Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (4 page)

He lay back on the hillside, feeling the cool grass. He could smell the tiny Japanese roses everywhere, dotting the hill with patches of yellow stars.

‘Whatever it was, Henry, you said it beautifully. What’s it mean?’

‘Nothing. It means “What time is it?”’

Henry glanced at Keiko sheepishly and saw the look of suspicion in her eye. ‘Did you come all the way over here to ask me what time it was?’

Henry shrugged. ‘A friend just taught it to me, I thought you’d be impressed, I was wrong – what kind of notebook is that?’

‘It’s a sketchbook. And I
am
impressed, just that you’d come all the way over here. Your father would be mad if he knew. Or does he?’

Henry shook his head. This was the last place his father would expect to find him. Henry normally hung out at the waterfront on Saturdays, with other boys from the Chinese school, haunting places like Ye Olde Curiosity Shop out on Coleman Dock – looking at the real mummies and genuine shrunken heads, daring one another to touch them. But since he’d begun attending Rainier, they all treated him differently. He hadn’t changed, but somehow, in their eyes he was different.
He wasn’t one of them anymore. Like Keiko, he was
special
.

‘It’s no big deal. I was just in the neighborhood.’

‘Really? And which neighbor taught you to speak Japanese?’

‘Sheldon, the sax player on South King.’ Henry’s eyes fell to the sketchbook. ‘Can I see your drawings?’

She handed him her small black sketchbook. Inside were pencil drawings of flowers and plants, and the occasional drawing of a dancer. The last one was a loose sketch of the crowd, the dancers – and a profile of Henry from the host of people below. ‘It’s me! How long did you know I was down there? You just watched me the whole time. Why didn’t you say anything?’

Keiko pretended that she didn’t understand. ‘
Wakarimasen
. So sorry, I don’t speak English.’ Joking, she took her sketchbook back. ‘See you Monday, Henry.’

H
enry closed the yearbook in his lap, setting it on the carved cherrywood coffee table, next to the framed photograph of him and Ethel on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. To Henry, her smiling face looked thin, gracefully hiding a certain sadness.

In the photo she was in early remission, but still was missing most of her hair from the radiation treatments. It didn't fall out all at once like you see in the movies. It came apart in uneven clumps, thick in some places, smooth in others. She'd asked Henry to use a set of clippers and shave it all off, which he did, reluctantly. It was the first of many personal moments they would share together. A long sabbatical into her day-to-day care, part of the mechanics of dying. He'd done all he could. But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.

He thought about moving on but didn't even know where to begin. So he went where he'd always gone to stimulate his senses, even as a little boy – a place where he always found a little comfort. He grabbed his hat and jacket and found himself stalking the dusty aisles of Bud's Jazz Records.

Bud's had been a fixture on South Jackson, near the old Pioneer Square, for as long as Henry could remember. Of course the original Bud Long didn't actually own the place anymore. But the new guy, a grizzled fellow with sagging hangdog cheeks like those of a partially deflated Dizzy Gillespie, filled the part amiably. He tended the record counter, where he readily answered to the name Bud.

‘Haven't seen
you
in a while, Henry.'

‘I've been around,' Henry said, flipping through a rack of old 78s, hoping to find something by Oscar Holden – the Holy Grail of Seattle's jazz recordings. The apocryphal story was that Oscar recorded a master-session 78 way back in the thirties, on vinyl, not wax. But of the rumored three hundred printed, none survived. None that anyone knew about anyway. But then again, almost no one knew who Oscar Holden
was
. Seattle greats like Ray Charles and Quincy Jones had moved on to the fame and fortune of Celebrityville. Still, Henry daydreamed that he might find a vinyl copy someday. And now that CDs were gaining in popularity, the used LP bins at Bud's were overflowing with new used records every day.

If one still existed, someone was bound to throw it out, or trade it in, not knowing what that dusty old recording meant to avid collectors like Henry. After all, Oscar
who
?

Bud turned the music down a bit. ‘You ain't been around here, 'cause I'd have seen you if you were around here.'
Something modern was playing, Overton Berry, Henry guessed, from the deep melancholy of the piano.

Henry thought about his absence. He'd been a regular for most of his adult life, and part of his youth. ‘My turntable was broken.' And it had been, so it wasn't a lie. Besides, how do I tell him my wife died six months ago – no sense in turning Bud's Jazz Records into Bud's
Blues
Records.

