1001 Cranes (16 page)

Pessimist Club

Friday evening I go next door for dinner. I try to get out of it, because I’m in no mood to talk to anyone, especially the O family. Even though they are much nicer and more polished—at least on the outside—than our family, it’s just more of the same. Nobody in either family says anything real. Gramps doesn’t even mention anything much about my dad’s visit.

Grandma Michi tells me that I still have to go to dinner. “You made a commitment; now you have to follow through,” she says. How come other people can break theirs, but I have to keep mine? I think. But it’s not worth arguing. I’m so tired I just go along.

She tells Aunt Janet to walk me to the O family’s door, just in case I try to take a detour to see Tony. Aunt Janet actually just waits in the middle of the walkway, looking at me like a stray dog.

Mr. O answers the door. He’s in a suit and he explains that he has to go to an Optimist Club meeting. I know what an optimist is: it’s someone who always sees the good side of things. I can definitely picture Mr. O as a member of an Optimist Club. It must be nice to be in the company of all those optimists. I’m the opposite; I’m a pessimist. But I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by optimists from time to time.

“I better get going, Ruth,” he says to Mrs. O, straightening his jacket collar. “Don’t want to be late.” If he is late to a meeting, he explains, he is fined seventy-five cents. Seventy-five cents is nothing, but it’s the principle of the thing, he says.

The other men are also not at dinner. The two brothers have gone to a bachelor party for their cousin.

“So that leaves us girls,” Mrs. O says. Her voice sounds too high and too loud, as if she’s adjusting her volume to convince herself that we’re going to have fun. I don’t think we’re going to have fun, but then, that’s the pessimistic side of me coming out.

The dinner is quiet. We’re eating lasagna, homemade, not the frozen kind from a box or one from the warehouse store.

Sarah clicks her teeth with the ends of her fork as she eats. Apparently, it bothers Helen, because when Mrs. O excuses herself from the table, Helen snarls at her, “Can you stop that?”

“What?”

“That noise. The fork hitting your teeth.”

“I’m not making a noise.”

“You are. Isn’t she, Angela?”

They both look at me and I shrug. I don’t like getting in the middle of girl fights. That Sarah and Helen are practically old enough to be my mother doesn’t make any difference. Girl fights don’t seem to change much over time.

It finally dawns on Sarah that Mrs. O has been away from the table for a long time.

“What’s happened to Mom?” she asks no one in particular. She gets up and we watch her walk through the living room, to the hallway where the bathroom is.

I hear her knock on a door. “Mom, are you okay?” she asks.

Helen rises from the table, too, and I follow. I think I know what’s going on, and I’m worried about Mrs. O.

We all stand in front of the locked bathroom door, and I can hear Mrs. O throwing up. It doesn’t sound like the little barfs she’s done before.

Sarah taps again. “Mom, can you unlock the door? Let us help you.”

“Is it the flu?” Helen asks.

I don’t know whether to say anything. The toilet flushes and then we hear water running from the faucet.

“Maybe we should take her to the hospital,” Helen says to Sarah.

The doorknob turns, and there’s Mrs. O, drying her wet face with a hand towel. Her eye makeup is smeared and she looks awful.

“No, no, I don’t have the flu. And I don’t need to go to the hospital again.” She walks down the hallway to the bedroom where I saw Mr. O massaging her back.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Sarah calls out.

Mrs. O turns. “My cancer’s come back, damn it. And I’m going to rest,” she says, and then closes the door behind her.

Now, if anyone else had said “damn it,” it would have been no big deal. But this is Mrs. O. Even though I haven’t known her that long, I know she’s not the type to curse, or even sort of curse.

“Did you know about this?” Sarah asks Helen.

“Did you?”

“Nobody knew,” I say. “Except for Mr. O.” I don’t say that I knew, too, although they can figure that out.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Sarah wanders back into the living room and slumps down on the couch. Helen walks out from the hallway and then turns to me. “Why do you know?”

Sarah waits for my response.

I’m not sure. “It just sorta came out. She’s gotten sick in front of me before.”

“You should have told somebody,” Sarah says.

“Don’t blame her; she’s just a kid.” Helen comes to my defense.

I don’t like how this argument is going. First of all, Sarah is accusing me of having done something wrong when Mrs. O explicitly told me to keep a secret. And Helen is saying that I’m just a kid, which is also wrong.

Before I can stop myself, I’m speaking. “She wanted you to be happy, at least until the anniversary party. She didn’t want anyone to worry. And I think she wanted you guys to try to be friends, at least for a short time.” My voice isn’t squeaky like it normally is when I speak to grown-ups. It’s low and steady. It sounds like me.

Sarah and Helen stare at each other.

Helen then plops herself down at the dining room table. “Hit me with them, then,” she says.

“Huh?” I ask.

“The origami papers. If three of us work together all night, maybe we can finish.”

So as Mrs. O rests, we fold. By the time Mr. Optimist returns from his meeting, we are close to having six hundred cranes, separated into three distinct piles on the table.

Mr. O seems to sense that something has changed, and I know I should leave as soon as I can.

When I’m home and I get into bed, I text-message Tony and he answers me. Grandma Michi and Gramps don’t know about these things. They kind of understand how you can send messages and read messages on the computer, but they don’t know that you can talk on the phone without really talking.

