A Girl Like You (36 page)
Tonight they are going to a hospital benefit. Just the thought of it brings on a sigh. She knows she will feel as nothing against Joseph’s people, their sureness, their smart show of boredom.
When Joseph has had enough of it he will send her home in a cab, go on to indulge in the life he keeps secret. She doesn’t mind, she tires long before him and would prefer to read anyway. He is always there when she wakes, though, making—without vodka, he says—his morning Bloody Mary, her tea.
“You’re a man for the moon hours,” she tells him, and he laughs.
Before he showers she can smell the night on him, kerosene, she thinks, and something sharp, it’s not unpleasant.
“Why kerosene?” she asks.
“You imagine it,” he says, not wanting to tell her it’s the lamp oil from Li’s place, where he buys his share of bliss.
He wants her approval, can’t imagine that he would get it if he were to tell her the truth of his life. Never mind his need of opium, what would she make of his lovers, those uptown boys who claim to be the sons of Russian princes, and the less salubrious breed who strut between Seventh and Hudson dressed up in boots and Stetsons?
But she has guessed Joseph’s secret. He is living a lie, and the damage of it is always there between them. It’s not so much that he looks at men when he is out with her, more that he never notices women, unless to observe how badly they are dressed, how overperfumed.
“Just spray in front of you, dear girl,” he advises. “Then walk into the mist. It’s vulgar to overscent.”
Whenever she thinks of the time after the riot at Manzanar,
those boys kissing at their barrack door, she knows that Joseph is like them. She had thought that what she had seen was the result of some strange after-riot electricity in the air. But of course it hadn’t been that, it’s something more, something she can’t get a handle on. It makes her feel ignorant, let down by her years of reading. Where had she missed it in those novels that seemed to leave out nothing of life? Had she failed to see a coded message in those lyrical sentences that more worldly people would have been aware of ? She is irritated with Joseph. Why didn’t he tell her? She didn’t have him down for a cheat. She doesn’t know if she approves or not, but Joseph is still Joseph, after all, whatever his needs.
Alone in her marbled bathroom, she spies the shockingly expensive bottle of Patou’s Joy perfume on the beveled-glass shelf. Its luscious tones call to mind a grown-up sophistication that is not hers. The scent, which she doesn’t like, which doesn’t suit her, is the real thing—she’s the phony.
“You’re going to love this perfume,” Joseph had said, handing her the exquisite crystal bottle. “It will be your signature fragrance. It’s very you.”
“Very me?”
“Mmm, smoky and not too sweet. It doesn’t smell like makeup as most of them do. You know that powdery Max Factor scent.”
She didn’t know. Often doesn’t know what Joseph is talking about.
She catches a glimpse of herself in the bathroom’s mirrored wall and pauses, sponge in midair. With her hair wet, and makeup-free, she might still be the girl from Angelina. She throws the sponge at her reflection and watches a soapy trail sneak down the mirror.
“Where have you been?” she asks quietly, and answers herself: “In a coma, perhaps.”
It’s hard to hurt a friend, but he must be told that she can’t marry him. If she marries at all, she knows now that it must be for love.
And she will tell him that she doesn’t mind about that thing he wants to keep from her, the thing she doesn’t have a name for. She is glad not to be ignorant about it anymore. And after when she leaves the soft bed of his life they can still be friends. More equal friends. She can’t take from him anymore. She must start again, do better.
She will be forgotten soon enough, she imagines, even though she and Joseph have become quite the beautiful couple. Her picture appears so often in
Harper’s Bazaar
that she can’t anymore walk Fifth Avenue without being recognized.
“You never take a bad photograph,” Joseph tells her when they relive their social life through the magazine’s society pages.
And there in the pictures is the polished woman who is her but not her, a manicured, gleaming woman with the light capturing her just so. The girl from the camp is lost, the angry girl in her mother’s hand-me-down jacket and twice-heeled shoes. Where’s the sense in her life now? It’s a film, a play, an ongoing dream.
The articles never mention the Japanese in her. Well, who could tell? Who could be sure? Those eyes, the elegantly long neck, the fine skin, all surely good enough indications of breeding. And nobody wants to stir up the bitterness, after all. This is New York, the victorious capital of the world, where nothing shocks, where its “
pulled-up-stakes
” minorities must go on believing in its endless possibilities. There should be no horizons, no barriers to anything in this earthly paradise.
