Just Like Honey, page 28
33.
Faintly warm
“I BROUGHT YOU DUMPLINGS from House of Hong, even though only people who show up for dim sum deserve dumplings. You’re lucky I like you.”
Veronica held out a grocery bag, then flopped down on the sofa. “You also get a preview issue of Red Flag Number Three plus the new promo t-shirt. Because what I’m missing in sales can only be made up by advertising on your chest.”
“Thanks.” Ryan fished the takeout containers of dumplings from the bag. “Who was there?”
“Kim. Cynthia. Miranda showed up and asked about you. Paul. Deb. Angie. Steven and Shane came. I finally got to meet Bash. I tried to keep him forever, but Shane got pretty weird about Bash having to go home with him. But it’s okay. Bash told me I reminded him of his cousin, so I’m pretty sure that means that I have an in for future family gatherings.”
“You invited Steven and Shane to artists’ brunch? Since when are you hanging out with them?” There weren’t chopsticks in the bag, so Ryan ate a dumpling with his fingers. They were still faintly warm. And delicious.
“Shane’s an artist even if he insists on calling himself a craftsman, but I just offered at the funeral. Pretty sure they only came because they were hoping you’d be there. Have you even left the house this week?”
“Work. For a couple of days. They’d already put me back on sales shifts, so it’s not hard to get people to cover those. Plus, I still had a few days off I never used when my hand was broken. I needed more time.”
“Can’t sit around the house feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I haven’t been.”
“I’m gonna need proof.”
“Come on then.” Ryan led the way to his studio.
Two incomplete paintings leaned against the shelf, with the photos that inspired them pinned above them. The painting of Gramma was there, finished. A fourth painting was on the easel, with only the under-painted umber-wash sketch and skin colors done.
The first photograph, of three somber teenage girls in prom dresses and giant 1950s hairstyles, was now painted in the style of the Old Dutch Masters, mirroring their somber expressions, their dresses a dark-pink satin matching the tone of the original painting style. The faces and dresses were done in fine detail, the background unfinished beyond smears of base colors. Compelled to paint these, Ryan kept starting new ones before he got very far on the previous ones.
In the second painting, three guys stood in front of a store at the corner of Weller Street and Seventh in Chinatown, some time in the 1970s. Done in a style reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth, cars exchanged for horses and carriages and the clothing timeless, like it could have been from 1900 or 1950. Ryan left the kanji characters on the store signs, and the building showed no specific sign of modernity.
On the easel, barely begun, was a young, just-married couple in front of a church. When it was done, the background would be a farm instead of Ryan’s neighborhood, the style emulating Grant Wood closely enough that people would get it.
Ryan finished the first container of dumplings while Veronica scrutinized the paintings.
“These are fucking incredible, Ry. I’ve never seen you do anything like this. I knew you could paint like this, but not original works like this.”
He nodded. Each was sketched and painted in an obsessive haze that blocked out everything else. He failed to finish the painting of Gramma in time to show it at the funeral. That didn’t matter. She’d never see it, so everyone else could wait too.
“Are you going to put these in Eli’s show?”
“No. I’m going to show those.” The paintings of Ben were lined up under the studio window, slightly obstructed by the easel and the stool.
After he’d finished the painting of Gramma, the next thing he finished was the one of Ben that he’d started on the morning of that awful fight. A couple others of Ben were sketched out. It worked fine to have Ben pretend he wasn’t aware of Ryan, though Ryan caught him truly unaware once. But those were sidelined by his obsession with making pictures based on Gramma’s photos.
Veronica sat down on the floor in front of the paintings of Ben, studying each one.
She looked back over her shoulder. “You already had these done.” It wasn’t a question.
“Most of them. I’ve been working on them on the side for a while when I wasn’t satisfied with other stuff.”
“I hope you feel satisfied now. These are perfect for the show. Wish you’d told me these were laying around. I wouldn’t have harassed you so much about getting other stuff up.”
She studied them again. Ryan opened the second container of dumplings. Shu mai. Not warm any more. Still delicious. Veronica got up and stopped at the drafting table, where a few of the sumi-e pictures were lined up.
“Are you going to get these finished, too?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I need to do these right now.” He pointed at the three unfinished canvases.
“You’re a marvel,” Veronica said.
“Spare me your pity.” Ryan smiled around the dumpling he was chewing. It was nice to show his work to someone who got it. But he didn’t need Veronica getting sentimentally weird.
“Fine, then tell me what’s got you so hyped up to paint again, little brother. And don’t tell me it’s because you’re miserable. I don’t have it in me to wage a whole campaign against that bullshit again.”
Ryan shook his head, still smiling. This was the Veronica he wanted. “I started painting before Gramma died. But she was the reason for it. Come on I’ll show you. In the living room.”
She followed him to the kitchen, where he left the rest of the shu mai and washed his hands. In the living room, the boxes of his grandmother’s photographs were under the coffee table for easy access. He opened a box and handed a stack of pictures to Veronica.
“Gramma took these. She gave them to me about ten days before she died.”
