“Your love gave me courage,” he said simply.
Libby held out her hands and beckoned him further into the bedroom. He was conscious of the dimensions of the room, of the double bed against the far wall and a large mirror over the dresser. Kojiro glanced at their reflection in the mirror, clasped hands, standing a little apart — tentative, shy.
They were both remembering the first time they had made love in the hotel in Sapporo. No hesitation then, no trepidation — just fierce desire, urgency, physical need. This time they were committing themselves to one another for a lifetime, bestowing the gift of their bodies on one another, exclusively and forever.
Kojiro picked Libby up and carried her to the bed. “I think I must be dreaming,” he laughed.
She reached up and drew him down on top of her, entwining her legs between his, sliding her hands under his jacket, across his broad shoulders. “It’s a very vivid dream,” she breathed.
“Ah, yes, but I have a very — vivid — imagination. And since that first day I saw you … ”
“Since the first day you saw me,” Libby insisted.
Kojiro raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at her. “I have been imagining myself making love to you. Kissing you. Touching you, like I am now.” His hand skimmed over her breast.
“When we made love that first time … I couldn’t believe you would give yourself to me. It was … it was better than I imagined. Every time. Always better. Not just the pleasure, but the feelings, the affection I felt for you. Until … ”
“The night at the hot springs,” she finished.
“Hai, until the night at the hot springs.”
“You told me you loved me.”
Kojiro grazed her lips with his tongue. “It was the last time we made love.”
Libby lay perfectly still while Kojiro finished undressing her. She could feel his eyes sweeping over her body, hear his rapid, shallow breathing as he discarded his clothes and knelt between her legs. His hands sought her breasts, kneading the soft flesh gently, insistently. She arched her back in invitation, her body tense with expectation and yearning.
Libby wanted to be reclaimed, her sorrow purged, once and for all, by this act of love.
“Libby,” he murmured tenderly.
They moved in unison, spirits soaring, savoring the exaltation and delight of their reunion, scaling together the summit of healing and fulfillment and promise.
Captain Libby Comerford and Major Kojiro Yoshida were officially engaged the next week and a tentative date set for the wedding. As soon as the interminable paperwork was completed, they would have a quiet wedding at the base chapel, followed by a ceremony at a local Shinto shrine, and a reception at a hotel in Hachinohe.
Libby’s family in Ohio was shocked by the news of the engagement. They had no idea Libby was dating anyone seriously, let alone a native of Japan. The only man she ever mentioned in her letters was Charlie McKay; the last they had heard of him, he had been transferred to Nevada.
“What do you suppose he looks like?” Mollie Comerford asked her husband.
“We’ll soon find out,” he answered philosophically. Mr. Comerford knew his daughter well enough to know that once she made up her mind about something, there was no changing it.
“What are we going to tell our friends?”
“That Libby is getting married to an officer in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force.”
“I wondered why she had her picture taken in a kimono,” she sighed. “It was so unlike Libby to do something like that. She must have done it for him.”
“Mollie, he has a name, Kojiro.”
“I know,” she bristled. “It’s just … it’s difficult to say, it’s so foreign sounding. My father fought the Japanese on Okinawa. He, he despised them, thought they were brutal and ignorant.”
“Your father is dead, Mollie. World War II was a long time ago. Japan is one of our strongest allies.”
“Libby wants a small wedding. No fanfare. I always envisioned a big to-do right here in Dayton. Arched swords … gala reception at the country club.”
Mr. Comerford put his arms around his wife. “I know you’re disappointed. But Libby is a mature woman with a demanding career and quite capable of making her own well-informed decisions. You didn’t want her to go to the Air Force Academy. You didn’t want her to fly. I’ve had reservations about some of her choices myself, but look how things have turned out.”
“Why didn’t she tell us about him before, instead of springing something like this on us?”
“Probably was afraid of how we would react or perhaps she was hesitant to make a commitment to a, hesitant to make a commitment. You used to worry she would never get around to getting married she was so involved in her career.
“Major Yoshida sounds like a fine young man. I don’t think Libby would have fallen in love with him if he wasn’t. Do you think the major’s parents are thrilled with his choice of a bride? I’d be willing to bet they’re even more distressed than you are, Mollie, at the prospect of Libby for a daughter-in-law.”
And indeed, they were. When Kojiro informed his parents he was marrying Libby Comerford, his father threatened to disown him. How could his son — so intelligent and successful — want to marry a gaijin? It was one thing to be infatuated with a beautiful foreigner but marry her? Never.
Kojiro admitted he didn’t know anything about Libby’s family. Most Americans couldn’t trace their lineage back more than two or three generations. No telling what undesirable forefather or tainted blood lurked in her ancestry.
Kojiro was his parent’s favorite. Perhaps because he was so small and frail when he was born they had been too lenient with him when he was growing up. He had such winning ways and pleasing looks and keen mind, Yoshida-san often wished Kojiro was the first born son. The elder brother wasn’t half the man Kojiro was, but at least he had had the sense to marry a respectable Japanese girl.
