Only Uni (44 page)

Her mother started at the sudden physical affection. She hesitated, then awkwardly patted Trish’s shoulder. “Eat up.” She extricated herself and bustled away to poke her head out the back door. “Dad! Dinner’s ready.” She filled a glass with juice and set it before Trish. “Why couldn’t you join us for dinner last night instead? One of the aunties brought over shrimp
tempura
.”

Aw, she’d missed deep-fried shrimp? Shucks. Not that she could eat shrimp right now, thanks to baby. “I volunteer at the Pregnancy Crisis Center on Tuesday nights.”

Mom’s eyes got as big as
musubi
rice balls. “You do?”

“Relax, Mom. This was before I found out. Ironic, huh?”

Mom bustled back to the kitchen. She thought she heard her mutter, “You can say that again.”

“I, uh . . . told them last night.” Griselle had squeezed her hand so hard, she thought she’d cracked a few bones.

“That’s probably good.” Mom slid two more plates of food onto the table as Dad walked in the back door.

After a staid dinner, punctuated by Dad’s complaints about the broken lawn mower, the doorbell rang. Trish opened the door to Mrs. Choi.

“Hello, Trish dear. Oh, you must be Mr. and Mrs. Sakai. Hello, I’m Mrs. Choi, from Trish’s church.”

“Hi, Mrs. Choi. Did you come all this way to deliver my mail? You only had to forward it — ”

“Oh no, dear, I didn’t bring the mail. I brought something for you.” She held out a bank draft with a triumphant smile.

Trish caught a glimpse of the amount. Astronomical. “What’s that for?” She straightened her back and kept her arms at her sides. She didn’t dare touch it. Once she touched it, she’d never get Mrs. Choi to take it back, and she had a feeling she knew why she’d brought it.

“I got George to reimburse me for the amount we paid for your repair costs, but this is additional for your labor.”

“Labor? But Mrs. Choi, I stayed there rent-free.”

“You did so much work, and then you had three days’ notice to leave.” Mrs. Choi’s face wrinkled like a shar-pei dog. “I’m so embarrassed by all the trouble this entire thing has caused you. Please, take it.”

“No, Mrs. Choi, I couldn’t.” Not with Trish’s
mother
standing right next to her. If she did something so rude as to accept this, she’d never hear the end of it:
Oh, what kind of a daughter did I raise? Have you no respect for your elders? How could you accept that check? So discourteous. Oh, this generation is so bad-mannered.

“Trish, I insist.”

“No, Mrs. Choi. I appreciate the gesture, but I couldn’t. You take it. You did so much for me.”

“No, I got you involved in that house in the first place. You deserve this.” Mrs. Choi attempted to grab Trish’s hand and shove the check in it, but she snatched her limb away.

“No, Mrs. Choi. I’m serious, you should take it.” The older woman tried to shove the check in Trish’s front jeans pocket, but she scooted backward and hid behind her father. “You provided a place for me to stay rent-free.”

Disappointment etched into her face, Mrs. Choi lowered her hand. However, Trish’s mother beamed her supreme pleasure that her daughter had evaded the check. “Mrs. Choi, won’t you stay for a while? We’re eating dessert. I have hot green tea. Would you like some?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t — ”

“Oh, but I insist — ”

“No, I couldn’t impose — ”

“Oh, it’s no imposition.”

“Oh. Thank you, I’d love some.”

Trish followed her mom into the kitchen, but felt a tug at her back pocket.

“No, Mrs. Choi, you keep it.” She removed the crumpled draft and held it out to her, but the woman clasped her hands in front of her ample stomach, turned her head sideways, and stared at the wall. Trish marched to Mrs. Choi’s handbag, which had been left by the door, and dropped it in.

She wasn’t too worried about losing that money — and boy, did she need it — because she knew the drill. Mrs. Choi, thinking she was so devious, would slip it into Trish’s jacket pocket for her to find later.

