Leavesly by Reni Huang
Inside, the eclectic collection of furniture was worn in and comfortable. A crowded row of framed photographs were proudly displayed above the huge fireplace in the main room. Floor to ceiling bookshelves overflowing with stacks of books, commentaries, and several old sets of Encyclopedias. A board of an unfinished game of chess and several folded pages of newspaper lay on top of the coffee table.
Wynn’s parents served their guests tea and sliced Fuji apple pears, wearing coordinating aprons. Pastor Yoshida’s had the words “Sir Loin” printed on it with a picture of a huge steaming juicy steak displayed in the middle. His wife’s apron said “Too Hot to Handle.” Little chili peppers covered the front.
Lexi couldn’t stop giggling over the aprons. Finally she blurted out, “Ok, there has to be a good story behind those aprons.”
Wynn smirked, while his mom explained, “Wynn bought these for us for Christmas a couple years ago.”
From his mother’s innocent expression, Julia wondered if his parents understood the implied meaning behind the cute prints. But she soon learned not to underestimate them.
Turning to her son, Mrs. Yoshida said, “Wynn, would you like to bring your friends to the dining room? Dinner will be ready very soon.”
“Oh, we can help!” Lexi offered, following Wynn’s parents back into the kitchen.
Julia was about to bring the bowl of garden salad and homemade Miso dressing after them, when Pastor Yoshida beckoned Wynn over to help him take the turkey out of the oven.
With his back towards her, Wynn slipped a third apron off the hook on the wall next to the refrigerator and tied the strings behind his back. There was sesame buns smattered all over the white apron. He glanced behind his shoulder and saw her waiting to see what was printed across the front of his apron.
Lexi and Elliott ambled back in at that moment, and there was this brief look of comical reluctance on Wynn’s face before he slowly turned around.
“’Kiss the cook, but don’t touch the buns’,” Lexi read off the caption written in bright red, and threw her head back to laugh loudly.
There was a twinkle in Pastor Yoshida’s eyes as he said, “To return the favor.” Then he said to his son in an overly nonchalant voice, “Wynn, you’ll need your oven mitts. The turkey is hot.”
With a suppressed groan, Wynn reached into a drawer and pulled out two oven mitts, with oversized buns attached to them.
“A matching set,” his mom beamed at Julia proudly, and they had a good laugh over it.
“Where in the world did you find these?” Lexi laughed, moving in to admire them.
“My mom made them,” Wynn grinned, throwing one arm around his mom, who was a foot shorter than him and gazed up at her son with adoration in her eyes.
The food was a delicious fusion of traditional Thanksgiving feast and homemade Asian recipes. The conversation flowed effortlessly throughout the meal, and Julia marveled at how open and easy to talk Wynn’s parents were, so different from her own. The only awkward moment was when Wynn’s dad hinted at his desire for his son to follow in his steps.
“The parents are so happy about the changes in their children after the three of you began working with the youth group,” Wynn’s mom had praised the guests.
Lexi deferred the compliment back to her son saying, “It’s Wynn, he’s a natural born leader.”
“No, I’m a terrible public speaker,” Wynn said.
“Not everyone leads by speaking,” Lexi insisted. She turned to his parents and said, “The kids love him. He’s passionate about God and it shows.”
Wynn’s dad beamed proudly at her assessment, and said, “See, Wynn? Didn’t I tell you, you have the characteristics of a pastor?”
Wynn’s face changed at that comment, but he tried to hide it, while his mom shifted uncomfortably in her seat from across the table.
“David,” she said softly to her husband, a subtle warning in her voice.
It made Julia think back to the first time she’s met Wynn. From their brief conversation at the beach bonfire, she had wondered about Wynn’s conflict of pursuing a career in media.
Pastor Yoshida sat back, his posture frustrated but surrendered for the moment, knowing this wasn’t the time to bring up whatever it was he and Wynn didn’t agree about. Lexi launched into a safe and funny anecdote about one of their Christmas rehearsals gone wrong. Soon the awkward moment was forgotten.
After dinner they crowded back in the cramped but cozy kitchen with its counters overflowing with sweet yam pie, yellow egg custards, and sugared red bean soup filled with tiny white and pink mochi balls for dessert. Elliott was busy stuffing his mouth with the golden flaky crust of the custard, while Lexi spooned the steaming sweet soup into small colorful ceramic bowls.
“Wynn, bring your friends back to the dining room, they’re supposed to be our guests,” his mom scolded him lightly. She picked up the tray of bean soup Lexi had ladled and turned to exit the kitchen.
Wynn shrugged and motioned his hand towards the door in a halfhearted attempt to usher them back into the dining room.
The last one to leave the kitchen, Julia heard the oven timer beeped. Not wanting whatever was in the oven to burn she wavered for a moment then slipped her hands into Wynn’s lumpy oven mitts. Julia hesitated, never feeling comfortable around anything that had to do with cooking. Taking a deep breath, she made herself reach into the scalding hot oven to pull out the hot tray of the caramelized fruit pie.
She wasn’t sure what happened next exactly. She set the pie down on the counter careful to place it on top of a flat square pot holder then slipped the oven mitts off. Not finding any space on the counter to place them, Julia turned slightly to toss them on the counter behind her.
