Surprise Me (18 page)

Daniel knows he should talk to his son about his behavior—it’s not normal—but he has no idea what words to use. All he has to do is look at his own behavior, which is equally far from normal, to know that he has no ground on which to stand if he decides to lecture his son. What can he say?
We both had ruinous fathers who failed us?

He tries a variation of that. “I should have been around more when you were growing up.”

Stefan shrugs. “Whatever.” Then: “How are we getting home?” And another thought: “How did you get here?”

“I took a cab.”

“You did?”

“What was I going to do, let you stay in jail for weeks until I could make myself drive over here?”

“You called a cab and stood outside and waited for it and then got into the car? By yourself?”

“Yes, Stefan, I did.”

“Wow…We gonna take a cab home, then?”

“I guess we have to.”

“Cool.” And Stefan finds one for them.

As they sit in the backseat of the moving taxi, Stefan watching the bleak and chilly streets of Colorado Springs out his window, Daniel tries again.

“What exactly did you think you were doing with that girl?”

Stefan gives his all-purpose shrug, his eyes on the scenery, hoping that if he doesn’t turn around, his father will just shut up.

Daniel waits a minute. He’s trying very hard not to start yelling again. When he finally speaks, he makes his voice as soft as he can. “Did you consider how it might look, your following her?”

Stefan shakes his head.

“You need to.”

“I’m sick of other people,” Stefan mumbles, not looking at his father, but Daniel hears him, and despite himself, his face softens. There’s a sentiment he can embrace.

“Me, too.”

And that turns Stefan around to stare at his father’s face. Did his dad just agree with him?

“But mostly,” Daniel says in a rare moment of confession, “I’m sick of myself.”

Some things change after that. They never discuss the incident again—what does Daniel have to say that he hasn’t already?—but he keeps his son as close to him as possible. It’s the best he can do. He insists that Stefan come into the classroom with him whenever they walk together to campus and stay for the entire hour, right there in a seat where Daniel can keep an eye on him. Stefan’s expression says it all:
I am going to die of boredom here.
And on the days Daniel doesn’t teach, he keeps his son in the apartment with him.

Stefan idly wonders how many hours of daytime TV it is possible for a person to watch without losing IQ points, because he feels he’s crossed the line. His mind has become logy and slow and his body loose and sloppy from hours sprawled on their broken-down couch.

It’s only in the evenings that Daniel lets his son out of the apartment, to pick up their dinner. For the first week or so after their unplanned visit to the police station, Daniel called for dinner to be delivered, but it soon became apparent how expensive that was, and so the Jablonski men returned to their previous habit: Stefan walks to one of the many restaurants close to their apartment and picks up their food.

What Stefan doesn’t tell Daniel is that often, when he feels he can get away with it, he jumps in the car and makes a quick trip to Mitsuko’s apartment and stands across the street, pleading with the universe to allow him a glimpse of her through the second-floor window.

He keeps a disguise in the trunk of the car—a battered fedora which he’s convinced hides his face, a Denver Nuggets jacket bought expressly for this purpose and which she’s never seen. Even if she looks out the window and sees a guy leaning against a tree, barely lit by the streetlight several feet away, she has no way of knowing it’s him. That’s Stefan’s firm and deluded belief, which is completely shattered one late March evening. There he is, in his disguise, gazing longingly up at Mitsuko’s brightly lit window, and there she is, standing at the window looking right down at him! And suddenly there’s another girl by her side, taller and probably older but looking so much like Mitsuko that she must be her sister. What happens next makes him so happy he feels he might just levitate right up to their window. They both wave. They giggle behind their hands at their audacity, then clutch each other’s shoulders in embarrassment, and then pull the drapes tightly closed. Stefan is left limp with happiness and wonder.

That night when he returns home and encounters Daniel’s questions about how long it’s taken him to bring back dinner—questions that he’s heard on previous nights—Stefan tells him the restaurant was really crowded. Sometimes he’ll say that they messed up the order and he had to wait while they remade it or that they were training a new chef and the guy was way slow. Stefan makes sure to rotate his excuses. Does Daniel believe him? It’s hard to tell.