“What will their children look like?” His wife wept. The thought of grandchildren who were neither one thing or another was too appalling to contemplate.
“I think she will be too busy to have a family,” he said. “I don’t believe you can fly fighters and have babies. Even in the American Air Force.”
“Oh, oh, oh. What will I say to my friends? How can I tell them Kojiro’s wife flies jet airplanes like a man? I won’t even be able to talk to her!”
“She’s studying Japanese. Kojiro said she was a very diligent student. And General Sato has given his blessing to the marriage. It seems the general knows the young woman and is very fond of her.” But nothing her husband said, could allay the horror of having a foreign daughter-in-law. Mrs. Yoshida had enough trouble with her Japanese daughter-in-law, the prospect of having an American one was mind-boggling.
In fact, General Sato had been as surprised, and as skeptical, as just about everyone else on the base, American as well as Japanese, when Kojiro told him his plans. He was so shocked by his aide’s unconventional choice of bride he conferred with Colonel Long, in the hope that Libby’s commanding officer could prevent the marriage. Colonel Long assured him he had tried to discourage the romance but he could not legally intervene to avert it.
When General Sato told his wife, who he expected to be appalled by the news, she smiled and nodded her head.
“Oh, I knew they were very attracted to each other,” she said.
“But you only saw them together once. At the garden party! They hardly said two words to one another. And you don’t understand English.”
“Ah, but it was not what they said that I observed, it was the way they looked at one another. Major Yoshida could not keep his eyes off her and she kept smiling at him. It was not the same polite smile that she gave to you or to me, or to our other guests. It was the loving smile a woman gives to a man who has touched h
er heart.”
“I don’t believe it,” the general grumbled.
“I’m very happy for them,” Mrs. Sato said. “And I would be honored to attend the wedding. If I am invited, of course, and if you approve.”
General Sato patted his wife’s hand. “You’ll have your invitation,” he said. And then: “I suppose I’ll have to write a new wedding speech for Major Yoshida about how this marriage symbolizes the strong friendship and trust that exists between the Americans and Japanese at Misawa.”
“It will have to be in English,” his wife reminded him gently.
“I’ll make it short,” he grinned.
Kojiro’s friends in the squadron couldn’t believe it when he told them who he was marrying. They thought it was some kind of joke. Kojiro and the gorgeous American F-16 driver? Getting married? You looked at pictures of women like that and fantasized about the size of their breasts. You didn’t marry them. They weren’t real.
Libby’s cohorts were as incredulous as the Japanese when they heard about the engagement — for different reasons. Major Petrowski made a few lewd remarks about Asian men — behind the Colonel’s back — but his fellow pilots were not amused. They might not wholeheartedly approve of Libby’s fiancé but they respected her too much to impugn her judgment. Perhaps most surprisingly to Libby, a message arrived in her Gmail from Charlie, wishing her well. Libby had smiled when she read it.
But the obstacles, either real or imagined, that lay ahead did not impede the happiness of Kojiro and Libby. They spent as much of their free time together as possible. When Kojiro wasn’t busy attending to the general’s affairs, he was with Libby. They rented a restored merchant’s house in the town, a beautiful wooden home built in the late eighteen-hundreds with rice mat tatami floors and a sunken kotatsu table where they shared the meals Libby cooked, Japanese cuisine one night, American the next.
His colleagues accused him of forsaking his old friends, of becoming “Americanized.” “You’ll get tired of spending all your evenings with a woman, once the novelty has worn off,” they warned. “Your wife will expect you home after work to help clean the house and cook the dinner. American women won’t let their husbands out of their sight.” But Kojiro ignored them. If they had someone as beautiful and loving and exciting as Libby waiting for them at the end of the day … .
The major and his American wife were familiar figures in Hiroshi Takamatzu’s restaurant. If they were alone, they always requested the secluded alcove in the back — for sentimental reasons. They sat close together and held hands under the table and marveled at how quickly the first year of their marriage had gone by. Why, it seemed like only yesterday that they had repeated their vows to the base chaplain and exchanged the prescribed three cups of sake before the Shinto priest, and been feted by friends and relatives at the reception in Hachinohe.
Considering their respective parents’ reservations about the nuptials, things had gone quite smoothly. The Comerfords were quiet and cordial, the Yoshidas polite and reserved. Both mothers wept. The two fathers stood in dignified silence, their emotions held in check by pride.
The reception, an amalgam of Japanese and American customs, left the guests a little bewildered. The Americans were bored by the interminable speeches read in fractured English by Kojiro’s colleagues, the Japanese appalled at the informality. The only person oblivious to the tension in the room was General Sato. The general — being party to the romance from the day of its inception — was busy regaling anyone who would listen about the considerable merits of the bride and groom. His speech, which was mercifully short, began with a humorous description of the look on Major Yoshida’s face when Captain Comerford walked into the Samurai Squadron in a flight suit and sat down with Colonel Long to brief the mission.
