One Hundred and One Ways

by Mako Yoshikawa

  “Last night it was so windy. We hoped it would rain then, but not a drop came down.”

  I nod.

  “Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “Good night, Mrs. Noffz.”

  “Good-bye, sleep well,” she says, and under the protection of her umbrella she smiles at me as I hurriedly pull the door shut.

  Eric thinks that my grandmother is going to be like old Mrs. Noffz—a little embarrassing, a lot annoying, but wholly endearing and sweet when considered in the abstract, as a photo in the album, or a name on a tombstone. Remembering his great-aunt Julia, who grew so enormously stout that her coffin had to be custom-made, he smiles fondly now. “Dear old thing,” he murmurs (waxing British, not coincidentally, as he waxes sentimental), forgetting, or choosing to forget, how her belches and gas spoiled their unfortunately intimate family reunions.

  He does not know, for I have kept it from him, that my grandmother is the last person to elicit the kind of fond, indulgent smile (perilously close to laughter at her expense) that the memory of dear old Great-Aunt Julia seems to provoke. I have long been cherishing the thought of Eric’s surprise when he finally meets her. Even though she will not be unusually tall by Western standards, even though her beauty has been dimmed by the ravages of age, he cannot fail to be stunned by her presence.

  The most recent photograph I have of her is from three years ago, taken by my mother on the day after my grandfather’s funeral. Looking straight into the camera, she is poised and impossibly elegant in a plain dark suit; her face, with its careful makeup, shows little sign of grief. She towers a full head above her two daughters-in-law, meek Aunt Tomoko and brassy Aunt Tomoko, and she is a shade taller than her sons, who take after their father in terms of height as well as temperament. It seems odd, contrary to nature, even, to see her silvery head rising above the dark ones of her children. But then again, my grandmother has lived in defiance of most social rules, clawing her way up from her humble beginnings to a cool, aristocratic demeanor and deportment that would rival any woman’s in Japan, so why should she not live in defiance of the process of evolution as well?

  She has been listless, lately, so much thinner and less haughty since her husband’s death that her two daughters-in-law wrote independently to my mother—Yukiko’s one blood daughter, and her oldest child—for help. Shuttling back and forth between her sons’ households, for all the world like some latter-day Lear, does not suit Yukiko. Her sons and their Tomokos welcome her into their homes dutifully, but she, with a virulence that surprises no one, hates that life.

  Both Tomokos, the meek as well as the brassy, dislike her, of course. While their worries about her may very well be sincere, they must be relieved that she will soon be out of their houses, far away in another country. Yukiko, with her imperious ways, is a nightmare of a mother-in-law, never hesitating to abuse my poor aunts in public. What makes it worse for the Tomokos is that they get scant support from their families. Their easygoing husbands, long used to the quick temper and sharp tongue that masks their mother’s fundamental warmth of heart, offer sympathy but no help, laughing off the news of her latest tirade. My cousins like her because they know she is their friend, though a grandmother she is not, at least in the sense that her lap (bony and hard) does not make a comfortable refuge; nor does she knit, or bake, or even smile with crow’s feet by her eyes. But she likes to talk with her grandsons, as she will with me, her only granddaughter.

  Gleeful as I am at the prospect of Eric meeting my grandmother, the prospect of her meeting him worries me a little. Chary with her approval and capricious in her tastes, she might decide to take a dislike to Eric, just as she has to my unfortunate aunts. Still, the chances of this happening are remote, for Eric is too handsome, too polite, too obviously successful and, finally, too male to excite the scorn that fell on the heads of the well-intentioned but completely and infuriatingly girlish Aunt Tomokos.

  I will know right away, of course, in the first few moments after they meet, whether my grandmother likes Eric. Well? I will say, smiling with pride as I lean against the doorframe, my shoulder still warm from where he brushed against me as he left the room. What do you think, Obaasama? He’s okay, isn’t he, this man that I have promised to marry.

