The Bride's Kimono

by Sujata Massey

  “It’s me. Are you very tired?” I asked.

  “Of course not, sweetie. Can you come up for breakfast? We’re in 605. Daddy was getting ready to order some room service—there’s a Japanese option that sounded intriguing.”

  I had noticed some of the office ladies on tour eating miso soup, rice, and pickled-bamboo-shoot breakfasts in the hotel restaurant, but it was the last thing I’d wanted to order in America. However, if my parents wanted to eat it, I’d go along with them. I was starting to get tired of bagels.

  The door to Room 605 was slightly open, so I called out a cheery hello and walked right in. I stepped back in haste. A woman with a purple silk robe coming halfway off her shoulders was locked in an embrace with a man—an embrace that looked about as passionate as my own the previous evening. Suddenly the woman pulled her robe closed and turned to greet me. I blushed to see that the lover was my mother, with a lighter shade of blond hair than she’d had a year ago. My father looked more embarrassed than she at having been caught in the act.

  “Sweetie, you’re here so quickly!” my mother said, embracing me now in a way that was warm and motherly, despite the aroma of Shalimar. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said, choking up. It wasn’t just happiness at the fact that my parents were there; it was a sense of wonder that they were still enough in love to touch each other that way.

  “Rei. You look so grown up.” My father, who was dressed in a Norwegian knit fisherman’s sweater, jeans, and Birkenstocks, came over to kiss my cheek.

  “After twenty-five, women don’t like being told they look grown up,” my mother chided him.

  “I don’t mind that you think I look older. I’m glad to be a day older and still alive.”

  “Not half as glad as we are,” my mother said, settling down on the rumpled king-size bed and gazing at me as if she couldn’t get enough. “Now, instead of mourning, we’ll celebrate. At that famous shopping mall!”

  “You know, the body was found there. I hardly think it’s the place to celebrate.” I broke off, distracted by the sight of my mother, who’d slipped off her silk kimono and now crouched over her suitcase, sorting clothes, in nothing but a black Spandex teddy. She looked remarkably slender.

  “Your body, Mom—what’s the secret?” I asked, amazed by the sight of this fifty-five-year-old sylph.

  “Pilates exercises three times a week,” she said, sliding off the bed, her arms full of clothes. “I’ve been trying to get your father to do it, if only to strengthen his back, but he still prefers tai chi.” She held up a shirt and looked at me. “Should I wear this? If it’s going to be warm, I can wear it under my Cynthia Rowley suit. If it’s colder, I’ll do the Krizia knit sweater-jacket and pants.”

  “The weather’s in the sixties—it’s like Japan,” I said. “By the way, did you bring a travel sewing kit? I tore the half-slip I need to wear again tomorrow.”

  “How big is the tear?” my mother asked.

  “About thirty inches long.”

  “I think we should just get you another slip. My treat. I’d love to take you on a lingerie shopping spree,” my mother said, slipping into a pair of stirrup-strap nubby wool pants that were far cooler than anything I owned. Her decorating business had to be going well—there was no way my father’s university salary could support that particular pair of pants.

  “Don’t you think it will be difficult to find a slip that goes all the way to the ankle?”

  “They’ll have one at a bridal boutique. I noticed they have three bridal shops at the Nation’s Place mall.”

  My mother had come in on a red-eye flight, been in the hotel two hours, and already she’d read through the mall’s offerings. I rolled my eyes. “Okay, we’ll go there. Today’s a free day for me—the only possible item on my agenda is checking in with the police.”

  The doorbell chimed, and my father opened it to a waiter bearing a tray laden with two Japanese breakfasts and one grapefruit. I could imagine where the grapefruit was going.

  “Since it is an established fact that you are alive, why are the police still interested in talking to you?” my father asked, arranging all our breakfasts on the Chippendale desk similar to the one in my room.

  “A Japanese woman on the plane with me disappeared. I think it’s quite likely she was the real victim.” In between sips of the soup, which was comforting, despite not being as hot or as well flavored as what you’d get in Japan, I recounted the long story of Hana—as well as of the missing bride’s kimono. My mother ate her grapefruit and finished the rest of my Japanese breakfast during the time I was talking.

