My dad paused for a moment, understanding that in speaking with my mother, a time-out for translation was often needed.
“That means she’s got an awful lot to worry about right now.”
“Not with those yum yums! She no have to worry about nothing!”
My dad’s low rich laugh filled the car.
“Shh!” said my mother, laughing too. “Don’t wake up Baby!”
I kept my eyes shut; even as I wanted to join in my parents’ high spirits, it was one of those times when the bigger satisfaction came from reveling quietly in their enjoyment of one another. It made me feel safe, like when my mother called me “Baby.”
The happy child photographs—if I wasn’t grinning in them, I was laughing—ended when I was five and a half and my mother died.
There is a snapshot I came across last winter that someone (probably my Aunt Lorraine) had the lack of grace to take. In it, I’m sitting at a table in a church basement, so hunched with sadness that my chin’s nearly touching the tabletop. Because of the way I’m seated and because the photograph is black and white, you can’t tell that I was wearing a red-dotted Swiss dress with a sash and flouncy petticoat, a dress that caused me great shame, making me look as if I were going to a birthday party instead of my mother’s funeral.
“That was such a terrible day,” said my Grandma Pekkala, anchoring me with her arm as I stood at the kitchen counter. I had promised to make the North Stars’ number-one hockey fan a fancy dinner in celebration of the Stars’ win over the Islanders and when opening her rarely used Better Homes and Garden cookbook, I had found the photograph tucked between two pages featuring Beef Wellington and Beef Stroganoff recipes.
I stared at the picture, reliving the awful memories it conjured: the surreal fear and confusion of waking up to my father’s howls and seeing men lift my mother onto a stretcher and race her out of our apartment; the wallop of pain and shock that had struck me hours later, when my dad staggered into my grandmother’s kitchen to tell me that my mother had died. By the time of her funeral service, those feelings had frozen into a numb coldness, only to be disturbed by the itchiness of my petticoat and the fits of rage that made me want to kick or punch someone—specifically my cousin Charlotte who, after enjoying the luncheon the church ladies had put on, said, “Good Jell-O.”
My life had caved in like a rotted shack and all she could say was “Good Jell-O?”
“I have no idea how that picture got there,” said my grandma, but as she reached for the photograph, I pressed my thumb on it, so hard that a crescent of white appeared high on its nail.
“I want it.”
There was neither Beef Stroganoff nor Beef Wellington that night; instead I took the picture and a bowl of cereal downstairs to my basement bedroom, the rattle of pipes and the clunk of the furnace accompaniment to my muffled sobs.
2
MY DAD MET MY MOTHER, Jong Oh, during his tour of duty in Seoul, Korea, several months after the Armistice had been signed. PFC Arne Pekkala had been enjoying a weekend liberty with his friend, the similarly ranked Kermit Carlson, and exiting the PuPu Club on Itaewon Street had grabbed two bikes from a pile near the door. Having toasted several times to peace and prosperity, as well as their plans of becoming partners in the expanding Carlson family hardware empire in Hoboken, New Jersey, the soldiers weren’t in any condition to ride bicycles, but it was being in that condition that convinced them otherwise. Laughter and inebriation caused them to swerve through the crowded streets and, a block later, into my mother, who’d just finished her shift at a metal-stamping plant.
Upon seeing the young woman sprawled on the street, the young private experienced a sudden sobering, helping to her feet the Korean who was bleeding from under the bangs of her shiny black hair. More dazed than hurt, the victim didn’t yell at the man responsible for her injury but instead made him laugh, by miming a drunken bicycle rider and then wagging her finger at him.
This accidental (literally) meeting led to a whirlwind courtship, which, after months of unsnarling red tape, led to a marriage ceremony conducted by an army chaplain, which led, four months later, to me.
These events were reported in sporadic letters home, and with such paucity of detail that I seek meaning reading between the lines and in between those lines.
There is one letter my father wrote that doesn’t need my added color commentary. It’s the one announcing my birth, and although it only comprises one page, it’s his most emotionally open.
