Bridge of Scarlet Leaves (13 page)

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Authors: Kristina McMorris

BOOK: Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
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19
A
s Lane entered his house, the smell of smoke greeted him like an intruder. His internal alarm blasted in his ears, along with his father’s words.
From now on, you are responsible for the family.
“Emma,” he yelled, charging toward the kitchen. “
Ok
san!”
Visions arose of a greased pan on fire, its orange and yellow flames climbing the walls. But once he got there, he discovered the kitchen in its normal state. Dishes were drying on the rack from breakfast. The Frigidaire buzzed long and low.
Smoke, not suggestive of food, continued to pave an invisible trail. And the faintest hint of gasoline. Was someone trying to run them out, a person who hated them enough to burn down their house—with or without his family inside?
“Emma!” he shouted, panic rising. He’d witnessed the crime in his dreams.
“I’m right here.” Emma’s voice whipped him around.
“Where’s the smoke coming from?”
In a rust-red jumper, she toted a box half her size, a trove of personal keepsakes. Sadness rimmed her eyes. “It’s
Ok
san.
She’s in back, burning all the Japanese papers and other stuff we still had left.”
Lane mentally chided himself for assuming the worst. He’d forgotten that many other “Issei” were doing the same. The immigrants had been destroying their letters and diaries, no matter how mundane; photographs of their youth spent in Japan, of their babies dressed in kimonos. A history erased as a show of loyalty.
“Do I really have to give her my school pictures?” Emma asked tightly. “Can’t I at least save the notes from my friends?”
He patted her braids, uneven and puckering from weaving them herself. “You’re not giving up a thing. Go put these back in your room, and let me talk to Mother.”
“But ... she said I had to.”
“She won’t mind, I promise. You go up and play now. Throw a tea party with Sarah Mae.”
Emma glanced at her rescued box, and a sparkle returned to her Betty Boop eyes. “Will you come too?”
“You get everything ready, and I’ll join you soon.”
When she shuffled toward the stairs, Lane headed for the door off the laundry room to stop his mother from this foolishness. Through the screen door he could see her. On the concrete patio, she sat primly on a wrought-iron chair. Black plumes swayed from a metal pail at her slippered feet. She lifted an envelope from the shoebox resting on her lap. Yet instead of adding it to the smoldering pile, she held the post to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. The emotion crumpling her face glued Lane’s grip to the door handle. He leaned back onto his heels, causing the screen door to squeak.
Her eyelids flew open. Again, she was a statue. “
Ot
san no ko-tode nanika k
ta?”
Her tone remained flat, even while inquiring about news of her husband’s arrest.
In response, Lane followed a longtime urge to enforce a change. “We shouldn’t speak Japanese anymore. We’re Americans. We should act like it.”
“
Demo, watakushi no eigo—”
“
Your English is fine. I’ve heard you use it at stores when you have to.”
Her fingers tightened on the shoebox. Her deceptively dainty jaw lifted. “
Wakatta wa.”
She agreed in her native language, no doubt to make a point. Then she snatched a photo from the box and flung it into the pail.
Lane reached out, unable to save the memento in time. “Mother, you don’t have to do that.”
She watched the flames devour the corners with greedy bites. It was her wedding portrait, a picture he hadn’t seen since boyhood. Heat animated their kimonos by bubbling the black-and-white image. Their stately pose gained a semblance of celebration it had never appeared to have. But then her headdress recoiled. Oval holes grew as if spurred by drops of acid, wiping away the bride’s youth.
On occasion, Lane would recall a trace of the innocence she’d once had. How she used to smile with a warmth that reached her eyes—like on the Mother’s Day he had proudly given her a lopsided clay pot; or the morning his father had first launched a toy glider, after a month of painstaking assembly, only to have the plane crushed by a passing truck. His wife had burst into such unbridled giggles, she’d forgotten the cultural female habit of covering her mouth.
What had happened over the years to both thaw and return her to ice?
The sound of his name sliced through his pondering. His mother’s impatience indicated she was repeating herself. She pointed to their house, where a doorbell rang. He could sense her desire for protection, despite an exhibition of strength.
