The Third Son (39 page)

Yoshiko, sitting in front of him, turned around and smiled so that her dimples showed, her eyes, tired for so long, glinting golden in the light. She carefully put down her paddle and buttoned the sleeve of her white seersucker shirt. Toru had urged her not to exert herself; she needed to fully recover before we could try for another baby.

One cannot truly start anew. Our little canoe was full with the memories of those who had died and those we had left behind—of our brothers, Aki and Kun-tai, of our premature son, of Yoshiko’s parents, loving through all their faultiness, of my own family even, with its betrayals and disappointments. They were, together with the sights and sounds, the smells and tastes, the joy and the bitterness of our lives in Taiwan, grown into the very core of our nervous systems. They formed the reference points of all that we were now and all that we would ever experience. We felt their loss every day. But still I pushed my paddle through the New World water, sparkling and cold, and somehow we went along.

“A fish! Where?” I matched my son’s excited tone.

“There! There!” He pointed.

“Ah,” I said. “Then we’ll go there.”

I paddled to an area by the leafy shore and dropped anchor. There were tiny splashes near our boat, and in a patch of water lit by a shaft of sun poking through the trees, silvery bodies glinted, dancing.

I showed Kai-ming how to cast. Yoshiko ducked.

I handed him the reel, and the line drew taut within a minute.

“I got one! I got one!” His rod bent.

“Turn the reel! Turn the reel!”

He turned the reel.

“No, no! The other way!”

“Oh!”

I shifted carefully to help him. Miraculously he still had the fish, and we pulled it into the boat, settling it, flip-flopping, onto the ice in our fishing cooler.

Kai-ming picked up the reel excitedly. “Let’s get another one!”

Yoshiko and I laughed.

“It’s not usually so easy,” Yoshiko said.

“You were just lucky.” I fixed his reel for him. “You have to be patient.”

“Why? It’s so quick!”

I recast his line and handed it to him. “It won’t be so quick all the time.”

But so it was. A child expects nothing outside the realm of his own experience. Kai-ming had never tried to catch a fish with his bare hands. He had never chopped a hole in ice to fish for trout. He did not worry about being bitten by a poisonous snake or careening off a frozen mountainside.

“Mama,” he said, “I’m hungry. I don’t want to fish anymore.”

“Give the fishing rod to your father, then.”

I took the reel and pulled up the anchor. I paddled, looking for a good spot to land. A train crossed over the river on a bridge up ahead, windows flashing, and Kai-ming whipped his head around to watch, the bill of his cap obscuring my view.

“Where does the train go?” he asked.

“To other cities,” I said. “Nowhere better than here.”

I found a break in the reeds and we pulled ashore. We walked through a stand of silver maples into a field of tall grass. I set the food cooler down by Yoshiko, and she opened it, taking out neat containers.

After a moment, I said, “I received a telegram from Professor Beck.”

“What did it say?”

“He said, ‘I told you so.’ ”

She laughed, eyes sparkling, that rich laugh that I loved. Her hair shone in waves.

“Ooh!” Kai-ming threw off his hat and jumped up and down at the sight of the food, his sneakers flattening the tall grass. He expected sushi. He expected hard-boiled eggs. He expected to be loved.

I laughed and bent down to my little boy, my chest aching with love. His hair stuck up in tufts, and I put my hand lightly on his head, feeling the silky warmth. He looked up at me, his eyes wide in surprise. And then he smiled.

“Let’s get ready to eat,” Yoshiko called. “We’re all hungry.”

I shook out a blanket and the three of us spread it on the grass. And I sang, because my heart was free.

The sky clears after the rain; fish fill the harbor.

We are the happiest couple in the world.

Today’s reunion warms our hearts.

We need never repair the broken net again.

Acknowledgments

THE THIRD SON
EXISTS
only because I learned to listen to my parents, Pei-Rin and Susan Wu, who contributed so much time, knowledge, and patience to this book over the years. They translated many texts for me, including the lyrics for
Repairing the Fisherman’s Net,
and read many of my drafts. My parents are the inspiration for all that is strong, wise, and loving in Saburo and Yoshiko. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

I am ever grateful to Stephanie Abou for believing in this book, helping to shape it, and championing it. I have been fortunate, as well, to have had two fantastic editors at Algonquin, Kathy Pories and Jane Rosenman, each of whom helped make the story the very best it could be. Many thanks to Rachel Careau, my copyeditor, for her thorough, thoughtful work.

What a wonderful thing it is that I live near Boston, the home of Grub Street Writers! Many thanks to the following Grubbies for their help with my book: Stuart Horwitz, Nichole Bernier, Henriette Power, Amin
Ahmad, Andrew Goldstein, Miriam Sidanius, Pat Gillen, Liz Michalski, and
John Sedgwick. Thanks also to my ongoing writing group for their terrific feedback and support along the home stretch: Diana Renn, Eileen Donovan Kranz, Steven Lee Beeber, Patrick Gabridge, Vincent Gregory, Edward Rooney, and Deborah Vlock.

Thanks, as well, to reader/writer Amy Sue Nathan, of the Backspace Writers Forum and Book Pregnant, two wonderful groups that have been a great resource of advice, camaraderie, and humor. Through Backspace I also met Randy Susan Meyers, who has shepherded me through the writing scene and pulled me into to the lively and lovely group of bloggers at Beyond the Margins.

Perhaps even more thanks are due to my very early readers, most of them family and friends who have supported me in other, no less important, ways: Linna and Gil Ettinger, Michael and Cheryl Patton Wu, Jussi and Leah Saukkonen, Martina Barash, Deborah Strod, Laura Heijn, Nancy Barron, and Kathy Finucane.

Many thanks to Elinor Lipman and William Martin for giving me advice and encouragement at crucial junctures; to the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society for their much appreciated recognition; to Rebecca Karl at NYU and Caroline Light at Harvard University for their historical expertise; to Philip Erickson at MIT’s Haystack Observatory for letting me pepper him with odd questions about atmospheric science.

To my children, Amy and David, thank you for your patience and for teaching me what is important in life. And to the many wonderful women and men who have cared for, played with, and taught my children, in and out of school: I would not have been able to write this book without you.

Finally, to my husband, Kai Saukkonen, who has supported me through all the heartbreak and joy of this journey to publication: I love you and am so grateful to have you at my side for this—the high adventure of life.

Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2013 by Julie Wu.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-61620-266-8