May 1, 1956
Dear Mother,
I telephoned to give you the news but no one answered.
Candy Lee Pekkala was born just an hour ago, at 2:42 pm. Weight: 7# 8oz., height: 19”. Black-haired and black-eyed.
Glad we got stateside for her birth—don’t US presidents have to be born on American soil? (Ha ha.)
Her mother is doing fine, and me, well, I’m as puffed up as a pigeon.
Things are going okay at the store. New Jersey’s okay, but I miss the Midwest.
Your son and new dad,
Arne
Of course I memorized it.
How I long to know more of my parents’ lives, but my mom died before my curiosity in her background was ignited, and my dad, well, technically he lived nearly a dozen years longer, but a big part of him checked out when my mother did.
My grandmother has tried to fill in the gaps of their stories, but that’s like asking someone with a trowel and a bucket of plaster to tuck-point the Great Wall of China. Desperate for the whole unabridged autobiography, I’ve had to make do with her anecdotes and observations.
“Imagine how hard it must have been for Jo. Brand new to the country. Hardly knows English and yet she figures out how to be funny in it.”
My grandmother’s memories reinforce my own: my mother was hilarious, and in cracking me up she inspired me to return the favor. I loved the sound of her laughter, so riddled with snorts that she’d cover her nose and mouth with a curled hand.
“Best to laugh!” was her frequent advice. The concept of comparatives and superlatives in the English language was something she didn’t have a firm grasp of and yet I was in total agreement: it was best to laugh.
Because I was so young when the poison from her burst appendix killed her, there aren’t a ton of charms on my memory bracelet, but the ones I have are golden. They have played over and over in my mind until I wonder: how much of these are real? How can I remember whole snatches of dialogue?
“You’ve always been sharp as a tack,” my grandmother said when I once confessed that I didn’t trust the truth of my memories. “What you remember is what you remember.”
Her words gave me permission to believe in them, however my own imagination and wishfulness have polished and made them lustrous.
One charm: my mother and I snuggled in my bed, Goodnight Moon propped open between us. Having spent countless hours on her lap as she sounded out words in her English books, I had taught myself to read, and we often took turns reading my bedtime story aloud. On this particular night my mother had decided to riff on the narrative.
“Good night crazy lady in grocery store who say, ‘Go back to Japan!’” she said, running her index finger under words that said no such thing. “Good night dog next door who only know how to yap yap yap!”
I didn’t need an invitation to jump in.
“Good night icky Janie Larson, who won’t let me play with her dumb Chatty Cathy doll!”
“Good night, Chatty Cathy doll who talk too much anyway!”
We had laughed ourselves silly, saying good night to all manner of things not listed in the book.
“Good night,” my mother said finally, kissing me on the cheeks, on the forehead, on my lips. “Good night, little girl I love!”
Another charm: my mother bringing cookies to my class on Treat Day.
“You talk funny!” announced Timmy Esperson, the kid who, if kindergarten were a monarchy, would reign as king.
“I look more funny!” said my mother
, crossing her eyes. “And how I dance—even more funny! She did the Twist, a dance that was all the rage, only she turned it into a series of poses that cracked up the whole class, our teacher included. When she left, King Timmy deemed my mother “nice.”
Her desire to become fluent in English and “Be American!” was so strong that she seldom spoke Korean, although she did sing to me in her native tongue. I’ve forgotten most of the words and melodies, but every now and then a wisp of her lullabies wafts through my head, my most precious charm.
THE ONLY GOOD thing about losing your mother at a young age is young age. Wounds heel faster, even the deep gash of your mom’s death. You don’t know at the time that the scar never goes away and that throughout your life it will get hot and inflamed; all you know is that you’re five and a half and you can be howling with sadness one minute and concentrating on a game of Jacks with your grandmother the next. I couldn’t articulate it then, but I felt that my mother’s love was so full and strong that, even in death, it somehow blanketed me.
