The Hope Store Read online

  I really would like to be happy and hopeful like other earthlings but I don't see it happening in this lifetime. So I'm doing this babysitting gig with my sister Sheila's two offspring, Willis and Angie. On this particular Saturday, their parents have snuck out to see a movie. The little rascals are opening countless packets of Splenda and sprinkling them into their iced lattes. I figure it's never too early to introduce caffeine to children. I don't hate kids. I just think all children are loud and unpredictable and too high-maintenance.

  Maybe I'm just cranky. I haven't had a good night's sleep in decades and that's bound to take a toll. We could trade bodies for a week, but trust me, you don't want to know. When I worked at the bank, there were days I didn't have anything to do. I'd sit at my desk and I could feel my bones morphing, turning to stone. And that was on a good day. Thank god Otis Franklin took a shine to me, though I have no idea why.

  Angie, for reasons that are not apparent to me, has decided to punch her older brother in his privates. "Angie, don't hit your brother in his special place! If you do that -- he won't be able to have babies," I say. Then add, "Not that it matters much to me, but your parents probably have an opinion about that."

  "About what?" Willis asks.

  "About everything. That's what parents do. They have opinions. Now sit down and drink your iced lattes before they melt. Aunt Jada wants to write in her journal. Is that too much to ask?" Now, where was I? Oh yeah, so I have a man in my life who loves me exactly as I am. And many of my single, middle-aged girlfriends are envious. But here's the killing part. I can't love him back! Not the way he deserves to be loved. I'm numb. Loving someone back just isn't in my repertoire. I'm The Girl Who Wasn't There. Sometimes, because I can put on a good face, people think I'm happy. Now that's what I call LOL funny. If you were to send a probe into the very inside of me, you'd see: The mall is open, but nobody's shopping.

  When our time at Rendezvous Cafe finally comes to an end, I look down at my spiral notebook and all I see are a few stray sentences scribbled on the page. Not even close to the two pages I had hoped to fill.

  Dear Angie and Willis,

  I am a walking cautionary tale. Don't grow up to be me, whatever you do. Be happy and hopeful. That's more fun. By the time you read this, I will be a distant memory.

  Aunt Jada

  I close my notebook and decide to stop at the ladies room before we leave. The kids say they don't have to visit the bathroom so I ask that nice man with the Mac if he'd mind terribly keeping an eye on the darlings for a hot second.

  "No problem," he says. He seems kind, probably a father himself. And a Mac user to boot.

  In the washroom, I notice the nice, plum- scented incense that wafts through the room. I wonder who makes it. Then I start to wonder: Was it dumb of me to leave the kids in the hands of a perfect stranger? He said they were 'cute kids.' I rush back to the heart of the coffeehouse.

  All I see is my spiral notebook on the table where I left it.

  The kids and the man are nowhere to be seen.

  LUKE

  4. A GUIDED TOUR

  I was flattered that day Kazu took me on a guided tour of the legendary LiveWell Laboratories. Did he treat all subjects for clinical trials like this? He showed me around the premises as if I was a VIP, pointing out secret rooms and scientific equipment, introducing me to his colleagues along the way. I remember the walls of one hallway flickered with illuminated images of brain hemispheres, functional MRI (fMRI) images showing a colorful river tracing the exuberance of brain activity -- the release of neurotransmitters, temperature, blood flow, sparks of electricity. But the images were not still; the colors moved in slow motion as if their energy could not be contained.

  One brain portrait showed the brain illuminated like a blue lightbulb with splatters of yellow scattered throughout. Underneath was the subheading:

  “This is the brain liking something.”

  Another portrait showed the brain as a pitch- black sky with red and white meteorites descending earthward:

  “This is the brain expressing fear."

  The image shows the brain with hula hoops of blinding white light at its center. The hoops glimmer against a background of purple and green:

  "This is the brain hoping for something."

  Every picture told a story with bursts of color here and there. It was as if the pictures were saying: "If you really want to understand the human story -- follow the light show."

