Later, after the dishes are cleared and washed, Iva and Ducee sing a few Irish ballads.
Ducee’s eyes form tears during the last stanza of “Danny Boy,” and that’s when I head out the door to go home.
All day I’ve wanted to sit at my computer and write to Harrison. Even during the sermon this morning, based on one of Ducee’s favorite passages, Matthew six, about God caring for the birds of the air, my mind was coming up with comments to make on Harrison’s latest email message.
After Monet had deleted his picture before I got a chance to view it, Harrison resent the photo as an attachment with a note. His words on the screen made me smile and think, what a sweet guy.
Nicole,
Monet sounds charming. I don’t blame her if she deleted my picture after looking at it. She’s not the first. An ex-girlfriend of mine still throws darts at a 5 X 7 of me in her spare time.
If you look at the pond, by the lily, just behind me, you can get a glimpse of my Kohaku, my most gluttonous koi. I think he is guilty of eating the plants.
Harrison
Charming? Monet? Harrison used the same word to describe Monet as Ducee once did. In my mind I saw her ketchup-stained face, her one-legged stances, her puckered lips. I let out a light laugh but was not sure I agreed to charming.
Then I closed my eyes, pressed the paper clip to open the attachment, let out one single breath, opened my eyes, and was face-to-face with a man of more or less average build seated on a stone bench by a pond framed in foliage. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a long-sleeved blue shirt that brought out the blue in his deep-set eyes. His hair was brown and cut short. His eyes were alive with a smile and his lips parted to show two rows of white teeth. I searched for his shoes, but his feet were hidden by the cattails growing beside the pond.
I studied his face and then found the fish’s white-and-red spotted back, barely visible in the pond. My eyes moved to Harrison’s face again.
It was then that I had the urge to tell someone about Harrison. If only I had a girlfriend, I could call to say, “Guess what? Harrison sent me a picture of himself. Come over and see!”
Oh, I knew I could call Ducee. Ducee has always let me know she wants to be right in the center of my life, but telling Ducee wasn’t the same. Besides, I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to Ducee about this. What would my grandmother say? “You met him online? Isn’t that very dangerous? Yes, that’s it, yes.”
Aunt Iva would throw in that she knew someone who had met a guy online and was now at the bottom of the Neuse River as fish bait. Cousin Aaron would likewise tell me to beware of a stranger. His pastoral warning would sound something like, “Beware, Nicole. God’s given us discernment for times like these.” Or would he be glad that I was finally dealing with the Japan part of myself ?
Carefully, I went over every aspect of the photo from the pond to the cattails to Harrison’s face. I concluded that Harrison was not a movie star, but sure as the sun, neither was I. He did have a cuteness to him, though.
In the quiet of my house that night, I moved from my computer to plan my lessons for Monday’s seventh- and eighth-grade classes. I opened the literature textbook. Half an hour later I’d read nothing from any of the pages. But I had written Harrison’s name in bold letters on a page in my lesson planner.
Back at my computer, I clicked on the photo attachment again.
Harrison does have nice eyes, I told myself. They are blue and a little crinkled at the edges due to his smile. They seem to embody a cross between warmth and ease, and something else, something I couldn’t quite place.
Grandpa Luke always said when you met someone for the first time not to neglect his eyes. His instructions were to hold the eye contact and see what your gut told you. “When I met Ducee,” he told me, “I locked my eyes with hers and saw into her pretty and strong soul. Yes, I thought, by golly, this is the woman for me!”
As I fed my fish, I said to them, “His eyes are kind. They’re blue like the ocean. I bet they’d gloss over when he was told a sad story.”
My angelfish and clownfish just opened and closed their button mouths.
Yet I didn’t say a word to Harrison about my birth in Japan or Mama. I simply replied that I was very glad to get the picture and that his outdoor fish pond looked great.