‘You hear about the Panama Hotel?' the old dealer asked.

Henry nodded, still thumbing through the rack, his nose itchy from the dust that always settled in the basement record shop. ‘I was standing right there when they started bringing all that stuff up.'

‘You don't say?' Bud rubbed his bald black pate. ‘I know what you're always in here looking for. Oh, I gave up looking for Oscar myself. But it sure makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean they board up that whole building, what, around 1950? And then that new owner buys it, goes inspecting, and finds all that
stuff
sealed up all those years. Newspaper says there ain't much of value in there. No gold bars or nothing. But it makes you wonder …'

Henry had wondered nonstop since he'd watched them bring up that first steamer trunk. Since the owner had spun that Japanese parasol.

Henry fished out an LP by the Seattle jazz drummer Webb Coleman and set it on the counter. ‘I guess this'll do it.'

Bud slipped the old record in a used Uwajimaya grocery bag and handed it right back. ‘This one's on me, Henry – I'm sorry about your wife.' Bud's eyes looked like they'd seen plenty of suffering in his own time. ‘Ethel was a fine woman. I know you did right by her.'

Henry found a weak smile and thanked him. Some people read the obituaries every day, even in a sprawling place like the Emerald City – but the International District was just a small town. People know everything about everyone. And just as in other small towns, when someone leaves, they never come back.

W
hen the weekend rolled around, Henry headed past the old Nippon Kan Theater, or what was left of it – his feet crunching bits of broken glass and shattered lightbulbs. The colorful marquee that had once lit up the dark streets now was riddled with empty sockets and broken fixtures – the once warm glow, a reflection of how much hope Henry had had as a young boy, sat covered in decades of rust and neglect. Restoration or demolition? Henry didn’t know which made more sense. The Nippon Kan had been abandoned decades earlier, like the Panama Hotel. But, like the hotel, it had also been bought in recent years and was in the process of being remodeled. Last he’d heard, the once-beating cultural heart of Japantown would soon be a bus station.

All these years, he’d never been inside, and even though there had been a small reopening party, four decades later, he couldn’t bring himself to go. Stopping to soak it in, he watched
the construction workers throwing old lavender upholstered chairs out a second-story window into the dumpster below. Must be from the balcony, Henry thought. Not much is left, might be my only time to step past the old ticket window and see that old Kabuki theater the way it was. So tempting. But he was almost late to meet Marty at the Sea Fortune Restaurant for lunch, and Henry hated to be late.

Henry regarded the musty old restaurant as the best in Chinatown. In fact, he’d been coming here for years, going all the way back to his childhood. Although, the first time he came here, it had been a Japanese noodle shop. Since then, it’d been through a merry-go-round of Chinese owners. Smart owners – they always kept the kitchen staff, which kept the food consistent. That was the true key to success in life, Henry thought – consistency.

Marty, on the other hand, wasn’t crazy about the dim sum there. ‘Too traditional,’ he’d argue, ‘too bland.’ He much preferred the newer establishments, like House of Hong or Top Gun Seafood. Personally, Henry didn’t favor those trendy restaurants that broke with tradition and served dim sum to the yuppie bar crowd until way after midnight. Nor did he care for nouveau Eurasian cuisine – ingredients like smoked salmon or plantains had no place on a dim sum menu, according to Henry’s taste buds anyway.

As father and son settled into the lumpy, cracked cushions of a bright red Naugahyde booth, Henry flipped open the teapot, sniffing its contents, as though he were sampling some vintage wine. It was old. Nothing but brown,
tea-stained
water with hardly any aroma. He pushed the whole pot, lid up, to the side and flagged down the ancient serving
lady pushing a cart of steamed dumplings in their general direction.

Looking over the sampling of shrimp dumplings, egg tarts, and steamed buns called
hum bau
, Henry pointed and nodded, not even asking what Marty wanted – he knew all of Marty’s favorites anyway.

‘Why do I get the feeling that something new is bothering you?’ Marty asked.

‘The tea?’

‘No, that’s just you thinking you’re some kind of sommelier of dried leaves in a bag. You’ve been acting different lately. Something I should know about, Pops?’

Henry unwrapped his cheap wooden chopsticks, rolling them together to rub off any splinters. ‘My son is graduating, soma coma lode—’

‘
Summa cum laude
,’ Marty corrected.

