Love and Other Consolation Prizes(36)

Ernest wished the rooms had their own phones as he heard the hotel manager shouting his name up the stairwell. That’s when he realized he was late for his meeting with Juju at the University of Washington—she hoped strolling around the former grounds of the AYP might jog loose a few memories. He grabbed his hat and coat and quickly trundled down the stairs, past the manager, who held the phone out at arm’s length.

“Tell her I’m on my way,” Ernest said. The man rolled his eyes and smacked on his unlit cigar, as he went back to reading his Life magazine bearing the headline OUT OF THIS WORLD FAIR IN SEATTLE.

—

ERNEST CLIMBED INSIDE his old black Cadillac, thinking how he’d once made a fine living with the elegant sedan, as the favored driver of visiting jazz musicians, colored celebrities, and the occasional prizefighter. Gracie had always loved this car as well, and he had so many fond memories of road trips, weekend getaways. But Ernest also had recollections of trips to the hospital, and driving Hanny to Sea-Tac Airport last year.

Now she’s back, Ernest thought. I have more people to hide Gracie’s secrets from.

When his wife moved in with Juju and Hanny moved away, Ernest had slipped into marital limbo. He tended a small garden in what used to be Kobe Terrace Park. He volunteered at the Chinese Community Center. And he’d haunted the Seattle Public Library, catching up on scores of books he’d wanted to read. Until he grew restless and paid a visit to Kawaguchi Travel, where Gracie used to work part-time, and on a whim he inquired about visiting Canton. A part of him longed to find the village of his birth, where his mother must have died. But in the end he knew traveling there wasn’t an option—visits had been prohibited to U.S. citizens.

So instead, Ernest had been forced to settle for a book of Chinese poetry. As he drove, he thought of the words of the great poet Shijing.

I search but cannot find her,

awake, asleep, thinking of her,

endlessly, endlessly…



Ernest’s route north to the U-District paralleled the gash of construction that had almost healed, leaving a scar the size of a superhighway through the heart of the city. As he saw the towering figure of George Washington who marked the entrance to the campus, Ernest knew that memories had always loomed over him, connecting him to places and people. He waited at a stoplight near the statue, which had been erected when the grounds were being converted to a university campus at the end of the AYP. He remembered that when he was a boy, the sculpture had sparkled, shining almost cobalt blue. But now the first president had taken on the color of dark ash, and his shoulders were covered in epaulets of pigeon droppings.

We are all a bit worse for wear, Ernest mused.

After he parked, Ernest fed the meter a dime and donned his hat. He walked briskly across the old red-brick plaza now known as Red Square, toward the old Geyser Basin, which had been remodeled and renamed Drumheller Fountain. Ernest used the reflecting pool as a compass to orient himself. The trees had added the growth of fifty summers and the view of Mount Rainier wasn’t quite as spectacular as he remembered, but if he squinted he could almost recall the grand vista, the cascading waterfalls that had now been replaced by an unadorned walkway. Now the Court of Honor, the massive Government Building, and the Grand Cupola atop Denny Hall were gone. And most of the turn-of-the-century buildings had been replaced by brick structures of a more modern era, designed to please school administrators instead of visitors from faraway countries.

Students milled about, bicycling from class to class, hurrying from building to building, kissing and making out on the wet grass.

As Ernest baptized himself in memory, he searched for the surviving buildings that he could remember from his days at the fair. A few of the big halls remained, but their Doric columns were now a patchwork of repairs. He kept walking until he finally found the marble steps of a modest building that looked like its two stories had sprouted up in a thicket of tall trees. The sign read CUNNINGHAM HALL, renamed after the famous Seattle photographer, but Ernest remembered standing atop those steps surrounded by elderly matrons of the Woman’s Century Club and the Daughters of Saint George, raffled off like the strange, peculiar novelty he was.

He stood there for a moment and looked up at the blanket of wet gray flannel that passed for a Seattle sky, sensing mist on his cheeks, the fresh smell of rain, and the sobering cold that came before the first drops of a heavy spring cloudburst. He watched the hermit sun peek out from behind the clouds, then disappear as though saying goodbye, farewell, nice knowing you. And he heard a low rumble of thunder as though timber were splitting and then falling in some faraway forest.

Then he spotted Juju, who waved and crossed the parkway. He watched her fondly, knowing that she didn’t just want to meet him at the site of the first world’s fair—she wanted to follow him into the past.

Ernest buttoned his coat and walked down the steps, as he’d done five decades earlier.

“I thought you might have stood me up,” Juju said as she met him halfway. They found a quiet, somewhat dry park bench beneath the thick canopy of a red madrona.

“I was tempted,” Ernest confessed. He sat next to her and watched Mount Rainier disappear as rain began to dapple the ground.

“To do what?” Juju teased. “Run away from your fatherly duty of giving Hanny away in marriage to Lantern Jaw Legal Services of Las Vegas, Nevada?”

Ernest nodded. “That too, now that you mention it.” He listened to the thrum of the rain on the leaves above them as the sprinkling turned to drizzle. “I take it you met?”