Momoye pressed a satchel of bills and coins into Frankie’s hand. He made a show of refusing it, but she muttered, Take, take! It was all she could give him: more, in fact, since in addition to the dregs of the sake business, it included the earnings of Aki (for the sewing she’d continued to take in after the camp canteen closed, and for cleaning the house of a family in Hope), and of Julia and Augusta from ticket sales at High Hope’s Theatre.
“I have a plan, Mama,” he assured her. “A fine home by the water, high up. A room for just you and Taiji.”
The next morning mother and son rode the subway. He could see the strangeness of it in her eyes, riding to who knows where as the lights flickered on and off in the dim tunnel. How she stared at the other riders, looking them over, from their hats to their gloved hands to their heels. When the two of them surfaced onto the busy street, she took a deep breath and charged ahead; he saw her apart from the crowds and from himself. She appeared small and hunched, whereas before she’d seemed ample; now swarthier, weathered from the mountain cold; her hair gone almost all white; and her clothes: he’d have to replace her shabby coat and shoes. Of course: she’d never been in a big city in her life. Now he’d have to look after her much more than she looked after him. But she ably climbed up into the streetcar, bandy calves as sturdy as ever. He led her along the lakefront, in and out of rusted fencing to a piece of land he wanted badly to anchor himself to. Massive old storage tanks occupied it at the moment: sooty, rundown, empty and out of use, three of them. He counted them out to his mother. “Look, no bad-luck four.” His breath cast a shroud around them in the chill air.
“What will you build, Fu-ranki?”
“A hotel. Or high-rise apartments. Modern. New City Living,” he quoted. He brought out a newspaper clipping he’d been carrying for weeks in his pocket. He pointed his finger at the big, bold letters there. Apartments as Modern as Tomorrow, it said.
“New City Living,” his mother repeated. Slowly and silently, she walked the muddy width of the lot counting to herself, then the length; Frankie followed behind. She looked across the water to the sliver of islands that faced her, not so unlike Port Alberni’s narrow harbour.
The morning sun glinted on the lake. It was the last in the Great Lakes chain that flowed out to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence River. It was the closest he could get to the sea. If he built high enough, the view would be perfect. They’d see over the islands, clear across to Rochester on the other side. He and his family would have the top floor with the finest view of all, windows on all sides.
“Lake of shining waters,” said Frankie, “Lake Ontario.”
“Shining water,” his mother repeated, like a promise.
* * *
—
“Frank wants to make his mark,” Hannah said, loudly and slowly, looking from Frankie to his mother to Taiji. “His mark,” she repeated as she handed Frankie, his mother and Taiji each a martini.
Taiji nodded politely. When he moved, Frankie could almost hear the grief creaking in his every joint. There were no marks to be made after Yas’s death.
“Uri and I know what it is to be singled out for the wrong reason,” Hannah fluttered on with an inexhaustible sigh. “To have your life pulled out from under you. The doors shut in your face.” She held her hand up toward where the roof once was. “The life you toiled for.” She then raised her martini glass to her lips, and motioned for the others to do the same. His mother downed it in one gulp as if it were her tiny cup of sake. Taiji nursed a long, deep swallow.
As Hannah’s eyes filled, Frankie glanced at his mother; she was staring down. Such nonsense. There hadn’t been so much to lose to begin with. Then, abruptly, she spoke. “Fu-ranki need money. He will pay back.” She added, “To make mark.” She made a stroke on her palm.
How jarring to hear his mother through Hannah’s ears. Her English never improving.
Now Frankie looked down, feeling Hannah’s eyes brimming over him. He was abashed, red-faced. He never could have asked for himself. Yet he wanted the money. Didn’t he deserve it for all he’d done? For the dirt on his pants and under his nails? The healing magic in the long-blooming irises? He’d been at her side, heeded her, received her wisdom, and now he would prove himself worthy.
An investment. He’d earn the money to pay her back and then some. He didn’t need to hear the story, not from her, not from the Slonemskys of Rosedale; he knew something of it, the Jews’ suffering through all of time. But thankfully, she merely lifted his downward jutting chin. It was his shame keeping it down but his pride too: he would not accept no for an answer.