  Phillip had been gone for five months by the time I met Eric, in July of last year. Usually I love summer, but that year I hated the sight of couples strolling in the park, and the sound of people laughing as they roamed the streets at dusk.

  I had been studying inside my apartment all week, and I was nervous about going out; if the ticket had not already been purchased, I would not have gone. I dallied so long that I was late leaving the house. Yet I was lucky with the subways, and when I stepped inside the hall, flushed from the brisk walk through the crowds, it was to find that the lights were still on; that the patrons of the arts, in varying degrees of fine attire, were still standing around and chatting as they fanned themselves with programs.

  While I took a program, I waved away the usher’s offer of assistance; my mother had given me the season tickets in March, and by July I knew my seat as well as the people I sat with, the perfumed lady with the dimpled elbows to my left, and the snoring fat man on my right.

  I took off my jacket and placed it on the seat to my right, and sank gratefully into my chair. A dark-haired, clean-cut man standing two aisles ahead of me caught my eye; he was talking to an Asian couple, but kept glancing at me all the while. I pegged him immediately as a man with an Asian-woman fetish, and sure enough, after a low word to his friends, he began edging towards the aisle, excuse-meing to the three old ladies on the end. He came up my row slowly, a smile on his face, his eyes fixed on me, and his step the stealthy, dogged tread of the hunter.

  New York is filled with men like that. They have introduced themselves to me in coffee shops, libraries, bookstores, and even over the phone, where a mere mention of my name once triggered a flood of conversational Japanese, delivered in a flawless accent, as well as a discount on the software I was ordering. If our conversation goes as far as career talk, I make sure to tell them I am studying English literature, with all the emphasis on the second term, but no matter what I say or what big words I use, they all too often ride over my hints and ask me how long I have been in this country, or they compliment me on my English skills. I always snub them, some less rudely than others.

  “Do you mind?” asked the young man, waving at my coat and bag. “Could I sit down?”

  “No,” I said, but in spite of all my righteous anger, I softened my response with a smile, for his tone was impeccably polite, and close up, he was very good-looking indeed.

  His smile abruptly vanished from his face, and he looked, just for a second, like a pouty child. “What do you mean, no? That’s my seat.”

  I wanted to flee, but I would have had to brush by his knees or vault over the seats in front of me to do so. So instead I picked up my jacket and purse and placed them on my lap. Mercifully the lights soon began to dim.

  It was not until after the tuning of the orchestra, the arrival of the conductor, and the start of the concerto that I mustered the courage to speak. “I’m sorry,” I said, leaning towards him a fraction of an inch, and keeping my voice to a whisper.

  “Don’t mention it,” he answered politely, but I could hear, almost imperceptibly, the smothered laugh in his words.

  “I thought—well, I thought you—”

  “I know what you thought,” he interrupted. “It’s not surprising—you must get that all the time.”

  The woman to my left turned, her dimpled elbow brushing against my arm. “Shh,” she said sharply. “Have some respect for the music.”

  “Excuse us,” said the young man, once again exhibiting beautiful manners. As the woman sat back, somewhat mollified, the perfume proved too much, and I sneezed. I bit my bottom lip, fighting another sneeze as well as a wave of hysteria, and then I felt the man next to me begin to shake.
Under cover of the Chopin concerto, as the woman beside me glared, we laughed together in the dark, conspiratorially, like children.

  His friends, the Chinese couple, came up to claim him during the intermission. The last piece on the program was the Pastoral Symphony, and as I heard its opening measures, I felt a pang for the snoring fat man, the usual occupant of the seat to my right: although most composers put him to sleep right away, he loved Beethoven dearly and he would have enjoyed the symphony much more than me or the young man who kept half-turning to look at me in the darkness.

  Mostly I was thinking about one of the novels I was reading, but I remember the rousing finale, how the conductor bowed, everybody clapped, and the lights went on. I had not enjoyed the concert particularly, but perhaps I was more stirred by the music than I realized, because when the stranger sitting next to me confidently, almost carelessly, leaned over and said, “Would you like to have dinner with me?” I smiled and nodded yes as if I always went out with strange men at night in the city. As we stood up, I wondered if the people sitting behind us thought that this stranger and I were a couple of long standing, perhaps even married, and were so familiar and comfortable with each other that we did not need to speak for hours at a time. Now I know that most people trust Eric immediately and instinctively. His instant charm is probably his most critical professional asset.

