In her dreams that night, Elly returned to the house in Provo. She was dressed as before in the white kimono. The sun shone down on the empty street. The driveway was a straight, clean line of asphalt, recently swept. The car crouched like a pensive cat inside the garage, the silver mustang on the grille plate gleaming from the shadows.
It was only after she started up the walk that she saw the boy. He was sitting by himself atop the porch steps, engrossed in a large manual that covered his lap. He glanced up, blue eyes under dark brows, and seemed not at all surprised to see her there.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
He held up the book: Chilton’s Ford Mustang/Cougar 1964–73 Repair Manual. At the same time his head snapped up and to the left, the way a grazing deer freezes and flicks its gaze about at the sound of a breaking twig.
Elly glanced over her shoulder. A tall man strode up the walk. The boy’s grandfather. He was thinner than the Connor she knew, showed a higher forehead, his silver hairline receding. But she couldn’t miss the resemblance. There was a hard, determined look in his eyes. The look of a man who felt he’d been disrespected, even if on a matter of no great moment. He extended his right hand. The boy held out the book, shrinking as far away from his grandfather as was physically possible.
The man reached to take the book from the boy. As his hand extended, Elly seized the old man’s wrist. “No,” she said.
He cast a puzzled look at his arm and then at her, for the first time acknowledging her presence. Then everything dissolved away, and there was only the two of them, bathed in the stark light. He finally spoke, his voice gruff, annoyed. “I never touched the boy. He’s got no cause to fear me.”
“Yes,” Elly said, speaking the words that suddenly echoed in her mind, that were not her own but became her own as she said them. “What you never did could fill the ocean. Yet all that nothing would never be enough.”
They agreed to meet again on Friday, and Connor made another stab at composing his thoughts in an email. If his fate before the court depended on oral argument, he’d never stand a chance.
The night before, he’d journeyed back to Kudoyama. He ended up at a bar in an alley off the main drag. To make things that much weirder, Pat Morita had an American cowboy tagging along with him—a burly man decked out in jeans, a Stetson, and cowboy boots—the whole John Wayne outfit. The two of them wanted to know what he was doing there without Chieko. How should he know? These dreams weren’t his idea.
Connor stared at the computer screen. He typed, “The older you get, the more invested you get in your tatemae (what the rest of the world can see) and the more you hide your honne (that which is privy to you alone). Easy enough to do when you’re single, especially when you’re single and Mormon. What’s frightening is contemplating what’s going to happen when somebody finds out how immense the gulf is between your tatemae and your honne.”
He clicked the send button before he could talk himself out of it.
Connor leaned against the mezzanine railing watching the little soap operas playing out in the Terrace Court. He didn’t hear her come up behind him until she said, “First of all, Connor, everybody’s screwed up.” She pressed on, not giving him time to respond. “Second, you haven’t got much of a tatemae. You’re pretty much honne all the way down. What I see is what I get. You don’t know how reassuring that is.”
She was right, he didn’t know.
“Third, it scary, and I’ve done nothing but show you the worst side of me. But I don’t want to live my whole life being scared.” She turned to him. “Connor, let’s not have this argument, okay? Forget about getting married. I shouldn’t have brought it up like that. Just don’t leave me. Please. Stay with me till we wake. That’s all I want. I’ve given you no reason to trust me, but trust me this once. Don’t be afraid of me.”
His expression softened. “I’m not afraid of you, Elly.”
She clasped his hand, a firm yet gentle touch. Then she walked away.
Nobuo’s terminology lists arrived (as they always did) Friday morning (Friday night, Japan time). Connor checked the attachments but didn’t get around to reading the cover message until that evening. Nobuo had added a P.S.: “My daughter and wife have been debating whether you and Chieko are dating. I try to keep out of such matters, but they insist I ask.”
Good grief, was his initial response. How did they know? Because Elly had asked for his email address. And dating? Were they? That was a good question. Not really. Fighting, yes—dating, no. He’d think of a better answer when he mailed back the corrections.
