The Poker Table
by Alden M. Hayashi
Mom and I were in the kitchen that Sunday morning, preparing lunch, when we heard the crash from outside, followed by an angry round of expletives in both English and Japanese. My father might let out a cuss word here and there, but it was rare for him to launch into a bilingual string of them. We rushed out to the garage to find Dad pulling himself off the ground with his poker table sprawled next to him.
“Damn this table,” he said, as he dusted off his khaki pants.
“Are you all right? What happened?”
“I had forgotten how heavy this thing is.”
“Well, it’s been a while since you last took it out,” I said, helping him to pick up the table and lean it against the garage wall.
“Maybe I should just dump it. That’s what I should do.”
“Really?” I looked at him, not sure if he was serious or not. The poker table was older than I was, and I couldn’t imagine my father parting with it. Mom just stood there, saying nothing.
“After all,” Dad added, almost as an aside of no consequence, “Tanaka-san made it and I don’t want anything of his.”
Mom looked at me and shook her head before silently retreating back into the house.
Ever since I could remember, Tanaka-san was one of my father’s best friends. They both were in a long-standing card gang: seven men who had played poker together since the end of World War II. All veterans of the 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd, the highly decorated Army infantry regiment composed of Japanese Americans, the seven friends had returned to Honolulu from Europe at the end of the war and would meet once a month, always on a Saturday evening, to play poker late into the early morning. They took turns hosting the game, so I’d see these men only maybe twice a year, but they made a strong impression on my childhood, from the earliest time that I could remember.
“Dad, are you really sure you wanna get rid of the table?”
Without looking at me, my father rolled the poker table into the far corner of the garage, picked up a rake, and headed to the backyard, his private sanctuary and refuge. I wasn’t quite sure he had heard me and, even if he had, I figured the question might be too difficult for him to answer right now. My father was like that, often telling me more by what he didn’t say.
Over lunch, a simple but comforting meal of fried gyoza and fresh saimin topped with slivers of char siu, slices of tamagoyaki, and chopped green onions, Dad ate silently while Mom and I caught up on family gossip and the latest happenings in the neighborhood. After my parents had entered their early seventies and I became aware of their increasing frailty, I would spend every Sunday with them, usually helping with shopping errands and tasks around the house, but sometimes we’d just relax in the living room watching TV.
As we were finishing up with lunch, Mom retrieved a small stack of letters from the kitchen drawer and plopped them on the dining table. “I can’t seem to cancel our credit cards,” she complained. “Even after I call and write them, they just send more letters, saying they’ll keep our accounts active and increase our credit limits.”
“Mom, you gotta cut your credit cards in half and mail them back. That’s the only way they’ll get the message. I can help you with that, but why do you want to cancel your cards?”
“We don’t need them anymore,” Dad interjected. “We only needed them for traveling, but we won’t be going to Vegas or Japan anymore.”
Even though my parents were now undeniably in their elderly years, I still had trouble accepting the fact they there were no longer the active middle-aged couple who loved to travel. “Why don’t you just keep a couple cards, just in case?”
Mom looked at one of the letters, this one from American Express, and tossed it aside. “I think our travel days are well behind us. I can’t even see us taking a short trip to Maui anymore.”
“Too humbug now,” Dad added.
“Well, maybe keep just one card for emergencies,” I suggested.
Dad laughed. “You younger generation, everything’s an ‘emergency.’ Always charging this and that.”
I remembered how it was a point of pride for my parents that they always paid with cash for virtually everything, not just for appliances like refrigerators and stoves but also for their cars and even for their home, a two-bedroom ranch house in Kalihi, one of Honolulu’s residential neighborhoods. In fact, when they first applied for a MasterCard, they were turned down because they lacked any credit history. Then, after supplying considerable additional documentation, they were approved for a credit limit of fifteen hundred dollars, while I, just out of college, had several cards with well over that amount. But, at the same time, I was the one who struggled mightily to save enough for a down payment for a condo. Even with my decent job as an engineer, buying a place outright in cash was unthinkable.
“Dad, I never asked you before, but how did you afford this house without needing a mortgage?”
Dad looked and Mom, unsure of how to proceed—or, more accurately, he was trying to decide whether this was information that should be relayed to his son. My parents rarely, if ever, discussed their finances with me, but my father had reached that age when he realized that there was only a limited amount of time to tell me things that he felt I should know. “We had the money from our tanomoshi,” he explained, referring to an informal credit club formed by his poker gang, in which everyone contributed a monthly amount and people would take turns borrowing from that sum. Tanomoshi was a popular financial arrangement among Japanese immigrants, especially those on the mainland who, because of racial discrimination, especially around World War II, often had trouble obtaining loans from traditional banks. I knew that Dad’s poker gang had a tanomoshi, but I always thought it was for smaller things, like vacations and minor home improvements.
“I had no idea that you guys were loaning each other such large sums of money.”
“Oh yeah, we all helped each other buy homes, send kids to college, medical expenses.”
“But how did you decide exactly where the money would go? You must have had some fights or disagreements.”
“No, we never did,” Dad said without a moment of hesitation. “The money always went wherever it was needed most.”
I had to ask, “What about if someone was delinquent in paying back the loan?”
“People always repaid the money, usually ahead of schedule.”
“But how could you trust that everyone would?”
Dad looked at me as if he were trying to explain the simplest of things to a dimwitted toddler. “Why would we loan money to anyone we couldn’t trust?”
I had to laugh at myself for my stupid question. Dad had fought with these men on the battlefields of Europe. If they could trust one another with their lives, then they could trust one another with their money. Suffice it to say that Dad’s poker gang was no ordinary group of men. My father was a social person who had countless friends, but this gang of seven was special. In Hawaii, we’re accustomed to calling anyone somewhat older either “uncle” or “auntie.” Teenage store clerks will say to a middle-age customer, “Uncle, the toilet paper is in aisle three,” or “Auntie, sorry but there’s a five-can limit on Spam.” This was especially true when it came to referring to the friends of our parents. Instead of calling them “Mr. Lee” or “Mrs. Takemoto,” we’d often just say “Uncle” or “Auntie.”
Dad’s poker gang was different. I always addressed them with their last name plus “san.” So it was Tanaka-san, Yamamoto-san, Fukuda-san, Aratani-san, Tokunaga-san, and Morimoto-san. I don’t know why this was so. I don’t even remember my father specifically instructing me to refer to his poker gang that way; that’s just how it always was. Maybe it was because my father wanted me to show particular respect to these men, who had served with him and had remained his friends over the decades. Whatever the reason, it was never “Mr. Aratani” but always “Aratani-san.”
Even after I had graduated from college and James and I had gotten our own condo in the Makiki area of Honolulu, I may not have seen the men as much as I used to but I was always aware of their strong presence in my father’s life. He would regularly fill me in with small talk about them: “Fukuda-san’s daughter just had a baby,” “Yamamoto-san and his wife are going to Japan next week,” “Morimoto-san’s son is studying to be a doctor.”
Today, talk of his poker gang’s tanomoshi has made Dad uncharacteristically nostalgic, prompting him to reminisce about this group of seven lifelong friends who, over the years, had dropped to six and then five, with the deaths of Morimoto-san and Fukuda-san. The surviving members continued to play until Tokunaga-san had to bow out because of stomach cancer, which required months of brutal chemo and radiation treatments. The group remained in limbo until he had passed, prompting a decision to be made: With just four of them left, did they want to continue playing and, if so, whom should they invite to join? After thinking about it for nearly a year, they agreed to end their poker nights. None of them could fathom adding a new player and, anyway, driving at night had become increasingly difficult for the men, who were then all retired and in their seventies. Instead, the remaining four switched to meeting weekly at the Ala Moana Center, the large outdoor shopping mall where they could accomplish their daily exercise by walking around the different levels, before retiring at the McDonald’s in the food court for a cup of coffee. But eventually the four men had dwindled down to two: Tanaka-san and my father.
