Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Sally
The first time that Rick Buchanan brought his Japanese wife back to Chestnut Hill to meet his family, it had caused a ripple so discreet that it was hardly noticeable at first. Sally, Rick, and Judy Harrison (née Thompson) had grown up on the same street.
They had gone to the same high school and even college.
After graduation, Sally went on to get a job in Center City.
Judy moved to New York and returned to Philadelphia several years later when she became pregnant.
Only Rick actually left. He went to Washington, joined the diplomatic service, and never returned, not even to the house he had bought on Germantown Avenue. He never lived in Chestnut Hill again.
A fine bond of memories and history remained among the three of them, though the thread had begun to fray over the years.
It started when Judy met her husband, Jason Harrison, who came from old Philadelphia money and grew up on the Main Line, in Villanova.
His parents had a house with a Louis XIV room and chandeliers shipped in from Venice.
Their wedding reception was at The Plaza in New York, and Judy’s junior executive position at Vera Wang meant she got her wedding and bridesmaids’ gowns at a steal.
Sally had hated her dress, it ballooned out from her rib cage and did nothing for her figure.
The bridesmaids who were taller than the bride were forced to wear flat shoes.
After the wedding, they moved back to Philadelphia and bought a brownstone in Society Hill.
Jason continued to climb the ladder at Goldman Sachs, and he commuted up to New York and kept a pied-à-terre in midtown.
The first Thanksgiving after Judy and Jason’s wedding Rick returned from his first assignment in Japan to introduce Yuriko, a petite, dark-haired, grave-faced Japanese woman, to his family.
They had been married in Japan, and only her family had attended the ceremony.
Sally didn’t know what had happened between Rick and his parents, or what had stopped them from going to the wedding—it surely wasn’t the cost. But Rick never explained, and she never asked.
Sally invited the newlyweds for dinner during their stay, and she watched Yuriko arrive from her living room window.
She didn’t know what she was expecting to see.
Yes, Yuriko’s skin was porcelain white, she had large eyes, long, flat dark lashes, and a tiny frame, but she wasn’t the woman Sally had expected to walk alongside Rick.
Sally didn’t know who she was expecting to walk through the door that day, but the woman she met was quiet, serious, and unlike anyone she had ever met before.
She also stood beside Rick with a self-assurance that was unshaken. This was the man she belonged with.
Judy joined Sally at the window and gasped, “Oh my god, she’s like a little doll. How cute.”
She rushed past Sally to greet Yuriko outside.
“You are just beautiful, Yooo-ree-ko. Am I saying it right?” Judy looked up to Rick for assurance.
“Yu-li-ko. It’s lovely to meet you, Sally,” she replied in perfect English.
“Oh my, your English is just wonderful. I’m Judy, by the way, not Sally.” She corrected her loudly and slowed her words.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Yuriko replied, bowing her head.
“Yu-li-ko, this is our host today, our Sal.” Judy threw her arm around Sally and felt her shoulders tense.
Sally had so many questions for Rick. How had they met?
How did they communicate? Had Yuriko always wanted to marry an American?
Had Yuriko worn a kimono at the wedding?
What did her family think? And most of all, why hadn’t it been her?
But she could never ask the last question.
Instead, she watched Yuriko’s polite, stiff smile and barely detectable nod, every time Judy pawed her and called her adorable.
At the dining table, Yuriko sat with her hands neatly in her lap, her body tucked into a small tidy space.
Her voice was barely audible, so Sally had to lean closer to her to hear what she said.
She only spoke when she was addressed and never tried to dominate the conversation.
When she laughed, she covered her mouth with a pressed ivory handkerchief.
Sally assumed Yuriko’s teeth were crooked or discolored, but when she finally caught a glimpse as she placed a small piece of beef Wellington into her mouth she noticed they were little, neat, and white.
Sally felt cumbersome and too big beside her.
Her wrists were almost double the size of Yuriko’s.
Her hair was unruly with curls while Yuriko had a glossy sheen on her poker-straight hair that reflected the light of the room.
After they left, Sally’s husband, Terry, said, “She’s built like a child, I don’t know.
Don’t you think it’s a bit weird? I mean, think of them together in bed?
She barely has breasts.” Sally was annoyed that Terry had been thinking of Yuriko’s breasts.
In truth, it surprised her too that Rick had chosen her .
He had been the most enigmatic of the three as well as “the most likely to succeed.” Everyone had been a little in love with him.
