Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (4 page)

Chapter Eight

Marbles. That was the word that rolled in Tak’s mind early the next day, glinting and changing direction as he squinted at the chrome wheels halting in the driveway.

When Tak was a boy visiting family in Denver, his uncle Yoshi would always buy sacks of marbles for the boys to play. Three bags, with Tak, the guest, picking first. With the offering dangling, Tak would look from it to his older cousin, Mike; certain that whichever one he chose would be the one Mike had to have. And when Tak grabbed it, Mike would cry out and claw for the prize.

The size, color, or number of marbles in the bag never made any difference to Mike. Scuffed ones were desirable if Tak put a hand on them. Cracked ones even better, if that’s what Tak wanted. Eventually, Tak and Mike’s younger brother John made a game of it, eyeing out the least desirable sack and snatching at it greedily, only to trade it the second Mike opened his mouth and bawled.

Once, when the marbles came around, Tak got a different idea. He stood there, like usual, with the dangling three bags, gaze shifting from them to Mike. He wanted to see, just once, what Mike would have wanted for himself, if he ever deigned to have his own mind. They were two pre-pubescent cowboys waiting on the draw, neither giving the slightest of signals—until a flicker of doubt sliced Mike’s features. The middle one came to Tak as a whisper. When he snatched for it, aqua boulders with lava red centers, Mike howled like a hyena. Grinning, Tak bolted with the bag, actually tearing the mesh away, and not realizing the extent of his damage until he hit the front door, where his marbles skated in a dozen different directions. Some off the stairs and some to the street, with a few into the dog house of his cousin’s only sometimes pleasant German Shepherd. There were marbles that seemed to evaporate, too, lost to foliage and mean-spiritedness Tak presumed.

That was the memory Tak held on to as the Tanakas ushered in.

His grandmother was the first to arrive, on the arm of Aunt June, who was Mike and John’s mother. Their dad, Yoshi, who was the younger brother of Tak’s father, trailed behind with luggage scraping his arms and scuffing the hardwood floor. He wouldn’t waste honest earned dollars on money-begging tips for the driver, his words. Instead, he wrestled his way in then yelled for Tak and Tony to help.

An hour and a half later, Yoshi and June’s daughter Lauren arrived on a flight in from New Orleans. Still donning the raccoon shadows of a teen Goth era they’d hoped would pass, she was only a little rounder than the last time Tak had seen her. He accepted the one-armed uncommitted hug she offered, only to have it followed by a demand to know which room she’d been stuffed in. At the news that she’d share it with Mia, she cursed and said something about vacationing in Maui with friends instead.

“It’s never too late!” Tak called after her, before Deena squeezed his arm in warning.

“Lauren is Lauren,” she said. “She’s always been something of a lark.”

Funny, he thought. A harsher word came to mind.

Tak’s brother, Kenji, arrived with his burgeoning belly of a wife and two sons in tow:  Brandon, who could have doubled as Noah’s younger and slighter twin, plus Elijah, who looked more like his mom than anyone. No sooner did Tak sweep the boys into a hug than did the door slam shut behind his favorite cousin, John.

“Where’s your wife?” Tak said, setting the little ones aside so they could tear off at freight train speed.

Color rose to John’s cheeks, but he merely shook his head.

“Work,” he explained. “She sends her apologies.”

It turned out Tak had a few apologies for him too.

“Well, since you didn’t bring her, chances are that you’ll be bunking with your brother. Unless he decided to bring, what was her name again? Michelle.”

John sighed. “We both know that Michelle deflates and rolls into his suitcase at night.”

Indeed. Tak grinned before pulling his cousin into a mighty embrace, not because he didn’t see him often—they were neighbors nowadays—but because he sensed heaviness about him.

“I’ll drop in later, OK?”

Whatever the problem, Tak sensed that Allison’s absence had less to do with work overload and much more with the smoldering brunette he’d taken on as a secretary.

