Sammoh
Connor asked, “How do you know when a game of T-Ball is over?”
“Search me. I’ve never watched one all the way through. You hungry?
There’s some shabu-shabu in the fridge.”
Elly stopped by the dugout. “Mel, have you had dinner? We’ll warm something up.”
Melanie checked her watch and yelled back, “We’ll be done by seventhirty at the latest.”
“I’ll leave the leftovers on the stove.”
Connor examined the gray keel of the cumulonimbus hovering above them. “They may be calling the game a little early.”
Back at the condo they dumped their backpacks on the couch and continued into the kitchen. She held onto his hand, refusing to let go. So he put his arms around her and they swayed back and forth to the silent music. She looked into his eyes and he kissed her. She encouraged him not to stop.
Thunder rattled the windowpanes.
They both jumped. Elly laughed. “You’re right about the rain. Mel may be home earlier than expected.”
She got the shabu-shabu while Connor tended to the rice. Ten minutes later the front door banged closed. Melanie poked her head into the kitchen. “Look at you boring two,” she said in a faux disappointed voice. Her hair was damp, her sweats streaked with rain.
“Yeah,” said Elly, “we already made out.”
Connor’s ears reddened. Melanie said, “If you don’t marry her soon, she’ll become downright unbearable.”
Melanie had her there. Elly hadn’t gotten over the sophomoric pride she took in having a boyfriend. A decade after the fact, she finally understood what had obsessed her idiot girlfriends back in junior high and high school.
The rice was done by the time Melanie returned, her hair turbaned in a towel. Elly set the shabu-shabu pot on a hot pad. Connor retrieved the rice cooker.
“Well, this is domestic,” Melanie said. She gestured to Connor. “When in doubt, fall back on patriarchy.”
He gave her a peeved look but pronounced the blessing on the food.
Dinner commenced. Melanie asked, “So, Connor, where are you from?”
“New York. Though I guess I’m from Maine now. My parents moved after I got back from my mission.”
“How long have you two known each other?”
Connor and Elly exchanged glances. Connor said tentatively, “Three months. Almost four.”
Elly nodded. It was true enough. Melanie gave her an accusing glance.
“You were on your mission four months ago.”
“Connor was in Osaka. He was working for my Uncle Nobuo.”
“When did you ever find the time to date?”
“Ha! Missionaries don’t date.”
“I’ve known a few.”
“With Susan Eliason as my companion?”
“Good point. I take it you exchanged the occasional pleasantries?” They both shrugged, caught the spark in each other’s eyes at the same
time and smiled. Melanie fumed, “No private moments at the table.”
“Yes, Mel,” Elly said, bowing her head with exaggerated penitence.
The thunderstorms swept north, leaving the darkening sky aglitter with stars. The sidewalks were damp with rain.
Elly asked, “I can’t imagine you ever dating on your mission.”
“No, but I ended up with a few companions who had.”
“Really? I was kidding.”
“I guess the mission president believed I exuded some sort of fraternization-killing mood.”
“Not anymore.”
And he proved her point, cupping her face in his hands and pressing his lips against hers. The moist, warm connection made her heart jump. She knew she could do much more than kiss him, and he could do much more than hold her in his arms.
“What time are you going to school tomorrow?”
“I have a class at nine. I’ll be by about eight-thirty.”
“Okay. Eight-thirty.”
He insisted on walking her to her door. She welcomed another chance to kiss him good night.
Since Tanabata, since that breathtaking night, they hadn’t made love in their dreams. Elly suspected they would not, unless their perverse guardian angels grew impatient with the course of their courtship. Still, she hated waking up alone. The moments of transition between shared sleep and the lonely darkness of her bedroom had become as unbearable as the guilt and confusion that had haunted her before.
She’d always believed herself to be a “together” person. Susan Eliason had taught her differently. Connor had taught her differently. Reluctant in wrath, her great-great-grandfather had lectured his volatile daughters. Oh women were the samurai in the family, and Elly was her mother’s daughter. Even Aunt Wanda said so. That meant her mother probably felt about her father the same way Elly did about Connor—all those roiling emotions so tightly contained. She’d have to consider her mother in a whole new light.
She’d told Melanie that she didn’t love Connor. She didn’t know what it meant to love another person like that. But did she ever get infatuation. Did she ever get being in love. She loved kissing him—in their dreams she’d loved making love. It must be the sublimation catching up with her—all the boys she’d never dated, all the boys that never copped a feel, all the boys she’d never necked with.
