More fatherly than grandfatherly, she’d always felt.
As she’d told Lou, she’d been the favoured child. Waves of guilt and love and something else she could never put her finger on: something that made her cringe, recoil. It had been there for years, her whole life maybe, this sense that their family tree was a gnarled, diseased creature. The beams of their old house creaked and gasped, like they wanted to talk to her and absolve their conscience; they’d witnessed too many secrets in their time.
Lily had edged to the end of the bed. Rita hadn’t realized that the TV was on, emitting silent light. It was a sitcom that she recognized, but couldn’t recall the name of, that one about the hippie parents with the Young Republican son and airhead daughter. The reception was bad and the colour was off, giving the actors’ skin an orange tint rimmed by fuzzy shadows.
Everyone, perhaps, had these faint, staticky shadow selves following them around, like degraded clones. Yourself, but not yourself. Things you’d done, but couldn’t believe you’d done, would never acknowledge. Parts of yourself you couldn’t bear to own.
There was so much Rita wanted to ask her mother. About what had happened between her and Kaz when he’d shown up on Margueretta Street. About whether their passion had reignited, as if no time had passed at all. About how she’d truly felt toward Grandpa, whether he was the man she’d always been in love with. And above all, Rita wanted to demand: How could you have been so weak? How could you have let this happen? Who is my father? Father, Son, or the Holy Spirit? Dark laughter filled her head, pushing her to the edge of what felt dangerously close to hysteria. How she longed to grab this woman by the shoulders and shake her until they were both limp as rag dolls and scream in her face: Why couldn’t you ever stand on your own two feet? Why couldn’t you seize control of your life? Motherhood was supposed to change women — make them fierce and invincible as lionesses. But Lily had simply remained the same wounded, hapless girl. Hadn’t she realized that her children needed her to get her shit together? Couldn’t she see the way men used and discarded her? Not least of all the men in her own family.
But these weren’t things Rita could ask. She didn’t trust herself to say anything at this moment; words would fail her. There were no words for these kinds of questions.
Whenever she’d turn on the TV to a talk show about the uncertainties and mysteries of paternity, her skin would tighten, her heart booming in her head. Something compelled her to keep watching the impassioned, makeup-slick faces as they dissolved into tears and rivulets of charcoal and glitter. All the anguish and fluttering tissues and hand waving. All my life, I thought he was my ole man, y’all, but what did I know? These people seemed unreal, a world apart from her own life, but they weren’t so far removed, in fact.
The room appeared glassy, on the verge of being washed away.
It wasn’t like these questions had any clear answers. Not at this point, that was for sure. Both Grandpa and Kaz were long dead, buried in the ground, consumed by maggots, or burnt to cinders, cast away on the wind. Well past the point of offering up a drop of blood or DNA.
And was that all fatherhood amounted to? Spilled sperm and the vagaries of chance?
Lily had loved and been marked by both Takemitsu men, and she yearned for something that neither one, alone, could give her. Perhaps, in the end, that was all that could be said for certain.
A rattling bang.
“It’s broken,” Lily murmured over her shoulder. She’d gotten up to fiddle with the TV and gave it another whack.
“It’s okay, Mom. Just leave it.” The screen blurred and shone and shot up like flames, and Rita’s eyes overflowed as the room seemed to slide sideways in a deluge of blinding light.
Thirty-One
Rita had always wanted to throw a housewarming party. She’d invited a bunch of old friends from art school: everyone was hanging out in the living room, sprawled out on the faded sofas and beanbag cushions, laughing about old times, eating cubes of wine-soaked fruit from their sangria glasses, Janis Joplin crooning in the background. Kristen was on the floor, playing Clue with the daughter of a semi-famous sculptor, their gleeful giggles rising every so often above the din. The two little girls were high on sugar, chocolate streaked across their lips.
What a surprise that Tom bothered to show up. He came inside only briefly then stood on the front porch, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Still, it meant something that he came. They hadn’t talked much since their mother’s return; Tom had been travelling a lot on business.
