Private Life (53 page)

off. It was eerie, and moment by moment, her feeling that she was waiting for Naoko and

her mother dissipated, and then she simply waited for something unknown that would tell

her why the tea was not drunk and the orange was not peeled. After about half an hour,

she got up and walked down the street and around the corner. The whole block was shut-the cleaners, the grocery, three restaurants, a doctor's office, a seamstress's shop. She had

turned three corners and gotten almost to the fourth when she came to a small

tobacconist, a shop only twice as wide as its own door. Inside, an old man sat behind a

counter covered with cigarette displays. She greeted him and asked if he spoke English.

At first, she had no idea whether he heard or understood her, so she said, "I am a friend of

Mrs. Kiku Kimura, from Vallejo." Immediately he began shaking his head. Then he got

up and went past her out the door. She was wondering what to do next when he came

back with a young man. This young man smiled and dipped his head. She said, "I'm

looking for my friend Mrs. Kimura. Maybe you remember that they came to--"

"I am so sorry tell you, ma'am, that your friends have been taken yesterday."

"Taken!"

"Yes, ma'am. All three. The boy, and then the lady, Miss Kimura, and then also

the old mother." He dipped his head again. The older man said something, and the young

man said, "My father hears they have been arrested."

She went to a telephone booth and called Pete. The phone rang ten, then eleven,

then twelve times, and she had begun to fear that he had been arrested, too, but he picked

it up. His voice was sleepy; he woke up when she told him about her morning. He said, "I

did hear about a man being arrested down in San Jose, but he was a prominent

businessman and a member of JACL. He'd bought a lot of land through his son, who was

born here, and has been agitating for repeal of the Alien Land Acts. I can see how the

local authorities down there would take this opportunity to silence that fellow, but--"

"Just to silence him?"

"And to get hold of his land. But I don't see how that operates in this case."

"But, Pete," she said, "Andrew denounced the Kimuras as spies. He sent letters to

Roosevelt himself--top-secret, of course--and to the Secretary of the Navy and the

Commandant of the Base. They were full of ridiculous claims, and he wrote them all out

by hand so no one could doubt that he had composed them. I made him send a retraction,

but, honestly, would anyone pay a bit of attention?"

Pete was silent. Aghast, she thought.

"He told me that Albert Einstein was coming to Vallejo repeatedly in order to

meet up with Japanese agents and develop a weapon of some kind that would wipe

Americans off the map and leave their natural resources to be developed by enslaved

Chinese workers."

Pete's laugh at this was welcome, but it was not a guffaw, more of a chuckle. She

told him about Agent Keene and Agent Greengrass. She said, "Agent Keene came by

ages ago, and no one ever investigated after that."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it was so crazy. Talking about it made him sound so ..." She paused. "I

thought if he wrote a retraction ..."

Pete gave a deep sigh.

She made herself say, "And he told them he thought you were a spy, too. He said

that I was the unwitting center of a 'nest of spies' who were trying to get to him. When

you weren't at Mr. Kimura's last gathering, right before he died, Andrew thought he saw

you carry away a box of papers, down the alley behind the shop, and then drive off with

them."

"Was he sure?"

"Is he ever not sure?"

"Is he ever not wrong?"

"He was right about the
Panay."

Pete said, "Well, go back up to the Kimuras' apartment and look around."

"I locked the door behind me so their things won't get stolen."

He said, "Darling, that was thoughtful of you, but I don't think that's going to do

any good. I don't know what all of this means in the long term, but ..."

"What does it mean in the short term?"

"Well, you know ..." His voice trailed off.

"I don't know."

There was a silence, then he cleared his throat. He said, "Roosevelt would

possibly not go as far as gassing them in the forests. He might stop at camps."

"Oh, Pete!" She was truly shocked, the way you are when a thing that has not

occurred to you is suddenly present.

He said: "All-out war started Sunday, darling. The Japanese attacked Malaya,

Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines, and Midway, as well as Pearl Harbor. If they

attacked Midway, that means they want to put a refueling base there so that they can get

bombers all the way to here. The Germans have taken Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and

Rostov. And I'm sure the Germans will declare war on the U.S. any day now." He fell

silent, then said, more thoughtfully, "But I don't think they would have come and picked

up Kiku and Naoko personally if Andrew's big arrow hadn't been pointing at them...." His

voice trailed off again, and then she ran out of nickels. When she had found some and got

back to the phone booth, Pete did not answer. The next day, she tried to call Agent

Greengrass, but he was long gone.

THE Tuesday after Pearl Harbor, Andrew decided to stay home. When he had

finished his breakfast, he asked for another cup of coffee, and when she put on her hat to

go to her knitting group, he said, "My dear, perhaps you would favor me by not going out

today."

"I want to go out. I have things to do."

"Perhaps you would write me a list of those things."

She said, "No, Andrew. I am not going to--" But when she stepped toward the

door, he was out of his seat in an instant, barring her way. She set her hat on the hall table

and went up to her room. In the afternoon, she tried again, coming down to the foot of the

stairs and saying, "Andrew, I am going to the store."

He came out of his office and said, "Let me get the leash for the dog. We can go

with you." And then he stalked down the street beside her, carrying her shopping bag and

leading Stella.

He did not come into her room, or even stand over her in the kitchen, but when

she tried the back door, she saw that it was locked with the key and the key was missing.