After a moment, he looked up and squarely met her eyes.
“I’ll give you the money,” Hannah sighed, “but don’t go buying a swamp.”
* * *
—
Frankie laid down his money for that sodden skirt at the bottom of the city, including what still lay beneath flood waters. Not for long a swamp. The man who sold was relieved to be saved from bankruptcy though not overwhelmed by the generosity of the buyer. He left behind his three empty rusting oil tanks.
With the deed in his hands, Frankie sat down on his waterfront land. He sat until the seat of his pants was soaked through. Each night he sat, his pants were less wet by the time he left. Until finally, they were no longer; the water had receded and he sat atop solid dry land.
Sometimes, in bright morning sun, the lake took on an almost false blue-green shade like a tropical sea in travel brochures. A far cry from the sawdust-littered shores of Port Alberni with its stacks of lumber and machinery, and the roaring sawmill planted wide and deep across the inlet claimed by Bloedel, Stewart and Welch. Frankie envisioned his high-rise apartments here, his Tomorrow Living for Today. First one, then another, then another, all across the waterfront, all with banks of windows to the lake and their backs turned to the city, hoarding their view. Then, like a beacon, a tower, his own Tower of Finance. So high, he’d call it Cloud Tower. Bucky would like that. He closed his eyes and envisioned its top lost in the clouds and its base buried in snow, so that it seemed to float in the mid-sky, untethered at each end.
Every morning he scanned the local news, waiting to hear of the City Council’s decision to expropriate. Uri, Mr. Knew-It-All, could not possibly have been wrong. At night the engine racing inside of him started up, his legs twitching. Once Reiko rested her hand on his chest and recoiled, her small worried eyes fixed on him in the dark. “What is it, Frankie?” she whispered. He gave a stilted yawn and turned onto his side. It was just him waiting for everything to come true.
* * *
—
In the subway, Taiji jostled against his son as the train came to a jarring stop at each dimly lit station. It was hardly the sparkling underground city of Frankie’s imagining. Words came into his head, talk that melted to nothing before he could speak. Words always came to nothing between him and Taiji.
How would it have been if Yas were with them? Would they be here or still back in Tashme, or perhaps Japan? Would he be in charge, looking after them instead of Frankie?
They transferred to an eastbound streetcar, and when they stepped off, Frankie didn’t recognize the street. Mr. Fujimoto’s house was gone. His block was gone. Children played where broken asphalt met newly poured concrete. Identical red-brick buildings squatted like pieces on a game board. A search for Mr. Fujimoto’s new address led them along criss-crossing walkways over dry grass. There were no flowers in sight.
They found his address on the last apartment at the end of a long hallway. Frankie knocked and heard hushed voices behind the door. After a few moments Mr. Fujimoto opened it. Behind him, in a dim room, his family huddled, though they were fewer now. He and Taiji had learned of each other only through Mr. Koga and had never met.
Outside the window, a few chrysanthemums had risen barely a foot in their pots; weed-thin, most straggled sideways along the balcony. When the slightest wind blew, petals fell to the concrete, where only a few dandelio
ns poked out between the cracks.
Mrs. Fujimoto offered them frayed cushions to sit on and set chipped teacups before them. She poured the tea and each of the Fujimotos sipped and squinted their tiny dolphin eyes into their cups for hope splayed in the leaves there.
They rarely went out, Mr. Fujimoto told them. The youngest son, the shyest one, employed for years in the eyeglass factory, had lost his way when returning home one day. He finally arrived after dark and never left again. The son who’d helped tend the Chrysanthemum Forest had grown pale and stiff from not enough sunshine and fresh air.
What about food? Taiji asked.
Once a month to the Japanese food store in Chinatown, Mr. Fujimoto said. The weather could turn at any moment. There were strangers all around.
Of course they no longer took in new arrivals to the city.
