Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
It was kind of the Suttons to invite Yoko to their Thanksgiving festivities.
Early that Thursday morning at the end of November, she finished her Japanese-inspired red-bean-paste pie, cooked in the style of a pumpkin pie, and set it gently in the oven to bake.
She was covered in rice flour, sugar, and spice, but she was happy, her heart floating.
Upstairs, she heard Liam and Lily moving around, probably getting ready to come downstairs for coffee.
The plan was to be at the Sutton House by noon.
Lily came downstairs first. She wore a pair of loose linen pants and an oversized Columbia sweatshirt and greeted Yoko with a sleepy smile.
Yoko had come to really love seeing Lily every morning, padding around the kitchen, searching for breakfast, coffee, or tea.
A few days ago, Lily had outlined her wedding plans with Yoko, and Yoko had felt Lily’s nervous eyes on her face, watching her expressions for signs that she either liked or didn’t like her decisions.
Yoko had made sure to exaggerate how much she liked Lily’s decisions.
She knew that Americans were effusive. They needed that back to feel comfortable.
After a brief discussion, Liam and Lily had set the date for late September.
Yoko had called Kendall to tell him the news, and Kendall had listened passively and said, “We should still be together for the wedding. Publicly. It’s what Liam will want for the photographs.
It’s what the press will want. And it’s better, in the long run, not to go through a messy divorce. ”
Yoko wasn’t sure why Kendall wanted to remain married, although she guessed that something was amiss with Kendall’s mistress.
Maybe they weren’t getting along as well as they had, especially now that the gossip channels were on to them.
Or maybe Kendall was too exhausted to go through the rigamarole of getting divorced, and engaged, and married again.
Yoko could understand that. She couldn’t fathom putting on another wedding dress or walking down another aisle.
Yoko opted to drive separately to the Sutton House. She followed Liam and Lily with a soft smile on her lips. Snow fluttered in front of her windshield and melted on impact. On the radio was a Christmas carol, “Carol of the Bells,” and she hummed along, getting almost every note wrong.
Esme and Victor opened the door to greet them with hugs and a “Happy Thanksgiving.” Yoko clutched her red-bean pie and smiled nervously, drawn into the haze of too many Suttons, too many happy and hungry family members, too many smells of gravy and sugar and meat.
She set the pie with the other desserts and stood in the kitchen with Bethany, Valerie, Rebecca, and Lily, too nervous to be among the men and their football game.
It reminded her of the day she’d met Kendall, standing in the kitchen with Kathy, pretending to know what the customs were.
Of course, it was similar to everywhere—the women cooked, and the men waited for food.
In here, she could hear her son talking to Rebecca’s boyfriend about sports. His voice was loud and clear and confident, just like Kendall’s. She clutched the lid of the counter, anxiety billowing through her.
The Sutton women were excited about Lily’s wedding and eager to talk about it.
“What did you think, Yoko?” Valerie asked, smiling as she chopped through an onion. “The venue’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“It’s beautiful,” Yoko agreed. “And I’m looking forward to trying the catering. Liam and Lily have offered to bring me when they meet the chef.”
“Yes! We’re going, too,” Valerie said. “The chef is a personal friend, so it’ll feel more like a party than anything else. I hope you’re ready to feast!”
Yoko looked past Valerie at the massive, stacked table filled with Thanksgiving foods. “Isn’t today the big feast?”
Valerie puffed her cheeks. “We won’t stop feasting till January, I’m afraid.”
Esme laughed and breezed past them, searching for something. “Everyone, prepare your stomachs!”
“You must feast like this sometimes in Japan,” Rebecca said, catching Yoko’s eye.
Yoko remembered long, gleaming tables, piled with fish and vegetables and rice. She recalled rice desserts, bean snacks, and fermented things in jars. She remembered eating with her parents until they’d told her she had to stop, or else she’d get sick and couldn’t play tennis later that day.
But Yoko didn’t want to get into anything dark from her childhood. “We had plenty of feasts,” she agreed.
“I still dream about the dinner you served us a couple of months back. After the dress fitting?” Bethany said.
“We will have to do that again,” Yoko said. “Perhaps after the next dress fitting?”
Lily’s cheeks went pink. “I have another session scheduled for December third. I hope everyone can make it.”
“We’ll make it work, honey!” Bethany touched Lily’s head. “You’re our number one priority till you walk down that aisle. We’re going to make it your best year yet.”
Yoko remembered being doted on by Kathy before her wedding to Kendall.
She remembered feeling like an American princess.
She remembered the day of, sitting by Kendall, watching their numerous high-rolling guests dancing to songs she didn’t know and marveling that they’d traveled so far away to celebrate her.