She didn't need to try the front door. Perhaps it was more disturbing not to see him. When

she was in her room, his heavy footsteps walked from the front of the house to the back,

and the back to the front, sometimes accompanied by the click of Stella's nails on the

floorboards. Sometimes she heard a few steps that then stopped, and she would find

herself concentrating on that sound, and when it would start up again. She could not read-even the books she had been saving for a free moment drew her in no way. Or she would

start a task, like cleaning out drawers, and quickly abandon it.

When she went downstairs, she would find him reading one of his newspapers. As

soon as he saw her, he would say, "My dear, you will be interested in this," and read

something aloud. When an American oil tanker was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine

off the coast somewhere (unidentified in the article), he said, "Here's something. What do

you think of that? They saw the shelling from the town." When American forces

surrendered Wake Island just before Christmas, he said, "You will want to read this, my

dear." He stood up and handed her the paper, jabbing at the article with his forefinger.

When Hong Kong surrendered, he said, "I suppose you will think it's for the best." When

Manila was bombed, he suggested, mildly, that perhaps she wouldn't believe that the

Japanese had "bombed mere civilians," but that, according to the newspapers, it was

"indeed true. Their objectives, I would say, aren't purely military. I'm sure even you will

have to agree." Her loyalties, she saw, were once more in question--her loyalties to him,

to the navy, the U.S. In his mind, what was the difference, after all?

After the first day, she hated to go out with him, but he insisted they shop together

and walk Stella together. He would not allow her to make or receive phone calls, but after

a few days, there weren't any. He was unfailingly, frighteningly polite. He read to her

about the arrival of the survivors from Wake Island as prisoners of war in Japan. He read

to her about the loss of Singapore, and then the Philippines. When she simply refused to

come out of her room, he brought her toast and cups of tea. One afternoon, he was sitting

just off the entryway, where she could see him from the top of the stairs. He was reading

a book and keeping his eye on the door. She descended the stairs and confronted him.

She said, "I want to go out, Andrew. If only for a walk. By myself."

"My considered opinion is that it isn't safe out there."

"What could happen?"

"There are those who believe that the Japanese are planning to execute a major

attack on all the shipping, airfields, cities, and oilfields along the coast of California,

which would result in the massive evacuation of millions of civilians to the east."

She felt a flutter in her throat at this idea, but she said, "Are there, really? What do

you think?"

"I admit that it would be an unprecedented tactical undertaking."

"If it's not safe out there, then it's not safe in here."

He looked up at her. "But why go out, is my feeling. We would only use up more

energy and require more calories to sustain ourselves."

"I'm going out."

"Well, I'm sure Stella would like a walk as well. Perhaps once or twice around the

block would do us all some good."

"You are keeping me captive!"

"I don't think of it like that, my dear." He put down his book, got up, reached for

his coat. She saw that he was obdurate in a way only he could be, in the way he had

always been--like something large and insensate, a statue of himself. She went back

upstairs.

She sat down on her bed and looked out the window, over the top of the manytrunked black-walnut tree in the side yard. The long dull-green leaves were well out, and

the dangling ropes of buds were beginning to form. Margaret knew that if she stood up

and looked down at the beds, she would see daffodils, but daffodils would remind her

how long she had let him keep her here.

The terrifying thing, once again, was how plausible everything he said was.

Hadn't this always been true--the very first time she met him, on that bicycle of Dora's, he

had talked about telephones and she had believed him. And then, what was it, levees

breaking or something on the Mississippi below St. Louis, and then double stars, and then

his half-mad and permanently bitter former student and all the other resentful colleagues

and unrelenting enemies, and then, of course, the universe itself, with its pillars of

gravity, or was that iron cables? And vast spaces that he spoke about in a warm tone of

voice, as if those spaces belonged to him above all other men. She had seen marriages

from the outside, and even, a little, from the inside--it was utterly routine for women to

talk about other women's marriages as Lavinia had talked about the Bells'--Mr. Bell

staying out of the house as much as he could, and Mrs. Bell doing what she pleased, and

everyone knew he thought she was a fool. Beatrice had gotten married and entered upon

the same dissatisfied but workable course, and no one expected marriage to be anything

different. All sorts of commonplaces covered it--"live and let live," "make the best of

things," "it could be worse," "sauce for the goose." The ladies in her knitting group had

dispatched one another's marriages every week or so for almost forty years.

Nor did they seem intimidated by Andrew. Even when they were not playing

poker with him, they asked him questions and joked a bit and said goodbye and forgot

about him. No doubt in her absence they dealt out a set of commonplaces about him, too-"thinks awfully well of himself," "too big for his britches," "barking mad." Even

thinking of these bits of phrase was reassuring in its way.

But no. Marriage to Andrew was not that small. She could not make it small--not

by parsing it out in daily tasks or making pleasant conversation or doing as she was told.

He wanted something from her that all of these activities did not give him. Right then,

she could feel what he wanted emanating from the floor below, mushrooming up the

staircase, through floor vents, under the door--he wanted agreement, belief, even,

possibly, worship. And he wanted that worship to be large and surrounding, something

that he could feel, not the mere something that she, or anyone, could give. She had agreed

with him more often than not over the years, hadn't she, and as soon as she agreed, he

looked past her for a grander and more satisfying embrace. The hugeness of his ideas

made her small, and then the smallness of her agreement goaded him to seek more. She

enlarged in his mind only when she didn't agree with him--then he set himself to conquer

her, and overwhelm her disbelief.

And yet--she lay down--his own developing smallness was what preoccupied him,

wasn't it? He had been the most brilliant boy in their town, the best student at the

university, that genius who changed the nature of the universe, that big fellow who