Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

  “So help you God?”

  Ernest chuckled. “So help me and the poor folks at the Black and Tan.”

  “So, Uncle Paz told you I made the rounds last night?” Juju asked. “Sorry, Dad, that’s just me doing my job as always, lots of spadework—you understand how that goes. Write hard, die free—rah, rah, rah. Besides, a good reporter never knows what other stories might be uncovered along the way.”

  Ernest grimaced.

  “Do you know who was the first Asian person to win a Pulitzer?” Juju answered before Ernest could respond. “Carlos Romulo, in 1941, who went on to become the president of the United Nations General Assembly. Do you know who the first woman was—in the category of Journalism?”

  “No.” Ernest felt a tad carsick. “Though I’m certain you’re about to tell me…”

  “Anne O’Hare McCormick—who went on to join the editorial board at The New York Times. And do you know who the first Asian woman was?”

  Ernest smiled grimly and said, “I’m guessing there hasn’t been one but the leading candidate works for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has a habit of shaking down old men who live at the Publix Hotel.”

  “Dad—you know me better than that. I’m as careerist as anyone, but this isn’t all about me and it’s not all about you, it’s about what those reporters had in common. They weren’t afraid to turn over a few rocks and look at the squishy things underneath. It’s about all the marginalized people who never get their stories told properly. And, yes, I can understand how, like you, some folks might not be tremendously inclined to talk about the past, but eventually someone will. Might as well be to me—your daughter.” Juju smiled and patted his hand. “Trust me, I’ll make you look good.”

  Ernest chewed his lip. It’s not me that I’m worried about. He watched the green light turn red. He waved absently to a street musician on the corner.

  “I’ll tell you everything I can,” he hedged, as he allowed himself a little white lie. “But I think I should talk to your mother first. We haven’t had a meaningful conversation in more than a year, and even then…”

  Ernest sighed. He didn’t know how to explain that his childhood was also Gracie’s childhood. And that whatever indignities he’d suffered through, hers were a thousand times worse—especially in the eyes of their friends and neighbors.

  “Do you suppose…?” Ernest hesitated. He didn’t want to get his hopes up. “Do you really think she’ll recognize me today? I mean—it’s been a while…”

  Ash fell onto the steering wheel column and Juju stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She coughed and then drew a deep breath, letting the air out slowly in an uneasy sigh that was more of a suppressed groan as she pulled into a steep driveway. Her ivy-covered Victorian home sat perched amid magnolias that had been there since before she was born, overshadowed by an array of new television antennas that towered above the hill, stretching toward the overcast sky.

  She wrenched on the parking brake. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  —

  DO YOU KNOW who I am? Those are the words Ernest said over and over in his mind as he sat across from his wife, who was napping in the living room. Ernest sat fidgeting as though he were a little boy again, curiously regarding the framed photographs that decorated the walls, the end table, and the fireplace mantel. Family portraits, some featuring a younger-looking Grace, who smiled with a familiar, mischievous sparkle in her eyes. That twinkle shone from their wedding photo, on vacation in San Francisco, at graduation. Juju explained that Dr. Luke had recommended surrounding her with photos from her past.

  Gracie, in real life, reclined in an easy chair, motionless.

  Juju greeted her mother as though she were awake and merely listening with her eyes closed. Ernest watched as his daughter picked up a brush and smoothed out Gracie’s thinning hair, tinged with silver. She fixed her mother’s coffee-stained pajama top where her buttons had been fastened out of order. Then she gently held the elder woman’s hands and whispered something in her ear. Gracie, who hadn’t yet opened her eyes, didn’t respond.

  Juju looked back at Ernest. “She’s kind of stubborn these days. I swear she ignores me just to irritate me.”

  “Don’t…” Gracie said. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not even here.”

  Ernest heard the lucidity in her voice.

