Once downstairs, I discovered that the basement was brightly lit and tidy, with a pool table covered in smooth green felt and a case behind it containing some basketball and track trophies won by Davon. On the wall here, there was a line of plaques recognizing Robert for his military service. It seemed to me that the basement was the men’s domain, while upstairs was Lorraine’s.
There was a pile of boxes in a corner. A medium-sized one was on its side, papers spilling out of the top.
“It was up high, and I knocked it over coming down,” Robert said. “Lorraine says I should use a stepladder for things like that, but I was in too much of a hurry to get one.”
I squatted to pick it up. Forty pounds, maybe; it wasn’t bad at all.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said.
“It’s not so heavy.” I moved toward the stairway, with him behind me.
“My back’s not good because of all the standing in the diner,” Robert said. “And my knees are bad from the war.”
“Oh, what happened?”
“I received some friendly fire to one of my knees. It was shattered.”
“War is a very bad thing,” I said.
“Yes,” he said shortly and started up the stairs.
In the kitchen, I paused. “Please, where shall I put this?”
“Right in your car would be fine,” he answered, heading toward the front of the house.
I put the box down on a counter instead. “Norton-san, my aunt and Andrea-san may still have question.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about these things now. My wife, Lorraine—”
I was beginning to lose patience with this man who’d fought in a war and been shot, and who was afraid of his wife. “We have made trouble for you. I am so sorry. Maybe we should not have made travel.”
“No, I apologize. I still feel real bad about what happened back when—back when we married. I guess that’s why I hung on to everything, hoping it would mean something to somebody later on.”
“Can you tell me the reason for Sadako-san’s death? I don’t understand it completely,” I said, making my face look puzzled, not suspicious. “They say she drowned in water.”
Robert seemed to reflect for a moment, then spoke. “I always thought it would be hard for her to die that way. As your family knows, she was a very strong swimmer.”
And, I thought to myself, she’d supposedly gone in nude. She wouldn’t have been able to weight herself down with stones, like a depressed Virginia Woolf had, to help herself sink.
“Was she ever found?” I asked, expecting him to tell me what Andrea had.
But he surprised me. “There were some remains of a female body found in the river a couple of years later. They thought it might be her. I couldn’t tell, but I guessed they were probably right. I said yes. The case was closed.”
For him, maybe, but not for me. “What about teeth?”
“We had no dental records because Sadie refused to visit the dentist. It was all I could do to get her to go to the obstetrician.”
“One other thing,” I said. “You and Mrs. Norton married close to the time that Sadako-san was declared dead, didn’t you?”
“Two weeks later,” he said. “Lorraine said she’d waited long enough.”
“But…that must have meant you and Lorraine were seeing each other for a while. During the time you had no idea what had happened to Sadako.”
“I’d known Lorraine since high school. Then, she was working at the Pentagon while I was…she was a great support for me. I needed that. All along I thought that even if Sadie hadn’t committed suicide, she wasn’t coming back.” I must have looked blank, because he added, “I thought she’d deserted me.”
“Honto? Is that the truth? Japanese women are usually very devoted.” I couldn’t think of a single woman I’d met in Japan who had divorced.
“She found it hard to become American, make friends, fit in. It was real different in Virginia during the seventies. There was a Japanese-American group in Washington, but she never wanted to go, said it was too far. She didn’t drive, and the Metro lines were just getting built. She felt trapped.”
I perked up at the mention of the Japanese-American group—could it be my group, WJFS, that he meant?—but stored the thought away as he continued talking.
“A lot of marriages like ours were breaking up. After Sadie left, when I went through her things, I found that she’d taken her passport. It seemed clear that she wanted to go back.”
“Did the police check to see whether she traveled back to Japan?”
“They checked with Japanese immigration, sure. There was no record.”
“What time was this investigation?” I asked.
“Right away, in 1974. The investigation remained open—I mean, I kept hearing from the FBI—until ’77, when the body washed up.”
But if Sadako was still alive, she could have traveled later, and not been noticed. That was a happy thought except for the fact that it would mean she’d abandoned her daughter.
“I don’t understand,” I said carefully. “If what you say is true, that she didn’t commit suicide but pretended, and then ran away, why didn’t she take Andrea with her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed like the baby was the only thing that made her happy.”
13
We left half an hour later. I’d tried to linger, to give Andrea and her father a chance to talk, but Lorraine made it impossible. She cut Andrea off every time she tried to say something, kept looking at her watch and commenting on how she had to get back to work. I thought we might be able to outlast her, or sneak back to the restaurant so Andrea could talk to Robert, but he announced a sudden need to drive into Charlottesville for supplies.
“Y’all are welcome to the rest room before going back. It’s a long trip,” Lorraine said pointedly.
We all declined.
“Well, when’s your flight back?” Lorraine persisted.
“Not for several months,” I said, smiling widely. “Not until we learn all that can be learned about Sadako-san’s death.”
“Oh, really?” Lorraine’s expression froze.
“Yes, maybe you come see us in Washington if you remember something. We can meet at Andrea’s place,” I said, because Hugh’s apartment would not seem a likely living space for two ladies visiting from Japan.
