Love and Other Consolation Prizes

by Jamie Ford

  Yung didn’t understand the sadness he had caused, even as the Japanese girl turned back and relayed the message that had only slightly changed. She looked embarrassed as she confessed, “I am sorry. No one will ever marry us.”

  JUJU REPORTING

  (1962)

  Ernest touched the tarnished band of gold on his ring finger and felt the groove worn into his skin from years of wearing it. He pondered the seaborne episode of his childhood, sipping a cup of oolong tea that had grown cold.

  Ernest sighed as he gazed out the third-floor window of his tiny one-room apartment at the Publix Hotel. One aspect of Gracie’s dementia was that she didn’t tolerate men very well—she had even punched a male orderly at the hospital. Even Ernest was not exempt. As a result, Ernest and Gracie had lived apart for almost three years now. Not the retirement he’d imagined. He visited as often as possible on sunny days—that’s what Juju called Gracie’s happier, lucid moments—and he wrote to her on cloudy days, when she didn’t feel like company. He missed her terribly, even when he was by her side—he ached for who she used to be. He longed for who he used to be as well.

  Ernest finished his tea. He could hear passenger trains coming and going, as well as the wind through cracks in the panes of glass that had been covered with masking tape to hold the pieces together and ward off the chill. King Street Station was one block away, and he imagined nattily dressed people streaming from the velvet-curtained Pullman cars, to be embraced by loved ones—the warmth, the smell of familiar cologne or perfume, the rush and excitement that came with a long-awaited reunion. But he also recalled the haunting emptiness of waving goodbye. The sunrise colored by thick, ashy smoke from torched fields and burning buildings. And the depth of sadness plumbed by the remembrance of falling asleep among dozens of seasick children in the belly of a ship that smelled like fear and despair.

  Ernest could almost feel the rain and the mist in the evening sky, as much as the melancholy. He stretched his back as he noticed an illuminated spire in the distance that could only be the top of the Space Needle.

  He thought about his long-lost mother as he regarded the hairpin she’d given him so many decades before. That tarnished bit of copper—the jade phoenix he now knew as Fenghuang—made him feel guilty for not missing her more, as though sixty years later he had somehow failed her as a son. At least he’d survived. And the sad truth was, he just couldn’t remember what she looked like. He didn’t possess a single photograph. He could always remember how she smelled, though—sweet, like fresh watermelon, mangoes, and bayberries. While reading a science book years later, he learned that’s what a body smells like when it’s starving.

  Over the years Ernest had always thought more about the many girls on that ship and what might have happened to them—especially whenever he saw an elderly woman in a market in Chinatown, the story of her life written in the lines on her face.

  He imagined that if they’d been fortunate, the ones who could walk probably ended up as servants in fancy, ivy-covered manors in Broadmoor or Laurelhurst. Or perhaps they’d found work in a laundry or a sewing factory. The choice few might have been able to earn or marry their way out of their contracts, to eventually have a home on Beacon Hill, and children who would have attended school at Franklin or Garfield High. They would have enjoyed all the trappings of a relatively normal life.

  The merchants’ daughters, in all likelihood, had ended up as picture brides, married to strangers they’d never seen except in black-and-white photographs.

  Unlike the least fortunate of all—the sorrowful girls who had been so kind to him. Like him, they’d been sold by their parents because their families couldn’t feed them or didn’t want them, or they were mere runaways tricked into thinking they’d get rich in America by working as maids. Many of those girls who came to Seattle ended up at the Aloha, the Tokyo, or the Diamond House, or perhaps the old Eastern Hotel—low-rent brothels. The girls were indentured servants with unfair contracts, who might run away to the police only to be returned, like stray animals, to their owners.

  All of these women, Ernest thought—the poor, the merchants’ daughters, and the handful of working girls who survived—they’d all be grandmothers by now. With secrets kept, stories hidden, and respectful children who would never dare to ask about their youth.

  Ernest’s reverie was interrupted by footsteps in the hallway.

