Zoe unlocked the front door to the Victorian stick-style home in Noe Valley where she grew up. “Here we are.” She held the door open for her mother to enter, but Freddy barged in first, already scoping out the joint.
It was another hot day, so the air felt stifling and heavy inside despite the fact that Zoe had shut all the curtains to keep the sun from beating in.
“It’s nice to be home,” her mother said, shuffling inside. “Thank you very much for the ride, Levi.”
“No problem,” he said. “It was nice to meet you.”
“You too.” She gave him a little head bob, like a mini bow. It was a habit she’d never managed to fully break since leaving Japan.
Taking off her shoes, she put on a pair of slippers before heading into the living room. Zoe knew her mother often got cold feet, but she also suspected that it was another habit that had carried over, despite the fact that they had hardwood floors, not tatami mats.
Levi waited until she was out of earshot before whispering in Zoe’s ear. “I think your mom hates me.”
Zoe snorted, not sure why he even cared what her mother thought of him. He certainly tried hard enough to change her mind on the drive home with the small talk and the cheesy compliments like “I can see where your daughter gets her good looks.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” she told him. “She’s distant with everyone at first. My mom is very private and keeps to herself. She’s probably just embarrassed that a complete stranger is driving her home from the hospital.”
Levi handed her the bag of belongings her mother brought home from the hospital. Freddy gave it a curious sniff before heading into the living room after her mother.
“I won’t be long,” she told Levi, heading up the stairs to the second-floor bedrooms. “Or I can take a taxi home if you have somewhere else to be.”
“Somewhere better to be than here with you? Impossible.” He smiled at her from the bottom of the stairs.
“Then I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time.” He waved her on. “I’ll just be snooping around your childhood home.”
She threw him a look. “Then I’ll only be a second.”
Zoe quickly ran through the house, checking to make sure her mom had everything she needed, but she’d done most of the preparations the day before. As she went from room to room, she made a list of things to bring the next day. It was routine by now since she regularly popped by a few times a week.
While her mother usually did her own grocery shopping and cleaning, Zoe had to do a lot of the tougher things around the old house. For being the black sheep of her family and leaving Japan at the age of twenty to marry an American, her mother was still very traditional at heart. Despite an independent life away from her family, she’d relied heavily on her husband for all those years to perform the “male” roles of the household.
When her dad died, it was Zoe who had to teach her mother how to reset the breaker, how to start the gas lawn mower, how to set mousetraps. And Zoe still ended up doing most of that herself during her regular visits to the house. She felt safer lighting the pilot light on the furnace or changing the burnt-out ceiling light bulbs than she did letting her mother do it herself.
Heading to the kitchen, she pulled out the medications prescribed by the doctor and organized them all on the kitchen counter. Each label had different instructions on how to take them and how often. Even she was confused, so she grabbed a pen from the drawer and relabeled them all in Japanese.
Zoe grabbed the mail from the mailbox and brought it inside. Heading into the living room, she flipped through the letters, scanning for junk. When she glanced up, Levi was standing in front of the mantle with a picture frame in his hands.
He waved it in the air. “Your mother says you were quite the gymnast.”
She recognized the photo in his hands. A dark-haired little girl was balancing on a beam no thicker than her with a giant self-satisfied grin on her face. She’d been eight.
Zoe swiped it out of his hands and set it back on the mantle where the clean patch of dust was. “Stop snooping.”
“But I’m getting to know a whole new side to you.” He reached for the next photo in line.
She slapped his hand away. “Keep digging, and I’ll show you a side you won’t soon forget.”
He just grinned, undeterred. “I like the leotard.”
Zoe’s mother sat down in the recliner closest to the fireplace, lifting Freddy onto her lap. He flopped onto his back like a baby in her arms, his foot jiggling with pleasure as she rubbed his belly, like I could get used to this.
“Zoe is very hard working,” she told Levi. “She’s always been very talented at whatever she’s done. She could have been an excellent gymnast.”
“If not for the growth spurt that landed me a foot taller than most boys in my school,” Zoe said. “I blame Dad’s genetics for that one.”
She sifted through the mail again. Finding no more ads, she went to set them down on her father’s old desk in the corner. That’s when she noticed the red letters on one of the white envelopes screaming up at her.
Urgent.