———
On Sunday afternoon after I get home I write until the sun sets. I answer Harrison’s questions about teaching, why I became a teacher, and why I like living in Mount Olive. “It’s tiny and quaint. Have you ever been to the South?” I tell him about the family reunion in July, the food we’ll make, including pineapple chutney. “We use an ancient recipe my grandmother says comes from Ireland, although we know there are few pineapples, if any, in Ireland.” I say that the green bean casserole is made with heavy cream instead of milk, which adds about five thousand extra calories to each serving, but somehow, on reunion Saturday at my grandmother Ducee’s, we don’t care.
Chapter Eleven
As we walk out into the fading late-March sunshine after school one Tuesday, Kristine wants to know why I look sad. When I don’t reply but just push my hands into my coat pockets, she tells me I can’t brood over Richard any longer. “Nicole, you have to get out there and circulate again.”
Richard? I haven’t given him a thought in weeks. He is probably circulating with the tattooed librarian and that is just peachy by me.
“You’re cute,” Kristine tells me with one of her wide smiles and a flick of her gently wind-blown hair. “I know this guy who would like to date you. He’s about your height, has brown wavy hair. Since he’s been out of jail he hasn’t found anyone he’s attracted to.” Then she turns to walk toward her red Mustang. “Let me know, okay?”
As I get into my car to go home, I look at myself in the mirror and can barely see my eyes. The wind has ruffled my frizzy mane in all directions. It’s hopeless. My hair will never look like Kristine’s, nor will my smile or eyes or legs. I speed out of the parking lot, return Mr. Vicker’s wave, and sail down the street.
What is wrong with me? Other than my wayward hair? It was a good day at school, I think. My eighth-graders wrote poetry and some of the poems, especially Clay’s, were electrifying. Maybe they were paying attention last week as I taught them how to string adverbs and adjectives together. Perhaps my students will make it to Fortune 500 companies. Once they pass middle school, high school, and college, that is. And as adults, they may even look back upon their eighth-grade year and thank me. After all, Henry Adams did say that a teacher affects eternity.
But it is not teaching that has me on edge. The teaching aspect of my life has been going well for a while now. It’s really quite simple. Sazae knows; my aquarium of swimming beauties know. I haven’t heard from Harrison in over a week.
I reread the previous messages I’ve sent, analyzing each one, trying to find the line or word that may have caused him to be offended and quit corresponding. We’ve been writing constantly and now the inevitable has happened—one of us is tired. And it’s not me.
For the whole month, I’ve sent messages in the afternoon and received replies the next morning. He writes at night, while I am still sleeping and on the brink of waking to a day that he is just about to complete. I learned early on that during the spring, Japan is thirteen hours ahead of America’s East Coast.
I wrote on a Saturday after cleaning my fish tank. In a cheerful mood, since I’d just completed the tedious chore of scrubbing the insides and outsides of the glass tank, I made a bowl of grits and wrote about the first goldfish I ever owned. He’d recently written about his first fish, which was a minnow he caught in a stream at a local park in Kyoto.
I typed,
My cousin in Mount Olive gave me my first fish. My father and I lived in Richmond at the time and I was visiting my grandma Ducee the summer before entering first grade. Aaron came over with a glass globe container, and it held one piece of seaweed, a blue rock and a green and red pagoda. He poured the contents of
a plastic bag into the container and out gushed water and a bright orange goldfish. I was attending Vacation Bible School that week and we were studying Jonah and the big fish. So, naturally, I named my fish Jonah. He lasted all summer, swimming happily in his home, which I kept on my grandmother’s kitchen counter. I still have the green pagoda, and every fish tank I’ve had since then gets this childhood item placed on the gravel.
I looked forward to hearing his response. But the next morning before heading to church, my inbox was empty. I didn’t hear from him the next day or the next. Why isn’t he writing? I asked myself. Did I say something wrong? My mind spun with confusion.
I even prayed that he would write as I walked the halls at school, listened to Kristine in the teachers’ lounge, and tried to ease Iva’s worries about Ducee’s failing health. Then I thought, what a silly prayer. He’s just a guy across the ocean who likes fish. Big deal. Get over it. God must think you are awfully frivolous to ask Him for such a selfish thing.