Tony asks me if it’s okay to call, and I tell him no. But I text-message him that I’ll call him. And I do, when everyone’s gone to sleep. Just in case, I cover myself with a sheet and a blanket, and I stuff the pillow close to my face.

I whisper into the phone that I can’t talk long. I think about telling him about my dad and Mrs. Papadakis but then decide against it. Saying it aloud will make it more real. And I want to pretend that it’s not true, at least for a little bit longer.

“When can I see you next?” he asks.

“Well, I’m kind of grounded.” It’s actually not “kind of.” It’s for sure. But I want to see Tony. “I’ll be at a wedding tomorrow. At the Buddhist church.”

“Are your grandparents going to be there?”

“No, I’ll be with my aunt. Besides the 1001-cranes display, we’re also doing the boutonnieres and the bridal bouquet.”

“Maybe I’ll pretend that I’m in the wedding party.”

I almost start laughing. There’s probably no one in Kawaguchi’s life who looks like Tony.

M
ICHI’S
1001-C
RANES
F
OLDING
T
IP
N
O
. 7: If you make a mistake, you don’t have to throw the crane away. Save it, because you may be able to use it in the back layers.

A Change in Plans

I’ve never been to a wedding before. My dad’s an only child, like me, and Aunt Janet has never been married (and has never had a boyfriend, for all I know). So we don’t have a lot of relatives who have gotten married since I’ve been alive.

Aunt Janet has told me that we don’t have to dress up for the wedding, because we’re the workers, but that I still shouldn’t wear jeans or shorts. She tries to get me to wear one of her denim skirts, but it’s so loose around my waist and my butt, it looks more like a sleeping bag than a piece of clothing. I go into my mother’s closet, and I find a simple pink and yellow plaid shift in the back. It’s sleeveless and definitely old, but in a cool, retro way. And it fits perfectly. Even Grandma Michi is impressed. “You look like a young lady,” she says before picking up her purse to meet Gramps at another event. I bring along my blue Hawaiian-flower-pattern mini backpack. I know that it clashes with my dress, but I don’t care.

I help carry the 1001-cranes display to the trunk of the car. It’s all framed and wrapped in black felt. It’s my first one, and even Aunt Janet says that I’ve done a good job. We have to stop by the shop on our way to the wedding, to pick up Kawaguchi’s bridal bouquet and the men’s boutonnieres. She told Gramps that she was going to make her bridesmaids’ bouquets, which Gramps secretly thought was a bad idea. “Customer’s always right,” he muttered to me after he’d tried to talk her out of it.

The boutonnieres are simple. They each have one white flower against a green leaf. The flower is called stephanotis. They have petals that are long and delicate, and they look like wax trumpets. Kawaguchi’s bouquet is full of stephanotis and white roses. It looks so perfect that it doesn’t seem real.

On the ride to the Buddhist temple, Aunt Janet tells me a lot of things I know and don’t know about weddings. Like that it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the ceremony. Even though I’ve never gone to a wedding before, I know that much. I know that brides should wear something borrowed, something blue. But then she tells me that if it rains on someone’s wedding day, it’s good luck for the marriage. That doesn’t make sense to me. I look out the car window, and the sun is already bright. Doesn’t look that lucky for Kawaguchi.

The parking lot is already full, so I wonder if we are late. After Aunt Janet parks, she thrusts the box with the bridal bouquet into my arms. “You find the bride and I’ll pin the men,” she says.

“How about the one thousand and one cranes?” I ask. I want to make sure that everyone sees it.

“That’s later, for the reception,” Aunt Janet explains.

As we rush up the stairs, I see a familiar figure in a plaid button-down shirt and khakis. Tony waves, and my eyes dart back and forth between him and Aunt Janet, who’s just concentrating on finding the groomsmen. I point to the front of the steps, meaning that I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tony nods.

We find the wedding coordinator, who directs me into one room and Janet into another. The room I enter looks kind of like a library, only there’s a huge mirror in front of some old books in Japanese. Kawaguchi is sitting in a padded chair, her head down. I’m surprised, because she really looks beautiful. Her dress is strapless and shows off how thin she is. Her hair is piled on top of her head, and her makeup isn’t overdone.

Before I can say anything, I notice that someone else is in the room. The groom. Kevin. I’ve seen him only one time, and that was in a car with Kawaguchi. He looks like a younger version of Mrs. O’s sons, clean-cut and tall. There’s a whiteboard on wheels right in front of the door, so they don’t seem to notice me. I think about tiptoeing back outside, but I don’t want to move.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“I can’t marry you.”

My mouth falls open. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Neither can Kevin. “What?”

“I can’t do it.”

“Lisa, our whole families, our friends, coworkers—they are all out there. And you want to call this off?”

“Reverend Marc—he was my boyfriend in college. We were even talking about getting married.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could have gone to a different church. Gotten a different minister.”

Kawaguchi just sits in her chair. Frozen. I begin to feel sorry for her.

“Are you saying that you still have feelings for this guy?”

“It’s not that. I just can’t figure out why I couldn’t tell you the truth. From the beginning.”

I can’t believe what’s happening. How do people know when they’ve found the one—the one who lasts forever? Did my own mom have any doubts when she got married holding fresh wildflowers? What made Dad like Mrs. Papadakis? What makes one better than the other?