For dinner, Yoko sat across from Victor and directly between Liam and Rebecca.
Around her, the Suttons spoke all at once, filled their plates with beige-colored foods, slathered them with gravy, and asked people to pass them more, more, more.
Yoko knew that this kind of food would hurt her stomach, but she didn’t want to be rude.
She picked at what she could and filled up on salad, smiling at everyone’s jokes.
Internally, she felt nervous and nauseous.
She kept looking at Lily and seeing herself back in 1995—meeting Kendall for the first time and letting herself fall for him.
She’d been in love with Akira! Oh, she should have told Akira the truth when she’d had the chance.
She should have told him she didn’t want to destroy his love, but he was the only man she’d ever loved, the only person she could dream of having a life with.
Now, they were old. Yoko and Akira were no better than strangers.
If she’d told Kendall she was in love with a Japanese man who lived across the world, he probably would have shrugged and said he was in love with at least thirteen other women.
Who cared? But Kendall’s heart worked differently than hers did.
She felt that Lily’s heart was different from Liam’s, as well. But she didn’t know how to tell her.
After dinner, Yoko helped clean plates for a full forty-five minutes, grateful for the hot water over her fingers and the sounds of the Sutton women’s voices in her ears.
When Esme instructed her to sit down for dessert, Yoko touched her stomach and said, “I really don’t feel very well. I need to go home.”
Esme looked stricken. “You can’t go!” she cried. “Let me find you some medicine. I have everything in the cabinet. Sit down. Drink some water.”
The other Sutton women crowded around Yoko, eager to help her. Only Lily hung back, her brow furrowed, looking at Yoko as though she understood that her stomach was not the only problem.
Yoko was adamant, and eventually, Esme gave up her anxious prodding and helped her gather her things.
Yoko insisted they eat the red-bean pie, and Esme looked at it nervously, as though she’d never seen anything like it before.
Yoko didn’t care what any of them thought anymore.
With her coat on, she hugged her son goodbye and, in Japanese, told him she’d see him later.
His eyes were still on the screen, where the football game raged on.
When Yoko returned home, she sat on her sofa with one of Kendall’s old laptops on her thighs.
The snow outside swept thick and fast through the darkness.
Via several online searches, Yoko finally discovered the website for her old tennis coach—a man she hadn’t seen since she’d fired him to work with Coach Reynolds.
On the website was his photograph, updated to show him in his mid-sixties with salt-and-pepper hair, along with prices and a list of both past and current clients.
Yoko’s photograph from the early nineties was included, her face fierce, her eyes like an animal’s. There was also a phone number.
It was twelve hours ahead in Osaka. When it struck 7:30 p.m. on Nantucket, Yoko decided she couldn’t wait any longer and dialed him. She wanted to make sure she nabbed him before he had his first lesson of the day.
It nearly brought Yoko to tears to hear someone greet her in Japanese on the phone. “Good morning,” he said. “How may I help you?”
At first, Yoko couldn’t speak. How was it possible that this was the man who’d coached her from her fledgling tennis years, all the way to her first Wimbledon? How was it possible that she’d abandoned him? He’d been a sort of father figure to her.
“Hello,” she said finally. “It’s Yoko.”
With that, her old coach burst with excitement. “Yoko! You don’t know how many years I’ve longed to hear from you. Where are you now? Are you still living in America?”
Yoko closed her eyes. She was overwhelmed with generosity and what felt like love for this older man.
She told him where she was and what she’d been up to, that she had a son and a house on Nantucket Island.
He told her about his recent successes in the coaching world, but “I never had another player like you, Yoko! You were one of a kind.”
But he wasn’t finished. “You are still celebrated all over Osaka. I see your photograph a few times a day. You brought great joy and pride to our city.”
Yoko’s throat felt thick with sorrow. She didn’t know what to say.
“When will you be back in Japan?” her old coach asked. “We must get together and eat! Oh, but I must warn you. I’m a very old man these days.”
“I’m old, too,” Yoko said.
“Not as old as me,” her coach said.
Before she got off the phone, Yoko apologized for leaving her coach behind and for going to the United States to train.
Her old coach laughed. “You knew just as well as I that I couldn’t help you anymore,” he said.
“We’d reached our limits together. You had to run off and see what you could do elsewhere.
It was the smart thing! Your parents knew it, too. ”
Yoko stretched herself out on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, listening to the winds howl against this overwhelming house.
She’d spent every minute of her time in the United States feeling frightened and tired and meek.
But her old coach—and her friends in Osaka—didn’t think of her like that.
What if she went back? Would she see herself the way they saw her?
Could she cancel out all this darkness and find herself again?