She had a moment of regret when she learned he had married.
Now she knew who he had chosen—this quiet, petite, bird of a woman who spoke their language as though she were trying an unfamiliar food for the first time, with caution.
Did Yuriko ever challenge him? she wondered.
But Sally didn’t know if she would have been able to challenge Rick either.
The day after the dinner, Rick and Sally walked over the sodden grounds of the Wissahickon. A wisp of frost in the air filled her nostrils.
“Can I ask you something that you might find a little blunt?” she asked Rick.
“Shoot,” he replied, a passive smile on his lips that gave nothing away.
“Do you guys ever fight?”
“Yuriko and I?”
Sally nodded.
“Yeah we do, but not a lot. Sometimes in Japanese, actually. I’m trying to learn the language, the culture. She is trying to understand my ways too. We are from two very different worlds, but we find our way.”
“It all sounds very romantic. A love without borders, something like that. I only ask because life can be tricky—and well…like I’m learning, marriage and friendships, and family, require a whole bunch of complicated, difficult conversations. You know?”
“I think I know what you’re trying to say.
But you think my life isn’t real? It’s not all romance and love against the odds, you know?
Do you think the silent judgment I get from my parents when I bring my wife home isn’t something Yuriko and I discuss openly when we’re alone?
” he said heatedly. “You think my dad, whose father fought in the Pacific, isn’t full of judgment about me marrying a Japanese woman?
Everyone has a view on whether we can make it work or not.
It’s not the same as if you and I had gotten together or any other relationship.
We’re always on the outside, and that’s fine.
But I also hate that she has to experience that.
We talk about real things, Sal, we find a way.
” Speckles of spit flew out of his mouth, and Sally felt her cheeks flush.
“I’m sorry, I had no idea it was so hard, that you have to deal with that…lack of acceptance. We should be past that by now. It’s the nineties.”
“Why would you? You’re married to a nice white kid from Montgomery County.”
Silence fell between them, the crunch of leaves beneath their feet the only noise for some time.
“I didn’t mean to snap. It hasn’t been an easy trip home, that’s all,” he said as they reached the gates that opened up onto the road.
“I get it. Well, maybe I don’t. How is her family?”
“The total opposite. They are so proud that she’s married a diplomat.
It’s such a quiet culture, so restrained, and people are so polite, at least I’ve found it that way.
It’s unexpected given our histories. But you know, there’s always an underlying tension too.
I’m always going to be the foreigner she married.
I will miss cues, and we don’t realize how loud we are as Americans, because Japan is so…
silent. I don’t know if I’m making sense but, there are a lot of things unsaid, you feel it in the air, but for the most part her family are kind, they welcome me. ”
Sally looked at him, his handsome well-formed nose, the plentiful dark hair that fell about his eyes and that he pushed back when he spoke.
She had always thought he looked like JFK Jr. She imagined the children he would have with Yuriko, and without thinking, said, “You’re going to have the most beautiful children. ”
He laughed. “People keep saying this to me. Why is everyone imagining our kids? It’s weird, right? Like just because we’ll have mixed-race kids, I’m suddenly aware of so much more. And aware that I actually haven’t been aware of what other people go through. Other people who don’t look like us.”
“I never thought about it.”
“I know, Sal, me neither. Not until I met Yuriko.”
By the end of Rick and Yuriko’s visit to Chestnut Hill, everyone had heard about Rick’s exotic Japanese wife. The tiny, five-foot, four-inch frame of this woman was discussed by everyone from the blue-rinse crowd at McNally’s Tavern on the Hill to the farmers market down on Mermaid Lane.
Did you hear? Rick Buchanan has married a geisha.
No, no, his Japanese-language exchange student.
I heard she’s pregnant.
Actually, they’re doing it for a green card. She’s really landed on her feet with that one. They must be in some kind of financial trouble.
No matter how many times Sally would set the story straight, fueled by her newly enforced loyalty to Rick and Yuriko’s struggles, the people of Chestnut Hill wanted to believe that Rick Buchanan, the 1983 quarterback, most likely to succeed of his class, had married a geisha.
Some of them, in the deep recesses of the bars at night, once the alcohol had fortified their nerves, suggested she had been a hostess.
But to Sally, Yuriko was a sacred spirit-like figure—she represented adventure and a life far beyond Eden, her small life in Chestnut Hill, and anything she dared consider for herself.