Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
That night for dinner, Lily appeared on Yoko Reynolds’s front stoop with an expensive bottle of wine and fear like a rock in her stomach.
Yoko opened the door almost immediately after she rang the bell, which made Lily think that Yoko had been waiting for her in the foyer, watching for her car out the window of this expansive, overwhelming mansion.
Compared to the house and the furnishings and the mighty windows, Yoko looked so small, her feet tiny in her house slippers, her long hair like ink down her back.
She bowed hello to Lily, and Lily bowed back, eager to uphold Yoko’s customs. She wished she knew more Japanese than “hello” and “thank you.”
“Welcome,” Yoko said.
Lily thanked her. But there wasn’t really anything else to say after that.
Yoko led Lily to the glowing kitchen, where she’d set a tiny table with natural wine and light Japanese snacks of rice crackers, wasabi peanuts, and edamame.
As she hadn’t eaten anything since the scone that morning, Lily was starving.
She reminded herself not to eat too much and not to crunch her snacks either.
She could always eat leftover pizza back at her mom’s place.
“Thank you for having me over,” Lily said again, feeling foolish as she sat across from Yoko and raised her glass of wine. “I’ve wanted to get to know you for a long time now.” Long time probably sounded foolish to Yoko, especially when Lily and Liam had only dated for a little more than a year.
Yoko smiled nervously at her. Lily wondered if the older woman was forcing herself to strengthen her bonds with her future daughter-in-law.
That, or she’d read the gossip magazine and learned that Liam had a sort of fixation in the form of Bex out in Los Angeles.
Maybe she wanted to see how Lily felt about it?
Perhaps she wanted to rub salt into Lily’s wounds?
“How was California?” Yoko asked.
“It was a dream,” Lily said. It was only partly a lie.
“I wanted to go out to visit him, but time got away from me,” Yoko said. “Kendall was in and out, always in Miami or coming back again. I never knew when to expect him. I was worried I’d miss him.”
“More business trips?”
“Always, there are business trips,” Yoko said, her eyes downturned.
Lily’s heart went out to the woman, whose face seemed to echo Mick’s estrangement and loneliness.
She cursed herself for not visiting Yoko more often when she’d been on the island.
The winter would be long, so she’d spend as much time as she could here.
Liam would like his mother and fiancée to bond.
Maybe they could have game nights or watch movies.
Lily reminded herself to stay in the conversation and remain present. “Have you given any more thought to going to Miami with Kendall?”
Yoko used her chopsticks to put a piece of raw fish on her tongue. Lily did the same, noticing how inexpertly she handled the sticks compared to Yoko. When Liam ate with chopsticks, it was always apparent that he’d learned to eat with sticks first, forks second.
When Yoko didn’t answer right away, Lily said, “I guess Miami would be warmer than here. Sunnier.”
Yoko clicked the ends of her chopsticks together thoughtfully and raised her eyebrow. “I have lived on this property here on Nantucket since the autumn of 1995. Can you believe it?”
Lily leaned back in her chair, trying to fathom the year 1995. It was a full seven years before her birth.
“As you know, I moved here to train with Kendall’s father,” Yoko said.
“Coach lived here in the big house with his wife, Kathy. I lived out there.” She nodded toward the pool house.
“It was the biggest place I’d ever seen.
Empty and strange. In Japan, we don’t have very much space, and I found myself unable to fill it very well.
But I threw myself into training. Hours and hours a day.
Running. Weightlifting. Hitting tennis ball after tennis ball.
A tennis court is attached to the house, if you can believe it. ”
Lily could, if only because she hadn’t yet fathomed the limits of this place. “Were you homesick?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
Yoko gave her an eagle-eyed stare that almost stopped Lily in her tracks. But a moment later, she nodded. “I was the loneliest I’ve ever been,” she whispered. “But that Thanksgiving, I met Kendall, and I let myself fall in love with him.”
“You let yourself?” Lily said. It was an interesting way of putting it. She wanted Yoko to elaborate.
“He showed me a world I’d never seen before.
” Yoko picked up another piece of raw fish with her chopsticks.
“He took me to wonderful American parties and introduced me to all his wealthy American friends. He talked about how great his life was going to be, and then he started including me in that story. How great our future was going to be! How wealthy! His confidence fed my own. I found myself winning after that. Whereas before I had been a flailing rising star, I was suddenly launched into the spotlight, on the cover of major sports magazines, and celebrated around the world. I won championship after championship. According to Kendall and me, nothing could get in our way.”
Lily had never heard Yoko talk about her own career like this. But there was something so ominous about how she said it, as though she were talking about herself and Kendall as villains of a story she’d lost control of. Lily had to fight her desire to get up and hug her future mother-in-law.
For a little while, Yoko was quiet, her eyes to the dark water outside. The day Lily had tried on wedding dresses now felt like many years ago, rather than a little more than a month. Winter was upon them, urgent and foreboding.
“Do you and Kendall talk about that time in your lives?” Lily asked tentatively.
“We haven’t talked about the past in a long time,” Yoko breathed.
Lily wondered whether it was too painful to bring up, or whether Kendall was no longer interested in the story that had brought them here. More than that, she wondered what kept Kendall in Miami for such long stretches at a time—and if Yoko and Kendall were still in love with one another.
She had a hunch that Yoko was trying to impart wisdom to Lily. Maybe it was wisdom about marriage. Perhaps it was wisdom about the choices we make and the paths we take.
Before Lily could push it further, Yoko sealed their conversation with a final comment.
“I’ve won and lost throughout my entire life,” she said.
“I’ve been at the top of championship podiums. I’ve held heavy trophies.
I’ve also lost my fair share of games. Through it all, I’ve realized that loneliness doesn’t come from winning and losing.
It comes from feeling like we’re living our lives on our own.
At the end of the day, my rooms are filled with my trophies, but there’s no one here to share those memories with. ”
Lily’s voice shook as she said, “I’m here, Yoko. You can share your memories with me.”
But Yoko was lost in thought, dropping back through time, her eyes glassy.