“I’ll get it.” Probably another junk dealer. Lane had shooed off two of the vultures this week. In cheap suits and tonic-saturated hair, they’d had the audacity to come here, citing reports of an impending Japanese American evacuation, offering to buy up belongings for half their worth.
Those
were the types of people who should be locked up by authorities.
He divulged none of this as he turned to go inside. While entering he glanced back, and a sight brought him pause. Something peeked out from his mother’s sweater pocket. An envelope. The same one, he would guess, that he had caught her embracing. A family letter? He found it improbable, and not just because she was an only child.
Like most Issei, his parents’ connections to kin in Japan essentially ended the minute they boarded the boat for a new life. Only in rare instances would he catch a relative’s name tossed out, like a puff at a dandelion. Then, bound to its seeds, Lane’s interest would just as soon drift away.
A double ring of the bell reminded him of the caller. He hastened toward the foyer and swung open the door. For a moment, he just stared.
On his porch was TJ Kern.
From beneath the curved lid of a baseball cap, TJ spoke first. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
A grueling quiet. “So, I heard about your dad.”
The intent unclear, Lane found himself on the defense. “They’re just questioning him as a formality, because he worked at the bank.”
TJ shifted his weight, his hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans. He nodded slowly, as if organizing his words. “Listen, there were a lot of things said between us. But what’s done is done. All that’s important is how we move forward.”
Lane became aware, right then, how much he had been hoping for this conversation. Admittedly, TJ’s words had left a bruise that continued to throb. But the fact was, the guy had made an effort by coming here.
Lane stepped out onto the porch. Beneath their shoes were the same planks they had sanded and repainted as kids, when their carved designs from TJ’s new pocketknife weren’t a hit with Lane’s mom. They’d screwed up; they’d learned. They’d repaired the damage.
“I want you to know,” Lane said, “that I
am
sorry. I shouldn’t have kept it all from you, but you have to understand why.”
“Maddie told me.”
Lane blinked at this. Last he’d heard, she and her brother weren’t on speaking terms. “She explained—about the arranged marriage?”
“She told me enough,” he said. “Besides, none of that matters. All I care about is how to square away this mess.”
Relaxing, Lane nodded. “Believe me, I’d love to get back the way things were between you and me—”
“Lane, I’m not talking about you and me.” More jarring than the frustration in TJ’s reply was the use of “Lane” rather than “Tomo.”
“Then what
are
we talking about?”
“Maybe you two did have a chance at making it. Maybe you actually thought through your finances, and job, and her schooling. Even where you were gonna live. But you’ve gotta see that the situation’s changed.”
“It doesn’t change how I feel about her.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“So what are you suggesting? That I walk away because things are tough right now?” Lane cringed at the idea of living without her. Seeing Maddie only twice over the past week had been hard enough. “They’re not going to stay this way. It’ll all settle down.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Just hear me out—”
“We’re in a goddamned war! With Japan, for Christ’s sake. It’s not fair what you’re doing to her and you know it!”
Fair?
The concept had become laughable. Lane’s volume rose to the challenge. “My family’s being treated like criminals, and for what? Huh? What’s fair about that?”
Their eyes held, a silent standoff.
How did they come to this?
What’s more, how could Lane possibly do what TJ was asking? Since the car accident, he understood TJ’s protectiveness. But he also understood that Maddie had grown up without her brother noticing. Now Lane wanted to be the one to protect her, as a husband who cared for her as much as TJ. Maybe more.
“I love Maddie,” Lane told him. “You have to know, I love her more than anything.”
Without pause, not even a humoring of consideration, TJ’s answer came low and firm. “Prove it, then. If you really love her, do what’s best for her—by letting her go.”
The words sank in layer after layer. They reached down to the bruise inside, reviving a throb as TJ turned to leave.
When Lane finally went for the door, he found his mother in the entry. Darkness raged in her eyes. Lane waited for a rebuke, but none came. She simply gathered her anger and walked away.

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