My dad kicked off any such blanket. Lacking the grace of a glad heart, or courage, or resilience—whatever—he was done in by my mother’s death. JoJo had been able to cajole kisses, caresses, and laughs out of the reticent Arne Pekkala, but after she was gone, he was an emotional Scrooge, locking away gestures of affection in a strongbox along with the key.
“It wasn’t you,” my grandma has assured me. “It was him. He thought to protect himself he had to . . . hold it all in.”
Coward. Not a word a kid likes to have on her list of Adjectives to Describe My Father, but, come on, he was the adult. How could he be so selfish as to let his sorrow trump everything—including a relationship with his own daughter? He could have helped me so much, and I would have returned the favor a thousand times over, if he had only let me in.
3
“YOU’RE CHARLOTTE FIELDS’S COUSIN?”
This was asked by a guy greasy with suntan lotion, whose abdominal muscles popped out in two rows as he sat up in one of the chaise longues that ringed the swimming pool.
His surprise was a reaction I was used to; what wasn’t familiar was the name Fields. My cousin’s last name was Fjeldsman. I was about to correct the error, but I didn’t have to channel Sherlock Holmes to deduce that my actress/dancer/singer cousin had given herself a stage name.
“Are you from Minneapolis, too?” asked Oily Man’s pal, a rangy guy who didn’t share his friend’s sculpted stomach, slick bronzed skin, or bad manners.
Nodding, I said, “I’m subletting her apartment for three months while she’s in a show.”
“She got the show?” asked Oily Man. “She got the Caribbean Vegas! show?”
“Vegas on the Adriatic!” I said, enjoying correcting him.
“And she already left?”
When I nodded, he said to his friend, “I auditioned for that show too and nailed my song—‘Where Is the Life That Late I Led’—from Kiss Me Kate. Nailed it. Wow. I guess they thought a really strong singer might take away from the ensemble.” He turned to me. “I cannot believe Charlotte got it and she didn’t even tell me!”
“They phoned her at the last minute. Someone had dropped out, and they said if she could be ready to leave in twenty-four hours, the part was hers.”
Not liking the eagerness in my voice—I sounded like I was my cousin’s press agent or something—I undid the towel I had wrapped around me like a sarong.
Strolling to the deep end of the pool, I bounced twice on the diving board and executed a simple but pretty swan dive, my splash as light as a librarian’s cough. I swam one length, did a slick somersault turn, and swam back. For nearly an hour, I stayed in the pool, emerging every now and then to show off my repertoire of dives, and when I got out for good, Oily Man’s chaise longe was empty, a vague impression of his oily body visible in the oily sags of the plastic webbing.
His nonoily friend closed his book.
“Don’t tell me—college swim team MVP?”
“High school, junior year,” I said, adjusting my towel like a matador’s cape.
“I’m Ed, by the way. Ed Stickley.”
“Candy.” I shook his outstretched hand. “Candy Ohi.”
The lie—my last name was Pekkala—sprang out of my mouth like a verbal jack-in-the-box.
“Like the county?”
I stared at the man with the pink peeling nose and shoulders. There was a county in Minnesota called Kandiyohi, a discovery I’d made long ago while heading to my Aunt Pauline’s house. On these road trips to visit relatives, my dad was less chatty than a hearse driver, forcing me to entertain myself with books, crossword puzzles, or the view the passenger window offered. I remember the kick I felt seeing the roadside Kandiyohi County sign.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, too excited to honor our tacit vow of silence. “Did you see that sign? There’s a county named after me and mom: Kandy-Ohi!”
“Your mother’s maiden name was ‘Oh,’ not ‘Ohi,’ he said sharply, “and you spell your name with a ‘C.’”
Duh! I screamed silently, my cheeks burning from the shame of committing the sin of trying to have a playful moment with my father.
I asked Ed Stickley how he knew Kandiyohi was a county in Minnesota.
Scratching his thinning strawberry-blond hair, he smiled. “The same way I know Citrus is a county in Florida, Churchill’s one in Nevada, and Catawba’s a county in North Carolina. I like studying maps.”
“For fun?”
“What can I say?” said Ed, holding up his palms. “I’m a teacher.”