This was ironic because, of the entire group, those two men had been the biggest rivals. Yamamoto-san once told me that the most fiercely competitive poker hands were when Tanaka-san and Dad were the last two remaining, with each vigorously betting and raising against each other. Neither of the men was going to let the other get the better of him but, from what I could gather, it was usually Tanaka-san who came out on the winning end of those battles. This irked my father to no end, and he would sometimes complain to me that Tanaka-san was always so damn lucky. I came to realize, though, that Dad simply wasn’t as adept at poker as Tanaka-san was, partly because my father often had trouble pulling off a convincing bluff.
Over the years, the poker gang must have had its fair share of disagreements, but my father was always discreet about any fights they might have had. He might, on a rare occasion, let loose a stray remark that hinted at some vague displeasure with someone in the group — as in, “sometimes I really don’t understand Morimoto-san” — but then he’d quickly switch subjects. Some of that, I guess, was a manifestation of gaman, the Japanese approach to life that calls for enduring hardships and difficulties without complaining. Gaman was what he always counseled me, whenever I had trouble at work or with my own relationships. But I also think it was my father’s way of saying how much he treasured these friendships, that he would always work out any differences quietly behind the scenes.
Yet, after the poker gang had shrunk down to just him and Tanaka-san, things finally came to a head. Something happened between the two men a couple years ago, and from that day on they refused to see each other. Mom had encouraged a rapprochement, in part because she didn’t like that she now had Dad at home, puttering around the house, 24 by 7. “At least I could catch a break once in a while when Dad would go holo-holoing with Tanaka-san,” she complained to me, “but now he’s always here.” My mother no longer had any time to herself, to cook, do household chores, tend to her orchids, and watch her afternoon soap operas uninterrupted. When her patience had stretched to the breaking point, she begged me to intercede, but whenever I tried to ask Dad about his fight with Tanaka-san, my father would just shake his head and redirect the conversation.
Now, though, my father seemed receptive to talking about that distressful subject. Perhaps it was the poker table and our reminiscing about the tanomoshi, but Dad was finally willing to explain what caused the big falling-out. According to him, he and Tanaka-san had planned to take a day trip to the North Shore, with my father driving. But when Dad went to pick him up, Tanaka-san had forgotten about the date so Dad had to wait for him to get ready. And then when they were finally on the road, Tanaka-san kept on telling Dad what route they should take, which sights they should stop at, where they should have lunch. “He’s always been so bossy,” Dad complained. “I’ve never liked that.”
So that was it: not one unforgivable breach of loyalty or shocking betrayal of friendship, but instead a simple lapse in memory, a few unasked-for directions, and an ill-timed suggestion that had caused the fracturing of a decades-long friendship. In response, all that I could say was, “Even if it wasn’t your fault, why can’t you just apologize for the sake of your friendship? After all, you guys go way, way back.”
“Humph, maybe too far back.” And with that, my father left the dining table, leaving Mom and me to clear the dishes.
After lunch, while Dad napped, I went out to the garage to take a close look at the poker table: its green-felt top, built-in trays for chips, and detachable legs. It was usually stored in the garage, but on game nights Dad would set it up in the middle of the living room, with all the other furniture pushed against the wall. Before the guests would arrive, he’d ceremoniously unpack the chips and lay out two decks of new Bicycle cards, one blue and the other red.
For the first time, I now noticed that the table wasn’t eight-sided, like standard poker tables. Instead, Tanaka-san had constructed the wooden surface to be seven-sided, with a hidden seam so that it could be folded in half for transporting. I measured all of the sides and found that they were perfectly equal. How in the world did Tanaka-san do that? It would have been so much easier to build an octagonal table because each half would then contain four seats. But Tanaka-san had gone to the distinct trouble of making the table heptagonal, as if to say, “We are a gang of just us seven, exactly seven, no more and no fewer.”
The table may have seen countless hands of poker played but only in the game’s purest form: five-card draw, with no wild cards. I once asked Dad if that ever got boring, whether instead they might have sometimes tried Texas hold ‘em or seven-card stud, and he looked at me as if I’d asked why the seven men had never practiced ikebana together. The men were also creatures of habit when it came to alcohol, always drinking beer, although on special occasions — someone’s recent birthday or wedding anniversary — they’d have whiskey, but always on the rocks or neat with just a splash of water. Nothing fancy, just a night of cards with good friends.
Interestingly, I never once heard the men talk anything about the war. They would playfully goad each other, brag about their children, and discuss the latest baseball news (six were diehard Dodgers fans, while Fukuda-san favored the Giants), but they would never talk about what happened on the brutal battlefields in Italy and France. It was only much later that I would learn that one of them — the unassuming Morimoto-san — had been awarded a Bronze Star.
“Do you want it?” Dad startled me as he approached from behind.
“You know I don’t play poker.”
“But what about James?” Dad asked, referring to my long-time partner. “Doesn’t he play?”
“Yeah, but only online. Are you really sure you want to get rid of it?”
Dad didn’t say anything as he kept staring at the table, lost in thought. I had no idea what was going through his mind. As I ran my fingers over the polished wooden rim of the table, I told my father how badly I felt about him and Tanaka-san. A long silence ensued and, just when I thought my father was about to leave, he said, “Before it was okay when there were others for Tanaka-san to boss around. But now it’s just me, and I don’t like it.”
“Geesh,” I shook my head. “You guys are such frenemies.”
“What’s that – ‘frenemies’?”
“It’s like you’re friends but you’re also enemies, so ‘frenemies.’” I can’t believe what I’d just done, trying to explain to my father a term from “Sex and the City.”
“Yes, frenemies.” Dad nodded, his lips breaking into a wry smile.
“It’s just a made-up word. In Japanese it might be ‘abudachi,’” I said, combining two of the few Japanese words I knew: “abunai,” or dangerous, and “tomodachi,” for friend.
It took a few moments for Dad to figure out my new portmanteau. “Yes, abudachi,” he laughed. “Tanaka-san is very abudachi.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“A while ago. He and I don’t drive anymore, so it’s not like we can just see each other anytime we want.”
Of course my father was just making excuses, so I told him, “You know you guys aren’t getting any younger. It’d be really bad if something happened to one of you without clearing up any bad feelings.”
Dad shook his head and kept staring at the poker table, while I slowly rolled it neatly back into the corner. I figured that this was as good a time as any to ask, “Why don’t we visit him? I can take you. In fact, it would be great for me to see him again too.” I was about to add something else, but my father had already lost interest in the conversation and was filling the lawn mower with gasoline from a metal can.
I had assumed the discussion was closed but, later that afternoon, after he and I had finished mowing the front and back lawns, Dad surprised me by asking if I’d be free next weekend because he was thinking we could drive to Tanaka-san’s place. I was elated and told him that either Saturday or Sunday would work for me. Actually, I was even willing to take a day off from my job during the week if that would be best for Tanaka-san.
Dad made the call to his friend early that evening, but he didn’t use the phone in the kitchen or living room. Instead he secluded himself in his and Mom’s bedroom. I felt for him — was the call so difficult and personal that he needed absolute privacy? “Honestly, those two men,” Mom shook her head, “just like little boys sometimes.”
When Dad returned to the dining room, where Mom and I were setting out dishes for dinner, he announced to me, “It’s all set. Next Saturday then. I told Tanaka-san we’d be at his house at one o’clock and then we can head over to the Zippy’s near Kahala Mall for lunch.” As Dad went to the kitchen to grab a beer, Mom sneaked a big smile at me.