Mr. Fujimoto, Frankie noticed, was stooped. He gulped back his hot tea thirstily. His dolphin skin was crinkled and dry. His fingernails were clean.
He and Taiji could only nod sadly to each other.
“You helped Frankie,” Taiji finally uttered and picked up a large bottle of sake and a package of fish cakes that he’d set beside him. “Thank you.” He held out the gifts and bowed his head low.
Mr. Fujimoto sat up abruptly as if doused with water. He folded his arms, refusing the gifts. “Frankie brought us bad luck.” He seemed to shiver and shake off the last hairs clinging to his crown. “Your son,” and he looked to Frankie.
Taiji dropped his head to ward off the bad luck; as if he hadn’t had enough. He shrank away from Frankie. He looked into his cup. No good fortune to be found there. This is not my son. My son is dead.
Taiji did not say those words, but Frankie heard them. They left. Out between the buildings to the main street. Frankie following after Taiji, who strode ahead with the bag of fish cakes still in his hand. “No streetcar,” he announced.
Fine. Frankie wanted to walk; he wanted to run and burn off the shame and dread he felt. He was bad luck; it was true. The chrysanthemums had wilted whenever he came near, just like the flowers he had planted in his floating garden. Even the irises, after their glory, were drowned.
They walked in silence, block after block until they reached the station.
“No train.” Taiji pointed under his feet. He didn’t want to go underground again.
Fine. Frankie turned toward the station himself, away.
But Taiji gripped his arm with surprising strength and pulled Frankie alongside.
“My father was rich,” Taiji declared, his voice rising, insistent. He hadn’t spoken much of his family to Frankie. Rice was their business. “A good business to be in over there.” He slapped his knee, then laughed. Suddenly he was out of breath, and at the first bench they came to, he sat down.
His father had not been a generous man, except to himself and his mistress, he told Frankie. “He left my mother almost every night.” She’d cry and cling to Taiji from when he was a boy. But his father gave him a horse to ride. Taiji had loved to ride all around the rice fields while the workers worked. He didn’t care if the horse was tired or wanted to stop, or couldn’t jump as far as he wanted it to.
One day he pushed it to leap across the creek on their property, but it stumbled.
“What happened to it?” Frankie asked.
“Leg broken!” Taiji rasped in English, and he jabbed at his chest. The horse had to be killed by one of their workers.
Not long after, Taiji decided to leave home for Canada. On his last night it began to snow. He went looking for his father and came upon him slinking through the fields. He tied his father to a tree to stop him from joining his mistress. Taiji knotted an imaginary rope now and grimaced, tugging each end as tightly as he could.
“He’s still there!” he said, laughing as his eyes filled.
* * *
—
After the shacks in Tashme, Reiko told Frankie, she was happy with any ceiling over their heads that didn’t leak. The indoor heating of the Slonemsky home was a gift: no more carting of wood for the stove. Luxury was an indoor toilet.
She tried not to dwell on the changes in her husband—his new ways of dressing, talking and even walking—though she did notice and remark on them. “You’re a slick so-and-so,” she teased. Whenever they found themselves alone, which was rare, she would love him as she had in the old graveyard. She wanted a baby: a live, healthy baby boy. But Frankie was always rushing off after his garden work to some other place she’d never seen. At home, he spent hours with his mother.
“It’s not right, Frankie,” Reiko told him. It was their life he was discussing without her. Whenever Reiko came near their huddle, she was shooed away by her mother-in-law while Frankie looked on like a bystander. Almost every evening, he and Hannah sipped martinis, which Reiko refused to touch.
At night, after everyone else had settled in, he came to her in the basement and slipped into bed. Now he had time.
“What were you talking about?” Reiko whispered. Her eyes flickered in the moonlight through the window.
“Business,” he said.
“Our business?” she retorted.
“What other kind of business is there?” He found her hand under the covers and shook it, firmly. “How do you do, Mrs. Hanesaka?”
“Stop it, Frankie,” she hissed. She slapped his hand away. But as he took back her hand and led it elsewhere, she couldn’t help relenting.
