Love and Other Consolation Prizes(9)

“Dad.” Juju pointed to the name in the article. “It says Ernest. Was this you? I mean—you once told me how you ended up at the Washington Children’s Home after you came here from China. And you said you were given a job as a houseboy after the world’s fair. You told me that’s where you met Mom.”

Ernest tried to laugh. “Why would you think that? Ernest is a pretty common name—Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Shackleton, Ernest Borgnine, Ernest—”

“Oh my God, it is you.”

“Look…”

“Dad, I’m an investigative reporter. This is what I do for a living. I can see the truth written on your face. I can tell just by the tone of your voice.”

Ernest furrowed his brow and drew a deep breath, exhaling slowly. It was one thing to lose himself in memories, but the last thing he wanted to do was share the whole sordid story with his daughter. Let alone one hundred thousand readers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He coughed and tried changing the subject.

“Has your mother’s memory improved any more these days?”

“I guess, because she’s the one who told me.”

Ernest blinked. “Told you what?”

“Dad, she’s the one who told me that a boy had been raffled off as a prize at the AYP—she said you were that boy.” Juju stared back. “She was listening to the radio and heard a commercial for the new world’s fair. Then she started talking to herself. I thought she was spouting nonsense until I looked it up.”

Ernest felt the warmth in his chest grow cold. “What…are you talking about?”

“Mom,” Juju said as she put a hand on his arm. “She’s begun saying things. Most of the time she still doesn’t make a lot of sense, but every once in a while—I think she’s starting to remember.”

—

AFTER HIS DAUGHTER left, Ernest turned on the small Philco swivel-screen he’d gotten on clearance from Hikida Furniture and Appliance, because of a broken dial. It worked fine, though he had to change the channel with a pair of needle-nose pliers. He tried to relax, listening to the hum of the television as the color picture tube warmed up and the distorted image on-screen slowly came into focus.

As far as Juju’s questions, Ernest had stalled. He’d bought a little time by saying he was tired and promising to come over tomorrow afternoon to talk. He’d wanted to drop everything and see Gracie tonight, but he knew she’d be going to bed soon and that evenings were when she was most fragile.

Let her rest.

Ernest thought about the people he knew—the ones he’d grown up with as well as his neighbors here at the Publix. He suspected that everyone his age, of his vintage, had a backstory, a secret that they’d never shared. For one it might be a forsaken husband back in Japan. For another it could be a son or daughter from a previous marriage in China. For others perhaps the secret shame was a father they didn’t talk to anymore, or a baby they’d given to a neighbor, never to be seen again. Or perhaps a vocational secret—back-room gambling, bringing rum down from Canada during Prohibition, or the personal, private horrors that lay hidden behind the bars, ribbons, and medals of a military record.

We all have things we don’t talk about, Ernest thought. Even though, more often than not, those are the things that make us who we are.

Ernest remembered the AYP and wondered how much he could share without giving up Gracie’s part of the story. Moreover, he worried about how long it would be before Gracie inadvertently gave herself up. What would Hanny and Juju think if they learned that their mother was once someone else—something else? To him, Gracie would always be more than a survivor of circumstance. She was a person of strength, a woman of fierce independence. But if her past ever got out, her gossipy friends at church, their old neighbors—no one would look at her the same.

Ernest rubbed his temples and watched Ed Sullivan as the show broadcast live from the refurbished Seattle Opera House, which sat adjacent to the new expo’s pillarless Coliseum. He offered a warbling introduction to Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, who danced and sang “Love Tastes Like Strawberries.” That performance was followed by the Amazing Unus, a local equilibrist who could balance anything on one finger—an umbrella, a sword, a padded barstool, even a six-foot scale model of the Space Needle.

Ernest glanced at the clock on the wall, next to a calendar from the Tsue Chong Noodle Company featuring a beautiful Chinese girl in a traditional dress, but with heavy makeup and ruby lips. The calendar was three years old.

He whispered, “Gracie, where did the time go?”





THE FLOATING WORLD


(1902)



Yung wished that someone had a pocket watch or at least a bundle of timekeeping incense, the kind the Buddhist monks in his village had used to mark the hours of the sun. Instead, the best anyone could muster was a piece of chalk that was used to keep track of the days, according to meals and their regular bedtime. Yung watched as one of the girls made another hash mark and quietly counted to nineteen.

As the ship rocked and the time passed, Yung had mourned his mother terribly—her memory waxing and waning like a ghostly echo. But he’d also been reasonably well fed for the first time in his life, surrounded by big sisters who laughed and smiled. And on his better days, he’d had his impressionable young heart realigned, set on foreign promises: the Hawaiian Islands, tropical sunshine, an endless horizon of warm water, and a beggars’ feast of sugarcane. They’d been told that there would be fat stalks everywhere they looked, just waiting to be sliced and peeled and chewed, nectar waiting to be savored. Yung clung to that hope, and the illusion that his mother would survive and that someday he’d grow up and make enough money to send for her. But even his tender imagination suspected that was folly.