The Gardens of Kyoto

by Kate Walbert

  “No poets?”

  “Not one. I was the minister, for Christ’s sake. Great soldiers, let me tell you. Shrinks and a minister and a handful of men who had never left their hometown except for boot camp. And a chemist, that’s right. We briefly had a chemist,” he said. “He was killed the first day. Everybody kept forgetting he had ever been around. Is that mine?” I had been holding the new teacup, its saucer, in my hand, too nervous to sit down. “Yes,” I said, though he did not move to take it.

  “Powers,” he said.

  “What?”

  “His name.”

  I should have noticed then, I suppose; I should have detected something out of place, but he had surprised me, so suddenly appearing, standing before me in the aspen grove in his Eisenhower jacket and trousers—have I told you? There were dead leaves stuck to my coat. Leaves in my hair and smudges of wet dirt, or the smell of it, on my wrists where another girl might have dabbed perfume.

  • • •

  A few days after he left for the last time, I discovered a note folded inside the front cover of The Gardens of Kyoto. I seem to be always writing letters that go unanswered, he wrote. To Daphne. Now to you. I don’t intend to hear from you. I don’t expect to. I am not well. Please accept my apologies. I have enjoyed our conversations, but I am not well. There are certain difficulties. Sleeping. If you do not sleep you are not well and I am not well.

  It was a strange note. But then, I had no idea the symptoms— women rarely did—everything suddenly loud, his fatigue. The night of that last visit, I fell asleep faster than usual. He must have written the note and left so quietly—gathering the quilt, folding it into a neat square and placing it at the foot of the sofa, carrying his teacup into my tiny kitchen, rinsing it and setting it upside down on the counter, a dishrag placed beneath it to catch water. He must have braced the door as it closed behind him, then turned to the rickety stairs, walking down slowly, exhausted, afraid that if he did not hold to the banister he might slip. I would later learn he often slipped in the veteran’s hospital, hitting the floor half dreaming, his bruises appearing some hours later, reminders to the nurses to keep him tied, though he pleaded against it: see Lieutenant Rock, they’d say. Here’s a new one, sweetheart. We didn’t have that yesterday.

  They’d tap the pale bruise with their finger and he’d feel a charge of soreness.

  Don’t, he’d say.

  Now, now, they’d say.

  They spoke to the difficult ones as they would speak to their difficult children.

  They called him sweetheart though he repeatedly requested that they not. He tolerated them as best he could, thinking, instead, of Daphne, what she would say to comfort him, how gently she would roll him on his side, massaging his tightened shoulders and arms, the bruises disappearing like so many violet starlings, flapping up and out the windows.

  You don’t understand, he’d tell them.

  No, sweetheart, they’d say. We don’t.

  4

  Tilsie told me he was breakable. Breakable, Tilsie said. His word. I disliked Tilsie the minute I laid eyes on him. He sucked a mint, or he smelled that way, and he seemed exceptionally nervous, as if he rightly guessed that I knew his story, knew that he was no hero, simply another soldier who had waited in the trenches, entertaining the reporter from Life magazine. A little man with close-cropped hair, he looked as if he were still in the Army though he wore civilian clothes.

  He worked in his father’s luggage store, one of the kind you used to see a lot of in those days on the corners of Main Streets. It sold luggage, true, but also a selection of ties, sport coats, trousers, and various knick-knacks—money clips, fountain pens, key chains— catering to the new traveling breed of businessman.

  I had walked in and asked for Tilsie, the store bell tinkling as I shut the door. An older man, most likely his father, sat on a stool behind the counter; he pointed to the back, where Tilsie stood on a footstool measuring the arm of one of his customers. “Five minutes,” Tilsie said when I reached him, and so I wandered around, reading the framed articles about Tilsie that lined the store’s walls. I had already seen—displayed in the store window in what could only be described as a shrine—the small table covered with black velvet, the plastic rose in the brass vase, the photograph of Bing Crosby shaking Tilsie’s hand, the cover of the Life magazine in which the article had no doubt appeared, propped on an ornate music stand in front of a sign that said “We Do Alterations.”

