The Color of Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Sorry, Mr. Sato,” I said, pausing on the porch steps. “Did I scare you?”

  “Little bit, yeah.” He pointed to his ears and shook his head. “Don’t hear so good no more. Your mom, she lets the door slam so I know she’s coming.”

  “I’ll remember to do that,” I said, walking down the steps so that he didn’t need to crane his neck to talk to me. “How have you been?”

  “Every day I find myself on this side of the grass and not under it, I think that’s gonna be a pretty good day.” He put his hat back on as he cocked his chin toward the flourishing vegetable patch growing in the sunny back end of the yard. He and Mom had planted it early in the spring before she went south to be near me during her knee replacement surgery and recovery. Before she decided to move down permanently. “Garden looks real good this summer. Too bad your mom’s missing it.”

  “Thanks for keeping it up since she’s been gone,” I said. “Any ideas about what to do with all that zucchini?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “This time o’ year, everybody’s got too much zucchini. Gracie Nussbaum tried to give hers to the food bank, but they wanted some certificate from the Department of Ag about pesticides or something. Berkeley’s one crazy place, eh? Even the poor people eat organic.”

  My eyes filled as I looked around the yard. Mr. Sato and Dad shared a love for roses and arguing politics; Mom grew herbs and vegetables. Roses and vegetables were planted in beds in the sunny south end of the yard. The shadier north end was a cool green lawn ringed by curved flower borders planted in the colors of the rainbow. And in the order of the colors of the rainbow: violet first, next indigo, then blue, a line of green, edged by yellow, then orange, and climbing the fence, vivid red bougainvillea. Dad, a physicist, planted the borders with the help of my older half sister and brother, Emily and Mark, fraternal twins, as a way of explaining to them the optical spectrum when they were taking their first physics classes. Later, Dad did the same exercise with me, this time planting flower borders on either side of the driveway in rainbow bands of color to explain the color spectrum of visible light to me. I still remember, though it has never come up in conversation since Dad’s lessons in the garden, that what we perceive as green has a maximum sensitivity—color perception—at about 540 terahertz. If I was, or am a nerd, I came by it naturally.

  As a family, we spent a lot of time in the yard. I was glad when Mom decided that the house was too much for her to keep up alone, and that she was now living near me. But we would both miss that garden.

  “So,” Mr. Sato said, face averted while I composed myself. “University gonna take over here, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re leasing the house for visiting faculty to use. The housing officer is coming by this afternoon to look around. Do you want me to ask her to continue with your service?”

  “Oh, hell no.” He snorted, waving off the idea. “I retired ten, maybe twelve years ago. I’m living with my big-shot son and his family over in Menlo Park with all the other dot-com big shots. He’s so rich he hired his own Japanese gardener. No, honey, I just been coming over here to hang out with your mom and look after my roses.”

  He took off his hat again and wiped the sweatband, a habit more than a necessity, I thought; it was a pleasantly warm day.

  “Everything changes,” he said, casting a glance around. “Was a time I took care of half the yards on this street. Now most o’ the houses are full of strangers—you kids all grew up and went away—and some Mexican guy mows the lawns.”

  We both turned when we heard the squeal of the gate hinges. Standing side by side, we watched in silence as someone pushed it open enough to peer around. I don’t know who was more surprised when a man’s face appeared, he or us. The newcomer froze, staring, but Mr. Sato acted quickly, grabbed a long-handled garden fork out of his tool cart and aimed the business end of it at the man.

  “How many times you gotta be told?” he said, advancing a few feet closer to the gate. “You quit coming in here, buddy.”

  “But I—”

  The man took a half step further in, seemed confused or conflicted, or maybe he wanted to plead his case for being there. He looked weedy in frayed jeans, his brown hair pulled back from a receding hairline into an untidy ponytail. If I were homeless, I might find a yard with a nice garden full of food to be a good place to hang out, and I, too, might want to argue about being turned away.

