Radiance (13 page)

Not far from where they were standing, the British had marched after landing in Bridgeport. Bertha had told her this the day they lunched at Voisin. The British had crossed this very property, wearing their curious spats and red jackets, bayonets in hand, torching barns, setting fire to fields. Brave deeds of independence had been enacted here—children bundled and carried to safety, homes defended from upper windows. One felt that goodness and freedom, albeit of a muted, civilized sort, had been victorious here, and that now the Atchitys were reaping the harvest.

Clumps of Virginia bluebells had seeded themselves around the bases of the birch trees, looking woodsy and natural. Why had nobody tried such a thing in Riverside Meadows? Was it that nobody knew how? Or would such an idea have seemed outlandish and showy in their little suburb, as though whoever did it intended to make a spectacle of their lawn. Of themselves.

Bertha came to the door, looking large-boned and encouraging. She was a force to be reckoned with, but not in the way that Irene was. Bertha was not a career woman. Instead, she poured her energy into charitable activities and was often written up in the newspaper’s society pages. She lunched regularly at the Colony Club, with her middle-aged society set.

“Look who’s here,” Bertha called out as they entered the living room. Various people that Daisy recognized from the
Sunday Review
smiled and came to speak to them.

Dean’s two teenaged girls, Stacey and Debbie, had come downstairs. They stood in the doorway looking faintly aggressive, their lips covered in coral lipstick. One wore a cheerleading skirt and a sweater with a big L appliquéd over her breasts. The other, a couple of years older, wore a pair of jeans and an
untucked blouse. That was the way teenagers dressed these days, before they headed out to cheerlead, or just to neck with their boyfriends in parked cars.

Bertha took Keiko by the arm. “And now, my dear, you must—absolutely must—come say hello to someone special.”

Keiko said something about being glad to visit such a nice home.

“I’m sure you’re welcome wherever you go,” Bertha smiled brightly at the girl. “This is a project of friendship, isn’t it?”

At that moment Irene emerged from the kitchen, a martini in her hand, and gestured for Daisy to follow her. They went upstairs into a parody of a girl’s bedroom: frilled coverlet, daisies painted on the dresser, a baby-pink vanity against the wall. Irene offered Daisy a cigarette and sat heavily on the bed. “So,” she said. “Anything further?”

“No,” Daisy said abruptly, surprising herself. “I said before. It’s not easy.”

“Don’t I know it.” Irene blew smoke into the pretty room. “Quite frankly, nothing’s come out the way I thought it would. I told Carney about our conversation—your observations—”

“Oh.” Daisy felt her heart sink.

Irene looked at her sharply. “You knew I intended to tell Raymond.”

“I suppose I did.”

“Well, don’t look so surprised then. Anyway, Raymond says that if you can’t persuade her to speak, he’ll have to have a session with her himself, after the operation. But I hate the thought of that.”

Daisy nodded. Thinking of Walter.

“I’d infinitely prefer it if you could get her talking. You have depths I don’t have. You know that, Daisy. You always did.”

A compliment. Daisy felt the pleasure of it.

Irene walked to the window. “Raymond bought her a kimono—did she show you? No, I suppose she wouldn’t. A silky
thing, from Saks. A kimono from Saks, for Christ sakes!” She stared out at the woods, the perfect vista of trees in new leaf, the brook hidden in the middle distance. Then she leaned her head against the frame. “He never bought me anything from Saks, not even at the beginning.”

Cool, beautiful Irene. A dusting of powder from her forehead had come away on the window frame. Daisy went to her and put her arms around her, while Irene stood ramrod straight, hardly accepting the embrace.

“Next time she enters the hospital, he’s going to sit with her, make her talk. He told me so. They all want him to do it—the folks at the AEC and the ABCC—all the men with their initials. So there’s really nothing I can do, is there? Except that I feel, if someone else got her talking first, perhaps he wouldn’t need to push and pry so much. Anyway, I’ve taken matters into my own hands. I’ve invited a reporter from the
Times
here tonight. He’s probably talking to her right now—we should go see.”

Irene turned from Daisy, firm but fragile.

