The wayward bullet, this time, had not landed on the dirt floor of the shed, but in the trunk of one of the cherry blossom trees. It was indeed Mari who had saved him, cracking Miss Waxley’s head with one of the garden rocks and then pushing the old woman four feet down onto the concrete floor. Luckily, the busybody neighbor had seen Mari run into the garden; curiosity had gotten the best of him. He had witnessed Miss Waxley brandishing the gun and spouting out her confession, thereby becoming Mari’s ticket out of jail.
“Howsu you know I’m here?” Mas was resting on the back stairs, his hands still trembling.
“I was worried when you never came back to the hospital with my things,” Mari explained. She had gone to the apartment, found the fax, and promptly called Haruo, who gave her a quick translation of the fax. He was the one who suggested that Mas might be at the garden. “He told me that you would need to be around plants to really think.”
Like always, Haruo was watching his back, more than three thousand miles away.
In minutes the police arrived. If Mari hadn’t saved Mas, the police would have been investigating a murder-suicide. Mas figured that after he was shot, Miss Waxley would have turned the gun on herself. The point wasn’t that she escape prosecution but that her secret end where it started, at the Waxley House.
Paramedics checked out Miss Waxley’s broken body and confirmed that she was indeed dead, her skull cracked, with her sticky blood settling underneath her. She was a tough baba -an old woman with a single-minded purpose-to hide the fact that her father had had relations, most likely forced, with an Irish maid. And that union had resulted in her, a woman whose perceived family lineage was so revered and precise. The Waxley family ended with her, but the irony was that the extended family tree would continue on, with the Ouchis.
Mari and Mas took turns sitting in the dining room of the Waxley House, telling their stories to Detective Ghigo, his bald partner, and their attorney, Jeannie. Mari went first, because she was considered the main suspect. After her turn, Mas was called in. He kept his eyes on the attorney as he told them about reading the journal and putting two and two together. Seeing the words on the bottom of the pond had sealed it, and then he had come face-to-face with Miss Waxley and her gun.
“But how did she know that you knew anything?” the bald detective asked. “She could have just let your daughter take the fall and kept out of it.”
Mas said nothing. If you attempted to hide something, you had a sixth sense about who was going to rat you out. Miss Waxley had had that feeling about Mas.
After Mas was released from their interrogation, he joined Mari in the living room. She was on the cell phone, talking to Lloyd, no doubt. “Everything’s okay,” she was saying. “Yeah, Dad’s fine.”
The front door opened, and it was J-E, Miss Waxley’s driver. Instead of a suit and tie, he wore a faded sweatshirt, shiny blue exercise pants, and, of course, the red-soled shoes. Also, another addition-a beanie cap that hid his eel-like hair. “I saw all the cop cars. Is everything okay?” he asked.
Mas pointed his finger at J-E’s head. “Youzu the one in Seabrook. Impala, desho?”
J-E turned quickly to leave, but Mari, dropping her cell phone, wrapped her arm around his. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Okay, okay.” J-E tried to shake Mari off. “I followed you guys. But I wasn’t going to hurt you. ‘Just scare them,’ Miss Waxley said. I didn’t know what the hell this was all about. She told me that she would fire me if I didn’t follow through. She didn’t want you to find something at that museum. That’s all I know. I couldn’t go through with what she wanted. It was bullshit, and I told her so. And then she fired me.”
“When?” Mas asked.
“Four days ago.”
Before Seiko Sumi was thrown off her balcony. Mas didn’t think that the driver would commit such a bloodthirsty crime, but you never knew. Sometimes the most harmless-looking ones were the most dangerous. After J-E was fired, Miss Waxley had to find another henchman. And that most likely came in the form of the sumo wrestler, Larry Pauley.
“You better talk to the police,” Mari said, leading the driver to Detective Ghigo.
Mari and Mas sat on the back stairs outside the Waxley House. It was like a replay of Kazzy’s death. The coroner’s office arrived, and so did the detectives and police officers. The body was wrapped and carted away. New police tape was affixed onto two pine trees across the concrete pond.
