Garden of Stones (20 page)

She padded barefoot to her mother’s room and opened the door carefully, though she was alone in the house. The closet door squeaked when she opened it, startling her. The wooden and metal implements from her mother’s long-ago taxidermy practice shared shelf space with boxes bearing incomprehensible labels like “Stuffers” and “Merlins wheels.”

Lucy found the soap tin behind a cardboard box of paints and glues. For a moment she stared at the dark, dusty corner of the closet, thinking about her mother moving the little cache of memories from one cramped apartment to another. She pushed the box of paints back into place and shut the closet door, then took the tin to her own room. She crawled back into bed, pulling the sheet up over her lap, then set the tin in her lap and looked at it for a moment. Finally she took a deep breath and pried off the lid. She took out the first few photos, the ones she’d already seen, and laid them facedown. Her plan was to view everything in order, so that if her mother checked, she wouldn’t know the contents had been disturbed.

The next item was a letter, written in a blocky hand on unlined paper, folded in thirds. It was worn along the creases and edges, as though it had been read many times. Patty unfolded it carefully, barely breathing, and read it through. Then she read it a second time.

Lucy:

It is almost three o’clock in the morning, and I think you are asleep. You are only ten or fifteen feet away from me, but it might as well be a thousand miles. Now that you know everything I can teach you, I have nothing more to give. I wish for so many things, but most of all I wish for your happiness. I have had so many long nights to wonder why things happen the way they do, why people get hurt and dreams and plans disappear in a single second, and I am no closer to understanding now than I have ever been. But one thing has changed. I used to believe I could never be happy again, but then you taught me that life continues, even after it seems that everything has ended.

May angels watch over you as you sleep.

Your G., always

Patty read the letter again, and then once more before setting it gently on the stack. Who was G.? Was it possible it was the boy from the picture, the boy who helped out at the motel? But this letter didn’t sound like it had been written by a boy at all. What did Lucy mean to him? Could the letter have been written by Patty’s father? If so, who had he been and what had he taught Lucy?

The doorbell rang, making Patty jump. She set the letter down carefully and raced to the front door, pulling the robe tighter and adjusting the sash. She opened the door without undoing the safety chain, just far enough to see that Inspector Torre waited on the porch, accompanied by a uniformed police officer.

“Miss Takeda,” he said, nodding.

“My mother isn’t here.”

“Yes, we know. She’s at the police station.”

“What? Why is she there? Did you arrest her?”

“No, we asked her to come in and answer some questions. We can call her in a few minutes if you like. But first, Officer Grieg and I would like to come in and take a look around.”

“In—in here? My mother’s house?”

“Yes, Miss Takeda. We have a warrant.” Torre pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and handed it to her through the narrow opening.

Patty scanned the single page quickly, then forced herself to slow down and read. There—her mother’s address. The date. A bunch of legalese.

She fumbled with the chain, her fingers shaking, then stepped back from the door. The men walked past her, Torre murmuring a polite thank-you as he passed, Grieg already pulling a pair of disposable gloves out of a bag. The situation felt like it was getting away from her, as though she had made a fundamental error from which it would be impossible to recover.

“I think I should talk to my mother. And I wasn’t... I just got out of the shower.” Her more pressing concern was the box of papers sitting on her bed. She winced as she realized she was doubting her mother’s innocence—but it wasn’t that, not really, was it? She just wanted to have a chance to make sure there wasn’t anything in the box that could be misconstrued, that could give a wrong impression.

“Don’t worry, Miss Takeda. Why don’t you go take a minute for yourself and I’ll call the station. May I use your phone?”

Patty showed him where the phone was, then hurried to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She scooped up the letter and photos and jammed them back into the tin box and mashed the lid back on. But where to put it? Patty looked frantically around the room for a hiding place. She yanked open the nightstand drawer and shoved aside a stack of old
Reader’s Digests
, a tube of hand lotion and a wadded Kleenex. The tin barely fit, and she had to shove hard to get the drawer to close again.