Rita wanted to thank him, actually. The message he’d left on her answering machine, the morning of their departure for California, had yielded some much-needed answers.
“So you talked to the Archer woman?” he said.
“Yeah, I did. I’m glad you put me in touch with her.” There was more she wanted to say to her brother, but he wouldn’t respond well if she got all touchy-feely.
“Kaz trusted the woman. At least he had one good friend.”
“That’s all any of us can ask for, in the end.”
“Yep. Well, nice seeing you, Rita, and your new digs. Gotta go. I’m flying to Hong Kong later today.” He butted out his smoke and they exchanged a stiff hug. Through his T-shirt, she could feel his heart beating madly.
Emily Archer. During their stay in California, Rita had been vaguely aware of this woman’s phone number, scribbled in red marker, on the back of her hand. The numbers were still faintly visible, she noticed, while sitting at the airport in LA with Lily beside her. Their flight back to Toronto had been delayed. If she didn’t call now, she’d never get up the nerve again. The pay phone in the corner of the waiting room beckoned.
As she inserted coin after coin and dialed, she geared herself up for the disappointment of an answering machine. How startling it was to hear a real, live voice on the other end. Rita stammered something about being Kaz Takemitsu’s daughter.
Sizzle of a match, a deep exhale, a smoker’s cough. “Yeah, I knew Kaz. We went way back. We were old friends from the Matanzas days.” Mrs. Archer explained that she’d had a job as a WRA photographer during the war.
That voice and gentle brusqueness was stirring something a long way back in Rita’s memory. “My brother, Tom, mentioned that you’d gotten in touch with him a number of years ago, after Kaz’s death.”
“True. Kaz left behind a bit of money, you see. Not much, but still. And some old cameras. He told me that if ever anything happened to him, he wanted Tom to have it all. But not right away — when the kid turned eighteen. At that point I was to get in touch with him.”
“Wow, the guy had really thought things through.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t leave anything to you, Rita.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” She felt happy, actually, that Kaz had been thinking of Tom. It seemed to make up a little for the fact that Grandpa had always favoured her.
“Kaz had a hell of an eye. I tried to open doors for him when he moved to San Francisco after the war. He wasn’t ambitious enough to get anywhere in the art world, unfortunately. And his best pictures were the ones they’d destroyed.”
“The ones of Matanzas?”
“So you know about them.”
“Yup. His secret photos.” Rita explained about the cache that had been salvaged, thanks to her mother’s desert pilgrimage.
“But that’s impossible. The authorities seized them all.”
“That might be what he told you, but there was always this small set he’d asked my mother to hide.”
For a moment, the woman seemed hurt that Kaz hadn’t confided in her. “That guy never trusted anyone.” Then her voice became impassioned, going off on a rant about Kaz’s commitment to justice and the truth and his natural gravitation to the pure, naked eye of photography. She wanted to see the rescued photos.
“You’re in luck.” Rita explained that she was thinking of o
rganizing a gallery exhibition, with the help of the JCNA, for the following spring. Part of their strategy to raise awareness about redress, the exhibit would hopefully attract some media attention.
Then they chatted more about Kaz’s years in San Francisco, when he’d been touring the streets to take pictures of hookers and homeless people and he’d been pretty down-and-out himself. At some point Rita’s heart stopped pounding. To her surprise, she was actually enjoying the conversation. It had pulled away from her, it was no longer quite there: that raw, obsessive need to recreate in her imagination every detail of Kaz’s life without her. She still wanted to know more about the man, but her interest felt oddly calm. She no longer thought of him as her long-vanished dad. Because maybe he wasn’t. Probably, he wasn’t. Most importantly, Kaz didn’t feel like he’d been her father and never would. It wasn’t that the absence at the centre of her childhood had been miraculously filled. That hole, that emptiness, was still there. Yet it no longer seemed explicitly connected with Kaz.