Daniel wants to believe him. It’s easier for everyone if Stefan is behaving himself. And shouldn’t Daniel be exhibiting some trust in his son? Shouldn’t he be treating him more like a man and less like a child? Stefan was in that interrogation room with Daniel and the cop. He heard the warning. He understands what will happen if he doesn’t leave this girl alone.

“Look,” he says to his son, “you’ve got to act like an adult here.”

You mean act like you?
Stefan is desperate to say but doesn’t.

“You’ve got to stay away from that girl. Can’t you find something else to do during the days?”

As if that’s the point.

Stefan mumbles, “Okay,” his eyes on his feet. He doesn’t like lying to his dad, but there’s a bigger principle involved here.

Daniel chooses to hear that barely audible
okay
as a promise, and so, after several weeks, he loosens the reins a bit. Given the extra freedom, Stefan hatches a plan. He knows he can’t go to the Ice Hall anymore. Even with a disguise, he’s pretty sure the coach, that asshole, will spot him. So his days of watching practice and taking notes are probably over. But he has the notebook. He wishes he’d been able to complete it, but it still contains gold as far as Stefan is concerned. If Mitsuko could read it, it would help her. It might even make the difference between her making the Olympic team or not. So he will present it to her.

That decision necessitates a lot more watching. And several changes of disguises. He goes to the Salvation Army store and buys whatever he would never wear in his real life—an army fatigue jacket, a Yankees baseball cap, a Stetson and a fringed jacket, a ski cap and goggles, a red nylon jacket with a hood, and several pairs of large, dark sunglasses. He will mix and match.

First he stays away from her apartment for two weeks. It’s agony, but he wants to lull the coach into complacency—
Okay, the kid has given up
. And Stefan’s far more regular habits also serve to reassure Daniel that his son has stopped his nonsense with the skater. But all Stefan is doing is biding his time.

One day in late April, the crabapple trees begin to bud, purple and red swellings that burst forth into pristine white blossoms laced with pink, and suddenly spring is thrust upon them. It’s wondrous how, overnight it seems, change is palpable and possibilities are poised on tiptoes after the cold, harsh winter. Now, Stefan thinks, he has to make his move.

The dilemma is how to get Mitsuko away from her coach but outside her apartment. Even if Stefan could get into her building, which is locked and needs a key code, he feels he shouldn’t walk in and knock on her door. If he gets into trouble for this—and he might—he wants to be able to minimize the damage. He wants to be able to say to Daniel,
I just ran into her on the street. An accident. It was a public place. There were people around. Nothing bad could have happened.

So he has to see where she goes after the coach drops her off. Does she leave the apartment, go out to eat with the other girl? Her sister, he’s sure. To a movie? Shopping?

On Friday afternoons, when Daniel has office hours, Stefan takes to waiting in his car, slumped down in the driver’s seat, watching the door to Mitsuko’s apartment house from under the brim of his cowboy hat. He discovers that the coach, the despicable one, lets her come home early from practice on Friday afternoons, and then one day Stefan gets lucky. He sees Mitsuko and her sister exit through the glass front door and walk down their street to a minimall two blocks away. He follows them in his car, creeping slowly behind them, and parks across the street.

All the tiny stores are eating establishments—Jamba Juice, a KFC franchise, a Thai restaurant, and a Yuzu Yogurt shop, which has a sign out front in both English and Japanese and a tiny patio with a few white plastic chairs and tables. He watches the two girls come out of the shop with their cones and sit there on the patio, eating and chattering.

Most Friday afternoons, he soon learns, now that the weather has turned more temperate, this walk to Yuzu Yogurt, this sitting on the patio and eating their cones, is their routine. Now he knows where he will approach Mitsuko, but first he has to make sure the notebook is as complete as he can make it and he has to write a note to go with it which explains the significance of it. All of this takes time, the note particularly, because he doesn’t know exactly what to say. He doesn’t want to brag, but he does want to let her know how important his notes are. How they might make the difference between going to the Nagano Games and not. He wishes he could ask his dad for help, because the one thing his dad knows how to do is write, but of course he can’t. So he struggles on his own and comes up with this note:

Dear Mitsuko,

I have spent many hours watching you practice and taking notes. What is in this notebook will help you make the Olympic team, which you truly deserve. It is a record of every hour of every practice I have been at. The black ink is for routines you have mastered, the red is for mistakes (not as many of those by far!), and the purple is for some personal comments of mine that might help you—all positive, don’t worry!