“I don’t know about that—” Andrea started to say, just as Lorraine began exclaiming about how the pollution had caused her such bad allergic reactions the last time she’d been in D.C. that she’d had to get a prescription.
So we left with the box of papers, but not much else. I backed out slowly from the driveway, Robert’s truck on one side of me and a sparkling silver Honda Accord parked on the other side. The Honda had to be Lorraine’s car. She’d parked it so close to the Lexus that I had to hold my breath when I got in the driver’s-side door.
Only Aunt Norie was pleased with how things had gone—we’d secured the box of papers, after all. But I’d hoped for more. I couldn’t imagine what Andrea was thinking.
As I drove north on the country roads at a safer speed than we’d traveled them before, Aunt Norie’s head lolled against the window. The jet lag from her long trip had hit her at last.
“What happened in the kitchen? I thought I heard you talking,” Andrea said.
“I asked your father more about what happened.” I filled Andrea in on the body that had been found and identified as her mother’s.
“It can’t be her,” Andrea said flatly. “I know it can’t.”
“Well, the problem is, your mother didn’t have dental records to be used as a comparison. But it is possible, don’t you think?”
“You want it to be her. You want to have a quick, easy answer like the rest of them.” Andrea sounded bitter.
“Look, I was able to help you obtain the box of papers,” I said. “Now you have them and you’re welcome to go through them on your own. And now your father knows where you work.
He might want to get in touch when he’s not being scrutinized by that horrible second wife of his. Or Davon might want to, as well.”
“It’s a good idea,” Aunt Norie said between yawns from the back seat. “A family should know all members. I am going to find your Japanese family for you, too, when I return.”
“Say what?” Andrea erupted so loudly that I jumped and started to swerve off the road. “Listen, it’s pretty clear that my friggin’ relatives here don’t want me, no way and no how. These are black people pushing me out. I can only imagine how it’ll be with the Japanese.”
“Obasan, maybe she has a point,” I said. “I may have gone too far, and I’m sorry for that. But, Andrea, you have to admit that you asked us to bring you here. You didn’t want to do it on your own.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want you to try to remake my life. I’m totally humiliated.”
“Let’s forget about it, then.” I needed to calm her down. “You’ve got that box of information. It’s yours, not mine to look at. And I suppose you don’t want to hear more of what your father said to me.”
“Of course I do!” Andrea exploded. “I want to know everything.”
“Well, your father said that she led a very closed life. She had trouble making friends. He said that she vanished with her passport, but there was never any indication she returned to Japan—although he admitted that the police hadn’t followed up with the immigration authorities every year. My thought is that she might have stayed in the U.S. for a few years longer, perhaps working, and then, when she had enough money, she could have flown back.”
“That I can find out,” Norie said sleepily. “When I return, I can check.”
There was silence all the way to 495, but as we surged into traffic—the afternoon rush hour, so slow moving that it put Aunt Norie to sleep—Andrea spoke again.
“I’m sorry I was so sharp. I thought maybe, because ten years had passed, it would be better, but it wasn’t. It never is.”
“I felt for you,” I said simply. The fact was, her father had been disappointing and her stepmother dreadful, but Andrea herself had been combative. Nobody had won prizes in the family Olympics that day.
“It’s okay now,” Andrea said shortly. “I’m starting to chill, a bit. And now that my dad knows where I work, maybe he’ll look me up sometime.”
I nodded in agreement, although I didn’t believe it for a minute.
The next morning, after Hugh had slipped out of the apartment just after dawn, I sleepily showered and went in the kitchen to set up a breakfast that I thought my aunt would enjoy: French toast with a homemade strawberry sauce, coffee, and freshly squeezed orange juice.
“You must be very clean.” Norie greeted me in Japanese when she stepped into the kitchen while I was sautéing strawberries in butter.
“Heh?” I looked down, and caught sight of a strawberry stain on my sweater. What was she talking about?
“This morning, you took two showers. I overheard the shower at five and then six-thirty. What’s wrong with you?”
I was speechless for a moment, then recovered. “I awoke early, showered, then went running. I had to shower afterward.”
“Ah so desu ka,” Norie said, nodding. “Yes, that is a good idea if you will be trying on clothing this morning.”
“What do you mean, trying on clothing?” I asked, setting the French toast before her.
“We need to shop for your wedding dress. And in the evening, I was thinking about visiting your restaurant.” Norie tasted the French toast with strawberries, chewed, then smiled. “Delicious.”
“I could take you to Bento for lunch. I’d be happy to.” I was trying to remember what Marshall had said about my bringing guests. I was fairly certain that I had a house tab of some sort. I’d need it, because I was momentarily low on cash.
“Wouldn’t dinner be better? Then Hugh-san can join us.”
“He’s working late tonight. I’ll cook for the two of us.” In fact, Hugh had told me he was sick of the pub and had decided to eat and stay late at his office, where there was a couch.
