Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

  "Henry! It's your father ..." Henry saw her waving frantically through the open window, the same one she hated for him to leave open.

  He

  ran.

  Up the street, and up the steps to his apartment. Ethel tried to keep up, then shouted at him to go on. She knew, even before Henry knew. She'd spent far more time with Henry's father than anyone but his mother.

  In the apartment he shared with his parents, Henry saw Dr. Luke once again.

  Closing his black bag, looking broken and defeated. "I'm sorry, Henry."

  "What's

  happening?"

  Henry burst into his parents' room. His father was in bed, looking pale. His feet curled in at impossible angles, rigid and lifeless from the knees down. His breathing rattled in his chest. The only other noise was that of Henry's mother crying. He put his arms around her, and she held him close, patting the side of his face.

  "He doesn't have long, Henry," the doctor explained sadly. "He wanted to see you one last time. He's been holding on for you."

  Ethel arrived in the doorway, out of breath and looking pained as she saw the condition of her future father-in-law. She patted the arm of Henry's mother, who began to have that vacant look of quiet acceptance.

  Henry sat next to the frail shell that was left of his once domineering father.

  "I'm here," he said in Chinese. "You can go now, your ancestors are waiting....

  You don't need to wait for me anymore. The Japanese surrendered--I'm going to China next week. And I'm marrying Ethel." If the words were a surprise to anyone, no one had cause to show it at the moment.

  His father opened his eyes and found Henry. "Wo wei ni zuo." The words rattled out between haggard breaths. I did it for you.

  That was when Henry knew. His father wasn't speaking about sending him to China, or about his planning to marry Ethel. His father was superstitious and wanted to die with a clear conscience so he wouldn't be haunted in the next world. His father was confessing.

  "You fixed it, didn't you?" Henry spoke with quiet resignation, unable to feel anger toward his dying father. He wanted to feel it, but unlike his father, he wouldn't allow himself to be defined by hatred. "You used your position with the benevolent associations and fixed it so that my letters never made it to Keiko. So that hers never got delivered. That was your doing somehow, wasn't it?"

  Henry looked at his father, fully expecting him to die at any moment, leaving him with that question unanswered. Instead, his father inhaled one last time, one long draw, and confirmed what Henry had already guessed. With his dying breath he nodded, and said it again. "Wo wei ni zuo," I did it for you.

  Henry watched his father's eyes widen as he stared at the ceiling, his mouth releasing one long, slow breath that rattled in his chest. To Henry he almost looked surprised as his eyes closed one last time.

  His mother clung to Ethel, both crying.

  Henry couldn't look at either of them. Instead he left his father's side and looked out the window. The excitement of the Japanese surrender was still palpable in the air, and people wandered about the streets looking for a place to continue their celebrations.

  Henry didn't feel like cheering, he felt like screaming. He did neither.

  Bolting from his parents' room and out the front door past a saddened Dr. Luke, Henry ran down the stairs and headlong down King Street--south, in the direction of Maynard Avenue, in the direction of what used to be Nihonmachi.

  If that really had been Keiko he'd seen in the street, she'd go there to retrieve her things.

  He ran first to her old apartment, the one she'd vacated over three years ago. The

  apartments in the neighborhood were now being rented to Italian and Jewish families.

  There was no sign of her. Amid the celebration and revelry, no one noticed Henry running down the street. Everywhere he looked, everyone seemed so happy. So satisfied.

  The opposite of how he felt inside.

  He kept looking, but the only other place he could think of to go was the Panama Hotel. If her family had stored some of their belongings there, they'd have to go retrieve their things, wouldn't they?

  Running down South Washington all the way past the old Nichibei Publishing building, which was now occupied by the Roosevelt Federal Savings & Loan, Henry saw the steps of the Panama--and in front, a lone worker. The hotel was being boarded up again.

  It was empty, Henry thought.

  All he could do was hold his breath, and the anger toward his father, as he scanned the streets for Japanese faces. He looked for Mr. Okabe, imagining him in an army uniform. Keiko's last letter had said he was finally allowed to enlist. He must have been one of the thousand Henry had read about from Minidoka who'd joined the 442nd and fought in Germany. A lawyer. They sent a Japanese lawyer to France to fight the Germans.

  Henry wanted to shout Keiko's name. To tell her that it was his father, that it wasn't her fault or his. That this could all be undone, that she didn't have to leave. But he couldn't bring himself to speak; like causing ripples on a placid lake, some things are better left undisturbed.

  Henry stepped forward, just to the edge of the street. If he took another step toward the hotel, he knew he'd break Ethel's heart, and he knew she didn't deserve that.