  “Well hello, Ma. I didn’t even know you were awake. Dad is here. Ernest, remember? He’s the boy you mentioned—the boy who was raffled off at the fair all those years ago. Remember the fair we talked about?” Juju spoke slowly and loudly, as though her mother were hard of hearing. “Here he is. Look, he’s all grown up now, just like you. And he came all the way over from Chinatown to see you today. I thought you might know some of the same people.” She leaned back and whispered to Ernest, “I’m expecting the full story when we’re done here.”

  Gracie nodded pleasantly and stretched her slender arms into a threadbare robe that had been draped across the back of her chair. She said something about the chill as she slipped her feet into mismatched slippers. She blinked at him and then at Juju. Then she turned her attention to the view of Puget Sound, dotted with the V-wakes of pleasure boats, the misty green Olympic Mountains, and a tiny hummingbird that flitted about a bird feeder hanging from a soffit outside the living room window. She sniffled and seemed to tear up as she pointed a trembling finger at the bird, which zipped up and down, back and forth, like a bumblebee with a long red needle for a beak.

  Ernest looked at his daughter and then past the bird, south toward the Century 21 Expo: the silhouette of the new Space Needle towering above the sweeping curve of the monorail, the pyramid-shaped roof of the new Washington State Coliseum, and the colonnades and vaulted arches of the United States Science Pavilion. He’d heard that the trees that were dug up in front of his house had been replanted there. That row of hardwood now lined one of the grand pavilions.

  “Ma, Dad is here to talk to you. And chat about the fair,” Juju said.

  Her mother blanched at the sound of Juju’s words.

  “Oh,” Gracie said with surprise. “We shouldn’t talk about the affair.”

  Juju laughed and shook her head. “No, Ma. Ernest is here to talk about the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo—the great big world’s fair, remember? He was there, just like you, so I thought you two might have a little visit, become reacquainted. Maybe you can share some of your stories about the old days. How’s that sound? He’d love to hear some of your memories, your tall tales. Maybe he can answer some questions—help you fill in the blanks, you know.”

  Gracie had ignored him. But when Juju wasn’t watching, Ernest could have sworn he saw his wife wink and suppress a knowing smile.

  Juju said to Ernest, “I’ll go make us some fresh tea—see if we have some cookies or something.” She switched on a shelf-top Radionette and tuned in to KRAB, where the local balladeer Ron Holden was crooning his hit single “Love You So.” The song had made headlines for cracking the Billboard top ten, but most local stations, like KJR, refused to play it.

  “I like your taste in music,” Ernest said. He had a deep abiding weakness for love songs, ballads, and musicians of color.

  “What can I say? I am my father’s daughter,” Juju said as she turned up the volume. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Just shout if you need me.”

  Ernest smiled and pulled his chair up next to Gracie’s. She looked so thin. She kept her hair long, as she always had, and her beautiful cheekbones had hollowed a bit. Her eyes looked haggard, though not so unlike his. They’d both seen so much.

  Where did you go, my dear sweet girl? After three years of trying, failing to reach his wife, and watching her become terrified, tearful, or practically catatonic at the attempt, Ernest had accepted their situation. But today he wasn’t merely going through the motions of a loving caretaker. Or a distant friend. Today he dared to hope.

  Ernest cleared his throat and said, “Hello, Gracious.”

  He held his breath as she
reached over and held his hand with both of hers. He searched her eyes for a glimmer of recognition.

  “It’s been a while. Do you remember me?” he asked as he longed for his wife of years ago, before the ringing in her ears, before the sudden headaches and dizziness, before the seizures that took her away.

  Gracie nodded and drew a deep breath, sighing. “It’s been too long. No one has called me Gracious in…” She blinked, squinting at him, pursing her lips, and shaking her head as though he were a puzzle waiting to be put back together. “…in…forever.”

  Ernest smiled and nodded even though he’d called her that just last week. But she hadn’t remembered him then and had told him to go away.

  But today, she touched his cheek, felt his stubble. She traced the lines on his face and the bags beneath his weary eyes. In that moment, he ignored how the years had accumulated on Gracie, memories that had left their marks, and the scars, which had piled up like layers of sediment. He felt his own age, though, as his heart seemed like a clock that had come unwound, slowly ticking. And he longed for the years he’d lost and the lifetime that she’d forgotten.