Trish found it in her father’s jacket pocket, because three jackets hung on the coat rack near the front door. She sighed as she fingered the thick paper and traced all those lovely zeros. She’d have loved to see George’s face when Mrs. Choi submitted the “bill.”

Thank You, Lord. And please forgive me for earlier when I was hoping the contractor I’ d arranged to come this week would find his joists rotted through.

She had pulled on her jacket to drive back to Venus’s apartment when her cell phone rang. Uh, oh. “Hi Grandma.”

“I heard something rather surprising about your state of health today.”

Oh, no. “I’m actually feeling rather good — ”

“Are you still at your parents’ house?”

“I’m about to leave — ”

“No, you stay right there. I’m ten minutes away.”

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.

But she hauled off her jacket. She wasn’t about to disobey a direct matriarchal order. She sank into the sofa, biting her cheek.

“Trish?”

“Grandma’s coming, Dad.”

What would she say? Grandma wasn’t going to be happy with Trish, but then again, they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms at Kazuo’s art unveiling at the bank. Would
anyone
sympathize with her that she didn’t want to get back together with Kazuo? Well, maybe the point was moot. Kazuo wouldn’t want her now.

So why was Grandma coming?

Round and round and round. Mom and Dad chatted in the kitchen, cleaning the dishes, while Trish sat on the couch, jiggling her leg, staring at the clock.

Grandma must have been speeding because she got there in eight minutes.

Trish opened the door before she’d even rung the doorbell. “Hi, Grandm — ”

Kazuo loomed in the doorway.

“Aack!” She jumped, feeling like a
kendo
stick had beamed her right in the forehead. She heard her parents come out of the kitchen behind her.

Kazuo took a giant step forward over the threshold, grabbed her, and planted a big kiss right on her gaping mouth.

Yuck, yuck, yuck! His mouth was slimy and hard and disgusting. She slapped at his chest and squirmed in his grip until he let go. She gave him a good shove for extra measure. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought him.” Grandma stepped into the house, nose in the air, choosing to ignore the PDA that had happened not three feet from her.

“You brought Kazuo? Have you become
his
grandmother, too?”

“Trish.” Mom’s voice had that warning in it that usually preceded sending her to her room for a timeout.

Grandma smiled, an evil upturning of scarlet lips that would have made Medusa proud. “I might.”

No. Way.

Kazuo dropped to one knee. “Trish — ”

She backpedaled even as she heard her mother’s sigh of joy. “No. Absolutely not.”

He clasped his hands to his chest and looked up, falling into the throes of artistic vision. Except he looked a little silly since he was still on one knee. “This is the very thing to complete my masterpiece. Marriage with you, my muse. We will forever and truly be one, heart and soul. It will be magnificent. My uncle’s gallery will be known for debuting the most brilliant artist of this century.”

Okay, no delusions of grandeur there. “What about the word
no
did you not understand?”

His eyes blazed dark with passion as he rose to his feet and moved toward her. “We will be alone again, you and I, in our world of artistic freedom and decadent creativity — ”

“That is not appealing and you are making
no
sense. As usual.” She planted her heels, rammed a sword down her spine, and stood her ground. He towered over her, his face inches away, but her basilisk glare prevented him from trying to take more liberties.

Grandma’s voice suddenly came from right at her elbow. “Trish.”

She started and turned away from her staring match with the Clueless Wonder. “Grandma, we already talked about this.”

“Kazuo’s parents love you and they will always take care of you.” Translation:
When Kazuo divorces you, they’ ll ensure you get a nice alimony package and child support for the baby.

“But I’m not marrying them. I’d be marrying him.” She’d rather eat
uni sushi
and gag to death.

“This is an ideal alliance with the bank.”

She knew it would eventually come around to that. “Why me? I have plenty of cousins willing to put up with him.”

“Do you really want to cause embarrassment for your family like this?” Grandma gestured toward her parents, who stood frozen a few feet away. “People will shun your mother. She will lose all her friends.” Marian Sakai, mother of an unwed mother. Trish swallowed. There were lots of unwed mothers.

