Chapter 12- Disaster
The shock of seeing her father still hadn't receded as Kari rushed to the kitchen to grab some ice. She walked back into the hallway where her father gratefully accepted her aid. T.K. stood by the doorway, waiting for Kari to react. The phone lay on the floor between the three of them and Matt's extremely irritated voice was the only noise in the room.
"I'm sorry if I interrupted anything," Mr. Kamiya commented, glancing skeptically at the two teenagers' apparel.
"Actually, you did," T.K. snapped, rather coldly.
Kari was still staring at her father's, now bruised face. Slowly, she bent down and picked up the phone and turned it off. "T.K., you should go."
T.K. looked at her, almost in disbelief. "If that's what you want…"
She nodded in response. Then silently, she held open the front door for him. He quickly pulled on the clothes he had been wearing the night before, all under the watchful eye of Kari's father.
"Have a nice flight," Kari whispered as he walked through the doorway.
He smiled, kissed her cheek, and told her that, "This isn't finished." And he walked down the front steps, only stopping at the bottom to give her one last confident smile.
Kari stood in the doorway watching him, unable to return his optimism. All of the emotions and depression she had fought with a year ago upon leaving him were coming back to her.
Fighting away tears, she turned to face her father, who was still watching her. "Why are you here?" she asked him, though she secretly desperately wanted him to say that he was here because of her, or even to see the concert. Of course, she could have just assumed that she would be the reason her father would fly to America, but she felt a need to ask. She needed to hear him confirm it.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kamiya missed his daughter's hidden motive and instead avoided her question. "Is your mother home? I really need to speak to her."
Kari shook her head "no," unable to hold back her tears any longer as she collapsed on the sofa. She should have known how terrible this day would become. No morning so perfect could have resulted in a similarly perfect day, things just had to get worse. She tried to look on the bright side, at least it couldn't get any worse than this, or so she naively thought.
"Look, Kari," her dad began, taking a seat in the armchair across from the couch. "I know I haven't been the world's greatest dad recently, but I want to give you some advice."
Kari snorted, but was feeling civilized enough to let him continue. "I know that you care a lot about Takeru, but he's just a boy. You're fifteen years old. You have plenty of time to meet other boys. And you live so far away, why don't you try meeting a boy here in California?"
"First of all, I'm seventeen. And second, T.K. loves me, which is something I'm not going to throw away just because we don't live near each other anymore," she retorted, stressing the word anymore.
Kari's anger swelled as he laughed at her. "I find it hard to believe that a seventeen-year-old, hormone driven teenager can have any understanding of love."
"And I should take your advise on this subject, because you're such an expert." Kari knew she was being cruel, but she was past the point of caring.
"I guess I've made some mistakes when it comes to love, but I'm here because I want to start over in that area."
He looked sincere, but Kari thought that he must have been kidding. "I hope you're not serious. You hurt mom emotionally in just about every way. But she's stronger now, without you, and there's no way in hell that she'll ever take you back."
He was surprised for a minute and then laughed once again. "Oh God no, I didn't mean your mother. No, it's definitely over for us. What I meant to tell you is that I'm engaged. Tara and I are getting married."
Kari felt her jaw drop, and it was several seconds before she closed it. "Congratulations," she told him earnestly, with just a hint of sarcasm. "I hope you'll be happy with your new family."
He was about to say more, when the front door opened and Kari's mother and grandmother entered the room. Kari's mother was the first to notice the two in the living room. She stared silently, her eyes wide and flickering between father and daughter. Grandma Kate stepped in behind her and, noticing Kari's father, headed into the kitchen where she called to them that she would be making coffee if they needed her.
Kari's mother stepped into the living room and sat down on the couch beside Kari. At the same moment, however, Kari stood up. Silently, she left her parents and went upstairs to change out of her nightclothes.
About five minutes later and two floors away, Kari could hear her mother's exclamations.
"You want me to sign what!" her mother shrieked. "You're getting married to a woman who is young enough to be your daughter?"
Kari left her room and headed back downstairs to the war zone. Her mother was still screaming. "You mean to tell me, that after no contact with your daughter in a year, you flew all this way, not to see her, but to tell her of your upcoming wedding? Were you even going to invite her?"
