The Path Of Dreams

by Eugene Woodbury

  “It’s a great idea,” said Elly.

  “See?” her mother said.

  Elly and Naomi were sitting next to each other at the table, so Naomi couldn’t glare at her cousin. She glared at her mother instead. Her mother ignored her. “They have a very nice house, don’t they, Connor?”

  “It’s a nice house,” Connor agreed.

  “A nice neighborhood.”

  “It’s a nice neighborhood.”

  “A nice school.”

  “I don’t know anything about the school.”

  Naomi said, “So why doesn’t Tom go?”

  “Because I’m going to be a senior next year,” her brother responded, as if this was the dumbest thing anybody had ever said.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You’re a freshman. You’re not doing anything important.” “Says you.” To her mother, “I can hardly speak Japanese anymore.” “That’s the whole point. Elly is practically fluent.”

  “That’s because Elly grew up in Japan.”

  “All the more reason. The older you get, the harder it becomes. At any rate, we won’t be going till December, which will give the world plenty of time to end.”

  After dinner, the cleaning up was left to Uncle Oh and Connor. June said, “I have something to show to Elly.” She added, as they walked down the hallway to the master bedroom, “Have Connor tell his Aunt Wanda I’ll be paying her a visit so we can arrange the reception.”

  “Oh, we don’t need a reception. I thought we could just have a dinner with the people who attend the wedding.”

  “Then call it an open house. When you visit your parents over Christmas, your mother will no doubt have something extravagant planned— which you, my niece, will gratefully and gracefully go along with.”

  “Yes, Auntie,” Elly said with an exaggerated bow. She asked in a more serious voice, “How mad do you think Mom will be at me?”

  “She—and your dad—put their families in much the same position when they got married. Which doesn’t justify what they did. But it did establish a certain precedent.”

  “Did you know they were going to get married?”

  “When I transferred into the district, they’d been pretending for three months that they had a purely professional relationship.” June laughed. “Of course, we shimai knew exactly what was going on. Your mom put up with some pretty merciless teasing.”

  “How? How did you know?”

  “He showed her such respect. Not that he was rude to the rest of us or put her on a pedestal. I mean he took her seriously and valued what she had to say in the manner it was intended. She, in turn, saw a young man coming into possession of his convictions, learning how to make priorities and stand behind them. Your mother knew that once he made a priority of her, she’d never have to question her place in his life.”

  June got three kimono boxes from the top shelf in the wardrobe closet and set them on the bed. She opened the smaller box. “The kosode,” she explained. “It has a shorter sleeve and no train. It’ll be appropriate for the temple ceremony.”

  She held up the white kimono. Elly slipped into it. The smooth silk lining was cool against her arms. June said, “I had to hem it up a hand’s breadth, so it should fit you just right.” She knelt and checked the length. Then stepped back for a better look. “You should wear kimono more often, Elly.”

  “That’s what Mom says.” She looked at her reflection in the dresser mirror. “It’s exquisite.”

  “Now, after the temple ceremony—” With far more care, she opened the two larger boxes and took out a wedding kimono and robe.

  Elly gasped. “A shiromuku uchikake! Where did you get it?”

  “In his later years, my grandfather’s reaction to the excesses of American liberalism was to rekindle a nostalgia for the old ways he’d left Japan to get away from in the first place. So he insisted I wear a shiromuku and uchikake at my wedding reception. But once in a lifetime isn’t nearly often enough for a kimono this nice.”

  Elly snuggled into the snowy uchikake, turning to the side so she could see in the mirror the silver cranes embroidered across the back.

  “Look at yourself,” June said, adjusting the mantle across her shoulders. “No parent could stay angry at the sight of such a lovely bride.” She retrieved the obi and held the glimmering silk sash against Elly’s waist.

  Elly felt as if some other girl was staring back from the glass, her chameleon-like nature already melding with the pure white wedding robe. “Can I show Connor?” she asked.

  “No, you may not. Have some respect for tradition.”