  Kazu walked me past the many conference rooms. Signs on the doors read: CLINICAL TRIAL IN PROGRESS. But through the glass, I could still make out silhouettes moving, a facilitator pointing to a flip chart. It was all very exciting to me somehow for soon I would be on the other side of the door. I would be a participant in a clinical study. I remember one sign by the coffee machine read: “Be Open To Anything… But Question Everything.”

  In another room, a woman was in a small theater, her eyes fixed on a movie screen. On the screen was the same woman: It is her wedding day. Someone is making a toast. Then the image stutters, pixilates, goes dark. Another image appears on-screen. The woman is wearing a bathing suit adorned with images of red tulips. She immerses herself in a bathtub filled with steaming water. She slides her body down lower and lets the water take her. The image stutters, pixilates, goes dark.

  I didn't know it at the time but I was the only volunteer whom Kazu favored with such a personal tour. Later after the study was over, he told me he gave me a tour partly because I had arrived an hour early, yes, but also because he wanted to. "I was extremely drawn to you for some reason," he confessed.

  I wondered what it was about me he was drawn to, but I didn't want to ask. I wanted to groove on the ambiguity. Was it my smile, my curiosity? Did he find me fetching, to his fancy, a studmuffin? Or was it just my overall Lukeness that he found irresistible? One day I would ask him these questions.

  But today is not that day, I thought to myself.

  JADA

  5. WHAT MATTERS

  My eyes scan the tables at the Rendezvous Cafe.

  I don't see Angie and Willis anywhere.

  I try not to panic. I walk up to the counter to talk to the waitress with the hot pink hair. "Excuse me, did you happen to see the two small children that were with me?" But now I see the waitress is on the phone, taking a delivery order. She hasn't heard a word I've said. The coffee house is fuller than I remember. People in the cafe are laughing like hyenas, are jabbering.

  Just then the nice man steps out from behind a shelving unit. It's where they display bags of freshly ground coffee of various flavors. "There you are," the man says to me, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Then I see the kids appear, one by one, each holding a bag of coffee in their hands. "Aunt Jada, can we bring some coffee home for Mommy and Daddy?" asks Willis. They raise their bags high over their cute little heads so I can examine them. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see them in my life.

  "Just pick one bag, kids," I say. I thank the man for watching the kids. I am overly gushy in my gratitude because in my mind I am also thanking him for not being a pedophile or a serial killer. I am thanking him for restoring a bit of my faith in humanity, however small.

  Suddenly the stranger's face lights up. "Hey, do you want to trade information? Maybe we could grab coffee sometime."

  "Oh, that's okay. I'm kind of a private person," I say.

  "I just watched your kids for you."

  "They're not mine."

  "Yeah, you said that. It's a new millennium, Jada. We're all Facebook babies. Privacy is so yesterday." He smiles strangely. I don't like that he knows my name.

  "Thanks again for your help," I say. "I really appreciate it."

  The man puts a card in my hand and smiles. I hesitate. "Well, don't be rude. At least take my card. Blair Matters. At your service.”

  Not wanting to be rude, I take the card.

  He winks at me. I put his card in my pocket without looking at it

  Maybe I'm bein
g paranoid. He’s probably just being friendly.

  I round up Angie and Willis. We spill out onto Clark Street, leaving the café and the over-friendly man behind. When I get on the bus with the kids, I read the guy’s business card. He is a freelance writer. Not once in my life have I ever had the need of a freelance writer.

  I don’t think Mr. Matters will matter much to me.

  After I drop off the kids at my sister Sheila's, I head for the animal shelter where I volunteer a couple times a week. I have to clean the cages of the dogs and cats; then I feed them. I know I'm not supposed to play favorites, but I'm partial to the cats. They're kind of weird and in their own world...like me. So I think we're, what do you call it when things are connected but they're not really, they're, uh, what's the word...I forget. Anyway, dogs are sweet but just too damn loving for my taste. I set out the Yummy Chow for the critters when my cell rings. It's Sheila. I put her on speaker phone so I can continue with my chores.

