Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (6 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Boxes of Christmas decorations spilled onto the punctuated marble floor of the entrance hall. Streamers and tri-colored lights, tinsels, and ornaments of varying designs sat pristine and anxious to share the holiday cheer. Motown Christmas classics crooned out of a hijacked radio left by the previous homeowners. Prior to Tak fiddling with it, the kids had been trying out some new dance shuffle to the sound of something obscenely grating.

They lingered near an imported spruce so pompous and stuffed, that a tilt of the head and the arms spread wide could take up neither width nor height of the tree. They made plans to adorn it to capacity, seemingly with every ornament, bulb fixture, and figurine sculpted by man’s hand. Every opened box brought an argument with it, passionate bickering about color scheme and distribution, interlaced with an endless shuffle of quitting and rejoining the group. As they worked, half a dozen guys moved the piano from ballroom to entrance hall, shouting orders and complaints and threats with every inch. Once situated, they buried the static-ridden stereo in favor of more playing from Tony. He warmed up with scales as the others joined the family in fighting over decorations.

Still, things weren’t bad. Not everyone present was Christian. Out there in the world, such a revelation was but a footnote for the day. With her family, it was evidence of some deviation. Before marriage, Deena’s greatest fear had been that each holiday season would be a nightmare of contention, grating away at their marriage, grinding it down to bitterness. But the opposite had happened. Her husband, who had once described himself as an ambivalent Buddhist, had neither taken nor demanded, willing instead to leave religion as a choice for each child. Meanwhile, husband and wife celebrated all things together, from the exchanging gifts on Christmas to the lighting of bonfires at the Obon Festival.

Tony launched into a complicated, full bodied luster of a gentle classic Deena couldn’t quite name. Head down and traversing the length of the keyboard, he played as he always did: unobtrusive, serene, angelic. Notes drifted and manipulated once airborne, nuanced, graceful, intimate. Tak, ever the doting father, looked on with unadulterated pride. Tony, as if sensing him, flung a grin his way before tumbling, headlong into a bursting cacophony of playful notes.

“Showoff,” Tak mouthed and clapped him on the back, to which his son wriggled eyebrows in response.

The music steadied, mellowing out to an upbeat festive number. Tak crossed the room with mischief in his smile, took Aunt Caroline’s hand and whispered in her ear. She cocked a skeptic brow and he stepped back, put a hand to his abdomen, and sashayed his hips, eyes closed. Caroline threw back her head and hooted, before allowing Tak to lead her to the center of room. Once there, he took her waist in one hand and drew up their clasped hands in the other, before the two began an exaggerated sway. Small steps to and fro; fractured by cackles of laughter, mashed toes, and accusations of poor dancing.

Deena tried to imagine a man—any man—conjuring affection in old sour-mouthed Caroline. Snake charmer, she thought wryly. Another addition to the resume of her husband.

“I do wonder where he gets it from,” Daichi said, voice low and suddenly at her side. “I’ve all the charisma of an executioner, while his mother’s most content comatose.”

He tipped up his glass of orange juice just as Deena stole a glance his way.

“I know,” he said. “About what happened in the billiard room, that is.”

“I…” she blinked, wondering where all her words had gone.

Tony flashed into a frantic melody, a rush of shoulder-jerking symphony. Tak responded by swinging out Caroline, abandoning her there, and dropping down on the bench next to his son. Tony scooted to accommodate him and the playing of one, flew fluid into two. Tak’s smooth, raw, deceptively velvet voice slipped in, infected with his inability to stop smiling. Tony followed, voice measured and aware, a musician wielding yet another instrument with care. Son was all shade and delicate harmony to his father’s playful torch of emotion.

“You haven’t told him,” Daichi said, eyes impassive on his son and grandson.

“I—”

Deena halted as the bottom dropped out of Tak’s voice as he crooned about the meanness of the Grinch. Tony flooded into the song smooth, seamless, as earnest as if he performed Silent Night.

“Your wife,” Deena said, remembering her conversation with Mike. “She doesn’t…drive, does she?”

Daichi shot her a look of scalding impatience.

“Ask what you intend to,” he said. “I require no preamble.”

Fine then, Deena thought, even as ice spread through her belly. She had a relationship with her father-in-law that no one else had managed. They were direct with each other, forthcoming, and she knew more about him than most. If she asked a question of Daichi, she knew that she’d get the answer.

And that was why the fear set in.

“Why doesn’t your wife ever drive?” Deena said.

It seemed as good a question to start with as any.

The music slowed. New Orleans blues slow. Jukebox slow. Crawling, gritty, sweat slipping down the face kind of slow. Tak belted out a roar of ridiculous magnitude, earning a whoop of approval from the Hammonds.

