“Mom. You can’t say stuff like that.” Strange how being the target of racism had made Lily all the more bigoted, as if pointing fingers at others was the only way she knew how to shield herself. That was the absurd way the world worked.
Yet they were getting away from the real source of Rita’s exasperation. A hot tide swept up her neck. “You don’t have to be ashamed to talk about it — I know what happened, Mom. You were rounded up and thrown in camps, like a bunch of diseased animals!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And watch your tone.”
“Just admit it. You’ll feel so much better!”
“Admit what?” The amazing thing was that Lily looked genuinely perplexed, as though a stranger on the street had called out her name, having mistaken her as someone else.
Always this clash of wills. And Lily’s signature strategy — surprisingly effective — was to retreat into her shell of proclaimed ignorance. It was taking Rita back, way back. She’d regressed to her teenage self again, hormonally out of whack, living on the verge of glassy tears. The more helpless Lily acted, the more Rita felt it: this cruel, uncontrollable, animalistic urge to tear apart the little world her mother had fabricated out of tissue-paper lies and delusions.
The cuckoo clock let out its mechanized clangs and shrieks, punching the air several times. If she kept this up, she’d never get out of here. Now wasn’t the time.
Another time. Maybe. Not.
Like Lily would ever open up about that stuff anyway.
“I have to go, Mom. The truck’s due back soon.”
A bit of apple crumble, a bit of mother-daughter chit-chat. A bit of screaming. Nothing out of the ordinary.
It wasn’t until they were by the door that Rita noticed anything unusual. She was struck by how her mother’s eyes had glassed over with a pleading mien.
“You’ve had a good life, haven’t you, dear?”
It was such a funny thing to ask. So sudden and out of character. Why would Lily have asked that? Rita didn’t know how to respond.
“I guess so?”
Now she wished she’d taken the time to glance back and examine Lily’s face for some clue as to what was going through her mind. The truth was she’d been concerned with nothing more than a quick exit.
Their bedroom was dim and humid, dust glittering in beams of sunlight. It seemed as though it hadn’t been inhabited in days; Gerald must have started sleeping in the guest room.
The bedspread, a faded peony print, was a leftover from his first wife. It looked strange next to the yellowed scrolls of Japanese calligraphy. As a kid Rita had fantasized that the scrolls were family heirlooms: the words of their ancestors. When she asked Grandpa who had painted them, however, he said they were by ladies at the Buddhist church. Rita clung to her belief the scrolls were somehow special; it didn’t matter that she had no idea what they said. Speaking Japanese would only make things harder on them all, according to Grandpa, so she and Tom only understood a smattering of baby talk, mostly to do with bodily functions — shi-shi, benjo. Yet when she looked at the calligraphy, the dripping black ink communicated a feeling of mystery and enchantment that went beyond words.
Rita could picture her mother perched on the worn, upholstered stool in front of the vanity. The circular mirror, aged and foggy in patches, would cast her image back dimly, waveringly. The tabletop was so crowded that things had to be put in shoeboxes. All her perfume bottles with stoppers shaped like diamonds and shepherdesses, tubes of lipstick running the gamut from a barely perceptible nude to blood red. Discontinued shades of coral and copper, nothing ever thrown out. Samples of this and that elixir, unopened silver packets full of promise, saved for a rainy day. So many jars and bottles for Lily to dip her fingertips into, massaging her skin in upward, feathery motions.
She always took special care around her right cheekbone, where the scar had once been. That was why she used to wear her hair like Veronica Lake, the curtain of hair providing some concealment. After fading over the decades, the vestiges of the scar had been removed through plastic surgery, like a dribble of pink wax, wiped clean. Yet Rita would sometimes catch her mother still touching her cheek, her fingertips searching for the ridges of something no longer there. And that was how Rita felt, too. She’d never found out anything about Lily’s scar, just one of the many things they’d all learned to pretend was invisible.
Hot prickles of tears. She sank to the bed, head in her hands. The room was rocking, awash in a million clashing perfumes, a floral din. She didn’t feel up to being here at all.