When Frankie had practised his handshake with Noriko, she had shared her own business ideas. One in particular seemed to be very, very good in a Bucky way: anticipatory, and doing more with less. Her brother-in-law, a Korean living in Noriko’s hometown of Yokohama, wanted to sell the scrap metal salvaged from crumpled Zero planes and undeployed torpedoes, half-sunk ships and submarines bobbing bottom-up off Japan’s shores. He would sell it here—to Frankie, in fact.
Facing the mirror the next morning, Frankie realized exactly what to do with the land he’d bought east of the city by the lake and highway. Scavenge and build, he told Frank in the mirror. As he’d always done. Then, with a firm shake of your hand, sell.
CHAPTER 10
After the Flood
Frankie found Aki a job. In a basement just south of Chinatown under a bare, hanging lightbulb, she cocked her one good eye to the thread unspooling under the foot of a Singer sewing machine and pumped its pedal. On her first day, he walked her there and waited for her in the evening. She showed him her work table, one of many in row after row, and the shirts she’d sewn, stacked beside her machine. When they emerged from the factory, Aki remarked that dusk on Spadina Avenue looked just like dawn.
At the end of the month, she went with Frankie to deposit her cheque in his account. Frankie knew money and knew what to do with it. He was looking after them all, as man of the house he was saving to buy them.
On his day off, he went to the other lot he’d bought for a song east of the city and surveyed the junk there. It was mostly metal, from railings to car parts to tin cans. The owner had left a contraption that crushed scrap. Nothing as big as a car, but if you broke it down into small parts, it could be crushed and cut into pieces of a size to be sorted, carted off in trucks and sold to a smelter. He hired men he knew from Tashme, and with axes, they set to chopping off car doors and hoods, like the branches of a tree.
He bought and bartered with his suit and his handshake. When that didn’t do the trick, when someone didn’t want to make a deal with a Jap, he signed off by mail as Frank Hanes and pretended to be the truck driver at delivery time. When business picked up, he hired more men.
But still, at night, he was sleepless. When would the expropriation arrive? In Port Alberni, it had arrived, the bad fortune of it, unsummoned, all too soon. This time, Frankie told himself, good fortune was simply making him wait. Wide awake, he slipped upstairs in the middle of the night. He found Hannah sprawled on the living room floor studying a book cracked open under a lamp. Her hair was tied back and a pair of reading glas
ses was perched on her nose. She started at first. “Ah, Frank. Come sit with me.”
She showed him a page lined with symbols and a language that looked like nothing he’d ever seen.
“Do you know what this is?” Hannah asked. Of course he didn’t. She spoke quietly.
“The seventy-two names of the Hashem, of God.” She ran her hand over the page as if it were Braille. “Touch it,” she urged and watched him. “Close your eyes.” Surely this was the true secret of the Jews. He placed his fingers on the paper and shut his eyes. He kept them closed, awaiting further instruction.
She drew him closer, her lavender and iris breath. Her face this close, without makeup, was almost unfamiliar, its fine lines an obscure map. “Let the words enter into you. Feel their energy,” she whispered. “Can you hear them?” He nodded, though it was not God’s words he heard, but Hannah’s. “These are the words God used to create the world. The code.” Her purple silk skimmed his wrist. It was like the hush of the Ladies’ prayers asking that his spot be healed. For him to be forever returned from the other side, out of the dark, into the light.
The air grew cool and stale; he opened his eyes. Hannah now sat apart from him.
“You don’t have to mention this to Uri,” she said with a finger to her lips. “He disapproves.”
Her husband was a man who had anchored his feet in the concrete foundations of his work. “Not that he has feet of clay,” she explained. Above the ankles he might sway with the wind. The seeming whimsy of his alphabetical buildings was not whimsy at all, but the impulse for order.
Of course Uri loved beauty but his beauty was scientifically, systematically constructed. Only through form and order could something so much taller than wide be engineered to remain standing. In the modest instance of the Kidney, it was simply the order of flesh and blood to which he’d adhered, a schema of renal physiology.
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