I look my stepsister in the eye. “Not to belabor the point, but I do think that's something you might want to consider as you decide what to do about Vikrum.”
I USED TO LOVE getting sick when I was young (I say, continuing with my storytelling; the words are coming easier now, and the rhythm of it too). No matter how badly my throat hurt, no matter how high my fever, it was worth it to stay at home with my mother, to feel her cool hand on my forehead, to open my mouth for her, ahhhh, so she could peer in and say whether my tonsils were red and swollen. They always were, according to her, which made me wonder sometimes if my mother liked my getting sick—those days I stayed home from school, playing cards with her and eating ice cream as she sat by the bed—as much as I did.
There's no doubt that what happened would have been easier to take if I hadn't assumed, as I'd done throughout my life, that I would have her to lean on.
I took the shuttle from Los Angeles to go to her house to deliver the news. After some time in Paris, a few years in New Mexico and another handful in New York, she's gone to northern California to live.
She has changed over the years, although it's difficult for me to see it. I haven't spoken much about my mother to you, I know (I say, interrupting my own narrative, about to apologize, but Claudia shakes her head to forestall me). She's loomed so monumental in both of our imaginations, hasn't she? A towering presence. Well, at sixty-six, she's gotten smaller. She was always short, but she swears with some conviction that she's been shrinking in the past few years. She's also finally given up dressing in all those gorgeous colors she always loved, and while her hair's longer now, she always wears it coiled in a bun: a style that, paired with her cheekbones, may not be unflattering—it gives her a kind of austere loveliness, if you will—but is definitely forbidding.
But when you're with her, it's hard to remember those changes. She's still the same Hana she was, a tiny woman who has such presence that she seems both tall and strong, an artist who busily and tirelessly produces picture after picture, her hands and parts of her face seemingly always splattered with paint. Last I spoke to her, she was talking with a rather well-known local gallery about a good-size retrospective of her work. She baby-sits whenever she can persuade Kei to come visit. My mother is still a woman with energy to spare.
So, call me arrogant or spoiled or presumptuous, but I simply assumed that I could lean on her, as I have in every crisis throughout my life.
I TOLD HER DURING A LULL in our conversation. I had brought her sushi that I'd picked up from my favorite store in L.A., as well as some little cakes. We were sitting in her large, light-filled kitchen and talking about what paintings I've been restoring, about the latest forgotten, neglected work I've rescued from oblivion and brought back to something close to its original glory. She seemed in her usual good spirits.
Then I told her. Casually—perhaps, in retrospect, too casually. I gave her a quick rundown of the facts, and I stated them plainly. I have a form of skin cancer; it showed up on my palm. I'm lucky, I said; it's treatable, and we caught it early; I've already had a number of the treatments and the doctors are pleased, so I should be fine.
There was a pause when I finished. She had a slight smile on her lips and she wasn't even looking at me, her eyes fixed on the wall to her left. I wondered for a second if I had just hallucinated that I'd told her; I thought I'd been dreading telling her for so long that I had simply, wishfully, imagined that I already had.
But then I noticed that her eyes weren't in alignment, as if one had come loose and wanted to strike out on its own, to see wondrous things that its mate had never dreamed of. And then she began to scream.
For a few moments, I sat frozen. Clearly I've inherited little of my mother's ability in a crisis. My mother, so neat and self-contained, so quiet and well-behaved, screaming. I was terrified. What saved me was that I could almost understand what she was saying. She screamed mostly in sounds that had nothing to do with language, but mixed in with the noise, like a thread of music, was a Japanese word. Anata, the formal form of you, often used by a woman to her husband.
She was calling upon her Japanese husband—her first one, my dead father—for help. An unexpected move but not an act, I told myself, of complete insanity.
I passed her a box of tissues, because she had also begun to cry. I held her, keeping my arm stiff because the bones of her shoulders were so fragile that I feared they might shiver and crack. Yet I was furious at her.
It was selfish of me, I know. But she wasn't helping, and my Lord, did I need help then.
