Irish Chain (16 page)

“One called me at the museum. I gave him the facts, then told him I’d bite anyone who tracked me down for any more interviews.”

“Whoa, harsh lady,” Todd said.

“Not harsh, just too busy for yellow journalism.” The antique mantel clock sitting on one of the bookshelves chimed softly. “Speaking of busy, I need to get to work. Got a ton of things to do today.”

“What things?” Ramon asked. Having known him since he was born, I was wise to his ploy. The longer he kept me talking, the longer he avoided Elvia’s lecture on the importance of a college education.

“Some interviews, some work at the museum. Just stuff.”

“Interviews? Like for what?” He arranged a wonderfully fake look of interest on his face. I couldn’t remember what his major was, but he wouldn’t go wrong considering a change to Theater Arts.

“For the Historical Society. They’re putting together a book about San Celina during the war years.”

“You mean, like the sixties?” Todd asked.

I rolled my eyes at Elvia and we both laughed. Another reminder of our advancing age. It was hard to believe there was a whole generation of kids who when they heard the word “war” instantly thought of Vietnam. “No, World War Two. I’m doing the section on how the Japanese-Americans were treated in San Celina during that time.”

“Wow, are you going to talk to Todd’s grandfather?” Ramon asked. “He’s Japanese.”

“Did he live on the Central Coast during the forties?” I said, turning to look at Todd.

He shifted the camera from one hand to the other, looking uncomfortable. “I guess. He’s owned the fish store a long time. Since before I was born.”

“It’s that one in Old Town, right? I forget the name.”

“Morita’s.”

“That’s right. Gabe shops there once in a while. Do you think your grandfather would talk to me?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Grandfather doesn’t talk much about the old days....”

“Well, maybe I’ll drop by sometime and ask him. Don’t worry, it won’t offend me if he doesn’t want to. There’s lots of people who don’t like talking about that time.”

Looking relieved, Todd nodded at Ramon. “Ready to split?”

“Just a minute,” Elvia said. She stood up and pointed an elegant finger at her brother. “I want to know just how bad you’re doing in history.”

Ramon jumped up and started backing toward the stairs. “Gotta go.”

“Ramon.” Her stern older-sister voice stopped him in his tracks.

“I’m not flunking or anything,” he said. “It’s just that today we were supposed to give a progress report on our history projects ...”

“We’re partners,” Todd put in.

“And we’re sort of, well, kind of ...” Ramon threw everything he had into his smile. She didn’t fall for it.

“You haven’t done a thing on it,” Elvia finished.

He laughed and blew her a kiss. “Smart women are so sexy.”

“Ramon, Ramon,” she scolded. “Don’t you realize how important a college education is?”

He moved behind her and flapped his hand in a quacking motion, like he did the other night. Since it wasn’t directed at me this time, I couldn’t help laughing.

Elvia frowned. “You’re not helping things, Benni.” She turned back to Ramon. “What exactly is your project?”

“Well, that’s sort of a problem,” he said, looking like a puppy who’d missed the newspaper. “We ...”

“Don’t have one,” Todd finished. “And it’s due in two weeks.”

Elvia’s black eyes flashed with anger. I knew Ramon was in for a real tongue-lashing unless someone intervened. Like so many times when he was growing up, I jumped in to save him.

“What kind of project do you have to do?” I asked, an idea forming in my head.

Ramon scrunched his face in consternation. “It can be anything to do with local history. Some people are tracing their roots. Some are just doing a report on one of the missions. One guy is researching ghost legends of San Celina County.”

“Radical idea, huh?” Todd said. “I wish we would have thought of it.” He raised his camera to the ceiling and peered through the viewfinder. “Super high-speed film. Pictures of protoplasmic gases.”

“I have an idea,” I said.

“What?” Ramon’s face pleaded,
Get me out of this, please.

“I’ve got the Historical Society on my back about getting this section on the Japanese written for their book. My problem isn’t doing the writing, but taking the time to do the interviews. I absolutely have to get back to the museum and work on the new exhibit and I need to start compiling the information I’ve already collected into something readable. If I gave you and Todd a tape recorder, a list of questions and some film, you could do some of the interviews and help me write up the histories. Do you think your teacher would consider that an adequate project?”

