It did not.
After he left her in the deep of the night, she awoke and cast bitter imprecations into the silent darkness. She’d never known a solitude emptier than the loneliness she felt in the arms of a lover who laid total claim to her body, but withheld his soul.
Chapter 10
O-miai
C onnor sat at his desk and stared at the Osaka Metro subway map thumbtacked to the wall, following the red line of the Midosuji down to the Nakamozu Nankai interchange. He’d gone to Sakai to get something for Nobuo. He couldn’t remember what. Elaine Packard had been standing maybe twenty meters away—he couldn’t possibly have recognized her from a single encounter. He recognized her because he slept with her, in dreams that could not be dreams.
Panic settled into his synapses like a cold, white fog. What if—what if they—what if somehow—
Moral panic permitted every possibility, entertained every extreme, and dredged up extra helpings of guilt just to make sure. Connor dug out the microcassette recorder he hadn’t used since his mission. He scavenged a pair of batteries from his MP3 player, flipped the voice activation to high, and set it on his bed stand. After he got into bed, he secured his left ankle to the bedpost with a stout piece of nylon twine. He’d never known anybody in his family to sleepwalk, but this wasn’t the time to find out.
He fell asleep thinking winter and ice—awoke to the urgent demands of their shared passions—unexpectedly feeling a tremor of fear course through her body as he—and the dream—disappeared.
In the morning, Connor climbed out of bed, took a step, and crashed to the floor, his foot nearly wrenched off. When he finally realized what had happened, the knot was seized so tightly he was reduced to groping around until he found a pair of nail clippers and released himself. He collapsed on the bed, clutching his ankle and laughing hysterically. The playback revealed the wail of a distant police siren, the yip and yowl of a cat spat on the patio, a long monologue by the next door neighbor’s German shepherd, and then a muffled expletive and the stupid thud of his body striking the floor.
His only consolation was that he didn’t snore.
Alicia was at the desk when he walked into the Writing Center. “Hey, a girl left a note for you.”
“A girl?”
“Kinda cute.” She smiled slyly. “I put it in your slot.”
Alicia leaned back against the wall as he retrieved the envelope. Mind your own business, he mouthed. “Connor McKenzie, 1010 JKHB,” was the address on the envelope. He slit the seal and pulled out a folded piece of paper. The quiz. He smiled at the grade. He turned it over. “Terrace Court,” it read. “Second floor mezzanine, above the clock. Five P.M.”
His head buzzed. Deep breath, take a deep breath. He folded the paper and tucked it back inside the envelope.
“Well?” Alicia asked.
Connor answered with a no-big-deal shrug. “When did she come by?”
“This morning around ten. I think she’s Japanese.”
He knew she was Japanese. Her handwriting betrayed that fact. Except that she was also half-American, if she was that Elaine Packard. She must have attended elementary school in Japan.
Alicia reveled in his discomfort. “This could make things interesting. You are in the pool, after all.”
“The pool? Oh, that pool.”
“Any inside tips, Connor? I’ll make it worth your while. I know for a fact that Thom and Natalie—”
He gave her a look. “There are no inside tips to give.”
Her expression said she didn’t believe him. “This definitely changes the line. I’ll have to discuss your status with Chloe.”
Connor rolled his eyes.
“I was betting on a perfect game. No engagement, no date, no marriage. Winter semester, you had me worried there for a few weeks. But I held firm. Now, though, you’re being—mysterious.”
“I am not being mysterious.”
“And evasive.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re exactly the sort of person I’d expect not to look like he was in love when he was in love.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
A student came in with an English 115 paper. Xiaojing stopped in an hour later with her Barron’s TOEFL workbook. That kept him busy for another hour. He found himself free at 4:45.
“Mind if I take an early break?” he asked Alicia.
“Give yourself enough time to pick up some flowers.”
Connor didn’t bother to respond.
He crossed the Quad to the Wilkinson Center and walked up the stairs to the second level mezzanine overlooking the Terrace Court. The clock hung dead center on the skirting below the west walkway. Connor paced back and forth in front of the windows and pondered what to say. Something obvious like, “Weren’t you a missionary in Osaka?”
The afternoon sun streaming through the glass made him squint. He turned around and looked across the courtyard. She was standing on the east mezzanine concourse, no farther away than the northbound platform of the Nakamozu Nankai station. She stared across the wide gulf of empty air. Whatever he did, she could escape before he could catch up with her.
This was her meeting, her o-miai. He sat down on the bench above the clock and waited. He didn’t see her again until she stopped at the railing next to him. She stood, poised, while Connor got to his feet.
Then she said, quietly, reproachfully, “You always leave.”
Connor had no idea what she meant. Yet he flushed, feeling a palpable guilt from the weight of her indictment.
She glanced away. “It was you, at the Nankai station in Nakamozu.”
“Yes.”
“We hadn’t met—or seen each other—before then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did my uncle tell you about me?” She looked at him, an angry glare returning to her eyes.
“Did he tell me about you?” Connor echoed. “Your uncle?”
“Oh Sensei.”
