Arrivals
Aunt Wanda wasn’t through playing the go-between. “I sense an opportunity to address some other oversights,” she mused. “Connor’s parents are going to be here for Thanksgiving. With a good six weeks to provide fair warning—”
Elly jumped up, clapping her hands with realization. “That’s right! My mom and dad—well, Mom, for sure—could see me married—sort of.”
Her mother was enthusiastic about the plan. She would fly in the Monday before Thanksgiving. “True,” Wanda admitted, “it won’t be the same as the first time around, but sometimes close enough counts.”
They asked Elder Packard to do the sealing at the Provo Temple the Friday after Thanksgiving. Connor’s parents sent word that they’d be in Seattle the third week of November to see Sara Beth and the grandkids, and then come down to Utah the following Wednesday.
Sayaka Oh Packard was one of those few people who, after a fourteenhour flight, could walk off the plane in full possession of her dignity. She saw Elly and smiled a luminous smile.
Elly ran to her mother’s warm embrace. “Mom—” she said, and found she could say no more.
“I forget how tall you are,” her mother said, resting her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I fear the grandchildren will prove unmanageable.”
Elly laughed. “You’ll have to wait a while to find out.” She grabbed Connor’s hand and pulled him over next to her. “Here’s Connor.”
“Son-in-law,” Sayaka Packard said with a nod of her head.
He answered with similar concision.
The late morning arrival meant a short wait at the luggage carousels. They took the escalator to the second level of the parking garage. Sayaka Packard regarded the metallic blue Mustang with an expression that said, I hope you’re qualified to drive this thing, son-in-law.
“So this is the car your grandfather left you. Sam demands details.”
“I’ll email him some photos.” Connor put the luggage into the trunk and got the door for his mother-in-law.
Elly leaned over the front seat. “Did Izumi Sensei get into Stanford?”
“He did.”
“And Sister Amiya? I’d swear Izumi was making up excuses to come to the office just to see her.”
“He is indeed smitten. You barging in that one time might have struck the right spark. You do remember that unfortunate episode?”
Elly grinned. “This one time,” she explained to Connor, “Izumi Sensei and I caught Mom in the office sitting in Dad’s lap.”
“Really, Elly,” her mother said. “I didn’t ask for details.”
“You thought it was just as funny as I did.” She said to Connor, “Izumi Sensei practically died of embarrassment. He was so cute.”
“Now, if Sister Amiya would only kindle the flame as I’ve instructed her—”
She stopped when her daughter laughed. “Connor is amused by our penchant for matchmaking. You do know, Connor, that it was Mom who set up Aunt June with Uncle Oh.” She said, “Do you remember Melanie and Chalmers Ch r , Mom?”
“The one who looks like a fashion model? I don’t recall the ch r .”
“I’m betting they get married by the end of Winter semester.”
Connor interjected, “You said they were getting married at the end of Fall semester.”
“I hadn’t adjusted for the peculiarities of my own experience. It threw off my timing.”
“I’m not sure how you would adjust for that,” Connor said.
“Yes,” Sayaka added with wry smile, “the go-between’s responsibility, after all, is to prevent this sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I bet Grandpa and Grandma wished they’d employed a go-between when you and Dad got married.”
A too-long silence followed. Her mother said, “I suppose they would.”
Elly thought about what she’d said and winced.
They met Elder and Sister Packard at the Church Office Building and then walked over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for lunch at the Garden Restaurant.
Elly observed that her mother and grandmother got on very well. Her mother’s ancient loathing for the mother-in-law relationship had long ago been ameliorated by the help and support her grandmother had provided when Emily was born.
As for her mother and grandfather—they played their parts very well. Ordinarily Elly wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss. But now she saw things she hadn’t before—the moment of hesitation, the extra degree of unnecessary politeness, the way her grandfather’s natural gregariousness dimmed in his daughter-in-law’s presence.
Her mother was more taciturn on the drive to Orem. Maybe she was thinking the same thing. Maybe it was jet lag catching up with her. Elly asked, “How are you doing, Mom?”
“Frankly, I don’t know how your father ever put up with all the travel. We may stay in Japan after our mission ends, at least until Emily graduates. Nobuo says that he could still use Connor’s help. Oh, and Elly, I ran into an old classmate the other day, Kazue Tanaka. She’s provost at Koya Joshidai, a little junior college south of Osaka in Kudoyama. She could use someone just like you for their summer English program.”
Elly and Connor exchanged similar expressions. Elly said, suppressing the excitement in her voice, “Tell Tanaka Sensei I’d love to.”
“Good.” She rested her head against the headrest, closed her eyes. “Wake me when we get to my brother’s house.”
They exited the interstate at Eighth North and drove east toward the mountains. Five minutes later they arrived at the Oh residence. Elly rang the doorbell and opened the front door. “Tadaima!” she called out. She and her mother stepped into the foyer. Connor brought up the rear, lugging the suitcases.
“ O-kaeri—” came June’s voice. She stopped at the sight of her sisterin-law in the foyer.
“Well—” Sayaka said.
“Well—” said June. A long pause followed. “Well, Sayaka, I told you so.”
“And so you did.”
They both laughed. “Where is my little brother?” Sayaka raised her voice, “Makotochan!” Oh Sensei entered the foyer. Sayaka said in Japanese, “Hey, little brother.”