“Don’t feed a caught fish,” Norie said in Japanese.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s an old Japanese saying. Before a fish is caught, it is fed and kept alive and treated very nicely. But once it is caught—” Norie raised her eyebrows. “No more special treatment.”
“Are you saying I should stay unmarried?” I was shocked.
“Of course not,” said Norie. “Just don’t cheat yourself of any pleasure while you still have a chance.”
“You and I will go out to dinner tonight,” I said with determination. “I’m sure that you’ll enjoy meeting Jiro, our Japanese executive chef.”
“Very good. Don’t you think seven o’clock will be about right? Now, we need to decide where to go for your wedding dress.”
Without much hope, I suggested we visit the close Maryland suburbs of Chevy Chase and Bethesda. Neiman Marcus, Saks-Jandel, and Saks Fifth Avenue would be considerably smaller than Japanese department stores, I warned her, but there were bridal boutiques in other suburbs that we could visit. But I wanted to start off in Chevy Chase so I could drop off my Japanese kites at the Washington-Japan Friendship Society. I also thought there was a slight chance WJFS might have, within its membership, someone who had known Sadako.
We traveled on the Metro against the morning rush hour, so we had seats, and Norie enjoyed the view of suburban northwest Washington and Maryland. It brought up her recollections of how undeveloped Yokohama had once been. I couldn’t think of the D.C. suburbs as undeveloped, but I could understand what she saw, from her Japanese perspective: a sky that was not filled up by boxy apartment complexes, but small houses, fifty years old, surrounded by green lawns. Hugh and I hadn’t come close to buying a home. I knew that a simple brick ranch house in one of these neighborhoods would go for more than a million. I mentioned the prices to Aunt Norie, but she nodded sagely.
“The houses are large, but they are too expensive, still. It’s better to have an apartment in Japan. Fewer rooms are easier to clean, neh? I notice you have no time to clean the apartment here. If only it were smaller.”
I ignored the comment about my halfhearted cleaning attempts. “I’m trying to get back to Japan, Obasan.”
“How are you doing that?” she asked. We were both speaking in Japanese, which made me comfortable enough to relay the joke Hugh had made over a month ago.
“I’ve been advised that I need to accomplish something great that will be noticed by the Japanese government. Maybe I’ll become a singing sensation, earn millions of dollars, and then get knighted.”
“Very funny, Rei-chan, but ladies cannot be knighted. Actually, I’ve been thinking, neh, that if you can do something to aid the nation of Japan, you might be readmitted.”
“‘Aid the nation of Japan’?” I echoed her words. “If that means showing around a Japanese citizen and giving her a good understanding of the life and people here, I’d be happy to do it.”
“And, you could find the killer of an innocent Japanese citizen, a woman forgotten long ago by society, but who deserves justice. If you can do that, the government will be grateful and surely relent.”
“I don’t know that she was killed, Obasan. There’s no indication—”
Norie interrupted me. “What kind of Japanese woman disappears with her passport and then doesn’t go home?”
“A passport’s an important document to have, whether or not you plan to travel right away. Perhaps she wanted to start a new life in another part of the United States.”
“I wondered about that, too, except for what new Mrs. Norton said.”
“Oh?” I stopped looking out the window.
“While you were downstairs getting the papers with Mr. Norton, Andrea-chan was speaking with new Mrs. Norton. Andrea-chan said something about her mother perhaps being alive and somewhere else in America, but new Mrs. Norton said it was impossible. She works for a secu
rity administration, and she knows.”
New Mrs. Norton. I wished Norie had used that phrase in conversation with Lorraine so I could have caught the second wife’s reaction. “It’s called the Social Security Administration. She was wearing an ID tag on a chain around her neck.”
“New Mrs. Norton said to Andrea that if Sadako-san was alive and working anywhere, going to any hospital, or receiving any kind of benefit, her personal number would have been active. Mrs. Norton has checked herself, the last time ten years ago, and there is no evidence. She says Sadako-san probably died in a tragic accident.”
“I wouldn’t believe everything Lorraine Norton says,” I told my aunt. “She has a powerful reason not to want Sadako to surface. If Sadako is still alive, it means that Robert committed bigamy by marrying Lorraine.” At least, I thought so. I would have to ask Hugh how the law would apply in that case.
14
In Bethesda, we bombed out at Claire Dratch’s salon because we hadn’t made an advance appointment. So we went on to Chevy Chase, where we visited shop after shop and I tried on the few dresses my aunt and I agreed on. I didn’t like the way I looked in any of them. Maybe it was because I wasn’t as rail thin as I’d been in Japan, or because I wasn’t used to seeing myself dressed like a cupcake.
Fortunately, the salesclerks at the boutiques seemed very familiar with this phenomenon of brides who tried but were hesitant to buy—especially when they heard it was my first day of shopping. Norie, on the other hand, was disturbed that I couldn’t commit.
“At least I haven’t spent thousands of dollars on something I don’t like,” I said as we dodged traffic on Wisconsin Avenue to get to Saks.
“If money is an issue, you must let me help you,” Norie said instantly. “You are saving me thousands in hotel bills. I should buy your dress.”
The Pearl Diver Page 13
