Once Removed

by Mako Yoshikawa

  It was worth the long journey, the homesickness she had already developed, the nausea, and even the customs official to see Seiji turn to her in surprise, and then slowly smile.

  IN HANA'S TELLING OF IT, this story was a classic O. Henry, even to its end: and then the happy couple went home, grated the daikon together, and ate it side by side. She meant for Seiji to eat most of it, since it was his favorite food, yet it turned out to be her first craving in a pregnancy filled with not many others, and so she consumed by far the larger share of it, he watching and nodding approvingly as she swallowed it down.

  But in Rei and Claudia's analysis of the story, the O. Henry quality of it was sullied by a fact that got lightly overlooked in Hana's version—that throughout their all-too-brief marriage, Hana never told her husband that their reunion in America should have involved not one daikon, but two. She never described to him how carefully she had guarded a gift for him throughout the journey; she never told him of the almost magical import she had placed on it, and how abruptly it had been taken from her by the first white man she ever met.

  Rei and Claudia tried but they never could figure out why, exactly, this aspect of the story made it so poignant to them. Did it have to do with the burden that Hana had to shoulder too long by herself, as if her own isolation in her new country made the callousness of the customs official that much more difficult to bear? Or did it have to do with the limitations of even the most happy of marriages; was it the idea that secrets were held, and half-truths told, even in this, a relationship they deemed well-nigh perfect?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Claudia

  Boston, 1999

  I SPOT THEM RIGHT AWAY, FROM SO FAR A DISTANCE THAT it should by all rights be an impossibility. They are in a playground, after all, a space where clusters of one figure surrounded by a couple of shorter ones are the norm. Since I am coming from the east at four in the afternoon, moreover, the light shed by the sun setting behind them has turned the entire crowd into dark silhouettes. Finally, there is the fact that Vikrum is not particularly striking in terms of his shape.

  Still, I know every line of his body and every gesture that he makes, and I have imagined his children (his daughter, age six, short, frizzy-haired, and dark-skinned, and his son, four, the very image of his father) for so long that I probably could have spotted them with my eyes closed and a hill lying between us.

  They are in the middle of what appears to be a family conference, Vikrum counseling or reasoning with his daughter as his son watches from the side. Her hair tamed into two long braids, Padma stands facing Vikrum, her feet planted firmly apart. Her stance looks confrontational, but then she rushes toward him and melts into his body, reaching her arms up to wind them around his stomach.

  It is on the cool side, a few degrees short of apple-picking weather, but I am beginning to sweat. I should not be feeling this way, flushed, dizzy, and a little ill—I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that Vikrum was a good father, much loved by his children.

  But then again, I am clearly having trouble with the concept that Vikrum is a father at all.

  That Raja does not look as much like Vikrum as I had been led to expect seems at first to be one small consolation. His hair is curly, his face round, and his skin almost as dark as his sister's. Yet that consolation proves to be hollow, for when Raja looks up, I see that he has Vikrum's eyes. I am in trouble: if I look too long at those familiar eyes set in that unfamiliar face, I will cry, or worse—snatch him up and carry him away, maybe, either to keep him for myself or to stash him somewhere secret that Vikrum cannot get to, I am not sure which.

  Perhaps (it occurs to me now, and not for the first time) I should just keep on walking. It is enough to see them like this, a family.

  Indeed, it might very well be more than enough.

  Still, I have come this far. There is little point in turning back now.

  “VIKRUM?” I SAY, shading my eyes with one hand. “Vikrum, is that you?”

  He turns, looks around, focuses on me, smiles. “Oh, hello.”

  So far, so good. But then I stick my hand out, and after a moment's hesitation he is taking it in his and pumping it up and down.

  It's nerves, of course, and even though I am the one who wanted this rendezvous, even though I know that these are the only conditions under which this meeting is possible, it's also my discomfort with acting out a lie. Vikrum and I have orchestrated this event carefully and rehearsed it a dozen times—the accidental encounter; the polite, restrained greeting, as befitting two people who are acquaintances, and that just barely; the introduction of the children almost as an afterthought; the quick-without-being-hurried farewell, instigated by me.

  The handshake was never part of the plan, and it almost proves our undoing.

  “How do you know my daddy?” asks the girl attached to his hip, wrinkling her nose at me. “Do you clone too?”

  Standing a little to the side of his assertive sister, the little boy looks at the ground.

  “No, I don't,” I say, wrinkling my nose as well, but she gazes unsmilingly back.

  Uncoiling herself from her father, she takes a step toward me. “So how do you know him, then?” she says, folding her arms and looking at me and then at Vikrum, and then back at me again.

  We are caught, fair and square. When we shook hands, Vikrum and I had held on to each other a millisecond too long. Our clasp had been a little too tight, our gaze, a fraction too intimate.

  Most six-year-old girls would not have noticed. But her size notwithstanding, Padma does not seem anything like six—sharp-eyed and poised, she would not be out of place among the sixteen-year-olds that my colleagues at school struggle to connect with and teach.

  “Padma,” begins Vikrum, “don't you know you shouldn't be asking—”

  Ignoring him, I bend down and begin tying the laces on my boots.

