Quiet

Chapter 13 - Margot the Diabolical, My Father the Fool

"Who was that?" my mother says when I come in.

"Cynthia's friend's mom." The boy's mother drove a Mercedes SUV. On the way to my house, she chatted about a million things. Before I got out of the car, she hugged me, and said she always wanted a daughter.

Of course, my mother assumes Cynthia's friend is a girl. Even so, she ambushes me quietly when I start up the stairs. "Don't plan on making a habit of staying out at night, okay?"

"Don't worry, Mom, I won't." That may be the harshest thing I've ever said to her. As I keep going up, she lingers at the first step, scanning me for signs of duplicity or lost virginity, or that just might be my guilt and weirdness tainting my perceptions.

***

On Friday, Margot, my father's assistant, and I discuss the incident after dinner with the teenage girls, but lots of other things too, like what it's like to work for Cluster Management. I don't mention that bald Yakuza Nobu, and Margot tells me that a magazine wants to interview my father and I. She requests my cooperation, so I agree. Why not? In your face, Cynthia. Besides, I like Margot. She's multilingual and efficient. When I grow up, I want to be like her.

I ignore a message from Cynthia's friend on Saturday morning. I don't swoon over his personality, and unless I do, it's not love. Love is a huge goal, too huge for high school, but that's my goal, I guess.

***

To reconnect before the magazine interview, I meet Margot and my father on Saturday, and we buy furniture for his apartment. No one mentions the girls who lied in front of his building, but I watch my father closely, trying to figure him out. Some people are two-faced and good at it. Then again, he has no idea that Cynthia and I know each other. When he finds out, he may laugh. Or not.

My father has lots to say and makes little quips here and there, but mostly he lets Margot and I talk. He doesn't demand our attention and is more obsequious than most Japanese people. He doesn't even notice that people recognize him. And he's funny.

I'm not funny or smart like my father. If I inherited any of it, I lost it. That might be the real reason I rejected the boy. I don't want to see him lose interest, because I'm not as boring and dull as I sometimes seem.

I try not to think about the boy or the haunted Porsche. I'm afraid of one and embarrassed about the other, even though I'm not ashamed. Girls can want it. Just for me... not yet. I don't want to rush and regret anything.

While we walk between shopping areas, I spot a shrine. "Can we go in?"

Surprised, my father and Margot smile. "Sure," he says.

After I wash my hands, ring the bell, and pray, I browse the amulets. They are tiny, colorful, folded cloths with inscriptions on them. Further away, my father surveys the grounds and the torii, like he's imagining angles for photographs.

Beside me, Margot examines other amulets. I find the kind I need. "Why that one?" she says.

The boy may have saved my life when he pulled me away from the Porsche, so just in case. "It's to ward off evil."

"Let's buy three," Margot says.

Behind us, my father's chukka shoes crunch the tiny stones on the temple grounds. He holds up his wallet and smiles. "Buy two. I don't want to ward off my favorite evil."

"Money?" I say.

He smiles. So do I, because I understood his dad joke.

***

To my surprise, my mother doesn't interrogate me about the time I spend with my father. She doesn't badmouth him either. During the ruined dinner, my father invited us to go to a museum in Roppongi for an exhibition of some of his photographs. It opens in two weeks, and I want my mother to go too. So far, she tolerates all this better than I imagined, but she's not easy to push around. Her silence is like a bear's, impossible to ignore and menacing.