Radiance (14 page)

“Oh, call me Daisy, for heaven’s sakes. That’s how we do things here. We’re less formal.”

“Thank you.”

But Daisy knew Keiko would never call her by her first name.

After breakfast the girl went to her bedroom.

The kitchen curtains moved in the breeze. Daisy thought about Keiko lying on her bed, rereading, for the tenth time, the copy of
Seventeen Magazine.
Daisy scratched her palms. They were itchy all the time now, red and hot, and so was the top of
her head. What was this stuff, this radioactive stuff? Sometimes she was sure she could see it, glinting in the dust motes as the sun poured through the windows.

Daisy knocked on Keiko’s door. She was sitting at the desk, looking through the magazine. Daisy told her she was going to walk across the fields to Strickland’s Grocery to pick up some butter. Keiko could come along if she wanted. In all of her time here, all the comings and goings to Manhattan, Keiko had not once taken this little walk. If something had needed replenishing—soap, shampoo, butter—Daisy walked to the store alone. Keiko held back now, and so Daisy suggested that they pick up Popsicles, something she had heard Fran say, to bribe her children to come on the walk.

Keiko’s face brightened, though Daisy suspected that she didn’t know what a Popsicle was: maybe she thought it was something expensive. She said she would come, as soon as she was changed. She was a great one for picking out clothes, wanting on every occasion to wear what was appropriate.

When she came out of her bedroom, she had on a pair of pedal pushers and a short-sleeved blouse. She had wrapped a cashmere sweater around her shoulders. A gift, this one from Bertha Atchity. On her feet were clean white sneakers.

Daisy stood by the front door as Keiko came down the hall, past the telephone alcove, the little porcelain shepherdess in her nook. In three days she would be gone, off to the hospital, and then the scar would be removed. And what would she become next, Daisy heard herself thinking, the process all at once reminding her of a butterfly inside a cocoon. What would she emerge as? What final form would she take?

It seemed as though it might rain, and Keiko took a foldable plastic rain cap from her pocket, shook it out, and tied it under her chin. They passed Joan Palmer’s house, and Daisy saw her at
the window and waved. Joan stepped back. Who did she think she was—Mata Hari? Joan would be on the phone, calling Evelyn Lithgow. Sure enough, when they passed Evelyn’s house, she was at the upstairs window, telephone in hand, watching them.

They crossed the elementary school playground and walked farther, through the field where the kids played baseball. It only took five minutes before they were in a different territory altogether. A dirt path ran beside the field for a hundred yards, then veered sharply down the slope. The path was worn and old. It must have been used for generations before the suburb was built, used by the Willards of Willard’s Creek. Whenever Daisy took this path she pictured the ghosts of the Willard women walking in front or behind, the wet swish of their skirts in the long grass.

At the bottom of the hill was the marsh, a muddy bit of water that iced up in winter. Kids skated there, but there were so many grasses and bulrushes sticking up through the ice that Daisy had heard it wasn’t much fun. In the summer they collected tadpoles in glass jars. At the edge of the pond was a bit of old fence, and then the path ran beside the creek. Joey Palmer’s three-legged cat followed swiftly through the long grass. He didn’t pull himself along, but moved with a muscular scrabble. The path narrowed and Daisy gestured for Keiko to take the lead. Her sneakers were muddy.

About a hundred yards along the creek path, there was an arched footbridge made of granite fieldstone. It was twice or three times as old as anything else in Riverside Meadows, even the barns and houses standing on the back roads. Its rough-hewn blocks of stone had been fitted together without mortar. Usually the creek was shallow, but today there was a lot of water rushing beneath the bridge, because of all the rain. Standing in the middle of it, they heard the poplars hissing. Daisy had a powerful sensation of another world beneath this one—a world of people, all
dead now, who had settled this area, tilled these fields, grown tobacco and pumpkins. She could feel how sudden Riverside Meadows was, and that all the time another world was flowing underneath, like hidden groundwater.

They watched the wind bend the tips of grass blades. Keiko was panting, but when Daisy asked if she wanted to rest a little longer she said no, she wasn’t tired. “I have not seen this bridge before,” she said, breathing deeply. “It feels different than the other things here.”

