Click Here to Start

by Denis Markell

  “Well, he was very respectful and seemed to take a great interest in talking with my dad. That unit your great-uncle served in during the war was quite important, you know. Those men were real heroes.” Donna squints and looks up the street.

  “Oh, here’s your mom now. I’ll just say hello!”

  My mom pulls up, and she’s apologizing before she’s turned the engine off. Donna will hear nothing of it, offers her water and cookies, and the two carry on like old friends.

  I turn to Isabel and Caleb, who have the same expression on their faces.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Did your mom tell you about this reporter?” Caleb asks.

  I shake my head. “Not a peep.”

  Isabel frowns. “From what Mr. Yamada said, this regiment was very important, so why wouldn’t they do an article on your great-uncle?”

  “We need to find out what he did in the war. Maybe this guy knows?” I say.

  —

  On the way home, Mom eyes us in the rearview. “So was Mr. Yamada nice?”

  “He’s a very interesting man,” Isabel pipes up. “He’s quite knowledgeable about bonsai.”

  “I’ve always wanted to learn about that,” sighs my mom, “and ikebana—flower arranging.”

  “I know!” Isabel says, somehow not making it sound obnoxious. Well, not too obnoxious.

  “It’s was just so hard, with the kids…and the work at the hospital…”

  “Speaking of the hospital,” I say, “do you happen to remember where Great-Uncle Ted was before they moved him to the ICU?”

  “You mean his floor? He was on fourteen, sweetheart, where Pearl is the floor nurse.”

  “Do you remember what his room number was?” I ask, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  “I don’t know. Who remembers those things?” Mom answers.

  Isabel looks at me, opens her eyes wide, and nods at my mom.

  She wants me to ask her something else…but I’m not sure what. She keeps looking at me as we drive along in silence. I get nothing.

  Finally, she says loudly to me, “Wasn’t that a nice chat we had with Donna before your mom came?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I reply.

  Isabel slumps down in her seat in frustration. Clearly I’m missing something.

  “We also learned a little bit about his war service,” says Isabel. “Apparently he was in a very famous army unit.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. I forget the number. The Nisei brigade, he used to call them. He’d get invited to reunions all the time, but he never wanted to go,” Mom says.

  Finally, it sinks in. Duh.

  “Oh, Mom. Did some guy from a newspaper in Hawaii call and ask questions about Great-Uncle Ted?”

  “A newspaper? What are you talking about?” My mom sounds genuinely confused.

  “Before we came, this guy had been at Mr. Yamada’s and—”

  “Wait a minute! The gosh darn traffic is just terrible here. I’m going to pull off and take the side road.”

  I know enough not to talk to my mother when she’s changing her driving plans. This requires the utmost concentration and focus. I turn to Isabel, who mouths the words “thank you” as sarcastically as one can mouth words.

  As we pull onto a local road, Mom returns to the land of the talkable.

  “What were you asking? A newspaper?”

  “A man came and talked to Mr. Yamada and said he’d gotten his name from you.”

  “That’s strange,” my mom says. “No one’s asked me about him. No one’s called.”

  Her mood changes as we pull up to Caleb’s house. “First stop!” she trills. Caleb hops out.

  “Text me or phone me later,” he calls back to me. I nod.

  Next, we drop Isabel off at her house. It’s in Treemont Oaks, the part of La Purisma Caleb and I simply call “The Rich Place.” We glide down a tree-lined street of large, immaculate houses and pull into a wide gravel drive beside the Archermobile, sunlight sparkling on its pristine exterior.

  “I’ll let you know anything I find out,” I promise Isabel.

  As she walks toward the house, I realize I don’t have her cell number.

  “Hey!” I yell after her.

  “917-555-6554,” she says, without even turning around.

  And with that, she walks into the imposing house.

  On the drive home, I turn things over in my head. What’s the deal with this man who says he found Mr. Yamada by asking my mom?