  "Jada, thanks again for the hazelnut coffee," she says. "That was so thoughtful of you."

  "No problem." There is a tiny pause. I reach in and pet the tiniest Calico kitten because she's the shyest of the bunch.

  "Say, do you think we can we get together sometime?" Sheila asks. "I'd like to catch up with you." My sister is not the let's-get-coffee-and-gab kind of gal so I'm suspicious.

  "Sure. Is there something you want to –"

  "Not really," Sheila says. "Well, actually there is. But I'd rather talk to you in person."

  "Now you're making me nervous. What is this about?" I say. I stop fussing with the animals. There is a longish pause you could drive a truck through.

  Finally Sheila speaks. "Angie showed me the letter you wrote."

  "The letter? What letter?" I go to my locker and pull out my bag, dig out my spiral notebook. I flip to the page where I scribbled those notes at the coffeehouse.

  The page has been torn out.

  "It's the one where you tell them you're a cautionary tale. And that by the time they read the note, you'll be a distant memory. Does that ring a bell?"

  I am not happy. "Gosh darn it, Sheila, I did not give that to her."

  "Right. Well, Angie said when you guys were at the cafe, she was curious what you were scribbling. When you stepped away, she took at peek.”

  “Did she now?” I say trying to hide my annoyance.

  “And by the way, Jada, if the situation ever arises again, please don’t let a strange man watch them. Just bring the kids with you into the washroom. I do it all the time.”

  “He wasn’t that strange. But okay.”

  Sheila continues, as she often does. “Angie was excited to find a letter addressed to her. She thought she was saving you a stamp."

  "You know, that is not okay with me, Sheila."

  "Jada, love, I really want you to be careful about the things you communicate to my kids. You know they're like sponges."

  "Okay, two things I have a problem with. One, the notebook is my personal diary and I don't appreciate anyone peeking at it. And two, are you saying it's okay with you that your child stole something that didn't belong to her?"

  `"See, that's exactly why I wanted to talk to you in person --"

  "There's nothing to discuss, Sheila. Nothing."

  I hear her start to speak, try to reason with me: "Jada, don't be like –" But I hang up my cell anyway.

  A moment later, my phone is ringing. I can see it's Sheila but I'm not picking up. Besides, I'm at work. When I take my break, I check the message and hear my sister's voice: "I'm sorry that Angie took your paper. I am. And of course, I told her that she shouldn't take things without asking permission. But you know it's bigger than that, don't you? What I really wanted to know about is...well, are you okay, Jada? I mean...you're not having those thoughts again, are you?"

  That's the thing about secrets. Once you tell a secret, there's no way of taking it back, of un-telling it. Ever since that night I told her I was thinking of killing myself – she's looked at me differently. Like I'm a bug in a jar and I'm her new science project.

  LUKE

  6. SUPERSTITIOUS

  I choose to let Kazu get his beauty rest. I walk into the bathroom and greet myself in the mirror. I've been told I look and act younger than my thirty-something years and for that I must thank my good family genes. The hair brush I am holding is Kazu's. My hair is always buzzed short; his hair is long like a pirate's. I close the cabinet and there I am again in the mirror. Gripping the brush tenderly, I speak into it: "I'd like to thank my late, great parents who always told me I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be. I'm just sorry they're not here to see this moment. I'd like to thank biotech companies all over the planet for not being smart enough to discover the secret of creating hope before we did. And most of all I'd like to thank Kazu for..."

  In Latin, my name Luke means "bringer of light." Kazu always likes to say that people are born with certain destinies, that our karma is imprinted in our genetic code. He's a Buddhist so he also believes that our destinies are changeable, are works in progress. At the store we have our defined roles. I plan to handle the marketing; Kazu will handle the science. Put another way, it's my job to get customers to walk in the front door; it's his job to keep them coming back. Three years of clinical trials have produced a compelling number of hope-enhanced subjects who will be happy to sing the praises of our scientific endeavor and their breath-taking results. These results are quantifiable and we're thrilled to have finally received our FDA approval.