  She eased out of the uchikake and kosode. “When Mom and Dad got married, did Grandpa—” She paused to come up with a more tactful way of phrasing the question. “Did Grandpa object to the fact that Mom was Japanese?”

  “What makes you think that?” June asked, in a manner that questioned not the truth of what Elly was asking, but how she came to ask it.

  “Something Grandpa said to me yesterday. I think he thought Mom told me about it. Except she never did. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  June nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think it had anything to do with her being Japanese.”

  “Just not white enough.”

  “The shock of the unexpected. She was different. Not the girl next door. To put it cynically, he might have worried it would hurt his advancement in the Church Education System. The proclamation about blacks and the priesthood had just come out and not everybody was comfortable with the fact of a racially-integrated church. Scratch the surface of any Utah ward and you’ll find a redneck or two. But the most harm is caused with the best of intentions. A lot of fake concern about what the children will look like and supposed cultural conflicts. Frankly, there’s a more profound cultural gulf between the East Bench and the West Valley than between a middle-class Mormon from Japan and a middle-class Mormon from Utah.”

  She stopped talking for a moment. Her voice was calmer when she spoke again. “But even if that were the case, your grandfather was yielding to public opinion, not personal prejudice. And your mother didn’t help matters any. I’ve never known anybody so incapable of showing deference to authority, even when it was in her own self-interest.”

  “I think he was sorry about it,” Elly said in a subdued voice.

  “I’m sure they both are.” A distant look came to her eyes. “I sometimes wonder if what hurt him the most was that his son and daughter-inlaw simply assumed from the beginning that the rest of the family would object to the marriage. Go looking for conflict and conflict will find you. Your father got his MBA at Stanford. They didn’t come home for two years. I think it was just long enough for things to settle.”

  June said to her niece, “People change. That’s what’s important. Not something a good man said in anger and regretted and repented of a quarter-century ago. There was plenty of blame to go around. Whatever he may have thought then, when you were born—they came back to Salt Lake to have you—and he held you, his first grandchild, in his arms and looked into your big brown eyes, nothing else in the world mattered.”

  She smiled. “You see, the reason your mother never mentioned their disagreements was because they aren’t important. Not the kind of thing people of character hold onto—just in case—like a knife up the sleeve.”

  Reluctant in wrath, Elly reminded herself. She nodded.

  “Good,” said June. “What about birth control?”

  “What?” said Elly, thrown by this whiplash switch of subject matter. “I— I’m on the pill,” she stammered, her cheeks growing warm.

  “So you’ve been to see Dr. Zhang?”

  “Yes, I’ve been to see Dr. Zhang.” Elly had even confessed her visit to Planned Parenthood. Dr. Zhang scolded her for not coming to her first, and then complimented her for thinking ahead, observing that too many young Mormon newlyweds seemed to think that simply not wanting to get pregnant had the same biological effect.

 
“I’m only doing your mother’s job,” June said pointedly.

  “Well, okay,” Elly grumbled. Though now that she thought about it, getting lectured about the facts of life by Dr. Zhang and Aunt June was preferable to hearing them from her mother.

  Chapter 30

  Moving In

  E lly could fit everything she owned into two suitcases. “It’s pathetic,” she said, as she hung her clothes in her half of the closet. “But this is all I’ve got. Besides a change of clothes I left in Kobe, I haven’t had time to acquire much else since my mission.”

  “I don’t think traveling light is pathetic. It’s more depressing discovering you can’t pack all of your earthly possessions into two suitcases. I think my parents moved to Maine so they’d have a good excuse to get rid of all the junk they’d accumulated over the past thirty years.”

  “You should try growing up in Japan with a sister and a brother. I look forward to accumulating some junk.” Her other suitcase held her underwear, among other things. She didn’t need any assistance with that. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go through life with a couple pairs of jeans and T-shirts. Aunt June says I should wear kimono more often.”

  “I’ve never seen you in a kimono.”