Tony mouthed “showoff” and proceeded to showoff himself.

“The state of Florida revoked her license several decades ago,” Daichi said, answering Deena’s question.

She let the words hang there awhile.

“Why?” she said eventually.

Daichi threw back his juice.

“Driving under the influence with serious bodily harm. A third degree felony in Florida.”

She hadn’t been sure whether she’d believed Mike’s speculations, even if his tone had been steady and convincing. But this? She had no choice but to believe this.

“Mike has a scar,” she hurried on, like one with too much momentum to stop the fall. “Is that where the charge comes from?”

“Partly,” Daichi said. “Though Takumi and Jonathan suffered injuries they were too young to remember.”

The baby. The crying baby Mike was desperate to help was his little brother.

“How long has she struggled with this?” Deena said.

Her father-in-law frowned.

“Too long for anyone to be sure,” he said. “Off again then on again, then on with no off.”

“So, she’s always been like this?”

Daichi looked at her in surprise.

“No,” he said. “Not always.”

Their object of discussion entered the room. Silent, graceful, ethereal, her makeup had been redone in smoky shadows, delicate blush, and dramatic lashes. She’d slipped into a sleek, flattering avant-garde sheath of teal. Deena looked from her mother-in-law to herself in bewilderment. How was it that she sustained not a hint of their earlier altercation, while Deena suffered through a handful of bandages and clothes that required constant readjusting?

“It started with the boredom,” Daichi said. “Lonely housewife, unfulfilled. Surely, you’ve heard of it.”

On the piano, Tony had turned his attention to a loping, dramatic melody, all vestiges of holiday cheer gone. Deena recognized it as one of those larger-than-life ballads that graced the Billboard charts a generation ago. When her husband’s sonorous quality slipped in, it was with the delicate incision required. Deena was torn between finishing her conversation with Daichi and fleeing, as her husband took a special kind of joy out of mortifying via serenade.

“Boredom?” Deena echoed. “That sounds a little incredible to believe. And dismissive.”

“The answer doesn’t fit your practical nature, your need for order in the storm.” He eyed her with something that bordered on interest. “I met my wife when we were both students at Harvard. Clearly, she had aspirations beyond that of trophy piece. You’re a plainly ambitious woman. Would you be satisfied with the domesticated role?”

She thought back to their earlier conversations, back when her relationship with Tak was unknown to him. Back when Daichi functioned as her boss, mentor, and friend even. He’d said that she’d never be sated with the “trappings of mediocrity,” with a “subservient role as wife and mother.” Did this same fire of dissatisfaction consume Tak’s mother? Deena knew that Hatsumi, several years younger than Daichi, had left school to marry him after Tak had been conceived. But so many years had lapsed, years where she threw herself into a bottle instead of resurrecting dreams. It was the mark of cowardice, the mark of weakness to Deena.

When her sister, Lizzie, had been addicted to everything Deena could work the winding path to her destruction out in her head. Little supervision, suffocating poverty, and exposure to criminal elements were all constant norms. Her choices, while appalling, had explanations backed by twisted reasoning. All Hatsumi had was never ending boredom.

“You should have left her,” Deena said. “When she harmed the children, maybe even earlier. You could have replaced her with a woman of your choosing and given both boys stable homes. Not all of us had the choice of improving the quality of upbringing.”

Daichi looked at her as if she’d just arrived, and unexpectedly at that.

“Tanakas don’t divorce. Surely, you’ve heard that by now.”

She looked up then. Looked up as Mike entered the room and Tak hit a false note. Her husband, with angle enough to look from his cousin to his wife, flashed a look of annoyance before burying it in a distracted smile. When their song petered to nothingness, Tak rose, put a hand on Mike’s arm, and led him to the hall. Deena and her father-in-law watched them go.

“Tread careful with those two,” Daichi said. “Theirs is a game not even they understand.”

****

In the hallway, Tak whirled on Mike and buried the urge to punch him somewhere deep. Everything he had in him, absolutely everything, bristled at the resistance to this impulse. But he would be cool. He would not be the jealous, raging husband, as easily subject to paranoia as he was the latest strand of the flu.

Tak took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Tell me what happened in the bathroom.”

Distrust chilled Mike’s stare.

“Ask your wife.”

“I’m asking you.”

Mike rubbed absentmindedly at the spot where Tak had grabbed him to yank him into the hall.

“We talked.”

“About?”

Mike dropped his gaze.

“Private stuff.”

“Private stuff?” Tak echoed. “You think you can talk private stuff with another man’s wife?”

Mike shot him a look of ill-contained exasperation. It reminded Tak of their childhood; back when they were almost OK. Back when Tak would fume for a third go at the Nintendo and his big cousin would give in, because, well because he really wasn’t so bad after all.

