"So kids, how do you feel about pizza for lunch? I think that you deserve a treat."
"A treat? For what? Are you crazy Mama? I just killed someone! Is that something ta be rewarded for?"
Karla knelt down beside her and gathered Kimiko gently into her arms. She didn't realize just how comforting her hugs were. There was an incredible gentleness and love that radiated from her when she was totally focused on someone in need.
Jane could liven up a room with her smile, but Karla could make that same room feel the same emotions you would feel on a cold winter's day when you're sitting in front of a crackling fire while wrapped in a down comforter with your mother and sipping hot chocolate that she'd made from scratch.
It was no surprise then that Kumiko soon gravitated over to the others and wormed her way into Karla's embrace as well.
After time had passed, whether it was a few seconds or 10 minutes they could never have told you, but, eventually, they rose back to the surface of consciousness and Karla spoke to them.
"Sweetheart, of course I don't give treats for harming others. It was my mistake in not speaking more clearly. What I meant was that I wanted to do something that you could enjoy after experiencing something that was so horrible.
"Life is like that. Everything is balanced. It's said that for every joy there is a sorrow, and vice versa. I don't think quite that way. I think you can have lots of joys before a sorrow comes along, but it is wise for us to remember that sorrow is inevitable, just as happiness is. What we need to do is accept that and do our best to find a middle ground where we can balance.
"It seems that very few people manage to do it, but just trying will accomplish a lot to help us be more stable. Does that make sense?"
Both girls nodded, Kimiko perhaps a bit more reluctantly. She was still remembering the crumpled body on the floor.
Karla, being what she was, filed that information away to be pursued another day when the situation wasn't quite so emotionally charged, but not so far in the future that Kimiko had walled those feelings off where they couldn't be dealt with. A difficult task, but it was was one that she had handled many times before. She was perhaps the best of her generation at it, and almost all of them were extremely good at dealing with emotional trauma.
"So girls, I still think that pizza is a pretty good idea." She paused dramatically then asked, oh so innocently, "Or are you too tired to go out? I could always cook something for you."
"No Mama, that's fine. Pizza sounds really good right now!"
"Indeed Okaa-san. Kimiko has the right of it. The idea of a humongous five or six topping pizza suddenly sounds quite scrumptious."
Karla hid her smile within herself and said, "Ok then. Get yourselves washed up, and then let's go out for some good pizza. How does Pizza Hut sound?" Karla was definitely not a Paddington's fan. She still couldn't understand why Jane loved it so much that she'd bought the closest franchise.
Both girls nodded vigorously and then hurried down the hall to the bathroom.
This was working out just fine. Karla would be able to avoid the mess she always made when she cooked, and there wasn't going to be any cleanup later on except for throwing the empty boxes into the recycling bin. (She'd bring home extras for Jane and Ian, and that would take care of dinner too.)
Ah, the wonders of creative laziness. It's a gift, and she had been given an extra helping. That thought helped sustain her in the car while the girls argued about what toppings they wanted on their pizza -- all the way into town.
At the restaurant, Karla amused herself by watching the face of the boy taking her order. "We want four extra-large pizzas. We want mushroom, pineapple, bell pepper, and onion on two of them. The others we want to have with fresh tomato, pineapple, and extra cheese."
So far no reaction beyond the expected. "We'll have one of each to eat here, and the other two we'll take with us when we leave."
Now the fun was about to start.
His nametag said "Trevan," and he asked, "Do you expect the other members of your party soon? I assume that you'll need a fairly big table for everyone." Nice boy. He was trying to be helpful. At least this one could think.
"No, any table that will hold the 3 of us and the pizzas will be fine."
He looked back and forth at the three of us, as if he expected to see that we were, somehow, hiding someone else behind us. Altogether he took it better than most.
"Sure ma'am. Just take any table that suits you. The pizzas will be ready in about 10 minutes. Do you want me to wait on the other two until a few minutes before you're ready to leave? They'll be hotter when you get home that way."
I smiled at him. Such a nice boy. "That will be fine, Trevan. We'd appreciate that. I'll wave at you when we're about ready to go."
Once the pizzas arrived, I could see the staff behind the counter whispering to each other. I'd place a sizeable bet that they were wagering as to how much of each pizza we were going to be able to eat before we had to give up.
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Too bad I couldn't join in. I'd have cleaned up. 20 minutes later I waved at Trevan to get him started on the other two pizzas. 10 minutes after that we'd polished off the ones we had and were ready to head out.
Trevan handed us the pizzas and hit us with an automatic, "Thank you for coming to Pizza Hut. Have a nice day." I think that he was too stunned to say anything else.
As a matter of fact, all of the staff were staring at our table and the empty pans. The girls had each eaten half an extra-large pizza and I'd polished off a whole one.
All three of us managed to hold in our laughter until we were outside.
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We'd purposely not called Ian to tell him anything about what had happened. We didn't want to disrupt his day, or draw attention to him. Obviously he'd heard about some sort of problem involving the police and the paramedics at the school, but, since we hadn't called, he'd assumed that there wasn't anything involving us or the girls this time.
We disabused him of that belief after he'd gotten home and started on the pizza. Once he'd finished the first two pieces, we filled him in on the general outline of what had happened. His reaction was a bit more than I'd expected.
"WHAT! And you didn't call me? What were you thinking?"
Then he dashed down the hall to the girl's room, threw the door open, and charged in. Jane and I followed and got there just in time to see him wrap Kumiko in a hug that would have suffocated any normal person.