  “I have a few pictures from Coming-of-Age Day. I’m just saying, a decent kimono is not exactly conducive to a minimalist lifestyle. I didn’t bring any with me.”

  “Okay, excepting kimono.”

  “You’ll say anything I want to hear, won’t you?” Elly stacked the rest of her vanity items on the bureau. Connor picked up the Yasmin box and examined it curiously. Elly pretended a lack of concern. She hadn’t raised the subject with him. He’d never raised the subject with her. The next few weeks were going to be interesting in that regard.

  “What’s it like?” he asked.

  Elly said over her shoulder, as she disappeared into the bathroom, “It gives you very regular periods.” She poked her head out the door, “Where do you keep your toothbrush?”

  “In the kitchen. The cupboard left of the sink. According to the theory that things you put in your mouth belong in the kitchen.”

  “How logical.” Elly took the box from him and went to the kitchen. In the cupboard, on the bottom shelf, was his toothbrush propped up in a drinking glass. She added her own. On the second shelf was a bottle of Tylenol, a box of Comtrex cold tablets, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of Q-Tips, and a box of Band-Aids. She placed her contact solution and lens case on the second shelf, along with the Yasmin box. She resolved right then and there to stop hiding stuff.

  Connor watched from the doorway. “Elly, did you ever worry about getting pregnant? You know, from the dreams?”

  “It crossed my mind. How about you? Did you worry about getting me pregnant?”

  “I tied my foot to the bed once. I had to make sure my body wasn’t getting hijacked by my id. I’d never had dreams like that before. I sort of freaked out.”

  “Why, do you sleepwalk?”

  “No, it was your basic neurotic overreaction. In fact, the next morning I completely forgot what I’d done. When I got out of bed, I did a good imitation of a falling tree.”

  Elly laughed. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Pride, only.”

  “Well, it was a noble thought, in a strange way.”

  They stepped back into the bedroom. Elly glanced around, took a deep breath, exhaled. “That’s everything, not counting a change of clothes for tomorrow.” She mentally ticked off the items she’d need. “Oh,” she said, “where is it?”

  Connor retrieved the clear plastic sleeve from the desk. Their marriage license. Elly stared at the document, examining it as if it were an ancient parchment manuscript. She said, “To tell the truth, Connor, the reason I started on the pill was because I knew I was going to marry you.”

  “When was that?”

  She looked into his blue eyes. “The end of last month.”

  “Then you were thinking a lot clearer than I was.”

  Elly put the marriage license down and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He pulled her closer. She opened her mouth against his. Her heart raced. Her desire plumbed a depth of feeling that simply hadn’t existed before that fateful day on the Nakamozu Nankai. The last of their dreams had left behind a key. Somewhere deep within her, a door began to open. If he chose to seduce her right here and now, she would willingly walk through it.

  He seemed to realize this as well. He ended the kiss, both to her relief and regret. “I love you,” he whispered.

  An ecstatic thrill swept through her, followed by a pang of guilt. Only minutes before, she’d resolved to stop hiding. If need be, some things she would hide forever. A little thing like not being able to say “I love you” wasn’t getting in the way of her getting married.

  Before she left, she took the Yasmin box from the kitchen cabinet and put it in her underwear drawer. She was all for being open and for being honest. But she was also in favor of avoiding uncomfortable conversations that could easily be avoided with a bit of discretion.

  Discretion won.

  Chapter 31

  A Marriage Epistle

  Connor donned the morning coat. Elly grinned as she adjusted the cravat. “C’mon, admit it. Isn’t it fun getting dressed up like this?” “Fun is not the word that springs to mind.” He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. “I look like a Japanese prime minister. Either that, or I’m about to surrender to General MacArthur.”

  “I think you look quite fetching.”

  “Fetching? How about a yukata? It’d be a lot more comfortable.” “Nothing is tackier than a gaijin in a cheap kimono. We’ll get you a real

  one at Christmas.” She kissed him until Melanie interrupted with an “Ahem.” She said, “I’ve been sent to get you two.”