“YOUR CANCER,” she said. “It's my fault.” I had made her a cup of tea and she was sipping it; although she wasn't composed yet, she was, at least, no longer hysterical.
“How could it be your fault?” I said, wistful still—where were the soothing clucks of the tongue and the cool hand on my forehead?—but forcing myself to be cheerful. “That's the silliest thing I ever heard.”
“The doctors warned me that if I had children, it was possibility that they get cancer and God knows what else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I hoped I no tell you.” She dragged out her words so, it was evident that she'd erred in her choice of tense. As if realizing that her English was going, she slowed down and almost visibly took hold of herself, and then she began talking in Japanese, as she hadn't to me since I was young. She maybe even didn't realize at first that she was doing so, but I was able to follow all that she said, so I just let her. It seemed to make sense, somehow, that she would only be able to tell this particular story in her native tongue. Come to think of it, there was a peculiar but fitting irony, too, in the fact that I had to ask her my questions in English—the story that she was telling was so far beyond anything I could imagine or understand.
“You know how I was visiting my grandparents' house in Hiroshima in August of 1945?” she asked. “When my aunt Sachiko was exposed to the radiation of the bomb?”
I nodded.
“Well, I was exposed too. Not a bad case”—she added quickly—“even milder than Sachiko's. Just some nausea and vomiting. My family hushed it up, so that my life wouldn't be ruined. It wasn't so hard to do, because we lived in Nagoya, a long way from Hiroshima. But there were rumors. When I got tuberculosis, people wondered. . . . The doctors didn't think that the tuberculosis had anything to do with it, but they knew so little.”
I didn't know what to say or, rather, where to begin. But then, suddenly, I thought of Kei—vain, pretty, weight- and fashion-conscious Kei. Who would have guessed that she would be so proud of how large her stomach would get during the pregnancies; who would have known that she'd be so fascinated by the changes that took place in her body, that she'd be so happy, even, to experience morning sickness? “Does Kei know? Wouldn't her children be at risk?”
My mother shook her head. Her face, tear-streaked and red as a child's, looked older than it had for a long time. “I didn't tell Kei. The risks for a child of hers were so small, and after Naomi turned out okay, I didn't think I needed to worry her when—”
“How could you not have told us?” I said. I wanted to hit her right in the middle of her face; I wanted to smash in that upturned nose and crush those delicate bones. “It's our past too. Who else knew? Did—”
She shook her head again, more slowly. “Your father didn't know.”
“You married him and didn't tell him?” I asked.
“I couldn't tell him,” she said, the words coming fast now, almost tumbling out, propelled by what I identified as a sense of relief. “You don't know what it was like. Those who survived the bomb were polluted, outcasts. His family wouldn't have allowed us to get married. And then, when we moved to America and started having children, it just seemed easier to forget.” She explained that that was the real reason she couldn't even consider a proposal from the prince. She knew (as her mother must also have known, although she did her considerable best to suppress that knowledge) that the prince's family wou
ld have turned up the truth, the background checks on the women considered for his betrothal were so thorough, there was no way that her exposure to the bomb would not come to light.
“So what are you saying?” I asked, placing each word with care, lining them up one by one as if they were to be the foundation of an edifice that would stand. “Are you telling me that you married Oto-san because he was a way for you to keep your precious secret safe?”
At that, she drew herself up, her back stiff and proud. But her gaze still skittered uneasily from mine, and when she spoke, she was barely audible. “It was another reason to marry him.”
“So everything you told us was a lie. So you never loved him after all.”
For the first time that afternoon, she looked at me with disapproval, a mother putting her daughter in her place. “I did,” she said with a hint of her usual tartness. Then, more softly: “Of course I did; you know I did.”
“Is that it?” I asked. “Is there anything else you're not telling me?”
She hesitated. “Just one more thing. It's about Henry. It's about why we split up.”
I shut my eyes, opened them. I wanted to cover my ears. But it was clear that having begun, she couldn't stop talking; her story needed to be told. “Go ahead.”
