Dixieland Sushi Read online

  According to Kimberly, who had wandered into the gym looking for me, since she was picking me up from school, I had a good running start with lots of momentum. It seemed like I was gaining speed for a serious move. A multiple backflip, maybe, or a series of midair flips. Something big, since I was running at full speed.

  I raised my hands up, like I was going to start a tumble. Only, I didn’t start tumbling. I just ran—hands up—until I reached the end of the mat. When my feet hit the solid gym floor, I skidded to an abrupt stop and made a little, almost three-inch jump off the ground with my hands still in the air. Then, instead of shouting “Give me some spirit” or “Go, Tro-jans!” like the girls before me had, I mixed up the two phrases. I shouted at the top of my lungs, “GIVE ME SOME TRO-JANS!”

  Since I sounded like I was asking for condoms, the entire gym burst out laughing, including Kevin Peterson.

  Needless to say, I didn’t make the first cut of the cheerleading tryouts. On my scorecard, I got a possible one out of ten for School Spirit.

  —Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid

  Concentrate. Focus. Power.

  It takes me a moment to recognize Kevin Peterson in Lulu’s Dress Shop. I am, after all, clinging to the memory of the last time I saw him—his Members Only jacket slung over one shoulder. His red parachute pants, which were then IT in terms of style, and his cutting-edge asymmetrical hair cut too short in the front and too long in the back—a 1980s mullet.

  What throws me at first is the fact that he seems to be wearing the same stuck-in-the eighties clothes: Ice Ice Baby pants that were pleated in front and tapered down to a tight fit around the ankles, sockless expensive-looking crocodile loafers, an Izod pastel polo shirt, and—horror of horrors—a white blazer with the cuffs pushed up to his elbows, à la Miami Vice .

  I blink a few times, wondering if my imagination is playing tricks on me. No. It’s Kevin Peterson. Older, taller, broader, a little heavier around the middle, and a little thinner up top, and looking like he should be pursuing coke dealers on a speedboat with Crockett and Tubbs.

  Kevin gives Lucy a hug and a kiss on the cheek, saying, “Hi, darlin’,” in his Southern drawl.

  I don’t even have time to be embarrassed by what I’m wearing. I can’t stop staring at Kevin Peterson’s white blazer. I know fashion trends move slowly in Dixieland but this is ridiculous. I think I would have preferred to see him in the Dixieland male uniform of choice: a bass-fishing T-shirt and frayed jeans.

  I am divided between two distinct but separate emotions: stunning disappointment and enormous relief. The man I once thought was my soul mate is wearing Z Cavaricci’s. I think even in the cosmic, eternal world of love that means I’m free to move on.

  “Sweetheart, you remember Kimberly and Jen—my cousins?” Lucy says to him. He turns then and looks at me for the first time. And to my surprise, his eyes light up and he knows who I am.

  “Jen! Jen Taylor! The girl I practically shared a locker with in middle school, how could I forget,” he says. He wraps me in a tight hug, and for a second I’m stunned.

  He remembers me. I’m temporarily blind to the fact that he’s wearing a white blazer over a pastel blue Polo shirt. Kevin Peterson knows who I am. For a second, I’m twelve again. I feel the same bubbly excitement I did when he used to give me a casual “hey” at the lockers.

  Kevin’s hug goes a beat longer than a casual greeting. I am still reeling from the fact that he remembers me. It feels like being known by a celebrity—a badly dressed one, but still a celebrity of sorts.

  “I didn’t think you’d remember me,” I say, before I can stop myself.

  “How could I forget the prettiest girl in school,” Kevin exclaims. Me? Pretty? For a second I see in him the old Kevin Peterson. The irresistibly cute, cool Kevin Peterson. He hasn’t lost all his charms, I think.

  For a second or two he holds my eye, and I can feel a blush start to creep up the back of my neck. He probably says that to every girl he went to school with, but I still can’t help but think maybe he really means it.

  “Are those alligator ?” Kimberly cries, aghast, looking at Kevin’s shoes. Kimberly, who is a vegan and owns several “Meat Is Murder” T-shirts, looks like she’s about to take Kevin’s loafers and beat him about the head with them.