She went to pick it up again and noticed another stack of letters on the desk, unopened. Her eyes couldn’t help but catch the bolded red letters on an envelope. She picked it up to get a closer look.
Final Notice.
The envelope shook in her hands. She spun around, holding it up. “Mom. What is this?”
“Oh, just junk mail.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Mom, junk mail isn’t addressed ‘urgent.’” She tossed it on the coffee table in front of her. “Junk mail isn’t titled ‘pending foreclosure.’”
“Zoe. Shizukani.” She switched to Japanese as easily as she might take a breath. “I didn’t raise you to speak to your mother that way,” she continued in her native language. “Nor do we discuss such matters in front of strangers.”
“No, you’ve just decided not to speak about it at all,” she replied pointedly in English.
“Nihon-go de!” she persisted. “What’s done is done. It can’t be helped.”
“Well, paying your mortgage helps.” Zoe rifled through the rest of the unopened letters, all with similar messages and red-lettered threats. “Why? Why haven’t you paid your bills?”
“Nihon-go de,” her mother demanded.
Levi jiggled his keys in his hand, glancing from mother to daughter. “Maybe I’ll go wait in the van.”
She sighed and gave him a grateful look. “Sorry. I’ll only be another minute.”
“Take your time,” he told her.
Zoe waited until she heard the front door close before asking her mother again, “Tell me why?”
But her mother’s lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared in anger.
Zoe rolled her eyes and asked again in Japanese. “Naze?”
“I can’t pay them because I don’t have the money.”
Zoe frowned. “Where is all your money going? Surely Dad had some kind of life or mortgage insurance.”
Her mother turned away, speaking to the cold fireplace when she answered. “He had a pre-existing heart condition. A congenital defect. So when he died of a heart attack, the insurance company wouldn’t pay out because of a loophole. What little money I was left with hasn’t been enough.”
Zoe sank into the chair across from her. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped.”
“Don’t worry. Once you meet Kimura-san, I’m certain you will like him. And he is rich, so once you are married, we won’t have to worry about all this.”
Zoe rubbed her temples, feeling the pressure build behind them. “Mother, I haven’t agreed to marry him. I might not even like him. He might not like me.”
“What’s not to like?” she asked. “Everything will work out. You will see. My sister assures me he is a very reliable man. He will take care of us.”
For wanting such an independent life away from her family, her country, her traditions, Junko Plum was the most dependent person Zoe had ever met.
Because her mother had needed a man all her life, Zoe understood why her mother felt that she did too. But that wasn’t Zoe’s view of things. That wasn’t going to be her.
“But Mom—”
Suddenly, her mother clutched her head. Moaning a little, she let her head fall back against the headrest.
Zoe jumped to her feet. “Mom. Are you all right?”
Her mother sighed. “Oh, I’m fine.” But she didn’t sound so fine. “I just worry about you. It causes me so much grief.”
Zoe crouched down beside her mother. She sighed, patting her hand. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
She reached out and stroked Zoe’s hair like she did when she was a child. “You’re all I have left to worry about.”
Zoe suddenly remembered the doctor’s advice. The best thing she could do was reduce stress—for her mom, anyway. Zoe’s stress was an entirely different story.
“I told you I would meet Taichi. And I will. You don’t have to worry.”
Her mother straightened in her chair, her dizzy spell miraculously over. “Good, because you have a date with him this weekend.”
A date, Zoe thought. So soon? No stress. No stress. No stress. Her face formed what she hoped looked like an excited smile. “Great.”
Yet another reason to get things back on track with her business. So she could prove to her mother once and for all that she was fine on her own. She could take care of herself. And now it looked like she was going to have to take care of her mother too. But without many upcoming events booked, it was hard to do that.
Zoe crossed the room and swiped the other letters off the desk. “In the meantime, I’m taking these with me.”
Her mother stood up. Setting Freddy on the floor, she made as if to take them back. “I’m the parent. You’re the daughter. It’s not your job to worry about matters like this.”
Zoe held them out of her reach, which wasn’t very hard, considering their difference in height. “Not my job? Well, too bad. You didn’t raise me that way either.” She threw her words back at her.
Shoving the stack of letters into her purse, she kissed her mother on the cheek and headed out to Levi’s van with Freddy in tow.