  For some reason, I think about Isabel as I watch the palm trees swaying over Ventura Boulevard, looking ridiculous next to the minimalls filled with sad-looking fast-food joints, discount jewelers, and chain stores.

  Not a bookstore in sight. What does Isabel see when she looks at this dumpy little place?

  As we turn onto our street, I notice a familiar-looking car. A black Jaguar XJ6 sedan, driven by a man with a narrow face and a thatch of gray hair.

  And it’s pulling out of our driveway.

  We enter the house to find Dad calmly sitting at the dining room table, looking at (what else?) the Purely Provence catalog.

  “Someone was here looking for you, Ted,” he says pleasantly. “You just missed him.”

  I try to sound casual. “Yeah, I saw the car pull out. Who was it?”

  “He said he’s from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and he’s writing an article about the division Uncle Ted was in.”

  Mom turns to me in triumph. “That must have been the man who visited Mr. Yamada!”

  “He wanted to talk to me? Why not Mom? She was his niece.”

  “He told me he needed something dramatic to end his article, so he was hoping he’d get a good quote, and the nurses at the ICU said Uncle Ted had spent a lot of time with you near the end, so…” My dad’s voice trails off.

  I sit down at the table and find myself rubbing the back of my neck, the way I do when I’m trying to solve a particularly hard clue in a game.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” I say, thinking out loud. “He doesn’t need to talk to me in person. He could have called, or emailed. Why did he fly all the way over here from Hawaii?”

  Dad shrugs. “He said something about coming to LA to do research at the Japanese American National Museum. He was interviewing people who knew Ted, like Mr. Yamada, and thought as long as he was in the area…”

  “Okay, but why not call ahead? Weird.”

  Mom rejoins us. “He was probably just driving by and remembered we lived near here.”

  “You can ask him yourself,” my dad says. “He’s coming back tomorrow. I told him you and Mom would be here in the morning.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. “Yeah, I just wish I had something to tell him.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Mom is going through her purse.

  She’s amazing. Even when I hear her and Dad argue and she gets mad, the most I’ve ever heard her say is “Darn it, Artie!”

  “What’s wrong, honey?” my dad asks. “Don’t tell me. You left your wallet at the Japanese market?”

  “Not this time. No, I left the book I was reading at the hospital. Darn! I was just getting to the good part.”

  My father mutters something under his breath. This has been a long-standing source of irritation to him. The wife of an English professor only reads books that patients leave behind in the hospital. And of course, these are inevitably the kind of books you buy at a hospital gift shop or an airport. You know—the kind whose covers show guys with their shirts open to their navels and women swooning in their arms? They have titles like Crime of Passion (if it’s romantic) or A Passion for Crime (if it’s a mystery), and most have the author’s name in big raised letters with the words “New York Times Bestselling Author!” (Dad always grumbles, “That’s a sure sign it’s great literature.”)

  Mom hits my dad playfully. “Stop it, Artie. This one is pretty good. Part of it takes place in Japan, remember? I told you about it three times already.”

  M
y dad shrugs.

  “I don’t know why I bother. You never listen. I think you’re afraid you might like it.”

  “Would it make me cry?” my dad says.

  “Shut up,” my mom answers. “Not everything has to be Henry James.”

  This is another joke in the family. It’s also a bone of contention that Mom hasn’t ever tried to read any of the works of an author her husband has taught for ten years.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Dad tries once more. “I’ll read this masterpiece if you read just fifty pages of The Portrait of a Lady.”

  “I’ll think about it,” my mom laughs. “But now I won’t even get a chance to finish it until Monday.”

  I have a brainstorm.

  “I can go get it for you,” I offer.

  “That’s so sweet, honey, but it’s not necessary.”

  “No, really. It’s at the desk, right? I don’t mind. I need the exercise anyway.”

