“Speech, speech!” Emma called, and everyone took up the chant, the rhythm of their voices accented by applause. Kenji chimed a spoon on his wineglass and the room went quiet.
“Forty years is a long time, and I’m lucky to have spent them with my soul mate, the best wife and mother of his children a man could ask for. I’ve had an exceptional life, and in large part it’s due to her.” Mariko tucked herself into his arm and Kenji kissed her. “And I’m lucky to have my children close by and my son as my business partner. What is a life without family?” Everyone cheered and whooped and clapped. Kenji turned to Kira. “I hope you know how much we miss your mother.”
“I know. She would have loved to be here today,” Kira said. “And she could have made all that lasagna instead of me.”
Kenji laughed and lifted his glass. “To Rosa. And to Aimi.” A murmur rose, cloudlike and emphatic. “And to my family and friends—I love each and every one of you. And most of all, to my beautiful wife. I love you more than life.”
More cheers and whistling. Kira squeezed Dan’s hand.
“Here’s to another forty years with you, my love.” Kenji swung Mariko into a dip and kissed her while everyone applauded.
Dan whispered in Kira’s ear. “I’m shooting for forty years too. Fifty.”
“Is that all?” Kira said, laughing. “Hey, listen, this party’s
gonna go all night. Let’s go visit Aimi and Akira and watch the sunset.”
In the three months since Kira and Dan had learned that Akira was buried at Mountain View Cemetery, they’d visited his grave a dozen times. Call it serendipity or fate, but they’d buried Aimi in the same cemetery as her then-unknown great-grandfather. It hadn’t been hard to find Akira once Dan pointed out that his parents probably would have taken his ashes home. Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, with its peaceful acres of flowering trees and shrubs and a ridgetop overlooking San Francisco Bay, was the first place they’d thought of. All three Shimizus were there, mother and father and son, marked by a single monument near a plum tree whose falling blossoms adorned the grave. Kira cried the day they found the grave, for Akira and his family, and for Maddalena, who should have been buried with Akira instead of next to the husband she despised.
Ten minutes after leaving the party, they drove through the cemetery gate, past the first fountain, the second, the third, winding upward past tulip trees whose thick white blooms perched on glossy roosts, where the roads were empty and the hills waited in silence. They went to Aimi’s grave first, pink marble on a sunlit slope. An origami crane Dan had made lay on the marker’s base, the white-and-gold paper wilted from sun and dew.
“I’ll make a new one,” Dan said. “One for Akira too.”
After they’d pulled the weeds invading the tufts of lavender around the grave, Dan took two small white stones from his pocket and handed one to Kira. It had been his idea to adopt the Jewish tradition of marking each visit with a pebble, and Kira liked its documentary aspect, the mounting evidence of remembrance, proof to passersby that the person buried here was loved and remembered. They placed their stones, kissed their fingers and touched them to the angel atop Aimi’s headstone, then walked up to Akira’s grave.
The Shimizu marker, made of rough-faceted granite, faced west, toward the bay. A handful of pebbles surrounded seven rocks lined up along its base, rocks they’d taken from the desert near Manzanar to serve as body doubles for Maddalena’s rocks, safe at home in their cigar box. Dan cleared the crumpled leaves scattered around the marker and Kira plucked dead blooms from a vase of flowers that Mariko had left the week before, rearranging the survivors. Freesia, irises, and roses—yellow for freedom, blue for faith, white for hope, Mariko said. They added their pebbles to the cluster of stones, then hiked to the ridgetop.
The fogless bay sparkled with amber light, stirred by a light breeze. San Francisco looked like a miniature kingdom surrounded by sapphire blue, its tallest buildings reaching for a streak of sun-laced clouds. They stood gazing at the distant city, Dan behind Kira, arms folded across her chest.
The wind picked up, raising the hair on Kira’s arms.
Manzanar. Wind would always remind her of that beautiful, desolate place. A strange setting for a love story, but that’s what it was. Her grandparents, young and unknowing, risk-takers. Not survivors, but givers of life, of indelible memories, kids who believed in the kind of love that would persist through generations. Kira lifted her face to the soft air, so different from Manzanar’s. This place had a gentler sort of beauty, kinder, more forgiving.
“Hey,” Dan said, nuzzling her hair. “What do you say we make a baby?”
“Yes,” Kira said. The word held promise, peace. “Yes, soon.”
The wind rose again, and she saw mountains in the distance where water should be, the open desert where tall buildings rose from the bay. Thin air and open sky, struggling trees. Sagebrush. Snow on mountaintops. Akira had never left the desert and Maddalena had never gone back. But Kira and Dan would go. They would take their baby to Manzanar and he would crawl in the dust.
Acknowledgements
This novel would not have existed if I hadn’t had the great fortune to study with Joshua Mohr, Lewis Buzbee, Nina Schuyler, and Karl Soehnlein in the MFA in writing program at the University of San Francisco. I’m grateful for their guidance and wisdom, which I recall every time I put words on paper. Thanks also go to my grad-school-and-beyond lifelines, Charlie Kennedy and Emily Vajda, readers of early drafts and lovely writers both, for their sharp critiques and gentle friendships.
The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto has provided community, inspiration, and support in many forms. Thanks to everyone there, particularly Lindsey Crittenden, Laurie Doyle, Thaisa Frank, Anisse Gross, Yukari Kane, Jason Roberts, Ethel Rohan, Julia Scott, and Maury Zeff.
The Eastern California Museum and Manzanar National Historical Site were tremendous resources, as were many books and photographs documenting Manzanar. In the interest of storytelling, I deviated from the facts at times, in minor ways (for example, most Japanese Americans from the San Francisco Bay Area were sent to camps other than Manzanar, unlike in my story), but I depicted the place and the experiences of its 10,000 prisoners as honestly as possible.
Heaps of gratitude go to Molly Cameron and Lee Nachtrieb for listening, believing, and making me feel the love; to Shinji Eshima for music, inspiration, and showing me life’s potential for unexpected possibilities; and to my sons, Christopher and Lukas Mondoux, without whom I would never have experienced the surreal bond of motherhood.
Finally, mega-thanks to Jaynie Royal, the dynamo behind Regal House Publishing, for believing in this story and thus giving my characters the chance to jump off the page and into people’s lives, and for offering damn good advice.
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