  In the mirror, I see tiny red lines on the whites of my eyes. Are they bloodshot? I haven't been getting much sleep lately. I'm too jazzed about the store opening. But I can't have bloodshot eyes for next week's grand opening. I reach for the Red-Out and let the medicine drops splash onto my eyeballs. Better. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Kazu. I pick up the hair brush again. "And I'd especially like to thank Kazu Mori for...let's see...what did he do anyway? Hmm. He said I shouldn't hope for much in life or I'd just be disappointed." I grab a tissue and dab the excess moisture from my eyes. "Come to think of it -- I don't think I should thank Kazu for --"

  Suddenly a projectile sails into the tiny bathroom and hits me square on the head. It is a small pillow. From the other room, he lets out a thunderous, lion-like yawn. As his eyes gradually adjust to the sunlight filling the apartment, he notices the banner. Suddenly he starts ripping everything down. I run toward Kazu to intervene.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I shout.

  "You can't --" he starts to speak, then goes back to attacking my banner. I try to place myself in front of it. "You should never --" Kazu proceeds to tear the banner into smaller and smaller pieces.

  "Either finish your sentences -- or stop fucking with my banner!" I say. Too late. What remains of the banner will find its way into the recycle bin downstairs.

  "Don't you know," he begins, "it's bad luck...to post the advertising slogan for a store before the store opens?" He sits down on the edge of the bed. He seems spent.

  "Kazu, that is about the dumbest thing I ever heard."

  "It's the worst way to jinx a new business. The worst. I could tell you stories. About an elevator company and elevator cars plunging one hundred feet per second. It isn't pretty."

  "I know you're superstitious, but this is ridiculous. Even for you."

  "Even for me?" he asks.

  "I didn't...you know what I mean!" I say. "You're the one that should be doing the explaining." And now a hush falls over the room. We are either pausing to reload, or considering a ceasefire. "Kazu, we open next week. Do you really want to spend this weekend having a knock-down, drag-out fight?"

  "You're right."

  "I was trying to surprise you," I say shaking my head. "I didn't know it was bad luck. Is this one of your crazy superstitions?" I considered myself a devout agnostic, while Kazu is a card-carrying Buddhist.

  "Actually, it's something I picked up from a business class at Seattle U. I took it as an elective for my Ph
D in biotech."

  "Oh," I say out loud, but inside I'm thinking Seattle folk drink way too much coffee for their own good.

  "I'm sorry I snapped at you," Kazu says "Come here." He pulls me into a gentle bear hug. "It's nerves. I just want our opening to be a smash. I take after my mother. She gets very hyper when she entertains."

  "I'm nervous too," I confess. Then Kazu does the thing. It's the one thing I can't resist, an absolute power that he has over me. He uses his magic thumbs and kneads the tight muscles of my neck in a way that makes me melt. I am Japanese American; I was born in Chicago in the Hyde Park area. Kazu is Japanese Japanese; he was born in Kyoto in a prefecture. When strangers see us together on the street, they sometimes think we're brothers. If they only knew! At moments like this I believe Kazu is drawing on centuries of Japanese healing mojo and I am happy to be the beneficiary of such an inheritance. Everything wrong in the world becomes pretty close to right when the magic thumbs come out.

  And for a moment, it's almost peaceful again in our household. If it weren't for the images flickering through my brain of elevator cars plunging through elevator shafts at the speed of light – I could almost drift back to sleep.

  We sit at the kitchen table eating a festive Saturday breakfast: waffles with ripe strawberries and vanilla ice cream. Kazu checks his phone messages and I sketch out some marketing ideas for a Halloween promotion. We both agree 25% off is enticing as it drops the regular price from $1,000 to $750. Until we are a known quantity in Chicago with a loyal following, we need to give people good reasons to check out our services.