She had a better hiding place for the albums. She swung open the closet door, unzipped the garment bag that held her wedding dress, and slipped the albums under the square piece of satin-covered cardboard that formed the base of the bag. Their weight made the bag droop a little, but that was all.

Patty grabbed a few things out of her suitcase—a pair of slacks and a work blouse. The floor around the suitcase was covered in laundry, and after quickly changing, she gathered up all the clothes and her robe and tossed them into the case and closed it. It seemed like ages since she’d moved out of her old apartment, but it had only been a week.

By the time she returned to the kitchen, she was perspiring. Down the hall, she could hear Officer Grieg moving things around.

Torre was talking on the phone. “Oh, here she is. Go ahead and put Mrs. Takeda on.”

Patty grabbed the phone. “Hello? Mom?”

“Patty, it’s me. I’m at the police station.” There was talking behind her, men’s voices, their words indistinguishable.

“Mom, the police are here. They’re searching the house.”

She waited, certain that now her mother would tell her something that would explain it all, why she was in the DeSoto the other day, a coincidence, an explanation,
something
. But Lucy said nothing.

“Mom? Are you there?” Panic rose up in Patty’s voice and she squeezed the receiver with both hands.

“I’m here, I’m fine. But I think it’s time I get a lawyer.”

“What? Why? When are you coming home?”

“I might be here a little while longer. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“When can I see you?”

“I don’t think they’ll let you see me here, Patty. Listen... I’ll call you as soon as I can.” There was a hesitation, and Lucy thought her mother had already hung up. “I love you, Patty,” she said, very quietly, and the words echoed in Patty’s mind long after the phone went dead.

24

Manzanar
April 1943

Days went by—three, four, Lucy couldn’t keep track—and gradually the haze began to lift. She was becoming aware of the people around her. The boy who had called for the nurse that first day was gone, and other patients came and went before she could learn their names. The nurses, all of whom had worked in Los Angeles before being interned, spoke in soft voices as they moved efficiently around Lucy’s bed, whisking away her linens and replacing the water in the pitcher next to her bed.

Sister Jeanne came to visit most days, often sitting quietly by Lucy’s bedside, reading or marking papers. Sister Jeanne was not a big talker, but she was a comfort nonetheless. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes were large and curious. When Lucy moaned or winced with pain, Sister Jeanne held her hand and soothed her with idle conversation about the pets her family had owned when she was little, or about the trips she took to visit her sister in San Diego, where her sister made ice cream on the back porch.

One afternoon she brought Lucy a bouquet of flowers in a glass pickle jar, orange poppies and pastel snapdragons and a burst of tiny white daisies.

“These are from Block Twenty-nine,” she said. “With their best wishes for you to get well soon.”

As Sister Jeanne fussed with the blooms, Lucy tried to remember if she knew any residents of Block Twenty-nine, and couldn’t come up with anyone. Lucy knew she wasn’t allowed visitors yet, but now she wished someone from her own block had sent the flowers, or one of the kids from school. Jessie—how she would have loved a note from him, a flower, even one of the flat stones he loved to skip in the creek. Maybe, once she was better, she could ask Sister Jeanne to take him a letter.

As soon as she had the thought, Lucy dismissed it. She had yet to see her face in a mirror, but she knew from the pain and from the way the nurses looked at her that it was bad. Jessie wouldn’t want her anymore, even if he wasn’t so angry all the time.

“Sister Jeanne,” she said. Nearly a week had passed, and talking came more easily now. “Tell me what really happened.”

Jeanne’s hands stilled on the bouquet. Lucy could tell that she had pains of her own, from the way she moved her thick legs and freckled arms so carefully. She knew Jeanne didn’t want to tell what she knew, but Lucy had no one else to ask.

The only other patient in the ward, a little girl with the measles, was sleeping, but Jeanne still spoke softly, as though what she had to say was a secret.

