A Fierce Radiance (49 page)

“Ah, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said.

“Did you understand what he was talking about?” she asked.

“He thinks my medical company had something to do with his sister’s death.” He kept his voice calm. No denial. No defense. No outrage. “He believes his sister was murdered and that I may have caused or condoned her death.”

“He couldn’t have said that.”

“He did say it, sweetheart.” Keep it simple. As if she were a little girl. A child, younger than Charlie.

“But that’s not true.”

“I know, darling.”

They sat without speaking. Claire imagined Jamie leaving the building. In her imagination, she followed him along the street. Where was he going? Along Eighty-first Street, a line of town houses, returning to the Institute? Or had he crossed Fifth Avenue to the museum, where she could find him amid the Rembrandts and Vermeers? They would pretend that nothing had been said, pretend that she hadn’t seen him in many days and now they were simply happy to be together, looking at their favorite paintings. She’d take him to see
Woman with a Pink
. The woman’s husband was portrayed in the companion painting which hung beside her. This painting was called
Man with a Magnifying Glass
. Perhaps the husband was a scientist, like Jamie. The pink carnation: the symbol of marriage and love. Of love within marriage.

“He’s been in the war,” Rutherford said. “Who knows what he saw there. Things you and I can never imagine. He was wounded. That might have mixed his mind up a little. He’s not himself yet. He still needs time to recover.”

She didn’t respond.

“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll find out what he was talking about. It can’t be true. After all, the police said his sister had an accident.”

She nodded.

Rutherford patted Claire’s hand, trying to reassure her, to slow her down to the here and now, the moment by moment—that was the way to get through this. Meanwhile his own mind was racing, putting the pieces together, identifying the questions, searching for answers, planning his next move.

Minutes passed, and still they sat together. Claire felt safe here. Her father was right: it was the war. Jamie had been wounded, probably more badly than he ever let on. Slowly, amid her father’s paintings by Giotto and Cimabue, amid the angels and the golden-haloed saints, she realized that the man she knew and loved might have died in North Africa after all.

C
laire hung up the phone. It was 8:30
AM
. Each day for a week she’d tried to reach Jamie, leaving a message with the switchboard operator at the Institute. Each day he never phoned back. She knew she wasn’t missing any return calls: here at her father’s, someone was always home to answer. She couldn’t go to the Institute and wait at the gates until she saw him. Or was that exactly what she should do? He was the love of her life—or so she’d thought. What was the proper way to fight for him? Maybe she had no means to fight for him. He had to return by choice, not battle.

From her upstairs bedroom at her father’s apartment, she looked out the window to Central Park. The trees showed the pale green of spring. She imagined him, wherever he was, waking up, showering, shaving, putting on his naval uniform, beginning his day.

She couldn’t keep leaving telephone messages for a man who wasn’t going to reply. His silence was his clear response anyway. Gradually Charlie was getting better. Soon he’d be well enough for Claire to return to work. She’d resume her life as if it had never been interrupted by a man named James Stanton. She slipped off the emerald ring he’d given her and put it in the back corner of her bureau.

And so the days passed, and then weeks, and months. The war dragged on, with steps forward, here and there, for the Allies. Admiral Yamamoto, commander of Japan’s navy, was killed in an Allied ambush. The Axis powers were defeated in North Africa. German
U-boats no longer destroyed Allied shipping in the North Atlantic. But the Germans still controlled Europe, and Americans were fighting island by island across the Pacific.

And still Claire had no word from Jamie. Her father was right: Jamie had been wounded in the war, in more ways than they knew. Eventually she stopped noticing how much time had passed since he’d left her. As Charlie grew stronger, Claire returned to work part-time. Rutherford resumed his usual schedule, traveling and scouting business opportunities. The family rebuilt itself on new terms, like so many other families that had been torn apart by the war.

When summer came, Charlie was well enough to go to a sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks. Reports of running races and tennis matches filled his first letter home. Claire missed him even as she felt relieved by his happiness at camp. In his letter, he told her to say hi for him to Uncle Jamie. So many dads and step-dads and uncles and brothers were far away; for now she wouldn’t have to explain to Charlie that she no longer saw Jamie.

With Charlie at camp, her father left New York on an extended business trip to the West. MaryLee and Maritza took their yearly vacations. Rather than stay on alone in the rambling Fifth Avenue apartment, Claire moved back to her own home on Grove Street.

And that’s where she was on a warm day in July 1943, soon after the Allied landings in Sicily, when Claire answered the door at four in the afternoon and found Dr. Jake Lind standing on the front stoop with a Japanese man.