  The store had been easy to track down, everyone wanting to recount the story of Tilsie’s heroism, the parade held in his honor by the Mayor of Bayshore: how he might have gone from there to Hollywood, become a big shot, but how he had stayed home to take care of his aging parents.

  • • •

  Tilsie finally came to the front, where I stood, gazing out the window.

  “May I help you?” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m a friend of Henry’s. Henry Rock.”

  I stuck out my hand, which I am always inclined to do in these situations; I imagine I blushed, as if he knew that I was more than Henry’s friend, that at that moment I carried Henry’s child and that Henry had no idea.

  “Goddamn,” he said. He chewed a bit, greased his hair into place. A yellow, cloth measuring tape hung around his neck and a smear of blue chalk marked one cheek. “How’s Henry?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I do. He’s fine. I think. I saw him a few months ago and he seemed fine. But I was hoping you might be able to tell me—”

  “Goddamn,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Henry Rock. He’s the one. The real McCoy, let me tell you. He don’t mince the words. A real philosopher. He used to chew our ears off. Talk, talk, talk, talk. Hey, are you Daphne? Goddamn. You must be Daphne.”

  I nodded.

  “Jesus H. Cranberries. He missed you more than his mother, let me tell you.” Someone entered the store and the bell tinkled again; I heard the old man ring the cash register.

  “It’s nuts around here. Do you want to walk?”

  I said yes and so we left the store and went up one side of Main Street and down the other, Tilsie repeatedly stopped by people who still wanted to shake his hand.

  “Hard to be a small-town hero,” he said, looking at me sideways.

  “I can imagine.”

  “He tell you about that?”

  “About what?”

  “What I done?”

  “I read about it.”

  He smiled, then, relaxed. He swung his short arms as we walked, and for a moment I thought he might link one in mine.

  “So, Daphne herself,” he said. “Goddamn. Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Daphne.”

  We had come to a diner and he opened the door for me, the chatter softening as we entered. We sat in one of the booths and Tilsie insisted I play a song on the jukebox. I chose “Secret Love,” I still remember. The Doris Day version.

  “So, you saw Henry. How ’bout that. I’d heard he was in the VH out near Oyster Bay. Was thinking of driving up there myself one of these Sundays but you know, they want me to cut ribbons, hold babies. Somebody says I should run for politics. Local. What do you think?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You think I look like a politician?”

  He struck a pose, his teeth small and sharp as a ferret’s.

  “You look like every politician I ever saw,” I said. “Truman and Roosevelt combined.”

  “Poor suckers.”

  I stirred my coffee; lit a cigarette.

  “Listen, Daphne,” Tilsie said, leaning in toward me, whispering as if he were telling secrets. “It ain’t none of my business, but here you are so I’m going to say it. Henry’s a good man. A very good man. He done more for us there than anybody. We couldn’t have survived without him, I’m telling you. What I done ain’t nothing in comparison.”

  I nodded.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I listened to “Secret Love” on the jukebox; it cl
icked into play, played, and then went silent. That’s always the way with your song on a jukebox, isn’t it? Just when it’s beginning, it’s over.

  • • •

  I’m not sure what else Tilsie and I discussed, though discussed is not an accurate word to describe our conversation. He was terribly nervous, and it seemed that only the sound of his own voice could soothe him. He talked and talked, telling me one thing after another, never really stopping to consider why I had sought him out. I realized after some time that I didn’t need to concoct any excuse, that he had told me what I needed to know and that I could just sit back and listen, let him wear himself calm. He had several cups of coffee, and cinnamon toast from which he tore the crust. After some time, when I said I had to be on my way, he told me what your father did. Maybe this is what he had been jabbering against—spilling this secret, because I know your father never wanted it mentioned to anyone: how he had tried to save the crucified pilot he had written to me of, how he slid on his belly over 854, how it took hours, the other men watching as best they could though it was a moonless night, before he even reached the man, before he could scale the cross, a bayonet in his mouth, to pry loose the nails. The fog came in around that time, saving your father’s life but keeping him trapped, there, with the decomposing pilot.