But he writes poetry. His blue eyes are kind. And when I look at his picture and read lines from his email messages, it is as though I can see his eyes move and light up and—
I have to stop sitting in Aunt Lucy’s chair. I am not only crazy, but obsessed.
It doesn’t matter what I try to tell myself; I want to hear from Harrison.
As I unlock my front door, I promise myself I’ll do five things around the house that need to be done before checking my new email messages. Promise.
In the kitchen there is an answering machine message from my stepmom, Bonnie. She emphasizes how wonderful it would be to hear from me. I suppose it’s time I give her a call.
First, I make a cup of Earl Grey and sip it at the kitchen table. Maybe Harrison has been on vacation. He did say he was going to southern Japan, to Okinawa, to snorkel, but wasn’t that in July? I finish my tea, realizing I didn’t even taste it.
Then I pick up the phone.
She answers on the third ring. I’d hoped to get by with the easy method—leaving a message.
“Hi, Bonnie, how are you? How’s Father?” I try to conjure a cheery voice, sort of like Kristine would sound.
“Oh, Nicole. It’s you. How nice of you to call.” I hear it in her voice. What she really means is, finally, you are returning my phone calls. At last you are showing some concern for me and your father. Well, girl, it is about time.
“How are you?” I repeat.
“We are doing.” Which means she is busy with the women’s club of Richmond while Father sits on the couch and eats sardines from a can. “How are you doing?”
I tell her school is fine and my fish are fine and then ask if she and Father will be at the family reunion.
She sighs. “When is it?”
Same as every year, I want to say, but instead tell her the first weekend in July.
“Oh,” her voice sounds hollow. “No, I don’t think so. The Club is having a luncheon that Friday. Saturday they are holding a canned-goods drive.” Bonnie has never been one for conversation. I once tried to get her to describe her childhood house to me. Since she holds an interest in interior decorating, I figured this subject would cause her to tell in detail about each room, the furniture, the swing in the backyard. Instead, she replied in a sinister voice with, “Our house was cold. There was this dampness that crept up from the floors.” Which brought chills over my skin. I didn’t want to hear any more.
Now the silence makes my head itch. I attempt to break it. “So what is Father doing? Can he come to the phone?”
Quickly, she says, “Oh no. But he sends his love.”
“Oh.”
“Richard?”
“What?”
“How is Richard?”
Coolly, I tell her, “Fine.” I’m sure he is, running off with the librarian.
“Will you come see us soon?”
“I hope to.” Please, don’t make me set a date.
“Can you come for your father’s birthday? He’d like that.”
“We’ll see,” I tell her. My students claim that when adults say we’ll see it’s just another way of saying no.
Father married Bonnie during an eclipse, I’m sure. That one moment in his life when the sun and moon lined up and he was actually sober and happy. He managed to put on some cologne to cover the smell of sardines, propose with a diamond he bought in a pawn shop, and she, enticed by his good looks, accepted. Since then there has never been another eclipse in his life. Just this large darkness like an overgrown shadow. The darkness has actually been around since Mama’s death, I’m told. “Her death ripped his life apart,” Ducee said once. “Just took everything from him. Yes, that’s it, yes.” You’d never guess my father is a medical doctor. But I heard he was once a good one, eager with enthusiasm to work at the Baptist Hospital in Kyoto, Japan. I’ve heard from some relatives that in his early twenties, right before he met Mama, he battled depression. Once the love of his life was dead, the illness consumed him, and not caring to seek help or medication, he lost his faith and spiraled downward. That’s what they tell me.
“Well,” Bonnie breathes in. “We do miss you.”
“Thank you.” As soon as the words leave my lips, I think, what a dumb thing for me to say. I know what I’m expected to say. “Oh, I miss you, too.” But I just can’t. I don’t miss anything about her, not even the beef stew she makes, which is actually tasty. And Father. His depressed lifestyle has never been something I’m proud of. In fact, I used to worry that if depression is hereditary, I was doomed.
“Well,” Bonnie says once more. “I’m glad we could talk.”