Downstairs, the living room was full. And there Keiko was, with Bertha, being introduced to Peter Hoaring, a thin, sharp-faced reporter from the
New York Times.
Daisy saw him shake Keiko’s limp hand, saw her hooded, silent, covert expression. What was Peter Hoaring saying? He had compassionate dark eyes, but the rest of his gaunt face reminded Daisy of a weasel. He would start with pleasantries, then move ahead in no time flat. Yes, he had put down his drink on the coffee table and was feeling in his jacket pocket for his notebook. Daisy edged towards them. She couldn’t see Keiko’s face, it was blocked by a small knot of women standing in the centre of the room, but she imagined it held its look of removed interest, almost haughtiness. Now Peter Hoaring leaned forward. What was his question? Daisy couldn’t make it out, but it had troubled
Keiko: she was gazing away from him, across the top of the grand piano, at a small collection of Meissenware potpourri dishes. Keiko eyed a tiny salt dish painted with gold and purple pansies.

“A few words, if you might.” Edging closer, Daisy at last could make this out. “About those devastating moments after the bomb dropped.” Hoaring flipped open his notebook.

Keiko was cornered. They had her at last. She kept her eyes on the salt dish, the slender shaft of its minuscule silver spoon, perhaps gathering courage, and Daisy recognized the blank look on her face, as though her true self had rushed for cover, hidden in the bushes.

“One thing about those moments,” Peter Hoaring said. “One memory.”

From the bevy of women she heard the words
neutron bomb,
clear as a bell, and then Keiko’s voice, so recognizable for its lack of depth.

“A single memory?”

“One.”

“I have many.”

“One will do.”

A pause. Daisy stepped around the women. Now she could see the two of them perfectly: Keiko staring at the salt dish, Peter Hoaring holding his pad, waiting.

“When I think back to Hiroshima, I think of one thing.”

Ah, now they were getting somewhere. Hoaring jotted eagerly, in shorthand. “Tell me what that one thing is.”

“I think of a place my grandfather showed me.”

“Gone forever?” He wrote this.

“The temple of Miyajima. It sits in the Inland Sea. It is considered to be one of the seven wonders of Japan.”

“And how far from the epicentre of the bomb was it?”

“Quite far.”

“And was it utterly destroyed.”

“No.”

There was a pause.

“Then why do you think of it?”

“It is considered very beautiful. Someday you may want to see it. There are many wild deer there. Pilgrims travel from all over Japan to view the famous red gate that stands in the water.”

Peter Hoaring held his pencil between two fingers, then drummed it against his pad. Daisy felt him wanting to scream,
But what about the devastation?

“Priests built the shrine on wooden docks that rise and sink with the tide.” Now Keiko’s eyes met Daisy’s. Oh, what was there? The faintest wisp of a smile, as if confiding,
This is what I do. Now you know.

Also something equally clear.

I cannot do this forever.

Hoaring would have kept at her, but Daisy obeyed her cue as neatly as if this were a double act. “Well, Keiko,” she said brightly, stepping forward and taking her arm. “You’re telling Mr. Hoaring about your home—I’m sure he’s appreciative. But now I’m afraid you’re desperately needed in the kitchen.” Luck was with them, because Bertha Atchity stood up on the hearth and called for everyone’s attention. She was about to serve cake, so everyone must gather.

Now you’ve seen.

That was what Keiko’s eyes had said. Yet walking down the hall there was nothing complicit, no buzz of mutual recognition. Keiko’s arm, as always, felt singularly limp.

In the large kitchen Bertha served the shortcake, ample slices topped with whipped cream. “No more Hiroshimas,” she called out, licking whipped cream from her thumb.

No more Hiroshimas.

The cry was picked up by Bertha’s daughter Stacey, and by one or two of the
Sunday Review
interns and then let drop. It was simply too difficult to eat strawberry shortcake and chant an anti-atomic slogan at the same time.

K
EIKO HAD NOW BEEN
with Daisy and Walter for more than a month, and so far there hadn’t been a peep from the neighbourhood women: Joan Palmer, or the terrible, shallow Evelyn Lithgow, or even from Fran Warburgh next door. They seemed to have retracted their claws and to be waiting, perhaps in aghast silence, perhaps plotting an attack. “I worry about it,” Daisy said to Walter. “They said they had informed the Residents’ Committee.”

“Maybe we should have a party. A neighbourhood get-together.”