  At the end, my father shook his head. “In my years practicing psychiatry, I have noticed how terrible things shadow certain people. A woman who is raped once is raped again. A man who was beaten as a child beats his children.”

  “I don’t know if there was any kind of trauma in Hana’s past,” I said.

  “It’s not poor Hana that I’m thinking about.” My father looked pensive. “Why is it that ever since you’ve gone to Japan, you have repeatedly been touched by death? It worries me that even on the way home to us, there is a death and you are involved. I think—never mind. You don’t want to hear.”

  “I’ll tell her, then!” My mother’s words rushed out. “We want you to come back to San Francisco. It makes so much sense! Take a little time to unwind and get back to a healthy inner space. You can join my Pilates class. And as far as work goes, maybe you can start some import-export thing between Japan and California—Asian furniture, at the moment, is very hot.”

  “No,” I said, my stomach tightening. “I can take care of myself, and more importantly, I have to take care of things with the Morioka Museum. I allowed their kimono to be stolen, and suggesting it was connected to something as horrible as a murder doesn’t lessen its absence. Now I’m thinking the kimono might be in a Dumpster at the shopping mall, if the killer didn’t take it with him. I’ve got to do what I can to get it back.”

  “Rei, a kimono means nothing!” my mother said.

  “Look at you! Krizia this, Cynthia Rowley that. How can you say clothes aren’t important?” I shot back.

  “Well, I would gladly give up all my clothes if was a choice between life and death. As for you, sometimes I wonder.”

  I put down my bowl of miso soup and went to look at the cars glinting in the sun in the hotel’s vast parking lot. “It’s not just the bride’s kimono that matters. It’s honor, and keeping promises, and the loss of something that really belongs to Japan.”

  “The way of the Bushido,” my father said softly. “How strange to hear it from your lips.”

  I turned back to stare at my father. He was talking about the samurai code of do or die—and that startled me. I couldn’t abide the idea of samurai culture, both for the elitism that it advocated and the violence that it condoned.

  “I’m not some kind of samurai person,” I said. “I have no pretensions whatsoever—”

  “Oh, you are,” my father said, sipping from his soup bowl and smiling. “You are the eighth generation descended from a samurai who lost his arm in defense of his lord’s castle. I find it fascinating that the strong character my parents wished for did not emerge in my brother or me, but in you.”

  My father’s almost delirious ramblings turned into snores after breakfast. He was exhausted. So I did what my mother wanted; I took her shopping.

  My parents had rented a Corolla. With my mother at the wheel and me as the chief navigator, we circled the mall, looking for a close parking space. Midway around the building, we approached an area that was sealed off with bright yellow tape that said POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

  “Let’s stop here,” I said immediately.

  “There are no empty spaces here,” my mother objected.

  “I bet this is where Hana died. I want to get out, just for a minute.”

  My mother sighed heavily. “Well, I’ll wait in the car by the curb.”

  I stepped out of the car and walked as close t
o the police line as I could. I could just see the edge of a Dumpster, but a corner of the mall kept it from being clearly visible. I ducked under the tape and went into the secured area, just far enough to get a clear view of the Dumpster. Now I could see it: about six feet tall, a dull green, with a generally grimy look. Japanese people, young women especially, felt strongly about cleanliness. Some office ladies even wiped off telephone receivers before speaking into them and wouldn’t permit their mothers to wash their clothes and their fathers’ in the same load. A Dumpster was a truly foul place for Hana to die.

  There was a loading dock a few feet away from the Dumpster. I could easily jump up on it and then I’d have a clear view into the Dumpster. I knew Hana wasn’t there anymore, but I was curious. Had they really taken out all the trash and combed through it for my kimono, as the detective had said last night?

  I was afraid to look, but something greater than fear gripped me; it was a sense of guilt. I had been suspicious and angry toward Hana for the last couple of days, but now I felt her loss. As Detective Harris had hinted, I could have saved her if I’d immediately reported her absence to the police.