Veronica treated them with the honor they deserved, going through them carefully. Ryan took his own stack. They went through them silently, each exchanging single pictures when they found one important or interesting enough that the other needed to see, too. Ryan made careful notes of which ones Veronica felt needed to be shared with him.
In the middle of the second box, the one Ryan had not yet sorted through, in a stack of brightly colored images from the late 1970s, an older, square black-and-white photograph fell out of the pictures Ryan was flipping through. It said nothing on the back. The front was a tiny headstone that read:
IKEDA Henry Hikaru 1943
The Lord needed our angel in Heaven
It wasn’t a sentiment Ryan expected from his grandmother, but Mrs. Hino said she and her husband had moved the grave when the cemetery at Minidoka was cleared. The picture gave no indication of where this was.
“Are you okay?”
Ryan wiped the tears away with his sleeve. Veronica would understand, but Ryan wasn’t ready to share.
“Yeah, always hard to look at some of these.”
Did Gramma forget this picture was in here? Or did she know when she handed them over he’d never have a chance to ask?
“I bet. Thanks for showing them to me.”
Maybe it was easier with Veronica here, with whom he didn’t have to share anything, but blocking the rising tide of sorrow at what was lost with his grandmother was an intense relief. Like taking this terrible minute and rising above it, at least until he was alone, was an accomplishment he couldn’t have managed the previous week. His grief was raw, but he pushed through for a few minutes.
Ryan tucked the discovered picture under a magazine on the coffee table when he put the rest back in the box.
Veronica flopped back. “Before the war, your grandmother probably never even crossed Jackson Street. But, boy, she mixed it up after.”
It was hard to refocus from that tiny uncle who never drew a breath. The words Veronica strung together didn’t mean anything. “What?”
“You know, Japantown on one side and Chinatown on the other. How people joke that none of the older people would cross? The kids did the shopping if a Chinese grandmother wanted something from a Japanese market?”
“I never heard that, but then she didn’t talk much about the past at all.” The permanent black knot in Ryan’s chest clenched at one more missed story, so many lost pieces of the past. But on this day, he’d found one.
“Whatever happened during and after the war, your grandmother clearly embraced everyone in the community. These pictures are amazing. She’s like the Helen Levitt of the International District. You need to do something with these photographs.”
Do something with them? Annoyance punctured Ryan’s anguish over lost family, lost tales. He wasn’t letting go of this last tie to her. “I am doing something with them. I’m painting them.”
“But you can’t paint all of them. These need to get out there into the world.”
“I don’t want to donate them.” Ryan’s voice cracked. “I need them.”
Veronica put a hand on his shoulder. “I get it. I got ahead of myself. But these are important to everybody. Maybe they’d mean even more to you if you shared them. Not like now, but sometime. Later.”
“How?”
“Isn’t this what we went to school for, to get our stuff out there into the world? Your grandmother was an artist worthy of being seen by everyone. When you’re ready, I’ll help you get her view of the world out there.”
◊
Ryan clutched Ben’s hand as they waited to cross the street toward Ivar’s Salmon House. “I’m nervous.”
“Nervous to have dinner with your parents? We’ve eaten with them a dozen times in the past couple weeks.”
“It was surprisingly hard to get them to agree to come out. You’d think after two weeks of being at home, greeting neighbors and eating church potluck food, they’d be happy to be away from that place. But it took some convincing to get them to do it.”
“Everybody grieves differently, Sunshine. Just going to take time for all of you.”
Ben was right, and it eased Ryan’s guilt over for how glad he was to not be going to his parent’s house tonight. At his own house, at work, out in the world, he could forget, if only for a minute, that Gramma was dead. But her absence in his parent’s house was constant.
While they waited for the hostess, Ryan said, “I want them on board with this. I’m nervous because I’m not good at asking for help.”
“You aren’t? News to me.” Ben’s cheeks were flushed with cold and his eyes sparkled with the tease.
“Fuck you.”
“Is that any way to talk in a nice restaurant?”
The desire to poke, kiss, and thank Ben drove down Ryan’s tension. It was just dinner. It was a nice idea; his parents would be as eager to help as he was to get it going.
His parents waited in a booth right at the window overlooking the whole of Lake Union.
Mary got up and hugged and kissed both of them. Since the funeral, she’d be more affectionate than ever in his entire life.
“Ryan. Ben.” Arthur greeted them as they sat down.
Tension buzzed in Ryan’s chest again. The restaurant was a bad idea. His parents both lacked the casual comfort they’d have in their own kitchen.
“Thanks for coming out,” Ryan said.
They both nodded, but neither of them tried to make conversation. Ryan studied his menu. There was nothing else to do in the awkward silence, though he knew what he was ordering before they even left the house.
“What do you guys usually get here?” Ben asked, a calm, easy smile on his face.
“Oh, everything’s good,” Mary said.
“Clam chowder.” Arthur didn’t look up from his menu.
“The view is incredible. I’ve never been here before. Though, of course, I’ve heard people talk about it. A Seattle institution and all.” Ben laid his menu across his plate and looked out the window at water as grey as the sky in the evening light. On the far side of Lake Union, the city was starting to light up.