Then a framed photo caught her eye. Gap-toothed, rabbit smile, and a little purple barrette peeking out like a glimmer of normalcy. It had been taken last year at Kristen’s birthday party.
Yesterday, when they’d talked on the phone, Rita had mentioned nothing about Granny’s disappearance. It just seemed better to luxuriate in her daughter’s bubbly giggles, something about how scary it’d been to walk across the Capilano Suspension Bridge. The line went fuzzy, the little voice so distant. She wanted Kristen here with her now; she wanted the Care Bear pyjamas and Fruit Roll-Ups stuck to the tabletop. She wanted “Mommy, what makes the rain fall?” and even “Mommy, why can’t you and Daddy live together anymore?” But the kid would be full of questions about Granny’s vanishing act that Rita couldn’t begin to answer, so maybe it was better that Kristen was away for another three weeks. Ugh. Rita only prayed that by the time she got back, everything would be back to normal.
That was the only picture on display. There hadn’t been a lot of Kodak moments growing up. Rita’s therapist had once asked her to bring in an old photo of her family, but she hadn’t been able to find one.
When Rita was little, Lily had been at her best, relatively speaking. Back then, she could be trusted to walk Rita to school and pick her up. She vacuumed and dusted the house while swaying her hips to Billie and Ella and put out little dishes of mints on the front hall vestibule so the place felt more like her idea of a hotel. On hot summer days, she’d stuff tissues into her armpits to protect the pastel fabric of her sleeveless dresses from sweat stains, her dewy face barely an inch from the fan. Bursts of motherliness came over her, and she’d fidget with Rita’s pigtails, trying to get them just right, wiping fiercely at her cheek. “You have to look smart because I named you after Rita Hayworth, the most sophisticated lady on earth. Never forget that.” But it was Lily who had the star’s elegance and ambition — Rita Hayworth back in the days when she was still dark-haired Margarita Cansino, the exotic Mediterranean girl assigned bit parts: an Egyptian beauty, a Russian dancer, a mantrap.
With the caprice of a windstorm, Lily would sometimes flirt with the boarders. There was a prune-faced man named Mr. Dobson, whom she fawned over because he claimed to have been a professor and hoarded shoulder-high piles of books in his room. While reading the newspaper, he’d call out the headlines: “‘The Russians Plan to Get There First.’ Those damn Russians.” As she carried in his tea, his eyes lingered appreciatively. Some days, she’d put a great deal of effort into her appearance, powdering and repowdering her cheek with a great white puff, as if just the right flick of the wrist and wistful smile might make the scar disappear magically. Other days, however, she didn’t wear makeup at all, just pulled her hair back in a tight bun that accentuated the glistening pink seam, the exposure of which subdued her spirits. Rita didn’t like to see her mother get like that, but it was just her nerves, her weak nerves. Nothing to worry about, according to Grandpa, and he was a doctor.
In the absence of a family photo, the therapist had asked Rita to remember a scene from childhood. What came to mind was an image of them all playing cards.
The sound of the cards shuffling. Grandpa was shuffling them, while explaining the rules of old maid. Their whole family was a bunch of old maids, really. Grandpa hadn’t always been an old maid, of course, but his wife had died long before Rita wa
s born. And yet, she wasn’t entirely gone because she’d left behind a double: Aunt Haruko, her twin sister. Another old maid, the quintessential old maid. As far as Rita could tell, Aunt Haruko’d never had a boyfriend — not unless you counted Jesus Christ. It was strange to think that Aunt Haruko had once been part of an identical pair, like Mary and Sally Cross in their matching gingham dresses at school. If her grandmother were alive, would the two of them have the same coarsely cut hair and spindly tree bodies? Rita wondered if Grandpa found it unnerving to live with the spitting image of his dead wife.
But two old maids didn’t form a pair. They remained just two unusable cards, destined for the reject pile.
