Southland. Nina Revoyr
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a few words and then fell silent again, and Lois thought, watching them, not for the first time, that she never wanted to marry. Marriage, to her, meant what her parents had—steadiness, like a small efficient business. Her parents never fought, but they didn’t hug either, or talk about anything that wasn’t related to the family or work. She knew that love could be more than that—more like Christy Hara and John Oyama from high school, who would vanish into Christy’s house in the afternoon and come out an hour later looking happy and relaxed; or like Dexter Coleman’s parents, who lived together but had never married, and who still cooked for each other, and sang songs together, and yelled, “Hey, baby!” when they met on the street.
Steadiness, in any form, was stifling to her. She liked the extreme, the inexplicable, the ridiculous and evil. She liked her Grandma and Grandpa Takayas’ stories of the hustlers and pimps they served in the old days in Little Tokyo; of the gambling house where they wouldn’t let Mary make deliveries because of the desperate, devious men and shady women. She liked their stories of nine-month winters and planting rice on early mornings in Japan, and her grandmother Sakai’s tales of surviving on locusts, fried for crispness or boiled for soup. They were citizens now, all of them, transformed into Americans at the mass naturalization ceremony at the Hollywood Bowl in ’54, but to Lois their stories of old Japan were like the best kind of fairy tales—fantastical, with familiar elements and odd but recognizable characters.
During the second set, Lois’s attention wandered. She looked around at all the well-dressed husbands and wives, the tiny grandmothers with their plain, drab Western clothes and their bright, patterned Japanese fans. She watched a couple of bored-looking wives glance over at her father, who she knew was handsomer than any Gardena man. A better father, too, she believed. He was at the store every night until eight or nine, but then he was always at home, telling stories, teasing his daughters, never going out for drinks or card games like the other Nisei fathers she knew. He even took her to baseball games sometimes at Dodger Stadium, and before that, when the team had just moved out from Brooklyn, right over at the Olympic Coliseum. Rose, of course, wasn’t interested in baseball, but once or twice a summer, Frank and his friend Victor gathered a big group of kids and drove them all up to a game. Lois loved being around the men, for any reason—the deep sweet smell of Victor’s pipe, the easy way her father laughed when they sat on the stoop of Victor’s house, always made her feel secure. The two of them together were a sight to see, especially her father’s friend—all the women in the neighborhood, from fifteen to fifty, threw more sway in their hips, more spice and honey in their voices, when Victor Conway came around.
At the break between the second and third sets—Stephanie Ikeda had taken the second set 6-3—Lois asked her mother where the bathroom was. Mary pointed at a small tan building about a hundred feet away from the court. “Can’t you wait?” she asked. Lois said that she couldn’t. “Hurry back,” her mother said.
Lois barely made it to the bathroom in time, and when she was done, she had no desire to get back to the stands. So she dawdled, distracted by a game of volleyball; by a picnic; by a particularly proud and vocal robin. Every so often she looked over at the tennis court and saw the slim white-clad bodies flitting around on the sea-green concrete. When she was about thirty feet away, a small golden puppy came up to her, dragging a leather leash. Lois crouched down to greet her. The dog jumped up, put its front paws on her shoulders, and thoroughly washed her face with its tongue. The owner appeared soon after and disengaged the leash, saying that Lois could play with her for a while. So Lois skipped around, leading the dog in a circle, pretending it was hers. She could hear the announcer over at the court saying the set was tied 5-5. Lois knew she should see the end of the match, so she started back over to the court, but the puppy, ignoring its owner, continued to follow her. Then the dog caught sight of the tennis ball. Rose was bouncing it, preparing to serve, and the puppy, following some ancient, blood-deep impulse, took off toward the court at a sprint. “Wait!” Lois yelled after her, but it was Rose who turned, upon completing her serve, and so she completely missed her opponent’s return. Worse, the ball skittered off her end of the court and the puppy pounced on it, growling happily. The entire crowd burst into laughter. Rose went after her, but the dog commenced a game of keep-away, getting close to Rose, then jumping back again, Rose lunging in desperation. The crowd continued to laugh, and Rose to chase, until finally the owner appeared and grabbed the dog by the collar. He pried the ball loose from the puppy’s jaws and handed it sheepishly back to Rose. She grimaced at the thing, which was now covered with dirt and saliva, and then glared at Lois, who was standing to the side of the crowd, trying hard to disappear. Rose went back to the court, took out a new ball, and attempted to regain her composure, and the crowd’s laughter quieted down to a still-amused titter. The last point had put Rose down 30-40, and now, distracted, she double-faulted. It was 5-6. Stephanie Ikeda had serve, and Rose never recovered. She dropped the last game, love-40, and lost the match in three sets.
On the car ride home, Lois slumped in the back seat and suffered yet another berating from her sister and mother. Rose was almost hysterical, complaining to her parents about how Lois was a brat, and a bad student, and she was trying to ruin her life, and Mary scolded Lois for spoiling her sister’s day. Lois felt small, the bad daughter. Even her grandmother refused to look at her. But then, in the middle of this barrage, she caught Frank’s eye in the rearview mirror. He’d laughed right along with the rest of the crowd when the puppy went after the ball. Now Lois saw that his eyes were still laughing, despite his immobile face. He looked at her in the rearview mirror, not adding to the din of voices. Then he winked. And in that moment, as they drove up Crenshaw and back toward their house, although she didn’t say anything or even return the gesture, she felt the weight of everyone else’s fury lift off her, and became her father’s child.
DRIVING INTO her garage that night, after spending the day with Lois, was like walking into open arms. Jackie loved her apartment, a top unit in a four-plex that had been built in the 1920s. All the buildings on this block were old and solid—although her books had fallen off their shelves in the quake and the refrigerator had shuffled out into the middle of the kitchen, the structure itself had withstood the earth’s violence. The unit had a refinished hardwood floor; the furniture was simple and elegant. She’d lived in this apartment all through law school, and while she could have found a place much closer to campus, it seemed like too much trouble to move—especially since, in a few more months, she’d be able to afford a much nicer place. The real reason Jackie had stayed here, though, was Laura. It seemed to Jackie that if she moved at all, she should be getting a place with her girlfriend—they’d been together now for almost three years. But something in the strange, shifting nature of their relationship did not make this an automatic choice. For the last year or so they’d been poised at the edge of something—Jackie didn’t know exactly what. And any big actions or decisions needed to wait until they fell, decisively, one way or the other.
When she got inside, the first thing she saw was the red light of the answering machine, flashing three times, stopping, flashing again, as if sending out a distress signal. She flopped down on the recliner and looked at her watch. It was just before six. With a feeling that was equal parts anticipation and dread, she pressed the “play messages” button.
The first message was from Laura, at 1:30, checking in. The next was from Rebecca, a friend from law school. She was in Sacramento, interviewing for a public interest job, and she wanted copies of the notes that Jackie would be taking in their Tax Law class on Monday. The third, again, was Laura, this time sounding tired and just short of impatient. “Jackie, it’s me again. It’s 5:45. I was thinking you’d be back by now, but…I don’t know. Anyway, give me a call when you get in.”
Jackie picked up the phone, and as the answering machine rewound she dialed her girlfriend’s number. She half-hoped that Laura would be out somewhere; she needed some time to recover. your last call.” But Laura picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, I’m home,” Jackie informed her. “I must have just missed
“Hi.