*******
That Saturday, when I arrived at my parents’ house to pick up Dad, he was already sitting outside, waiting for me with two large paper bags.
“Sorry, am I late?” I asked.
“Look at what I picked this morning,” he said, pointing to the two bags. Inside were white Piri mangoes from his tree as well as several jabong, a type of grapefruit with the sweetness of oranges.
“Wow, Tanaka-san is gonna love these!”
I didn’t tell Dad that, actually, I had allowed some extra time in our schedule to stop at Liliha Bakery to buy some cocoa cream puffs, just so that we wouldn’t arrive at Tanaka-san’s house empty handed. But since Dad had already taken care of that, I figured we could take a leisurely drive through the city, avoiding the highway, to get to where Tanaka-san lived in Palolo Valley. It was a beautiful, warm day in Honolulu, with just a few white clouds hanging low in the brilliant, blue sky beyond Diamond Head. As we winded through the streets of Liliha, Punchbowl, McCully, and Kaimuki, Dad and I sat in silence, but it was a familiar, comfortable feeling, unlike the unease I had often experienced when I was a young kid.
Back then, Dad and I had difficulty talking to each other, and I’d dread Sundays when we would take long drives to the North Shore to visit his cousin in Waialua. Mom, who usually acted as our buffer in those days, would do her grocery shopping then, so it was just Dad and me, and we’d sit in awkward silence, barely saying a few words to each other as we drove from Honolulu past Waipio and along the massive pineapple fields that eventually gave way to a breathtaking view of the ocean along the northern coast of Oahu. During those days, when I was in elementary school, I was interested in only two things: collecting coins and building models of battleships. Meanwhile my father was mainly focused on gardening, fishing, and his beloved Dodgers. It seemed like we had no common ground, no neutral territory for us to communicate.
The distance I felt from him only increased when I got older, as earlier inklings I had of being different coalesced into the growing realization that I was gay. Then, after I had officially come out during my junior year at the University of Hawaii, this only further alienated me from my father, leaving us with little to talk about beyond the weather. But things eventually began to change when, after I had graduated from college, James and I started seeing each other. We dated for several years before moving in together, and we’ve remained a couple ever since.
Over the many years of our relationship, Dad slowly, even begrudgingly at first, began to realize the strength of James’s and my bond, that we loved, supported, and would take care of each other through all the hardships and joys of life. On some level, my father must have been comforted knowing that he didn’t need to worry about my well-being after he and Mom passed, because James would always be there for me. My parents had seen so many marriages of their nephews, nieces, and friends’ children fall apart, some after only a few years, whereas James and I had steadfastly weathered three decades together, and our enduring relationship eventually helped Dad make peace with my being gay. That acceptance, I felt, was my father’s expression of his paternal love. It was a hard-fought battle that eventually allowed me to savor a sweet victory. I now took pleasure in every single instance of Dad’s thoughtful gestures toward my long-time partner — his asking, for example, whether James might appreciate a used poker table. And I was grateful that Dad and I could now enjoy long car rides with each other, sitting in an easy, comfortable silence that had eluded us so many years ago.
As we neared Tanaka-san’s home, heading down his dead-end street, I tried to remember the last time that I was actually there. It might have been a birthday party for his daughter Lynne, who was a year younger than me. We were probably only in second or third grade then, so that would have been more than forty years ago.
From what I could remember, the house seemed to be basically the same, except at some point Tanaka-san must have chopped down the large lychee tree in the front yard. Also, there was now a wooden ramp that wrapped in front of the one-story plantation-style structure, dramatically altering the aesthetics of what used to be a beautiful front lanai.
“Did you know that Tanaka-san built the ramp for his wife by himself?” Dad told me. “This was when she became too ill and had to use a wheelchair.”
“When did she pass, was it recently?”
“Maybe just three or four years ago.”
After parking my car in the short driveway, we made our way to the front of Tanaka-san’s house, where Dad elected to use the handicap ramp even though he was quite capable of handling the short flight of steps to the entrance. I joined him, admiring Tanaka-san’s skilled carpentry. We knocked on the front door and were greeted by Lynne, or at least I assumed it was Lynne.
“I hope you remember me,” I told her.
“Oh my gosh, how many years has it been?”
Lynne smiled and thanked us for the fresh fruit, but she seemed somewhat withdrawn, a bit sullen even. This was nothing like the child I remembered from elementary school. She was a cute and lively girl then, her long pigtails always bouncing in the air as she ran around the house.
When we entered the living room, Tanaka-san got up from his recliner and, somewhat warily, greeted Dad before quickly turning toward me. “Long time no see! When was the last time you were here?”
“Geesh,” I shook my head, “I don’t even know. Probably when Lynne and I were young kids.”
“Oh, then you have to see the family room. I added all this shelving.”
Tanaka-san took me to the adjoining room, where one long wall accommodated rows of built-in stained maple-wood shelves displaying not only books but an impressive collection of kokeshi dolls, assorted tchotchkes, and dozens of framed photos. In one of those photographs, a young Lynne, the girl I remembered, smiled with a missing front tooth. The largest photo was a black-and-white of Tanaka-san and his wife on their wedding day, she in a splendid kimono and he in a classy white tux. As I admired the photograph, he said, “She was beautiful, huh.”
“Yes, so elegant, regal like.”
“Did you know your father wanted her? But I got her first, not him.”
Just then Dad poked his head into the family room. “Come on, I’m really hungry,” he said. “Let’s get lunch.”
Tanaka-san then rushed to his bedroom to grab a light jacket, while Dad whispered to me, “What was he telling you about his wife?”
“Oh nothing,” I shook my head.
“Yep, abudachi all right.”
Outside, I helped Tanaka-san into the back seat of my SUV, while Dad settled himself in the front passenger side. With the two men secured with seat belts, I reversed out of the drive and started down the road when I heard a muffled tapping from the rear of the car. Damn, I thought to myself as I checked the dashboard, but thankfully none of the warning signals—oil pressure, engine check, temperature warning—indicated any problem. As I continued driving, though, the sound became a louder rapping noise, so I pulled over.
Now the tapping was on my side window and I looked to see Lynne. When I rolled down my window, thinking maybe my wallet might have fallen out of my jeans on the driveway, she said, “Hey, remember me? Is it okay if I join you?”
“Sure,” I muttered, as I unlocked the back door, confused as to why she’d want to have lunch with us. If anything, I figured that she’d relish having some free time to herself. But then the thought crossed my mind: maybe she didn’t trust me with her father. This annoyed me—after all, I was more than capable of taking care of two elderly men for an afternoon—but I brushed that feeling aside, convincing myself to just make the best of the situation.
At Zippy’s, we were escorted to a booth, with Dad sitting across the table from Tanaka-san, and me opposite Lynne. That’s just great, I thought to myself. Now I had to make small talk with a virtual stranger while Dad caught up with his longtime friend. But, while Lynne told me about her recent divorce and about her having to take a leave of absence from her job to take care of her father, whose health had been on the decline, I was also half-listening to the conversation right next to us. For the first few minutes, Dad and Tanaka-san started off tentatively, unsure where to pick up on their decades-long friendship. Slowly, though, they began talking about their old poker gang, and soon enough they were chatting just like old times, exchanging gossip and reminiscing about their past exploits. They were even teasing each other, playfully boasting about who was the faster swimmer, the more skilled bowler, and then better fisherman. I breathed a sigh of relief to myself and tried to concentrate on my own conversation with Lynne.