  “Poor son of a bitch,” Tilsie said, tearing his crust into smaller pieces, and I wasn’t sure whether he meant the pilot or your father. “Ain’t no chance he’d be alive, we’d told him, still Henry said he couldn’t watch him rot that way, said he’d rather get shot trying.

  “He’s a good man, Daphne,” Tilsie said. “He didn’t mean nothing reading them.”

  I must have looked blank; Tilsie moved in closer.

  “Your letters. We swore we wouldn’t tell if it ever came to pass. You know. That we was sitting across a table from one another. Don’t be mad. They was beautiful; we all said so.” Tilsie shrugged. “You wrote the best of all our girls.”

  • • •

  The Veterans’ Hospital overlooked the Sound, high on a bluff on the North Fork of Long Island, just outside of Port Williams, a town that had once been a fishing village. Most of its residents now worked at the naval munitions factory at the foot of the bluff, its foundries spewing smoke that from the common lounge of the hospital appeared to be a rising, dense fog. The men rarely gathered in the common lounge; they stayed in their own, small rooms, each painted a fleshy tan. I call it a hospital—it called itself a hospital— but the truth is it felt more like a repository. A cluttered toy chest for the damaged.

  I sat in the common lounge and watched the smoke, the way the gusts of wind off the Sound broke it into odd clouds, a language from another time. Or at least this is what I was thinking. I remember staring out at the water, its color from that distance nothing more than a flat, December gray, the same gray, no doubt, of the metal the factory employees soldered somewhere below me. I startled when the nurse called my name.

  He stood behind me, near one of those sad grand pianos you often see in places like this. No doubt once or twice one of the men had been cajoled into playing “Claire de Lune” or a Strauss waltz or perhaps even “Summertime”—the Gershwin brothers popular in those days—but I imagine that whoever played had lost heart after a while. The piano’s black paint had been nicked so often it looked speckled, and the keys were a tobacco-stain yellow.

  Your father did an elaborate bow, as if he had just performed a concert. The nurse stood next to him, her hand lightly on his elbow; I wished her gone, and she did, in fact, leave soon after, first explaining that I should probably only stay a half hour, no more.

  “You look well,” he said, or something to that effect.

  “Thank you.”

  “That color agrees with you.”

  “It’s a new dress.”

  “I was referring to your hair.”

  “This?” I touched my head. “I suppose I tried something.”

  I wanted to break the space between us, to stand and walk straight toward where he stood; but I sensed I should not. There are certain birds of prey, golden eagles, for example, who will attack if you attempt to reach for them: you sit stock still, you wait for their approach. I did this with your father. I waited. I turned back, even, to the ugly view. I tried to breathe.

  I don’t know how much time passed before he sat down next to me.

  He wore pajamas, the standard-issue pajamas of the place, a faded green, and paper slippers torn at the toes. He seemed, in these, practically nude.

  “And you’ve grown a beard,” I finally said.

  “Have I?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are particular about razors. And mirrors, for that matter. Never let the inmates think their luck has changed.”

  “It looks nice.”

  “I had hoped for distinguished.”

  Strands of red, white, and blue crepe paper fringed the big windows looking out to the Sound. There had been a party of some sort.

  “You are not a prisoner,” I said.

  “But I am,” he said. “What did our friend Daphne say? The enemy. That’s right. I’m the goddamn enemy.”

  He lit a cigarette. I heard the scratch of the match, smelled the sulphur, then sweet smoke. I felt terrified to look at him, as if he were, indeed, nude, or as if he might melt or vanish. It had taken me so long to find him.