  “You're stepping on something,” I say to Padma.

  “No, I'm not,” she says, without looking down.

  “Move your right foot and see.”

  One grudging foot tap. “I told you there's nothing.”

  I wave a hand over her kneecap. “Now try again.”

  This time there is a quarter, a little dented and none too shiny, peeking out from under one small sneaker-clad foot.

  “Hmph,” she says. Her arms are still folded.

  Raja casts a quick sidelong glance at his sister's feet, and then drops his gaze back to his own.

  “So that's how you know Dad?” asks Padma. “Because you're a magician too?”

  “I'm hardly a magician. I'm just starting to learn,” I protest, which only in itself is not really a lie.

  “I'll say,” she pipes in. “That wasn't bad, but you need a lot more practice.”

  “Padma,” says Vikrum again, but now there is a hint of laughter in his voice.

  “Here, I'll show you,” she says grandly. Stooping down, she scoops up the coin in one small hand, tosses it in the air, catches it, holds it up so that it catches the light. And then the coin is gone.

  “Did you just make my lucky quarter vanish?” I say. “Where'd you put it? Is it here?” I lift her hair and check her right ear.

  A six-year-old after all, she begins to giggle and then, when I poke her in the ribs and the belly (“Did you swallow it; do you think you can keep it in your tummy for safekeeping?”), she bursts into gales of musical laughter.

  She is Vikrum's firstborn. When he held her in his arms the very first time, he was terrified to think that he had brought someone so tiny and helpless into the world.

  “Paaaadmaaaa,” comes a voice from the swings.

  My lover's daughter turns, her braids swinging out around her head. “Coming,” she says, singsong, and then she begins to run toward her friend, almost knocking her brother over in the process.

  “Padma,” Vikrum hollers, “aren't you going to give the coin back to the nice lady?”

  But she is already gone.

  “Don't wo
rry about it,” I say to him, shaking my head.

  Vikrum smiles apologetically, and then there is a short, awkward pause.

  “Well, it was fun running into you like this,” he says at last. While the dismissal that is contained in his words makes me wince a little, he is right to issue it: I have already stayed far longer than is prudent. He places his hands on his son's shoulders. “This, by the way, is Raja.”

  “Hello, Raja,” I say, squatting down. “I'm Claudia. Nice to meet you.”

  He smells like chocolate, milk, and pee. It is dangerous for me to be so close to him, and I am about to turn and flee when he thrusts a chubby hand out to me.

  I put out my hand and place it around his. When I withdraw it there is a keepsake, dented, warm, and a little moist, nestled inside my palm.

  “Thank you,” I say, with all the gravity that his offering is due. I pocket my gift and stand.

  He inclines his head in what might be a nod and wheels around. There is a swirl of dust, and then he, too, is gone.

  Vikrum turns his head toward his children, and smiles and waves. “I'll be there in a second,” he calls out. Turning back to me, he speaks quickly and quietly. “He really liked you.” Not only do his eyes have the almond shape, the rich brown color, and the liquid shine of his son's, they wear the same expression—weary and sad beyond their owner's years. “They both did. It's just that he hardly ever talks these days.”

  With that, I have to leave. But the conversation about his son would be over anyway, because there is nothing more to say. Even if we had more time and more privacy, Vikrum would not attempt to solicit my professional opinion on what it means when a four-year-old child stops talking almost completely, for the simple reason that he does not have to.

  He knows, just as well as I do, that Raja is exhibiting completely normal behavior for a boy with a mother with a drinking problem and a father who might love him but, what with the competing demands of work and a mistress, is not very often at home.

  IT IS WHILE I AM WALKING HOME, the magic quarter clutched tightly in my fist, that I face up to the fact that I have been dodging for the good part of the last two years.

  Never mind that she never gave birth to me, that we look nothing alike, and that I only lived with her during weekends for just eight years of my life. It does not even matter, perhaps even more unexpectedly, that I have hated her for much of my life for what she did to my mother and me.

  I am my stepmother's daughter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rei

  Boston, 1999

  WE TAKE OUR FATHERING WHERE WE CAN FIND IT. DOES Henry, his speech slurred by the stroke, still love to play with words? I glance over at Claudia, trying to see if I can read the answer in her profile. It's the perfect time to ask her. She has been preoccupied today, still a bit shell-shocked, no doubt, by the encounter with her lover's children three days ago, but as we move through Cambridge at her leisurely pace on this gray afternoon, a silence as comfortable and companionable as an old sweater has wrapped itself around us. Yet in my quest for the answer to this particular question, her profile is as far as I go; I have to believe that Henry still plays his word games. The alternative—that he's unable to, or that those around him can't understand when he does, or even when he doesn't—is too unbearable to contemplate.

