Gasa-Gasa Girl (6 page)

She took a deep breath, as if she were getting ready to go underwater. “I thought about all the things I would tell you when you got here. What’s been going on with me over the past few years. How I’ve been working on myself. Trying to be happier, becoming less angry. But on the day you arrived, I realized that this whole thing was a mistake. Seeing you was too soon. I shouldn’t have called you, asked you to come all the way over here from L.A.”

There was a hush over the apartment. There would be no turning back from whatever would come next.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been since Takeo was born. It’s like the whole world’s a little bit brighter, better. I never knew what my girlfriends with kids were talking about. All I saw were the inconveniences, the messes. Runny noses, crying, wet pants. No vacations, no career, no money. But the sacrifices have been worth it. Really.”

Baby changes everything, Mas wanted to say, but thought better of it.

“I’ve been rethinking everything. You, Mom. What it took to raise me. I understand how hard it is.”

Mas blinked hard. What was his daughter trying to tell him?

Mari turned on the faucet to wash the rice. “Sometimes I feel like walking away. I do. From Lloyd and the garden. From New York. And sometimes even Takeo.”

She swished the grains of rice in the pot. “I even blamed myself for overworking while I was pregnant. Maybe that’s why he has so many health problems.”

Or maybe it’s me, thought Mas. The legacy of the Bomb pumping through his body, to Mari’s, and now the grandson’s.

“I don’t want to pass on my problems to Takeo. Keep him from knowing you because I don’t. But now with all of us together, I realize that it’s too much.”

Mas’s heart began to drop, from the base of his throat down to his stomach.

“I thought that I could handle it. But I don’t think I can, Dad.” Mari placed the pot in the rice cooker.

“I go.” Mas had heard enough.

“Maybe it’s because too much is going on. And now with Kazzy—”

“I go,” Mas repeated. He didn’t want to hear her excuses.

Mari nodded. “I thought that you’d understand,” she said. She put the lid on the pot, pressed a button on the rice cooker, and then disappeared back into the lighted bedroom.

I
t wasn’t hard to pack his things. He hadn’t changed his clothes or even bothered to take a shower during his first twenty-four hours in New York. His yellow Samsonite, in fact, was in the same spot where he had left it. Mas couldn’t stand being in that underground apartment for another minute, and went to take a walk around the neighborhood.

He went back to the first stranger he had spoken to in New York. The operator of the small grocery store across the street.

Ever since Mas had gotten all his rotted teeth pulled out to make room for his ill-fitting dentures, he never could properly get the hang of chewing gum again. Tonight he didn’t care. He placed a large package of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum on the counter. He figured that he could at least suck the sugar out of three sticks at one time.

“Marlboro?” This time it was just the old man.

Mas shook his head. “Nah, just dis. Izu go back to Los Angeles.” He didn’t know why he was offering any personal information, but there was no one else—not Tug, not Haruo—to talk to.

“Short trip,” the shopkeeper said. “
Mijikai sugiru.
”

Mas widened his eyes. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The man was most likely Korean and old enough to have been there when the Japanese had forced their language on those they conquered.

“Yah, too short, but whatcha gonna do?” Mas shrugged his shoulders. In these situations, Mas felt awkward speaking Japanese and opted to use English instead. Here the Japanese language seemed bitter and sad, remnants of a weapon that had been once used to wipe out a people’s identity.

The shopkeeper laughed. “Yah, what you gonna do?”

T
he minute Mas reentered the apartment, he knew something was wrong. Takeo was wailing, and the door to the bedroom was wide open.

“They said they’ll be here in five minutes,” said Lloyd, placing the telephone back on its cradle on the kitchen wall. Two large bags, bursting with the smell of strong spices, had been left on the counter. Instead of whetting his appetite, they made Mas feel like throwing up.

Lloyd grabbed his leather jacket from a hook on the wall. “We’re going to take Takeo to the hospital,” he explained to Mas.

Mari brought out the baby from the bedroom. He was wearing a knit cap and blue jacket, and who knows how many layers of clothing underneath that. Takeo’s jacket arms were so stuffed that they poked out from his body like the plastic legs of an overturned toy animal.

Lloyd noticed, too. “He’s already burning up, Mari. Don’t you think he’s wearing too much?”

“It’s cold out there. I don’t want him to get worse.”

They hurried back and forth, packing blankets, diapers, and bottles into nylon bags, when a car honked out front.

“The cab’s here.” Lloyd, who stayed back to lock the door and the gate, seemed surprised to see Mas follow Mari outside.

At the top of the stairs to the adjoining apartment stood a middle-aged
hakujin
woman wearing a long sweater decorated with leaping deer. “Is the baby all right?”

“He has a high fever; we’re taking him to the hospital.” Mari bounced Takeo in her arms.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“You’ll be the first one we call, Mrs. Knudsen.”

The cabdriver jumped out of the taxi to open the door for Mari and the baby. Mas was also ready to get inside, but as he leaned into the car, he met Mari’s icy stare.

“Let him come, Mari,” Lloyd said.