“There you are,” Wynn said from the doorway. “Custard?” he grinned at her.
Julia smiled back at him as she took the yellow pastry from his hand. She was vaguely aware of a strange stench.
Then all of a sudden Wynn’s eyes popped wide open.
“Watch out!”
Julia whirled around to see a blazing hot light flare up from the stove top where the large pot of red bean soup was still simmering.
“No!” Lexi yelled, appearing in the doorway with Elliott close behind her, “Lia’s not allowed in the kitchen by herself!”
“But I wasn’t cooking,” Julia yelped, jumping back guiltily.
She ducked out of the way as Wynn leapt forward, grabbing the lid of a pot and slamming it over the fire to extinguish it.
“Lia is not allowed near any stoves or ovens,” Lexi said very seriously.
Wynn removed the pot lid to reveal the culprit: a blackened scorched lump the shape of a large hand that had fallen over an open flame. Julia had burned Wynn’s oven mitts, the one-of-a-kind funny buns his mom had attached to match his apron as part of their family’s inside joke.
Leaning her head against the cool window in the airplane, Julia shuddered at the memory, the horror and embarrassment still too vivid. She blinked at the pitch blackness outside, the night so dark it revealed nothing then felt her face stretch involuntarily into a wide smile as her mind fast forwarded to the end of the evening.
“I’m so sorry, Wynn,” she repeated for the hundredth time, at the airport.
Lexi and Elliott were already standing at the curb of the drop-off area in front of their airline, their suitcases already unloaded from the trunk of Wynn’s Honda Element.
Wynn stopped to look at Julia from across the hood of his car. His guard dropped and he smiled. “Don’t worry about it. You did me a huge favor tonight.” Before he opened the car door, his expression back to its usual smirk, he said, “And one day, I’m going to have to hear the story about why you’re restricted from cooking.”
Chapter Eleven
It was a strange feeling coming back home after being away for three months. It was late and the neighborhood was dark except for the light of the moon shining down from above. The silence in the car, despite both he
Julia followed mom’s slight, straight-back figure into the house through the garage door. Her dad went around the car to take the luggage out of the trunk of his Mercedes Benz. Julia stepped into the quiet and spacious house its floral yet slightly sterile smell greeted her in a familiar way. Even though her family has lived here since she was a child, the furniture showed no wear, each room decorated to resemble the glossy pictures found in an Ethan Allen catalogue. All her childhood toys had long since been donated to charities. And instead of photographs of Julia in different stages of her life growing up, the walls displayed expensive oil paintings.
Her hand slid along the polished banister as she made her way wordlessly up the curved staircase towards her bedroom at the end of the long hallway. There was no point in calling down a “goodnight, talk to you more tomorrow.” Her parents knew she was safely home. They knew she would still be here tomorrow when they woke up. Anything beyond that was unnecessary information.
Julia hadn’t given much thought as to why her mom had found her journals, and then decided to FedEx them to her at college. But the moment she opened the door to her bedroom she understood. Her room had always seemed empty compared to Lexi’s growing up since Julia’s mom despised clutter. But this was a whole other level of clean. It was a museum.
Julia was surprised there weren’t velvet ropes guarding the entrance of her room. All that was left was the expensive faux-antique furniture her mom had bought for her birthday back in the third grade. Everything else was gone.
Growing up in this cold home, her bedroom at least had been a refuge. It had been the only room she could personalize and create a space for herself. She had tacked up photographs and ticket stubs and a few posters as the years had gone by. But they had all been cleanly stripped away, a foreign and heavily embroidered wallpaper in its place. It matched the brand new duvet set on her four poster canopy bed.
There was a knock on the door, and Julia whirled around to find her dad standing at the doorway holding her suitcase and bag.
“Your mom fixed up your room,” he said, his eyes scanning across the room slowly. Julia wondered what he saw, which differences he noticed. Even while she lived at home he didn’t often come up to visit in her room. He paused, holding his daughter’s gaze as if he wanted to communicate something important. After a moment he said simply, “She missed you.”
Setting her things down, he turned and closed the door quietly behind him.
* * *
The next morning Julia woke up to complete silence. She wandered around the empty house wondering where her parents could possibly be. Wasn’t everything closed on Thanksgiving?
She knew her parents were workaholics but who was going to make an appointment to see the dermatologist on Thanksgiving?
Julia was sitting at the kitchen counter eating a grapefruit and doing the Sudoku puzzle in the back of the newspaper when she heard the garage door rumble open. A minute later her mother walked in through the door dressed in a tennis outfit.
“Oh, Julia,” her mother said as if surprised to see her home. “Sorry we weren’t home when you woke up.”
Julia frowned but barely glanced up at her. Whatever, it’s not like you were home when I woke up all the years I grew up here.
“Want me to make you an omelet?” her mother offered, but Julia just shook her head. She knew she was acting childish, but for some reason being back in her home brought back all those unhappy memories of loneliness and abandonment she felt as an adolescent.
“I’m going to make your dad a spinach and mushroom omelet, so it’s no trouble,” her mom added.