  When the man stayed his ground, not speaking, just staring, Mr. Sato pulled out his mobile phone. “You want me to call the cops again?”

  “No, don’t,” he said, holding up his hands as he backed out the gate. “I’m going.”

  “Persistent bastard,” Mr. Sato muttered as the gate latch snapped home. He put the fork away and rooted around in his cart for something. Search successful, he held up a hefty padlock for me to see. “I brought you this. Pest control.”

  I followed him to the gate and watched him attach the padlock. When it was secure, he handed me a pair of keys on a wire ring.

  “Thank you.” I put the keys into my pocket.

  “Lock or no lock, watch out for that guy,” he said. “I don’t know what his deal is, but he seems bound and determined to hang out here. I’ve shooed him away a couple times. When I saw you come out the back door just now, I thought at first it was that asshole and he’d moved right in.”

  “You called the police on him?”

  “Last week, I sure did,” he said with righteous conviction. “I saw what kinds of mischief that knucklehead was capable of when he was just a punk kid. Who knows what he might do now?”

  “You know him?”

  The question surprised him. “You didn’t recognize him?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s the kid you made cry that time. Remember?”

  Impossible. “Larry Nordquist?”

  “That’s him,” he said, thumping me on the back. “I pulled his dad’s crabgrass out of half the lawns on Euclid. He didn’t control his kid any better than he did his weeds.”

  “Mr. Sato, can I offer you a cup of coffee? I’d like you to take a look at something.”

  “I was hoping you’d ask. Your mom makes a good cup of coffee.”

  “She taught me how.”

  He followed me into the kitchen and helped me move some boxes off the table so there was room for us to sit. While he stirred cream and sugar into his coffee and chose a few cookies from the tin of shortbreads I offered him, I downloaded the film I had shown Kevin onto a laptop. When it came up, I paused it and turned the monitor toward him.

  Mr. Sato took a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and scooted his chair closer. “Whatcha got? One of your TV shows?”

  “No. One of Dad’s old movies.”

  “Hah!” He snorted again. “Your dad, crazy with that little camera, following you all ovah the place.”

  I was surprised: “You saw him?”

  “Oh, sure. He had me watching for that girl. The French one. Me and the Nussbaums.”

  “Did you ever see her?” I asked,

  “Oh, sure. Every time I see her, I go tell Al, he chases her away for a while.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  He leaned forward, tapping my hand with a crooked finger as he grinned like a conspirator. “That was the idea, honey.”

  I took a breath; he took two more cookies and refilled his mug, perfectly comfortable in that kitchen.

  “So, what’d you want me to see?” he asked.

  I hit Play and the images began to move.

  “Look at all you kids,” he said, smiling. “Whole buncha little trouble­makers, huh? Played hell with my flower borders, runnin’ all over the place.”

  When the parade of girls passed a house where a gardener was mowing a lawn, I hit Pause again.

  “Is that you, Mr. Sato?” I asked.

  “Let’s see, now.” He adjusted his glasses on his nose and peered closely. Grinning, he said, “Looks like my truck; good truck, that one. L
ooks like my hat, too, so I’d say probably the handsome guy under the hat was me.”

  I fast-forwarded to the first frame that showed Tina Bartolini and Beto.

  The sound he made when he saw them was something between a sigh and a groan. He said, “Poor little boy, lose his mother so young.”

  “Mr. Sato, Dad shot this movie on the same day Mrs. Bartolini died.”

  Eyes on the monitor screen, he sat back in his chair, nodding. No questions, no argument. No surprise.

  “You took care of the Bartolinis’ lawn, too, right?” I asked.

  “For a while. But one of the guys I had working for me said something that the lady didn’t care for. She was a very fine-looking lady, you know? Can’t blame a man for noticing, but whatever he said he shouldn’t of. I didn’t blame Big Bart for hiring someone else. A cousin or something.”

  “Any hard feelings afterward?”