  He listened as the radiator pinged and hot water pipes rattled within the walls. As he waited, he drew a deep breath, and then relaxed when he heard the tromping of work boots in the groaning, creaking mahogany stairwell of the old Chinatown hotel.

  Perhaps it was his old friend, Pascual Santos, a longtime resident of the Publix who’d helped Ernest move in when he lost his home.

  Maybe he’s hoping I’ll join him for a night out on the town, Ernest thought. He knew he should answer the door, but he didn’t feel much like socializing.

  In fact, he’d considered moving someplace nicer, but whenever he was woken by chatter in the hallway—greetings in Chinese, Japanese, and Tagalog, some polite, some stern, a few happy, rambling voices that slurred from too much drugstore screw-top wine—Ernest realized that he felt strangely comfortable here. At this pay-by-the-week purgatory, the rooms were tiny, the floors were warped, the bathrooms shared, and the old floral wallpaper was perpetually peeling, but the bar for achievement was remarkably nonexistent, and he was fine with that. Because the Publix was an old workingmen’s home, a tobacco-stained hideaway where lost individuals found solace. Where the elderly tended to their gardens on the roof, and the children of the few families who lived here played basketball in the basement. And for Ernest the hotel was also mere miles from all the people he’d grown up with and cared about.

  Ernest was about to make a fresh pot of tea when he heard footsteps again, this time the unmistakable rap-tap of a woman’s heels on the wooden floor outside his door, and a knock.

  “Dad, it’s me. Open up.” The voice in the hallway belonged to his daughter Juju. Ernest had been so busy driving people to and from the fair that he’d ignored the small stack of pink While You Were Out messages that had piled up in his mailbox downstairs, courtesy of the hotel’s front desk manager. Now he guessed they were from her.

  Juju switched to an innocent singsong. “Da-aaaad, I know you’re in there.”

  His daughters always worried about him, especially in the years since Gracie had fallen ill. Even Hanny, who lived in Las Vegas, which seemed like a world away, called at least once a week, long-distance charges and all. Ernest rubbed his eyes as he looked in the chipped mirror on the wall. He finger-combed his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair and straightened his well-worn sweater, which had only one button left.

  He cleared his throat and donned a smile as he opened the door. “Juju!” he said, wide-eyed. “Come in and get warm. I’m so sorry I haven’t returned your calls. I’ve been so busy these days—running people around town. Your mom okay? Have you eaten?” As he gave her a hug and she kissed his cheek, he realized that he hadn’t shaved.

  His daughter loosened her raincoat and stepped inside, groaning as she looked around. She pointed to a patch of old paint blistering on the ceiling and a leaky pipe that dripped into a mop bucket on the floor. “Dad, if they’re not going to fix this place up you should at least let me do it for you. Seriously, how can you live like this? Oh, and I’m pushing forty, so feel free to call me Judy anytime.”

  “Hanny doesn’t seem to mind—”

  Juju interrupted. “Hannah also wears a three-foot headpiece with ostrich plumes that glitter and struts around in a sequined G-string for money. Her name doesn’t go on a byline like mine does.”

  Ernest smiled and tried not to roll his eyes. He couldn’t help but be proud of his daughter, a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She’d started off at the Northwest Times, then landed a job at the big daily, covering the Ladies Garden Club and meetings of the Women’s Auxiliary of the King County Library. But somehow Juju
(Ernest couldn’t bring himself to call her Judy) had fought her way up to a regular beat covering Chinatown, the Central District, and Rainier Beach. Sure, she’d probably landed the assignment because she was ambiguously Asian—and more to the point, because no one else wanted to cover the colored neighborhoods. But her region was also riddled with racial tension, and dubious development deals on every corner and vacant lot—fertile journalistic soil for someone with a sharp, eager plow, and a shoulder for hard work.