“It’s older. Built before the suburbs. Built by a family called the Willards, who settled this area.” With the tips of her fingers, Daisy felt along the crack where stone met stone. She added, “Perhaps it reminds you of the bridges from your home.”

Keiko’s chest was moving as she breathed. Her hands gripped the edge of the stone wall.

“Were there bridges like this, on the rivers of Hiroshima?”

Keiko looked into the water and said something. Daisy leaned over as well.

“Were there many?”

“Yes.”

“Were they like this?”

“In some ways.”

“Made of stone?”

“Mostly wood.”

“But everything must have been destroyed …” Daisy knew she must be fast, or the blankness would descend.

But the girl merely shrugged. “The old bridges are gone, if that is what you mean. People built new ones. Now they use cement.” She paused, then added, “It’s stronger.” Daisy saw no trace of irony in her eyes.

There they hung, Keiko and Daisy, not speaking, but not entirely silent either. It was as though they were both waiting for
what might be said next, where the words might pull them. After a while, Keiko said, “They planted plum trees in my old district, the year after the war ended, and now they’re big.”

After all the hours, all the days, of waiting for the girl to speak, it didn’t seem to cost her all that much. “Just like the ones on your street,” Keiko said. “That size.”

“Probably planted around the same time. This suburb was built in
1946
.”

Riverside Meadows and Hiroshima, both postwar constructions. After a while, to Daisy’s amazement, Keiko spoke again. “Some people said they didn’t want things to grow. My Aunt Yoshiko said that. She wanted things to be desolate forever. But I never liked it when she said that.”

“But why did she want that?”

“So that nobody forgets.” She said it so simply that Daisy was embarrassed.

“And what about you?” Daisy reached for her hand, and that was a mistake. The girl pushed herself away from the bridge and walked on. Her small head was swathed in the plastic cap, which had drops of moisture condensed in the inside pleats. Her shoulders were tiny, delicate, like the bones of a bird. Daisy imagined them hollow and porous, the consistency of pumice. The sun was behind the clouds, and the overcast light made her plastic hat shine. Her bare calves looked dark, almost purple. Her ankle socks, fluted red at the edges, glowed with a strange vibrancy.

Inside Strickland’s Grocery, Daisy bought a pound of Land O’ Lakes butter, then picked out two lime-green Popsicles. At the cash, Gerard Strickland sat on his stool doing a crossword, his yellow-white hair plastered to his scalp. He put the paper down and gestured to Keiko, who was near the front of the store, slowly turning a rack of comic books.

“So this is your Japanese guest. My we’ve been hearing a lot about you, miss.” He used his habitual voice of professional courtesy, while he pressed the buttons on the register. He always made it seem like an esoteric and difficult skill: proclaiming the sale price from memory, then pressing at least five different buttons, pulling the cash lever. The cash drawer sprang open.

“You are the girl from Japan?” He winked at Daisy.

Keiko, studying a Captain Marvel comic, glanced up and nodded.

“We don’t get the likes of you in these parts very often.” He wrapped the butter in brown paper, tied it with butcher’s string, then handed it to Daisy.

Back outside, they crossed the parking lot and walked along the edge of the cornfields, which were covered in lines of new shoots. In the first field they were six inches, but in the next field the shoots showed as stubble. When they reached the creek Daisy decided to speak again.

“Keiko, I understand, or at least I think I do.” It was hard to say this, but she forged on. “What I mean to say is, I think I understand your wish to remain private about the bombing. About what happened. But you see, many people are depending on you …”

Keiko bypassed a puddle that blocked the path, reflecting wisps of cloud, then she stopped. “I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Lawrence. I have been very ashamed that I did not speak at the press conference. Or to Mr. Hoaring. I know that everyone expects this thing from me.”

“Then why not try, at least a little? Tell your story. Then say a few words against the H-bomb. So many people are counting on you.”

She looked at Daisy—oh, those remarkable eyes of hers. “I want to.”

“Good, Keiko.”

“Mrs. Lawrence, I can try, but I am not sure I can say what people want.”

“I think a few words is all they want. Condemnation. And a few, you know, memories.” This sounded so coarse. Daisy quickly added that it was for fundraising purposes mostly, to bring more girls over.

Keiko said something softly.

“I can’t hear you.”

“I do not remember,” she said.