“We weren’t…doing anything,” Mike said. “You must know that. Otherwise, I never would have made it out the bathroom alive.”

It was true. All true, and yet he couldn’t get past the general unease that always came with Mike. That feeling that since he was the smartest in the room, it was best just to rely on distrust and figure out what the hell he was up to later. He was always up to something.

“Can I go now?” Mike said.

He wore the flat expression of a man expecting undeservedly poor treatment.

Tak exhaled and forced himself to reconsider. Was he overreacting? He just couldn’t say.

Chapter Sixteen

Deena regretted the decision to barbecue for lunch the second she stepped outdoors to a half dozen bickering men cloistered around the grill. At the center was her father-in-law and his brother, unapologetic in their fervor. Arms waved as faces slipped into varying shades of magenta. The words “phony,” “trailer trash,” and “poser,” wafted over to her, before she decided it wasn’t the place she wanted to be. On spotting her cousin, Crystal, by the pool, she journeyed over to speak instead.

They hadn’t seen each other since their days of childhood, when Crystal and her mother Caroline, lived with Deena, Deena’s siblings, Crystal’s siblings, Grandma Emma, and Grandpa Eddie. For a brief time, Deena, Keisha, and Crystal even shared a room, crammed into a hell of their very own design.

Crystal waved her over.

“Sit. Please,”’ she said. “Or else I’ll think I have B.O.”

Deena sat and looked around.

“You came with someone,” she said after a while.

“Tyson.”

The name hung in the air, clinging for recognition. Except, she hadn’t said it as a lover would, as if the very taste of each letter was worthwhile. She’d said it cautiously. Maybe their love was new.

Years stretched between Crystal and Deena, years of silence and distance. Their awkwardness felt doused with uncertainty. But they’d been friends once.

“You’ve done good for yourself,” Crystal said. “Tyson can’t stop talking about all this.”

Deena followed her gaze to the pool, where a dark and rippling man sliced water like an Olympian.

“Oh,” Deena said, surprised. “He’s…athletic.”

“And damned pretty, too. Which happens to be my kryptonite. Judging by the look of your husband, I’d say it’s yours, too.”

Deena flushed.

“No. I—I’m not vain. I—”

How had this conversation happened?

Crystal giggled.

Deep, toasted even skin, smooth as cream and perpetually flawless. Short, with a compact frame and flaring hips, Deena’s cousin was cute in a completely nonthreatening way. The sort of girl whose eye shadow matched her handbag, yet would look up in surprise if a man expressed interest. But she was genuine, with a smile that reminded Deena of winter fires and comfort, of knowing that someone cared.

Yet, they’d grown apart. When Crystal graduated from high school, she’d boarded a Greyhound for Tallahassee, armed with a scholarship to Florida A&M and a determination to never come back.

Deena’s gaze shifted to Caroline, who stood at the pool’s edge in a yellow one piece that had her looking like a lemon on legs. A cigarette dangled from her mouth.

“Five years and Tyson’s never met my mother.” Crystal smiled. “He gets why now.”

“Does he?”

A flicker of uncertainty crossed Crystal’s face.

“How long did it take you?” she said. “Before…you know.”

“Three years,” Deena said. Three years and him almost dying before she found some sense, before she let Tak into the world of her family.

Crystal frowned.

“I can’t marry,” she said. “Marriage brings children and—and the opportunity to…”

Her gaze drifted to the pool.

“To turn into your mother,” Deena said.

Crystal said nothing.

Deena gave Tyson a second, closer look as he made strong, smooth scissor movements from one end of the pool to the other. He had stamina and strength.

He’d need it for their family.

Once done swimming, Tyson erupted from the pool with a flood of water, pulling up and over the side before extending to his full height. Crystal was right. He had a sculpted beauty. Tall, dark, and broad shouldered, every inch of him boasted definition, every stretch implied strength. He turned to the women and smiled.

It felt like being laughed at.

“He’s sweet. And I adore him. But he knows what he looks like and takes pride in it.” Crystal paused. “What happened to your hand?”

Deena looked up.

“Nothing. Really. Just a kitchen accident.” She tucked her hand into her lap and smiled too brightly. “Tell me about you. What have you been doing all these years?”

“I’m a social worker,” she said and snorted out a laugh. “Ironic, I suppose. Me telling others how their families should be.”

It’s your need for order, Deena wanted to say. We all have it.

“Tyson’s in the Marines,” Crystal went on. “He did a tour in Iraq and another in Afghanistan before getting discharged.”

Deena looked at him with new eyes.

“Well. Let him know that I thank him for his service.”

“I will. Only, he doesn’t like to talk about it much.”

No. Deena imagined he wouldn’t.