In a matter of hours, the cherry blossoms had finally opened in full force, weighing their branches down with pink flowers. “They would have to open now,” Mari said.
“Thatsu the way it happen,” Mas said. “No control nature.”
“Do you believe in God, Dad?”
Mas paused. Decades, or even months, earlier he would have said no, that he believed only in Mother Nature. But there was something out there working hand in hand with trees and plants, he had to admit. “You orai?”
“I feel so terrible.” Mari pressed her wrists against her eye sockets. “I killed someone. Another human being. I mean, I know that it was to prevent her from hurting you-but still. How can I live with that?”
There were no answers. Mas remembered when he abandoned his friends after the Bomb fell. He felt as though he had killed them, too. And that guilt burned in his gut for close to a lifetime. “Day by day,” Mas said. “Just thinksu about Takeo. Thatsu best thing.”
The sides of Mari’s mouth turned upward, but Mas noticed a fluttering in her cheeks, as if it was difficult to keep a smile on her face.
The back gate opened and the two Ouchi siblings walked in. Becca was wearing a T-shirt at least a couple sizes too tight and a torn-up pair of jeans, while Phillip was in a tailored knit jacket. “Is it true?” asked Becca. “It was Miss Waxley?”
“Yes,” Mari said. “She killed your father, and she tried to kill mine.”
Phillip was a walking, talking skeleton. “I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “I can’t believe it. Why?”
“Sheezu gotta secret,” Mas said. “Secret she don’t want nobody to know. Dat her mama is not Mrs. Waxley but Kazzy’s mama.”
Phillip took a few steps back. “What are you saying?”
“That Miss Waxley was K- san ’s half sister.” For once, Becca was quick in connecting the dots. The realization hit hard, though, because afterward she didn’t speak for some time.
“Kazzy must have found out recently when he read Asa Sumi’s journal. She was a housekeeper who helped Emily at the Waxley House,” Mari explained. “I guess he wanted to tie up all the loose ends in his life before he died. He probably wanted to let you both know the truth.”
Mas pointed to the kanji on the side of the pond. “Kazzy’s daddy try to leave message. ‘Child lives.’ Asa Sumi wrote dat they tole him the baby died, but he knew the baby was alive.”
“What he probably didn’t know was that the baby’s father was Mr. Waxley,” Mari added.
They all remained quiet for minute, deeply affected by how family members could wound and sometimes even destroy each other.
“I knew that this damn garden was cursed, Becca,” Phillip finally said. He ran his hand through his graying hair and paced the length of the pond. “We should cover it over, like it was before.”
For once, Mas felt sorry for Phillip. Maybe he had misjudged him. Mas knew what it was like to be ignored, your work not fully appreciated. He probably had been struggling to keep Ouchi Silk, Inc., the family business, alive. It was on its last legs, and while his father was the one who had built it up, Phillip would be the one to watch it fall down.
Mas knew that it was his time to step in. He went back into the house and brought a plastic bucket from the laundry room.
“What are you doing, Mr. Arai?” Becca’s black makeup was smeared underneath her eyes.
Mas filled the bucket with water from an outside faucet and motioned for Becca, Phillip, and Mari to come to the far northern side of the pond, by the stone tsukubai.
Phillip knelt by the stone water basin. “What’s that? I never noticed that before.”
“ Tsukubai, ” Mas said. “Makes your hands clean.”
“I think they use it for the tea ceremony, right?” Becca said, wiping tears away on the back of her hand.
“It’s part of a purification rite,” Mari said. “That much I’ve learned from my husband.”
Mas didn’t know much about purification, but he knew that somehow the pond, with all its bloodstains and bad memories, needed to be made clean again. Although the police tape warded them off from disturbing any evidence, they at least could wash themselves of its curse.
Mas poured the water over the hands of Phillip, Becca, and finally his daughter. Mari took the remaining water from the bottom of the bucket and shook it off on Mas’s hands. The bandage had fallen off of Mas’s cut a day earlier, and Mas was surprised to see that the skin was already starting to fuse together again.