“What happened was that he was rummaging through some boxes in the attic, and he came across an old medical file of mine, from my childhood. It was written in both Japanese and English—enough English for him to figure out that I had been exposed.”
“And that made you decide to leave him? Because I know Henry didn't feel you were contaminated.”
“We had been together for more than seven years by then. He couldn't believe I hadn't told him, and he couldn't forgive me for not trusting him. Can you blame him?”
“But you left him.”
“I did.”
“And you never told him why you were leaving?”
“I didn't,” she said. She spoke clearly, her eyes meeting mine and her chin jutting forward with defiance. “He thought I met someone else, and I let him think that. There wasn't any reason to tell him, since there wasn't anything left to discuss.”
That was all I needed to hear. I pushed my chair back, stood up, turned around, and walked out the door. I could hear her calling out my name but I didn't turn around to look back at her. If I had, I knew what I would see: a tiny, shrunken woman. I'd done it. I was finally immune to her peculiar charm—the combination of kindness and steel underlying an impression of helplessness that had made men fall for her, that had made them feel as if they were large and strong enough to accomplish anything: fight demons, stride around the world in a day to fetch her a rare lily, build a tower for her so high that it brushed against the sky and leap over it too.
SOMEWHERE BEHIND CLAUDIA there's a rustle and the rattle of a box shifting its contents. She blinks, then turns her head. I feel like telling her that it's her apartment that's haunted, not mine, but I keep my mouth shut, for how can I be sure?
“I haven't spoken to my mother since,” I tell her, wrapping it up. “I moved out here as soon as I could, which is to say a couple of months, and I didn't leave a forwarding address. I was all set to tell Kei, but in the end I didn't. She was absorbed both in her baby and in the preparations for the new child—I'd never seen her so happy, and I thought, how could I bear to worry her?”
The story's over, and there's nothing more to say. Or, at least, there shouldn't be anything more to say, except that I, my mother's daughter after all, having finally begun, can't seem to stop.
“Do you know that way back when, she lied to Kei and me and said that Henry had fallen out of love with her because he was finally fed up with her inability to speak English? It seemed unlikely to us, since he always seemed to adore her so much. But then again, that last year together, they did seem to be growing apart, so we didn't know what to believe. So we supported her in the decision, and I made up my mind that I shouldn't see you anymore—for all those reasons I told you earlier, but also because I knew it would hurt her if I did continue to see you and Henry. She did love him terribly.”
Claudia's head is cradled in her arms. “Jesus,” she says.
“What I can't forgive her for is the way she left Henry. Loving him the way she did, she left him anyway, without giving him a single chance to present his side. How could she have done that, given who he was, given how happy they were together—how happy we all were together?” There it is. What is for me, perhaps, the heart of the matter, much as it shames me to admit it: the fact that she had deprived me of a father and a family that I had loved, for no good reason at all.
Claudia looks up. “You think she was wrong in imagining that my dad had a change of heart, right? Because I do.”
I nod. “Of course your dad still loved her. You know how crazy he was about her; you know how true he is, how loyal. He was, I often think, one of the best men I've ever known. No, she left him because she was too proud. She couldn't bear that he thought her tainted; she couldn't stand that he no longer thought her pure and perfect.
“That pride was the real pollutant in her. And it ended up contaminating our family too, and finally destroying it.”
“That's not too good,” Claudia admits. From her, a major indictment.
What I do not tell Claudia is my belief that this flaw in my mother infects her work as well. It's the reason she's only achieved local success, despite all her hard work and undeniable talent: Her paintings are well-constructed and visually appealing, but they lack the devil-may-care swagger and boldness that characterize great works of art. With my mother, everything has to be refined and delicate and, inevitably, false.
But Claudia doesn't need to hear a critique of my mother's artwork. Like her father, she's always loved my mother's dramatically colored pictures and still keeps a number of them on her walls.
She should see something in my mother to admire, even if I don't.