“Hey, big sister.”
They didn’t hug. Hugging was the one custom Elly had to restrain herself from when she was in Japan, and she wasn’t that outgoing a person.
Sayaka said, “I should take a nap. Will you and Connor be coming for dinner?”
“And Aunt Wanda,” Elly added.
June said, “Remind Atsuko that she’s expected too.”
That evening they picked up Atsuko at Helaman Halls and drove back to Orem. Wanda’s husband, Walter Brooks, had taught accounting around the same time Elly’s father was an adjunct professor in the MBA program. So Sayaka and Wanda weren’t strangers.
Sayaka said to Wanda, “From what my daughter has told me, you did your best to save them from themselves.”
“More like I found myself in the middle of an accident and got out to direct traffic.”
Elly said, “I’m not sure I like this metaphor.”
“And that’s why no one is getting married in Japan anymore,” her mother said. “No one directing the traffic.”
“We got married.”
“Yes,” her mother answered with a smile, “and it was a perfect wreck.”
After dinner Sayaka ejected June from the kitchen and collared Elly for cleaning duties. She said as they worked, “Your uncle and husband get on very well.”
“They are of one mind when it comes to things academic.”
“And you and your grandfather?”
“Grandpa and Grandma were great. Once they got over the shock. But they got over it pretty quick. Grandpa approves of Connor. That helped.”
“Yes,” her mother said.
“What about you, Mom? When you and Dad got married, what was it like?”
Her mother didn’t answer for a while. Then she said, “Elly, has your grandfather said anything about the—circumstances—under which your father and I got married?”
Elly thought about the difference between what she knew and what her grandfather had said. She remembered June’s admonition. “Only that he wishes he’d handled it differently. He admires you, Mom. She looks on tempests and is never shaken—that’s how he describes you.”
Elly could tell she hadn’t expected this response. “I wish I’d handled it differently too. And how does Connor feel about being listed on our family register? Really?”
“He’s fine with it. Really,” Elly said, ceding to her mother’s wish to change the subject, though she suspected that this as well had been a sore point between her mother and grandfather.
“Good. He does seem a suitable companion for my eldest daughter. So, do you love him?”
“Yeah, Mom. I love him like crazy.” She said in a more subdued voice, “I believe Connor took your advice to heart.” She hastened to add, “He didn’t tell me. But he would have done the right thing in any case.”
“I hoped you’d overlook my meddling. I don’t want to be that kind of mother-in-law.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Elly reassured her. “It’s nice to know there’s somebody watching over me.”
“The people watching over you, daughter, have a serious command of karma. Not something I would want to stand in the way of.”
Connor’s parents flew in from Seattle Wednesday afternoon. They rented a car at the airport and drove down to Provo.
Elly waited anxiously.
“I’m telling you,” Connor repeated. “They’re going to love you.” They were indeed delighted to meet her. Elly wore the pearl choker.
“Oh, it’s just right on you,” her mother-in-law said. “It goes perfectly with your complexion. I’ll have to do your portrait when you come to Maine.”
“Mom used to teach high school art,” Connor explained.
His father greeted her with a pleasant reserve. Meeting him and knowing Connor, she had no difficulty grasping something of what his grandfather must have been like. Connor said that height-wise he’d averaged out, and that seemed true of his personality as well. His mother was no taller than her mother and his father was about the same height as her father, though the McKenzies were a dozen years older than her parents.
June came over with Sayaka, and Elly made sure June and Wanda were accorded the praise they deserved as the wedding planners. Both mothers demanded more details, at which point Connor and his father retreated to the garage to talk cars.
Elly hung around with them for a while, but finally had to admit that she simply was not that interested in the particulars of the Challenger Special V-eight engine.
While the older women poured over the wedding pictures, Elly paged through the family photo albums Wanda had brought out. The pictures were mostly of people she didn’t know, though now and then she recognized Wanda or Connor’s parents or Lynne and her family.
And then a photograph that must have been taken the same day as the one in Grandpa McKenzie’s study. The boy stood in the foreground, his grandfather several yards behind. Both had looked up as the shutter was snapped. The camera lens compressed the distance between them. Elly’s heart ached, knowing the years it would take to close the few yards that separated them.
Yet she couldn’t help but imagine a child of their own, the same dark hair but her almond eyes, and maybe even blue.
The next album was filled with much older material. It was lying face down on the table, so she paged through it backwards. Toward the front she came across a copy of a yellowed daguerreotype. It appeared to be a wedding portrait, a man and a woman stiffly posed in their nineteenth century Sunday best. There must be a good twenty years between them.
“Who’s this?” Elly asked, though she was sure she knew.
Micah said, “That’s Connor McKenzie and his third wife, Katherine Anne Carroll.”
“He was the one,” Elly said. “Connor McKenzie and Sametaroh Oh.”
“What was that?”
“Our go-betweens,” she said mostly to herself. She looked up and realized nobody knew what she was talking about. “Sametaroh was my greatgreat-grandfather. I’d like to think they’ve gotten to know each other since.”
Micah and Wanda nodded. Her mother smiled at her across the table, a private understanding. She knew what Elly was talking about, about an old samurai racking the sleep of his stubborn daughters until they did the right thing.