She can’t help wondering if Lily, trawling through her hand-me-down magazines, sees and recognizes her. She hopes so, not so much for revenge, more that she doesn’t want Lily remembering her as a victim. If Lily is capable of it, she doesn’t want her pity.
She has stayed too long in the bath; the water has cooled to the
wrong side of comfort, and the skin on her fingers has wrinkled. Shivering a little, she examines herself in the mirror, looking to find in her face, her body, what men might see. All she sees, though, is a girl watching. She looks at her nakedness and it is nothing to her, as it is to Joseph, as it was in the end to Haru.
In her wardrobe, shimmering like jewels, hang the evening dresses from Molyneux and Coco Chanel, lavender silk, gold satin, and her favorite, the Dior midnight-blue velvet that she will wear tonight to the hospital benefit.
There are gloves and little beaded evening bags, lace handkerchiefs, nylons so fine they would seem invisible when held to the light if it hadn’t been for their seams. It’s odd, but she’s looking forward to living without such luxuries; such beautiful things are a responsibility. She can’t remember, though, where the clothes she brought with her have gone. It’s unsettling.
You will be fine, my girl
, Tamura’s voice comes to her, as though it is there still in the ether. She will always be able to hear Tamura’s voice.
She thinks of Cora’s little knitting-wool hair bow and everything in her hurts.
There’s something very sweet about Joseph when he gets home. He has brought her flowers, a cloud of dark anemones with the white ones taken out so that their garnet colors put her in mind of old tapestries.
“Don’t know why they put those white ones in,” he says. “White flowers only go with white flowers.”
She is amused by him caring about such things, and touched that he takes such care when choosing her something as simple as a bunch of flowers. For a moment she wavers, wondering if she is doing the right thing in leaving Joseph. Being rich doesn’t make his need of her any less, and will she ever do better than him, ever be safer than she is with him? Maybe he is right to question whether true love exists. Tamura had despaired of her never taking the sensible path. Perhaps for the first time she should take it now?
Two hours later, as the band at the hospital benefit plays “Rum and Coca-Cola,” she is in a different frame of mind. Among Joseph’s smart friends, those sure-of-themselves bankers and their urbane wives, the familiar feeling of loneliness has overtaken her. It’s not so much that Joseph’s friends exclude her, more that they judge her on the superficial level of her Japaneseness. She is
Joseph’s exotic girlfriend, not one of them but someone who adds color to their numbers. She will never be an intimate among them, never be at ease with them. She suspects that Joseph has chosen her for the same reason. That exotic thing always in the mix. It comes to her that the so-called safe path is not for her; that it is quite likely a life with Joseph may be neither safe nor sensible.
And Joseph tonight is adding to her disenchantment. There’s something wrong with him, she can tell. His movements have speeded up and he seems distracted, not quite connected to what’s going on around him. He has left her twice at their table, heading off somewhere with mumbled excuses as if he is late for an urgent appointment. She is used to his mood shifts, but it is uncomfortable being left at the table to charm in his place.
“Come and dance with me,” she says, catching sight of him lurking behind a pillar.
“Sure,” he says, slurring the word a little. “Sure.”
He is clumsy on the floor, not like Joseph at all, who is usually precise in his steps, easy to follow. Exposed out there under the bouncing light of the revolving mirror ball, she wishes she hadn’t asked him to dance with her, wishes that she hadn’t come this evening, pretending that this is her life, that she is at home here among this other tribe.
And suddenly Joseph is spinning her and she is falling, twisting her ankle, breaking the heel of her shoe, and Joseph is on the floor beside her, smiling a lopsided smile, his eyes looking at but not seeing her. What is the matter with him?
“Let me help.” The voice is deep, not quite baritone. “Give me your arm, lean on me. It will hurt to put weight on that foot.”
She lets him take her weight as she limps back to their table.
“I’m Abe Robinson, by the way. I’m a doctor.”
“I won’t be long, dear girl,” Joseph mumbles, and rolls his way to the bathroom.