He was just a guy, who’d felt the rebellion of youth boil in his blood. Who’d longed to use his pictures to make the world a better place. Who’d made some mistakes he’d paid for dearly in the end.
“I don’t suppose Kaz ever mentioned his family?”
“Not really. Though I got the sense he never got along with his father.”
“That’s an understatement, for sure.”
“What happened between them?”
“Long story. If you come to the exhibition, I’ll take you out for a drink and try to tell you what happened.”
Just as they were about to say goodbye — just as Rita had almost convinced herself that she didn’t need to know — something inside her flipped the other way with violent force. “Mrs. Archer, how did Kaz die?”
A weak rasping.
“It was you, wasn’t it? The woman who called us that morning. To tell us that Kaz had died. I remember talking to you on the phone before you asked me to put on my mom.” How heavy the receiver had felt in her small hand. That golden river of light flowing down the centre of their kitchen, the way it reflected in dull splotches off the worn linoleum. “It sounded like you were crying.”
“Perceptive for a little kid.”
Rita said nothing.
“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. What did your mother say about Kaz’s death?”
“If anyone asked, he’d died of a stroke. That’s all she’d ever say.”
“A stroke.”
They listened to each other breathing. She would be frozen on the threshold of this still, fragile moment forever.
“Yet you knew he didn’t die of a stroke.”
Rita replied that she’d always had her suspicions.
“Look. He killed himself.” And a moment later, “So there you have it. He wasn’t a very happy man at the end. I suppose few of us are, are we?”
It was what she’d expected, at some level. Even so. Rita hugged her arms around herself and leaned her head against the wall of the phone booth.
“The last time I saw Kaz, he was pale, thin. We sat at the bar, drinking whiskey, watching the ice melt. He wanted to take my picture, but his hands were too unsteady. I should’ve taken his picture instead. Always regretted not having a picture of that guy.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
But she did have a picture to remember him by. His picture of Lily strolling across the desert — so young, so lithe, so light, her entire life still ahead of her. Whenever Rita looked at this image, she felt something take flight inside herself, like some elusive notion of beauty and possibility would always be within grasp.
She’d had this photograph enlarged and framed. It hung in the sunroom at the back of her apartment, the room that one day, in the not too distant future, might become her painting studio. It was the one picture that wouldn’t be included in the exhibition because Rita wanted to keep it for her eyes alone.
After Tom left, Rita rejoined the party. On a whim she’d invited a few teachers from her school, and to her surprise, they’d all shown up with wine bottles and cookie tins in hand. They were different people in the summer, carefree as the kids they taught, dressed in tank tops and miniskirts, getting drunk, laughing raucously.
Lily looked younger, too. Her roots had been freshly dyed and the sunburn on her face had nearly healed. A lightness had come over her, the tension around her brow and mouth had dissolved. Sipping a glass of white wine, she appeared remarkably at ease.
“You look good, Mom. Have you started going to the gym again?”
“Just some tai chi classes. It relaxes me, I think.”
“You can tell. I should try that.”
“I can get you in on a guest pass for free, if you’re interested?”
There was a time, not so long ago, when this kind of superficial chit-chat would have annoyed the hell out of Rita. But these days she was grateful just to have her mother back in her life. Out in the desert, Lily had revealed more than Rita would have ever guessed possible. And even if she never understood the full extent of those secrets, that was all right, maybe. The important thing was that her mother had gained some degree of peace.
Since her return, Lily had started seeing a therapist whom Lou had recommended. Rita hoped she’d stick with it. Possibly, down the road, they’d reach the point of being able to talk more about the nether side of their family history. Lily’s guilt over having kept Kaz’s photographs hidden made more sense now, in light of his suicide. What a load to bear. Rita wanted to help lift that burden from her mother’s conscience. It wasn’t your fault, she wanted to say; you couldn’t have known he was going to kill himself. One day, she hoped they’d be able to have that conversation.