  Ever since I turned twelve, I’ve been allowed to bike back and forth to the hospital. It’s all local roads, and I’ve done it plenty of times. Like I’ve met my mom for lunch, or biked to the hospital after school to hang out and do homework and head home with her after her shift ends.

  “Well…”

  I can tell Mom really wants to finish the book.

  “This is ridiculous,” mutters my dad. “I can tell you how it’s going to end. Devon, or her adorable son or daughter, will melt Erik-with-a-K’s heart and he will learn to love again.”

  “That would be lovely, Ted. I appreciate it so much,” my mom says, kissing me on the top of the head.

  It feels good to get on my bike and move around after being in that stifling greenhouse.

  Still, I keep coming back to the way Mr. Yamada’s face lit up with surprise when he saw the lighter. It’s as if he knew it had been hidden.

  How much did Great-Uncle Ted tell him?

  I pull into the hospital parking lot in record time.

  On the first floor, I greet Ronnie the security guard, who looks surprised to see me. Ronnie seems to carry much of his considerable weight in his butt and has the face of a basset hound, but he doesn’t miss anything.

  “Your mom’s not on today,” Ronnie says, scanning the call sheet.

  “She left a book here, so I offered to get it for her.” I smile.

  “Just sign in and head up, man.” Ronnie watches as I sign the book that keeps a record of every visitor, where they go, and how long they stay.

  I finish and head up to the tenth floor. As I get out of the elevator, the operating room nurses are all clustered around a box of gourmet chocolates probably sent by a grateful patient.

  Connie, a small woman with a head of tight curls, spots me and calls out, “I should have known! What? Amanda found out about this candy and sent you to take some?”

  All the ladies laugh, and I feel my face turn red. “I’m, uh…just here to get a book she left at the end of her shift.”

  “Oh my gosh! She left her book!” cries Rowena. “She sent you to get it? That woman sure loves her books!”

  “No, actually, I offered,” I say. “Do you know where she left it?”

  Rowena pulls something out of a drawer in the nurses’ station.

  “I’ve got it right here.” As I reach for it, she pulls it back and turns it over.

  “Wait, I have to see what makes this so amazing,” she announces, reading aloud from the back cover. “ ‘Love’s Savage Kiss—a tale of love and revenge spanning three generations, from the streets of war-torn Japan to days of free love in San Francisco to the high-tech world of today’s Seattle…this story will touch your very soul with its searing portrayal of forbidden passion and illicit romance!’ ”

  The room erupts in laughter and Rowena raises her eyebrows. “I’m not sure if I can trust you with this, Teddy. You promise you aren’t going to read this yourself ?”

  Why do people think this is funny?

  Another round of giggles, and I assure Rowena I’ll give it directly to my mom. Rowena hands me the book and then pulls me into a hug. “You know I’m just playing. You’re growing up so fast, Teddy! You’re as big as your mom now!”

  I endure this torture and wave goodbye to the other nurses. They all call after me as I step onto the elevator.

  I get on and, once the doors close, punch the button for the fourteenth floor.

  One look and I can see the nurse on duty is Pearl. My heart sinks. I’ve only met her once before, at some Christmas party or other, and still remember that I’ve rarely seen such a scary-looking woman. Her face seems to be made entirely out of sharp angles, from her forehead down to the beak of her nose, which leads to the tiny line of a mouth, then to the jutting chin, which looks like something cut out of sheet metal, or maybe concrete.

  She’s busy entering information into a computer when I approach the desk.

  “May I help you?” she asks crisply, without looking up.

  “Hi, I’m Ted Gerson.”

  Pearl keeps at her work. Clearly she’s waiting for me to continue.

  “My mom’s Amanda Gerson. She worked with you, and used to—”

  “Yes, I know. I was sorry to hear about your uncle.”

  “My great-uncle. At any rate, I believe he was in room 1405.”

  Pearl looks up at me, like a vulture sizing up its prey. “Yes, that’s right. Is there something I can help you with? I have to get back to these reports.”