  “Gen-you-ine alligator,” he drawls.

  Has he always sounded like a hillbilly—or have I just been away from Dixieland too long?

  “They’re from New York City,” he adds.

  He says this as if it’s supposed to impress us. Clearly, he doesn’t understand that Kimberly, a card-carrying member of PETA, is looking about the store for something that might substitute for red paint.

  “So are you going to say something about my getup or what?” Kevin asks me.

  “Your what?”

  “My outfit,” Kevin beams, proudly. He pulls on the lapel of his white jacket. “I am trying to fulfill a bet with my Lucy.”

  “He’s trying to get away with not throwing out any of his old clothes,” Lucy explains. “I told him he could only keep in his closet anything he wore within the last month—so he’s dragging out all his worst clothes. Yesterday, he wore an ‘I’m a Bass Man’ T-shirt and galoshes.”

  “Oh—oh,” I say, finally understanding.

  “I can see you think I walk around wearing a getup like this all the time?” Kevin Peterson asks.

  “Um …” I pause.

  Kevin Peterson throws back his head and laughs. “We’re not all that backward around here, Miss Big City Girl. I just wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I can still fit into the clothes I wore when I was eighteen.”

  “We all know how adorable you are,” Lucy says. “Next thing he’ll start telling you about how he got $150 during the bachelor-for-charity auction last fall.”

  “I seem to recall that $150 was your bid,” Kevin Peterson says. “You insisted on outbidding Laura Cody, who was pretty determined to win me, as I remember.”

  “You can see why I want to get a ring on his finger,” Lucy says to me.

  “Until then, she’s got to dress me in terrible clothes so no other woman runs off with me,” Kevin Peterson says. “Speaking of women, you know how I remember you, Miss Jen Taylor?”

  I shake my head.

  “You were the first girl I ever wanted to kiss,” Kevin says, giving me an honest smile.

  I can’t think of anything to say.

  “Really?” Lucy says.

  Kevin is giving me the kind of extended eye contact I would have killed for in seventh grade. He’s off the charts in terms of flirting.

  Then my purse starts blaring the Dixie Chicks. My mobile phone—again.

  “I hope that isn’t ‘Cowboy Take Me Away,’” Kimberly cries, sounding disgusted. “Why don’t you just wear a sign that says ‘I’d rather be barefoot and pregnant’?”

  “Sorry—it’s my phone,” I say, rummaging around in my purse. I don’t get to my phone before it kicks into voice mail. When I try to redial, I can’t get a signal. What is it with this town?

  “Kevin,” whines Lucy in a warning tone. “Can I speak to you a minute? Alone?” She drags him off to a back corner of the store.

  “Don’t they just make a darling couple?” asks Maggie.

  Neither Kimberly nor I say a word.

  “Those two are prom king and queen of Dixieland, that’s for sure,” Maggie says. “Lucy couldn’t have done better. She’s the prettiest girl in town and Kevin is the richest guy so it works out.”

  “Richest?” Kimberly asks.

  “He sold his farm to Hormel,” Maggie tells us. “Word is he got a six figure deal.”

  Only in Dixieland would six figures equal independent wealth, I think.

  “Not to mention, all the ladies love Kevin,” Maggie says.

  “They do?” Kimberly asks, aghast.

  “He’s a charmer, that one,” Maggie tells us. “If Lucy knows what’s good for her, she’ll keep a close eye on him. The ring she needs to p
ut on him shouldn’t go on his finger.”

  Kimberly and I look at each other.

  “Maggie!” I exclaim, shocked.

  “I only speak the truth,” Maggie says, winking.

  —Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid II

  Nobody perfect.

  1987

  By the start of eighth grade, was still wishing that I could be like Baby Jessica and fall down a well, because I was still smarting from the humiliation of the cheerleading tryouts.