“Dad’s not home.”
“He’s golfing. He’ll be home soon.”
“Wait, you both went to the club? Why didn’t you just drive in the same car?”
Instead of answering her question, her mother opened the refrigerator door and began rummaging through the content before pulling out some fresh vegetables.
A few minutes later a steaming plate was set on the kitchen counter and her mother disappeared upstairs. The sound of the shower could be heard running upstairs, when the garage door rumbled for the second time and her dad entered the house.
“Mom made you an omelet,” Julia said.
Her dad nodded and picked up the plate. “Are you done reading these pages?”
“You can take all of it,” Julia sighed moodily, pushing the newspaper towards him. Her dad nodded again and tucked it under his arm before heading into the dining room to eat, clearly unaware that anything was amiss.
Julia was sitting at her desk, lazily surfing the web for lack of anything better to do when she heard a knock on her bedroom door.
“We’ll return back home before dinner,” her mother said, opening the door a crack.
“Where are you going?”
“To visit your aunt and uncle in San Francisco.”
“Um, so what about me?”
Her mother looked at her blankly. “You don’t like visiting your aunt and uncle. You always say there’s nothing for you to do when we go.”
“But you knew I was coming home for break. Did you have to schedule visiting them today?”
“Is there something you want to do?”
“I don’t know, we could go shopping,” Julia said, listing her mother’s favorite hobby, “Or to a museum, or even browse the bookstore?”
“Everything’s closed today.”
Julia let out a frustrated sigh. “Ok, whatever, you could have asked me if I wanted to go play tennis with you this morning!”
“Did you want to play tennis? The club is closed, but we have the key to the tennis courts.”
“No, I don’t want to play by myself.”
“Julia, I don’t understand what it is you want.”
She stared at her mom and suddenly felt very sad. No, she didn’t understand. She never had.
“I don’t know why I even came home.”
“Is it better for you to spend Thanksgiving alone on campus?”
“Than what,” Julia retorted, “To spend it alone at home?”
* * *
She ended up calling Lexi, who was in the middle of preparing an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner for her dad and the eclectic mix of people who would be showing up for the feast later that night. Ever since Julia could remember Lexi’s family had the tradition of inviting the people from their church who didn’t have anybody to celebrate Thanksgiving with to their home. It was a tradition Grammy Lois started, but Lexi kept it going.
Julia could remember a couple years when she was one of those misfit guests at their table. Her parents had chosen to go on vacation during the holiday since it was the only time they could take off from work. According to them, a cruise to Alaska or a trip to Venice were not fit for a little girl like her.
“Julia,” her mother had tried to explain to her, “Mommy and daddy need a vacation. It’s very hard work to open your own practice. You understand, right?”
But all Julia had understood was that her parents didn’t want to spend their time off with her.
Pushing the bad memories away, she instead focused on the simple tasks Lexi gave her around the kitchen, like scrubbing the small brown potatoes, and adding the walnuts to the Waldorf salad.
Elliott stopped by briefly but had to leave again to pick up his relatives flying in from Seattle. Both of Elliott’s parents came from large families, so every year they took turns hosting Thanksgiving dinner for either side of the family.
She hung around Lexi’s home until her mother called her cell phone saying they had returned back home. That night Julia ate her turkey and mashed potatoes in near silence. Her mother avoided any eye contact, and her dad didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong.
Julia spent the next two days holed up in the room, reading or writin
* * *
Monday morning at the airport, Julia watched as Lexi bravely held back her tears as she hugged her dad, sniffling over how this past weekend had been too short. Julia remained quiet, thinking just the opposite. She missed college. She had spent most of Thanksgiving weekend transcribing her sophomore year journal on to the little black memory card lodged in her laptop. She now had another notebook to send through the shredder and couldn’t wait to board the plane and head back to campus.
After dropping his belongings off at his own room, Elliott reappeared and flopped on Lexi’s bed as if he’d just run a marathon rather than skateboard across the short distance from his dormitory to theirs.
“Come with me to the grocery store?” Lexi begged him before he had a chance to kick off his shoes.
He groaned. “Let’s just eat at the cafeteria. You’ve barely used up any of your meal points for this quarter.”
“But I miss home and making some dumpling noodle soup is the only cure.”
Julia exchanged a look with him. It was clear Lexi was missing Grammy Lois. Thanksgiving must not have been the same without her.
Pulling himself slowly off the bed, he gave Lexi a longsuffering look and said, “Ok, fine.” In response she squealed and gave him a hug as they headed out back out the door.
Treasuring the rare few moments she had to herself, Julia quickly switched on her laptop. Pulling out the latest journal she had left off typing up, Julia took a deep breath.
Junior year of high school, the fateful year, was not a particularly fun time of her life. Even back then she had suspected that sooner or later she would drift apart from her two childhood friends. After all what sixteen year old boy remained best friends with two girls he wasn’t dating? And Lexi was always hard to pin down. She had a revolving string of friends the same way she did favorite activities and interests.
But then two things happened that brought the three of them snapping back together again like a rubber band that had been stretched too thin: Grammy Lois passed away, and Julia’s boyfriend turned out to be a liar.