Melanie walked into the kitchen after her morning jog. “Connor seems like a nice boy.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Elly asked, “Do you know who Pat Morita is? Some nisei actor.” She paused to remember, “Karate Kid.”
“In the movie? He’s the super at the apartment complex where Ralph Macchio and his mom live. Ralphie’s getting picked on by the neighborhood bullies, but it turns out that Pat Morita is this incredible martial arts sensei. He teaches Ralphie how to kick butt by having him wash his cars. Wax on, wax off, as your uncle likes to say.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Elly. “Best Kid. That’s the title in Japan.”
“I didn’t think your pop culture IQ was that lacking. This is important how?”
“Yeah, he does look like my great-great-grandfather. Thanks, Mel. This really helps.” She bounced to her feet and scampered up the stairs.
“How? How does it help?” Melanie shouted after her, “You’re getting to be an irritating person to have around, Elly Packard!”
Connor was on time. Elly ran out the front door and into his arms before he rang the bell. Her eyes brimmed with excitement. “I know who he looks like. Pat Morita, I mean. Sammoh!”
“The guy in the Hong Kong action movies?”
“No, Sametaroh Oh. My great-great-grandfather. My brother Sam was named after him.”
“Sametaroh Oh.”
“Last name usually goes first—the American contingent must have come up with it—but yes. And he does look like Pat Morita. See, it makes sense. If your great-great-grandfather got together with my great-greatgrandfather—”
“It makes sense?”
She playfully whacked him on the shoulder. “As much sense as anything. What classes do you have?”
“Phonology at nine, Japanese lit. at two. How about you?”
“Yesterday was the last day of class for 301. I have my kids at two and that’s it.”
She escorted him to the JKHB. Kusanagi Sensei came down the hallway from the north wing staircase. “Hello, Elly.”
“Auntie,” Elly replied, with a polite nod. Kusanagi Sensei continued into the classroom. “Oh Sensei’s sister-in-law,” she explained in a loud whisper. The bell rang. “I’ll be at the library, fourth floor.”
She left him with a brief, sweet kiss. For the first time in a long time, he gave serious thought to skipping class.
By “fourth floor” Elly meant the Asian collection. She was filling out a form when he arrived. “C’mon,” she said, jumping to her feet.
She led him through the stacks to Special Collections and handed in the form. Five minutes later, the librarian emerged from a side door with a boxed set of books. Elly extracted the first book in the set and handed it to Connor.
It was hardbound in black leather, a hundred pages or so. Connor flipped to the title page. “Instructions in American English: Volume I,” he read, “by Oh Sametaroh.” The text was typeset in tategaki format—top to bottom and left to right—which meant he had to turn the book sideways to read the sentences. He turned the page and said, “That’s way wrong.”
“The katakana phonetics?”
“No, the explanation of the grammar.”
“It’s fairly horrid throughout. As Uncle says, Sammoh was a businessman first, a linguist second. But he did get some things right. Like specializing in American English at a time when the sun never set on the British Empire.” Elly turned to the frontispiece. “There,” she said, pushing the book across the table. “That’s him, Sammoh.”
A black and white print of a middle-aged man dressed in the garb of a Victorian academician. The Meiji elite had been quick to adopt the style. The two swords and the crest on the wall behind him signified his samurai heritage. And he did look an awful lot like Pat Morita.
Connor shook his head in wonder. “He’s the guy.”
“Told you. That means the other man in your dream must be your great-great-grandfather.”
“Why’s he showing up in my dreams?”
“Sammoh might have been at the cutting edge of societal evolution in his time, but I imagine he’d be pretty traditional by modern standards. If he wanted to get us together, arranging it with your great-great would be the honorable thing to do.”
“Did he know how to use those swords?”
“Probably used them to open crates of books. Or hocked the real ones and put some cheap knockoffs on the wall for show.”
“But you’re from an honest-to-goodness samurai family—”
“Cool, huh? Though whatever conflicts they got themselves into, I suspect the Ohs preferred to talk their way out of them.”
“The sword is the warrior’s right hand; his letters, the left. Letters in the poetic sense, of course.”
“Who said that?”
“Lord Hojo Soun of Odawara. I was there on my mission. This affinity between English and Japanese and teaching goes a long way back in your family. Like it’s bred in the bone.”
Elly gave Connor a curious look. “What?” he queried.
“It’s just that my Grandpa Packard says the same thing.”