  As he turned around, remembering to breathe again, he saw Ethel standing there, maybe ten feet away, parting her way through the crowded sidewalk. She must be worried about me, Henry thought. He pictured her running after him, so upset about Henry's father, about Henry himself She approached him, but kept her distance a bit, as if not knowing what Henry needed. Henry knew. He held her hand, and she relaxed, her eyes wet with tears from the up and down emotions of the day. If she suspected, or wondered, she never said a word. And if she had had an inadvertent hand in the loss of Henry's letters, she never spoke of it. But Henry knew her heart--too innocent to get caught up in his father's drama. She simply let Henry feel everything and never questioned. She just was there when he needed her.

  Walking home with Ethel, Henry knew he had much to do. He had to help his mother prepare a funeral. He had to pack for his trip to China. And he had to find a suitable engagement ring. Something he would do with a certain sadness.

  He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.

  Broken Records

  (1986)

  Henry hadn't heard from his son in a week. Marty didn't call asking to borrow a few bucks. He didn't even pop by to do his laundry or wax his Honda. Henry thought about his Chinese son, engaged to his Caucasian girlfriend, driving around in a Japanese car. Henry's own father must have been spinning in his grave. The thought made him smile. A little.

  Marty didn't have a phone in his dorm, and the community phone in the hallway just rang and rang each time Henry tried to reach him.

  So after his visit to Kobe Park, Henry walked over to the south end of Capitol Hill and past the security desk at Seattle University's Bellarmine Hall. The front desk watchman was busy studying as Henry strolled to the elevator and pressed six--the top floor. Henry was grateful that his son had moved up from the fourth floor before his senior year; four was an unlucky number. In Chinese, the word for four rhymed with the word for death. Marty didn't share his father's built-in superstitions, but Henry was happy nonetheless.

  Henry smiled politely as he stepped off the elevator, nearly running into a pair of coeds in bathrobes returning from the showers.

  "Pops!" Marty yelled down the hall. "What are you doing here?"

  Henry ambled to his son's room, around two young men wheeling in a keg of beer in a shopping cart and past another girl with an armload of laundry.

  "Are you okay? You never come here," Marty said, his eyes questioning Henry as he stood in the doorway, feeling out of place and beyond his years. "I mean, I'm graduating in a week, and now you show up--when everyone is kicking back. You're gonna think all that hard-earned tuition went to waste up here."

  "I just came by to bring you this." Henry handed a s
mall thank-you card to his son. "It's for Sam. For making us dinner."

  "Ah, Pops--you didn't have to ..."

  "Please," Henry said. It was the first time since Ethel had died that he'd made any attempt to visit Marty. During his freshman year, Ethel had made it a point to hand-deliver care packages when her health allowed her to get out once in a while. Henry, by contrast, had never come alone.

  Looking around Marty's room, he saw Keiko's sketchbooks spread out on the desk. Henry didn't say much. He didn't like talking about Keiko's things in front of Marty--as if his excitement and joy at finding them somehow tarnished the image of Ethel. Too soon. It was far too soon.

  "I'm sorry 'bout what Samantha said, Pops, about finding Keiko. She's just a little caught up in the moment--you know what I mean?"

  Henry did. It was understandable. The belongings at the Panama Hotel were drawing the attention of a few local historians. A certain fascination was to be expected.

  "She's fine," Henry said.

  "But she does have a point?"

  "About returning the sketchbooks to their rightful owner--"

  "No, about finding out if she's alive, where she might be."

  Henry looked at Marty's shelves. On them sat a Chinese tea service and a set of porcelain rice bowls that had been given to him and Ethel for their wedding. They were worn, chipped, and cracks were everywhere just beneath the hardened finish.

  "I had my chance."

  "What, back during the war? She was taken from you. She didn't want to leave and you didn't want her to go. And the things Yay Yay did and said, the way he interfered--how can you just accept all that?"

  Marty had an old rice cooker simmering on a table near the window. Henry pulled the steamer away from the wall and unplugged it out of precautionary habit, letting it cool. He looked at his son, unsure of how to answer.

  "You could have been together--"

  Henry interrupted, drying his hands on a towel as he spoke. "I had my chance. I let her go. She left. But I also let her go." He hung the towel from the closet door handle, his hands clean. He'd thought about Keiko so many times over the years. Even during those empty, lonely nights while Ethel was taking that long, slow journey toward her final destination. He'd been barely able to hold her because she was in so much pain, and when he did, she was so heavily medicated she didn't know he was there. It had been a hard, bitter road he had walked alone, as he'd had to walk to and from Rainier Elementary as a boy. Keiko--how he'd wished she were there in those moments. But I made my decision, Henry thought. I could have found her after the war. I could have hurt Ethel, and had what I wanted, but it didn't seem right. Not then. And not these past few years.

  "I had my chance." He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. "I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward."

  Henry watched his son listen; for the first time in many years, Marty seemed content to listen. Not to argue.

  "Like that broken record we found," Henry said. "Some things just can't be fixed."