He resisted whacking himself on the forehead. Of course! Nobuo was Oh Sensei’s brother. Sayaka was his sister. Sayaka Oh Packard. The pieces began to fall together—except for the big one, the iceberg mostly buried beneath dark water.
“He didn’t try to set us up?”
“Your name might have come up now and then. But not in that context. Should I have?” he queried.
“I suppose not. It’s just that my uncle—you know the way he is.”
Connor smiled and so did she. She was quite pretty. The dreams didn’t lie. But then, desperately searching for some way to continue the conversation, he made what he believed at the time was a mistake. Though later, and for the rest of his life, he knew it was not.
“What do you mean, you always leave?”
The smile vanished. Her face turned ashen. “You do,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse with anger.
He felt her reaction like a blow to the chest. It frightened him, how much he cared about what she felt. She wasn’t filling the atmosphere with kind feelings. He said, “Do what?”
“You leave. You always leave.”
She was talking about the dream. Sweat prickled on his skin. Suddenly she closed the distance between them, creating a private, intimate space in which she could place all of her anger.
She said, articulating each word separately, “You. Leave. Me.”
Subject. Verb. Object. She could have jabbed a forefinger in his sternum, but the grammar was sufficient. He took a step back. His voice rose. “This isn’t my fault. I saw you at a train station in Nakamozu. That’s all that happened. I’m not the one causing these dreams!”
Her eyes were sharp as knives. “But you act as if you are.”
She whirled around and walked away. He didn’t follow her. Then he wished that he had.
Chapter 11
Precautions
E lly didn’t have Japanese 301 Wednesday morning. That meant she didn’t have to be at school until two o’clock to teach her Japanese 101 class. The success of her plan depended on one other variable.
At breakfast she said to Melanie, “There’s something I have to take care of in Salt Lake. I was wondering—”
“Need the car?”
“Only for a few hours.”
Melanie mulled over the request. “Nope, my schedule’s open.” She got
the keys and tossed them to Elly. “Going to see Kevin?” She grinned. “Who?” and then, “No,” with a how-could-you-think-that expression.
“I should be back before noon.” She grabbed her backpack and left with a
“See you later.”
“Alligator,” Melanie replied.
Elly didn’t volunteer an explanation because she didn’t want to lie, and
no way was she going to tell the truth. She blamed that kid Kevin, the RM
from Two Cats, Nebraska. And she blamed Melanie. If you really want to go
where no man has gone before, you can always get pregnant.
The possibility hadn’t occurred to her before. Now it occurred to her
like crazy. She had no desire to test Mormon belief in immaculate conception. Not when her father was a mission president, her grandfather was a
General Authority, and her uncle taught at BYU.
The night before at the library, she’d Googled “birth control” and got
back fifteen zillion hits. Good grief. She eventually ended up on the Planned
Parenthood website. But even narrowed down, there was more information on the subject than she knew existed. Starting with: “Eighty-five percent of women who don’t use a contraceptive during intercourse become
pregnant each year.” Well. That ratcheted up the fear factor. Though she
couldn’t help wondering, What’s the pregnancy rate for intercourse that takes
place in an alternate universe?
Still, she reasoned, since she only imagined she was having sex, couldn’t
she imagine she was using a contraceptive? Except that she couldn’t shake
the distant but vivid memory of Girl’s Camp and the snapshot that almost
ruined her life. She wouldn’t be so lucky twice. Better safe than sorry. Never had she imagined, not in a billion years, that she’d visit Planned
Parenthood. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to the BYU Health Clinic. She set up the appointment from a payphone. Drug dealers must feel like
this. Calling Salt Lake was long distance and she didn’t want it showing up
on the phone bill. The part she’d dreaded most was borrowing Melanie’s
car. She could take the bus, but worried about making it back to Provo on
time.
The hard part turned out to be the easiest.
The clinic was located two blocks east of Trolley Square. Elly drove around the block, reconnoitering the scene of the crime. Planned Parenthood wasn’t on anybody’s evil-protesting radar screens that morning. Mormons were not by nature the protesting type, and the official Church position on birth control was one of those things everybody was sure about but nobody could articulate. The refrain, “It’s between you and the Lord,” covered a lot of ground.
If the Lord wanted different, He would have done something about her dreams.
She drove back to Trolley Square and returned to the clinic on foot. No hesitating, no second thoughts—she walked in as if she worked there.
And discovered that a waiting room is a waiting room. “I’d like to get a prescription for birth control pills,” she told the receptionist, who responded so nonchalantly Elly almost expected her to say, “You want fries with that?” She handed Elly a consent form to sign and a medical history to fill out.
Elly found a seat. She dug a pen out of her backpack and adjusted the forms on the clipboard. Did she smoke? No. Did she have high blood pressure, angina, or heart disease? No. Ever had a stroke? No. A bleeding or blood-clotting disorder? Breast, uterine, or any other hormone-related cancer? Liver disease or a history of jaundice? Abnormal vaginal bleeding? Migraines? Asthma? Seizures or epilepsy? No, No, No, No, No, No, No.