Abe Robinson has her foot in his hands, putting pressure where it hurts, wincing when she does at the pain of it.
“Not broken,” he assures her. “But a sprain can hurt worse, I know.”
“Thank you.” A familiar feeling runs through her, the same one she experienced when she first caught sight of Haru.
“No more dancing for a while.” He says with a smile.
“Shame,” she says, returning the smile, attempting lightness. “Will you have a drink with us?” It’s foolish, but she doesn’t want him to go.
“Thank you, but I’m with someone.” He points across the room to where a girl, a frowning girl in a shiny dress, is looking toward them.
“Oh, of course, you must go.”
“It would be better not to drink anymore, you’re going to need a hefty dose of painkillers for a couple of days.” He fumbles in his pocket for a pen, picks up a napkin, and hands both to her. “I can call on you tomorrow, if you like. Check your ankle.”
She writes the address down, hands it to him, and feels a pang as he walks back toward the waiting girl. Stupid, she tells herself. A few minutes in his presence and she hardly knows herself. It must be the champagne, it always puts her in a silly mood.
Joseph returns just as Abe Robinson turns and says, “Ice, lots of it. And keep the leg up.”
“How high?”
“Oh, above your heart if you can.”
Four months on, and Joseph is still blaming himself. If he hadn’t been so high that night at the hospital benefit, Satomi never
would have met Abe Robinson, and she wouldn’t be leaving him now. He thinks of it as leaving him, as though he is the lover in this threesome, although she has been dating Abe from the first moment they met.
“So I’m going to lose out to Mr. America,” he says.
“Oh, Joseph, you and I, we’re better off as friends,” she says consolingly.
“Ouch.” He slaps his hand to his chest as though she has cracked open his heart.
“It’s true, Joseph, you know it is.” She’s sad for him, but there’s nothing to be done about it.
“Damn that dance,” Joseph says brightly. “That damn dance.”
He can hardly remember the dance that brought Abe Robinson into her life, except that it had a rumba sort of beat about it. But whatever the stupid rhythm had been, he should have caught her. Would have, if it hadn’t been for the snort he’d taken discreetly behind a pillar in the moment before Satomi found him and pulled him onto the dance floor.
“All my stupid fault,” he says now. “That’s the trouble with the good stuff, you never know if it will take you mellow or hard.”
“I’m glad of it, Joseph.”
She is more than glad, despite the fact that she has wavered over the months, that she still has her doubts about her and Abe. The love between them feels equal and she can’t get used to it. Strange, she thinks, that it should be so hard to trust in love. She had imagined when love came it would drown doubt, but perhaps doubt is the ingredient in the mix between men and women that keeps the love alive. Where there is light there must be shadows too.
But doubts aside, she feels blessed, blessed to have slipped, to have broken the heel of her beautiful shoe, to have turned her ankle.
Abe had felt the current between them on that first night too. Such a beautiful patient, flushed cheeks, strands of dark hair escaping from their burnished knot, the grace of her. He took it all in and knew he was setting his sights high.
Earlier that evening he had watched her from across the floor until something in him had faltered so that he had to look away to steady himself. He had been struck by the odd couple that she and Joseph made. The man appeared obsessively neat, hair tamed, his smooth skin so closely shaved as to make you wonder if he had a beard at all. And the tux so perfectly cut it might have been carved on him. Not the sort, he thought with distaste, to have gone for girls.
“She’s in all the magazines,” his girlfriend Corrine said sharply, following his gaze. “She’s got it all, the looks and the money.”
“His money?”
“I guess. He’s the Rodman heir.”
“They’re married?”
“Engaged, perhaps. Not sure.”
She didn’t project socialite, he thought. Rather she looked lost, out of place. He wanted to know her, to save her, he thought, at the same time as telling himself that was a ridiculous idea. He couldn’t shake the thought, though. Not for the first time he felt false being with Corrine. Something must be done about that. To think that he nearly hadn’t come. That he had dreaded it. Corrine had been stupidly excited at him winning the tickets in the hospital raffle, wouldn’t hear of him giving them away.
“It’ll be stiff, formal. I hate that kinda thing,” he had said, trying to talk her out of it. “We won’t know anyone.”