Elly’s grandparents invited them to Thanksgiving. Martin and Lynne and Glenn and Mike were included, as were the Ohs.
Representing the Packards were Uncle Grant, Aunt Karen, and Elly’s cousins, Kim and Debby and Darrell. The total came to twenty, average for a Packard Thanksgiving.
The men set up the tables in the living room (including a Relief Society loaner). Before long, Connor and Grant were drawn into the gravitational well of the family room television. Connor made a point of gallantly resisting until Elly laughed. “Oh, go watch football,” she said, and escorted him downstairs herself.
The game had already captured Mike and Tom and Darrell, along with Naomi and Atsuko. Atsuko planted herself in Mike’s lap and was being treated to a personalized play-by-play analysis of the sport.
“You’d better watch out for this one,” Elly warned Mike. “She’s a little bundle of trouble.”
“Hidoi!” exclaimed Atsuko. “Elly’s being mean. I am a lot of trouble, but I’m worth it.” She said pointedly to Connor, “Neh?”
“She’s right,” Connor agreed. “She’s a bundle of trouble.”
Mike looked like he was in the mood for trouble, and more where that came from. Elly watched for a few minutes, munched on a few potato chips, and then went back upstairs.
It was like rising into a warm, delicious cloud. The aroma of baking bread, steaming mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie. Japanese cuisine took a holiday on Thanksgiving. The Packard, Oh, and McKenzie women busied about the kitchen and dining room like worker bees. Traditional gender roles shamelessly ruled the day.
Elly stopped in the kitchen doorway. Her grandmother, mother, and mother-in-law were gathered together at the counter. Each of them had grown up in the little island of her own family, knowing only her own language and her own kind, wary of others and the outside world. And then, at the proper time, she’d been dispatched to distant lands, seeking friendly relations with foreign peoples.
This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
Her mother turned and saw her. “Elly, why don’t you and your cousins set the table?”
So she helped Kim and Debby. Glenn and Connor’s father, like Uncle Oh, were immune to football. The men arranged the chairs and discussed the advantages of hot water baseboard systems versus forced air.
Back in the kitchen, Elly fished a walnut from the bowl and looked for a nutcracker. Her grandmother handed her the cranberry relish. “Put that on the table, dear.”
When Elly came back she asked, “Where’s Mom?”
Wanda said, “I think she went with Martin to look at the horses. You know Martin can’t resist a horse.”
Her grandmother added, “Your grandfather should be in the barn. Tell him to come inside and get washed up. We’ll be ready to begin in another, oh, twenty minutes or so.”
Outside it was cold and gray. Flurries tumbled through overcast skies. Elly turned up the collar of her jacket and hurried across the yard. She met Martin coming out of the barn. He had a coil of longe line over his right shoulder. “Hi, Uncle Martin,” she said.
“Hiya, Elly. Your mom and gramps are inside.”
Elly stepped into the barn. Despite the overcast skies, her eyes took a minute to adjust to the dim interior. There were two stalls on her left, a dozen bales of hay stacked against the wall opposite. The barn was as Elly remembered it, except that it seemed to get smaller as she got older.
Her mother was standing in the center of the small riding arena. Seeing her there in her long coat, Elly was struck by the realization that she never dressed extravagantly, even when she wore kimono. She wore little makeup and no jewelry. Yet her bearing was almost regal, a stature that spoke of a long and proud ancestry. Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.
Elly’s grandfather was studiously straightening up the tack, the sort of thing a man did hoping others would see how busy he was and go away.
Her mother said, “Grandfather.”
The break in the silence startled Elly as much as it did him. She slipped into the shadow between the stalls.
“Grandfather,” her mother said again.
He seemed to sigh to himself before he turned and sat down on a hay bale. He pulled the work gloves off his hands and raised his head to meet her gaze. He nodded. Elly noted the heaviness in the gesture, the weight of old guilt that bowed his shoulders like a warp in weathered wood.
Her mother took a careful step forward. “Twenty-five years ago I was a willful young woman, sure of my own course and deaf to the counsel of others. June warned me that consequences would follow. ‘One day you will have a daughter and she will grow up and do exactly what you are doing now. Then you will know how it feels.’ The apple falls not far from the tree. I believe that was the expression she used.”
She took a deep breath. Her voice grew quieter. “Now I know how it feels.” She almost smiled, but it was an expression that masked pain.
“Sayaka—” Elly’s grandfather started to say.
“No,” she said, her voice firm again. “This has gone on long enough. You are the father of my husband, grandfather to my children. I am your daughter-in-law. That is my place within this family. No matter what else, I owed you my respect. I withheld it. You asked for my pardon. I gave it grudgingly. And now, what you have done for Elly and Connor—” Her voice broke. She paused to draw an even breath. “I cannot say how grateful I am, only that I owe you a debt I cannot repay.”
There was a moment of silence. Then she clasped her hands together at her waist and bowed.
Elly almost gasped aloud. Her hand flew to her mouth. She had never imagined her mother capable of such an act of voluntary contrition. Her eyes darted to her grandfather’s face, wondering if he understood the true significance of the gesture.
But somehow he did. A glow lit up his face, like that of a man at the mountaintop welcoming the dawn. He got to his feet, an oak standing beside the willow. He pulled her to him and enfolded her in his arms. “Don’t you know, Sayaka,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, “that I’ve always loved you as my own daughter. Nothing could ever change that. All that stands between us has been my unwillingness to admit it.”
Elly averted her gaze, her vision blurring. Her presence suddenly felt rude and intrusive. She slipped through the barn doors. The air was sharp and cold against her face. She shook the tears from her eyes, walked to the fence, and folded her arms on the rail. Uncle Martin was in the center of the paddock with the horse at the end of the longe lines. Now and then he crouched down to examine the horse’s gait.
“Uncle Martin!” Elly called out. “It’s time for dinner!”
He nodded. “Whoa, there,” he said to the horse. He unclipped the lines and sent the horse off with a friendly swat on the flank.
She heard the barn door swing open. Her mother joined her at the railing. “Did you say it was time for dinner?”
“Yeah, Grandma sent me out to get you.”
Her grandfather met Martin at the gate. “Let me put that away,” he said, taking the longe lines.
“Seems to be favoring the right fore,” Martin said. “Nothing more than a bruised frog, I’d say.”
“Well,” Sayaka said, affectionately stroking her daughter’s hair, “we’d better not keep everybody waiting.”
Elly nodded, then buried her head against her mother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, her voice muffled by the coat.
“Sorry about what?”
“Getting married without telling you.”
“Oh, Elly. That’s nothing to be sorry about. Don’t ever regret love. And just as importantly, live your life so you don’t have to regret the love you walked past time after time, but were too stubborn to acknowledge was there.” She brushed the bangs from her daughter’s face and smiled.
Grandpa Packard latched the barn doors. Elly grabbed his hand. Holding her mother’s in her right, they walked back to the house.