How to Be an American Housewife (32 page)

This being outdoors, doing things, was new to me. Charlie and I had also been walking from time to time. I wanted to get in good shape for my Japan trip, to visit Sue as well as Taro and the rest of my family. My mended heart, with the wedge cut out of it to make it smaller, was doing well. The doctors thought it would add five or more years to my life. I hoped for longer. I told Charlie, “I’m not gonna sit around waiting no more. We got to
do
stuff.”

Finally, Charlie had agreed. He would go with me to Japan. We took out a reverse mortgage on our home, one of those old-people loans that paid you the equity of your home until you died, and now we had enough to go.

Mike would look after the house for the three weeks we were gone. He was getting more hours at the pet store, showing up to work on time, keeping his uniform neat and clean. At last, getting more responsible. I had left him stamped envelopes and checks to pay the bills. “Don’t forget,” I warned him at least four times.

“I won’t,” he promised, and crossed his heart.

For the first time, I believed he would follow through. He had been changing too, little by little, ever since I had told him about Ronin. After I had told Sue the story in the hospital, I spoke to Mike that very evening. While I still had my courage.

Mike had stared down, rubbing his hands nervously over his hair as I talked. He gulped. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“No need for. Daddy and me, we love you.” I watched him anxiously, echoing what Charlie had said so many years ago. “Past is past, Mike.”

He closed his eyes. “I can’t take this.” He got up and left, me staring after him. There was nothing to do but hope he came back.

An hour passed. Charlie came in. “Where’s Mike? Isn’t he supposed to be here?”

“I did something.” My voice was faint. “I tell him.”

Charlie was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What for?”

“He need to know.” I looked at my husband for understanding. His lips were pressed thin. “Please, Charlie. Go home. Talk with him.”

Charlie softened. “I can’t promise anything, Shoko.” He kissed my forehead and left.

Mike returned to me the next morning. He looked tired. He said nothing, just sat down beside me as he always did, refilling my water cup from the pitcher at the bedside table. I wondered if he would even bring up the subject again.

I spoke first. “I do what I think best.” I spoke slowly. “I sorry, Mike.”

He cleared his throat once, then again. “It explains a lot.”

I wanted to ask what Charlie had said to him, but decided not to. That would be between him and Mike, not for me to know. All that mattered was Mike’s being there. I touched his hand with mine, tubes trailing, my voice rising. “I no want hurt you, Mike.”

“I know, Mom.” He smiled briefly, and his eyes met mine. Ronin all over again. “But I don’t want to keep talking about it, all right?”

It sounded like something Charlie would say. Mike and my husband were similar in so many ways. And both were more like the Japanese than they knew. A Japanese person was happy to not analyze every problem to death. Sometimes letting go brought more peace than holding on, I realized, though it was harder to do. I pulled the sheets up to my neck and smiled. “Okay.”

Mike had not broken, as I had feared. And my secret, uselessly burdening me for so many years, floated away.

A cheer went up from the baseball crowd. I cheered, too, not caring what we were yelling for. It just felt good.

I remembered something else. “I need new suitcase,” I said aloud. “We better go store after this.” I watched the Cubs pitcher strike out the home team. “Yes!” I stood up and waved my Cubs hat around.

Charlie sighed, holding out his hand to steady me. “There’s plenty of time.”

I realized he was right. I smiled. “I hungry,” I said. “How ’bout hot dog?”

Charlie waved to the vendor with the big box strapped to his front, holding up one finger.

“Five bucks,” the vendor said.

Five dollars! Robbery. “That okay. I not that hungry.”

Charlie took out his wallet. “How often do we come here?”

I smiled. “Probably only time. But still
takai
.”

Charlie handed me the hot dog. “There you go.”

I took a bite. Watching baseball while eating a hot dog. Now I felt like an American.

Our picture flashed on the JumboTron screen. “Charlie!” I shouted. “Look, there we are!”

We waved frantically, until they went to someone else.

“Wait until Sue hear ’bout this. Maybe we be on the news, too.” I polished off the meal, licking mustard off my fingertips.