But very few with grandmothers who owned the largest private bank in Japantown.

Trish bit her lip and glanced at Mom. She was blinking rapidly and clinging rather hard to Dad’s arm.

No, Trish wasn’t going to be guilted into this. This was her entire life. This was doing what God wanted her to do, not what Grandma and her family wanted her to do. “If they won’t be Mom’s friends because I choose not to marry this scumbag, then they aren’t true friends, are they?”

Grandma’s eyes started to glitter in a very unpleasant way. “They’ll boycott Grandma’s bank and bankrupt the family.”

“Now you’re being melodramatic.” As soon as the words flew out of her mouth, Trish’s heart stopped beating for a second or two, then resumed.

She’d smart-mouthed Grandma. She sounded like Lex or Venus. Her, Trish. She never talked back to Grandma, especially when her grandparent had become so agitated that she was speaking of herself in the third person.

Grandma had turned an interesting red-orange color, rather like those Chinese octopus appetizers at wedding banquets.

“I’m having this baby and I’m not marrying him.”

Kazuo’s brow furrowed as if he were just catching on. “Baby?”

The world stopped. She stared at him. He stared back, completely ignorant.

She rounded on Grandma in amazement. “You mean you didn’t tell him?”

“Ah . . .” Grandma’s mouth worked open and closed. Trish couldn’t believe it. Grandma was speechless.

And Trish had her trump card. She turned on him for the attack. “Yes, Kazuo, I’m carrying your
baby.
”

He visibly flinched at the word.

“Do you really want a
baby
around your studio? Playing with your paints? Ruining your artwork? Chewing on your brushes? Your apartment isn’t exactly
baby
-proof. And there’s no way I’m letting you get out of changing the
baby’s
dirty diapers — do you know how much they
smell?
— and burping the
baby
so she upchucks all over your shirts, and did you know that
babies
always start screaming and wailing right when you want to watch TV, like, oh, Korean soap operas?”

He’d turned pale as she pressed him with mutilated brushes, dirty diapers, and slobbery burping, but when she threatened his K-drama watching, he balked. “No K-dramas? I cannot miss my K-dramas.”

“Trish, stop scaring him. I’m sure his apartment is fine and he’d make a wonderful father.” But even Grandma didn’t sound so sure.

Kazuo was even less sure. In fact, he’d turned the color of Elmer’s glue and was inching backward toward the door. She’d been right — no way would he want a baby.

Now she only had Grandma to deal with. Trish crossed her arms. “Grandma, this is my decision to make.”

“Not if it influences the rest of your family.”

“Well, my family supports me.” Trish gestured to her parents. They gave her bewildered looks. Her chest tightened.

She gestured at them again, widening her eyes at them. They finally nodded in response, and she loosed a breath.

Grandma’s eyes narrowed, but she couldn’t really fire her own son, especially when he was so popular with the bank’s wealthier clients. “If you do not marry Kazuo, Grandma will
not
support you.” She hmphed and crossed her arms.

Trish stared her down. “I’ll have this baby on my own, with or without you. I don’t need your permission to do anything in my life, Grandma.”

She deepened her fierce frown.

“What’ll you say when your friends ask you how Trish’s baby is, and you can’t answer them?”

Grandma visibly faltered.

“I’m sure it’ll look so good when people notice my own grandmother, a pillar in the Japanese community, won’t visit her great-grandchild.”

Grandma shifted into hasty retreat. “No, no. You misunderstood. As if Grandma would abandon you.” She whirled toward the door so fast, Trish blinked, and Grandma was already turning the knob.

Trish’s chest swelled. So this was how Mel Gibson — er, William Wallace felt when the English were vanquished. Victor. Conqueror. Master and commander —

Grandma wasn’t finished. She looked back at Trish, her lips pulled into a highly miffed line. “At the very least, you could be a
good grand daughter
for a change and find some nice boy who’ll marry you, baby or not.” It sounded more peevish than threatening. Grandma exited with a flourish.