  Ernest was proud of Hanny too, but it would be an understatement to say that her vocation as a Stardust showgirl (and occasional magician’s assistant) had always struck too close to home. He didn’t care for her profession the way Howard Hughes didn’t care for reporters, or the way Elvis didn’t care for the army. Ernest told himself that he was happy that Hanny was happy. And honestly, he was impressed that his younger daughter had gotten the job given that she was half-Chinese and didn’t look like Jayne Mansfield or the cookie-cutter showgirls he’d seen on postcards. But Hanny was extraordinarily tall (she called it poised) and royally confident (she called it refined) and he guessed that had carried the day.

  Occasionally, Ernest worried about her working at places like the Sands, which had made Nat King Cole eat alone in his suite rather than be seen downstairs in the restaurant. But the times were slowly changing. And Hanny seemed immune to controversy. She was Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, practically gushing, “Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there in Las Vegas! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people as Frank Sinatra in’t!”

  Ernest was less impressed, though he had to admit that he loved to hear about Hanny’s run-ins with Billy Daniels and Peter Lawford, even if he had to turn a deaf ear to stories about the drunken marriage proposals she seemed to receive on a nightly basis.

  Ernest offered Juju an orange Nesbitt’s soda and sat down in his favorite reading chair. He watched as she drank half the bottle in one long swig. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and took a seat on his lumpy vinyl chesterfield.

  “So what brings you here?” he asked.

  “Well,” said Juju, “I think I found a way to finally get my byline on the front page of the paper. It has to do with you and Mom—but mainly you—”

  “Is she okay?” Ernest asked. “Has she had a relapse? Let me get my shoes on—”

  “No, Dad—she’s fine. She’s, you know, pretty much how she is. She still thinks I’m her nurse half the time, a maid the other half. She’s happy, pleasant, in and out of her own world, no nightmares lately,” Juju said with a resigned shrug. “Better than ever.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Ernest asked as he sat back in his chair.

  Juju looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, it’s not a problem. It’s just that I convinced my editor to let me write a then-and-now piece about the grand opening of the new world’s fair, seen through the eyes of some old-timers who happened to attend the original Alaska-Pacific-Yukon Expo, fifty-something years ago. Granted, that story angle isn’t particularly unique, but along the way I dug up some details that could make my story stand out above the rest. And since I’m on deadline, I was thinking that I’d fact-check with you about some of the details. Because I remember you talking about how you went to that first expo as a little kid.”

  Ernest nodded politely. “Oh, I don’t remember all that much, really.”

  “Well, do you remember anything like this, by chance?” Juju reached into her handbag and retrieved a small stack of newspaper clippings. She handed one to her father, who donned a set of reading glasses.

  The article was from The Kennewick Courier circa 1909 and read:

  Seattle—A boy, the charge of the Washington Children’s Home Society, was one of the prizes offered at the exposition. His name is Ernest and maybe he will have a surname if the winner, holding the proper ticket, comes to claim him.

  Ernest opened his mouth to speak. Closed it. And then opened it again. “That’s interesting…I mean…they gave away a lot of peculiar things at the fair…”

  “Dad.” Juju pointed to the name in the article. “It says Ernest. Was this you? I mean—you once told me how you ended up at the Washington Children’s Home after you came here from China. And you said you were given a job as a houseboy after the world’s fair. You told me that’s where you met Mom.”

  Ernest tried to laugh. “Why would you think that? Ernest is a pretty common name—Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Shackleton, Ernest Borgnine, Ernest—”

  “Oh my God, it is you.”

  “Look…”

  “Dad, I’m an investigative reporter. This is what I do for a living. I can see the truth written on your face. I can tell just by the tone of your voice.”

  Ernest furrowed his brow and drew a deep breath, exhaling slowly. It was one thing to lose himself in memories, but the last thing he wanted to do was share the whole sordid story with his daughter. Let alone one hundred thousand readers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He coughed and tried changing the subject.

  “Has your mother’s memory improved any more these days?”

  “I guess, because she’s the one who told me.”

  Ernest blinked. “Told you what?”