Kari entered the kitchen, took a Styrofoam of extremely strong coffee from her grandmother, slid on her sandals, and left through the back door. Heading down the street sipping her coffee, she hoped that T.K. and the rest of them hadn't left yet.
She arrived at the house the band had rented just in time to observe Tai and Davis dragging their suitcases across the sidewalk and into the trunk of a yellow taxi. "Hey! Wait!" she called, running to catch them before they left.
Tai turned around in time to catch his baby sister as she flung herself at him, her coffee forgotten as it hit the sidewalk and rolled into the street. "Where are the others?" she asked, looking around for T.K., Matt, and the rest of the band.
"They already left for the airport, which we should be doing right now so we don't miss our flight," Davis said loudly as he held open the door of the car.
"Tai, dad's here. He needs mom to sign some papers so he can get married."
"I know. Have you met her yet? Her name's Tara and she has an IQ about a point higher than the average boulder, and that's rounding up."
Kari laughed. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "Maybe mom'll let you come to Japan for the wedding and you can come visit me. I've been kind of living with Matt, and, yes, we do know how to behave ourselves." But he added a mischievous wink which made her a little bit suspicious about what was going on there.
"All right, tell everyone back home that I said hi and that I miss them." She hugged her brother and Davis one last time and stood on the curb waving until the yellow cab rounded a corner and disappeared from her sight.
With one last sigh, she headed back towards her grandmother's home, as ready as she ever would be to handle her father. She entered through the front door just as her mother threw up her hands and hurried into the kitchen, leaving her very angry father alone in the living room.
"Kari, there you are," her father said, trying his best to sound concerned. "I wasn't done talking with you. I wanted to invite you to come stay with us next month before you start school. So you'll be able to visit all of your old friends and come to the wedding."
"I'll think about it," was all she could say before following her mother into the kitchen.
Grandma Kate and the former Mrs. Kamiya were sitting at the counter, silently drinking their coffee, both upset with Kari's father for various reasons. Mr. Kamiya followed Kari into the kitchen, attempting to persuade her to come to the wedding.
"There's going to be lots of food and pretty dresses. You have to meet Tara; after all, she's going to be your new stepmother. I think she would even like to ask you to play a part in the ceremony. And there's going to be lots of photographers. You still like photography, don't you?"
"I said, I'll think about it," Kari repeated, trying to refrain from the cruelty she had expressed earlier.
However, it seemed that her father wasn't even listening to her. He kept on describing all of the "wonderful" aspects of a wedding, and was almost to the point of bribery when Grandma Kate interrupted.
"Ami will sign your damn papers. You daughter, whom you haven't so much as written to in the last year, said that she will think about attending your wedding. Though if I were her, I wouldn't even have let you through the door. But she did, and now we've said all that needs to be said, so your welcome here has been officially worn out."
He stood in the kitchen doorway, staring openmouthed at his former mother-in-law's blunt demand for him to leave. "Do I have to show you to the door?" she asked, and Kari tried to stifle her laughter at her father's obvious shock and agitation.
Somehow, he managed to locate the door and successfully exit. Kari watched from the living room window as he climbed into his rental car and drove away down the street. Internally, she was exhausted, the tears that had been with her all day were beginning to fall once again. Despite how horrible he was and everything he had done wrong, she still loved him. She figured she couldn't help it. More than anything she wanted to feel the icy detachment that Grandma Kate had shown, but she didn't think it was possible.
As she stood at the window, staring blankly at the neighborhood, Kari's mother came and stood behind her, placing a comforting hand on her daughter's shoulder.
"It doesn't make you a bad person, you know," she told her daughter. "He's your father and you should care for him no matter what happens. Your affection towards him is what makes you such a great person."
Kari sighed, "It's just hard to love someone who won't love you back."
"I know that I'm supposed to say that he does love you, and that he just has a unique way of showing it, but I think, in this case, he just has his priorities mixed up. Even though he doesn't want children in his life right now, that does not mean that he doesn't love you. I don't know of any parent that could stop loving their child, especially when she's such a sweet kid like you."
Kari smiled, "Thanks, that kind of makes me feel better. But I'm still angry with him."
"I know, and you certainly have a right to be. You know, if you don't want to go to the wedding then you don't have to go."
"I know," she said, heading up the stairs to her room. "Thanks for being so understanding today."
"Well, what's family for anyways?"