  He shook his head. “I fired the guy, and that was it. Hired someone else, a better worker. Never a shortage of guys who need a regular paycheck.”

  I nodded toward the image frozen on the monitor. “Did you see Mrs. B that day, or speak to her?”

  “I might have, you know, just coming and going. I don’t remember; it was a long time ago.”

  “Did the police ever ask you about that day?”

  Slowly he shook his head. “Not the police, no. They never asked me nothing.”

  The way he looked at me from the corner of his eye made me wait. I thought he was deciding whether he wanted to say something more. I topped off his mug, still waiting.

  “Friends tell you something because they need your help,” he said. “Ask you to keep it to yourself, you keep it to yourself long as it doesn’t hurt somebody. You know, if your dad asked me to help him sneak that French girl into the house, I’d say, fuck yourself, Al, out of respect to Betsy. But he said, Tosh, help me keep that girl away from my baby, so that’s what I did.”

  “Did the French girl have anything to do with what happened to Mrs. B?”

  “No, no, no. ’Course not. But that’s the thing, you know. Al asked me what I saw, and that was exactly nothing except maybe aphids on the Lopers’ roses. If the cops asked me, I’d tell them the same, because it was the truth.”

  “No strangers lurking around, other than the French girl?”

  “If I saw anyone, I woulda said. But I didn’t.”

  “What did Dad ask you to keep to yourself about that day?”

  “Just that he was out there with the camera,” he said with a nod toward the computer. “We looked at the movie, but we didn’t see anything the police would want to know about.”

  “Did Dad talk to your helper, too?”

  He held up his hands, shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Good question.” He crossed his arms over his chest and gazed toward the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. After a moment, he laughed softly, tapping his forehead. “Almost... It’ll come to me, maybe.”

  “Give me a call if it does.”

  “Yeah, okay. How come you’re asking so many questions?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Sato.” I closed the computer and set it aside. “Curiosity?”

  “Nosy.” He grinned at me. “I see you on TV, you know. All the time nosing around about stuff. You was always like that, pestering about why, why, why before you could hardly talk.”

  “Dear God,” I said, feeling heat rise on my face.

  “I gotta go.” He finished his last bite of cookie, washed it down with coffee, and picked up his hat. “My daughter-in-law has me picking up the kids from lacrosse camp. But first I gotta top the green beans.”

  “I’ll give you a hand.” I followed him out, grabbing a sun hat and a muslin shopping bag from the hook by the back door on the way. “Do you need something to take veggies home with you?”

  “No. I brought a box,” he said.

  “I thought I’d pay Gracie a visit. Is there anything in our garden that she doesn’t have in hers?”

  “Gracie likes the herbs and tomatoes best,” he said. “But she didn’t plant a garden this year.”

  “Just zucchini?” I said.

  “Not even. Zucchini planted itself, hitchhikers from last year.”

  In the middle of the garden, Mr. Sato had constructed half a dozen six-foot-tall tepee-shaped frames out of bamboo stakes for the green beans and peas to climb. The vines, heavy with crop, had grown to the top of the frames by June and were now putting out tendrils that waved in the air above. While Mr. Sato cut the stray tendrils, I snipped beans and peas and distributed them between my bag and his box. The young beans were so beautiful that I picked one, broke it in half and ate it; sweet and crisp and delicious.

  “When you was little,” he said, grinning at me, “you always ate those beans just like that. Sneaking ’em, like you was stealing ’em.”

  “They’re so good.” I popped a pea pod open and offered him the contents. With a thumbnail, he scraped the row of firm sweet peas into his mouth. “Better than candy.”

  “Is your little girl as crazy as you were?”

  “My little girl isn’t so little, Mr. Sato. She’ll be a junior in college next year.”

  “She gonna come and help you out here?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s spending the summer in Normandy with her French cousins, getting to know them and learning how to make cheese.”

  “I forgot. Gracie told me something about that.”

  I knelt down to snip herbs. “How are your beautiful granddaughters?”

