Rain Song (16 page)
Mrs. McCready is a dear woman in spite of the recent trouble she has had with hair conditioner. Forever this woman will be esteemed by all of the clan because twice now she’s found Ducee, called 911, and overseen Ducee being lifted into the ambulance and taken to the hospital. There is no way we can repay her for being a neighbor that is like a sister to my grandmother. But as kind as this elderly woman is, she’s not going to look after a donkey. That much is clear.
It is up to me to feed Maggie McCormick while Ducee’s in the hospital—only because, perhaps, I am the only one dumb enough to volunteer.
I brush the animal and give her clean water. I let her eat a baked potato, taken from Ducee’s hospital tray at dinner, and a carrot, out of my hand. Before leaving, I guide her out into the field by Ducee’s house. The rustic barn door is ajar; Maggie can go inside if she needs to. But the weather’s so warm that Maggie will be just fine in the grassy land enclosed by the fence.
“Maggie, you are more than a beast. You are a lifesaver,” I tell her as I hand her the apple, the gift Mr. McGuire gave me yesterday for her. I stopped by his store for fish food. Eagerly, he told me he knew that Clive had been in the ER. Nothing stays secret in this town.
“I hope,” Mr. McGuire said, “that Dennis ended up in the ER, as well.”
I told him that, according to Iva, Dennis threatened to take out a gun but punched Clive in the jaw instead. Clive fell backward and landed on his arm. Clive knocked Dennis in the teeth and possibly, although no one knows for sure, a few of them broke.
Maggie McCormick chews the apple, shows her large teeth, and gives a slight bray. She must know she is special to have alerted Mrs. McCready about Ducee.
I check Ducee’s doors to make sure they’re locked. Everything seems secure and tranquil, right down to the two dormer windows protruding out from under the black roof. Even the wreath is hanging squarely on the lavender front door this June evening, but the door doesn’t look inviting now, perhaps because no one is home.
The gardenia bush on the side of the house fills the air with its sweetness. Now, that is a fragrance that can calm any uneasy nerve. If Ducee dies, I’ll take the gardenia and plant it in my yard. Each day as I walk past it, I’ll be filled with an aroma that will soothe me almost as well as watching my fish swim.
When I back out of the driveway, I take one last look at Ducee’s house. Part of me fears that Ducee will never return to it again. Perhaps the nine lives we’ve kidded her about having have come to an abrupt end.
I feel badly that I even considered taking the gardenia bush if Ducee dies.
I drive home unaware of my surroundings, making the familiar left and right turns. When I pull into my driveway, Hilda waves from her open garage. She’s standing over a stack of cardboard boxes while a burly man I’ve never seen before washes her van. He soaps up the body, his large muscles flexing. I bet lots of people are willing to wash Hilda’s van. They may even think that cleaning the vehicle of a saint secures a place for them in heaven.
Before I take the keys out of my car’s ignition, the dashboard’s Check Engine light ignites. Oh no. I wait for the light to disappear as though if I stare at it long enough it’ll fade. Cars are fine, I always say, unless they refuse to run smoothly and need servicing.
Luckily, I can call Great-Uncle Clive. He’s still in pain and doesn’t sleep well since the fight with Dennis, but maybe he can come by and take a look under the hood.
———
Inside my house, I settle in my fuzzy chair to check for email messages. There’s a pink-and-purple-colored message from Kristine asking how my summer is going. She adds that her car is in the shop because she backed into a telephone pole after her salsa lesson last night. She hopes the repair won’t be costly. I can relate. She and Salvador just returned from three days at Emerald Isle and they’d like to bring over a gift for me. “We might just stop by and surprise you one of these days,” she writes before ending her message.
I hope their visit isn’t too much of a surprise. I would hate to have just stepped out of the shower when they arrive, or burned something on the stove.
The phone rings.
Aunt Betty heard from Iva about Ducee and wants to know how her mother is doing. “Should we come now?” She poses this question a few times, using a variety of intonations. “We could come earlier than planned for the reunion. I can fly out tomorrow. How is she? What do you think? Should we come now?” Her questions spill into each other, and I don’t know which one to answer first.
One thing I do know is that my grandmother would prefer that people not make such a fuss over her, even if one of those people is her own daughter.
“She’s going to be fine.” Who am I trying to convince? “Just fine.”
“How is her heart?”
“The doctors are going to change her medication.”
“Oh, should we come now?” I hear the worry over the phone lines.
