The Japanese Lover(72)
“Our sincere condolences, Mrs. Belasco,” said Ichimei as he took his mother’s arm to move away.
“Alma. I’m still Alma,” she murmured.
“Good-bye, Alma,” he said.
She waited two weeks for Ichimei to get in touch with her. She scrutinized the mail carefully and jumped every time the telephone rang, imagining a thousand reasons for his silence apart from the obvious one: he was married. She refused to think about small, slender Delphine, who was younger and prettier than she was, with her inquisitive look and her gloved hand on Ichimei’s arm. One Saturday she drove to Martinez, wearing a pair of big sunglasses and a head scarf, but although she passed by the Fukuda nursery three times, she did not have the courage to get out. On the second Monday she could not bear the torment of desire any longer, and so called the number that, from seeing it so often in the phone book, she had learned by heart.
“Fukuda Flowers and Houseplants, how may we help you?”
It was a woman’s voice, and Alma had no doubt it belonged to Delphine, even though she had not said a word on the only occasion they had met. Alma hung up. She called again several times, praying that Ichimei would answer, but it was always Delphine’s friendly voice that came on the line, and she hung up each time.
On one of these calls the two women remained silent on the line for almost a minute, until Delphine inquired gently: “How may I help you, Mrs. Belasco?” Horrified, Alma slammed down the telephone and swore she would never again try to get in touch with Ichimei. Three days later a letter arrived bearing Ichimei’s handwriting in black ink. She shut herself in her room, clutching the envelope to her breast and trembling with anguish and hope.
In his letter, Ichimei once more expressed his condolences for Isaac Belasco, and spoke of his emotion at seeing her again after so many years, even though he was aware of her success in her work and her philanthropy and had often seen her photograph in the papers. He told her that Megumi was a wife and mother, married to Boyd Anderson with one son, Charles, and that Heideko had visited Japan a couple of times, where she had learned the art of ikebana. In the final paragraph he wrote that he had married Delphine Akimura, a second-generation Japanese-American like him. Delphine was a year old when her family was interned at Topaz, but he did not remember seeing her there, and they only got to know each other much later on. She was a primary school teacher, but had left her job to manage the nursery, which had prospered as a result; they were soon going to open a branch in San Francisco. He said farewell without raising the possibility that they might meet or that he was expecting her to reply. He made no reference to the past they had shared. It was a formal, informative letter, with none of the poetic turns of phrase or philosophical speculation of others she had received during the brief period of their love. It didn’t even include one of the drawings he often used to send with his missives. The only relief Alma felt on reading it was that there was no mention of her phone calls, which Delphine must have told him about. She took the letter for what it was: a farewell and a tacit warning that Ichimei wanted no further contact.
The next seven years went by in a life of routine that contained no great highlights for Alma. Her interesting and frequent trips became fused in her memory as one single Marco Polo adventure, as Nathaniel called them without the slightest hint of resentment at his wife’s absences. They felt as viscerally comfortable with one another as Siamese twins who have never been separated. They could intuit each other’s thoughts, states of mind, and wishes, could each finish the sentence the other had begun. Their affection was beyond question; it was so much taken for granted that it did not even bear talking about, as was their extraordinary friendship. They shared the family’s social commitments; a taste for art and music, the refinement of good restaurants, and the wine cellar they gradually built up; as well as the pleasure of family vacations with Larry.
The little boy had turned out so docile and affectionate that his parents sometimes wondered whether he was completely normal. When they were not in the presence of Lillian, who would not tolerate the slightest criticism of her grandson, they joked that one day Larry was going to give them a ghastly shock by joining a cult or murdering someone; it was impossible for him to glide through life without any turmoil at all, like a satisfied porpoise. As soon as Larry was old enough to appreciate it, they took him to see the world on unforgettable annual excursions. They went to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon, on various African safaris; Larry was later to do the same with his own children. Among the most magical moments of his childhood was giving a giraffe something to eat from his hand in a Kenyan game reserve: its long, blue, rough tongue, its gentle eyes with their operatic eyelashes, its intense smell of newly mown grass.
Nathaniel and Alma had their own space in the Sea Cliff mansion, and lived there carefree as though in a luxury hotel, because Lillian took care to keep the domestic machinery well oiled. She continued to pry into their private lives, regularly asking them if they were in love by any chance, but they regarded this odd insistence as charming rather than annoying. If Alma was in San Francisco, they saw to it that they spent some of the evening together for drinks and to recount the day’s events to one another. They celebrated their mutual successes, and neither of them asked any more questions than the strictly necessary, as if they sensed that an inappropriate comment could bring the delicate balance of their relationship crashing down in an instant. They willingly accepted that each of them had their own secret world and private times, which they were under no obligation to account for. Omissions were not lies.