Connor went outside and watched the sun setting into the mountains beyond the flat plate of Utah Lake. He was making this all too complicated. Why not just stay in the dream? She asked him to stay. It obviously meant a lot to her. If there was going to be sex, shouldn’t there be affection as well? Even if there’d never be any physical contact between them, wouldn’t that make a difference?
Something—someone—had woved the threads of their individual lives together, creating a binding cord between them. In this span of days between Tanabata and Obon, between the Bridge of Birds and the Festival of the Dead (the time of year at once occurred to him), whose graves had stirred? Whose spirits had returned during this haunting season? Did he have to ask what they wanted? The dreams lacked all subtlety. But he wouldn’t have listened otherwise.
Be practical, he told himself. He was a McKenzie. He was good at being that. He knew he’d been offered something extraordinary, the best thing that had ever happened in his life. But he was scared. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned. He might as well invite in the wrecking crew. Loving her would change everything.
For the first time in his life, he found himself contemplating a possibility antithetical to the McKenzie mind: surrender. Not to fate (though that was a tough one for those ornery Celts). But a surrender of the pride that masqueraded as character, yet in the end revealed itself as little more than dumb stubbornness in disguise.
It was all about Newton’s First Law: A body in a uniform state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. It had been his father’s family vacation transportation strategy: plot the straightest navigable line between where they were and where they wanted to end up in eight hours, and drive.
Ever since that distantly-remembered death when he was seven years old, Connor had been running straight ahead and in one direction—away. An external force had now been applied to his trajectory. It was time to stop and turn around and take the path less traveled, and that might make all the difference.
The Tanabata festival, adopted from the Chinese “Night of Sevens,” commemorates the union of two celestial lovers, the stars Vega and Altair. In Japanese they are called the Weaver (Orihime) and the Herdsman (Kengy ).
The lovely Orihime was the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, a vain ruler jealously fond of the gorgeous cloth his daughter wove on her loom. Yet watching from his throne on the Pole Star, even his cold heart could not ignore his daughter’s despair as she spent day after day weaving together the threads of starlight. A prisoner of her loom, all her wondrous fabrics could not mask the darkness of her solitude.
So her father arranged a marriage with a loyal retainer of the court. His name was Kengy , and he tended the royal herds in the meadows across the River of Heaven. The marriage proved a most propitious union. The two were devoted to each other from the start, so deeply in love that their other cares and responsibilities faded from their attention. The Emperor’s admonitions were ignored by the young couple. The loom gathered dust and the cattle roamed far and wide on the astral plains. In a fit of rage, the Emperor banished Kengy to the distant shores of the Milky Way.
Only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month ( Tanabata), does he repent of his anger and permit the ferryman to cast off from the harbor of the Moon and carry Orihime across the River to her beloved’s arms. Even so, if she has not completed her weaving to his satisfaction, he will forbid the ferry to cross. When that happens, we must call upon the magpies to fly up to the stars and weave a Bridge of Birds over which the princess can cross, else the rain of her tears will flood our homes and farms and put us all at peril.
Because peril has always been the price of true love and devotion.
Multistoried floats danced through the thronged streets like junks sailing through rough night seas, masts emblazoned with lights. Like burning box kites anchored to the earth with Lilliputian mooring lines, threatening at any moment to break free and fly into the dark sky. Gangs of sweating bearers, wearing short happi coats decorated with the crests of their merchant sponsors, surged to and fro calling out guttural encouragements to their companions.
Yoisho! Korasho! Yoi korasho!
Yoisho! Korasho! Yoi korasho!
Red, green, blue, and gold streamers rippled from the telephone poles.
Leafy bamboo branches arched over the streets. From the green stems hung thousands of tanzaku, folded strips of colored paper inscribed with a wish or poem. In her dream, Elly reached up and added her own to an overhanging branch. What did I write? She smiled at Connor. He wore a gray yukata. She had on a bright summer kimono, too colorful for a married woman, but she was young and in love.
