A Castle in Brooklyn(61)

Then after reconnecting the broken links of an old swing he had bought secondhand, along with a slide that required constant sweeping from dirt and leaves, he turned his efforts to the facade of the home, which with systematic strokes of the brush was tempered from its sunny yellow, which had taken on a dismal and sad hue, to a more sedate shade of greenish blue. Last, the family carried new wicker chairs and a wicker love seat to the porch, along with a green-and-white-striped hammock that Riku tied in the shade between two trees in the back of the house. When all was done, everything about the place echoed home to the Japanese American family.

Esther herself had settled into her new residence in Boca weeks before the family had moved into the home. Riku could tell that Florrie, though, kept a keen eye on her neighbor’s house through the open slats of her own window shade. On the first of each month, hair tied back and dressed in a pantsuit, she would appear in front of the home, its path lined with new rocks, and step onto the porch that no longer squeaked. That was when Jenny would greet her with the monthly rental check, which Florrie would later deposit into Esther’s account. Jenny had never asked her inside since, because as she and Riku had agreed, she didn’t like the idea of turning a business relationship into something more than that. Nevertheless, she would usually catch the woman trying to sneak a peek into the home’s ever-changing interior. As Jenny closed the door, she could see the shadow of disappointment wash across Florrie’s face. Jenny was pleased that she would have no gossip to report back to Esther, other than the fact that they were good tenants.

Once his efforts were expended and the house made into the very model of his and Jenny’s vision, Riku had little time to enjoy it. He was kept busy with his new job as a chemical engineer at Dow, which had recently expanded with home food management projects like Ziploc and Saran Wrap. Riku worked long hours, leaving at 6:00 a.m. and not returning until eight in the evening, when the night had dimmed the hue of the home’s exterior so that it blended in with the dark sky. Yet even from down the block, as he approached, walking past the stately oaks at each curb, the garbage cans positioned like soldiers before every home, Florrie’s house with the wooden bench in front, he could discern the lights of the home sparkling brightly. Not his home, not yet. But he hoped that one day it might be.

Often when he looked at his wife of twelve years, Riku would consider himself a lucky man. Although Jenny herself was highly educated, possessing a master’s degree in business administration before embarking on a career in management at one of the largest hospitals in San Francisco, she had abandoned it all once their twin boys, James and Joseph, were born. After that, Jenny never seemed to complain or to long for missed opportunities, instead devoting herself entirely to the two boys and the two daughters to come. And, of course, to Riku who, she had to acknowledge, was the most difficult of all.

When he struggled out of bed each morning, rubbing the crust from his eyes, Jenny was already downstairs making sure the special green tea he loved so much was steeped exactly right, and then opening each of the shades in the home like a quiet little bird. Riku marveled how at day’s end she looked much the same, her dark eyes bright, her cheek still dewy as he bent to kiss her in greeting. He knew, too, that Jenny, the daughter of wealthy jewelers whose parents had escaped Japan before there had been a hint of turmoil, and whose children had been free from the shame of imprisonment, having been born in the Northeast years after the war had ended, was far more than he deserved. He had loved her from the first time she appeared in one of his classes at the university back in San Francisco. Even then he could not take his eyes off the girl with the heart-shaped face, the girl with splashes of rose-color rouge on her cheeks.

Upon hearing the news of his impending marriage to the young woman he had described as a girl with eyes of brilliant coal and hair sleeked back in a bun resembling a scoop of mocha ice cream, Riku’s mother, Airi Shiori, was ecstatic. She had resigned herself to the idea that her only son would be a lifelong bachelor. Riku sighed now, remembering his father’s adage, “No coin has two heads,” that happiness always has another side, for it was shortly after the joyous wedding that he was confronted by two tragedies. First, the loss of his job as a lab technician, and then, worst of all, the death of his mother after a series of small strokes. Airi Shiori’s death was something he would never quite recover from. After all, a boy has only one mother. It was then that Riku was overcome by an illness, an illness of the mind that the family never spoke of. Just like those first few days when he was a young boy, after his arrival at the camp, when he found himself immobile, locked inside his own body without the capacity to speak or focus on anything around him but his own terrors. With time, the panic had passed, but Riku always harbored a secret fear that the feeling would someday return with greater consequences.

But now, after securing a new, more lucrative position on the East Coast and after twelve years of marriage, Riku still could not believe his luck. First came the twin boys, James and Joseph, and two years later, a girl, Abigail. Then in five more years, Leticia—Letty—the baby with the unusual emerald-colored eyes and ringlets of dark hair, arrived. And even though he knew he could never be the typical American father, the kind that coaches their sons’ Little League games or dances with their daughters around the living room, even though he still winced whenever his colleagues would call him “Ricky,” he was proud of his accomplishments in the country that had both punished and rewarded him. He was proud, too, that his children all had American names.