‘That’s what I said. My son is graduating
with highest honor
.’ Henry popped a steaming hot shrimp
shui mai
dumpling into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. ‘What could be wrong?’

‘Well, Mom’s passed, for starters. And now you’re pretty much retired. From your job. From taking care of her. I’m just worried about you. What are you doing to pass the time these days?’

Henry offered a pork
bau
to his son, who took it with his chopsticks and peeled the wax paper off the bottom before taking a large bite. ‘I just went back down to Bud’s. I picked up a little something. I’m getting out,’ Henry said. To punctuate his statement, he held up the bag from the record store.
See, conclusive evidence that I’m doing just fine.

Henry watched his son unwrap a lotus leaf and eat the
glutinous sticky rice inside. He could tell by the concern in his son’s voice that Marty was unconvinced. ‘I’m heading over to the Panama Hotel. I thought I’d ask if they’d let me look around. They found a lot of old things in the basement. Things from
the war years
.’

Marty finished chewing. ‘Looking for some long-lost jazz record, perhaps?’

Henry ducked the question, not wanting to lie to his son, who knew he’d been interested in old jazz recordings from a very young age. But that was about all Marty knew of his father’s childhood, though he did know that his father had had a hard time of it as a child. Why? He never asked, it somehow seemed sacred, and Henry rarely shared. In return, his son probably thought he was quite boring. A man who had cared for every detail of his wife’s last years but had no surprises in him. Mr Reliable. Without a bone of rebellion or spontaneity. ‘I’m looking for
something
,’ Henry said.

Marty set his chopsticks on the edge of his plate, looking at his father. ‘Something I should know about? Who knows, Pops, maybe I can help.’

Henry took a bite out of an egg custard tart, set it down, and pushed his plate away. ‘If I find something worth sharing, I’ll let you know.’ Who knows, I might even surprise you.
Wait and see. Wait, and see.

Marty seemed unconvinced.

‘Something bothering
you
? You’re the one who looks like he has something on his mind – aside from studying and grades.’ Henry thought his son was about to say something, then Marty clammed up. Timing seemed to be everything in Henry’s family. There had always seemed to be a right time
and a wrong time for discussion between Henry and his own father. Maybe his son felt the same.

‘He’ll deal with it in his own way, and in his own time,’ Ethel had said, shortly after she learnt she had cancer. ‘He’s your son, but he’s not a product of
your
childhood, it doesn’t have to be the same.’

Ethel had taken Henry out on Green Lake, on a boat, beneath a sunny August sky, to tell him the bad news. ‘Oh, I’m not leaving anytime soon,’ she’d said. ‘But if anything, when I go, I hope my passing brings the two of you together.’

She had never stopped mothering her son, and Henry for that matter. Until the treatments began, then everything got turned around. And seemed to stay that way.

Now father and son waited in silence, ignoring the carts of dim sum that rolled by. The awkward moment was interrupted by the crash of plates somewhere in the kitchen, punctuated by men swearing at each other in Chinese and English. There was much to say and ask, but neither Henry nor Marty inched closer to the subject. They just waited for their server, who would soon be bringing more tea and orange slices.

Henry quietly hummed the tune of an old song – he didn’t know the words anymore, but he’d never forgotten the melody. And the more he hummed the more he felt like smiling again.

Marty, on the other hand, just sighed, and kept looking for the waitress.

H
enry paid the bill and watched as his son waved goodbye, loading an enormous to-go bag into the front seat of his silver Honda Accord. The extra goodies had been at Henry’s insistence. He knew his son did OK with the food on campus, but they didn’t have anything that compared with a dozen fresh hum bau – and besides, steamed pork buns could easily be reheated in the microwave in Marty’s dorm room.

Content that his son was well on his way, Henry stopped at a flower stand, then stood at the nearest bus stop, where he caught the Number 10 to the far side of Capitol Hill – within walking distance of Lake View Cemetery.

When Ethel died, Henry had sworn he’d visit her grave once a week. But it’d been six months now, and he’d been up to see her only once – on what would have been their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary.

He placed fresh-cut starfire lilies, the kind they grew in
their flower garden, on the small granite headstone that was all that reminded the world that Ethel had once lived. He paid his respects, sweeping away the dried leaves and wiping the moss from her grave, where he placed another small bundle of flowers.