Libby and Kojiro, who couldn’t believe that their marriage had really come to pass, were anxious for all the festivities to end so they could get on with their busy lives. They had so much to learn about one another. And neither knew what to expect in their new role of husband or wife. What would a red-blooded American male do after the first fight? How did Japanese couples make decisions about money? The only certainty was that they would have to compromise, and accommodate, and forgive, and love each other in large measure, in order to make their marriage succeed.
Loving was the easy part. Forgiving one another, overlooking little faults or unfamiliar patterns of behavior, was more difficult; but because they never lost sight of that love, their first year of marriage had been generally free of strife. Their most pressing problem was finding time to be together, as their schedules often conflicted and one or the other was away on temporary duty — Libby on exercises in Korea, Kojiro traveling with General Sato.
When they were on the road, the general teased the major remorselessly about pining away for his wife, but duty was duty and Libby, as a military officer, was more sympathetic on that score than most wives generally were.
The frequent separations made the time they spent together infinitely precious and they always came together with a renewed sense of awe and excitement and love.
Takamatzu lumbered over to their table to chat. He had to be a little more circumspect in his conversation than in the past, for Libby’s Japanese was improving at an alarming rate.
“For a gaijin, your wife has a very nimble tongue,” he said to Kojiro. “Pretty soon, she’ll be speaking better Japanese than you or I.”
“She studies very hard,” Kojiro said. It was unseemly for a husband to boast about his wife’s accomplishments, but it was true that Libby had made such significant progress in the difficult language during the past year that even his mother was forced to comment on it.
“Intelligent as well as beautiful. You are a lucky man, Major Yoshida.” Takamatzu turned to look at Libby and said: “It looks like married life agrees with her. She looks radiant this evening, Major Yoshida.”
Kojiro glanced over at Libby as if to confirm Takamatzu’s compliment. He did not want to let on in public, after over a year of married life, that he was still so enthralled by her beauty or so passionately in love. But his famous host was right, with her golden hair and luminous complexion, Libby set the room alight with her loveliness. Humility vied with fierce pride when he looked at her, and he had to bow his head, lest his face reveal his emotions.
“Eat up, Major Yoshida,” Takamatzu grinned. “If you want to keep that smile on your wife’s face, you need special nourishment.”
By the time they left the restaurant, it was dark, and with the exception of the bars and a few restaurants and a Kentucky Fried Chicken take-away on the corner, the town was closed up for the night. Libby linked arms with Kojiro and steered him in the direction of the little shrine where they had taken refuge that fateful night.
In the moonlight, they could just make out the two stone figures standing side by side on the altar. Someone had been there before them. There was an offering of fruit and vegetables and a few coins, on the votive tray.
Kojiro, emboldened by memories and the suggestive nature of the dosojin, stole his arms around Libby’s shoulders. She was wearing the pearls he had given her at the ryokan in the mountains. He had returned them to her on their wedding night.
The pearls, nestled between her breasts, felt as smooth and warm as her flesh. Kojiro twisted the long strand around his fingers.
Libby turned and put her arms around his neck. Beneath the linen skirt, he could feel the taut contour of her belly and hips pressing insistently against him.
“Do you think the dosojin will ever be satisfied?” She murmured in a husky voice.
Kojiro, glancing over her shoulder at the carved figures presiding over the deserted intersection, smiled. Then fumbling in his coin purse for some change to leave on the votive tray, took Libby by the hand and led her to the car.
Weather along the coast was unpredictable and in the int
ervening hours Kojiro and Libby had spent in the restaurant the countryside had been blanketed by a dense, wet fog. Driving was treacherous on the narrow, two-lane road, and Kojiro drove cautiously, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Familiar landmarks and road signs were obscured in the gloom so that they had driven several miles past the turn off for Misawa before Kojiro realized his mistake.
“It will take another hour to get home, at this rate,” He muttered under his breath. Kojiro was leaving in the morning for two weeks in Okinawa and he wanted to spend what was left of the evening making love to his wife, not hunched over the steering wheel trying to avoid running off the road into the drainage ditch.
Up ahead, a replica of the Alamo, the distinctive silhouette illuminated by strings of blinking lights, appeared brazenly in the darkness.
“You wouldn’t think a love hotel would get much business on a night like this,” Libby remarked.
“Love hotels are always busy,” Kojiro said with a scowl. He didn’t like the blatant reminder of what he was missing because of the exasperating weather. He had no idea where he was or how far he had driven past the sign for Misawa.
Braking sharply, he steered under the portals of the love hotel in order to turn around. The interior of the car was suddenly flooded with florid light from the pulsing heart on the archway overhead.
Kojiro growled something in Japanese as he slammed the gear shift into reverse and started to back on to the road.
“Wait. Kojiro?” Libby put her hand lightly on his arm. “If you want to … .”
“Want to, what?” He was in no mood to be teased by his wife about love hotels. Any mention of them, inevitably reminded him of their disastrous first date.
“Well?”
Libby glanced over at Kojiro out of the corner of her eye. His smooth cheeks were mottled with color, out of frustration or embarrassment. “We could stop here. For a little while. If you want to. Stay. For a little while.”
The Unquiet Heart Page 23