  Hearthstone

  (1986)

  Henry couldn't quite bring himself to run through the sleepy, well-appointed halls of the Hearthstone Inn. Running just seemed to fly in the face of the quiet dignity the quaint and elegant nursing home maintained. Besides, he might run over some old lady and her walker.

  Old--what a relative term. He felt old whenever he thought about Marty getting married. He'd felt old when Ethel passed, yet here he was, feeling like a little kid who might be scolded for running in the halls.

  When Henry had got the call that Sheldon's health had taken a turn for the worse, he didn't grab his coat, wallet, or anything. Just his keys and out the door he flew. He'd let little slow him down on the drive over, rolling through two red lights. He'd received the call before and was used to a variety of false alarms, but he knew better this time. He recognized death when it was sitting right there waiting. After having listened to Ethel's breathing change, that shift in her state of mind, he understood. And now, visiting his friend, he knew the end was close.

  Sheldon had taken ill on several occasions, usually because of a lifetime of untreated diabetes. By the time he began to take care of himself, and by the time he fell into the hands of the right doctors, the damage had already been done.

  "How is he?" Henry asked, stopping at the nearest nurses' station and pointing to Sheldon's room, where a nurse was wheeling out a dialysis machine. No use anymore, Henry thought. They're taking him off everything.

  The nurse, a plump, red-haired woman who looked about Marty's age, read her computer screen and then looked back to Henry. "It's close. His wife was just here--she left to go get more family. It's funny. After all those little strokes, you fight off the visitors, just as part of the process of letting someone rest, hoping they'll recover soon.

  But when it's this time, this close, it's nothing but family and friends. It's that time, I'm afraid."

  Henry saw the genuine concern in her eyes.

  Knocking on the half-open door, he slipped inside. He padded quietly across the tiled floor, looking at the array of equipment usually assigned to Sheldon--most of it had been unplugged and wheeled to a cluttered corner.

  Henry sat down on a wheeled chair next to his friend, who was propped up so he could breath more easily, his head slumped to one side, nestled against a pillow facing Henry, and a thin, clear tube draped around his nose. The whistling sound from the oxygen was the only sound in the room.

  There was a CD player near Sheldon's bed. Henry adjusted the volume to low and pressed play. The smooth bebop rhythm of Floyd Stan-difer filled the quiet of the empty room like a steady flow of sand filling the bottom of an hourglass. Less time each second.

  Henry patted his friend's arm, mindful of the IV protruding from the back of Sheldon's hand, noting scabbed-over dots marking the landscape of his medical condition and recent removal of other tubes and monitors.

  Sheldon's eyes opened, eyelids flicking, his chin falling from side to side, his eyes finding Henry. He felt saddened for his friend--a sadness that was mollified when Henry spied the broken record next to Sheldon's bed.

  I've been here too many times, Henry thought to himself. So many years with my wife, now with my old friend. Too soon. It's been a lifetime, but it's still too soon for everyone. Henry had clung to his grief and sadness with Ethel's passing, and now this.

  He saw the confusion in Sheldon's eyes. He recognized the vacant stare of not knowing where you are or why you're here.

  "Home ... time to go home" was all Sheldon kept saying over and over again quietly, in a way that sounded almost pleading.

  "This is home for now. Then I think Minnie will be coming back with the rest of your family."

  Henry had known Sheldon's second wife, Minnie, for years but hadn't got around to visiting them as often as he'd have liked.

  "Henry ... fix it."

  "Fix what?" Henry asked, feeling oddly grateful for those hard final weeks with Ethel. That experience made this difficult exchange seem normal. Then Henry saw what Sheldon was looking at--the old vinyl 78, split in two. "The record. You want me to fix the Oscar Holden record, don't you?"

  Sheldon closed his eyes and drifted off into deep sleep, the kind of in and out that only someone in his condition can accomplish. Such heavy labored breathing. Then back.

  Eyes open. Lucid again, like waking up to a new day.

  "Henry

  ..."

  "I'm here ..."

  "What are you doing here? Is it Sunday?"

  "No." Henry looked at his old friend, smiling, trying to be cheery despite the circumstances. "No, it's not Sunday."

  "That's too bad. All these midweek visits. Must be time for my final performance, huh, Henry?" Sheldon coughed a little and struggled to make his aching lungs work the way they should.

  Watching his old friend, still so tall and dignified, even lying here dying, Henry looked at the old
broken record that sat on the wheeled nightstand next to the bed.

  "Earlier you were asking me to fix it. I'm guessing you meant fix this old broken record, maybe find someplace to restore it ..."

  Looking at Sheldon, Henry wasn't sure if, in his state, he remembered the conversation they'd started just minutes before.

  "I think it's time you fixed it, Henry. But I wasn't talking about that old record. If you can put those broken pieces together, make some music again, then that's what you should do. But I wasn't talking 'bout the record, Henry."