*******
It was late in the afternoon, almost five o’clock, when Dad and I dropped off Tanaka-san and Lynne, so I called Mom to tell her we were running late because, with freeway traffic in Honolulu, it could be a while before we were back at my parents’ place across town. As I merged onto the freeway, I couldn’t help but think about Lynne. How odd it was, her insisting on joining us for lunch. I really would have thought she’d have preferred having some unencumbered time to spend with her friends, catch a movie, or do some errands. It actually was quite peculiar. Did she really not trust me with her father?
Then it all dawned on me.
“Dad, when you called Tanaka-san last Sunday, what did you tell him?”
My father hesitated before answering. “I told him that we wanted to see him.”
“So you said that we wanted to see him, not that you wanted to see him.”
“Well, you wanted to see him too, right?”
“I did, but what exactly did you say when you called him?”
Dad then chuckled the laugh of someone who had just been caught red-handed eating the last piece of chocolate haupia pie. “I told him that you hadn’t seen Lynne in a while and wanted to visit them.”
“Oh geesh, Dad! Why the hell did you have to do that?”
“Well, wasn’t it good to see her, after all this time?”
“That’s not the point, and don’t make excuses. Why couldn’t you just apologize to Tanaka-san? Say you missed seeing him. Or just tell him you wanted to take him out to lunch. Why’d you have to involve me?”
Dad just sat there looking straight ahead, staring at the three lanes of traffic that were slowly snaking along the freeway. I know I should have dropped the matter but I was so annoyed. “Don’t you see that I must look like a total jerk to Lynne? There I was, driving off with Tanaka-san and you, and she had to come chasing down the street to join us. What must she think?”
Dad sat in silence, as the rush-hour traffic in Honolulu inched along. I was so irritated at him yet I also began to feel compassion, that he needed a ruse to pave the way to reconcile with his longtime friend. Finally, as he fidgeted in his seat, Dad added, “Well, if you feel so badly about Lynne, why don’t you call her to apologize?”
This only angered me more. “Why should I apologize?” I shot back, any sympathy I had been feeling toward my father quickly dissipating. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re the one who lied, not me.”
“You see,” Dad interrupted me, “so easy to tell other people to apologize, but not so easy when someone tells you to apologize, especially when you’re not the one who did anything wrong.”
Dad and I sat in silence, as I fought back the urge to say something because, really, what would be the point? I took the Likelike exit and, within a few more minutes, we had reached my parents’ house. As I undid my seat belt to get out of the car, I noticed that Dad wasn’t moving. He was motionless in his seat, looking straight ahead. “Thank you,” he said.
“Anytime,” I told him, wanting to get out of the car, but my father was still sitting there. “Dad, let me know if there are other people you wanna see too. I don’t mind driving wherever.”
“No,” he said, “I wasn’t talking about the driving.”
I must have looked at him with a puzzled expression, because he then reached over to gently pat my shoulder several times without saying anything. I then got it. “You mean about Lynne?”
“Yeah, about her. Thank you for taking one for the team.”
What an odd thing to say! Half of me wanted to laugh, but the other half was confused. By “team,” was he referring to just him and me, father and son? Or was he talking about his old poker gang, that he was thankful that they all could rest in peace knowing that the big rift between him and Tanaka-san was now mended? Or maybe it was both. As always, Dad was saying so much with such an economy of words. We sat there for a few more moments, until Dad slowly unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the car, and started up the steps to his home, a house that he could pay for in cash, thanks to the unequivocal trust of his poker gang. Before opening the kitchen door, he turned to look at me, as I was still sitting in the driver’s seat bemused. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked. “Dinner is probably getting cold.”
*******
Just a couple months after our visit, Tanaka-san fractured his hip on a bad fall, requiring extensive surgery. While recovering in the hospital, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and passed quickly in the middle of the night. Ironically, Dad and I had plans to visit him the next morning.
His funeral was an intimate, simple service. His nephew read a touching eulogy, describing how his uncle would take him to baseball games at the old Honolulu Stadium, always treating him to a shave ice afterward. When the Honolulu Islanders had won, the shave ice would include a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a generous helping of azuki beans.
After the service, a few dozen of Tanaka-san’s relatives and close friends attended a reception where we could reminisce and exchange stories about him. I was surprised to learn that, in addition to being an expert carpenter, he was also an accomplished photographer, having won several amateur contests sponsored by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. While my parents were engaged in a long conversation with Tanaka-san’s neighbors, I made my way to Lynne to express my condolences. I had also wanted to apologize for Dad’s recent ruse and the mix-up over lunch that day.
“Oh, I thought it was something like that,” she half-smiled.
“If only my dad could have been more upfront when he called your father. Anyway, I’m really sorry you had to chase us down the street.”
“That’s our dads, though, a totally different generation.”
“No kidding,” I shook my head. “Honestly, how hard would it have been for my father to say, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. Let’s get together for lunch’? I’m just sorry you got dragged into this.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can easily see my father pulling something like that too. In a way, it’s almost kinda cute, those two,” she laughed.
“Well, as long as you think so,” I said, grateful that we could now find comedy in that awkward afternoon.
After the reception, it was such a beautiful, sunny day in Honolulu that I suggested to my parents that we take a drive around the city, maybe head up to Tantalus to enjoy the spectacular view of the city, but Mom said she preferred going straight home to take a nap before dinner so I took the quickest route to their place. As I was driving up their gravel driveway, Dad asked if I was busy the rest of the afternoon. “Why?” I asked, “Do you need help with something?”
He didn’t say anything until I drove into their garage. “Come,” he motioned as he got out of the car. While Mom headed into the house, Dad made his way to that corner of the garage where his poker table was still leaning against the wall. “Do you think this will fit in your trunk if we snap down the backseats?”
I looked at the back of my SUV. “Sure, we can fold and tilt the table sideways, and if it sticks out a bit we can always tie the tailgate down. But where are we bringing it?”
Dad smiled and then explained how he had found the perfect home: the clubhouse of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans. “I called them yesterday and they said they’d be happy to accept the donation.” As I helped my father roll the poker table to the rear of my SUV, fold it in half, and hoist it into the back, I asked him where exactly the clubhouse was.
“You know, near Iolani School across from the football field.”
“Right along the Ala Wai Canal?”
“No, not along the canal. Don’t you know where? It’s off Kapiolani Boulevard near the Ala Wai Elementary School.”
My confused expression made my father stop what he was doing, the poker table balancing on my SUV’s rear bumper, as he dug into his memory. “You mean I’ve never brought you there before?” he asked. I shook my head as we continued loading the precious cargo.
On the way to the clubhouse, we were stuck in a traffic jam on the H-1 freeway when my father asked again, “Are you sure you’ve never been there before?”
“Dad, I didn’t even know there was a clubhouse.”
“How can this be?”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes, crawling along the heavy traffic, which had funneled from three lanes to two because of a stalled car ahead. I was deep in my thoughts, wondering if Dad might have indeed taken me to the clubhouse long ago when I was too young to register its significance. I might not have even known then about the heroic exploits of my father’s former infantry unit.
Interrupting my thoughts, Dad said, “I really should have brought you before. I don’t know why I didn’t. Well, better late that never.” Silence for a few more minutes, as the traffic slowly lessened with the two lanes expanding back into three.
“Dad, what exit should I take, Bingham Street or U.H.?”
“Either one is okay. No rush, right? And if you have time, I’ll show you around the place.”
“Oh yeah, that would be great.”
“Maybe I can introduce you to some folks there, too.”
I smiled as I took the Bingham Street exit, resisting the urge to tell my father something I was sure he already knew — that, actually, I’ve always had the time for him to tell me the things he wanted to, even when it might have appeared that I was too busy with the daily grind of my own life. But I also didn’t want to rush him. As always, my father would tell me only what he chose to, and I’d have to listen closely to the things he couldn’t talk about, because only then would I be able to hear what he was really trying to say.
