with a sigh, how pleased he would have been to see Hiroshi rising up through the ranks of academia, dispelling any vestige of doubt that Daidai might not be doing the right thing in giving up her career to plan a family, because without family there was no future, and without a future what did they have to look forward to?
It was late in the evening when they dropped Mako off. Daidai watched from the backseat as Hiroshi rushed around from the driver’s side to open the passenger door, holding his elbow out to escort Mako up the driveway to the front door, and inserted her house key into the lock, knowing Mako had trouble with her eyesight at night. Seeing the interior light flash on as she reseated herself in her mother’s place, Daidai nodded in approval at her husband’s flawless performance.
“Do you know how much I appreciate you?” she said as he belted himself in for the drive home.
“I appreciate you, too,” he said, reaching across the gearshift to kiss her.
The drive back to the Valley took twice as long as it normally did, with everyone returning home from their weekend pleasures. Worried about the toll all the activity might take on her husband, Daidai was surprised on Monday morning when Hiroshi hopped out of bed and left the apartment singing. He returned at the end of the day with flowers in hand: three burnt-orange gerberas collected in a Ball jar, tied with a purple bow, attached to which was a thankyou, addressed to her, that read, I thought these would look good with your name.
Clever Satsuki—though she didn’t know Daidai had chosen her name randomly at the age of three. Carolyn Ann had been her given name. Her mother had decided on that one, which she’d later been told she’d rejected in full and even abbreviated versions. She would not respond to Carolyn, or to Carrie or Ann, or to Lynn or Annie. For no apparent reason, she’d answer only to Daidai. It wasn’t until much later that she learned that the name she’d chosen for herself translated in Japanese to mean “bitter orange.” But perhaps she’d been predisposed to liking the nickname Daidai because orange turned out to be her favorite color. And then along came vibrant Satsuki and her gift of the flowers.
“I guess she wants to be friends with you,” Hiroshi teased.
“She wants to use me to get closer to you,” Daidai teased back.
“Can’t you just accept the gesture without prejudice, as an offer of friendship? Besides, aren’t gerberas your favorite?”
Hiroshi was right about her fondness for gerberas, but these looked like the antennae of some gigantic species of insect, reaching into the air for purchase, as if they’d come looking for something, or signifying something. Daidai felt certain of that and was perturbed by Hiroshi’s insistence that they and their bearer be viewed as innocent. “If Satsuki wanted to be my friend, she could have delivered the flowers to me herself. She knew where to find me.”
Hiroshi shrugged, a sign Daidai construed as his tacit acceptance of what she’d said—that, of course, she’d been right. Satsuki hadn’t brought the flowers to her, she’d brought them to him. Imagining the scenario one step further, Daidai saw the grad student showing up at her husband’s office, half hidden behind the doorframe, flattering him with her stated desire not to interrupt, even though she’d shown up precisely to do just that.
As if to confirm that she’d imagined correctly, Hiroshi sat across the kitchen dog-faced, suggesting that of the three he might be the only innocent one: Hiroshi, steadfast and trustworthy in his affections, his brand of linearity a big part of why she’d married him. But after five years of marriage, he was no longer the person he’d been. Her groin still ached from his roughness with her two nights earlier, and the ache should have informed her new understanding of him.
But instead of feeling that she’d been wronged, she felt remorse. Her husband’s passing interest in one of his students didn’t justify her scrutiny, and she well realized that the problem could be hers alone. Without her own work to occupy her thoughts, she’d grown anxious. She needed to relax. Turning her attention back to the flowers, she admired them anew, each stem arching upward to show off its own personality.
For nearly a week, the burnt-orange gerberas added a splash of color to the windowsill. Daidai changed their water daily until the morning she woke to find the last blossom overturned. That same day, in the produce section of Whole Foods, while she bagged Persian cucumbers for a recipe Hiroshi wanted to try, a hand with slender fingers tipped with French-manicured nails held up a Japanese pickling cucumber for her to inspect. “These are better,” the bearer of the cucumber said.
Daidai laughed at the pimply proboscis, made all the more grotesque by Satsuki’s delicate fingers. “What are you doing here, Satsuki?”
“Where else do you shop?” She smiled demurely.
Daidai replayed the question twice before answering, her attention shifting from the whiteness of the woman’s fingers to her impressively shiny teeth. “I tried those once,” she said, still not understanding. “They’re bitter.”
“That’s because they’re for pickling!” Satsuki laughed, tossing the spiny cucumber into the batch of slender, darker green ones Daidai had been sorting through.
Satsuki gave no advanced warning before showing up the next afternoon, this time on the doorstep carrying a heavy, round stone, which she claimed to have brought with her from Japan. Where just the day before Daidai had thrown out the flowers, believing Satsuki’s stint in the apartment over, now the woman had returned with a small boulder, presenting what seemed to be yet another puzzle. Even beyond that, wasn’t it strange for a grad student to show up unannounced at her professor’s apartment? Was there a different code of etiquette in Japan, one that prevented Satsuki from understanding this?
Daidai followed Satsuki into the kitchen, where she rolled the stone onto the countertop. “I’ll need it back, but I want you to use it,” she said, blotting a line of sweat from above her lip with her tongue. Out of breath, perhaps from the stairs, still she looked lovely with her eyes alight, her skin flushed and flawless, her fingers visibly trembling.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what this is for.” Daidai turned from her observation of Satsuki to the stone.
“Its weight will speed up the pickling process.”
“Oh, of course.” Hadn’t her mother used a similar stone for pickling vegetables? Daidai recalled the exchange at Whole Foods the day before while she rummaged through the vegetable bin for the cucumbers, embarrassed to have missed her cue.
That afternoon, Satsuki demonstrated in quick, even strokes of the knife her prowess as a chef, transferring the thinly sliced cucumbers to a bowl, then mixing them with salt using her bare hands. She talked as she worked, glancing up to make eye contact when she wished to emphasize a point. The weather had turned fine in the week since the party, yet a memory of heat lingered in the kitchen.
The stated purpose of her return three days later was to check on the pickling process. Lifting the stone and the plate beneath it, she pinched a sample and declared the batch of Japanese-style pickles ready for consumption. Hiroshi arrived home from campus to the table being set for otsukemono, which was served over hot rice with a cup of genmai tea. Pleased with the meal, he ventured into the kitchen for a refill of water and returned palming the pickling stone like a football. “Where’d this come from?” he asked, apparently having not noticed that it had sat on the countertop for three days.
“I brought it with me from Japan.” The question had been asked of Daidai, but Satsuki addressed Hiroshi directly.
“Sansen ishi. Ii desu