  I walked over to the loading dock, ignoring my mother honking the car horn, and pulled myself up. Then I walked the few steps necessary to see into the container.

  There was nothing inside. A few strips of crime-scene tape had been placed across it, apparently to discourage potential dumpers. The Dumpster looked dirty, all right, but I didn’t see blood, or anything truly grisly.

  I heard the honking sound again, and then the sound of a police siren. I whipped around and didn’t see a police car but understood that one was near. I got off the loading dock fast, and instead of running straight back to my mother in the car, I went behind the loading dock, skirting around a building that wasn’t visible from the road.

  “Ma’am, can I see your license and registration?” A policeman was speaking to my mother.

  “I know I’m not supposed to stop here, but I had to answer a call on my cellular phone,” my mother said in her most stentorian tone—a decibel level once used to get me to clean up my room. “You see, unlike most people, I think driving while on the phone is dangerous.”

  “Crime scene…move on…” I couldn’t catch all that the answering male voice said to her, because it was at a normal speaking level.

  “You mean—it’s not safe?” my mother shouted.

  “Against the law…”

  “Thank you for the information, sir. I’ll just try to find a parking place and go into Off Fifth, the Saks outlet. I came here specifically to buy some shoes!”

  A car door slammed, and the Corolla purred off. I waited a few beats, and a second car followed. Good. The cop was gone. Keeping close to the edge of the building, I began inching my way out of the service area. From where I was standing it was a good ten minutes’ walk to the nearest entrance to the mall, a walk that I spent thinking about how stupid and pointless my investigation of the Dumpster had been. What could I possibly find, that the police hadn’t?

  Nothing, I had to conclude. All I’d accomplished was getting a clear picture of Hana’s dismal final dumping ground.

  “You almost died. And then, you almost got sent to prison,” my mother said when I joined her at Off Fifth.

  “Nobody gets put in jail for snooping.” I swooped down to hug her slim shoulders. “The worst that could have happened is the cop would have yelled at me. But thanks for keeping me from that.”

  “I’m going to yell at you lots this evening. What do you think of this sandal? I can’t believe I can even get a pair of Jimmy Choo sandals at a discount. Do you have any idea what these cost normally?” She turned over the shoe and showed me the sale price: $400.

  “Mom, it’s almost November. Why are you looking at sandals?”

  “I’m doing some work in Las Vegas. Everyone wears open-toe there, as well as fabulous dark nail polish. I’m trying to fit in, just as you do in Japan.”

  “Can’t you find a cheaper one?” I objected.

  “Rei, if I bought cheap things you wouldn’t enjoy wearing my hand-me-downs so much. Face it, expensive makes sense, especially if the two of us are going to share.”

  I left my mother to her own decadent devices, buying myself two far cheaper pairs of Aerosoles and one pair of Bottega Veneta T-strap heels. My mother wanted to pay for the stilettos, and I didn’t protest when I realized how happy it made her. “This is my daughter,” she said to the shoe salesman coming out of a storeroom with boxes up to his chin. “She does have a long foot, but at least it’s not wide. Actually, she wears the same size that I do. We wear each other’s clothes as well.”

  I ducked quickly into a sports shoe outlet to get myself a new pair of Asics, which were cheaper here than in Japan, where they were made. I was also pleased to find a tiny MAC makeup boutique, where I meticulously inspected all the new colors, and wound up buying two new frosted shades along with three of my favorite old colors. Then I joined my mother at St. John, where she reminisced with the sales clerk about buying the ladylike suits over the years. St. John had gotten a little bit edgier. We found a creamy belted cardigan with a fake fur collar and a coordinating skirt that looked businesslike yet felt incredibly cozy.

  Shopping, the way my mother and I were doing it, was not about practicality, but sheer pleasure. I had judged Hana a shallow person to spend all her money on clothes, but now I could understand it a little better. It was an exhilarating feeling to be able to buy dreams like this—the dream of being a bit taller, because of the stiletto heels—and perhaps slimmer, after I’d run a hundred miles in the new Asics. The suit from St. John made me feel like a New Age Holly Golightly, and the lipsticks…well, I had to admit they made me think of kissing.