“Damn this table,” he said, as he dusted off his khaki pants.
“Are you all right? What happened?”
“I had forgotten how heavy this thing is.”
“Well, it’s been a while since you last took it out,” I said, helping him to pick up the table and lean it against the garage wall.
“Maybe I should just dump it. That’s what I should do.”
“Really?” I looked at him, not sure if he was serious or not. The poker table was older than I was, and I couldn’t imagine my father parting with it. Mom just stood there, saying nothing.
“After all,” Dad added, almost as an aside of no consequence, “Tanaka-san made it and I don’t want anything of his.”
Mom looked at me and shook her head before silently retreating back into the house.
Ever since I could remember, Tanaka-san was one of my father’s best friends. They both were in a long-standing card gang: seven men who had played poker together since the end of World War II. All veterans of the 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd, the highly decorated Army infantry regiment composed of Japanese Americans, the seven friends had returned to Honolulu from Europe at the end of the war and would meet once a month, always on a Saturday evening, to play poker late into the early morning. They took turns hosting the game, so I’d see these men only maybe twice a year, but they made a strong impression on my childhood, from the earliest time that I could remember.
“Dad, are you really sure you wanna get rid of the table?”
Without looking at me, my father rolled the poker table into the far corner of the garage, picked up a rake, and headed to the backyard, his private sanctuary and refuge. I wasn’t quite sure he had heard me and, even if he had, I figured the question might be too difficult for him to answer right now. My father was like that, often telling me more by what he didn’t say.
Over lunch, a simple but comforting meal of fried gyoza and fresh saimin topped with slivers of char siu, slices of tamagoyaki, and chopped green onions, Dad ate silently while Mom and I caught up on family gossip and the latest happenings in the neighborhood. After my parents had entered their early seventies and I became aware of their increasing frailty, I would spend every Sunday with them, usually helping with shopping errands and tasks around the house, but sometimes we’d just relax in the living room watching TV.
As we were finishing up with lunch, Mom retrieved a small stack of letters from the kitchen drawer and plopped them on the dining table. “I can’t seem to cancel our credit cards,” she complained. “Even after I call and write them, they just send more letters, saying they’ll keep our accounts active and increase our credit limits.”
“Mom, you gotta cut your credit cards in half and mail them back. That’s the only way they’ll get the message. I can help you with that, but why do you want to cancel your cards?”
“We don’t need them anymore,” Dad interjected. “We only needed them for traveling, but we won’t be going to Vegas or Japan anymore.”
Even though my parents were now undeniably in their elderly years, I still had trouble accepting the fact they there were no longer the active middle-aged couple who loved to travel. “Why don’t you just keep a couple cards, just in case?”
Mom looked at one of the letters, this one from American Express, and tossed it aside. “I think our travel days are well behind us. I can’t even see us taking a short trip to Maui anymore.”
“Too humbug now,” Dad added.
“Well, maybe keep just one card for emergencies,” I suggested.
Dad laughed. “You younger generation, everything’s an ‘emergency.’ Always charging this and that.”
I remembered how it was a point of pride for my parents that they always paid with cash for virtually everything, not just for appliances like refrigerators and stoves but also for their cars and even for their home, a two-bedroom ranch house in Kalihi, one of Honolulu’s residential neighborhoods. In fact, when they first applied for a MasterCard, they were turned down because they lacked any credit history. Then, after supplying considerable additional documentation, they were approved for a credit limit of fifteen hundred dollars, while I, just out of college, had several cards with well over that amount. But, at the same time, I was the one who struggled mightily to save enough for a down payment for a condo. Even with my decent job as an engineer, buying a place outright in cash was unthinkable.
“Dad, I never asked you before, but how did you afford this house without needing a mortgage?”
Dad looked and Mom, unsure of how to proceed—or, more accurately, he was trying to decide whether this was information that should be relayed to his son. My parents rarely, if ever, discussed their finances with me, but my father had reached that age when he realized that there was only a limited amount of time to tell me things that he felt I should know. “We had the money from our tanomoshi,” he explained, referring to an informal credit club formed by his poker gang, in which everyone contributed a monthly amount and people would take turns borrowing from that sum. Tanomoshi was a popular financial arrangement among Japanese immigrants, especially those on the mainland who, because of racial discrimination, especially around World War II, often had trouble obtaining loans from traditional banks. I knew that Dad’s poker gang had a tanomoshi, but I always thought it was for smaller things, like vacations and minor home improvements.
“I had no idea that you guys were loaning each other such large sums of money.”
“Oh yeah, we all helped each other buy homes, send kids to college, medical expenses.”
“But how did you decide exactly where the money would go? You must have had some fights or disagreements.”
“No, we never did,” Dad said without a moment of hesitation. “The money always went wherever it was needed most.”
I had to ask, “What about if someone was delinquent in paying back the loan?”
“People always repaid the money, usually ahead of schedule.”
“But how could you trust that everyone would?”
Dad looked at me as if he were trying to explain the simplest of things to a dimwitted toddler. “Why would we loan money to anyone we couldn’t trust?”
I had to laugh at myself for my stupid question. Dad had fought with these men on the battlefields of Europe. If they could trust one another with their lives, then they could trust one another with their money. Suffice it to say that Dad’s poker gang was no ordinary group of men. My father was a social person who had countless friends, but this gang of seven was special. In Hawaii, we’re accustomed to calling anyone somewhat older either “uncle” or “auntie.” Teenage store clerks will say to a middle-age customer, “Uncle, the toilet paper is in aisle three,” or “Auntie, sorry but there’s a five-can limit on Spam.” This was especially true when it came to referring to the friends of our parents. Instead of calling them “Mr. Lee” or “Mrs. Takemoto,” we’d often just say “Uncle” or “Auntie.”
Dad’s poker gang was different. I always addressed them with their last name plus “san.” So it was Tanaka-san, Yamamoto-san, Fukuda-san, Aratani-san, Tokunaga-san, and Morimoto-san. I don’t know why this was so. I don’t even remember my father specifically instructing me to refer to his poker gang that way; that’s just how it always was. Maybe it was because my father wanted me to show particular respect to these men, who had served with him and had remained his friends over the decades. Whatever the reason, it was never “Mr. Aratani” but always “Aratani-san.”
Even after I had graduated from college and James and I had gotten our own condo in the Makiki area of Honolulu, I may not have seen the men as much as I used to but I was always aware of their strong presence in my father’s life. He would regularly fill me in with small talk about them: “Fukuda-san’s daughter just had a baby,” “Yamamoto-san and his wife are going to Japan next week,” “Morimoto-san’s son is studying to be a doctor.”
Today, talk of his poker gang’s tanomoshi has made Dad uncharacteristically nostalgic, prompting him to reminisce about this group of seven lifelong friends who, over the years, had dropped to six and then five, with the deaths of Morimoto-san and Fukuda-san. The surviving members continued to play until Tokunaga-san had to bow out because of stomach cancer, which required months of brutal chemo and radiation treatments. The group remained in limbo until he had passed, prompting a decision to be made: With just four of them left, did they want to continue playing and, if so, whom should they invite to join? After thinking about it for nearly a year, they agreed to end their poker nights. None of them could fathom adding a new player and, anyway, driving at night had become increasingly difficult for the men, who were then all retired and in their seventies. Instead, the remaining four switched to meeting weekly at the Ala Moana Center, the large outdoor shopping mall where they could accomplish their daily exercise by walking around the different levels, before retiring at the McDonald’s in the food court for a cup of coffee. But eventually the four men had dwindled down to two: Tanaka-san and my father.