“People heard your screams and came running,” she said, tucking a loose strand of Lucy’s hair behind her ear. She liked to keep her hands busy when she sat with Lucy, and she was always adjusting the sheets and pillow, smoothing her blankets, patting her arms. “They found you on the floor in the hall of your building.”

“Was I alone?”

“Yes, of course you were,” Jeanne said. “This was just a terrible accident, Lucy. They say the heating pan had somehow come loose from the brace inside the stove, they don’t know how. You don’t remember that? You didn’t touch the stove, maybe try to adjust it yourself?”

Lucy had been asked the question so many times—by Dr. Ambrose and, later, by a man from the maintenance staff—that she lied with ease. “I don’t even remember going into the hall.”

“Well. It’s no matter now, no sense focusing on that. They think it might have ignited and flared up, or there was maybe even a bit of an explosion that made the oil go through the air like that. But that’s not what you want to know, I don’t think.” She picked up one of Lucy’s hands in her own. They were old and wrinkled but warm. “I am guessing you want to talk about your mother.”

Lucy nodded, not daring to look into Jeanne’s kind eyes. She had replayed that morning dozens of times in her mind: Miyako, taking her hand and leading her into the hall. Their bare feet on the rough, cold wood. The shouting outside the building. The stove, hissing and smoking, her mother, reaching for something behind its iron hulk...

Her memories really did stop there, but she knew the truth: Miyako had done this to her. Deliberately. She would never tell a soul, but she still longed to know about her mother’s last moments, the time between when she let Lucy go and when she died. “I just wondered if anyone saw her after.”

“She wasn’t at the barrack,” Jeanne said. “You already know that after they found you, some people brought you here to the hospital. Everyone was terribly worried about you. They didn’t know the extent of your injuries.”

“You mean people thought I was going to die?”

“I think some people were afraid that was a possibility,” Jeanne said quietly. “So you can understand that people were searching everywhere for your mother. It wasn’t until later in the day that some kids playing near the net factory found her.”

“And she hanged herself.” Lucy said it herself to spare Sister Jeanne, a fact she had pieced together from the bits she’d heard the nurses saying when they thought she was asleep. “In the smoking hut.”

Jeanne blinked. “Yes, Lucy, I am afraid that is true, although—”

“Was there a note?”

Surprise and dismay flashed across the nun’s face. “Please, Sister Jeanne, please just tell me. I have to know.”

Sister Jeanne sighed and she looked even older, her wrinkled skin sagging. But she didn’t let go of Lucy’s hand, and Lucy held on tight. “You must understand, Lucy, the MPs took the note. I never actually saw it.”

“But they told you what it said. Right? When you started coming to see me.”

“In general terms, yes, but I can’t tell you exactly—”

“I don’t need to know exactly, just tell me what you know.”

For a long moment Jeanne said nothing, biting her lip. “Your mother confessed to killing George Rickenbocker.”

Lucy felt as though the air was sucked out of her. “Does...does everyone know?”

“The case is closed, Lucy, and since your mother has passed, there is nothing more to be done. But people talk. There are rumors...all kinds of rumors. The note didn’t give any reasons, just your mother’s confession, and her body was laid to rest without any further investigation.”

Lucy wondered if Sister Jeanne was alluding to the baby inside her mother. But no one knew about the baby, no one but Auntie Aiko and her. And Rickenbocker, but he was dead too. And now the baby was buried inside her mother, and they would always be together, in the little cemetery at the edge of the camp.

“He was so mean to her,” Lucy whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Jeanne said. “So very sorry, for everything. For your mother’s suffering.”

Lucy saw how it would be; people would learn that Miyako had been hurt, and maybe they would forgive her, at least a little. The story would swell up with all their guessing and gossiping, but eventually it would fade away, and people would remember how beautiful she was, and be glad that she died without ever having to know what happened to her daughter. Maybe they would curse Rickenbocker and be glad he was dead. Maybe the pretty girls would stop going to the parties in the motor pool. Maybe the soldiers and the staff would be more careful now, even a little bit afraid.