  “I think he may have left something there. Would it be possible to check?”

  A bony hand appears from under the desk. It waves me off like a fly.

  “Anything found in the rooms is brought to the lost and found.” Pearl’s laser beams cut through me again. “I would have thought you’d know that.”

  I push on. “Yes, but it wasn’t there, and it’s something quite small. They might have missed it.”

  Pearl folds her arms. “First of all, it’s impossible that the cleaning crew missed anything. They removed all your great-uncle’s possessions when they moved him to the ICU last week. Secondly, the present patient, Mrs. Krausz, has expressly forbidden any visitors…even her immediate family.”

  I think for a moment.

  “Was she here when my great-uncle was in the room?”

  “Yes, she was,” Pearl says briskly, in a tone that suggests that the conversation is over as far as she is concerned.

  “In that case—”

  “I have already told you she has requested no visitors. She is recovering from spinal surgery and has great anxiety about infection. Please respect her wishes. If you have any other questions about anything your uncle may have left behind, please address them to the nurses on the ICU floor, or, as I told you at the beginning of this conversation, the lost and found.”

  Pearl goes back to her computer. Behind her, I see a bank of video monitors, each one showing the patient in the rooms on her floor. If anyone went in unannounced, Pearl would know about it in seconds. And Ronnie would be called, or one of the orderlies, and that would be that. So slipping in is out of the question.

  “Those monitors are state-of-the-art,” Pearl says proudly. “We’ve been given a grant to test them out. Saves so much time, being able to watch all the patients without leaving the station.”

  “I guess it would,” I say, and turn to go.

  As I’m about to leave, Pearl says something under her breath.

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  “I don’t know why you people keep coming here like this, taking up my time.”

  “You people?” I’m getting confused.

  “Just this morning, one of your relatives came in asking about room 1405. I told him about Mrs. Krausz and he got quite unpleasant.”

  My relatives?

  “I’m so sorry….I didn’t know that. I wonder which one of my relatives it was. What did he look like?”

  “He wasn’t Asian, which was kind of funny. But he said he knew your uncle through your father’s side, and I explaine
d that first of all, only blood relatives could visit, and second of all—”

  “Yes.” I nod. “The lost and found.”

  Pearl smiles. Somehow, this makes her face look even more unpleasant.

  “Exactly. So you can understand my impatience.”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “I would feel the same way.”

  I back away as Pearl calls out to me. “Regards to your mother.” She notices the book in my hands.

  “Oh, are you reading Love’s Savage Kiss? It’s one of my favorites! I’m such a sucker for romance!”

  I wait until the elevator doors close before I allow a look of amazement to come to my face. The image of Pearl reading romance novels is almost funny enough to erase the shivers I got at the thought of someone else asking about the room. And lying about how he got there.

  And I have a pretty good idea who that someone is.

  The doors open and I go to sign out at the desk, where Ronnie is looking off through the glass partition, watching a rerun of some CSI show on the television in the waiting room.

  “The husband killed her, I figured it out,” he says as I write in the time I’m checking out. “I always figure it out,” Ronnie adds. “I shoulda gone into forensics. I got like a gift. I don’t miss nothing.”

  “Cool,” I reply. Then something occurs to me. Whoever visited the fourteenth floor and talked to Pearl had to have signed in.

  Ronnie seems to be intent on his show. At the same time, he’s making the kind of conversation with me that non-Asian people think is small talk with kids who are even part Asian.

  “You see that kung fu movie on Classic Film Channel last night?”

  “Kung fu’s Chinese, not Japanese.”

  “I just thought you might be into martial arts films.”

  Word to the wise: we are all so over this.

  “Sure, Ronnie,” I say as I turn my head to look at the sign-in sheet on his clipboard. I reach over and quietly start flipping through the pages, looking back through the times…I get as far as noon when a large hand slaps down on the board.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Ronnie demands.