Although Dr. Lind had warned her about the visitor on the telephone, Claire wasn’t prepared. The man was about five-foot-five and carefully dressed in a threadbare, shiny suit with vest and a panama hat, the straw frayed. His wide face was somber. Claire hesitated without even realizing that she was hesitating. She’d never been introduced to a Japanese person. She’d never been to a Japanese restaurant. On Hudson Street, a Japanese man owned a lapidary shop, but Claire had never been inside.

Wartime propaganda portrayed the Japanese as monsters. After Pearl Harbor,
Life
magazine had run a picture essay comparing in detail the racial characteristics of the Chinese, our friends, and the Japs, our enemies, so Americans wouldn’t confuse them.

The man standing next to Dr. Lind, hat in hand now in a gesture of politeness, didn’t look like a monster. Yet for the first time in her life Claire found herself wondering what the neighbors would think.

“May we come in?” Dr. Lind asked. He’d said on the phone that he felt some sympathy for this man because the man’s daughter had a link to Tia. Because of this link, he couldn’t bring himself to send the man away. Maybe Claire would be able to help the man.

“Do come in, of course.” Claire remembered what she needed to do. The duties of hospitality. “Welcome.” She stepped back to let them pass.

“This is Dr. Isiguri Ito,” Dr. Lind said when they were safely in the front hall.

“How nice to meet you,” Claire said, automatically shaking hands with Dr. Ito. Claire found herself slipping into her mother’s demeanor of absolute politesse. “It’s a lovely evening, why don’t we sit in the garden.” Claire led the way downstairs.

When Dr. Lind phoned to ask to stop by, she’d wondered if she’d feel awkward around him. He must occasionally see Jamie. She was glad to realize that she didn’t feel awkward—not about that aspect of Dr. Lind’s visit, at least. She’d succeeded in making herself numb to Jamie. Dr. Lind had been good to Charlie, and by now he’d come to belong to their world as well as Jamie’s.

But as they walked through the house to the garden, Claire caught herself watching Dr. Ito’s hands, wanting to know at every moment the location of his hands. Not because he might steal something, but because he could use those large, strong, smooth hands to strangle her and Dr. Lind. Irrational, she knew. But this was the enemy, in a way that the German and Italian moms and dads of Charlie’s classmates—
Karl’s father or Maria’s mother—could never be. Racism. Unwittingly she, too, had been infected by the war propaganda. The Japs, as they were called in common parlance, were the enemy. This was a Jap.

They sat down in the garden, cool in the breezes, peaceful with the birdsong of the late afternoon.

“Dr. Ito is a physician,” Dr. Lind said. He sensed that Claire Shipley was ill at ease. He never would have expected it from her. Surely her work would have made her more cosmopolitan and tolerant. On the other hand, maybe she was ill at ease over seeing not Dr. Ito, but
him
. Lind knew that she and Jamie had had a falling-out of some kind, but he didn’t know the details. In any event, Dr. Lind was not ill at ease about Dr. Ito. He had been raised to believe that all people were the same, regardless of their physical appearance. As a scientist and physician he knew this to be true. The same blood, the same bones, the same sinews. Only the outer surface was different. A superficiality, literally.

Claire didn’t offer them anything to drink, then she remembered her manners. This was her mother’s house, too, and she’d been raised to welcome visitors, friend or foe.

“Would you like some tea?” Claire asked, glad to hear herself sounding hospitable.

“Thank you, how kind of you, Mrs. Shipley,” Dr. Ito said without a trace of accent. He could pass for a cultivated, highly educated American.

While she boiled the water and organized the teapot and cups, Dr. Ito sat at the edge of his chair, as if prepared to stand and bow at the slightest provocation.

After the tea was served, Claire said, “Have you had a long journey, Dr. Ito?” Her mother had often used this as an opening gambit with strangers.
Have you had a long journey?
And,
Where are you from originally?
Then, depending on the response,
I understand the scenery is lovely there
, wherever
there
happened to be. Thus her mother set strangers at ease.

“I am from Seattle, Washington,” he said, as gracious as any gentleman of her mother’s acquaintance. “Born and raised.”

That, at least, explained his lack of an accent.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to Seattle,” Claire said. “The scenery is lovely there.”

“Yes, it is. Quite lovely. Recently, however, I have been living in the western mountains. In the State of Idaho. With others of my community. Beautiful countryside. Except in the winter, when it’s below zero. And the summer, when it’s above a hundred. The spring provides deep mud and the autumn provides dust, but apart from all of that, the setting is lovely.” A wry smile played at the edges of his lips, and with that bit of banter, Claire knew: he was among the tens of thousands of Japanese Americans sent to internment camps in the western states after a presidential order in February 1942.

“And what brings you to New York City?” she asked, ignoring, as her mother surely would have ignored, any reference to his recent difficulties.