  “I am dangerous,” he said. I smelled a different smell then, putrid, and turned to see him rubbing ash on his bare arm, singing the hairs with his cigarette point. He looked up and smiled. “I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” he said. “That’s what the shrink said. He said, I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I couldn’t. Something about my goddamn mother. The place is crawling with shrinks. They wear these glasses.” He stuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and held his fingers to his eyes, rounded into glasses. “Worse than Chinks.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I felt I had to say something. His nails were too long, unkempt as his beard, and I had half a mind to find the nurse to ask for nail trimmers and a good pair of scissors. He took the cigarette from his mouth and offered it to me and I accepted only because I wanted to touch him.

  “Tilsie sends his regards,” I said, trying to change the subject. I took a long puff.

  “Ah, you saw Tilsie,” he said. “How’s our heroic son of a bitch?”

  “He works in his father’s luggage store.”

  “A very good time for luggage. The best time ever. Everyone’s on the move.”

  “It’s a very successful store,” I said.

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Tilsie’s a goddamn movie star.” He had lit another cigarette. I stubbed out his first in one of the ashtrays and we sat for a while without speaking. I heard a telephone ringing somewhere; smoothed the lap of my dress—Mother’s habit—and drew my breath in.

  “Tilsie said you were the heroic one.”

  “Tilsie doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

  “He told me how you risked your life to take that pilot down; how you pried the nails from his—”

  “Shut up,” he said. “Please,” he said. “Shut up.” He stood and walked out of the common lounge, or I believed that he did. I sat before the view of the Long Island Sound, the foundry smoke listing then catching the wind. The crepe paper banners rode the blasts of heat from the radiators, a scissored flag. The telephone began to ring, again.

  I wish I could tell you what I was thinking, but I can’t remember much more outside the look of that room, its scuffed floors and ragged collection of chairs, their arms pocked with cigarette burns and stained by so many hands; the piano and its bench. I suppose this is where he sat. Eventually I heard a few keys, minor, played softly; I thought it best not to turn around.

  “She got every one of them, didn’t she?” he said, still playing.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She just never wanted to write back.”

  “She had the best of intentions.”

  “Everyone does
,” he said.

  “I suppose.”

  “I wrote my own after a while. Even signed them for her. An interesting exercise,” he said.

  He began to play a song, one I did not recognize. I sat and listened, my hands in my lap. Even out of key it was beautiful, and I would have liked to have stood next to him, to have followed the notes, to have turned the music on the stand or to simply have smiled if he looked up, if he noticed me. But I knew if I did, if I even breathed too loudly, let my arms relax at my sides, lit another cigarette, that the music would stop, and so I sat, listening, until he closed the lid and left the room.

  5

  This is none of it how you wanted; none of it right. But I am tired of the old story: your father returning the day after finding me in the aspen grove, dead leaves in my hair, the smell of wet dirt on my wrists where other girls would have smudged perfume. How he drove right up the circular drive to the front door of the school, honking his horn to beat the band, tin cans tied to the bumper of his convertible: Marry me, Ellen, written in shaving cream across the hood and slowly melting, its wintergreen smell strong from the heat of the engine, the heat of the day.

  It would have to be a warm day; gloriously warm. In the distance boys play football in shirtsleeves and girls cheerlead in cut-offs, their pyramid perfect. They stand on one another’s shoulders; they leap to the field, applauding, bouncing, their ponytails as shiny as their smiles. They are smiling, of course. Everyone is smiling.

  I spy him from my third-floor classroom exactly as he’d planned. Now I frantically erase the blackboard, sweep paperclips into my desk drawer, pencil dust into the trash. I grab a few mementos—the drawings that have been addressed to Miss Ellen, the letter from the boy with the crush. There is little that is mine in this classroom. It will stay exactly as it is: its shaded windows, its blackboard, its quotes from Lincoln, Luther, and, for Sterling, Edwards lining the walls. I unpin Edwards from the cork and fold him to a four-cornered square. I won’t return, I know. From here my life is with your father.