  “Ernest,” Gracie whispered, nodding. “Young.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief and choked back a tidal surge of emotion.

  “I’m here.” He held her soft warm hands, mottled with veins and spots, mileposts from a life richly lived. He dared to kiss them.

  “And just like that…here you are,” she said, furrowing her brow and then smiling again. “I’m not imagining this, am I?”

  Ernest shook his head.

  She coughed and then tugged at a loose thread on her kimono, pulled the red string, then snapped it off. She dangled it and then dropped the loose bit into an overflowing ashtray, sighing. “Oh, dear…I’m so sorry that you’re seeing me like this.”

  “It’s always good to see you, Gracious. You’re as beautiful as ever.” Ernest looked toward the kitchen, from where Juju was peeking, smiling. “And our daughters, they’re just like you. You must be so proud…”

  “And there it goes,” Gracie said as she noticed the hummingbird fly away.

  Ernest watched her eyes and saw the lucidity come and go, fading in and out like a television signal during a thunderstorm. He turned off the radio. Then sat back down.

  “Do you remember us?” Ernest asked as he held her hand again.

  “Oh, I remember you,” Gracie said with a nod, but her furrowed brow said otherwise. “You were my most…devoted friend. How could I ever forget…you?”

  Ernest turned his attention to their matching wedding bands. “And you—you were the precocious girl who stole my heart.”

  “Mmmm…” Gracie sat back and smiled. She seemed lost in wistful thought as she touched her lips. Then she laughed gently and asked, “Do you want it back?”

  Ernest squeezed her hand. “No, my dear. That’s yours to keep, forever.”

  He watched as she closed her eyes, seemingly content, patting his hand, comforted. He listened as her breathing slowed and she relaxed, pulling her lap blanket up toward her chin, resting her head on a pillow in Ernest’s direction. Then he turned to his daughter, whose smile had evaporated as she walked back into the living room. She shrugged an apology as if to say, We’ll try again some other time. But Ernest didn’t mind. He was happy to sit next to her, to watch Gracie sleep so peacefully. This was the best moment he’d had with her all year.

  —

  ERNEST SAT NEXT to Juju on her small, moss-covered patio and sipped a cup of tea. Her lawn hadn’t been mowed in forever, and weeds had taken over the plot that once belonged to a modest garden. He glanced over his shoulder toward the house and back to his daughter. “Your mother looks fabulous. More clearheaded than she’s been in…years. Tired, but still, she seems so…content. But now that she’s more present, she doesn’t ever leave on her own or wander off when you’re not home?”

  “She never does,” Juju said as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “She’s always content with her game shows and happy with her radio and her bird-watching—a perfect roommate. We go for walks around Kerry Park. Or I’ll take her shopping at the market. She still gets confused when we run into someone who knows her and she can’t remember—she used to get really uncomfortable, agitated even. But lately she’s been more relaxed. As though she’s rediscovering things. I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, we could take her to the world’s fair. Maybe some of that excitement might unlock a few of those closed doors.”

  Ernest blinked and mulled that over. Gracie seemed so happy, so peaceful. Would it be better to leave her in her bliss, rather than stir up the past and hope for more? There is good in the past, but there are things that should be left undisturbed.

  Juju opened her reporter’s notebook, clicked a ballpoint pen.

  “Well, my deadline isn’t getting any longer.”

  Ernest nodded politely. He’d agreed to talk, to share the past.

  “From what I’ve been able to find in newspaper archives and on microfiche at the library, you were what—a newborn, or a toddler?” Juju asked. “And yet nobody came forth with the winning ticket to claim you, correct?”

  Ernest shook his head and looked down at his worn, wrinkled hands—old man’s hands. He touched his wedding ring and thought about Gracie sleeping so perfectly, dreaming of better days, as he cleared his throat and looked back at his daughter.

  “No, although there was a baby that they tried to give away at the incubator exhibit. I wasn’t that baby, or even a toddler. I was quite a bit older. And yes, someone did claim me for their own.”