  “Dad, she’s the one who told me that a boy had been raffled off as a prize at the AYP—she said you were that boy.” Juju stared back. “She was listening to the radio and heard a commercial for the new world’s fair. Then she started talking to herself. I thought she was spouting nonsense until I looked it up.”

  Ernest felt the warmth in his chest grow cold. “What…are you talking about?”

  “Mom,” Juju said as she put a hand on his arm. “She’s begun saying things. Most of the time she still doesn’t make a lot of sense, but every once in a while—I think she’s starting to remember.”

  —

  AFTER HIS DAUGHTER left, Ernest turned on the small Philco swivel-screen he’d gotten on clearance from Hikida Furniture and Appliance, because of a broken dial. It worked fine, though he had to change the channel with a pair of needle-nose pliers. He tried to relax, listening to the hum of the television as the color picture tube warmed up and the distorted image on-screen slowly came into focus.

  As far as Juju’s questions, Ernest had stalled. He’d bought a little time by saying he was tired and promising to come over tomorrow afternoon to talk. He’d wanted to drop everything and see Gracie tonight, but he knew she’d be going to bed soon and that evenings were when she was most fragile.

  Let her rest.

  Ernest thought about the people he knew—the ones he’d grown up with as well as his neighbors here at the Publix. He suspected that everyone his age, of his vintage, had a backstory, a secret that they’d never shared. For one it might be a forsaken husband back in Japan. For another it could be a son or daughter from a previous marriage in China. For others perhaps the secret shame was a father they didn’t talk to anymore, or a baby they’d given to a neighbor, never to be seen again. Or perhaps a vocational secret—back-room gambling, bringing rum down from Canada during Prohibition, or the personal, private horrors that lay hidden behind the bars, ribbons, and medals of a military record.

  We all have things we don’t talk about, Ernest thought. Even though, more often than not, those are the things that make us who we are.

  Ernest remembered the AYP and wondered how much he could share without giving up Gracie’s part of the story. Moreover, he worried about how long it would be before Gracie inadvertently gave herself up. What would Hanny and Juju think if they learned that their mother was once someone else—something else? To him, Gracie would always be more than a survivor of circumstance. She was a person of strength, a woman of fierce independence. But if her past ever got out, her gossipy friends at church, their old neighbors—no one would look at her the same.

  Ernest rubbed his temples and watched Ed Sullivan as the show broadcast live from the refurbished Seattle Opera House, which sat adjacent to the new expo’s pi
llarless Coliseum. He offered a warbling introduction to Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, who danced and sang “Love Tastes Like Strawberries.” That performance was followed by the Amazing Unus, a local equilibrist who could balance anything on one finger—an umbrella, a sword, a padded barstool, even a six-foot scale model of the Space Needle.

  Ernest glanced at the clock on the wall, next to a calendar from the Tsue Chong Noodle Company featuring a beautiful Chinese girl in a traditional dress, but with heavy makeup and ruby lips. The calendar was three years old.

  He whispered, “Gracie, where did the time go?”

  THE FLOATING WORLD

  (1902)

  Yung wished that someone had a pocket watch or at least a bundle of timekeeping incense, the kind the Buddhist monks in his village had used to mark the hours of the sun. Instead, the best anyone could muster was a piece of chalk that was used to keep track of the days, according to meals and their regular bedtime. Yung watched as one of the girls made another hash mark and quietly counted to nineteen.

  As the ship rocked and the time passed, Yung had mourned his mother terribly—her memory waxing and waning like a ghostly echo. But he’d also been reasonably well fed for the first time in his life, surrounded by big sisters who laughed and smiled. And on his better days, he’d had his impressionable young heart realigned, set on foreign promises: the Hawaiian Islands, tropical sunshine, an endless horizon of warm water, and a beggars’ feast of sugarcane. They’d been told that there would be fat stalks everywhere they looked, just waiting to be sliced and peeled and chewed, nectar waiting to be savored. Yung clung to that hope, and the illusion that his mother would survive and that someday he’d grow up and make enough money to send for her. But even his tender imagination suspected that was folly.