She said nothing, and then moved far enough down the backseat to allow a place for Mas.

T
he hospital was all brick and about eight stories tall. It reminded Mas of an old-fashioned hotel, like the Biltmore back in downtown Los Angeles, more than any kind of medical facility. Even the admitting area resembled a hotel lobby, with shiny tile floors, an expansive counter, and a couple of plastic plants on both sides. The emergency room, however, was nothing unusual, aside from the fact that they had a special section for children. The nurses admitted Takeo in no time flat, but told Mari that she would have to go to the waiting room with Lloyd and Mas on the third floor.

In the elevator, Mari flinched when Lloyd tried to put his arm on her shoulder. Her bony arms were folded tightly across her chest—the upper half of her body looked like a human clothes hanger, ready to poke anyone, perhaps Mas especially, in the eye at any minute. Mas couldn’t blame her. It had taken the nurse a few tries to pry Takeo away from her arms.

The third-floor waiting room also resembled a fancy hotel. Fake plants were everywhere, as if the real kind would cause deadly allergies and rashes. Mas understood the hospital’s need for artificial plants. Real plants needed gardeners to take care of them, and here the priority was to make sure people, rather than ivy or ficus trees, stayed alive.

They made themselves comfortable on couches and easy chairs arranged in a square. Mas opted for one of the chairs, while Mari and Lloyd sat on different couches facing each other. Mas was grateful for his Juicy Fruit chewing gum. After offering some to Mari and Lloyd, he stuffed five pieces in his mouth at one time. In spite of the sugar intake, he dozed off for a few minutes before hearing Mari ask in a sharp tone, “What are you doing here?”

It was that detective again, Ghigo, wearing the same black jacket and badge. Pretty low class to come at a time like this, thought Mas.

“Your neighbor, Mrs. Knudsen, told me you’d be here.” He took a seat on a couch next to Lloyd.

“Can’t this wait, Detective? Our son’s not doing so well.” The more time Mas spent with the son-in-law, the more he had to admit he liked him. Lloyd was quiet for a
hakujin
, but he also knew when to speak up.

“No, Mr. Jensen, this can’t wait. You see, we checked your credit card activity, and the records show that a hotel stay was charged to your card, Mrs. Jensen. A hotel in Midtown, checkout at eight this morning. Curious that you could be in Midtown Manhattan when you told us that you all were in Park Slope.”

“We had a family situation.” Mari’s arms remained crossed.

“Would you like to elaborate?”

“Not really. It’s a private matter.”

Mas sucked on his wad of gum, which now felt like a wet rag in his mouth.

“Well, I have to disagree, Mrs. Jensen. It’s now a police matter.”

Mari jutted out her chin. Mas knew that she was close to attack mode.

Ghigo turned his attention to Lloyd on the couch. “Hadn’t you had an argument with the deceased just two days ago?”

Mari’s eyebrows pinched together as she stared at Lloyd. “Who told you that?” she demanded of Ghigo.

“Never mind who told us. Is it true?”

“It was nothing out of the usual. I was just telling him that we needed to alter our business practices,” said Lloyd. “We’re changing into a nonprofit, and we can’t operate like a private enterprise. I was just telling him we should diversify our vendors; look for different suppliers of plants, equipment, fertilizer.”

“Did he want to end the project?”

“He was always saying that. But he really didn’t mean it. He just needed me to reassure him that everything was going to turn out all right.”

“You really had a stake in this working out,” said Ghigo.

“What the hell are you trying to say?” Mari interrupted.

“A garden that was paying for your family’s health expenses.”

The power of the detective’s words seemed to catch Mari off guard. Her eyes misted over, and then Ghigo softened his approach.

“Listen, I got two kids myself. I know how all this can add up, a doctor’s visit here, a procedure there. A person may feel like he doesn’t have many choices.”

“We didn’t hurt Kazzy. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to him,” Lloyd said.

Mari took a less calm approach. “What are you suggesting? That we threw Kazzy into the pond ourselves?”

“Do you own a gun, Mrs. Jensen?”

Mari’s face grew very still, and Mas knew that something was wrong.

Lloyd hesitated for a minute. “No, of course we don’t own a gun.” He stumbled over his words like he was walking in unknown territory when it was pitch dark.

“Well, that’s good to know, because we found a gun in a trash can down the street. A nine millimeter. It’s only a matter of time before ballistics matches that gun with the bullet in the victim’s skull.”

“Bullet? I thought that Kazzy was pushed into the pond by vandals,” said Lloyd.

The missing part of his head, thought Mas.

Lloyd and Mari exchanged looks. Finally Mari swallowed and spoke. “Well, there is this one gun. It’s just a prop from one of the silly slasher films I worked on as an assistant cinematographer. The propman wasn’t too professional and never kept track of it.

“I just kept it as a joke. I knew that I needed to get rid of it eventually, but I stuck it in a shoe box and forgot about it. Until all this stuff was going on at the garden. I was working there, sometimes alone, at all hours. I needed to use the foundation’s digital equipment, you see. We don’t even have a decent television set at home.”