“Of geography?”
“Sometimes, but usually history or English. Whatever’s needed. I’m a substitute.” He reached into the little Styrofoam cooler beside him and held up in offering what looked like a pop bottle of chocolate milk. “Want one?”
I shook my head and instead picked up the book he’d been reading.
“So is this something you’ll be teaching?” I asked, examining the cover that promised in bold print to reveal The Truth behind the National Security Act of 1947!
“I wish, but the school board likes our students’ reading lists to be a little less . . . controversial.” Opening the bottle with a church key, he took a sip. “But let’s not talk about school—this is my last weekend of summer vacation. That is, if I decide to take an assignment right away.”
His grin begged me to ask him why he wouldn’t, and so I did.
“Because in June I won fifty-one thousand dollars on a game show.”
“Whoa,” I said, rearing back in my chair as if I’d been splashed. “You must know a lot of trivia.”
“I prefer to think of it as ‘general knowledge.’”
Metal squealed against concrete as two women on the opposite side of the pool dragged lounge chairs from out of the shade. Once in the sun, they greeted Ed.
“Hey, girls,” he said, doffing an imaginary hat, and a moment later he whispered, “Sherri Durban. She works for the Hollywood Bowl. Definitely worth checking out while you’re here.”
“I’m not really much of a bowler.”
Ed’s laugh was a series of heh-heh-hehs. “The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheater.”
“Oh. I thought because of the name—”
“—which is perfectly logical. But no, this bowl’s the biggest natural amphitheater in the United States. It can seat up to eighteen thousand people. They say it . . .”
We both laughed and he shrugged.
“Sorry. The teacher in me.”
The smell of coconuts wafted over as the two women across the pool made a production of slathering suntan lotion up the slopes of their calves and thighs.
“What about her friend?”
Ed squinted at the minimally bikinied woman kicking off her high-heeled mules.
“Joanie Welles. She’s a singing waitress at this Italian joint on Hillhurst, but her dream—and this is a direct quote—‘is to be bigger than Streisand.’”
“That’s pretty big.”
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“And pretty delusional. I’ve heard her sing.”
Pointing out my new neighbors, Ed was a veritable directory.
The man wearing a maroon velour robe and a copy of the show-business daily Variety tented over his face was Robert X. Roberts.
“He was on his way to being a big leading man and then talkies came in and his career went phhhhht. Couldn’t get rid of his Bronx accent—still has a little bit of it, in fact. So he got into directing instead. He did a lot of B movies and then had a career revival in live television.”
Bastien Laurent was a French photographer who accessorized his black Speedo with a black Stetson and several gold chains.
“Once he had a photo shoot with a bunch of swimsuit models down here at the pool,” said Ed with a sigh. “That was a good day.”
The two intensely tan men, wearing little plastic eye protectors and triangles of zinc oxide on their noses, were Bruce, a talent agent, and his boyfriend Robb, a salesman at Giorgio’s in Beverly Hills.
“And that guy leaving?” said Ed of the silver-haired man who’d anchored his towel under a belly that looked like a fully inflated pink beach ball. “That’s Vince Perrogio. He wrote a couple of noir films back in the ’40s. Now he says he can’t get a movie made because ‘the fairies have taken over Hollywood.’ That’s why he never hangs around the pool when Bruce and Robb are here.”
“Sounds like a real charmer.”
“Plus he’s got a policy that he’ll only date women under thirty, and he’s always on the lookout.”
“Ick. Thanks for the warning.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, surprised that it was nearly dried. Even buried in its shroud of smog, the sun shone fierce.
“So other than your name,” said Ed, “what else should I know about you?”
My mouth turned down in a little grimace. “Actually, you don’t even know that. My last name’s Pekkala.”
“Finnish, right?”
“You’re good,” I said, impressed.
“So why’d you say it was Ohi?”
“I don’t really know,” I said, feeling the flush of being caught in a dumb lie spread across my face. “It just popped out of my mouth. Maybe because when that oily guy—”
Best to Laugh: A Novel Page 2