“Don’t remember what?” For a moment Daisy was completely at sea. “What don’t you remember?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you saying that you have forgotten the bombing?”

“I wish I could remember.”

“But how could this be, Keiko? You told them about it in Hiroshima.”

“I am very sorry. Please forgive me.”

“What happened to your memory?”

“Please.”

“But you
do
remember,” Daisy said, despite herself. “You did, in Japan.” She bent down and picked up a stick, a nonchalant gesture, but her heart was beating hard. There was a long silence; the girl standing beside the puddle.

At last Keiko said, “I don’t think the things I would say could make any difference.”

“Oh!” Daisy was glad to be on flat terrain again. “I think they would make a great difference. To everyday Americans. Just to hear, first-hand …” These words weren’t right. They belonged to her false self. She shut her mouth.

They had reached the bridge, and they stopped in the middle again, looking down at the rush of muddy water beneath them.

“Come now, my dear,” Daisy whispered. “Is it so terrible to say a few words?”

Keiko looked down at the gurgle of water breaking across a small logjam of twigs and old leaves.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy said. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“After the bomb blast there was the bright light.”

Daisy nodded.

“A bright light.”

“It must have been terrible.”

“I remember nothing else.”

“You were unconscious, but then you woke up.”

“I cannot say.”

“But later still.”

She shook her head.

“But the things you told Mr. Atchity in Hiroshima.”

Keiko shook her head, then she looked at Daisy, eyes wilder than she had ever seen them. “I said what I
thought
I remembered. I am ashamed. I didn’t tell the truth, Mrs. Lawrence.”

Keiko was lying, Daisy was sure, lying about lying—but that didn’t seem to matter so much. Daisy had a fleeting feeling that she understood this shadowy craft. What was hidden made sense. Keiko looked up again, eyes large and amber, the eyes of a deer. “I have done something bad coming here, when I cannot do what people wish of me.” She spoke clearly and simply, and Daisy doubted every word she uttered, but still she wanted to say that she believed her. She didn’t know what to do, so she took Keiko’s hand. It was cold, and without thinking Daisy slipped it into her coat pocket. Daisy felt the girl’s small fist clamped tight, her knuckles brushing something round—a chestnut picked up from the ground the autumn before. Keiko stood rigidly beside her, her hand in the older woman’s pocket. Then gently, as though in a play, she let her rigid body relax, her
cheek rest on Daisy’s shoulder. Daisy put her arm round her. She seemed thinner to the touch than Daisy could have imagined.

“We’ll figure something out,” Daisy whispered.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
K
EIKO LEAVES
for her second operation, Tom Orley sits in his landlady’s kitchen, eating his two fried eggs in silence. Mrs. Gordienko leans in close, holding the enamel coffee pot, the better to smell his scalp, which in the morning smells so much like her son, Grigory’s. She can see flakes of darkened skin along the part of his hair, very like the cradle cap Grigory used to get as a baby. She feels an urge, instantly suppressed, to pick at Tom’s scalp. But even a genial young man like Tom would be offended at such a liberty. Mrs. Gordienko sighs heavily and turns off the frying pan.

Tom is thinking about you, Keiko. All the time, thinking about you.

Today, after he has eaten breakfast, he walks to the train station. He feels reckless and happy and hollow on the inside. Inside the hollow he carries a conductive fluid that lights him up, making him do things he doesn’t normally do, like pat the silky ears of an Irish setter at the corner.

He gets on the Long Island Rail car and finds a seat easily. The train is deserted at this time of day, except for one fellow leaning his head against the glass. He looks like an ad man, some poor sucker who stayed out all night and now has to face his wife, head throbbing. His eyes are closed against the flashing as the train passes the iron girders of the station.

Back on the farm, Emmy, Tom’s sister, came to him once and said that she heard voices. She was about eight at the time. He was fourteen. “Just a whole pile of people in my head,” she had said. “I can’t get them to stop.” Turned out there was a father—she’d named him Baxter, and he was from Texas—and there was a mother with the sophisticated name of Eloise, and two children, whose names Tom never learned. At first Tom had gone along with it, but after a while she had become too serious and he had shouted at her to shut up. “They’re not real,” he had said. “They’re made up.” She had reached out and clawed his arms with her nails. It didn’t hurt. It just surprised him.