“Does he play tennis?” Yoko asked.
Coach Reynolds laughed. “I wish. I tried to get him to. But he was never so focused on physical games. His were mental games. He’s really an intelligent guy, far more so than I am. I think he gets that from his mother’s side.”
Yoko was surprised at Coach Reynolds’s insistence that he wasn’t as smart as his own son. That kind of behavior wouldn’t have flown in Japan. Elders were respected above all.
Before Thanksgiving dinner, Yoko changed into a dark brown dress and styled her hair in a sleek updo. It felt nice to wear something that wasn’t a tennis skirt and a pair of sports shoes. It occurred to her that she should bring something to share at Thanksgiving; wasn’t that part of the fun? But when she drove to the store, she realized it was locked up for the holiday. At the gas station, she bought a terrible bottle of wine that she hoped wouldn’t embarrass her too much.
When she appeared on the back porch of the main house with a bottle of wine, snow swept around her and stuck in her hair. Kathy hurried to open the back door and welcome her into the warmth. Everything smelled of roasted meat, roasted potatoes, and simmering gravy. They were different from the flavors Yoko was accustomed to back in Osaka. Since her arrival, she’d eaten her share of American food but had found its heaviness made her ill. Coach had told her, “Cook whatever youwant in the kitchen. I don’t want you to miss any days of practice because you can’t handle American food.” She’d been grateful he didn’t want her to assimilate that much. Food was essential to her way of life and identity. Of course, it was often difficult to get the ingredients she wanted to make traditional Japanese food. She did what she could with what she could find.
Kathy graciously accepted the bottle of wine and smiled, showing a little lipstick on her teeth. Yoko was stricken. She wanted to tell the kind woman about the stain, but didn’t want to embarrass her. She followed her to the kitchen, where Kathy poured her a glass of much more expensive and better wine and introduced her to her sisters and friends. The roar in Yoko’s ears grew and grew. She practiced it in her head in English: There is lipstick there. On your mouth.Lips? No, teeth. Ugh! Her English was still so awful!
Right when Yoko thought she was going insane, a twenty-something man who looked remarkably like a younger version of Coach entered the kitchen, grabbed a glass of wine, and kissed Kathy on the cheek. He wore a dark linen shirt and slacks, and his eyes were animated and intelligent. “Mom,” he said, whispering into her ear, “lipstick. Teeth.” He kissed her again as Kathy giggled and wiped it off. It was clear that her son could do no wrong.
If Yoko wasn’t mistaken, she was pretty sure most of Kathy’s friends and sisters breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn’t known how to tell Kathy about the lipstick either.
“Wait! Kendall!” Kathy called, right before Kendall disappeared into the living room to watch football with Coach and the rest of the men. “I want you to meet Yoko. Finally!”
Kendall spun on his heel and let his eyes drift to Yoko. Yoko’s heart thudded. For some reason, she felt cornered, like a rabbit facing off with a hunter. She swallowed another bit of wine and tried to smile at him. She remembered reading once that manyAmerican men want to date Japanese women. Did Japanese women want to date American men? She searched her heart for guidance, then cursed it. The last thing she wanted was to date Coach’s son. It would make everything messy and potentially hurt her game. And her game was her life.
Plus, there was Akira to consider—and the fact that she’d promised herself she’d never fall in love with anyone ever again.
Kendall stuck out his hand. “You’re in the guesthouse? The tennis champ?”
Yoko shook his hand and nodded.
“My parents sort of adopted you, didn’t they?” Kendall said with a wink. “Don’t hurt them, all right?”
Yoko promised she wouldn’t, then watched as he breezed out of the kitchen, crunching on a cracker as he went.
“That boy,” Kathy’s sister said, shaking her head. “He’s always up to something, isn’t he?”
“He’s going to be something,” Kathy said under her breath. “We don’t know what. But I think the world should prepare itself.”
Although Yoko couldn’t fully understand what the women said, she guessed what they meant. Kendall was a live wire who didn’t take no for an answer. He moved through the universe with gravitas, with drive, with charm. He didn’t need a tennis court to tell him how to move and strike. He attacked when he saw fit. He took what he wanted. Yoko wondered what kind of woman Kendall dated and whether she was just as charming and alive as he was.
She wondered what Akira would think of someone like Kendall and decided he would see him as a traditional American man: brash, arrogant. Unsophisticated.
Yoko found that she strangely liked that Akira wouldn’t like Kendall. She found that she wanted to live beyond the bounds of what Akira thought, liked, and dreamed for.
At dinner, Yoko overate hearty American food and, in fact, made herself sick. It was hard to say what it was: the pumpkin pie? The sweet potatoes, mixed with sugar and pecans? The sweets she ate after dinner, listening intently as Kendall chatted to one of his uncles about his dreams for after he got his master’s degree?
Yoko gleaned that Kendall was a graduate student at Princeton University, which, she knew, was a prestigious university where “winners” went. She wondered what Kendall’s life was like there, if he had a girlfriend or roommates, if he had big, intellectual arguments with his professors, if he had a reputation for being a rich brat.
When Kendall left that evening to go to a house party on the other side of the island, he said goodbye to Yoko with a wink and a wave. Yoko’s heart throbbed with wonder. But the next morning, back on the tennis court with Coach, she sweated out her excitement for his son. Kendall was already headed back to Princeton. He’d probably already forgotten about her.
The following three weeks between Thanksgiving and the start of Kendall’s Christmas break were some of the murkiest and most difficult of Yoko’s life. She was overwhelmed by Coach’s teaching style and frequently fell asleep at 8 p.m., just before her 4:30 wake-up call. She was thinner than she’d been since she was a teenager, and she knew she needed to eat more to sustain herself.
But worst of all, on December 16th, she received a letter from Japan. It was from Akira.
Still sweating from a long day of training, Yoko sat at the kitchen table of the pool house and opened the letter with shaking hands. The only people she’d spoken to from Japan were her parents, and even then, they had a phone call maybe once a month, because it was costly and the time difference was staggering. Yoko wondered who’d given Akira her address.It couldn’t have been her mother; her mother didn’t want Yoko to be in love with Akira. Could it have been her father? Her heart pounded as she marveled at how little she knew about her dad. Did her dad understand how lonely she was? Did he hope that someone like Akira could bring her back home, back to her original coach, back to Japan?
The letter read:
Dear Yoko,
It’s hard to fathom how far this letter must travel to reach you. I’ve been to America for brief business trips, to scout for documentaries, to eat burgers in Midtown Manhattan—but I’ve never spent as much time as you have. Tell me. How is the island? How is your new coach? The rumor is that he’ll be the one to push you to the glory that awaits you. I believe it’s true.
If you were here, I would tell you the following in person. But because you aren’t, I want to pass it along to you personally and with a heartfelt message. The woman you met last July, Himari, has agreed to marry me. Our wedding is this upcoming summer in Osaka. It would mean the world to me if you’d come and be our guest. You are one of my favorite people in the world. I know we have a bit of a romantic history; we were children in love. But I think back on that time as an era of learning, of exploring my heart and the dimensions it could fathom. I can only thank you for teaching me that.