Then he started to cry. While he was doing that, he kept asking her over and over, "You're all right, aren't you? Tell me that you're all right. Did you get hurt? Are you OK?"
It's a good thing that Kumiko was stronger than Ian, or I doubt we'd have been able to pry him off for quite some time. Remember what it took to get him off Jane when we first met? Well, this was a lot worse.
Kumiko somehow worked her hands up between them, and then pushed. Slowly but inexorably they were separated enough that he had to let go. At that point she stepped forward, picked him up, and threw him out into the hall.
"How many times am I going to have to tell you not to EVER come into our room without knocking and waiting to be invited in? What if we had been changing?"
What she did next probably surprised her as much as it did the rest of us. She walked over to him where he lay crumpled on the floor and bent down. Then she kissed him gently on the forehead. After that she whacked him on the head with her fist, spun on her heel, walked back to her room, and slammed the door.
You've probably heard people described as looking like a pole-axed steer. Ian had the expression down perfectly, along with a fair portion of astonishment thrown in.
He reached up and touched the spot where Kumiko had kissed him. Then he pushed himself to his feet, staggered down to his room, and closed the door.
Jane looked at me. I looked at Jane. We both clapped our hands over our mouths, sprinted to the dojo, and locked the door so we'd have some privacy while we laughed our guts out.
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When we'd finally let loose with our last guffaws, we were both on the floor of the dojo, lying right where were were when we first collapsed. Jane was on her back, but she'd managed to push herself up onto her elbows. "It's a good thing that they're almost 4 years apart in age. That will give us some leeway before the hormones have kicked in for both of them."
Uh-oh. It seemed that I'd neglected to fill Jane in on that little detail. Oops!
"Ah, Jane sweetie. Do you remember the trip to Seattle that Kumiko and I made just before school started?"
"How could I forget Mama. That 'if looks could kill' expression on her face was pretty much unforgettable. I assumed that you straightened her out while you were on the trip. She seemed to be in a much better state of mind when you got back. Now that I think of it, she's acting pretty much the same that she always has -- except for all the calf-eyed looks at Ian."
"Well, yes. We did sort of get that taken care of. It's just that something unexpected happened on the way up. Or, rather, she told me something unexpected.
You know how they were bullied when they were in the orphanage in Japan. Well, it seems that they were a bit more creative in dealing with it than we'd thought at first. Kumiko reasoned that if everyone thought that they were younger than they really were, and they hid out with the younger kids, they'd get bullied less often."
"Mama, the general idea makes a lot of sense, but I don't get it. They were the younger kids."
"Well, ah, not exactly."
Jane's voice was all sweetness and honey, but her eyes were venomous. "Mama, just what do you mean by that? Is there something you haven't told me? Perhaps something rather important Mother Dearest?"
I cleared my throat and found my voice again. "Ah, yes, I guess that there is. Kumiko told me that they had a very high staff turnover at the orphanage. It seems..."
Double uh-oh. Janes eyes were practically flashing.
"Well, I guess that 'why' isn't important right now, is it?"
Jane gave me a tight, minimal nod.
"Anyway, Kumiko arranged for the records showing the date that she and Kimiko were left at the orphanage to get lost. Then they just kept going where the younger kids were. After a few months, all the staff and most of the kids figured that they were in the right place. They were the same size as the younger kids, and nobody could ask them anything even if they did think something was wrong. It was a pretty clever plan."
Jane's teeth were clenched together very tightly but she managed to speak quite clearly in spite of it. Rather like Terry Fator does. She wasn't trying to be amusing though.
"How long?" Jane hissed.
"Uh...well...two years. They're really 11."
I've got to hand it to her. Jane's self-control is beyond extraordinary. She didn't explode. She didn't get up and break anything, or anyone - fortunately - seeing as I was the only other person present. She just laid back on the mat and covered her eyes with her forearm.
I could see that she was taking slow, deep breaths. She kept doing that for several minutes. Then that stopped and she started to shake. I knew that she wasn't prone to seizures, so it could mean only one thing.
She rolled over on her side and clapped her hands over her mouth again. An occasional snort escaped from hiding, but, other than that, there was no sign of her laughter.
Eventually she sat up again, and there were tears running down her face.
"Oh, my. Oh, my. Is Ian ever in for it. He thought he'd have a good five years to figure out how to handle her. He's never going to know what hit him. I am SO going to enjoy seeing him get his just desserts."
"Jane honey, what are you talking about?"
That was when she told me all the little details of her conversation with Ian about his future relationship with Kumiko and how it was going to be conducted.
"Oh, that's choice Janie. I don't supposed that you might consider, oh, warning him or anything?"
"Not a chance Mama. He thinks that just because he's so incredibly intelligent that he's a master of the human psyche as well as of mathematics. It will be good for him to learn that he really doesn't know everything. It might even turn out to be one of the shortest periods of teen know-it-all-ism on record."
Then Jane's expression turned somber. "It'll probably be good for all if us if it is. We can't afford to make ANY mistakes. I know that people say that all the time, but in our case, it's absolutely true, isn't it Mama?"
Well, that was a painful punch in the solar plexus of reality. Our interlude of good humor was instantly over. We had a lot of planning to do, and a USB drive to take a look at. I had a strong suspicion that what Mr. Hafiz gave us wasn't some new kind of financial planning software. I just had to hope that it had something useful on it.