Once Removed

by Mako Yoshikawa

  STORED IN AN OLD SHOE BOX that I keep on the shelf at the top of my coat closet, I have a large number of photographs of Hana. In the throes of passion and almost endearingly oblivious to the fact that I maybe would not want them, Dad gave me copies of the best shots of her and him together. Sometimes I think I should throw them away, or at least cut her image out of the pictures of her and Dad together. Still, maybe he knew what he was doing when he gave them to me: I cannot quite bear to get rid of them.

  In light of the dozens of Kodak images I have of my stepmother, it seems odd that the picture of her I recall most often in my mind is one that cannot be found in that crumbling shoe box. It is instead a shot from a photo I have lost, or perhaps never had or have even seen—a picture that may exist only in my imagination. She and my father are dressed in light T-shirts and surrounded by lush, colorful flowers, bougainvillea and birds-of-paradise and others so exotic I do not think I have even seen their like in the travel books that I used to love to read. A magnificent blue-green butterfly hovers, caught mid-flight, in the upper right-hand corner of the shot. Hana is in the dead center of the picture, my father standing a little behind her, on her right, his face partly in shadow. He looks down at her adoringly; his arm is draped over her shoulder and his torso is a little curved, protectively, to enfold hers. Skinny as he is, he is so much larger and broader than she is that part of his left shoulder is visible behind hers.

  Hana and my father's positioning in the shot, combined with her beauty (so simple but powerful that it puts the blazing brilliance of the flowers and the butterfly to shame) and the way in which she gazes away, to a point far beyond the margins of the photo, makes it seem as if his function in the picture is to be a frame for her, of no greater importance than the white border that traverses its edge. He looks so alive—grinning away, his thick brows, already gray then, lifted in amazement at his good fortune to be with her, the object of his adoration, his former paramour and now his legal wife, in that tropical paradise—that his face throws into relief the absence of any emotion on hers. The effect is of a stillness in the center of the photo, eerily at odds with the rest of it, so bursting and bustling with color and joy.

  They are in Hawaii in this shot. That was as close to the Far East as Dad ever got with Hana. He always wanted them to go to Japan together. He badly wanted to meet her mother, who was ailing but still alive during the first half of their marriage, and to talk with her brother and her sister in their native setting. But in the end, Hana said no, that she hated so much to fly that she would not be able to bear it. Besides, she did not really see the point of visiting, now that her aunt Sachiko was gone.

  How much did it disappoint my father to be deprived of a chance to visit Hana's childhood home with her? Did he yearn with a deep hunger to hear of her past; did he plead with her for stories, just as Vikrum demands them from me? But then, once she began, was he sorry? Did he hate hearing about her first husband; was he tortured by the story of how she chose to marry Seiji instead of a prince and how she never once regretted it?

  It seems obvious, looking back, that Dad never really stood a chance at making Hana happy. The real wonder is why he decided to try—as well as, of course, how he could give my mother and me up in the process.

  “I'D FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH I love the smell of flour,” says Rei. “It's like old times, isn't it? You baking, and me sitting and watching and being no help at all.”

  With the dough—white bread, of course, and formed in a braid, a shape that, she tells me, she particularly likes—in the oven now, I can give her my full attention. “You'll help eat it, right?” I ask, trying not to sound anxious. Freshly baked bread was one food that she always had a real weakness for, and surely that has not changed.

  “I'll help eat it,” she repeats. Her voice is innocent but there is a knowing glint in her eye, and I wonder if she has cottoned on to my resolution to make her gain weight. Given how much food I have been making for her, it would not be a miracle if she has.

  “Do you remember how I once tried to make banana bread, and how even that ended in disaster? You had to bail me out.” She shakes her head, remembering.

  “Rei,” I say. I have utterly failed to pave the way for this revelation, but unless I speak up soon, I am going to lose my nerve once again. “I need to tell you something I should have told you before. About two years after your mom left Dad—”

  “What was that?” she asks sharply, her head swiveling. “Did something just get knocked over?”

