A Castle in Brooklyn(63)

“Riku, please hear me. You’re having another panic attack. Take a few deep breaths. That’s right. You will be fine. You will be just fine.”

Jenny’s soothing voice washed over him, an ocean of calm. Riku closed his eyes and kept them shut for how long he couldn’t say. When he finally opened them, the sun’s colors had paled, and he watched the impression of clouds as they sailed through the air. Jenny was stroking his chest quietly. He nodded, took another breath.

“Will you tell me now?” she asked, her voice low, patient, as if speaking to a young child.

“I didn’t want to say, Jenny. It was my decision to make.”

Jenny nodded, her face settling from concern into a smile. It was almost as if she could read his mind.

“You know we’ll follow you wherever you go, whatever you decide. That will be the right decision.”

He could no longer feel her hand even though it was firm in his grasp. And then his head began to shake. He could not stop it. His eye wandered to the kitchen window, where he could see their reflections in the glass. Abigail, nose pressed to the surface, tears streaming down her face. James, his hand on her shoulders, his mouth set in a tight line, looking older, much older than his ten years.

Riku couldn’t help it. He was a man. He was Japanese. Imprisoned as a child, imprisoned still. Who would help him now that his mother was gone, his father dead? Just Jenny. Maybe Jenny. Still, it was his decision, resting only with him. After all, wasn’t he the man? He was not sure who or what he was anymore. He had to see. He had to see now.

“Jenny, I need a mirror!”

“No, Riku. No, you don’t.”

“Jenny, please! I need a mirror!”

“You are here, Riku. You are here and I’m with you. Lie back down.”

“But, Jenny, I must—”

“Let me help you, Riku. You don’t need to carry this alone. Please let me help you.”

He lay back in the hammock, allowing her to place her hands on the sides of his face. They felt soft, cool.

“Okay, Jenny,” he said, “okay.”





TWENTY-FIVE



Zalman, 1985

For the first time in the two years since he had heard about Jacob’s death, Zalman jumped out of bed, dressed, even coaxed his sleepy daughter awake, switched on the Mr. Coffee, and placed two slices of white bread in the toaster. He looked out the kitchen window, which faced the courtyard below. Another gray December day, but today he felt as if spring was just beginning, and he couldn’t wait to head out the door and take a nice deep breath. Miriam, still in her robe, walked in and stood for a while, observing her husband. She sat down at the kitchen table and watched Zalman spread margarine on a slice of toast, and when he handed it to her, she smiled.

One of the things that Zalman most admired about his wife was her quiet strength. Superficially, she was that shy girl, living in a farmhouse amid rolling pastures, who had perhaps too blindly succumbed to her father’s will. And, indeed, it would appear that she also deferred to Zalman in all things. Yet Zalman knew that she not only listened to him intensely but responded. With only a few words she would confirm his decision to come back east and indeed convince him that it was the right one. He was happy now for this quality in his wife, and he knew that she would accept his most recent decision, even if she did not fully understand it, and maybe persuade him that it, too, was right. This was a good thing, he reassured himself, because he had no intention of revealing his real reason for making it.

“Daddy, you can’t be serious! You’re actually making breakfast?”

Zalman greeted his daughter with a huge smile, the same reaction he had whenever she came into his view.

“Why not, Debbie? Don’t you think your father is capable?”

She laughed, fullheartedly, still with that childlike innocence that made him want to run to her, hold her in his arms, and keep hugging her, as he had when she was just a toddler. Instead, he asked her if she would like a slice of toast, maybe some milk? She shook her head.

“I’ve got to get to school early to set up my project, and I’m walking over to Elizabeth’s first.” She grabbed her book bag from the counter, opened it, checked its contents before kissing both her parents on the cheek, and left.

“Make sure to keep your coat buttoned. It’s cold outside!” reminded Miriam just as the door slammed behind her daughter.

At twelve, Debbie, the couple’s only child, was a dark-haired beauty. With her mother’s oval-shaped eyes and long lashes, her pale white skin, the luxurious hair that when occasionally let loose would sinuously curve past her shoulders, she reflected Miriam. In two aspects only did she resemble her father. The first was the color of her eyes—lighter, bluer than Zalman’s, which had flecks of green. But it was her true nature in which she most resembled him. Steadfast, determined, and loyal to a fault, that was the essence of his Debbie behind her demure, almost angelic, appearance.

These characteristics occasionally flared up from her more passive surface, as when the family had moved from the daily routines of farm life to the more challenging sidewalks of central New Jersey. The girl was only nine years old and at first had ignored the taunts of her peers, bullies who assailed her, calling her “farmer” and “country hick,” the girls who snickered at her gingham shirts in the corners of the playground. And she tried to ignore the boy with the shaggy blond hair, which seemed to be always in his eyes, who sitting behind her in class one morning joined in the torment, giving the child’s long silky hair such a firm tug that she squealed out in pain. One day, finally, Debbie confronted the children. She told them she had as much right to be here as they, suggesting that most of their own grand-or great-grandparents were once farmers too. As for the names, well, she was proud to be a farmer, a “country hick,” names she accepted as a badge of honor. What’s more, the girl boasted, her father had been a hero during the war, living on sour milk and knockwurst, hiding until he and his friend faced down the muzzle of the Nazis’ guns before slipping away moments before bullets could rip their flesh and their carcasses were thrown into mass graves they themselves had dug. At first, the children were awed by the audacity of their classmate, but shortly after, their interest was piqued as, in the school playground, they listened to stories of her father’s heroism and the daily tasks of how she would milk the cows, care for the chicks so they would become good egg layers, and even how she spent her leisure time playing hide-and-seek with her cousins in the hayloft. And so the nine-year-old had stood up to the bullies until finally she won their trust and, eventually, their friendship.