LITMIR.BIZ

      5

      The doctor had given her mother something to help her calm down, which seemed to make her mostly sleep. Aiko had moved into the house and slept in Lucy’s parents’ bed. Lucy could hear her during the night, getting up to go to the bathroom or to get a glass of water. She missed the sound of her father’s snoring. She missed everything about her father.

      The funeral would take place tomorrow. Mrs. Koga had taken her yesterday to buy a suitable dress. She and Aiko had had a whispered conference in the parlor, and Lucy had taken the opportunity to slip into her parents’ bedroom to check on her mother, something Aiko had discouraged her from doing.

      Miyako had been sleeping with her hands folded under her chin, the covers pulled up neatly, almost as though she too were dead. Her face was smooth, her lips dry and pale, her eyelashes fluttering slightly as she exhaled. The flutter of the lashes was proof that she was still alive, at least. Lucy watched her for a moment and then tentatively touched her hand. It was warm. After a moment, Lucy went around to the other side of the bed and got in, lifting the covers carefully and inching slowly across until she was pressed up against her mother.

      She burrowed her face into her mother’s arm. She could smell her mother, an unwashed smell that was both unfamiliar and welcome. Usually, her mother smelled like perfume and hair spray and the cloud smell from the laundry. Lucy burrowed deeper, inhaling as much as she could, and wished that she could stay here, that Mrs. Koga would go away and Aiko wouldn’t notice. She wished that she could stay here all night with her mother and maybe, in the morning, her mother would wake up and the first person she would see would be Lucy. She would look into Lucy’s eyes that were so much like her own and decide to be brave for her. She would stop taking the medicine that made her so sleepy and send Aiko home, and she and Lucy would decide together what to do next.

      But of course that wasn’t what happened. Lucy had gone downtown with Mrs. Koga. She had nodded numbly when Mrs. Koga asked if the dress, the hat, the slip were all right, and when she got home Aiko had made a pot of bad-smelling soup with vegetables and thick noodles. Aiko’s own husband had been dead since almost before Lucy could remember, and she was closer to Lucy’s father’s age than her mother’s. Lucy supposed she might end up staying forever, now that her father was dead, and she wondered what would happen to Aiko’s house and her two fat cats, one white and one tabby, who were never allowed outside because they killed the birds that came to the feeder Aiko had hung from a tree. The cats, the birds—Lucy supposed they would have to learn to fend for themselves now that Aiko had moved here.

      A man arrived with a load of dishes and napkins and silver for tomorrow. Another brought a stack of funeral programs from the printer. They had a picture of her father on the front, one Lucy knew well since it sat in a silver frame on her mother’s dresser; in the photograph, his hair was still dark and he wore a suit he no longer owned. The program was in both English and Japanese, and Aiko said that the readings had been her father’s favorite. Lucy doubted that was true—she’d caught him napping in church more than once, and she was certain he only went to please her mother.

      People would be coming to the house after the funeral. Lucy had attended two funerals already, so she knew what to expect: people would talk in quiet voices, and the ladies would make trips in and out of the kitchen, even though there would be hired help to do all the serving. The men would drift farther and farther from the women, until eventually some of them would be outside, huddled and smoking and shivering in the cold. Her mother would be required to talk to everyone, but at least she would be allowed to sit down, and a few words would suffice. No one ever wanted to talk to the grieving widow for very long. It was one of those things that grown-ups did that they obviously didn’t want to do. There seemed to be so many of those, the more Lucy understood about growing up.

      Aiko said that Lucy needed to stay at home for a while, that she could miss some school. Next week would come soon enough, she said. Lucy had asked if she could call Yvonne, but Aiko frowned and shook her head.

      Something else was bothering Lucy. Aiko had moved the radio into Miyako’s bedroom, where they listened to it after dinner, the sound turned down too low for Lucy to hear, even with her ear pressed to the closed door. Also, the newspaper was nowhere to be found. Lucy kept meaning to get up early enough to go out and get it from the drive, but each day she woke to find Aiko already up and busy around the house, the paper hidden away.

      She thought of sneaking out, waiting until Aiko was in with her mother and slipping out the front door. She could walk to the newsstand; she had an entire piggy bank full of coins. She could buy a chocolate soda at the drugstore and read the paper. Only someone was sure to see her and insist on bringing her home. Everyone knew her father was dead; there was no way she could escape the eyes of the neighborhood.

      Lucy filled the long and restless hours reading pages from her mother’s books, the words lost to her as soon as she’d scanned each page. Instead, her mind turned over the words shouted in the church, the ones that had seemed to put in motion the terrible events that followed—and the words printed on the neat stack of programs on the dining room table.

      Pearl Harbor. Torpedo. Casualties.

      Renjiro Takeda, 1879–1941.

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