Meeting Luciano - Brossura

"A richly textured tale of love, disappointment, family ties, and the ways in which our fantasies can sustain us . . . A charming debut."
--DANI SHAPIRO
   Author of Slow Motion

"SUBLIME . . . Like the steakhouse where Emily works, which was built without a single nail, Esaki-Smith's first novel is a precisely constructed work of art, and your pleasure in discovering its multiple layers will have you singing her praises."
--Newsday

"HEARTFELT . . . WILL PAVAROTTI ACTUALLY SHOW UP? THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS DELIGHTFULLY UNEXPECTED."
--Publishers Weekly

"DELECTABLE, BRIMMING WITH GOOD FOOD, GOOD MUSIC, GOOD WRITING. I LOVED IT."
--HISAYE YAMAMOTO
   Author of Seventeen Syllables

There are two kinds of parents: those who bring you up with stories of their childhood, and others who act like they never had one.  My mother told me everything: how her family chilled a watermelon during the summer by dropping it down a well in the morning and retrieving it at dinner, and of evenings spent in rowboats watching plankton glow in the dark.  I knew she put on singing shows for her relatives, that her best friend was the daughter of the man who made her shoes, that she ate ice cream for the first time at five.  Her father dropped dead from a heart attack at a train station; she loved her nurse more than her mother.  My mother was filled with stories, and she'd tell them in clear, precisely chosen English, her eyes black as wet stones.

On the day I returned home from college, my mother told me about her brother.

"He was a very talented musician.  A drummer."  She laughed.  "The girls really went for that, especially on an island where most men like to fish.

"He studied with that American, Buddy Rich," she continued.  "Isn't he famous?"

I nodded, vaguely remembering a name from a television show.

My mother tapped a beat with both her index fingers on the kitchen tabletop.  "But my brother's talents were not just limited to drums.  He loved all music.  When I was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, he taught me this melody, which he had me sing over and over again.  Even at that age I could understand the beauty of the song."

She broke out into her trembling soprano, the thin, silvery notes melting into one another like snowflakes on a fingertip.  She watched me listen.  Her voice strained, reaching for a particularly high note.

"You get the idea," she said, clearing her throat.  "So, after I memorized the song completely, my brother sang an accompanying melody, and it became this beautiful duet.  I loved being with him.  We would sit outside on summer evenings and sing in the dark.  Just us and our voices."

"You and Uncle Kahei?  Or was that Uncle Goro?" I asked.

"Neither.  His name was Kazu.  He died," my mother replied.

I had never heard of Kazu.  My mother was from a large family, and there had been so many deaths (a sister who committed suicide, a brother hit by a car, a half brother killed by stomach cancer) that I was never able to keep straight who had died.  I was no longer surprised at being surprised by my mother's stories, small bombs set to explode at some disconcerting point.

"Tuberculosis," my mother added. "Everyone died of tuberculosis back then."