Putting his umbrella away, and ignoring the fine Seattle mist, he opened his wallet and took out a small white envelope. On the front was the Chinese character for Lee – Ethel’s last name for the last thirty-seven-plus years. Inside had been a piece of hard candy and a quarter. The small envelopes were passed out as he left the Bonney-Watson Funeral Home, where Ethel’s memorial service had been held. The candy was so that everyone leaving would taste sweetness – not bitter. The quarter was for buying more candy on the way home – a traditional token of lasting life and enduring happiness.

Henry remembered savoring the candy, a small peppermint. But he didn’t feel like stopping at the store on the way home. Marty, ironically, argued that they honor this tradition, but Henry refused.

‘Take me home’ was all he said when Marty slowed down near the South Gate Grocery.

Henry couldn’t bear the thought of spending that quarter. That was all he had left of Ethel. His enduring happiness would have to wait. He’d save it – keeping it with him, always.

He thought about that happiness, reaching into the small envelope he carried with him every day, drawing out the quarter. It was unremarkable – a normal coin anyone would spend on a phone call or a cup of bad coffee. But to Henry it was a promise of something better.

Henry remembered the day of Ethel’s service. He’d arrived
early, to meet with Clarence Ma, the funeral director assigned to his family. A kindly man in his sixties, prone to talking about his own bodily ailments, Clarence was the patron saint of all things funerary when it came to Chinatown. Each neighborhood had its own advocate. The stately walls of the Bonney-Watson Funeral Home were covered with their framed photos – a United Nations of ethnically diverse funeral directors.

‘Henry, you’re early – something I can do for you?’ Clarence said, looking up from his desk, where he’d been stuffing the coins and candy into envelopes as Henry walked by.

‘Just wanted to check the flowers,’ Henry replied, heading into the chapel where a large portrait of Ethel sat surrounded by flower arrangements of various sizes.

Clarence caught up to him, placing his arm on his shoulder. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

Henry nodded.

‘We made sure to place your flowers right next to her picture – she was a lovely woman, Henry. I’m sure she’s in a happier place, but hardly one as beautiful.’ Clarence handed Henry a small white envelope. ‘In case you don’t remember after the service – take it, just in case.’

Henry felt the quarter inside. He held the envelope to his nose and could smell the peppermint among the wet, fragrant scents of the floral-filled room. ‘Thank you’ was all he could muster.

Now, standing in the misty rain of Lake View Cemetery, Henry touched the envelope to his nose again. He couldn’t smell a thing.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been here as often as I should have,’
he apologized. He held the quarter in his hand, putting the envelope in his pocket. He listened to the sound of the wind blowing through the trees – never really expecting an answer, but always open to the possibility.

‘I have some things I need to do. And, well, I just wanted to come by and tell you first. But, you probably know all this.’ Henry’s attention drifted to the marker next to Ethel’s – it was his parents’. Then he looked back to where Ethel lay. ‘You always knew me so well.’

Henry brushed the graying hair from his temples, wet from the drizzly rain.

‘I’m getting by. But I’m worried about Marty. I’ve always worried about him. I guess I’d ask that you look out for him – me, I can look out for myself. I’ll be OK.’

Henry looked around to see if anyone might be watching him having this odd, one-way conversation. He was all alone – he wasn’t even sure if Ethel was listening. It was one thing to talk to her at home, where she’d lived. But out here, in the cold ground next to his parents, she was certainly gone. Still, Henry had needed to come out to say goodbye.

He kissed the quarter and placed it on top of Ethel’s headstone. This was our promise of happiness, Henry thought. It’s all I have left to give. This is so you can be happy without me.

He stood back, hands at his sides, and took three deep bows out of respect.

‘I have to go now,’ Henry said.

Before he left, he drew a lily from Ethel’s bundle of flowers and set it on his mother’s grave. He even brushed a few leaves from his father’s stone before opening his umbrella
and walking back down the hill in the direction of Volunteer Park.

He took the long way back, down a winding path that lead to the near-empty parking lot. Lake View Cemetery was a beautiful place, despite the somber graves that stood as cold reminders of so much loss and longing. The final resting place of Chief Seattle’s daughter and other notables like Asa Mercer and Henry Yesler, it was a walking tour of Seattle’s forgotten history. Not unlike the Nisei War Memorial Monument in the northeast corner. It was a smaller monument, smaller than the headstones of members of the Nordstrom family, dedicated to Japanese American veterans – locals who’d died fighting the Germans. These days it went all but unnoticed, except by Henry, who tipped his hat as he slowly walked by.