“Nobody would come.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

They were happy, Keiko and Walter. They had found a routine where they listened to the Jack Benny show after supper, then the Lux Radio Theatre. Keiko’s face relaxed, and when Walter spoke to her she smiled shyly, or laughed. This made Daisy feel restless. She cleared dishes, clattered them into the sink, breaking the china stem of her tomato-shaped relish dish. She cursed out loud at this—rare for her—but neither Keiko nor Walter heard her. They sat with soft smiles of identical
appreciation on their faces, listening to Gracie Allen, who was guest-starring on the show.

“Her voice is squeaky,” Keiko ventured.

“You can say that again.”

Daisy watched for her neighbours, and though she didn’t see them, she felt waves of hatred emanating from their silent houses. It was true that the Project wasn’t going as she had hoped, but they didn’t know that. It was just like Joan and the others to be hating her for having tried to do something halfway decent in this blasted heath of a suburb.

She did feel Ed coming and going—ostentatiously slamming his car door, glowering at her window, while his children dutifully chanted
Jap, Jap, Jap
during their games of war.
Jap
and
Kraut
were very much the words of ditch play on Saturdays on Linden Street. But perhaps this was not because of Keiko. Perhaps her presence hadn’t even pierced the consciousness of the children. It was difficult to say. Since her miscarriages, Daisy had found children’s minds almost impossible to decipher.

But then something did happen that was upsetting.

It began, late one afternoon, with a sound: a scraping of metal on stone, clear and hard, amplified by the cool, spring air. It seemed to emanate from the kitchen walls, that cherry-printed wallpaper, that was how loud it was, but then Daisy realized it was coming from outside. She stepped onto the back porch. Ed righted himself from his hunched position and wiped his brow on a red hankie. She could see his face over the fence. His body was reflected in the greenhouse, but even still she couldn’t see what he was doing. He saw her standing on the porch, but let his glance slide past her, as though his real interest was in her garbage cans. Then he bent again to his task.

When Walter came home, an hour and a half later, Ed was still out there. The scraping of metal had given way to a gentle velvety
sound, as dirt was piled on dirt. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” Daisy whispered.

Walter put his hand in his suit pocket, found his tobacco and papers and began to roll himself a cigarette. Then he thrust open the back door. “Ed!” he called out.

Ed stood up. In the dusk his face looked purple. A thin coat of dirt clung to the sweat of his cheeks.

In his easy, loose-hipped way, as though he had all the time in the world, Walter walked down the steps and crossed the lawn to the fence. “What’s up there, neighbour?” he said.

Ed seemed to be wiping his hands on his jeans. He must have reached into his pocket, because a moment later he held out a pamphlet. “Doing my civic duty.”

Walter took the pamphlet. “You can survive,” he read out loud. He flipped it over, read the back, then returned it to Ed. “Lots of digging to do yet?”

“Kids’ll help.”

“Those
kids?” Walter pointed at the Warburghs’ house. Junie had come onto the back porch, a tiny violin in her hands. “Jimmy Jr. busted one of my strings,” she said. “I’m gonna slap him.”

“Don’t you slap your brother.” That was Fran’s listless voice from inside the house.

Ed laughed. “Yeah,” he said, wiping his brow. “Those ones.” He took the papers and tobacco from Walter and rolled himself a cigarette. They smoked together, then Ed flicked his butt into the hole.

“Not bad for a few hours’ work,” Walter said.

“It’ll take weeks.”

By the time Walter came back in, the smell of earth clung to his suit. Keiko was in the kitchen, and so Daisy had to follow Walter into the bedroom to get the news.

“Regulation bomb shelter.”

“Oh, that’s just like Ed. He’s doing it to hurt us. To get at Keiko.”

Walter shrugged.

“He thinks I put on airs—I know he does. He said as much to Fran.”

Walter laughed. “Now that’s something to take seriously.” He gave her a little kiss on the cheek—a dry hit-or-miss affair, but better than nothing.

T
HERE WERE ONLY THREE MORE DAYS
before Keiko was to return to the hospital. Walter had caught the train to work. Keiko and Daisy were alone for the day.

“Why do you call Mr. Lawrence, Walter, but me Mrs. Lawrence?” Daisy said.

A pause. The girl was plainly startled.

“I am very sorry if I have offended you, Mrs. Lawrence. He asked me to call him by that name, and so I did.”

“So did I!”

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Lawrence. I’ll stop.”