Together, she and Coach Reynolds walked to the press conference, where Yoko would be peppered with questions about the match, about beating Emilia, and about her change of coach and what that had meant for her training. Now that Yoko had been dating Kendall and working for so long with Coach Reynolds, her English was better than ever. (It still wasn’t perfect, but Kendall said it was adorable that way. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.)
After the press conference, Yoko showered, changed into a sleek dark blue dress, and met Kendall and his parents downstairs at the hotel before dinner. There was a celebratory dinner for Yoko, her family, Kendall, Coach Reynolds, and Kathy at a swanky Japanese restaurant not far from the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Her parents had opted to stay at a cheaper hotel. Yoko guessed they wanted a reason to get away from the American Reynolds. But it hurt her to know that they wanted to stay away from her, especially after so many months apart.
Telling her parents that they had hurt her was nothing a Japanese person would ever do.
Kendall was overjoyed to call his girlfriend the Wimbledon Champion. In the cab, he kissed her knuckles and boasted to the cab driver that she was the best player in the world. Yoko’s heart swelled with what she was pretty sure was love for him. How did anyone know what love was supposed to feel like? She reflected on the past six months of falling for him, how, after their first date at Christmas, he’d made a point to come back to Nantucket to take her to parties or out to dinner. He’d asked her to be his girlfriend in February, and she’d said yes. The first time she’d gone to visit him at Princeton, Coach Reynolds had been annoyed and mystified. “You can’t get confused about why you’re here,” he’d said. “You aren’t here for Kendall. You’re here for yourself.” But Yoko hadn’t been able to resist the coach’s handsome and confident son.
Dinner was to be the first meeting between Kendall and her parents. Her parents were already seated at the table as they approached. When they saw them, they got up and bowed low, as was their custom. She’d instructed Kendall and his parents to do the same. She could sense how foolish the Reynolds family felt, bowing in public like this. But she knew it was important to her parents. It was the ultimate sign of respect.
“Mom, Dad, this is Kendall,” she said in Japanese. To Kendall and his parents, she said, “Their English is not very good. I can translate through dinner. We’ll make it work.”
“We have been taking lessons!” her mother said in almost perfect English, interrupting Yoko.
“Yes. It is our pleasure to meet you,” her father said.
Yoko was caught off guard. How was it possible that her parents were nearly better at English than she was? She’d always known they were smart. But now it occurred to her that they’d spent the entire past year at nightly English classes, studying to be included in the life their daughter had chosen for herself. That, or they were bored.
“That’s fantastic,” Coach said, sitting across from them. “I want to gush a little bit about our girl. Yoko killed it out there today. Just like I knew she would.”
He raised his hand, and Yoko gave him a tentative high five. She felt her father’s eyes on her, probably marveling at how “American” his daughter seemed.
Coach went on to say that he’d never had a player like Yoko and that he’d been amazed by her improvement since September.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise that our kids have found each other,” Kathy said tenderly, offering Yoko a smile. “We’ve loved having Yoko in our home. We should have known that Kendall would fall for her, too. It didn’t take long at all.”
Kendall laughed. “She’s been a distraction from grad school. That’s for sure.”
Yoko’s father was fascinated with Kendall’s business career. The Japanese were fixated on their work lives, with many businessmen working upward of fifteen hours a day. Yoko guessed that her father saw himself in Kendall or was trying to see it. Kendall said he planned to be a CEO one day.
“A CEO for what sort of company?” her father asked.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Kendall said. “But I can feel it. I’m bound for that kind of responsibility.”
Yoko’s mother and father exchanged a look that only Yoko could read. They liked Kendall. They wanted him more than they’d ever liked Akira. To them, Akira was an artsy guy who wasn’t “going anywhere” in the world of money and work. Kendall was the American dream: money-focused and eager to prove himself. Yoko felt a spike of resentment that she swallowed along with her food. (The food, it needed to be said, was nothing as good as her mother could make on an ordinary evening back in Japan. Yoko tried to shove that out of her mind as well.)
Since she’d received that letter from Akira, Yoko hadn’t responded and hadn’t heard from him again. She’d let him understand that she didn’t want to go to the wedding and didn’t want to hear from him. A part of her hoped that he understood how painful his new relationship was. Another part hoped that he thought she was “too successful” for little old him. The reality was far more complicated. She wished things could have been different.
If only she didn’t dream about him so often.
She hoped she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life thinking about him.
After dinner, Yoko tried and failed to convince her parents to come out to a bar to celebrate her win. They bowed to her and thanked her for the joy she’d brought to their family. But they said they were tired and needed to rest. The look in Yoko’s mother’s eyes nearly brought Yoko to her knees. She felt a sorrow and a reluctance there, as though her mother’s instinct was to grab Yoko’s elbow and yank her out of this scene. But parents had to know when a situation was “best” for their child’s future. This was definitely best for Yoko’s future. It had to be.
Two days later, Yoko’s parents flew back to Japan. Yoko cried in the bathroom and wouldn’t let Coach, Kathy, or Kendall see how upset she was. The plan was for her to take a few days off in England before she returned to her outrageous training schedule. “We have more to do,” Coach reported to her mere minutes after she’d dried her tears.
The next few days found Yoko and Kendall celebrating their love all over England. They traveled to Bristol, to Brighton, to Whitby, kissing on beaches, eating pub food, and hiding from the reality of Yoko’s training schedule. Up next was the US Open, a tennis championship that Yoko was, of course, already signed up for. Everyone was expectant, wondering if Yoko was the stuffof legends. She’d won Wimbledon. But if you only won one major championship, it could be deemed a fluke.
Yoko’s private hope was that after the next open, she could take Kendall back to Japan and introduce him to her culture, the very best of Japanese food, and a few of her old tennis friends. But when she expressed this desire to Kendall, he said, “I have to get back to school.” He had one year left before he graduated, after which he planned to plunge headfirst into making more money than God. This was how he said it, in a way that made Yoko’s toes curl. She couldn’t imagine speaking about God like that. Kendall also said, “We’re going to have an incredible quality of life, Yoko. We will never want for anything.” And then, “If it isn’t clear, I see a future with you. I’ve never seen a future with any woman before.”
Yoko was flattered. But when she pictured a future with Kendall, she hated to admit how empty she felt inside. She saw chic clothing. She saw expensive restaurants and platters of food she didn’t care for. She saw sports cars, American highways, and sleek American sailboats. She saw Akira’s face, broken and tired.
But as Yoko descended back into the tumult of her training schedule, she decided not to think about whether she was happy, whether she truly wanted a future with Kendall, or whether she really wanted to be “American.” She decided to ride the wave.
It was after she won the next championship that she saw the magazine article that broke her heart. She purchased it at the airport magazine shop and allowed herself to dig in, standing up as the rest of the first-class passengers boarded the plane back to Boston. In the article, Akira and Himari were featured in their traditional Japanese wedding outfits. They stood stoically and beautifully before a sweeping stretch of Japanese mountains. The headline called them a power couple, a creative team bound to change the world.
When Yoko got on the plane and took Kendall’s hand, he asked her why she was crying.
“I’m just so happy,” she said, squeezing his fingers hard. The lie felt like poison in her mouth.