“Take care of each other,” I reply. Then I quickly whisper, “Bye,” and hang up.
It’s over. Going to the dentist would have been easier. But I did it. I’ve taken care of something before giving myself the luxury to check for new messages.
I ease into my computer chair. Yes! There is a message from Harrison. He’s written back, at last. I let the relief sink in for a moment, enjoy it. All is well now. I glance up at my fish. “It’s okay,” I reassure them. “He wrote. Everything’s okay.” Smiling, I open his newest message.
It holds only one line. I am too stunned to read it aloud to my fish.
Nicole, my mother remembers the night you were born.
Chapter Twelve
In elementary school in Richmond, I wanted the teachers to catch every kid who lied. Those in the back row who claimed they weren’t talking when they could be heard down the hallway. Those who said the markers belonged to them when they’d taken a set from someone else’s desk. The ones with innocent eyes, telling the teacher their dog slobbered on their math homework, when really they’d left their fractions book in their desks with no intention of doing homework the night before.
Liars made my face burn with anger. Lying was surely the worst sin.
“God punishes you ten times more for lying,” I once told Ducee as we lifted ladles of pineapple chutney into clear mason jars.
“Really?” she asked, wiping her fingers against her green apron with “Mount Olive” printed on the wide, square front pocket. “And how’s that?”
“Lying hurts. Bad.” I made a sour face like I did when she gave me turnip greens to taste.
Ducee studied the chutney in the lineup of jars on her kitchen counter. “The one doing the lying or the one lied to?”
I thought this was a trick question. So I answered, “Both.”
She nodded, which made me think I had given the correct response.
I haven’t lied to Harrison, though. I’ve just been a little . . . well, deceitful. Unfortunately, regardless of how I term it, what I’ve done is now biting at me. And it hurts. I am as exposed as a single goldfish in a glass bowl. Caught. Busted, as my students would say.
I’ve been corresponding with a stranger I’ve grown fonder of with each email message. He likes fish. He has a sense of humor. He has nice eyes. He writes well. In addition to his poem from last spring, he’s sent three other
poems.
We have several things in common—keeping fish as pets, teaching English to students, and much more than I care to let him know. We were both born in Kyoto, at the same Baptist hospital, and once lived in the same city. His parents were medical missionaries and so were mine. But did I need to tell him all that? I liked just reading his words and keeping my Japan life concealed. I have always kept my Japan side hidden.
Except for one night at my friend Josie’s house when I was in second grade. We were talking about how sad it was that her pet guinea pig got loose, was run over by a garbage truck, and died. Josie had tears in her eyes and something inside must have made me think I could let my friend know about what happened to my mother. So I told her. “My mama died in a house fire in Japan,” I said.
Josie said, “Ooh. That means she’s a ghost of fire. Ghosts of fire are the scariest ones. Ooh.” She quit sobbing and made eerie noises by smacking her lips and moaning. For added emphasis, she blew air through her nose.
I told myself Mama was not a ghost as I tried to sleep in the twin bed in Josie’s bedroom. But the shadows on the walls were exceptionally spooky that night, and the barking neighborhood dogs kept me from falling asleep. I lay in the dark as Josie snored. And I made a vow to myself. Never, ever, tell anyone about Mama again.
And now, my secret has been found out.
———
In a light jacket, I sit outside on the front step of my house. I wave to Mama in heaven and feel the pounding of my heart against my navy sweater. Harrison’s mother must have known Mama. Harrison said his parents were medical missionaries. They might have lived near Mama and Father before I was born, and even after I was born. Or perhaps they just worked together at the hospital.
Nicole, my mother remembers the night you were born.
I imagine a woman with kind eyes like Harrison’s, coming to the hospital to see Mama and me after I slithered into the world. She might have held me or at least watched my mother bring me to her breast. Maybe she cooed at me, “Why, you are beautiful. Look at all that hair.” Perhaps this woman said to Mama, “Emma, she looks like you and Cliff. Such a nice mixture.” She might have whispered, “Oh, Nicole is a pretty name.”
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