This was ironic because, of the entire group, those two men had been the biggest rivals. Yamamoto-san once told me that the most fiercely competitive poker hands were when Tanaka-san and Dad were the last two remaining, with each vigorously betting and raising against each other. Neither of the men was going to let the other get the better of him but, from what I could gather, it was usually Tanaka-san who came out on the winning end of those battles. This irked my father to no end, and he would sometimes complain to me that Tanaka-san was always so damn lucky. I came to realize, though, that Dad simply wasn’t as adept at poker as Tanaka-san was, partly because my father often had trouble pulling off a convincing bluff.
Over the years, the poker gang must have had its fair share of disagreements, but my father was always discreet about any fights they might have had. He might, on a rare occasion, let loose a stray remark that hinted at some vague displeasure with someone in the group — as in, “sometimes I really don’t understand Morimoto-san” — but then he’d quickly switch subjects. Some of that, I guess, was a manifestation of gaman, the Japanese approach to life that calls for enduring hardships and difficulties without complaining. Gaman was what he always counseled me, whenever I had trouble at work or with my own relationships. But I also think it was my father’s way of saying how much he treasured these friendships, that he would always work out any differences quietly behind the scenes.
Yet, after the poker gang had shrunk down to just him and Tanaka-san, things finally came to a head. Something happened between the two men a couple years ago, and from that day on they refused to see each other. Mom had encouraged a rapprochement, in part because she didn’t like that she now had Dad at home, puttering around the house, 24 by 7. “At least I could catch a break once in a while when Dad would go holo-holoing with Tanaka-san,” she complained to me, “but now he’s always here.” My mother no longer had any time to herself, to cook, do household chores, tend to her orchids, and watch her afternoon soap operas uninterrupted. When her patience had stretched to the breaking point, she begged me to intercede, but whenever I tried to ask Dad about his fight with Tanaka-san, my father would just shake his head and redirect the conversation.
Now, though, my father seemed receptive to talking about that distressful subject. Perhaps it was the poker table and our reminiscing about the tanomoshi, but Dad was finally willing to explain what caused the big falling-out. According to him, he and Tanaka-san had planned to take a day trip to the North Shore, with my father driving. But when Dad went to pick him up, Tanaka-san had forgotten about the date so Dad had to wait for him to get ready. And then when they were finally on the road, Tanaka-san kept on telling Dad what route they should take, which sights they should stop at, where they should have lunch. “He’s always been so bossy,” Dad complained. “I’ve never liked that.”
So that was it: not one unforgivable breach of loyalty or shocking betrayal of friendship, but instead a simple lapse in memory, a few unasked-for directions, and an ill-timed suggestion that had caused the fracturing of a decades-long friendship. In response, all that I could say was, “Even if it wasn’t your fault, why can’t you just apologize for the sake of your friendship? After all, you guys go way, way back.”
“Humph, maybe too far back.” And with that, my father left the dining table, leaving Mom and me to clear the dishes.
After lunch, while Dad napped, I went out to the garage to take a close look at the poker table: its green-felt top, built-in trays for chips, and detachable legs. It was usually stored in the garage, but on game nights Dad would set it up in the middle of the living room, with all the other furniture pushed against the wall. Before the guests would arrive, he’d ceremoniously unpack the chips and lay out two decks of new Bicycle cards, one blue and the other red.
For the first time, I now noticed that the table wasn’t eight-sided, like standard poker tables. Instead, Tanaka-san had constructed the wooden surface to be seven-sided, with a hidden seam so that it could be folded in half for transporting. I measured all of the sides and found that they were perfectly equal. How in the world did Tanaka-san do that? It would have been so much easier to build an octagonal table because each half would then contain four seats. But Tanaka-san had gone to the distinct trouble of making the table heptagonal, as if to say, “We are a gang of just us seven, exactly seven, no more and no fewer.”
The table may have seen countless hands of poker played but only in the game’s purest form: five-card draw, with no wild cards. I once asked Dad if that ever got boring, whether instead they might have sometimes tried Texas hold ‘em or seven-card stud, and he looked at me as if I’d asked why the seven men had never practiced ikebana together. The men were also creatures of habit when it came to alcohol, always drinking beer, although on special occasions — someone’s recent birthday or wedding anniversary — they’d have whiskey, but always on the rocks or neat with just a splash of water. Nothing fancy, just a night of cards with good friends.
Interestingly, I never once heard the men talk anything about the war. They would playfully goad each other, brag about their children, and discuss the latest baseball news (six were diehard Dodgers fans, while Fukuda-san favored the Giants), but they would never talk about what happened on the brutal battlefields in Italy and France. It was only much later that I would learn that one of them — the unassuming Morimoto-san — had been awarded a Bronze Star.
“Do you want it?” Dad startled me as he approached from behind.
“You know I don’t play poker.”
“But what about James?” Dad asked, referring to my long-time partner. “Doesn’t he play?”
“Yeah, but only online. Are you really sure you want to get rid of it?”
Dad didn’t say anything as he kept staring at the table, lost in thought. I had no idea what was going through his mind. As I ran my fingers over the polished wooden rim of the table, I told my father how badly I felt about him and Tanaka-san. A long silence ensued and, just when I thought my father was about to leave, he said, “Before it was okay when there were others for Tanaka-san to boss around. But now it’s just me, and I don’t like it.”
“Geesh,” I shook my head. “You guys are such frenemies.”
“What’s that – ‘frenemies’?”
“It’s like you’re friends but you’re also enemies, so ‘frenemies.’” I can’t believe what I’d just done, trying to explain to my father a term from “Sex and the City.”
“Yes, frenemies.” Dad nodded, his lips breaking into a wry smile.
“It’s just a made-up word. In Japanese it might be ‘abudachi,’” I said, combining two of the few Japanese words I knew: “abunai,” or dangerous, and “tomodachi,” for friend.
It took a few moments for Dad to figure out my new portmanteau. “Yes, abudachi,” he laughed. “Tanaka-san is very abudachi.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“A while ago. He and I don’t drive anymore, so it’s not like we can just see each other anytime we want.”
Of course my father was just making excuses, so I told him, “You know you guys aren’t getting any younger. It’d be really bad if something happened to one of you without clearing up any bad feelings.”
Dad shook his head and kept staring at the poker table, while I slowly rolled it neatly back into the corner. I figured that this was as good a time as any to ask, “Why don’t we visit him? I can take you. In fact, it would be great for me to see him again too.” I was about to add something else, but my father had already lost interest in the conversation and was filling the lawn mower with gasoline from a metal can.
I had assumed the discussion was closed but, later that afternoon, after he and I had finished mowing the front and back lawns, Dad surprised me by asking if I’d be free next weekend because he was thinking we could drive to Tanaka-san’s place. I was elated and told him that either Saturday or Sunday would work for me. Actually, I was even willing to take a day off from my job during the week if that would be best for Tanaka-san.
Dad made the call to his friend early that evening, but he didn’t use the phone in the kitchen or living room. Instead he secluded himself in his and Mom’s bedroom. I felt for him — was the call so difficult and personal that he needed absolute privacy? “Honestly, those two men,” Mom shook her head, “just like little boys sometimes.”
When Dad returned to the dining room, where Mom and I were setting out dishes for dinner, he announced to me, “It’s all set. Next Saturday then. I told Tanaka-san we’d be at his house at one o’clock and then we can head over to the Zippy’s near Kahala Mall for lunch.” As Dad went to the kitchen to grab a beer, Mom sneaked a big smile at me.
*******
That Saturday, when I arrived at my parents’ house to pick up Dad, he was already sitting outside, waiting for me with two large paper bags.
“Sorry, am I late?” I asked.
“Look at what I picked this morning,” he said, pointing to the two bags. Inside were white Piri mangoes from his tree as well as several jabong, a type of grapefruit with the sweetness of oranges.
