie got home, she found her roommate at the kitchen table, head in her hands, examining the tabletop.
“That kind of day, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
Later that night, Elly lay in her bed, afraid of what sleep would bring, and equally afraid that it would bring nothing. This affair had begun with a chance meeting—should it not end with one?
The Path Of Dreams Page 5