  “Just a pile of books. You see?” I say, waving my hand airily toward the back of the room, where there is nothing to see. “I told you: this apartment is haunted by Orson. How could I even think about getting a new cat?”

  “You're right,” she says, lowering her voice. “Let's see if we can hear him again. Hey, Orson, hey, kitty, come out.”

  The ticking of the timer is loud in the silence. Through the open window, a late-afternoon breeze wends its way into my apartment, lifting first the ends of her hair, and then of mine. It sifts through the small piles of flour that remain on the counter and riffles through the newspaper that lies on the chair next to Rei's.

  “A true cat,” Rei pronounces after a minute or two. “He won't come if he's been called.”

  “Maybe later. Anyway,” I continue, “as I was saying before Orson rudely interrupted me, Henry got remarried.” I take a deep breath in, but it's no good. My nerve is nowhere to be found. “Two, almost three years after he and Hana split up,” I conclude lamely.

  “That's good,” Rei says, nodding. “Kei and I have been worried about Hana a little, what with her being single and all. It must be a relief for you, knowing that there's someone looking after him. My God, it's a huge relief for me—I was feeling really worried about Henry.”

  That is the most she has said about her mother for some time, and I leap at it, perhaps too aggressively. “Your mom's single? But she has a boyfriend, right?”

  Rei flushes. “She doesn't, actually. And she hasn't since Henry, if you must know.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Right.”

  There is more to this story than she is telling me, of course, since Hana had to have had at least one lover since my father—why else would she have left him so abruptly? But Rei is looking as remote as her mother again, and adept as I was at getting her to tell me tales of both the fairy and non-variety when we were young, times have changed, and my confidence has slipped. At this point I am no longer sure if I can make her cough any story up. Besides, and perhaps more to the point, I do not have time now for my own particular brand of the Heimlich maneuver (a punch in the ribs, yes, but one specially designed to draw out stories rather than chicken bones); revelations about Hana's love life and even about Rei's health can wait for another five minutes.

  I am a woman on a mission. I have a secret of my own that must be divulged.

  “So as I was saying, my dad got remarried,” I say, and then I stop.

  I take so long to resume that Rei looks up. “Yes, you were saying that.”

  “And . . .” I say.

  “And?” she says, beginning to laugh. “You can tell me, whatever it is. It's okay; he and Mom divorced what—almost two decades ago, and by now I'm resigned to it.”

  “And,” I say, reminding myself to breathe, but forgetting to do so right away, so that I have to remind myself all over again, “the woman he remarried—it's Mom.”

  “Right,” says Rei. “Wow.” She has turned a shade paler, but she manages a smile, and it is a real one; I have known the girl since she was nine, and there is no fooling me. “That's wonderful.”

  She's okay. Suddenly I notice that I have been holding on very tightly to my favorite wooden spoon; when I uncurl my hand, it's stiff and a little cramped. Rei is fine with the news; Vikrum was completely wrong about how difficult the idea of my parents' remarriage would be for her. “It happened at least two years after he and your mom split up,” I tell her again. Then, to give her time to compose herself, I
squat down and rummage through the cabinet below the counter, looking for a utensil I do not need.

  Only a few seconds lapse before Rei begins to speak. “You know, I actually wondered for a moment or two way back when if that would happen. They remained such good friends, after all, throughout the divorce. . . .”

  Such good friends? Taking advantage of my position behind the cabinet door, I sit back on my heels for a moment. It is true that my parents had sat together at one of my band concerts, but that was only because Dad was late, coming in as the lights were dimming, and had slipped into the nearest available seat. When he came to pick me up or drop me off for my weekend visits, he and Mom chatted, very civilly, mostly about their work and sometimes about me, but they never seemed disposed to linger and in fact always seemed relieved and even anxious to go their separate ways.