“Wow, Tanaka-san is gonna love these!”
I didn’t tell Dad that, actually, I had allowed some extra time in our schedule to stop at Liliha Bakery to buy some cocoa cream puffs, just so that we wouldn’t arrive at Tanaka-san’s house empty handed. But since Dad had already taken care of that, I figured we could take a leisurely drive through the city, avoiding the highway, to get to where Tanaka-san lived in Palolo Valley. It was a beautiful, warm day in Honolulu, with just a few white clouds hanging low in the brilliant, blue sky beyond Diamond Head. As we winded through the streets of Liliha, Punchbowl, McCully, and Kaimuki, Dad and I sat in silence, but it was a familiar, comfortable feeling, unlike the unease I had often experienced when I was a young kid.
Back then, Dad and I had difficulty talking to each other, and I’d dread Sundays when we would take long drives to the North Shore to visit his cousin in Waialua. Mom, who usually acted as our buffer in those days, would do her grocery shopping then, so it was just Dad and me, and we’d sit in awkward silence, barely saying a few words to each other as we drove from Honolulu past Waipio and along the massive pineapple fields that eventually gave way to a breathtaking view of the ocean along the northern coast of Oahu. During those days, when I was in elementary school, I was interested in only two things: collecting coins and building models of battleships. Meanwhile my father was mainly focused on gardening, fishing, and his beloved Dodgers. It seemed like we had no common ground, no neutral territory for us to communicate.
The distance I felt from him only increased when I got older, as earlier inklings I had of being different coalesced into the growing realization that I was gay. Then, after I had officially come out during my junior year at the University of Hawaii, this only further alienated me from my father, leaving us with little to talk about beyond the weather. But things eventually began to change when, after I had graduated from college, James and I started seeing each other. We dated for several years before moving in together, and we’ve remained a couple ever since.
Over the many years of our relationship, Dad slowly, even begrudgingly at first, began to realize the strength of James’s and my bond, that we loved, supported, and would take care of each other through all the hardships and joys of life. On some level, my father must have been comforted knowing that he didn’t need to worry about my well-being after he and Mom passed, because James would always be there for me. My parents had seen so many marriages of their nephews, nieces, and friends’ children fall apart, some after only a few years, whereas James and I had steadfastly weathered three decades together, and our enduring relationship eventually helped Dad make peace with my being gay. That acceptance, I felt, was my father’s expression of his paternal love. It was a hard-fought battle that eventually allowed me to savor a sweet victory. I now took pleasure in every single instance of Dad’s thoughtful gestures toward my long-time partner — his asking, for example, whether James might appreciate a used poker table. And I was grateful that Dad and I could now enjoy long car rides with each other, sitting in an easy, comfortable silence that had eluded us so many years ago.
As we neared Tanaka-san’s home, heading down his dead-end street, I tried to remember the last time that I was actually there. It might have been a birthday party for his daughter Lynne, who was a year younger than me. We were probably only in second or third grade then, so that would have been more than forty years ago.
From what I could remember, the house seemed to be basically the same, except at some point Tanaka-san must have chopped down the large lychee tree in the front yard. Also, there was now a wooden ramp that wrapped in front of the one-story plantation-style structure, dramatically altering the aesthetics of what used to be a beautiful front lanai.
“Did you know that Tanaka-san built the ramp for his wife by himself?” Dad told me. “This was when she became too ill and had to use a wheelchair.”
“When did she pass, was it recently?”
“Maybe just three or four years ago.”
After parking my car in the short driveway, we made our way to the front of Tanaka-san’s house, where Dad elected to use the handicap ramp even though he was quite capable of handling the short flight of steps to the entrance. I joined him, admiring Tanaka-san’s skilled carpentry. We knocked on the front door and were greeted by Lynne, or at least I assumed it was Lynne.
“I hope you remember me,” I told her.
“Oh my gosh, how many years has it been?”
Lynne smiled and thanked us for the fresh fruit, but she seemed somewhat withdrawn, a bit sullen even. This was nothing like the child I remembered from elementary school. She was a cute and lively girl then, her long pigtails always bouncing in the air as she ran around the house.
When we entered the living room, Tanaka-san got up from his recliner and, somewhat warily, greeted Dad before quickly turning toward me. “Long time no see! When was the last time you were here?”
“Geesh,” I shook my head, “I don’t even know. Probably when Lynne and I were young kids.”
“Oh, then you have to see the family room. I added all this shelving.”
Tanaka-san took me to the adjoining room, where one long wall accommodated rows of built-in stained maple-wood shelves displaying not only books but an impressive collection of kokeshi dolls, assorted tchotchkes, and dozens of framed photos. In one of those photographs, a young Lynne, the girl I remembered, smiled with a missing front tooth. The largest photo was a black-and-white of Tanaka-san and his wife on their wedding day, she in a splendid kimono and he in a classy white tux. As I admired the photograph, he said, “She was beautiful, huh.”
“Yes, so elegant, regal like.”
“Did you know your father wanted her? But I got her first, not him.”
Just then Dad poked his head into the family room. “Come on, I’m really hungry,” he said. “Let’s get lunch.”
Tanaka-san then rushed to his bedroom to grab a light jacket, while Dad whispered to me, “What was he telling you about his wife?”
“Oh nothing,” I shook my head.
“Yep, abudachi all right.”
Outside, I helped Tanaka-san into the back seat of my SUV, while Dad settled himself in the front passenger side. With the two men secured with seat belts, I reversed out of the drive and started down the road when I heard a muffled tapping from the rear of the car. Damn, I thought to myself as I checked the dashboard, but thankfully none of the warning signals—oil pressure, engine check, temperature warning—indicated any problem. As I continued driving, though, the sound became a louder rapping noise, so I pulled over.
Now the tapping was on my side window and I looked to see Lynne. When I rolled down my window, thinking maybe my wallet might have fallen out of my jeans on the driveway, she said, “Hey, remember me? Is it okay if I join you?”
“Sure,” I muttered, as I unlocked the back door, confused as to why she’d want to have lunch with us. If anything, I figured that she’d relish having some free time to herself. But then the thought crossed my mind: maybe she didn’t trust me with her father. This annoyed me—after all, I was more than capable of taking care of two elderly men for an afternoon—but I brushed that feeling aside, convincing myself to just make the best of the situation.
At Zippy’s, we were escorted to a booth, with Dad sitting across the table from Tanaka-san, and me opposite Lynne. That’s just great, I thought to myself. Now I had to make small talk with a virtual stranger while Dad caught up with his longtime friend. But, while Lynne told me about her recent divorce and about her having to take a leave of absence from her job to take care of her father, whose health had been on the decline, I was also half-listening to the conversation right next to us. For the first few minutes, Dad and Tanaka-san started off tentatively, unsure where to pick up on their decades-long friendship. Slowly, though, they began talking about their old poker gang, and soon enough they were chatting just like old times, exchanging gossip and reminiscing about their past exploits. They were even teasing each other, playfully boasting about who was the faster swimmer, the more skilled bowler, and then better fisherman. I breathed a sigh of relief to myself and tried to concentrate on my own conversation with Lynne.
*******
It was late in the afternoon, almost five o’clock, when Dad and I dropped off Tanaka-san and Lynne, so I called Mom to tell her we were running late because, with freeway traffic in Honolulu, it could be a while before we were back at my parents’ place across town. As I merged onto the freeway, I couldn’t help but think about Lynne. How odd it was, her insisting on joining us for lunch. I really would have thought she’d have preferred having some unencumbered time to spend with her friends, catch a movie, or do some errands. It actually was quite peculiar. Did she really not trust me with her father?
Then it all dawned on me.
“Dad, when you called Tanaka-san last Sunday, what did you tell him?”
