Outside Beauty (21 page)

“It's my job,” he said. “But don't try it again.”

“We won't,” I said. “At least I doubt it.” Then we meekly followed the fathers outside and all stood by the cars.

The moment the station's door closed, Bronson started in. “You girls are in a lot of trouble. Let me tell you about that.” He looked at my sisters and then at me. He took a big breath, his nostrils flaring. He looked like an angry bull.

Mack said, “Now wait a second. I'm going first. I need to give them a piece of my mind. Girls, what you've done isn't just idiotness, it's the maximum of idiotness. If you took all the idiotness in the world and rolled it into one big idiot ball, this is what you would have here.”

I stole a glance at Jiro. His face was unemotional.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Jiro. I looked down at my sandals. They were really dirty.

He nodded, deep in thought. “You didn't mean bad,” he finally said. And he patted my shoulder far more gently than I knew I deserved.

Mack cried, “What do you mean, she didn't mean bad?”

“Jiro,” I pleaded. “We belong together. We're sisters.” I grabbed Maddie and pulled her to me. She neither resisted nor complied. She felt so limp, I wondered how she could stand up.

“You didn't mean bad, but I have to punish,” Jiro said.

“Dad,” Marilyn said, turning to her father with tears in her eyes. “We've always been together, and we were separated. What happened to Mom was bad enough, but it was even worse because we were separated.”

“And you took Maddie away from me,” I cried. “Mom said for me to always watch out for Maddie, but how can I do that if she's away from me?”

Mack threw his hands in the air and looked at the other fathers.

Larry's voice was calm and gentle as he said, “Look, we're in uncharted territory here. We're all doing our best to cope with your mother's accident.”

Jiro looked at me. “No excuse. But I understand.”

Mack said, “But come on, men! In terms of an act of idiotness, this is the maximum. Marilyn doesn't even have a driver's license.”

I touched Jiro's arm. “We love Maddie so much. We just wanted to do right by her. It's hard to explain, but funny stuff was happening. Like her letters didn't seem like her. They seemed like Mr. Bronson was dictating them.”

Mr. Bronson didn't say anything. What could he say?

Larry said, “Let's just get everyone home.”

Mr. Bronson said, “Madeline, discipline is one of
the most important parts of being a parent. I would be hurting you in the long run if I didn't punish you.”

Jiro patted my shoulder. “Dangerous to run away. Many weirdo in America. Some in Japan, too, but not as many.”

“I know. But we didn't know what else to do.” My nose was starting to sting, like it sometimes did when I was about to cry. But I was
not
going to cry.

Mr. Bronson said, “I'm taking Madeline back home.” He glared at me when he said that.

Maddie burst into tears. Jiro said, “I don't think she want to go.”

“She's a child, and she needs to learn what growing up means. And if you're smart, you'll punish
your
daughter the way we all agreed on the plane that they should be punished.”

“I change my mind,” Jiro said.

Mr. Bronson grabbed Maddie's wrist and started trying to pull her into the rental car.

“No!” she said, and started crying. “No!” She kicked him. We all stared. My mouth fell open.

“You kicked me,” her father said. He must have been as shocked as I was.

Jiro spoke more passionately than I'd ever heard him. He said, “Think, think, think. Maddie in danger
at your house. She run away again, might get hurt.” He looked squarely at Mr. Bronson. “Think about how much danger she in if she run away again. She
will
run away again. These girls need one another.”

Mr. Bronson looked genuinely hurt. “My other kids turned out fine.”

Jiro said, “Your other kids not Maddie. Maddie spend her life with sisters.” Then he turned to us girls. “If your mother want, I stay with you four in Chicago. Maybe Chicago needs some of my gum. If I need to take trip once in a while back to Arkansas, maybe Mack stay with you.”

Mack said, “You're going to leave
me
with them?”

Larry, who'd been silently nodding for the past few moments, said, “They're not bad girls. They just want to be together.” He looked at the mountains in the distance, then back at us. “I know how it is to want to be with someone and you can't.”

I knew he was talking about our mother.

“I'm suing Helen for custody,” Mr. Bronson said, his nostrils flaring again.

Larry said, “Good luck with that. In the meantime, I'm going to talk with Helen about what she wants to do.”

“Life ain't a democracy,” Mack said. “But I'll agree
to that if it keeps me from having to come all the way out to Colorado again. I got better things to do.”

“I strenuously object to my daughter returning to Chicago,” Mr. Bronson said.

I said, “You don't have custody, my mother does. Once the judge learns you spank Maddie for wetting her bed, I bet you'll never get custody. I vote for my father's idea.”

“What?” Mack cried. “You girls don't get a vote.”

“All four of you girls need to be disciplined!” Mr. Bronson said. “That's the trouble. Their mother never disciplines. . . .”

“Hmmm, you not thinking,” said Jiro. “Maddie can get hurt if she ran away again. She too sad. Sad about mother. Sad about sisters. You make her too sad.”

Again Mr. Bronson looked genuinely hurt. I almost felt sorry for him.

“I agree they should be grounded,” Larry said. He held Lakey to him. “It's been great having you. But you belong with your sisters, I understand that now.”

I looked at Jiro. “Thanks.”

“You did bad thing, but I proud of you,” he said.

“Me too. I mean, I'm proud of you.”