  “Eric Lowenson,” he said, reaching out his hand in a mock-formal gesture. “I’m Kiki, Kiki Takehashi, nice to meet you,” I said as I shook his hand; usually I am shy during introductions, but I felt at ease with him.

  There was a crowd at the door and a marked shortage of cabs on the street, as a light but steady rain was falling. No one seemed prepared for the rain, for the skies had been clear throughout the day and in the evening before the concert, but Eric surprised me by pulling out an umbrella, a large navy one, which he held carefully over my head even though the rain was so light. As I discovered later, Eric almost always carries around an umbrella, clear skies and favorable forecasts notwithstanding. At first I believed this habit bespoke volumes: wariness, worry, and a fastidious, almost feline distaste for water and mess—all the hallmarks of a momma’s boy, and everything that Phillip was not. Yet as Eric and I walked through more and more showers, increasingly I began to see that the umbrella he always carries is not really so at odds with the one lock of hair that insists on falling rakishly over his eyes, giving him the smoldering potential of a teen idol. He does not actually care about getting wet, although he does not care for it, either. He is in fact much more likely to use his umbrella to cover others, and though even now, when he whips one out from some hidden pocket, I tease him about how his umbrella is a (tried and true) means of getting close to women, it is used, often as not, to keep his male buddies at the office dry, as well as dozens and dozens of female ones.

  He steered me through the crowds on the sidewalk, clearing a little space so that I walked without hindrance. Gray smoke swirled and curled out of a grate on the street, and the rain at once blurred and heightened the lights of the city. We walked a few blocks until we found a tiny French restaurant that he had heard about and wanted to try. It was such a small and unassuming place that I did not think it would cost much, but the prices were startling and the portions, when they came, were minute. The waiters were quiet and benevolent. Eric told me that the wine we were drinking was first-class, and that the food was fair, although the fish was a bit overcooked.

  Over dinner I gave him the usual simplified summary of my dissertation, and he described his work. Soon the food was gone, his fish expertly deboned, and his glass emptied of wine. Neither of us wanted coffee. He signaled and the waiter brought him the check, which I reached for but he picked up first. “I’m paying,” he said. “I asked.”

  “But I took your seat,” I said, “and I wasn’t going to let you sit down.”

  “Ah,” he said, handing his credit card to the waiter, “but you did let me in the end.”

  “That hardly warrants such a nice dinner,” I said, laughing.

  He grew still as he watched me, a slightly puzzled look on his face. The waiter stepped in, then, with the receipt. Eric glanced at it, calculated the tip with record speed, and signed it with a flourish. Only then did he look again at me. His brow was still faintly wrinkled in thought, but he did not ask a question or voice confusion. Instead he paid me a compliment, speaking to me in the tender tones of a lover, or a parent.

  “I really like it when you smile,” he said.

  As we stopped to pick up our coats, I saw a china fixture on the counter, a sculpture made up of two levels of plates, one balanced on top of the other like the skeletal frame of a building under construction. Each plate was filled with mints. Standing there and looking down at them, I thought how Phillip would have loved this: we went to one Chinese restaurant all the time because it had a whole bucket of mints on the counter, and we took turns covering each other so that we could fill all our pockets with them. But because a young lawyer in a suit and tie stood behind me this time, I picked up just two mints and daintily nibbled on one as I pulled on my coat. Then, without moving my lips, I sucked on the other until it was gone.

  It was past twelve. He did not suggest another meeting until he had found me a taxi and put me inside it. When he bent down to talk to me through the open door, he did not hesitantly say, “Would you be interested …?” or “Could I call you?”; he seemed to assume that I would be, and that he could. “You’re in the phone book?” was all he asked, and I said yes, or maybe I just nodded my head. He spelled out my last name to check that he had it right, and I nodded again, impressed with the ease with which he reeled it off. Then he shut the door; I waved good-bye through the window, and the cab pulled away into the light summer rain.