“I don’t know,” Ramon said. “Could you talk to her?”

“Why don’t you talk to her?” I asked.

“She and I ... Well, she doesn’t exactly ... It’s like this, I ...”

“He put a dead mouse in her desk last week,” Todd explained. “Wearing a little Napoleon hat.”

“I couldn’t make a small enough coonskin,” Ramon said.

“Ramon!” Elvia cried. “This isn’t high school. When are you going to grow up?”

Ramon grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Could you talk to her, Benni? Tell her Todd and I are serious about this. It’ll seem more official coming from you, you having such an important job now and everything.”

“Cut the bull, Ramon.” I ran my fingers through my hair and wondered what I’d let myself in for. I could certainly use the help, but Ramon and Todd weren’t the most mature teenagers I’d ever known. “Okay, I’ll talk to her, but you two have to promise me, no practical jokes or goofing off on this project. These interviews have to get done so I can start writing them up. And this subject is very serious. You’ll need to show respect to these people.”

Ramon stood up and held up three fingers. “I do solemnly swear to be a good scout and do my best for you and this project.”

“Since you were thrown out of the Boy Scouts the same month you joined, that doesn’t set my mind at ease,” I said. “But I guess I have to trust you. I know you guys will do a good job.” I said the words with more conviction than I felt. “If your teacher okays it, then I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set up some interviews for this week. What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Thompson. Thanks, Benni, you’re a real pal. Peace, love and all that baloney.” Ramon held up two fingers in a V before running up the stairs, Todd close behind him.

“Are you
loco?
” Elvia said, walking back up the stairs with me to find the oral history books she’d ordered. “You’re going to get those two jokers to do some real work? Are you serious?”

“Yes, yes and yes,” I said, though my voice wasn’t convincing even to me.

I called Mrs. Thompson from Elvia’s office. She agreed to meet with me in half an hour, though she was a bit confused as to why I’d be concerned with the history projects of two of her students when I wasn’t related to either of them. A tense edge crept into her voice when I mentioned Ramon’s name. I wondered how much of a sales job it would take to bail him out.

You
are
crazy, I told myself, driving toward the campus. You have enough to do without supervising two teenagers on a history project. But if I could organize them right, and they did what they were told, it would actually save me time. On that optimistic note, I bought a two-hour parking pass from the machine at the tree-lined entrance to Cal Poly and pulled in across from the student store, aptly named the Cougar’s Lair. Besides textbooks, it sold everything from backpacks imprinted with the snarling mascot’s picture to milk and ice cream from the agriculture department’s Guernsey cows. I was ten minutes early for my appointment, so I took a seat on a paint-chipped wooden bench under a budding decorative plum tree. The red brick History and Cultural Arts building, where Mrs. Thompson’s office was located, didn’t look any different than when I attended classes there fifteen years ago.

A wind had sprung up from the south, blowing away any lingering clouds, leaving a bold, brilliant blue sky and air smelling of wild mustard, salty earth and springtime. Around me, the raucous, noontime chatter of students brought back memories as clear and sharp as the air. I’d spent more days than I could remember sitting here with Jack and Elvia and other friends, complaining about teachers and parents and trying to decide what to do that Saturday night. Everything seemed so certain then. We knew exactly how we felt about things, where we were going, how we would get there. Our concrete plans reminded me of the mosaics created by one of our artists at the co-op-bits and pieces of stone and glass laid out just so—the scene becoming clearer as you stood further and further back. Except our lives weren’t really like those mosaics, whose pieces, once the artist placed them, could be cemented permanently into place. Looking back, I realize now we were more like kaleidoscopes—our designs twisting this way and that, unpredictable as clouds, changing sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but always open to that unexpected color combination we’d never think of on our own.

Mrs. Thompson’s office was the typical tiny cubicle awarded to tenured professors at Cal Poly. I knocked on the tan metal door and a crisp voice commanded me to enter.