They continued ahead of the procession to the river. The water’s surface was alight with Chinese lanterns, bobbing in the currents on their little rafts. The taiko drums pounded like distant thunder. Flutes and fifes trilled, calling to the magpies. The sky above was clear and shot through with stars. Everyone knew the lovers would meet this night.
The parade reached the river and spilled out along the levee, the bearers mixing among the barkers and carnies. Cheers arose as the first rocket rose on its comet’s tail, rising to meet Vega and Altair high above, and exploding in the night sky.
She leaned against him and gazed up at the sparkling bouquets, wanting the night to go on forever, Orihime to never leave her lover again.
They rode the train back to Kudoyama. She recalled the Sada Masashi song about a girl leaving home to get married against her father’s wishes. As the night train takes her farther and farther away, the girl counts the passing stations, numbering every fear, concern, and second thought that crosses her mind.
Elly’s present distress was not shared by her future self, who snuggled against the shoulder of this dark-haired, blue-eyed gaijin. What did you do? she wanted to ask. This dream, for all its magic, seemed more real than the others. How did you cross the bridge?
At Kudoyama station, a taxi zipped around to collect them at the curb. The walk was no more than a kilometer, but too far in kimono and geta. The driver dropped them off at the front gate, bid them a good evening, and careened back down the hill.
Inside they followed their familiar routines, throwing open the windows to let in the cool mountain air and taking out the futons. But first she had to get out of the kimono. His expression broke into a grin. She must have made some indelicate quip about how getting out of a kimono wasn’t something you did by yourself. He began to untie her obi. She twisted around and kissed him impatiently, impertinently.
She’s teasing me, Elly thought, a tad annoyed.
Returning to the bedroom after a soak in the o-furo, she extinguished the light. He was standing at the window. She wrapped her arms around his waist. He hugged her closer. The valley glowed with starlight. A bottle rocket flew low over the canopy and popped like a faraway flashbulb.
The throbbing drone of the cicadas filled the night. He smoothed away her bangs and kissed her forehead. The stinging in her eyes—the look of concern on his face—told her she was crying. She was not sad but overcome. The emotions were nestled deeply inside her, connected to every part of her being, and yet she could not understand them.
She raised her mouth to his, tasted him, his cheeks as a bed of spices, his lips like lilies, the roof of his mouth like the best wine. He lowered her to the futon. She welcomed the cool breath of night air on her skin, the warm caress of his hands across her body.
She pressed against him, wanting to feel his weight, wanting to be as close to him as physically possible. His left hand under my head and his right hand embracing me. She smiled at him. I sleep, but my heart waketh. It is the voice of my beloved saying, Open to me my love, my dove, my undefiled.
A soft kiss, and they glided back to earth. The gentle breeze cooled her skin. The tears dried on her cheeks. She rested her head on his chest. Yet in the falling afterglow Elly felt him waver, she felt his fear, felt the magical world grow distant and dim and uncertain.
I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn. I sought him, but I could not find him. I called him, but he gave me no answer.
She whispered to herself, No.
In that flickering, transparent moment, as Connor pulled himself out of unconsciousness, he hesitated. He wanted her to take hold of him and make him stay. But she would not make him. Don’t let go, he told himself. Yet he knew that this other self lived in a world more real than the one he now occupied alone. So he let go and fell back through the darkness.
He hit the ground hard and stared up from the depths of the abyss. All at once he no longer saw darkness, but welcome light. A vision of intimacy and beauty ravaging safe solitude in ways he could not have believed. The light descended and she was with him. She said nothing and she did not leave. He lay back on the bed, unconsciously shifting to one side, as if she truly slept there beside him.
And when he closed his eyes she was there, the girl on the Nakamozu Nankai. Then and all through the night.