“Don’t bet on it, Shoko-chan.”

A breeze blew up and I put on my jacket. Charlie put his arm around me.

I checked the scoreboard: Padres 1, Cubs 2. “Look that! We beat you good, Charlie.”

Charlie shrugged. “Like you said, it’s early in the game. Let’s see what happens.”

“Fine.” I relaxed against him. “Time for another hot dog. Maybe I have beer, too.” I was joking, but Charlie looked horrified. I laughed.

My mother, Suiko O’Brien, always told me her life would make a great book.

As I was growing up, she regaled me with stories of what had happened to her during her youth in World War II-era Japan. At last, when I was in college and her health had left her bedridden, I asked her to do one last thing for me: record her stories on tape. She obliged, giving me a rambling account of her life.

Several of these stories are incorporated into this novel, including those about how she got shot at by American pilots, how her father picked her new husband from among photographs, and how her extreme beauty caused men to lose their minds over her. I made up all the other stories.

The language Shoko uses in the book was particularly challenging for me. When I studied Japanese, I discovered that some of the words my mother had used when I was growing up were her own personal usages and not grammatically correct Japanese. Since I wanted to preserve the flavor of her speech, I decided to use the same words my mother would have used. Some Japanese speakers might find errors in some of the word choices or spellings, but it’s true to how my mother spoke, and how I imagined Shoko speaking. My mother died of an enlarged heart when I was twenty. She was only sixty-one. We never knew what caused the enlarged heart; her doctors speculated it could have been scarlet fever or radiation. There are many new treatment options available since my mother died, including the one that Shoko undergoes in the book, called “left ventricular remodeling.” In this, a wedge is removed from the too-large heart. That is an oversimplification, and possibly there’s a cardiologist out there who will take me to task, but this is fiction.

The postwar handbook quoted within this book, also titled
How to Be an American Housewife
, is, likewise, fiction, but with a nonfiction inspiration. About twelve years ago, I was going through some cookbooks at my parents’ home and found a book entitled
The American Way of Housekeeping.
Written in Japanese and English, it told of how to keep house “the American way” in order not to offend Western sensibilities. I asked my father about it. “I got that for your mother. I thought it was a book for housewives,” he told me. “But it was a book for maids.” It appeared to have been barely cracked open.

I put the book down and didn’t think of it again for a decade. Of course, my father had given it away by then. I finally found a copy after I had written the novel. Written “by the Women of the Occupation” (several officers’ wives groups), the book details how to report to “your mistress” and contains recipes as well as cleaning instructions. Though the book was written for maids, another Internet search revealed two references to Japanese brides using it for assimilation. It seems that this book for maids was the best option available at the time.

For the novel, I created my own version of this book, keeping in mind how my mother might have viewed the world back then, through her unique cultural lens.

Thanks to my husband, Keith, for his support and encouragement of my writing and blocking our children from door-pounding at crucial times. Thank you to my children, Elyse, Ethan, and Kaiya, for understanding that Mommy gets cranky when she can’t write.

Thank you, Bill and Sharon Dilloway, my parents-in-law, for providing moral support and babysitting services as often as I needed. Thanks to my own family for never telling me I couldn’t be a writer when I was little.

Thanks also to several crucial teachers who encouraged me from a young age: Gayle Bean; Norma Garcia; and Carleen Hemrich, who promised to have me back as an author for the Pershing Junior High Book Fair.

To my early readers, Denise Armijo, Hedy Levine, and Barbara Ryan, from the Scripps College Book Club, who helped rein in a huge blob of a work, thank you. Thanks also to my two later readers, Elizabeth Eberle and Adriane Fleming, for their quick turnaround and moral support.

A big thank-you to Jane Cavolina, freelance book editor and my champion, who would not let me give up.

Thank you to my agent, Elaine Markson, who gave me the greatest early-morning call ever. Thanks also to Gary Johnson, for answering my questions with good humor and alacrity.

And thank you to Peternelle van Arsdale, my editor, who saw the potential in the book and helped me change it in the very best ways possible. She is gracious and generous, a true writer’s editor.