Ben carrying the conversation was one more thing he’d stepped up for. They were here that night because of Ben’s idea after learning that Veronica had suggested Ryan should do more with Gramma’s photos. The tombstone photo Ryan had discovered the day before was in his shirt pocket, over his heart, waiting for him to discover what to do with it.
“We came here for both of Ryan’s graduations.” Mary smiled and patted her husband’s hand. He sighed and tossed his menu aside.
Ivar’s Salmon House was a fixture of Ryan’s childhood. The place they went for special occasions. Now it wasn’t as fancy as he remembered from childhood, but familiar enough to be comfortable. Across Lake Union, city lights sparked. The sky was clear through downtown towards Puget Sound.
When the waiter came for their drink order, Arthur said everybody was ready to order food, and so they did. Nobody had a cocktail. Ben had to drive and then work in the morning. Ryan never felt comfortable doing it with his parents at the table, since they so rarely drank.
Again, Ben filled the silence. “The decor in here is amazing. I’m going to have to bring clients here when I’m trying to give them a Pacific Northwest experience.” Hand-carved canoes and traditional local native art hung on the walls in a strange contrast to the 1960s-style booths and white tablecloths.
No one replied.
No time like the present, even though Ryan couldn’t get a handle on his father’s weird mood.
“Ben and I were talking last night. We have an idea we hope you guys can help with.”
“Are you still looking for jobs?” Arthur asked.
“No, this is about something else. I want to do a special memorial for Gramma.”
“We already had a funeral,” Arthur said. “What more do you need to do?”
Under the table, Ben twisted his fingers through Ryan’s.
“It’s about these photographs she gave me. I want to do a gallery-like showing of her pictures. Invite people to come write their memories. A place to think about her whole life and the time that they knew her. It’s a lot of pictures. We’ll need a big space. That’s where we need to start.”
Ryan came up with the idea of having people write their memories of each picture, after Ben suggested showing them at her church. Getting everyone who knew Gramma to contribute would uncover more of his grandmother’s history. A way to keep his grandmother close, to not lose the stories she hadn’t yet told him.
“I’m sure you could do it in the church basement,” Mary suggested. “Maybe on a Sunday after services.”
“The church doesn’t seem right,” Ryan said. “We want a less religious, more public space. Somewhere we can rent for a couple of weeks, so people can come when they have time. So it’s not a one-time thing.”
Arthur said, “We all work, son. We don’t have time to sit around for a couple of weeks while people look at old photographs.”
“I’m not asking you to sit there. I thought you’d want to help me set it up. Something we could do together.”
His father scowled. “You want to invite people into our lives to write down stories? Why do you think this is a good idea?”
“There’s art in these pictures, and I want the memories that go with them.” Ryan’s voice cracked on the last word. Ben squeezed his hand. He wished he’d ordered a drink.
“You know, Ryan, your grandmother had big dreams for you. She expected a lot out of you. I don’t know see how you’re going to repay her by putting all her business out for the public like this. Everything isn’t an art exhibit.”
It stung to have to convince his parents that this was a good idea. It reminded Ryan of the “Art is real work” fights when Ryan applied to art school instead of the UW.
Ryan said, “I get that there’s a lot of emotions tied up in these pictures. Mine and other people’s. I want to find a way to share that, so I’m not sitting on this by myself.”
Arthur had been practical and seemingly unaffected since the funeral, polar opposite to Mary’s new exceptional affection. It bothered Ryan. As if the rest of them were mourning while his father modeled behavior that chastised them for revealing their anguish. Whatever Arthur was feeling, Ryan didn’t know. Anger arced through him about everything they disagreed on, starting with funeral planning.
“Her things might not have meant anything to you. You got rid of them right away, like she was never there.” Ryan’s voice cracked again, his chest constricted
“She made it easy for us. She got rid of nearly everything before she moved in with us. It wasn’t that big of a deal. She wasn’t sentimental about everything like you are.”
Wounded, Ryan sat back in his chair, unable to believe his father was denying who he was, denying how much Sue meant to both of them. Pain gave Ryan the moral high ground. “She got rid of these pictures by giving them to me, telling me that I would know what to do with them. This is what I want. She trusted me. You don’t have to participate, but it’s a memorial for your own mother. I thought we, as a family, would be all in this together.”
“Look, here comes our food,” Mary said in a chirpy voice Ryan had never heard before.
It was like being out with two people he didn’t know. Sitcom parents, with a stern oppressive father and a mother attempting to make things better. These were two people that didn’t act like this, not for him or anybody else.
Ben remained silent, holding Ryan’s hand under the table. Ryan wasn’t alone in this new world where his grandmother didn’t get to defend her intentions and his parents acted like strangers.
Mary got a salad, but everybody else got clam chowder, which was the reason to come to Ivar’s after all, even the fancy Salmon House and not the shack on the waterfront. Ryan ate it without tasting it at all. Ben picked up the conversational thread, chattering on about the food, the view. Mary pitched in with commentary. Ryan and his father ate in silence.
By the time their entrees arrived, Ryan was ready to try again.