The back door opened and there emerged the neighbor, Howard Foster, who had completed his interview with the police. His hands on his hips, he made a strange noise with his tongue and teeth, as if he were calling chickens for their next feed. “I told you. I told you that this would end up a disaster,” he said, shaking his head. “You should have never unearthed this pond.” He walked up to Phillip. “I’ve been talking to my bank. I think that I can make you and your sister a fair offer. Once you’re ready, give me a call.”
Phillip stood above the tsukubai and folded his arms. “I won’t be making that call, Mr. Foster, because we are keeping the house.”
“And the garden,” Becca added with finality.
Before Becca and Phillip left the garden, Mas pulled Becca aside. “Youzu chase Anna Grady away,” he said.
“What?” Becca’s right eyelid fluttered like a butterfly trying to make its escape.
“Youzu don’t want her to marry your daddy.”
Becca swallowed and looked away. “I finally got K- san to myself, you know. After all these years. We shared the same passion for gardens, plants. I can’t tell you how many times we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden together. We even had pet names for each one of the bonsai in their collection. Do you know some are hundreds of years old?”
This woman has too much time on her hands, Mas thought.
“And then he tells me that he’s met someone. And it’s serious. He was talking about marriage, Mr. Arai, after only two months. I had to put a stop to it.” Becca explained that she had hired a private investigator to look into the background of Anna Grady, formerly Anna Miller, both in the U.S. and in Estonia. “She had been married once before, but that wasn’t a big deal, with K- san married three times. But what the investigator found out overseas was highly damaging: Anna’s family had aided the Nazis during World War Two. What if that news got out? K- san ’s reputation would be at stake.”
Mas wasn’t that sure of that. “Ova fifty years ago. Nobody care.”
“That’s what Phillip said. But K- san would have cared. I know it. He prided himself on helping teach military intelligence officers to help end the war. What if people found out his new wife was a Nazi? What kind of PR mess would that be?”
Mas shook his head. Anna’s country had been pulled apart by different world powers. The only reason her family probably had turned to one was to get away from the other.
“I threatened to tell K- san if she kept up the relationship. She refused to break it off, almost spit in my face. Before I could do anything more, K- san ended it. I was so happy at first. But then his mood became so dark. He must have known that he was dying then. I’m sure that’s why he decided to call it quits with Anna. He didn’t want her to feel that she had to hang around while his body wasted away.” Becca hid her face in her hands. “He must have really loved her.” She lowered her hands, black makeup smudges like ash around her eyes. “Do you think K- san would have forgiven me?”
Mas didn’t answer. He didn’t know Kazzy Ouchi, or even much about forgiveness. He did understand emptiness and regret, however. Having those feelings in common, they stood silently at the open gap of the pond, imagining what it would be like for it to be finally filled with clear water and brightly colored fish.
After the police told them that they could go, Mas told Mari that he needed to make one more stop, one more task he needed to do, before returning to the underground apartment.
“I have yoji,” he said.
“Want me to come with you?”
Mas shook his head. “But there’s sumptin’ you and Lloyd needsu to do. Your own yoji. Tell Lloyd to give Ghigo okome can.”
“Our rice container?”
“Let Lloyd handle,” Mas said. His daughter had gone through enough for that day.
Mas returned to the same Parisian flower shop, and indeed the same girl was working behind the counter.
“Hel-lo,” the girl said very deliberately, and Mas figured out that she still thought he was an inspector from Japan.
“I needsu gardenia.”
“You want to send some gardenias?”
Mas nodded. “One dozen,” he said, taking out his credit card. “To Fort Lee.”
For the next couple of days, Mas really tried to take it easy. Both Lloyd and Takeo were discharged from the hospital, so the whole family was again in the underground apartment. Mas, however, couldn’t help but be gasa-gasa. He first began cleaning the moldy bathtub with an old toothbrush and then tried to do something with Lloyd and Mari’s pitiful garden. Finally, Mari moaned. “Dad, you’re so restless; you’re driving us crazy. Get out of the house, why don’t you? You’re going home in a couple of days. Go sightseeing with Tug.”