Mike burst in with a pile of luggage, and Michelle, no doubt, in the folds. He wore a smoke gray tee with four elements of the periodic table mashed on the front, so it read: “Lithium, Carbon, Potassium me.”

Deena burst like an orangutan, red faced and guffawing, as Tak looked from her to the shirt. His older cousin, finally peaking at the hairline, beamed and stood up a little straighter. Too pleased, as far as Tak was concerned.

“Deena,” Mike said, in that way that always curled Tak’s hands into fists. “I knew you’d get it.” He passed his cousin to embrace his cousin’s wife, held her for a beat too long, and took off for the staircase.

Halfway down the hall, Mike realized he had no idea where he was going and turned, only to make a show of noticing Tak for the first time.

“Upstairs, third door on the right. With John,” Tak said.

The clench in his jaw settled the second Mike disappeared. Deena, he knew, wasn’t the only one who had to suffer through the presence of family.

“It was elements of the periodic table,” she explained. “‘L and i’ for lithium, ‘C’ for carbon and ‘k’ for potassium. The shirt said ‘lick me’.” She looked at him as if wondering about the quality of his education. “Jeez, honey. Didn’t you pay attention at all in school?”

Tak rolled his eyes. “Only when they were passing out the paints.”

The driver they’d hired for the duration of the stay ambled in, overstuffed bags hanging from his limbs.

“Which room did he go to?” The middle-aged man breathed, mouth parted with a need to pant. Tak looked from the driver to Mike and back again, before shouting up a string of rudeness after his cousin. He’d turned the man into a bellhop, and like natural, expected Tak to tip.

Their reunion had officially begun.

Deena’s family arrived like the rolling flood of a severed dam about a half hour later. Aunts and cousins once, twice, and three times removed, poured in, each clapping Tak on the back and squeezing him. Next to him, his wife took nods of acknowledgment and lukewarm hugs instead. It made him think of the days when they were young and dating, fearful that neither of their families would accept the other. Now, Tak embraced every relative of his wife’s, accepted kisses on the cheek from some, and navigated surly greetings as surely as if they’d come from his kin. But none of that overshadowed Deena’s relationship with Tak’s father, who thought of her as his own; nor her relationship with Mike, who wasn’t beyond getting on one knee with a ring for her.

Still, the ice greeting between Deena and the Hammonds was more than the usual clipped hellos, prompting Tak to ask her what it all had been about.

His wife treated him to a polite, board meeting smile.

“They know this is your doing,” she said. “And that I wouldn’t occupy the same room as them on purpose.”

Mutually preferred distance is what she always called it. Though, he sometimes wondered how mutual.

Chapter Nine

As a Buddhist, Tak had no business overseeing the stringing up of Christmas decorations in the ballroom. Time rushed like speed dial, bleeding the overseeing of banquet duties into the festive nostalgia of Christianity.

Housekeepers hoisted up on ladders, running blinking lights crosswise down the hall. For whatever reason, the left side stayed low no matter what he said, just like the Christians stayed busy no matter what he shouted after them. Deena, with her faux commitments: a phone call here, a text message there, only to scurry out when he spied her nibbling on strawberries.

His uncle Yoshi strode in next and made a line for the yakitori. Hovering over the elongated grill to the right of a gargantuan Santa, he paused only to rummage through the skewers for the fattiest pieces, before moving from chicken to beef tongues.

“Oli—”

“Tell me when your father’s coming,” he gruffed, then spun around in a circle. “What? No sake?” He waved a skewer in Tak’s direction and cursed when a hunk of pork belly flopped onto the marble.

“If you’d give them a chance to finish setting the food out—” Tak said, before stopping as Lauren fluttered into the room, gliding in layers of black fabric. Since Tak had seen her last, she’d touched up the raccoon shadows and paired it with some lipstick that looked like a wound.

