Queen of Love

Chapter 34

“Whatdoyoumean she took off with hardly a verbal Dear John letter?” Mari pushed a rusty bicycle from the station nearest their parents’ house. After promising their father she would take a look at his squeaky bike, Mari tested its endurance by walking it down to the station to pick up her sister and walk her back to the main house. Raindrops threatened to fall on their heads. All around them, housewives, students, and the elderly threatened to open their plastic umbrellas at any moment. “Che. I thought she was classier than that.”

The late spring humidity didn’t usually bother Aya, but she tugged on her cotton button-up in the hopes her sweat would evaporate before she overheated. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” she grumbled. “She had been cagey after the hack.”

Mari blushed and cleared her throat.

“Please don’t tell me you…”

“I’ve seen nothing! It’s bad enough I know about it!”

“Mou. If Mom or Dad bring it up today, I’ll fucking die.”

“Dad has already forgotten it, I’m sure. Mom would never directly talk about it.” Mari stopped a few meters short of the family house. She tested the front wheel of the bicycle, cringing when it gasped for life. “She’ll be her usual passive-aggressive self and… hora!”

The topic was dropped the moment Mari discovered her children in the middle of the one-lane street, playing a game of chicken with a passing car. Hisa bent over and smacked her bottom as the old man leaned out of his driver-side window and shouted at both children. Sho ran up and hit his door. The old man was so irate that he turned red in the cheeks.

Aya bypassed the whole scene while Mari wrangled her kids and apologized profusely to the old uncle who was simply trying to get to his appointment. Not that Aya was in a hurry to go inside her parents’ house. She’d dreaded this weekend dinner since the hack, and it was only worse now that Genevieve had been gone for two weeks.

Rika barely acknowledged her when Aya entered and removed her shoes in the genkan. Her father gave a noncommittal wave from the living room, where he watched old baseball highlights on cable. Yomiuri Giants. Great. Aya had almost forgotten about Toumo and his weird rant from behind his bar. That baseball cap now haunted her memories.

“Here.” The moment Aya sat at the table, her mother presented her with small plates of salted edamame and freshly made pork gyoza. While the scents were appetizing, Aya jerked back in surprise: her mother seldom gave her such attention without first running her through a list of reasons why she was a disappointment. “Ara, you look ten years older. Eat some food. You’re making me feel old.”

The screams of children filtered through the open living room window. Soon came Mari’s despondent cry of motherhood. Instead of assuming a tragedy had occurred, everyone in the house went about their business. Two seconds later, Mari marched by the window with a kid under each arm and a rusty bike crashing at her feet. I’d kill to have her problems right now. “Shouldn’t you be feeding them instead?” Aya asked her mother.

“Those kids eat too much. Don’t tell Mari I said that, but it’s true.”

“I thought they were growing?”

Rika scoffed with a flap of her hand. “You need to eat. Soon you’ll be so skinny everyone will wonder if you’re sick. You think I want to field those kinds of questions? I’m already surrounded by pity and whispers. Half of the neighbors have seen your breasts.”

Aya grabbed a pair of lacquered chopsticks and grabbed edamame. “Un. I’m sure they have, the perverts.”

“Sou. Speaking of perverts…” Rika lowered her voice. “You didn’t get this from me.”

“So, what?” Aya didn’t have the patience for her mother’s commentary. Maybe other daughters were likely to bow their heads and take whatever came to them with an apologetic sigh, but Aya had long learned that was the fast track to headaches with her mother. Why bother? “Did I get it from Dad? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t believe what comes out of your mouth sometimes. Who raised you? Bonobos?”

Rika returned to the kitchen. Mari burst through the front door, dropping her giggling children in the genkan. “Who raised you!” she crowed. “Monkeys?”

I never want to hear she’s nothing like Mom ever again.

“Here.” Rika returned with a small plate of homemade kimchi. “It’ll make the fried stuff go down easier.”

“I know how kimchi works,” Aya muttered, while her father hooted at a caught flyball. “I swear to God…”

While the kids crowded around Grandpa, who was more than happy to wrap his arms around them and tell them all about baseball, Mari joined her sister at the table and helped herself to some of the gyoza. “Nice!” she said with a thumbs up to her mother in the kitchen. “I still can’t make these as good as you do.”

“Because you’re a terrible cook,” Rika said.

Mari lowered her head toward Aya. “How’s it going?”

“She’s giving me food.”

“Oof. She’s going the ‘I don’t want people asking me if you’re sick’ route.”

Aya shrugged. “Ki ni shinai.”