I firmly tell her to wait. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Meanwhile, don’t worry.” I hope I sound as calm as anyone, even though I’ve twirled my index finger around a strand of hair so tightly that my finger, for a few seconds, is stuck.
Uncle Jarvis gets on the phone and, true to character, tells a joke about two men who went fishing with an elephant. The joke is wasted on me because I don’t think it’s funny. But when my uncle roars with laughter, I can’t help letting out a little laugh. His next joke is about a bottle of Tabasco and a moose; it must be only for those in Wyoming to understand. I pretend it’s a good one. As he delves into a joke about a buffalo in hiding, I realize my mind is a thousand miles away—somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
Aunt Betty yells in the background, “That’s enough, Jarvis! You need to mow the grass.”
Uncle Jarvis chuckles, says he’ll see me at the reunion soon. He wonders if he should bring some buffalo steaks for the grill. “They might taste good with that chutney Ducee makes.”
I take a thumbnail from my mouth and say, “Sure.”
When we tell each other good night, I wonder what kind of shape Ducee will be in for the reunion. Although we’ve already made the chutney for the event, she’s not going to be able to make the casseroles, the gallons of iced tea, the egg salad sandwiches. She might still be in a hospital bed. The weekend is just around the corner and how can she possibly get things ready when she sleeps half the day?
It’s ten-fifteen at night eastern time, eleven-fifteen in the morning Japan time.
I wonder how Harrison’s church picnic at Minoo Park is going today. He wrote that this particular mountain park has monkeys that roam freely. They often grab food from visitors. He said once a tiny monkey crept up to his picnic table, snuck under his elbow, and ran off with a whole bag of potato chips.
Smiling at the thought of a monkey stealing chips, I wonder if Harrison thinks of me as much as I think of him.
I can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to your visit.
I would never admit that sentiment to him in a message across cyberspace. I would hold it tightly, secretively, in my heart. As I already do.
In two days, on Thursday, July first, I have a flight to Japan. And except for Ducee and me, no one in Mount Olive knows. This must be the best-kept secret of the whole McCormickDubois-Michelin clan. It will go down throughout the generations as the story of Nicole Michelin’s trip to Japan. Families will crowd around the tables eating chutney, drinking ginger tea, wiping their mouths on linen napkins, saying, “She and her grandmother Ducee didn’t tell a soul. Nicole applied for her passport and purchased an air ticket and planned her trip just like that. No one knew. Isn’t that amazing? The whole time everyone thought she was going to be at the family reunion, bringing that Mount Olive centerpiece. You know, the one with the olives on a large fresh pineapple? But no, she was on her way to Japan. And that is the story of how Nicole missed the reunion and went to Japan.”
The downside of a well-kept secret is that there is no one to talk this over with.
Do granddaughters leave their grandmothers in hospitals and sail across the skies, away from them? If I could ask Grable, or even Iva, what they think of me leaving at a time like this, that might help me know what to do.
Maybe the tale of how Nicole skipped the reunion and flew to Japan will never be told.
My new clothes are still in the striped pink-and-blue bags with Julianne’s written in gold on them. The drugstore bag holding lipstick, perfume, and nail polishes sits next to them on the kitchen floor where I dropped them when the phone call from Iva about Ducee being in the hospital arrived. They are crouched together, expectant, waiting to hear. What is the verdict? Will the items remain in the bags forever, or do they get let out and have their price tags clipped off ? Will they get placed in the large gray Samsonite suitcase?
I stare blankly at the bags. What was I thinking? What possessed me to buy nail polish? Why would I paint my nails and draw attention to their short, stubby characteristics?
After buying clothes at Julianne’s, I guess I went crazy. Stopped at Franklin’s Drug and came out with three bottles of nail polish. And a tube of coral lipstick. And Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea perfume. When was the last time I purchased any of these products? I’ve prided myself on not needing any of them. These frou-frou products of society are for other girls, not me. Not Nicole Michelin, the simple English teacher.
The bags bulge and beg with wanting to know if they will forever hold their contents.
So what is the verdict?
Bits and pieces of Harrison’s previous email messages start to pop up in my mind, the way the letters pop over when Vanna turns them on
Wheel of Fortune
.
We can take the train from Kyoto to Tokyo. For lunch we can eat the
obento
they sell at the stations. Rice, pickles, fish, and seaweed, I tell you, it is a traveler’s delight. There is nothing that can be compared with riding on the
shinkansen
, looking out the large glass window, watching rice fields and bamboo groves, little towns and children on bicycles, as you eat an
obento
.