  I had two things to look forward to every day—the daily debate with my friend Amy about which Corey was cuter (Haim or Feldman) at lunch, and watching the new seventh graders fumble with locker combinations and trying to find their way around the school. On the weekends, I went to the new East Town Mall, built between Dixieland and Little Rock, where Kimberly worked overtime shifts at The Limited . She divided her paycheck between buying stirrup pants and oversize sweaters and sending cash donations to Amnesty International.

  East Town was the closest city to Dixieland with a mall and it was twenty minutes away on the Interstate. While we were years away from driving, Kimberly would sometimes give us a ride in the back of her maroon 1977 Honda Accord hatchback.

  Even though we had no money, Amy and I would walk through the then-new Gap with its endless stacks of pastel V-neck sweaters.

  We would often dream up reasons to walk by the arcade, where Kevin Peterson, then the reigning champion at Centipede, hung out.

  It was on my thirteenth birthday that Amy and I pooled what money we’d saved from skipping lunch for the last week and wandered over to Center Stage, the in-mall recording studio where for five dollars you and your friends could record your own karaoke versions of whatever song you wanted on cassette tape.

  Amy and I chose to sing “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles, which I silently dedicated to Kevin Peterson.

  I decided that while maybe I had not thrived in the country music setting, back those many years ago, maybe my true calling was to be a pop star. After all, the way they manipulated voices in the studios these days, it’s not like you really had to have any talent (See Tiffany and Debbie Gibson); maybe I did have a calling as a pop star.

  Sinead O’Connor and The Bangles became famous because of songs that Prince wrote for them. All I needed, I decided, was for Prince to write me a song, too, and I’d be all set.

  I wrote him a letter, telling him about Kevin Peterson.

  Dear Prince,

  I realize you are very busy because you are a musical genius. But I was hoping you could write a song that I can sing. I am at least as talented as The Bangles.

  I want to impress a boy named Kevin Peterson, and I figured being a pop star might be easier than being a cheerleader (since I can’t do backflips).

  If you could find time to write me a hit, something in between “When Doves Cry” and “Manic Monday,” I’d be totally in your debt. Like, forever.

  Your greatest and most devoted fan,

  Jen Nakamura Taylor

  P.S. I’ve enclosed the $15 fan membership fee, along with my self-addressed stamped envelope.

  After I sent the letter to the Prince Fan Club P.O. Box, I checked our mailbox regularly for what I’d hope would be a cassette tape, or at the very least, a sheet of music. I still couldn’t read music, but I could definitely find someone who could. Then I imagined I’d be in malls across the country just like Tiffany. Only I’d have a Prince song, which would be a million times better than “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

  Prince did write me back, eventually. Well, not Prince exactly, but someone on his staff. There was no cassette tape. No sheet music. No single.

  But there was an eight-by-ten glossy of Prince standing astride a motorcycle, and his stamped autograph (stamped, not original) along with a form letter that thanked me for joining his fan club and gave me a list of concert dates.

  Kimberly, who spent her free time carefully ripping holes in her brand-new Guess jeans, told me that I’d be better off being her assistant, because she was either going to be the president of Greenpeace or she would direct music videos for a living, but only ones with social messages, like “We Are the World.”

  Ironcially, her favorite band at the time was Bon Jovi, who, as far as I know, did not dedicate themselves to any causes other than having lots of sex. She was a big fan of “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and would play it at the start of her local PETA chapter meetings she’d hold in our garage every month. Only two of her high school classmates ever showed up, and they were just two guys who were in love with her and trying to get her out on a date.

  “How can you think about fame when there are people starving in Ethiopia?” Kimberly asked me.

  Of course, Kimberly’s new sensitivity to the hungry populations of third-world countries did not prevent her from throwing away any meat Vivien put on her plate.

  “It’s about sticking to your principles,” she’d said when I asked her about how wasting food helped the starving masses in Ethiopia.

  —Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid III

  Sometimes better to be bothered on full stomach than empty one.

  When we get back to Vivien’s house, Old Red is parked out front and the entire place reeks of fish. There’s also a trail of muddy water that leads from the porch to the kitchen. It seems the boys are back from their fishing trip.