Lily’s face would light up as she looked down at her hand, regardless of how good or bad her cards were; she knew how to hide her emotions behind that aura of wonder. Cards she wanted you to take protruded slightly. Tom was onto her tactic and it wasn’t long before he ducked out of these games anyway. Grandpa, on the other hand, continually fell for it. Only years later, as Rita looked back on those long, rainy afternoons, did she realize there’d been something deliberate about his efforts to lose. He’d always had a soft spot for his daughter-in-law, on account of the fact that his son had abandoned them all. So if indulging her desire to win at cards made her smile, what could be the harm?
“Oh, I don’t mind being the old maid.” A soft chuckle.
“The queen of hearts?” Lily plucked the lone card from Grandpa’s hand, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not a bad sign you’d be left with her.”
This was typical of her innuendo. Her hand would brush against Grandpa’s arm while clearing away his plate. Once he backed away so suddenly that a knife flew across the room and hit the wall, leaving a dung-brown smear. Their relationship was full of these strained flirtations, punctuated by moments of volatility.
What it came down to was this: Lily needed a man in her life. Her singleness, her old-maid status, seemed unnatural, cruel. Although Kaz had long vanished, his phantom remained behind in the form of her deep loneliness, which she’d transferred over to his father. It didn’t take much for her to erupt in a shower of tears and throw herself into Grandpa’s arms — his body rigidifying, hands awkward as paddles as they patted the back of her head a few times before pushing her away, gently but firmly. His face turned grey, grief-stricken almost, thanks to whatever she’d whispered in his ear.
On the day of Lily’s disappearance, Tom took his sweet time to show up. He’d been in meetings all morning, hadn’t even had a chance to check messages. Or so he said. Rita suspected he’d banked on it being a false alarm. Just wait half a day and Mom would reappear. Unless she didn’t.
He plunked his briefcase on the kitchen table, loosened his tie, and ran his hands through his coarse, buzzed hair. Not even a fleck of grey. Although he was forty — six years older than Rita — Tom was often mistaken as her younger brother.
“No sign of Mom, still? She hasn’t called? Must’ve lost track of time at the mall.”
True, Lily was a sucker for promotions. But shopping since the crack of dawn? Tom was a little late in the game to breeze in and throw around unhelpful suggestions.
Family stuff didn’t fall on him the way it fell on Rita. And he was quite happy to take the back seat. It had been this way for as long as she could remember. Tom had always found convenient reasons not to be around the house: his paper route, his job at the corner store. “It’s good for a boy to be independent,” Lily had said. And as long as his activities were tied to earning money, Grandpa seemed quite fine with his absence.
Most of the time when they were growing up, Tom wanted nothing to do with Rita. On one sweltering summer afternoon, though, she was allowed a glimpse into his adventures. Carrying her sand pail, she followed him a few blocks to an abandoned apartment building. In the overgrown courtyard was a wishing pond that hadn’t held water for years; rotted leaves clogged the paint-chipped bottom. But if you dug through the muck carefully enough, every so often a shiny penny or nickel would be illuminated. So Tom set her little, nimble fingers to work, telling her they were like pirates digging for buried treasure. In the end, they had half a pail of coins, from which her share was enough to buy a cinnamon lollipop. How fiery sweet it had tasted.
Only years later did it occur to her that her brother had given her less than a 5 percent cut of the spoils. The realization made her laugh. Even then, he had a firm grasp of profit margins.
By the time high school rolled around, Tom had moved on to other, more lucrative activities. He had no time for her — no time to torment her even — because he had places to go, games to make. His best friend had a broad forehead and blunt features, as though his face had been carved from a hunk of cheese. That family was rich by neighbourhood standards; they owned two divey bars, where Tom must have gotten his start on the pool tables out back. The sweaty, metallic tang of adrenalin and crumpled bills surrounded him wherever he went. Maybe Kaz would have knocked some sense into him, but not sweet, feeble Grandpa; he was past that stage in his life. Tom could get away with anything.
“So what’s the story, guys?” Tom asked.