“Ms. Harper?” The fiftyish, Japanese woman in tortoise-shell eyeglasses and a nubby, honey-gold suit, stood up to greet me. Her office was small, but deceptively spacious. Pastel-framed Japanese watercolors depicting slender cherry trees and faceless women in kimonos decorated the wheat-colored walls. A pink-and-white-etched teapot with matching cups sat on a bamboo tray on the scarred credenza behind her. The top of her standard-issue steel desk held only a pale green blotter, a porcelain pencil cup painted with a red-legged crane, and her black telephone. She had achieved the roomy feel by eliminating everything but the necessities.

“Yes, are you Mrs. Thompson?”

“Mariko, please.” She shook my hand firmly, then gestured to the inexpensive metal office chair next to her desk. I hung my purse over the back and sat down.

“I’m Benni Harper,” I said. “A friend of Ramon and Todd’s.”

“Ah yes, Ramon.” A pained look glided across her face as she sat down in her high-back chair. “He is something, our Ramon.”

“He’s a good kid,” I said, somewhat defensively. He was like a brother to me and I couldn’t help feeling protective.

“Yes, he is.” She smiled ruefully. “I just hope you never have to teach a class with him in it. He’s one of those students who drives a teacher insane while at the same time making great conversational fodder for the teachers’ lounge. He’s actually quite bright, just not very focused.”

“He’s the youngest of seven children,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to give her that information. “His mother’s favorite.”

“I’m not surprised.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands across her lap. “So, tell me about this project.”

She watched me intently with intelligent black eyes while I explained what the Historical Society was doing, why I was involved and how I thought Ramon and Todd could help.

“I heard through the grapevine here that a section of the book was going to be on how the Japanese-Americans were treated during the war,” she commented. Her eyes continued to study me.

“What do you think about it?” I wondered if she were upset because I, a Caucasian, was asked to write that section.

“It’s a wonderful project for Ramon and Todd to be involved with and I say it’s about time someone told that story. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind being interviewed myself.”

“That would be great!” Then I hesitated, doing a quick calculation in my head. “No offense, but were you old enough to even remember anything about that time?”

She gave a laugh as light and airy as one of her Japanese prints. “No offense taken. Thank you for the compliment. Actually, I’m fifty-nine years old. I was seven when they sent us—my mother, my brother and me—to a relocation camp in Arizona. I remember it quite vividly.”

This was too good to pass up. I reached into my purse and pulled out the hand-held tape recorder the Historical Society had purchased for me. “Do you mind being recorded?”

“Not at all.” She glanced at her delicate gold watch. “I only have about fifteen minutes, though. Faculty meeting.” She wrinkled her nose.

“No fun, huh?”

“Have you ever been to one?”

“No.”

“Let me put it this way: I’d rather have root canal.”

“Well, hopefully my questions won’t be that painful.” I turned the tape recorder on, then pushed it across the desk toward her. “First, what do you remember about the day Pearl Harbor was bombed?”

She sat forward in the chair, her eyes focused on the machine. “It was Sunday morning. I was getting ready to go to the movies. I had been very good all week and my mother promised to take me. I can’t remember what we were going to see, but I remember being very excited.” She touched her silver-streaked pageboy and stared at the top of her desk as if she were seeing the words there. “My hair. I remember I couldn’t get my hair to go how I wanted. I was very upset about that.”

“How did you hear what happened? Did your mother tell you?”

“El Toro told us.”

“Who?”

She gave a crooked half-smile. “That was what everyone called the siren on top of the firehouse because it sounded like a cranky old bull. The minute it bellowed, my mother turned on the radio to see where the fire was and we heard the report about Pearl Harbor.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Well, we didn’t get to go to the movies. I was angry and acted quite bratty about it if I remember correctly. But I was only seven and the word ‘war’ had no real meaning for me. I only remember my mother sitting in her maple rocking chair, silently rocking back and forth, tears running down her face. When my father and brother came home from the grocery store my family owned, they sat up until late that night talking in Japanese about what would happen to us. A few times they sent me out of the room, when my mother got very upset and started crying out for her mother and father.” Mariko’s mouth sagged at the comers and her face seemed to age as she talked. I reached over and started to turn off the tape recorder.