  Back when Henry was my stepfather, picking up my mother's accent on certain words gave him unending pleasure, “jet rag” and “flied lice” being his particular favorites. But what he most reveled in was scrambling like-sounding words. “Let's adjoin to the adjourning room,” he'd say after supper, and “I'm ravishing, my ravenous one,” to my mother before it, and when Kei and then Claudia began to date, “So will that imminent fellow of yours be arriving eminently?” making them blush and then glare. My mother didn't get the joke, such as it was, very often, but when she did, she would smile but also admonish. “You're going to confuse the children,” she'd say, not bothering to add, because it didn't need to be said, “let alone me.” And she was right. Even now I have to think carefully about whether my departure is imminent or (as I fear everyone considers it to be) eminent, whether the model in the magazine is ravishing or (the poor skinny girl!) ravenous.

  Despite what might very well be a lifelong confusion over certain words in the English language, I wouldn't trade those years with Henry for anything. When Claudia and I were young, we spent so much time talking about my mother that we never really got around to discussing her dad. The few times he did come up in our conversations, I always referred to him as Henry. Claudia did the same; not once were the words my father spoken by her in my presence. A certain familiarity with a parent's first name might be one of the hallmarks of children who are close to their stepsiblings, but in Claudia's case it was just another of her many acts of generosity. By forfeiting her claim to sole proprietorship through those words, she allowed me to pretend with someone other than myself that he was mine too.

  Rarely ruffled and apparently congenitally incapable of being hurried, Henry had a singular serenity about him. I used to think that it was his height (which seemed outlandish to me, a nine-year-old just back from a year in Japan, when I first met him) that accounted for his air of inner peace: it seemed to allow him to exist in another realm, high above our petty concerns.

  Years ago, I once pointed out to Claudia the irony in the fact that Henry was a tall man who'd chosen to be a geologist, a profession that required him to examine rocks and the ground lying beneath our feet. She agreed, deadpan—“You're right! It'd make much more sense if he were an astronomer; someone should tell him, stat”—but I wasn't really joking, and I didn't consider full-time stargazing, for Henry, to be such an unlikely job. Geology always struck me as a curious career choice for him, a man who seemed so poorly grounded, as it were, in this world: a person who not only could not do his taxes but also kept his affairs in such poor disorder that it was up to his wife (my poor mother—lucky she was so organized, with a sharp businesswoman's head attached to that artist's eye and soul) to pull it all together for the accountant.

  It wasn't until years later, when I was down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon on a steamy evening in late spring, that I realized that geology and Henry were in fact a perfect fit. My clothes covered in red dust and my legs aching from the steep climb down, I leaned into the long, lean figure of Max (an attraction to tall men and a fondness for wordplay the only legacy from eight years as Henry Klein's stepdaughter) and listened to a park ranger speak about the history of the canyon. The swirl of dark colors, no larger than a postage stamp, that had grown from a freckle on the palm of my left hand had not yet been diagnosed. The air was hot and almost unbearably still and heavy, but I felt unusually and almost strangely comfortable.

  The ranger, a short, stocky woman who wore her uniform with visible pride, talked about continental drift, plates of land floating away from each other and then together again, colliding and ever so slowly swinging into something close to the positions in which we know them now. She told us how this unchoreographed, stately dance was responsible for the formation of mountain ranges, how when the plates bumped into each other, the land was pushed upward and boom! the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalayas came into being. Right here at the bottom of the canyon (the ranger gestured, the sweep of her arm taking in us, the lodge, the woods, and the growing dark outside) are the roots of an old mountain range that was formed almost two billion years ago.

  Then, she told us, came the layers of sediment and rock that were carried in by the sea. The earth's climate changed over time, and as its temperature warmed and then cooled, the caps of snow at the poles melted and then froze again, which led in turn to the rise and fall of the level of the sea. When the ocean rose so high that it washed over the land, it brought in limestone deposits, which also contained fossils of strange marine creatures—coral, sea lilies, fish teeth, worms, and mollusks. When it retreated, it left behind deposits of shale, mud, and slate. The ocean had been particularly busy,
coming and going, in the area of the canyon, which is why it's made up of so many stripes of color, orange and red and brown and siena and even a shade of green, hues of such variety that I'd need to get my mother in to name all of them.

  The ranger talked about how the mighty Colorado River, fed by the snow from the Rockies, chipped away over the centuries at the banks through which it flowed, cutting an increasingly deeper and wider path through the layers of stone. She described how dry the land became and explained that when heavy rain fell, as it did every year, the soil was too parched to absorb the water, which ran into the river and swelled it even further, producing floods that could and did dislodge boulders the size of elephants.

  “And then there's the wind,” the ranger said. “That plays a part in the erosion too. It's one of the reasons why we don't have any rock layers younger than 250 million years in the canyon. I know it feels real airless down here in the valley right now, but at the top, believe you me, it can blow.”

  A breeze blows, dust scatters, and one step is taken in a billion-year process.

  The ranger ended by saying that the hundred-thousand-plus-pocket-change years that the human race had existed didn't even register in the timeline of the canyon, and that the billions of years that had gone into its formation were inevitably difficult for our minds to grasp. “Geologists work on such a vast scale, yesterday and today and next Thursday become completely meaningless categories,” she said. “They have a completely different sense of time than the rest of us.” She even had a term for this reconfigured sense, deep time, which made me fleetingly smile: in the family that I once had, we, too, had a term for an alternative approach to the passing of hours, Henry time, which almost invariably involved being too early or late for events.