  “Growing fast,” he said, smiling proudly as he tied the herbs into bundles with garden twine.

  “Are they dancing in the Obon Festival this weekend?”

  “Oh, sure. To make the old grandpa happy, my son takes them to the Japanese Cultural Center for classes.” He looked up at me. “You know, the kids got baptized Episcopalian by their mother. So, I ask my son, when you’re in that big fancy church, which god does a good Buddhist boy like you pray to? You know what he says?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “He says, Pop, you were a married man. You know damn well it’s the one my wife tells me to.” He tapped his forehead and winked at me. “Smart boy, that one.”

  The garden was abundant. It didn’t take long before my bag and his box were filled: young green beans and peas, three varieties of lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and squash, with fat red tomatoes safely nested on top with the herbs.

  As I saw him out the gate, he said, “I still keep my greenhouse down south of San Jose. You come see me sometimes, okay? Bring your mom.”

  “I will,” I said.

  He aimed a finger at me. “You better.”

  I held the gate for him.

  His parting words were “Lock up after me.”

  After I said good-bye to Mr. Sato, I called Gracie Nussbaum to see if she was home and wouldn’t mind me dropping by. Like Mom, Gracie had a full calendar, so it was rare to find her at home during the day. But I was in luck, she was in and yes, she would love a visit.

  I washed my hands, found a case for my laptop, gathered up the bag of herbs and vegetables, and set out for Gracie’s house three streets over.

  Gracie was waiting for me in the big wood-slat swing on her front porch. On a little iron table beside her there were a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of rugelach.

  “What is all that you’re carrying?” she asked as she rose to meet me.

  “I was in the garden with Mr. Sato,” I said, opening the bag to show her.

  “Lovely.” Gracie kissed my cheek. She let me carry the bag up the steps and said I should just set it beside the front door, she’d put it away later.

  “Taking a break from house clearing?” she asked, handing me a glass of lemonade after I was settled on the swing.

  “Yes, but I shouldn’t,” I said, steadying the swing so she could sit down beside me. “I haven’t accomplished much today, one distraction after another.”


  “You know, dear, I always liked that Kevin Halloran.” She passed me the plate of rugelach. “Ben did, too.”

  “Exactly what made you think of Kevin just now?”

  “Didn’t he drop by to see you?”

  “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “I ran into Karen Loper at Beto’s deli. She told me she saw Kevin on your doorstep this morning. Didn’t he marry one of the Riley girls?”

  “He did. Lacy.”

  Gracie chuckled softly. “So, our boy has had his hands full, then.”

  “Seems he has,” I said, biting into a raspberry-jam-filled rugelach and getting flaky crumbs all over my lap. “But Kevin can be a handful, too.”

  “I forget, do they have children?”

  “Two. A boy in college and a daughter in high school.”

  “Hmm.” She nodded, thinking that through. Gracie is a font of information about everyone in town, but she really is not a big gossip. There is never anything malicious in what she says. I think that Gracie is just sincerely interested in people and doesn’t mind sharing benign information with others who might also be interested. People seem to be comfortable telling her the most amazing, sometimes excruciatingly personal things about themselves. Gracie sorts it, keeps confidences to herself but shares various comings and goings, births and deaths with mutual acquaintances.

  “Gracie,” I said. “Did you know that Beto asked Kevin to look into his mother’s murder?”

  “No.” Her eyes grew wide and owlish behind her thick lenses. “Did he?”

  “He did.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Maybe not. But I understand why Beto would ask.”

  “I suppose.” She seemed doubtful.

  “Do you remember Larry Nordquist?” I asked.

  She chuckled. “He’s the boy you made cry.”

  “Is that all you remember about him?”

  “I remember he had a very troubled home life.” She leaned close as if to share a confidence. “Problem children sometimes are the products of problem parents, you know.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “You ask, because?”

  “The brouhaha that ended with Larry in tears began when he said something crude to Beto about his mom.”