Secrets of the Apple Read online

  Ryoki turned a corner into the kitchen and missed the end of the threat. As Doug handed him his water, a man came toward him who looked so much like Brian that he could only be John Porter, Kate’s father. They shook hands firmly, Ryoki bowing respectfully, wishing to make a good impression. “My goodness. I haven’t seen you since you were just a little bit,” John said. “But Brian’s kept me up-to-date.”

  Ryoki felt John’s hand warming his own chilly fingers.

  “I hope Kate hasn’t abandoned you already—” John said, but Kate breezed in before he could finish his thought.

  “I saw him go off with Doug.” She tapped Ryoki once, one finger lightly on the elbow. “Follow me and I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

  “Excuse me,” he said smiling, bowing again as he turned to leave the room.

  “You don’t need to bow to them, only to me,” Kate said as he took his bag from her hands.

  “Your family seems to have two distinct looks,” Ryoki said as he followed Kate up the stairs.

  “The blonds are Nancy’s kids, two boys and two girls. My mom died eight years ago and my dad remarried.” She opened the door to a large bedroom painted pale green, furnished entirely in gleaming red mahogany and ivory brocade. As he set down his bag, he noticed three smudgy charcoal drawings of women reading, grouped with the same number of bold fashion illustrations painted in crisp black. He leaned forward for a closer look at the illustrations. Too strong to be watercolor, brush and ink maybe.

  “There are some good titles in the bookcase,” Kate said, gesturing around the room. “The bathroom is down the hall, second door on the left, towels in the linen cupboard behind the bathroom door.” She opened the closet, revealing an inordinate amount of red, and shoved everything on hangers to one side to give him space.

  “Is this your room, by chance?” he asked.

  “I moved back home during my last semester of grad school,” she said, pulling some empty hangers to the middle before craning around. “How could you tell?”

  Ryoki didn’t answer, his attention riveted on a glossy silk kimono hanging on the far wall, its arms flung straight out, soft spring colors, the shortened sleeves of the married woman, the heron pattern reaching high from the hem indicating a young wife, the silk threads of his mother’s family crest gleaming faintly in the light.

  “If you’re uncomfortable in my room, Charlotte and I could easily switch with you. It’s no trouble,” she said, sounding uneasy.

  “Your kimono, where did it come from?”

  She opened her mouth as if to expel a quiet “Ahh,” but made no sound as she walked over to the kimono, checking her hand for smudges before running it over the smooth silk.

  “The summer after my family moved back from Brazil, I worked for your parents in San Francisco.” Ryoki didn’t know if he’d ever been told this, but he tried to look unsurprised. “Your mother sent it to me after she went home. She said she was too old for it and intended to obligate me to write her, said if I didn’t practice my kanji I’d lose it, such as it is.” She began tracing the pattern with her finger. “I used to store it folded flat in tissue, but I wanted to enjoy it, so when I redid my room I hung it on the wall. It reminds me of your mother.”

  Ryoki wanted to ask why a Japanese kimono reminded her of his American mother, but instead he said, “Did you write to her then?”

  “Every week ever since.”

  He began to wonder if Kate’s surprise at his arrival had all been an act, a set-up between scheming women. “She didn’t tell you I was coming to San Francisco?”

  “Last time she mentioned you, you were in London. Mostly she writes about looking after your father or managing the household, whatever she’s up to at that moment.” She walked over to the bookcase and pulled out the first of three large blue binders, all with The Politics of Running a Japanese House printed in black Magic Marker down the spine. “These are her letters. She has a real gift for words.” She placed the binder on the little table by the overstuffed armchair and reading lamp, apparently assuming he’d be curious to read his mother’s domestic ramblings. He smiled politely, but looked back at the kimono.

  “Have you ever worn it?” he asked.

  “Once, to a costume ball in college. I didn’t really do it justice, what with not being Asian.” She seemed much more open and friendly than in the office, as though all the bubbly sister-talk hadn’t quite worn off.

  “Did you white your face and wear a wig?”