I want you to meet my koi. I know as an expert in fish care, you will be able to convince them not to eat the plants. They’ll listen to you.
Nicole, it will be so good for you and Watanabesan to reconnect and talk together. Of course, I won’t mind translating. Watanabe-san appears a bit confused at times, but seeing you will make her so happy.
I think I’d like to buy another Tashio Sanke koi. It has a white body with a red pattern and black accent marks. The last one I picked out was sick and didn’t live long. I bet you could help me get a good one this time. Then you can meet the fish store guy. He has a saltwater aquarium that takes up half of his apartment and is always telling me he needs advice.
When the bullfrogs and crickets sing in my garden and my koi swim in the pond and then raise their heads to eat out of my hand, and the sky is filled with stars, I think I live in a corner of heaven. And you, Nicole, just might agree.
I go to the computer and view a picture he sent of Watanabesan seated in a wheelchair at the nursing home. She’s in a white
yukata
with a dotted blue pattern; her hands that look like flower buds are folded in her lap. Her gray hair is pulled back from her forehead into a bun. What catches my attention most is her smiling wrinkled face—like she can’t wait to see me.
———
At midnight I could use some Uncle Jarvis. Instead, I turn on the television and dig into a pint of Two Times Nutty Crunch. A balding comedian in a plaid shirt starts to tell mother-in-law jokes and the audience finds him hilarious.
Watanabe-san and Mama, Mount Fuji and the
shinkansen
, they are all on my mind. I think of questions to ask Watanabesan. There are several concerning my doll. First, why did the doll get named Sazae? What does that mean? Assuming it is a Japanese name, do I pronounce it correctly? Throughout the years, I’ve wondered if I’ve been mispronouncing the name of my cherished companion.
I have a recollection of deciding that Sazae was too strange a name and so I started calling my doll Belinda Sue. I was seven and, to me, Belinda Sue was the most gorgeous name. Oh, why, oh, why hadn’t my parents named me this?
For one full day while we played house where she sat in the doll high chair and drank from a plastic tea set, she was Belinda Sue.
But the next morning when I looked into her coal eyes and stroked her black hair, I knew. She was not Belinda Sue. She was Sazae, and changing her name would be denying who she was and where she came from. A gift from Mama, a gift given to me in that country I wanted nothing to do with—Japan.
I finish the container of ice cream and throw it in the kitchen trash can. I could use another pint, but my freezer holds no more of the creamy treat.
There are other questions I want to ask Watanabe-san, questions regarding Mama and Father. How was their Japanese? Did Mama go to the market to buy fish and pickles made of radishes? How often did she make pineapple chutney? How did she and Father get along? Did they hold hands as they strolled in the Imperial Palace grounds?
And then there are the questions about my relationship with Mama. How had Mama mothered her only child? Was she laid-back or overly protective? Did she insist I wear shoes, or did she let me run around in the spring and summer grass barefoot? Did she kiss the top of my head as I’ve seen mothers often do? Was she the type of mom who would twirl her daughter around in a parking lot and ask if she was ready to see the big wide world?
I sit in the wing chair as these questions take turns coming to sit beside me. One by one, they pose themselves, wanting answers.
Then they leave me alone. And when my mind is clear of them, thoughts of Harrison arrive. Harrison—dear carp owner with the soft blue eyes. Harrison—poet, email buddy, mystery solver, and childhood friend. Of course I wonder if when I greet him at the airport there will be that spark, that deep sense of knowing that I could love him.
Oh, really, is this the time to be such a romantic?
In my bedroom, I pull the blinds shut and then take out my passport from the dresser drawer. It’s in pristine condition with its navy blue cover and crisp, unmarked pages. United States of America—how much more official can you get? The photo of me looks almost as pale as the page it’s glued to, but that’s okay; it’s a known fact that passport pictures, like driver’s license photos, are not supposed to be glamour shots. Nicole Delores Michelin—I signed it using my most flamboyant signature.
I see Ducee in the hospital bed, still weak, her heart damaged. Again. A worried doctor from the other day. Why was he worried? She has to live to see the year 2000, don’t you see?
My passport will remain starched and clean. It’s not going to know the mark of the immigration stamp. It will stay here in my dresser drawer, along with the framed picture of Richard.
The TV audience laughs as a profound sadness fills every silent laugh line on my face.