And I meant it.

MADDIE, JIRO, MR. BRONSON, AND I took the rental car together. I couldn't read what Maddie was thinking. I don't think she believed yet that we would all stay at home with Jiro. Then I thought to ask Jiro, “How is Mom?”

“Getting better. Antibiotics work.”

They let Maddie and me sit next to each other on the plane while Jiro and Mr. Bronson sat across the aisle. Mr. Bronson barely spoke the rest of the way home, even though Maddie and I giggled loudly and sang songs. I kept waiting for him to tell us to quiet down, but he never did. Though, at one point, when a toddler started crying, Mr. Bronson leaned forward and told the mother, “Parenting is all about
discipline.” Then he must have noticed a stewardess struggling with an overhead bin. He called out to her, “You need to push that big black one sideways.” She ignored him. That actually made me feel a bit bad for him. There he was, thinking he knew everything in the world, and nobody wanted his advice. Several times I saw him gazing sadly out the window at the empty night sky. And I realized suddenly that there was one thing my father, Mr. Bronson, and Mack had in common: They were all outsiders, just like my mother was. And they were all lonely.

Jiro did stay with us in Chicago until my mother had her final surgery a few months later. Often he took us to the hospital instead of Mack. At first this annoyed Mack, but eventually Jiro and Mack actually grew to like each other. One day Mack suddenly slapped Jiro on the shoulder and said, “I love the Japanese. They're fine people.”

My sisters really started to bond with Jiro. In fact, Maddie began following him around like he was a guru. Meanwhile, his chocolate gum was a failure, but he found several new customers in Chicago for his regular Gum-Bo, so actually all was well on the gum front.

Then, when it was time for me to visit Jiro for the
Christmas break, all my sisters decided to visit him as well. He met the four of us at an airport in Oklahoma and drove us through the Ozarks.

I said to my sisters, “This is a bunch of plateaus, not hills.”

“Why?” Maddie said.

“Because a mountain is where the ground rises because of geological forces that force the ground up into mountains. And the Ozarks are the result of these forces that force . . . anyway, forces that make a plateau.”

“Why?”

“Because the earth is alive and constantly moving and full of forces that are constantly forcing the landscape to change.”

“Why?”

“Because the earth changes just like we change.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. That's what Dad says.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes to teach me things.”

“Why?”

“Because he's my dad! I quit.”

“Why?”

“I quit!”

“Why?!”

“Because I'm tired of Why?”

“Okay,” she said, and snuggled into me.

Jiro smiled at me. “You never call me Dad before.”

The Ozarks were deserted. All of a sudden Jiro—Dad—said, “Look at this.” He turned off his lights, put the car in neutral, and floated downhill as if we were on a river. Nobody talked. I leaned my head out the window, the frigid breeze blowing hair off my face. We swooped down into the valley below.

Maddie had fallen asleep by the time we reached Jiro's house. Jiro carried her inside and laid her on my bed. I just sat next to her and watched her beautiful face as she slept.

On Christmas we four walked along the Gloomy River, and at night we sat with Jiro on the porch with a couple of space heaters. I watched the red glow of the heaters and felt the warmth comfort my cheeks. The trees across the road were bare, cracking the sky with their shadows. My mother was in Paris with her new boyfriend, Dr. Jefferson. A year ago, I wouldn't have believed it if somebody told me my sisters and I would be gathered on the front porch with my father on Christmas Day. But here we were.

I don't know why, but I asked Jiro what his brothers and sister were like. He said, “One happy, one sad, and one in between. I don't know why it happen that way.”

“And what about you?” I asked.

“Hmmm,” he said. “When you here, I'm happy; when not, I'm lonely.”

“Do you miss me, too?” Maddie said.

“You too,” he said. At around nine p.m. he went in to bed, leaving us girls to talk.

“What if there's an earthquake?” Maddie said. “Jiro said there are earthquakes sometimes in Arkansas.”

“I think that's only in northeastern Arkansas,” I said. “At least, I think so.”

“What are we going to do tomorrow?”

“I guess the same thing we did today,” I said. “That's the way it is in Arkansas. Sometimes you do the same thing every day.”

“Okay. Can we bring Goat?”

“We can try.”

Anyway, we passed the next two weeks doing pretty much the same thing every day, walking in our boots with my goat along the river for an hour before coming home for dinner. I never would have thought doing the same thing every day could be so much fun. It made
me think maybe growing up was a pretty good thing. I could just do the same thing every day and love it.

After our visit we flew back to Chicago. We had to catch a taxi home from the airport. Our mother, back from Paris, was busy. Even with her scars, she was still beautiful, just not perfect. And as soon as she was able, she'd gone right back to the universe where beauty meant everything. But I noticed that even Dr. Jefferson had a sad quality about him. Maybe he was lonely, too. I wished I could change her, but I couldn't. I couldn't bring her happiness the way I could with Jiro.

I would never be truly lonely as long as my sisters were okay. The line between loneliness and happiness seemed slender to me. If I were killed by a car tomorrow, Jiro would be unhappy. If anything happened to any of my sisters, I would be unhappy. You were taking a chance by letting someone make you happy or sad. My mother had never wanted to take that chance, for whatever reason. Those were some pretty big thoughts I had, if I say so myself.