  She shook her head. “No, I looked like myself in a costume. I hadn’t realized kimono were so narrow. I couldn’t take a normal step. It was fun to wear, though.” She went back to the bookcase and pulled out a photo album, setting it on the high bed and quickly flipping through the pages. “I think I sent your mom a picture—here.” She stopped to show a photo of herself wearing the kimono, two lacquered chopsticks pushed through her bun and her lips painted an intense shade of red. She did indeed look like herself, but with a difference he couldn’t quite place, something about the expression that made her look impossibly young, naïve even. There was a glare from the overhead light and he pulled the photo from its sleeve to get a better look. Another photo fell out from behind it, another shot of her in the kimono, smiling at the camera, but joined by a handsome blond pirate who stared at her wide-eyed, awed and entranced.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My husband, before he became my husband.”

  Ryoki stared.

  “Was, past tense, divorced a little over a year now.” She replaced the photos and returned the album to the bookcase, her open mood drawing to a close. “I think everybody’s going to bed. Don’t worry about getting up early. Sleep in as long as you like.” She left the room, clicking the door shut behind her.

  Ryoki looked at his suitcase and realized he hadn’t seen his computer or his phone since entering the house. Probably hidden by Kate or one of her accomplices.

  Hardly knowing how to act in a gadgetless room, he sat on the edge of the high rice-carved four-poster, remembering the top of the mattress hit Kate at the waist, and wondered what had possessed her to buy a bed that required stairs.

  In his opinion the room contained entirely too much furniture, yet as he ran his hand over the supple ivory silk comforter, he had a sense of sitting in an abundant living greenhouse surrounded by fertile dark earth and blossoming ivory orchids, even though there wasn’t a single flowering thing in the room.

  His gaze drifted to Kate’s large double-stacked bookcase. How long since he’d taken the time to read for pleasure? Last vacation? The vacation before? Really he shouldn’t get started. Hands in his pockets, he sauntered over and scanned the spines. The books were stacked two-deep, and first one hand came out of his pocket, then the other as he began to mine the contents, pulling out a handful from the front layer to read the titles behind. One by one he ran his fingers over the covers, taking his time, ferreting out the perfect book to take to bed. Hard to choose. Can’t spill past the weekend.

  She appeared to read widely, perhaps rather snobbishly, heavy on canonical titles he was too tired to face. He came across a hardcover Gone with the Wind riddled with sticky notes and found the margins intricately tattooed with her spidery handwriting. He laid it on the nightstand and kept reading titles until he came across The Screwtape Letters in the back layer.

  Two hours after going to bed he set the book back on the night table and turned out the lamp. But instead of falling asleep, he lay in the dark luxuriating in Kate’s warm, comfortable bed, listening to the lively stillness of a sleeping family. A shaft of moonlight had fallen across his mother’s kimono hanging among the shadows, a shimmering revenant. His last vivid memory of that particular kimono was a Children’s Day when his mother had put it on because he said he liked it “specially.” By that evening he’d sneaked too many sweets and his mother found him hiding in the corner of his room holding his stomach, afraid to tell and afraid to keep quiet. Instead of scolding him, she gathered him i
n her arms and held him while she told him one of her stories, something about a valiant knight who had to overcome a snarling dragon he had once raised as a pet, in order to storm the castle and win the fair maiden. Lulled by the cadence of her voice, he traced the birds and flowers on her kimono, feeling the smooth silk under his fingertips and breathing in her warm, sweet smell, the bellyache gradually lessening until he fell asleep, content. Ryoki didn’t remember exactly when this happened, but he must have been very young, before he learned to be ashamed of his mother.

  The next morning dawned gray and chilly, but he awoke with the lazy slowness of a childhood summer, his eyes teased open by the smell of bacon and baking things. He’d slept the full night without a single nightmare, and he wanted to laugh out of sheer joy and gratitude. In no great hurry to get up, he burrowed deeper under the covers and idly wondered if Kate would sell him her magic bed with all its pillows and how long it would take to ship it to Brazil. Then the door clicked open and two little brown-haired boys, about five and six, streaked into the room, slammed the door shut, and crawled commando-style up onto the end of his bed, catching a lamp cord on a plastic sword and knocking over books with an AK-47 squirt gun. Whispering loud enough to be heard down the block, the boys scrambled over the footboard and leaped onto Ryoki’s feet, putting their fingers to their lips to signal quiet.