Mas was not wild about sightseeing, because what was the point? He usually wanted to get from point A to point B with the least wandering. Straight lines were the best, the shortest distance between two locations.
But Tug was a lot like Chizuko. They liked to see things beyond the most direct route. To heed his daughter’s plea, Mas agreed to wander this time. “You have to see the Statue of Liberty,” Tug said. “Up close.”
As they approached the landmark on the ferry, Mas first noticed that the statue seemed squatter in real life. He thought that the green lady’s figure would take his breath away, overwhelm him with her sheer size and grandeur. Instead, she seemed more comforting, like a distant female relative who regularly sent you treats in the mail. But the color-the greenish tinge much like the rusty copper end of an old hose-that was another story altogether. That was indeed incredible.
Upon reaching the small island, they debarked from the ferry and stood at the foot of Lady Liberty. Dodging the lenses of cameras aimed by Chinese and European tourists, Mas couldn’t really take in much of the statue, aside from the folds of her skirts. Tug explained that they could take an elevator to climb three hundred fifty-four stairs to the statue’s crown, but again, Mas thought, what was the point? Then Tug took him to the edge of the water so that they faced the skyline of Manhattan.
Tug told him about all sorts of Nisei who had made it-men and women who constructed skyscrapers, built sculptures, created paintings, and established trading empires.
The Nisei who flew away from the Pacific Coast were indeed a different species. They could stretch their wings without fear of being clipped or captured. Even Takeo Shiota, an Issei, had made a name for himself. But then Mas remembered how Lloyd had told him that Shiota had been left to die in an internment camp. Why? thought Mas. Why would a gardener who placed a giant orange gate in a pool of water be a threat to anyone?
Mas remained quiet on the ferry ride back to Manhattan. The wind whipped through his hair, causing the sides to stick straight up like the ears of an aging bat.
“There’s one other place I want to show you,” said Tug.
Mas’s legs were so darui, weak, that he thought that his feet and knees would detach from their joints. But again, no monku, no complaints.
They took the subway, and from there, more walking. The sun seemed to drop all of a sudden, painting a silvery glow in the gray skies. At least the sidewalks were pristine, not a crack or a bump from an overgrown tree root in sight. The drapes of the exclusive apartments were wide open, showing off the units’ contents-antique lamps and polished tables. Mas would be worried that revealing all that wealth would invite robbers, but this was an area so rich that any evildoers would instantly stand out. In fact, Mas was surprised that an undercover policeman didn’t pop out from a hiding place to question him. He was, however, with the best alibi he could ask for, the all-American Tug Yamada.
They finally stopped in front of one of the multilevel apartments. “This is New York ’s Buddhist church,” said Tug.
“Ha-” Mas kept his mouth open as he checked out each floor of the concrete building. Didn’t look like any temple he had come across before. Even the Seabrook Buddhist Temple seemed more sacred than this.
Tug explained that he’d visited this temple a couple times in 1946. Outside, it couldn’t compare with the grand temples in California, but inside was the familiar smell of incense and the golden altar, Tug remembered. Christianity had touched Tug by then, so he had hidden his dead friend’s worn Bible underneath his coat while he listened to the familiar chant of the priest.
“Look, Mas.” Tug pointed to a huge statue of a Japanese man standing behind an iron fence outside the neighboring apartment. The height of at least two men, he wore a curved, umbrella-shaped hat and cloak. He held a staff in front of him like a candle that would give off light. “This is new to me.”
“Izu see dat before,” Mas murmured. Some kind of erai leader, but he couldn’t place the name. Wasn’t that the same kind of statue standing on the grounds of the eastern-most temple in Los Angeles ’s Little Tokyo?
Tug walked over to a plaque. “This statue is originally from Hiroshima. Survived the bomb, like you.”
Then Mas faintly remembered seeing the statue a couple of miles northwest of Hiroshima ’s ground zero. How had it come to be moved to New York? thought Mas.
At first the statue looked totally out of place, fenced in behind an iron gate on New York ’s Riverside Drive. But the longer Mas stared at it, the more at home it seemed to be.