  Still, maybe Rei is not too far off. Even back then, my parents always kissed each other, albeit only on the cheek, when they met up. No matter how bad it got, no matter how awkward and uncomfortable and sad (Mom smiling valiantly, waving good-bye from the door as I left with Dad to go to his new home—to his new wife, his new children, and his new cat—for our first Christmas as a divorced family; Dad quiet in the car, watching her in his rearview mirror as he pulled away until she was just a dot of red and green), they were always kind to each other, always considerate of the other's feelings.

  “. . . and I'm glad it happened, for your sake. And for your mom's sake, and of course most of all for Henry's.” Rei pauses. When she speaks again, her voice is shockingly bitter: “He deserves all the happiness he can get, after my mother.”

  I am so surprised that I involuntarily jerk my head up and bang it, hard, against the cabinet shelf.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, startled, peering over the counter. “That was loud.”

  “It's fine,” I say, waving her away. “That sound was just the cracking of my skull. And, to a lesser extent, of my dignity.”

  Rubbing my head and once again sitting back on my heels, I look up at Rei across the flour-dusted counter. She gazes back at me, open-mouthed, still, with surprise. Have I ever heard her say anything that negative about Hana, let alone in that tone? She and her mother had always been close. When I would complain about mine, which was often, Rei was sympathetic, but she never reciprocated with stories about her mother's annoying habits, the myriad petty ways in which she was misunderstood by her, or the unjust treatment she received at her hands.

  Sometimes I wondered whether Rei was silent on those occasions out of loyalty to her mother, knowing—all too well!—how tenuous my relationship with her was. But in the end I always decided that no, incredible as it might seem, she really just likes her mom.

  “Why did you say that about your mother?” I ask.

  “Should I get you some ice?” she says, reaching her hand out to touch where I am rubbing. “You're going to have a real bump.”

  Again I wave her away. “Dad was happy with Hana,” I tell her. “Sure, it didn't work out in the end, and he was really depressed after she left. But they were happy together for a long time—almost eight years isn't too shabby.”

  Shaking her head and muttering something not quite audible about stubborn people who don't take care of themselves, suffering concussions and ending up in comas as a result, Rei pushes her chair back and goes to the freezer to make an ice pack.

  “If Hana ultimately ended up meeting someone else she loved more than Henry—well,” I say, lifting my shoulders up in a quick, easy motion, “that's the way it goes, isn't it?” That I can shrug about these particular aspects of our parents' shared history is, of course, only made possible by what followed it. If my mother and father had not reconciled and remarried, that lift of my shoulders, quick and easy though it is, would be beyond me. But given that they did, I can afford to be generous about the beautiful, charming, and oh-so-casually destructive force that was Hana Watanabe.

  Or in any event I can pretend to be generous about her, at least in the presence of her daughter.

  “People fall out of love,” I say, raising my voice so she can hear me as she cracks out the ice cubes she has taken from the freezer. “Happens all the time. And then, go figure, divorce rates are high.” Try as I might, I cannot help but sound a little bitter myself. “Rei, I really don't need an ice pack.”

  She has placed the ice in a plastic bag and wrapped a dish towel around it. “Shut up,” she says calmly, holding it to my head. “Let me feel useful, for once.”

  “You danced to entertain me while I was making the bread,” I say, taking the ice pack from her and pressing it back onto my head. Despite what I said, the numbing of the pain that it brings is welcome. “That was very useful.”

  Rei walks around to the other side of the counter and sits back down. “Ha ha,” she says, almost absentmindedly.

  Then, suddenly, she shivers.

  “Are you cold?” I ask, sliding off the stool. “It was because you were holding the ice pack, wasn't it? I can shut the windows—”

  “No, don't. I'm not cold in the least. What was that expression your mom liked to use? Someone just walked over my grave.” Her smile is only a little forced. “Maybe it was Orson.”

  “Orson wouldn't do that,” I say. When it comes to distracting Rei, there is nothing more surefire than cats. “He was such a sweet-tempered cat. He was born with this tiny defect in his hind paws—a misplaced toe, so that his nail stuck out. He used to click when he walked, as if he were wearing high heels. He was like this big old cuddly tom in drag.”