  “We’re hiding from Aunt Kate,” the older boy said. “She says not to bother you, but we gotta know. Are you a ninja with a sword?” They both looked at him, their eyes shining, worshipful and earnest. Ryoki bit his lip to swallow a laugh. He had a whole collection of swords, mostly on loan to a museum in London.

  “What do you think?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked.

  “Attack!”

  They leaped at Ryoki, who caught them each around the waist, flipped them over and tickled them until they could hardly breathe for laughing. Nobody heard the door open.

  “Boys, what did I tell you about bothering this gentleman?” Kate stood in the doorway, hands on hips, head tilted to one side.

  “‘Gentleman’?” the younger boy said. The boys looked at each other, then at Ryoki who winked. “Nah, he’s a real live ninja guy,” the older boy told her, “plus, he’s wearing pajamas.”

  “Out.”

  “Awww pleeeaasse, just a few more minutes—”

  “One—two—”

  “You’re getting on our nerds,” the younger boy muttered as they both slid off the bed and walked out the room, stoop-shouldered and crestfallen. Ryoki was about to plead their case, but heard them pounding full-speed down the hall, yelling, “Sniper on the roof!”

  “We have a large plastic arsenal,” Kate said apologetically, her hand on the door jamb as she turned to go.

  “Wait,” he said, immediately startled by the pure honesty in his own voice. “I mean—” He cast around for some reason to make her stay and lit on her scribbled copy of Gone with the Wind. “I wanted to ask you about this,” he said, picking it up and tossing it to her. She caught the book awkwardly in both hands, like one accustomed to missing.

  “Master’s thesis,” she said.

  Ryoki glanced at her bookcase. “Not Shakespeare?”

  “This is American mythology. I’m interested in the way popular culture simplifies history and this is full of romanticized Southerners and evil Yankees,” she said, flipping the pages. “But it was written just a few years after American women got the vote and I believe it reveals more about women in the 1920s than it does about the Antebellum South.”

  “What was your conclusion?”

  “Melanie needs Scarlet, but Scarlet doesn’t understand how deeply she needs Melanie. We still don’t really understand that dynamic, although I used a lot of three syllable words to make it sound like I did.” She smiled to herself as she laid the book on the dresser and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  Something about that private little smile whispered across his skin and tickled down his spine, exploding a series of roman candles in the base of his stomach. It happened sometimes when they were alone in the office, triggered by a sudden fall of her hair across one shoulder or the sight of her fingers unconsciously twirling a pen. Simple attraction, male and female, that was all.

  He tried the usual remedy. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out, and thinking about the strange chemistry between men and women, pheromones and hormones, reminding himself it was all molecules, just science, easily explicable. An enlightened man knew better than to be taken in by the absurd stuff of romance novels.

  However, this morning’s emotional chemistry lesson, so effective in the office, seemed to lose its potency in Kate’s bedroom, which apparently amplified the overwhelming mystery of rushing blood and pounding heart. As a last resort he focused on Apple, his beautiful ex. There. Killed his pulse stone dead.

  Everybody’s good for something.

  Twenty minutes later he was coming down the stairs for breakfast, when the doorbell rang twice in a row, followed by a thumping sound outside, like something heavy falling. He swung open the door, intending to jump out and startle whatever giggling niece or nephew he imagined was out there. Instead he found a middle-aged woman with hair the color of wheat rinsed in pink lemonade, wearing a black polyester cocktail dress with stretch wrinkles across the middle.

  “Hi, I’m Susan Calvert, from down the street. My finger just slipped on that bell when I dropped my purse. Sorry about that.” She was nervously brushing invisible dirt from her purse and looking at Ryoki who smiled politely, his eyes drawn to the erratic motion of her hands.

  “I understand all the girls are here today and my mother passed two days ago and—” She put a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, almost concealing the white tissue protecting the delicate fabric from her mascara.

  “Mrs. Calvert?” Kate said, coming down the hall. Ryoki saw his chance and attempted to bow out, but Mrs. Calvert snagged hold of his arm to be led inside and offered a chair.