“The cops just asked a bunch of questions, looked around the house. Left a list of things for us to do. God knows what my hard-earned tax dollars are going to!” Gerald stirred his coffee with a clatter.
“I thought Mom was doing so much better these days.” Tom looked at Rita.
“Me, too.”
“I guess she still has setbacks every so often.”
“We have to find her, Tom.”
Rita heard her voice cracking, as she let herself be pulled into his embrace, but even the way he patted her back felt mechanical. It wasn’t comforting. If her brother looked worried, he didn’t look worried enough; there was something hard and concentrated about his expression, as if he were bracing himself for the worst because he’d always known in his heart the worst would one day happen.
“We will find her. I’ll drive around the neighbourhood and swing by the mall on my way home.”
“Already did that,” Gerald interrupted.
“Mom’ll come back on her own. Any minute.”
Tom was just saying what they wanted to hear.
“And what if she doesn’t?”
“Well, then. It’s out of our control, I guess.”
Maybe, deep down, he’d find it a relief if the worst happened. To be free. Free of the fear that next time their mother wouldn’t be okay. Free at last of the burdens of family. For reasons Rita had never entirely understood, Tom had long resigned himself to the fact that their family was a losing investment. And what was the point of throwing good money after bad? He could walk away from it all; in his head, maybe he’d already walked away years ago. His powers of self-preservation never ceased to amaze her. Sure, he’d worry about Lily’s disappearance, to a point, and then that would be it. He wouldn’t move heaven and earth to find her.
If anyone were going to step up, it would have to be Rita.
“So I hear your ma’s had memory issues for a while now?” There was an aggressive edge to Gerald’s voice, implying that someone should have filled him in a long time ago.
“Sure, she has her ups and downs,” Rita said. She could feel the tension running up her brother’s neck, the same posture overtaking her own body.
“Must’ve been hard being a single mom. Bad luck, your father’s death.”
Rita and Tom exchanged arch looks, his a little sharper than hers. They could imagine how Lily would have spun the story for Gerald, the story of how she’d tragically lost her beloved husband.
“Did she tell you things were peachy ’til Kaz kicked the bucket? That he was a great dad — Father of the Year?” Although Tom wore a bit of a simper, his jaw had tightened. It was the look he’d get while leaning over a pool table.
“You two didn’t get along?”
“Never got a chance
to find out.”
Gerald looked befuddled.
“The guy walked out on us.”
“What? I thought he died of a stroke.”
Rita glanced at her brother warningly. Why did Gerald have to know about any of that crap? “Yeah, he did die of a stroke.”
“But that only happened years later. After he’d left us high and dry.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. Kinda sucks, doesn’t it.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Moved back to California, apparently. Then, five, six years later, he checked out for good.”
“But Lily said —”
“Lily says a lot of things.”
“Why’d she lie to me?”
“Don’t take it so personal, Gerald. It’s what she tells everyone. Kaz died of a stroke. If it wasn’t for that, they’d still be two peas in a pod. Hell, maybe she even believes it.”
Tom’s glum, blindly accepting expression filled Rita with a heavy, bloated feeling. They’d both long given up trying to figure out what made their mother this way.
But Gerald continued to look hurt and confounded.
“Yeah, it sucks.” Tom shrugged then straightened up. “But, ya know what? Ya get over it.”
In a way Rita envied him; at least he had something to get over. In her case the process of moving on had never been as clear: how could you get over someone you couldn’t remember? Kaz had left when she was less than a year old. There weren’t even any photos of him around the house to trick her into thinking she recalled some detail — a stubbly jawline, an old cardigan. “What was he like, Tom? Did Kaz play ball with you? What kind of car did he drive?” Rita used to ask. Jenny Smart’s dad drove a creamy Oldsmobile convertible and smiled like the man in the toothpaste ad and said things like, “Fake it ’til you make it,” a phrase he’d learned at a business course in a church basement. But Tom always shook free of Rita’s grasp. “He was never around. He was a loser, a bum. I don’t know.”
After the Bloom Page 3