Checking off all those boxes made her feel much better about the state of her own health. She signed and returned the forms. The nurse escorted her to an examination room. Height, weight, blood pressure, temperature. More questions: Diabetes? No. Surgeries? Just wisdom teeth. Ever been pregnant? No. Any sexually transmitted diseases? Definitely No. (She left out the “definitely.”)
The nurse made the necessary notations and said, “Doctor Starley will be with you presently.”
Elly sat on the examination table, trying not to crinkle the white paper. The door opened and the doctor walked in. A woman, and how she was grateful for that.
“Elaine Packard? I’m Doctor Starley. Mary, if you wish. Now, you said you’d like to get a prescription for birth control pills. Have you ever used contraceptives before?”
“No.”
“Are you sexually active?”
“Not yet,” was the answer that came out.
Mary smiled.
I have BYU written all over my face, Elly thought. And suddenly she was on the verge of bursting into laughter. What was she thinking? That she was going to get pregnant from a dream? How dumb was that? So what was she doing here? What am I doing here?
Dr. Starley said, “You know that oral contraceptives don’t prevent sexually transmitted diseases?”
“It’s to keep from getting pregnant.” She hardly hesitated a beat. “I’m getting married.”
“Congratulations.” Mary handed Elly a pamphlet that described the hormones used in oral contraceptives, dosages and regimens, and ranked the common brands. In the end, they decided on Yasmin.
Mary opened a drawer and retrieved a sample blister-pack, four rows of seven tablets. “Take the first pink pill the Sunday after your period begins. The last row of white pills you take during menstruation.”
“They’re placebos, right?”
“Yes. Try it for two months and see how you react, menstrual flow, tenderness in the breasts, and any other side effects. It takes about two months for the body to adjust to the hormone levels in an oral contraceptive. I can give you a one-month prescription. You’ll have to get a pap smear before getting it refilled.”
“Thanks,” Elly said. “I will.”
At the back of her mind—perhaps because of the association with female reproduction—she had made a connection between Planned Parenthood and Relief Society. The difference was, Planned Parenthood only cared about Elaine Packard, here and now. Nothing else. Her soul was her own business. And so the unexpected answer came to her in this atmosphere of nonjudgmental amity, so casually that at first she thought she was lying. But she knew she couldn’t lie that glibly.
An hour ago, she couldn’t have explained what she was doing there. Now she knew exactly what she was doing there, and for that she was truly and deeply grateful.
“You’re welcome,” said Dr. Mary Starley.
Elly arrived back in Provo a little after eleven. The entire adventure had taken less than three hours. In her room, she took the cellophanewrapped box out of the white plastic bag. Begin the Sunday after her period started—the Sunday after next. They’d get married in August then.
Connor spent Thursday morning at the library. He didn’t go home for lunch. He ate at the Cougareat, something he rarely did. He didn’t see Elly. Afterward he went up to the mezzanine. She wasn’t there either.
He paced the walkway, watching the summer camp kids mill about the courtyard. I didn’t cause this, he said to himself again. I didn’t do anything wrong.
But you always leave. As if leaving was all his fault. As if they were doing something wrong.
But it was wrong. Dammit, now he was contradicting himself. He got up and walked down the steps and across the Quad to the JKHB. He had to get to work. Besides, he knew a better place to wait.
In so many words, Darlene said she’d had a change of heart. Elly wasn’t convinced, but she couldn’t resist the call to redeem the prodigal. Maybe Darlene had multiplied a 2.0 tim
es a four-hour class and didn’t like what the arithmetic told her. Whatever the reason, she was eager for extra credit. And that meant more work for Elly.
So now Darlene and Bradley followed her down to the basement of the JKHB. Bradley was asking her why the continuative form of iku wasn’t “going,” as in, “I’m going to the store.” She was letting him talk because her answer was: Just because. It was difficult keeping a chapter ahead of the class when some of her students kept racing to the end of the book.
They filed into the TA office. Someone was sitting at the carrel in her cubicle. It was Connor McKenzie. “What are you doing here?” she asked in Japanese. Tomoko peered over her carrel. Elly realized that this was the one place where Japanese provided no more privacy than English.
Connor answered in Japanese, “I wanted to talk.”
“So call me.”
“You’re not in the book.”
The student directory, he meant. She said to Bradley and Darlene (in
English), “This won’t take long,” and walked out.
He caught up with her in the hallway. “Hey,” he said.
“Not here.” She shook her arm free.
He let go as if he’d grasped a hot iron. He followed her up the stairs,
out the doors into the hot sunlight.
“So, talk.” She continued down the sidewalk to the triangle of lawn at
the north end of the Quad, pulling him along in a wake of repressed fury. “Look, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, okay?” “What is there to figure out?”
“What’s not to figure out? You think this is normal?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“The other day, it sounded a whole lot like you were blaming me.” “I wasn’t blaming you.”
“Do you want me to leave? Put enough distance between us—” “I didn’t say that. That isn’t what I want.”
“Then what are you saying? What do you want?”
“I don’t want you to leave me.” She spoke with enough emphasis to attract
the attention of passers-by.
Connor leaned in close, an effort to create a small sphere of privacy
The Path Of Dreams Page 6