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Three Short Stories by Diane Payne. (Page 3)

Foreign Affairs.

 

He comes to the door bearing gifts, gifts for my mother, not me, nor for my father who's sitting in his chair drinking beer, imagining himself as a fatherly Archie Bunker home on a Saturday night, ready to meet his daughter's date. He wasn't home the first time Yugi appeared with a dozen roses for my mother, and a smaller bouquet for me.

Yugi thanked my mother for letting him take me on a date. I don't know if my mother ever received flowers from our father. "He's just trying to show off. Damn Jap," he said after realizing there were flowers in the house. "Probably thinks he's better than us."

Worried this college student would lure their high-school daughter to Japan, my dad stays home until Yugi arrives for our second date. When Yugi gives my mother a vase from his family's shop in Japan, my father whines something about not getting a gift, something Yugi misses. But he doesn't miss it when my father remains seated in his chair and bellows, "What do you think of World War Two? You know, the Nips losing and all that." Yugi looks at me nervously, and I shove him to the door, where he has a taxi waiting, a taxi, no one used a taxi for dating, but he wants to take me somewhere special, somewhere we can't reach by walking, somewhere far from my father and his orange chair, and my mother's fears of me disappearing to Japan, to a world I can only imagine. Sitting in the taxi, watching our unpainted house disappear, I look at Yugi and realize my home is a world he had only imagined, until he knocked at our door. Sitting in the taxi, watching our unpainted house disappear, he's got to be wondering if it's worth knocking on our door.

 

 

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