  “Come in, and I’ll call the other girls,” Kate said, leaving Ryoki and his charge in the formal living room to shift uncomfortably on the elegant but hard-hearted furniture.

  Silence slapped the oxygen the minute Kate left and Ryoki was about to make a daft comment on the fine crystal chandelier, when Mrs. Calvert stepped into the breach.

  “You must be Kate’s boyfriend. I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, plucking at her handkerchief, carefully so as not to shred the tissue.

  He opened his mouth to clarify, but she didn’t give him the chance.

  “My mother’s funeral is on Monday. I’ve been wondering and wondering what to do about the music. Then I saw all the cars and remembered the Porter girls were all home for a few days. They’ve sung together for lots of things, even their own mother’s funeral. Beautiful family, such lovely people.” Her voice broke and she paused to dab at her eyes.

  “I sure miss Mary. That’s Kate’s mother, but of course you know that,” she said, tapping her forehead. “They gave her quite a send-off when she died. Must have been a whole shop of flowers and people lining up at the funeral home and filing by the casket for three solid hours the night before, then that big old church full clear to the back for the funeral. Those girls singing and playing…You’d have thought she was somebody important instead a just a housewife. But she seemed to have that effect, which is funny, because she wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly. In fact, she once told me that what she really wanted was an electric fence so all she’d have to do is go out in the morning and pick up the bodies. But people sure did line up to pay their respects when she died. She just had that effect.”

  Ryoki managed to make a few more noncommittal noises before she put her hand back on his arm and leaned toward him. “I want to get your opinion on something. I want to sue that nursing home for neglecting my mother.” Her eyes refilled with tears. “There was this woman that used to steal my mother’s pudding two, three times a week, and none of the st
aff ever said a thing to her. Then this woman up and trips during dinner and flips her dress clear over her head. Naturally my mother just laughed and her lower teeth fell out, that’s when the meatball slid wrong and cut off her air. If they hadn’t all rushed off to help that other lady, my mother might still be alive. Besides that, somebody should have helped her get some better-fitting teeth. And besides all that, if they’d stopped the other lady from taking my mother’s pudding, she wouldn’t have laughed and she’d still be alive today. What do you think of that? My husband says no.”

  The Porter sisters began trooping in, followed by their father, who entered holding a hand out to Mrs. Calvert. Ryoki saw his chance and bolted.

  An hour later when he heard Mrs. Calvert leave, Ryoki brought his book into the family room, though he hoped to scare up a game of chess. Unfortunately the board was already occupied by two brothers-in-law whose names he couldn’t remember. Instead he sat opposite Doug who was reading The Art of War, and Nancy’s daughter Phoebe who sat absorbed in a romance novel.

  “You reading Screwtape?” Doug asked. Ryoki nodded, thumbing through for his place. “I like Lewis,” Doug added. “Studied him in college. I guess he had this borrowed mother who made him chop wood and do household chores. My professor used to pull his tie and say, ‘One of the great minds of the twentieth century should not have been wasting his time chopping wood.’ I wish my wife had taken that class.”

  Phoebe looked up at Doug and narrowed her eyes. “Corinne’ll be here in a minute to make you help with the kitchen,” she said, clearly annoyed by his chatter.

  “So, Pheebes, what are you reading?” Doug asked.

  “I’m on vacation,” she said.

  “Pay money for that book, did you? They all have the same plot,” Doug said.

  “It costs less than a movie ticket and it lasts longer,” Phoebe said without looking up.

  Children began to filter in from outside, their noses pink from the March chill. They appeared to be in the middle of some peculiar game Ryoki couldn’t understand. They’d formed a large wobbly circle and each began pantomiming a random activity, except the one who was “it,” called “Truth” in the game, who went from player to player trying to get their attention without touching or speaking above a whisper. He watched a curly pigtailed girl go around the group making faces and silently jumping around. Finally she succeeded in catching little Ben, making him snort a laugh by crossing her eyes and sticking her fingers up her nose. The kids erupted in laughter, chanting, “Truth Truth Truth” as Ben took his place as the new “Truth” and began moving from player to player.