“Ugh, you’re eating again,” Lauren groaned and swept over to the food with a critical eye. “Soba, udon, sushi, rice, yadda, yadda, yes.” She halted at a pan of braised barbecue brisket. “Good Lord, yes,” she managed before going back for a plate.

“Listen,” Tak said with an eye on more lopsided lights. “You guys should have a better eye for these Christmas decorations since—”

“I have to go,” Lauren said and hoisted on the candied yams before departing.

Uncle Yoshi, who had followed her plate with his eyes, went in for the yams himself.

Tak opened his mouth to ask his uncle if he’d look over the remaining work since seemed content with camping out in the ballroom anyway, but then he remembered a thorny and dehydrated Christmas tree from years past, decked with stringed popcorn and homemade yarn ornaments. Tak’s mouth snapped shut on the request.

“You want say something?” Yoshi said and shoved more butabara, or pork belly, in his mouth.

A dollop of dark tare sauce hit the front of his white polo. He didn’t seem to notice.

Were it not for the features, Deena once told him, the subtle things that made a Tanaka a Tanaka, she would have never believed that Tak’s father and this man were brothers. But it was all there for the seeing: smooth, rich golden skin, thick tresses that ran sleek as an oil slick, and in dark almond eyes that always seemed softer on the second or third look. After there, the changes grew subtle, losing themselves to the particulars. Sharper chisels of the face for Tak and his father left them with definition and a touch of stubborn chin. Uncle Yoshi, on the other hand, buried all that in plumpness.

“I heard your son upstairs,” Yoshi said. “On bass. Better than you, I think.”

He gave a mutter of appreciation for the food and dropped another splat of sauce.

Say what you will about his family, Tak thought, they’d taken to Tony as sure and certainly as they had Mia or Noah. Predictably, a change surname was all it took.

“He is better than me on bass,” Tak said and reached for a wad of napkins from a nearby table. “Better than most, in fact.” He retrieved a bottle of iced water, unscrewed it, and dampened the napkins for his uncle.

“Now I need you to stop making a mess,” Tak said. “And don’t eat so much. You’ll spoil your appetite.”

He swabbed at his uncle’s stain, before his narrowed dark eyes concentrated on the vast sweep of the ballroom. It was the sort of room that glimmered in opulence, that pushed the boundaries of luxury. It made him think of old English country homes and bygone gentry, once content to spend their days entertaining.

“Stop that. You’ll turn into your wife,” Yoshi snapped and snatched the wad of napkins from Tak. The dabs he made bled the brown stains, smearing instead of controlling. “You’re getting as bad as your father. Always on me to lose weight.” Yoshi glanced down at his skewer. “But this kawa,” he said and tore teeth into a stick of chicken skin. “Kawa and me cannot part.”

Tak resigned himself to directing the staff as they decorated, speeding up the process as family began to file in. On sighting his father, Uncle Yoshi slid down to the beverages, as if to make his gorging more innocuous. More lights went up, less red, no green, and briefly Tak entertained himself with the idea of mounting a Buddha in the center of the room. What was it that Grandma Emma said all those years ago, on discovering her evangelical granddaughter would marry a Buddhist?

Whoever heard of a fat Chinese man being the son of God?

Tak grinned. He swore; that one never got old.

Their first night turned into something of an impromptu party, once the decorations were up and Tony took to a lively string of Christmas hits on the grand Fazioli in one corner. Though Mario had gone to a great trouble in representing two divergent food cultures, no respect had been paid to that judging by the plates made. Scallion rolls with black-eyed peas, sukiyaki alongside cheesy mac and cornbread. Mia was the most egregious of the lot, with her oysters and offal smashed in black eyed peas and topped in soy sauce. And off in one corner was John, with a hodgepodge of uneaten food and a glass of red wine already tipping toward empty. Having a talk with his cousin shot up on Tak’s to-do list.

Chapter Ten

Deena rose for the sunset, grabbed her pencils and pad, and took a glass of OJ to the terrace. Before the bustle of family made it impossible, she wanted to slip in a little work.