I did this only to help you know where you are at because I think you are amazing! Even though I am not a citizen of Japan, I will be rooting for you.

Sincerely,

Stefan Jablonski

Stefan reads the note over so many times he has it memorized. Is it exactly what he wants to say? Not even close, but he feels it’s as nonthreatening as he can make it. He knows it’s inappropriate to tell her how he feels watching her skate or how his heart beats more quickly when he sees her set foot on the ice. He’s not some weirdo, after all. He was engaged in a helpful mission, using his unique gift—his powers of observation. That’s the message he wants to get across to her.

Now that the note is done and he’s reread every entry in his notebook, there’s nothing to do but give her both. He makes his plan. On a Friday afternoon, he will wait until Mitsuko and her sister are sitting on the Yuzu Yogurt patio. He will approach and take a seat at their table—better to be sitting down than looming over them. (He’s proud that he’s thought all this through so carefully.) Next he will put the notebook on the table and explain what it is and that there’s a note inside, and then he will get up and leave. Simple. Nonthreatening. Mission accomplished.

The next Friday he makes sure to wear clean jeans and a simple white T-shirt. He combs his hair, something he rarely thinks about doing. He makes sure to shave that morning, and when he gets out of his car and crosses the street to the yogurt shop, his spirits are soaring.

The two girls look up at him as he approaches, breaking off their conversation abruptly. It’s obvious that they both recognize him, but instead of the anticipation and smiles he’d hoped for, he sees a flash of fear across Mitsuko’s face.

“No, no,” are the first words out of his mouth, not at all what he had planned to say.

When he sits down at their table, the sister stands up, grabs Mitsuko’s arm, and pulls her up to standing, as well.

“Please,” Stefan says, “I just want to give you something,” and he lays the battered green notebook on the table. “To help you. I want to help you,” he says again in desperation, because both girls look terrified.

The sister says something in Japanese to Mitsuko, something terse and anxious, and pulls her sister into the shop and attempts to close the glass door behind them. But Stefan is there, worried now that they’ve misunderstood.

He pushes the door open, to explain, to put the notebook in her hands, and that’s when everything goes wrong. The Japanese owner screams at him from behind the counter, in broken English, to get out of his shop. Stefan screams back that this is none of his business. The girls cower in a corner by the counter, the sister yelling something over and over in Japanese and wrapping the tiny Mitsuko in her arms, protecting her from whatever harm is coming.

In the midst of all the chaos, Stefan suddenly understands that he left a crucial element out of his planning: Mitsuko doesn’t speak English. There is no way she can understand what he is offering. How could he not have realized that? How could he have been so stupid again?

Frantic now to right his wrong, Stefan approaches the girls again with the notebook and they scream and he tries to put it in Mitsuko’s hand. And then he’ll go. He tries to tell them that—“Just take it and I’ll go!”—but they don’t understand a word. They sink to the floor, trembling, and he’s heartsick and desperate, standing over them, pleading with them, the notebook thrust toward them.

And then suddenly four strong arms are dragging him away. Two big cops he didn’t even see enter thrust him out of the shop and slam him up against the hood of their patrol car, knocking the air out of him, twisting his arms behind him so they can snap on a pair of handcuffs. And Stefan doesn’t utter a word of protest.

Through the back window of the cruiser, as he’s being driven away, Stefan spots the tattered green notebook spread-eagled on the parking lot asphalt, and at that moment he understands that all is lost.

—

TWO HOURS LATER DANIEL AND STEFAN
are sequestered in the same shabby, sterile, windowless room of the same Colorado Springs police station, waiting. Today one of the fluorescent lights has given up the ghost and half the room is in murky light. But where they sit, across from each other at the square table with the scarred top, the light is irritatingly bright and still flickering from time to time.