She still experienced bursts of sadness and confusion about the state of their family. Some days were harder than others. Some mornings when she looked in the mirror, she found herself scanning her face for signs of genetic depravity. But all she could see were the features she’d always seen, the features that bore more than a trace of Lily, particularly around the forehead and cheekbones, as if they’d both been moulded from the same skull.
Kristen had frog-walked over in one of Rita’s old grey sweaters, the neck all stretched out of shape in order to accommodate both arms and legs poking through the baggy sleeves. She hobbled around, her little body lost in the distorted garment, absurd and adorable. As Lily bent down and caressed the back of her head, Rita experienced a buzz of warm tingles awakening at the nape of her own neck.
“Impressive turnout. Having a good time?” Mark, having snuck up behind, slipped a finger through her belt loop.
“Yup.” And she was, who could deny it? A dizzy sensation had filled her head and heart.
“How about you, Lily? A splash more Chardonnay?” He extended the bottle.
“If I have any more splashes, I just might drown. Or get up and start dancing!” She winked, flirtatious as ever. Gerald wouldn’t be joining them until later, after his AA meeting, so what else did Lily have to keep herself entertained?
Fortunately, Mark had gotten used to her idiosyncratic personality. “Now there’s an idea.” He held out a hand in mock chivalry. The music had changed to one of Nina Simone’s more upbeat numbers.
“Now don’t you get any ideas, Dr. Mark!”
“Mom, Mark’s not a doctor doctor. He’s a doctor of philosophy.”
“Oh, Rita, you’re way too picky. Any doctor’s good enough for an old broad like me!”
“You’re not old. Not old old, anyway.”
“Yeah, Granny’s not old!”
Although Lily was smiling, for a second there was a touch of resignation or relief in her expression. After a lifetime of struggling to remain young, the onset of old age no longer appeared to frighten her so much; no longer did she feel the need to fight it. And still, there was something like quicksilver in her movements as she
rose to her feet and swayed to the music, ignoring Mark’s hand as if it were invisible. Immersed in a rhythm that was hers alone, Lily danced on her own, surrendering to the moment entirely.
Acknowledgements
In researching and writing this novel over the past four years, I consulted several books and films on Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian history. Discovering Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the internment, published in Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro), proved inspirational. Lange’s photographs of Manzanar, California, were particularly helpful. Although After the Bloom is set in a fictitious camp named Matanzas, this camp is loosely based on Manzanar and draws, to a certain extent, upon historical events that led to the infamous Manzanar Riot. My descriptions of some of Kaz’s photographs were inspired by Lange’s photography.
The sections of my novel chronicling Lily’s participation in the Cherry Blossom Pageant drew upon key information gleaned from Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants by Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain. Two documentary films, Emiko Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon and Junichi Suzuki’s Toyo’s Camera, helped me better understand life in the camps and the possibilities for resistance, as did the Final Report: Manzanar Relocation Center, Volume 1, by Ralph P. Merritt (available online through the University of California). The books Nisei: The Quiet Americans by Bill Hosokawa and Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice by Roy Miki fleshed out my understanding of the internment and its aftermath. The parts of my novel dealing with Lily’s memory problems and dissociative tendencies were greatly aided by information and case studies in The Stranger in the Mirror: Dissociation — The Hidden Epidemic by Marlene Steinberg and Maxine Schnall. My understanding of Christianity in Japan is indebted to John Dougill’s fascinating book In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival. In incorporating a fictitious Newsweek article, “Crisis at Matanzas,” into my novel, I researched 1940s media coverage of the internment; my article quotes the phrases “15,000 sons of heaven” and “1,000 men, tanks, tear gas, and tommy guns” from Newsweek article “Trouble at Tule Lake” (published in the November 15, 1943, edition of the magazine). This nod to research sources is not exhaustive; I apologize if I have forgotten to acknowledge any texts that have slipped off the radar of my memory over the years.
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