  NATIVE TONGUES

  (1909)

  Seven years after arriving in America, Yung Kun-ai didn’t dream in Cantonese anymore. Though he did occasionally have nightmares about the U.S. Immigration Bureau’s decrepit holding facility at the northern corner of Elliott Bay. He’d been crammed into that warren for months with fifty or sixty people, Chinese and Japanese, all of them sharing three copper buckets for washing. He’d experienced his first Christmas, with ginger cookies and mince pies that volunteers must have made for the inmates. And there were the strange, festive moments when Japanese women would be married on the spot to migrant workers who came to claim them, with Immigration Bureau employees serving as witnesses. The women always cried, sometimes sobbed, and Ernest could never tell if the new brides were happy or sad, joyful or in a state of mourning.

  Yung Kun-ai had grown into a boy whom everyone now called Ernest Young. Neither pure Oriental or Caucasian, nor fully American or Chinese, he left the holding facility and became a ward of the state, drifting through a series of reformatories and state-run boarding schools, where he played sports and studied American textbooks. He dreamed of baseball and hitting the game-winning home run (or at least getting on base). He dreamed about second helpings of tender roast beef with herbed gravy on Sundays. He dreamed of Saturday afternoon field trips to the Seattle Public Library. And he dreamed of wooing the tall, intelligent, adventurous Maud Brewster in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf.

  Ernest dreamed of all these things, even at 5:15 A.M. as he sat on a frigid toilet in the dark, unheated lavatory of the Holy Word Academy and warmed the porcelain seat for one of the older boys, who would be waking up at 5:30.

  Fagging for the senior students was part of the routine prescribed to all of the second-class kids—the half-Indians, the mulattos, the slow and the lame, many of whom had been sponsored by wealthy docents, matrons like Mrs. Irvine—Ernest’s own patron saint, who had agreed to manage his affairs from a distance. The older woman was polite, but stern, and always quick to remind him of his good fortune and the vastness of her charitable heart. Though her patience and interest seemed to wander as he got older and her attention spread to younger children, who were more easily amused.

  So every weekday morning Ernest shined leather shoes with Vici Paste, refreshed linens, made beds, dried towels, refilled tins of tooth powder, heated baths, and brushed wool and linen coats by the dozen. No matt
er how he was treated at Holy Word, the conditions were infinitely better than his first year in America, when he’d been mistakenly remanded to an Indian school in Tulalip and forbidden to speak anything but English. That’s where he had yearned for other things, like a day without having to march around the playground, in the rain, in the snow, while wearing ill-fitting boots. That’s where he had dreamed of a better life, or at least an afternoon without being forced to watch other kids whipped for accidentally speaking in Klallam, Okanagan, or Salishan.

  A year later, the students’ collective dream had come true when the school mysteriously caught fire. The dormitory, the classrooms, the machinery and woodshops, the nursery, all of it burned to the ground. Ernest remembered standing with his knapsack and watching the flames as heat lofted burning planks into the sky, carrying them away like magic carpets. Ernest had stood in awe, still somewhat in shock and disbelief as a man from the school came up to him and pinned a note to Ernest’s shirt, then put him on a bus for the Washington Children’s Home at Dow’s Landing.

  There, Ernest rarely thought about the Indian school because his new home was so placid by comparison. He enjoyed an idyllic year, surrounded by white faces filled with hope and vicarious joy. Ernest loved living at that old house on Green Lake, with the geese in the summer, the rare ice-skating parties in winter, the ever-present sound of piano lessons. He didn’t care that his friends all found foster homes or farm work while he’d been left behind. He could have lived there forever, but Mrs. Irvine eventually came along and chose him from a lineup of mixed-race kids who were considered unadoptable. She determined that since he was half-white, he was worth sending to Holy Word, a boarding school. She paid his tuition so he could attend alongside wealthy children from good families, to make a proper young man out of him. Even if most of the students, teachers, and administrators didn’t share that enthusiasm.