  “I wish I could have met him,” she says. Once again, it is clear that her mind is elsewhere. She hesitates and then adds, slowly, “Claudia, there's something I should tell you too.”

  I want to say that what we have here is a regular soap opera, with dark family secrets exposed every minute, but she is swaying in her seat, and something tells me that this is not the time.

  Rei carefully places the palms of her hands on the edge of the countertop, bracing herself. “I know you think my mother fell in love with someone else and that's why she left your dad. I know that that's what Henry thought, and that that's what she let him think, even though she refused to actually say there was another man.” Rei seems to be speaking quickly, even for her, so much so that it is almost hard for me to follow, and I wonder for a moment how much damage that bump on my head has caused. “But that's not what happened. There never was anyone for Hana but Henry.”

  “So why did she leave him then?”

  We stare at each other. Rei's eyes drop first. “It's—it's a long and complicated story. Maybe I could tell you some other time.”

  Like the bell that marks the end of a round of fighting, the timer goes off with a ding. It is time for us to head back into our corners, to be hosed down and pep-talked by our trainers. I slide off my stool, pick up a pot holder and, opening the oven, slide the bread out. It is cool enough in my apartment that the gust of heat that I am met with is not unpleasant: mild as the month has been, winter is undeniably on its way. The smell of bread, warm, fragrant, and almost filling in itself, is everywhere.

  After placing the bread on the cooling rack, I turn back to face her. “Those seventeen years when I didn't see you—I thought throughout that entire time it was your mom's doing.” My voice sounds oddly robotic. “I thought your mother decided you shouldn't talk to me; I thought she must have insisted on it.”

  “Why would she do that?” Rei is frowning, puzzled and, for a split second, a little defensive about her mother, just as she used to be in the old days. Then she recovers and shakes her head. “She did lots of terrible things—some so terrible I can't even tell you, at least not yet—but she would never do that.”

  There is nothing to say. Still, she is watching me expectantly; clearly some kind of response is required here. “Oh.”

  “It was my decision entirely. My mother never asked—in fact she told me to call you—but I thought I owed that to her. And besides, Henry didn't need
to have a constant reminder of my mom, which is what I would be. I knew he'd be kind and that he probably would even continue to be a father of some kind to me”—tapping her forehead with the heel of her hand, she rushes those words, and then slows down again—“but I figured that it'd be better for him not to see or hear about me.”

  Better for him. And what about me; what about you? Was it also better for us? I do not say these words aloud, yet Rei nods again, seeming to hear them anyway.

  “I was miserable about it,” she says flatly. “And outraged at the sheer absurdity of it all. We were brought together and told we were sisters because of a marriage, because two people related to us had a yen for each other and then had a ceremony in a church and were given a piece of official-looking paper. And then they stopped having a yen for each other and so, suddenly, we weren't sisters anymore. As if that could just be taken away. It was absurd and I knew it, but I bought into it anyway. The lines were drawn, and I thought I had to be loyal to my mother, when it was clear all along that you and Henry were my real family. My mother”—she all but spits out the words—“she's just an accident of birth, of biology.”

  Once again we fall silent. If I listen hard, perhaps I will be able to hear the clicking of Orson's high heels as he comes down the hall again, or even the low and infinitely more masculine-sounding rumble of his purr. And then I think I almost hear it—click click, a brisk and elegant sound. No, it's just the bathroom faucet, dripping again; Orson will not come out today.

  It is almost twilight, which used to be Rei's favorite time of the day—who knows what she prefers now? The light is fading fast from the room. In another couple of minutes, when it is too dark to see her face, I will turn on the lights and shut the windows, leaving one or two open a crack so that the soft evening air can still steal its way inside. In another thirty, I will make tea and bring out the butter and the jars of honey and jam and creamy peanut butter, and she and I will sit down to eat the bread together. The topics we discuss will be easy ones—what is going on with her work, perhaps, or with mine—and when the conversation lags, we will pretend that we are being quiet because we are listening for the clicking sound that a dead cat's deformed nails make against the polished wooden beams of my apartment's floors.