  “BUBBA!” shouts Vivien, stomping up the porch steps and through the front door.

  On Vivien’s nice dining-room chairs sit Riley, Matt Chang, and Bubba, all shoeless and drinking cans of Budweiser.

  “I leave you alone for four hours and you already trash my house,” Vivien shouts.

  “Calm down, darlin’, we’re just relaxing a bit after our fishing trip,” Bubba says. “We brought you some sushi.”

  I check in the sink and, sitting on ice, there are four big bass and one tiny one.

  “The small one is Riley’s,” Bubba says.

  “AND the biggest one,” Riley points out.

  “Matthew Chang, you had better not have fished,” Kimberly says, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Worry not, sugar,” Bubba says. “Your boy didn’t fish on account of his principles or some such nonsense.”

  “I swear,” Vivien says. “You’re just like a cat. Always bringing back useless dead animals, thinking we’re going to eat them. Just what am I supposed to do with these fish?”

  “Fry ’em?” Bubba suggests.

  “The three of you had better have this kitchen spotless. You know very well, Bradford Alexander Taylor, that your parents are coming,” Vivien points out. She never uses Bubba’s full name unless she’s really angry.

  “You know my parents love a good fish fry,” Bubba says.

  “I’m going upstairs, and when I come down again, I’d better not see one fish,” Vivien says between clenched teeth. She stomps up the stairs, leaving the rest of us in the kitchen.

  “I hope you had fun,” I tell Riley.

  “Dead right,” he says.

  “Your limey Brit did all right,” Bubba says, clamping Riley on the shoulder. “He only fell out of the boat twice.” Bubba loves rocking the boat to see who falls out.

  “Bubba—you didn’t,” I say. I can feel my face start to burn. Bubba is always doing embarrassing things like this. It’s no wonder I never want to bring home boyfriends. He was, after all, the one who answered the door causally holding a hunting rifle the night my prom date came to pick me up. He likes to remind me it wasn’t loaded, but my date sure didn’t know the difference. The entire night, he barely said two words to me.

  “It’s all right,” says Riley. “I can swim like a fish.”

  “Hope you’re stronger than one,” Bubba says, handing Riley the beer cooler. “This needs to go to the garage.”

  I follow Riley as he heads to the backyard. “I’m so sorry you got stuck with my dad. He can be a little odd.” God knows what else Bubba said or did while they were on the lake. “And I know you must be thinking we’re all b
ackward here. My family means well, but they’re not very sophisticated.”

  “There’s nothing boring about your family, that’s for sure,” he says. “But I don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about either.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, doubtful.

  “Let me tell you a story.” Riley sits down on the overturned cooler and motions me to sit next to him. “My dad …” he starts.

  “The bankrupt earl?”

  “Brother of that earl,” Riley corrects. “Anyway, my dad was obsessed with being proper. You know, the British, stiff upper lip and all that. He never hugged me. Never told me he loved me. The only time I realized I meant something to him was when he came to one of my rugby matches when I was a lad and watched us win the championship and he actually started crying. He couldn’t stop and it was a bit embarrassing. He’d been bottling up his emotions for years. He doesn’t know what to do with them, so they just come up at times like that, and he’s overwhelmed.”

  I nod, not quite sure what this has to do with my crazy relatives.

  “Families are always going to find a way to embarrass you,” Riley says. “You can have people who spend all their time trying to be proper, or you can have relatives like yours who aren’t afraid to show how much they love you, even if it means dunking their daughter’s date in the lake a few times.”

  I’d never thought about it that way before. I feel a sudden, instant relief.

  “Point is, your family loves you dearly, and that’s the important thing,” Riley says. “And they make you unique.”

  “Even if they are insane.”

  “I think the proper term is sanity-impaired.”

  I snort, and I feel closer to Riley than ever. He’s looking every bit The Colins, and I want badly to wrap my arms around him and pull him to me, even if he does smell like lake. My knee is touching his, and I realize that there’s an electric energy between us that is hard to ignore. When I look up, Riley is staring at me with a serious look on his face.