A “shameless swipe at immortality” was what her father-in-law now called her projects. The sleek keyhole of a skyscraper in Milan, the arcing half circle hotel straddling the Indian Ocean in Bali, and the undulating wave of smooth grace, embedded in the cliffs of Cabo San Lucas. All the work of ego, her father-in-law chided, with all the humility of a British king.

Her latest attempt was a recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mile High dream. It was exactly as outrageous and consuming at it sounded, as reckless as it dared be in an age of terrorism: a skyscraper thrusting a mile in the air.

She had no buyers for such a thing, no investors willing to front for such a hemorrhaging project, but she had the inclination to obsess over it anyway. For now, Deena Tanaka stood as the preeminent female architect in a field dominated by men. The feminist in her wanted to smash at every consonant and vowel in that statement until only “preeminent” and “architect” remained. Top architect automatically meant top male, with a rush of testosterone fueling their war. Deena knew she wasn’t the first girl to take a running smash at the field’s proverbial glass ceiling; she would only be the first to shatter it so thoroughly.

When the sun made its presence known, Deena took breakfast in the ballroom with her family. Chef Mario, who complained nonstop about a night of labor while they slumbered, served eggs in every style, alongside biscuits, pancakes, French toast, sausage, bacon, and an assortment of other delights. Guests were left to serve themselves.

As Deena piled her plate, her gaze fell on Tak’s aunt, Asami. If perfection had a walking synonym it would be her. Skin smooth and firm and vehemently denying her age, her hair flowed and tapered as if combed purposefully by the wind. Beauty found its way in subtle details, resting in the bow and arch of her lips, in the slightness of curves on a slender body. Never had Deena seen Asami outside of makeup or tasteful wear. That morning she donned a crisp, asymmetrical summer dress that had to be tailor-made and paired it with simple string of pearls. Across from her, her husband Ken wore slacks and a white button up, sleeves rolled up as he sipped coffee. They could have been a million other places in the exact same wear: a business office, an office party, a night out on the town. It could have been a romantic evening for two. No matter the time or place, they were two fixtures of perfection without fail.

Arms slipped around Deena’s waist and lips pressed to her neck.

“They’re not as flawless as you think,” Tak said. “Some are just better with their masks than others.”

Masks. As if they needed any. In her husband’s family, the biggest scandal involved missing a mortgage payment. In hers, it was the murder of her father.

*

Tak released Deena just as his gaze fell on John. The entire time he’d been standing there, John had busied himself by shoveling eggs back and forth across his plate. Tak elbowed his way through throngs of wild children in every shade, barely avoiding Noah mid back flip, scolded him, and finally dropped across the table from John.

“Where’s Allison?” Tak said, eyes on his cousin’s berries and mandarin slices artfully arranged into a frown.

“Don’t know,” John said and stabbed at his eggs.

“You don’t know,” Tak echoed, weighing out each word.

John tossed his fork and glared at him.

“She left me. OK? The day she disappeared, I got divorce papers. I thought you, of all people, would have figured it out.”

Figured it out? There had been fights, yes. Screaming, hysterical brawls with furniture broken and accusations hurled like slime on a wall. Still, Tanakas didn’t file for divorce. Ever.

“You…let her go?”

It was the wrong thing to say, he knew. As he considered how to amend this blunder, Tak’s thoughts drifted to his father and the xenophobia he once had. Back then, he wanted Japanese spouses for his family and saw anyone else as a threat to tradition, a promise for unwanted change. Was this the omen portended? Tanakas getting divorced? The idea felt otherworldly, abhorrent. Giving up on someone was for before marriage. It had no place after vows.

“We were unhappy, Tak. I thought time would see us through. I was wrong.”

“John, you can’t just—”

His cousin shoved aside his plate, hard enough to unseat the eggs and scramble the frown, before excusing himself from the table.

“John!” Tak called, feeling the inward cringe. “John, wait!” Though he knew he’d already lost him.