  We couldn’t stop shopping. At BCBG, I found a slinky red dress of a velvet and Lycra mixture that my mother pronounced fine for a “little evening,” whatever that meant. She also insisted on a simple turquoise silk slip dress from the Nicole Miller boutique. I couldn’t imagine where I’d wear it, but my mother said she could. The Nicole Miller transaction took five minutes, about the amount of time she had to strip me down, slide the dress over my body to see if it fit, and throw her Visa card at the sales clerk.

  “I didn’t mean for you to buy me so much,” I said to my mother, but she pooh-poohed me as we went on to Escada, where she decided she had to have a winter-white pantsuit in the window for herself.

  When I pointed out that its merino wool fabric would be very difficult to keep free of stains, my mother said, “I barely eat anymore, so it will be safe with me. In fact, I’ll hand it down to you in a couple of seasons.”

  “It’s not my thing,” I said darkly; I was beginning to burn out. “Hey, shouldn’t we go to the bridal boutique to look for the half-slip?”

  “Oh, you’re American,” the pretty female sales clerk said with a laugh. “I thought I saw you the other day. There was a girl who looked a lot like you, but she had an accent…”

  I looked at her more closely. “Really. Tell me about the other person.”

  “She was Japanese, I guess, but had hair that was lighter than black. She was wearing a cute quilted coat—Barbour, I think they’re called—with black leather slacks. The girl sticks in my mind because she asked me to show her a coat that was typically American. Can you imagine?” The clerk wrinkled her nose.

  “Typically American?” I pondered that for a minute. “Did she use those words?”

  “She told me she wanted a typical American coat. She said a plain coat that was like what everyone wore. I told her that Escada was actually a German label, and our clothes are quite expensive and worn by discerning clients worldwide. If she wanted American, she should go to the Gap.”

  “Of course,” my mother soothed. “Escada is classic, but the clothes are so well made that they could hardly be called typical.”

  As my mother and the sales clerk went back to discussing my mother’s new suit, I stared out the window at the crow
ds of shoppers. Hana had been in Escada, looking for a coat to disguise herself. Was it because she wanted to get away with the kimono—or was she hiding from someone else?

  19

  I had the impulse to go around the mall to more stores to find out whether a fashionable Japanese woman had been looking for ordinary clothing. My mother revolted, though. She said that what I was doing was morbid, and that I should take my mind off things and just shop.

  “Mom, you’re more Japanese than the Japanese,” I scolded.

  “Hmm. How so?” she asked as we struggled to fit all our boxes and bags in the backseat of the Corolla.

  “It’s the shopping—your uncontrollable desire for small luxury goods. I watched the way your eyes lit up when you found those sandals at a price that was still stratospheric. You thought you had found a bargain, and you were in bliss.”

  My mother smiled serenely. “You know, your father has commented on my hobby recently, and I gave him this explanation. I deserve what I wear because I work hard for my clients. In fact, I’m considering this a working vacation, since I’m going to the Washington Design Center this afternoon to look at some new sources. Do you want to come along?”

  “I’d better first check whether the police have called. I might have to go look at the body of the woman who was found.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. Like Daddy said, it’s not healthy for you to repeatedly encounter death scenes. I don’t understand why you wanted to poke around in that Dumpster, either.”

  My mother dropped me off at the Washington Suites. Before going to see my father, I lugged eight shopping bags to my room and checked my voice mail. Detective Harris had indeed left a message. My pulse quickened as I heard his recorded voice ask me to call him back. I dialed the number he gave me—it must have been a cell phone, because he answered it himself, immediately.

  “Ms. Shimura, I’d like you to come in for a chat. Do you have time this afternoon?” he asked, sounding completely businesslike.

  “Yes. I’ll get something to eat first and then I’ll be there.” I knew that if I saw Hana’s body on an empty stomach, I was liable to get sick. “Is the medical examiner finished with the autopsy?”