  Aunt Wanda’s living room was the most crowded Connor had ever seen. Melanie had come earlier with Elly. Elder and Sister Packard arrived shortly thereafter to confirm the final arrangements and get a rough head count for the sealing room.

  Lynne stopped by. Glenn would go directly to the sealing, as would Bishop Ferguson. Uncle Martin bustled into the kitchen, where Wanda had laid out a buffet (and insisted that the two lovebirds eat. “Believe me, you don’t want to do this on an empty stomach”).

  “How’re you holding up there, Connor?” Martin said. “My, that’s a smart outfit you’re wearing. And there’s the lovely Elly.”

  “Thank you, Martin,” Elly said, and kissed him on the cheek, which pleased the old man to no end.

  Lynne observed, “You’re remarkably calm, Elly. I was a nervous wreck the morning of my wedding.”

  “I simply have to imagine what my mother will have in store for us at Christmas. This should be a piece of cake in comparison.”

  Sister Packard joined them. “He cuts a dashing figure, doesn’t he,” she remarked to her granddaughter. “Now, where’s your wedding dress?”

  “My aunt has it. They’re going to meet us at the temple.”

  Elder Packard ducked into the conversation. “We probably should be going.” Never a man to refrain from leading others, he stood in the alcove between the living room and dining room and brought the congregation to order. “Brothers and sisters, I’m Elder Packard, Elly’s grandfather. I’ll be officiating at the wedding. The endowment session is scheduled for one-thirty. The sealing will start at three-forty. There’ll be time for photographs afterwards, and then we shall repair to the home of Elly’s aunt and uncle, Brother and Sister Oh, for the wedding dinner.”

  Elly said, “I made maps if anybody needs directions.”

  Her grandfather continued, “We’ll be leaving shortly with Connor and Elly. There’s still plenty of time. But be in the chapel by one-twenty.”

  Back in the kitchen, he drew aside the bride and groom. “Do you have your marriage license?”

  Connor nodded.

  “Good. Many a marriage ceremony has been stalled on account of that particular piece of inform
ation. Let’s go.”

  Elly remained behind in the kitchen a minute to speak with Melanie. “Will you come and help me with my kimono afterward?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “You’re the closest thing I have to a bridesmaid.”

  Melanie nodded and smiled courageously.

  Elder Packard held the door as Elly and Connor got into the Buick. It was a hot day, even hotter in the car. So they sat there, very still, in the sleepy contentment that warm, bright, still air will induce. Her grandfather started the engine and turned on the air conditioner. The cool blast flooded around them.

  “I would have enjoyed going to the prom with you.” Elly touched his cheek. “The fancy dinner, the limo, the whole nine yards.”

  “I would have, if you’d been around to be asked. In a heartbeat.”

  Elder Packard pulled out of the driveway and wended his way through the Tree Streets. They climbed Ninth East to Temple Hill Drive, and then up and around the looping driveway, stopping in front of the portico that led to the temple lobby.

  Aunt June and Oh Sensei were waiting inside. June had stacked the kimono boxes on the chairs next to her. Oh Sensei said to Connor, “You look like a Japanese prime minister.”

  They checked in at the recommend desk and received colored tags identifying their party.

  “There you are, Jack.” A stocky man Elder Packard’s age entered the atrium.

  “President Wells,” said Elder Packard. “This is my granddaughter, Elaine, and her fiancé, Connor McKenzie.”

  President Wells shook their hands in turn. “Do you have your marriage license?” he asked. Connor produced the document. “I’ll get this ready for processing,” he said. “It’s pretty busy today, but there shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll notify Elder Packard of your sealing room assignment.”

  Sister Packard said to Aunt June, “These must be the kimonos. Let me help you with those.” Aunt June handed her the box holding the kosode. Sister Packard said, “Come along—Elly, you too—I’ll show you to the bride’s room.”

  “There’s a bride’s room?”