“SHE WAS WRONG, actually,” I say. Claudia has made us tea, soothing and honeyed, from a recipe of her own devising, and I cup it close to my face. “I spoke to a number of doctors, and all of them said that the fact that my mother was exposed to fallout from the bomb had no bearing on my getting melanoma.”
“Your mother—” says Claudia. “Well, she called me. Just about three weeks ago.”
My mother. For a second I allow myself to miss her; it's a taste like raw salt, sharp, powerful, and parching, which leaves my tongue numb. Then I shrug. “Ah,” I say lightly, “I should have known.” Then, in spite of myself: “How does she sound?”
“Worried. Frantic,” she says. “Like a mother.”
“Really?” I say, forcing a laugh. “Because she never did seem like much of a mother, really, did she? She was always so obsessed with her artwork. When she was young, she never thought about having children, you know. It was different with your mom”—how Rosie used to hover over Claudia! stroking her hair whenever Claudia gave her the chance—“she had her career, but I always thought that the proudest accomplishment in her life was you.”
“Hana's made some bad mistakes. But you should see her,” Claudia says, with the same gentle authority that she used to bring to bear—and, no doubt, will bring to bear again soon—when she told me to fasten the top button of my coat in the winter.
“Why? Just because she's my mother and—”
“No, that's not why. Because it's time. Because you miss her, maybe even more than I miss Vikrum, and that's saying a lot. And because—” she says. She stops and looks at me hard, and then she gives me a small, nervous smile. “As of yesterday, she's here in Boston, staying in my apartment.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Claudia
Boston, 1999
AT FIRST I CAN HEAR NOTHING BUT THE FAMILIAR static— a problem with their telephone rather than with the thousands of miles of ocean that lie between us. Given that my parents are scholars in the fields of science and math, it might seem safe to assume that they would have elect
ric appliances that would be, if not state of the art, at least functional. But that assumption would be wrong.
“Mom?”
“Claudia, honey, is that you?” she says. “Sweetheart, do you want me to call you back?”
My mother has always disliked using the phone. To make up for her own discomfort, she tends to sprinkle endearments into the conversation with an overly liberal hand. “No,” I say, doing an even poorer than usual job of suppressing the irritation in my voice, “you know it's cheaper to call from here.”
“Okay,” she says. Chastened, perhaps, she is quiet for a beat. “How are you doing? How have you been?”
“Fine,” I say. “Better, thanks for asking.” I have called, as usual, to speak to Dad, but it is so seldom that my mother will attempt to chat on the phone that I cannot pass up the opportunity. “And you?”
“I've been thinking about you and that man—”
“Vikrum,” I say. If I had not guessed before that she disliked the idea of him, I would have known now, from her tone as well as the term that she applied to him. Still, even though her dislike of him is hardly unexpected or, even, unwarranted, even though I am no longer with him, her refusal to use his name is a mark of disrespect that I cannot quite let pass. “His name is Vikrum.”
“Vikrum.” She stops and clears her throat. “Sorry, of course it is. What I want to say about him, about Vikrum, is that it's hard, I know, but—”
The rest of her words are lost in a perhaps propitious spate of static; all I can make out is something about teeth having memory.
Could there be a reasonable explanation for bringing up dental matters in a discussion of my married lover? My mother is getting older. Although I do not want to believe it, I cannot ignore the signs; the leaps that her mathematician's mind has always been prone to have grown increasingly steep. I picture her sitting in her study, where she always makes her calls. It is a small room, untidy, of course, and crammed with books and papers, but the view, of lush green hills and trees older than a century, extends for miles. When she leaves the window open, which is almost always the case, the air that blows in is cool and fresh, its smell a combination of flowers, grass, wood smoke and, faintly and not unpleasantly, farm animals. Except when her cats begin to meow or caterwaul, which is about as often as one would expect from three feisty felines, the only sounds my mother can hear are church bells, the rustle of leaves when a breeze sweeps through the trees, the calls of birds, and the occasional tinkling of a cowbell or two.
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