My father hesitated before answering. “I told him that we wanted to see him.”
“So you said that we wanted to see him, not that you wanted to see him.”
“Well, you wanted to see him too, right?”
“I did, but what exactly did you say when you called him?”
Dad then chuckled the laugh of someone who had just been caught red-handed eating the last piece of chocolate haupia pie. “I told him that you hadn’t seen Lynne in a while and wanted to visit them.”
“Oh geesh, Dad! Why the hell did you have to do that?”
“Well, wasn’t it good to see her, after all this time?”
“That’s not the point, and don’t make excuses. Why couldn’t you just apologize to Tanaka-san? Say you missed seeing him. Or just tell him you wanted to take him out to lunch. Why’d you have to involve me?”
Dad just sat there looking straight ahead, staring at the three lanes of traffic that were slowly snaking along the freeway. I know I should have dropped the matter but I was so annoyed. “Don’t you see that I must look like a total jerk to Lynne? There I was, driving off with Tanaka-san and you, and she had to come chasing down the street to join us. What must she think?”
Dad sat in silence, as the rush-hour traffic in Honolulu inched along. I was so irritated at him yet I also began to feel compassion, that he needed a ruse to pave the way to reconcile with his longtime friend. Finally, as he fidgeted in his seat, Dad added, “Well, if you feel so badly about Lynne, why don’t you call her to apologize?”
This only angered me more. “Why should I apologize?” I shot back, any sympathy I had been feeling toward my father quickly dissipating. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re the one who lied, not me.”
“You see,” Dad interrupted me, “so easy to tell other people to apologize, but not so easy when someone tells you to apologize, especially when you’re not the one who did anything wrong.”
Dad and I sat in silence, as I fought back the urge to say something because, really, what would be the point? I took the Likelike exit and, within a few more minutes, we had reached my parents’ house. As I undid my seat belt to get out of the car, I noticed that Dad wasn’t moving. He was motionless in his seat, looking straight ahead. “Thank you,” he said.
“Anytime,” I told him, wanting to get out of the car, but my father was still sitting there. “Dad, let me know if there are other people you wanna see too. I don’t mind driving wherever.”
“No,” he said, “I wasn’t talking about the driving.”
I must have looked at him with a puzzled expression, because he then reached over to gently pat my shoulder several times without saying anything. I then got it. “You mean about Lynne?”
“Yeah, about her. Thank you for taking one for the team.”
What an odd thing to say! Half of me wanted to laugh, but the other half was confused. By “team,” was he referring to just him and me, father and son? Or was he talking about his old poker gang, that he was thankful that they all could rest in peace knowing that the big rift between him and Tanaka-san was now mended? Or maybe it was both. As always, Dad was saying so much with such an economy of words. We sat there for a few more moments, until Dad slowly unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the car, and started up the steps to his home, a house that he could pay for in cash, thanks to the unequivocal trust of his poker gang. Before opening the kitchen door, he turned to look at me, as I was still sitting in the driver’s seat bemused. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked. “Dinner is probably getting cold.”
*******
Just a couple months after our visit, Tanaka-san fractured his hip on a bad fall, requiring extensive surgery. While recovering in the hospital, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and passed quickly in the middle of the night. Ironically, Dad and I had plans to visit him the next morning.
His funeral was an intimate, simple service. His nephew read a touching eulogy, describing how his uncle would take him to baseball games at the old Honolulu Stadium, always treating him to a shave ice afterward. When the Honolulu Islanders had won, the shave ice would include a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a generous helping of azuki beans.
After the service, a few dozen of Tanaka-san’s relatives and close friends attended a reception where we could reminisce and exchange stories about him. I was surprised to learn that, in addition to being an expert carpenter, he was also an accomplished photographer, having won several amateur contests sponsored by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. While my parents were engaged in a long conversation with Tanaka-san’s neighbors, I made my way to Lynne to express my condolences. I had also wanted to apologize for Dad’s recent ruse and the mix-up over lunch that day.
“Oh, I thought it was something like that,” she half-smiled.
“If only my dad could have been more upfront when he called your father. Anyway, I’m really sorry you had to chase us down the street.”
“That’s our dads, though, a totally different generation.”
“No kidding,” I shook my head. “Honestly, how hard would it have been for my father to say, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. Let’s get together for lunch’? I’m just sorry you got dragged into this.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can easily see my father pulling something like that too. In a way, it’s almost kinda cute, those two,” she laughed.
“Well, as long as you think so,” I said, grateful that we could now find comedy in that awkward afternoon.
After the reception, it was such a beautiful, sunny day in Honolulu that I suggested to my parents that we take a drive around the city, maybe head up to Tantalus to enjoy the spectacular view of the city, but Mom said she preferred going straight home to take a nap before dinner so I took the quickest route to their place. As I was driving up their gravel driveway, Dad asked if I was busy the rest of the afternoon. “Why?” I asked, “Do you need help with something?”
He didn’t say anything until I drove into their garage. “Come,” he motioned as he got out of the car. While Mom headed into the house, Dad made his way to that corner of the garage where his poker table was still leaning against the wall. “Do you think this will fit in your trunk if we snap down the backseats?”
I looked at the back of my SUV. “Sure, we can fold and tilt the table sideways, and if it sticks out a bit we can always tie the tailgate down. But where are we bringing it?”
Dad smiled and then explained how he had found the perfect home: the clubhouse of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans. “I called them yesterday and they said they’d be happy to accept the donation.” As I helped my father roll the poker table to the rear of my SUV, fold it in half, and hoist it into the back, I asked him where exactly the clubhouse was.
“You know, near Iolani School across from the football field.”
“Right along the Ala Wai Canal?”
“No, not along the canal. Don’t you know where? It’s off Kapiolani Boulevard near the Ala Wai Elementary School.”
My confused expression made my father stop what he was doing, the poker table balancing on my SUV’s rear bumper, as he dug into his memory. “You mean I’ve never brought you there before?” he asked. I shook my head as we continued loading the precious cargo.
On the way to the clubhouse, we were stuck in a traffic jam on the H-1 freeway when my father asked again, “Are you sure you’ve never been there before?”
“Dad, I didn’t even know there was a clubhouse.”
“How can this be?”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes, crawling along the heavy traffic, which had funneled from three lanes to two because of a stalled car ahead. I was deep in my thoughts, wondering if Dad might have indeed taken me to the clubhouse long ago when I was too young to register its significance. I might not have even known then about the heroic exploits of my father’s former infantry unit.
Interrupting my thoughts, Dad said, “I really should have brought you before. I don’t know why I didn’t. Well, better late that never.” Silence for a few more minutes, as the traffic slowly lessened with the two lanes expanding back into three.
“Dad, what exit should I take, Bingham Street or U.H.?”
“Either one is okay. No rush, right? And if you have time, I’ll show you around the place.”
“Oh yeah, that would be great.”
“Maybe I can introduce you to some folks there, too.”
I smiled as I took the Bingham Street exit, resisting the urge to tell my father something I was sure he already knew — that, actually, I’ve always had the time for him to tell me the things he wanted to, even when it might have appeared that I was too busy with the daily grind of my own life. But I also didn’t want to rush him. As always, my father would tell me only what he chose to, and I’d have to listen closely to the things he couldn’t talk about, because only then would I be able to hear what he was really trying to say.
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Alden M. Hayashi has been an editor and writer at Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. After more than thirty years covering science, technology, and business, he has recently begun writing fiction to honor the memories of his grandparents’ immigration to Hawaii, as well as to preserve stories of the lives of their many descendants. His first novel, Two Nails, One Love, was published in 2021 by Black Rose Writing.
Social Media Handles: @aldenmhayashi Website: www.aldenmhayashi.com |