“I am in transit. I have been called to join a Nisei regiment preparing for the European theater. As Dr. Lind has so kindly explained, I am a physician. I will be permitted to treat the wounded and ill of my own kind of Americans, not the Caucasian kind.” He gave a bitter laugh.

“And I understand from Dr. Lind that your daughter was acquainted with Dr. Lucretia Stanton?” Claire asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the edge in his laughter.

He smiled warmly now, with an unexpected generosity and affection. “Yes, yes, that is correct.”

“How so?”

“My daughter is, or rather was, before our current situation, a Girl Scout. Her troop was asked to send soil samples to a Dr. Lucretia Stanton at the Rockefeller Institute in New York as one part of a science badge. Akiko went about this with great concentration, collecting
in forests and along the banks of streams and in our own garden. Dr. Stanton sent her a letter of commendation, reporting that although none of the samples progressed from the first testing stage, there was an impressive variety in the mold. That letter, with its Rockefeller Institute letterhead, is tacked to the wall above my daughter’s bed in our new…home.”

“Your daughter must be unusually gifted,” Claire said.

“Thank you. Perhaps she will be inspired to become a scientist. That would be an honor to our family.” He bowed to them, slightly, at the thought of this possibility.

“Pray do continue, Dr. Ito.”

“Recently, in our current situation, I had cause to remember these efforts of my daughter. I wrote a letter to Dr. Lucretia Stanton, and I’m grateful to say that this letter was forwarded to Dr. Lind.”

“Indeed.” Claire had learned this language literally at her mother’s knee.
Indeed
,
pray do continue
—her mother was from the era and background of Henry James and Edith Wharton.

“In February of 1942, my family, among other members of our community, was instructed by the authorities to leave our homes and our businesses. This was a time of sadness and confusion. After a brief stay at a somewhat unpleasant relocation center, we were sent to what became our current home, if you will, Camp Minidoka. Under difficult circumstances, we organized schools, a camp government, a fire brigade, and various committees for food, clothing, and entertainment.” He spoke matter-of-factly, without self-pity. “I was among the lucky ones, in that my profession is useful anywhere. I was permitted to serve as camp physician-in-chief. Our camp has hosted upward of thirteen thousand people, served by a medical support staff rather hastily scrambled together. You can well imagine the rates of infectious disease among people crowded into unheated barracks under such conditions.

“Several months ago, a group of medical personnel arrived at the
camp. I don’t know if they were physicians, although they tried to create the impression that they were. Certainly they needed some type of security clearance to be allowed in. We were, and are, considered enemy aliens, so undoubtedly certain standards must be met by those who wish to interact with us. At any rate, they came to us to test a new medication. They needed my cooperation. They didn’t ask for my cooperation, they assumed it, then ordered it when I requested more detailed information.

“At first they seemed to be doing some good, so I went along without learning the details. We had many infectious conditions at the camp, streptococcal infections of the usual types, pneumonia, tuberculosis, several cases of meningitis, anything and everything that gains a foothold among thousands of people bunking together at close quarters. And this drug helped my patients. However, it was even given to those with relatively minor symptoms, patients who might very well have recovered without it. I assumed it must be penicillin or a variant of penicillin, but no, these medical men informed me, penicillin was restricted to the military and what did I know of penicillin anyway—as if I must be a spy simply for knowing the name of the medication, when anyone could already read about it in the newspaper before the war. Thus they attempted to threaten me for being aware of what was common knowledge.” He paused, shaking his head.

“One of them, a pleasant young man who gave his name only as ‘Pete’”—Dr. Ito pronounced the name “Pete” as if he assumed it was false—“admitted to me in an unguarded moment that this drug was similar to penicillin in that it was also made from mold. Thus I thought back on the work Akiko had so carefully undertaken, collecting soil samples in those days when we were still allowed to live in our proper homes.”

He paused, seeming lost in his memories.

“And?” Claire said.

“Ah, yes. As time passed, I began to notice a mysterious set of
side effects developing from the use of this medication. Granted, my patients would recover, some rather quickly. I saw several cures which I consider remarkable, if not miraculous. No one died from the medication. In fact many would have died
without
the medication. Obviously my community has no access to penicillin, and supplies of sulfa medications are limited. So perhaps some might consider us lucky. But side effects began to set in, as I say. Deafness, blindness, permanent tingling or lack of feeling in the extremities. The men conducting the tests found nothing amiss in these side effects. They had cured the patients of the disease at hand, the rest was meaningless. To them. One evening when I was nursing a patient with heart trouble, I was able to glance at their record book when one of then stepped away. Their records were meticulous. Miss J, age nineteen, suffering from scarlet fever, was listed as having fully recovered, but she is now blind. Mr. M, age thirty-six, suffering from pneumonia, was also listed as having fully recovered, but he is now deaf. And so on.