  As I sat in the taxi and watched the city lights go flashing by, I was reminded of the way I felt when I was a child, and my father tucked me into the front seat of the car before driving me to school in the morning. Sometimes in the winter, the windows of our car were all white with frost. “Let’s see,” my father would say on those days, examining the depth of the ice. “Give me thirty of those rivers today. And don’t cheat.”

  I never did cheat, mouthing out the numbers slowly (… fi-ive Mis-sis-sip-pi…), as if I could in this way slow down the ticking of the seconds on my watch: it was a rare day I finished before he did. The glare of the sunshine hurt my eyes; I hated school, where the children mocked me with rhymes about Chinese eyes, and I was always grumpy early in the morning. But as my father scraped the frost off the windows, he sang silly songs and wiggled his tongue at me through the clean patches, so that I laughed and forgot to dread school, at least for a while.

  That night in July, Eric made me feel safe in a way that I had not felt since the loss of my father, so many years ago.

  The following morning, Eric called to ask me out to a movie over the weekend. I hesitated, but then I thought again of my father, and the umbrella held over me in the rain. I thought of my mother, and the years that she lost grieving for him.

  “Sure,” I told him. “Thanks, that sounds like fun.”

  After all, Obaasama, I will say (shrugging as I explain), what more did I have to lose?

  Phillip first appeared in late March, and by July he was a part of my apartment. He was almost a household fixture, not a piece of furniture to sit on or eat off or rest books upon, nor even a lamp that you would want to be near, but rather something to look at from afar, like a sculpture or a souvenir. Except that unlike a statue, of course, he refused to stay stationary, the suddenness of his appearances and disappearances always keeping me slightly off-balance.

  Given that this incarnation of Phillip was and always has been as silent and immobile as stone, it now seems faintly ridiculous and more than a little eccentric that I used to talk to him, trying to keep up my side of the seemingly unending conversation that had once been ours. Although it was rare indeed that I felt up to making a joke in those days, on one or two occa
sions I even tried to coax a smile from him, mock-cheerfully calling out to him when I returned home from the grocery store, playing at regular-coupledom (“Honey, I’m home… got you some of those doughnuts you like—you know you are just wasting away….”).

  I abruptly ended these attempts to chat with him after a few months. These days, I try as much as possible never to talk to him, or even to wave or nod, for as I know from experience, it is none too pleasant, waiting in vain for his response.

  But back then, before I knew any better, when I still hoped that Phillip was listening, and someday might even reply, I made sure to keep him apprised of all the (very few) events of note in my life. So I told him about Eric, breaking the news offhandedly (“I met this guy, see….”), and before the first few dates, I tried to emphasize to him the casualness of each event: “It’s just a movie”—or dinner or a picnic or a walk—“and then I’m coming home.”

  He was always there to watch me leave. While he did not smile, he did not look sad, either. Yet one night, as I pulled open the door, I looked back and saw his body stretched and flattened against the wall. Visions of martyrs flashed through my head, and I had to fight down a sudden urge to yank him off his cross, and pelt him with rotten tomatoes. I regretted the urge almost as soon as I felt it, though, and so instead of flying at him with my nails extended, I tendered him yet another explanation. “Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean I have to be,” I whispered, before hurrying out the door.

  Later that night, after an outdoor concert, Eric invited me to his apartment, and I accepted. He lives way downtown, in a modern apartment building made of glass and steel. We took a cab to get there and I had no idea where we were, but of course that did not matter because Eric was with me. In his presence, strange and hostile neighborhoods begin to look friendly and familiar, waiters snap to attention, and harried shop people suddenly have time to spare. Even on the busiest streets at the busiest times, unoccupied taxis spring out of the traffic whenever he lifts his arm. I have rarely seen him lost in any sense of the word.