Radiance (9 page)

Daisy felt obscurely disappointed, but all she said was that the girl must need to rest.

“But, Daisy, she’s rested since she arrived. And we need the press’s interest: we can’t fundraise without them. And without money, we can’t bring more A-bomb victims here for surgery. I know it sounds harsh, but Keiko has an obligation.”

“Perhaps Dean wants her to settle in, which might be wise—”

“Of course, it’s wise. Dean’s always wise, but no amount of wisdom is going to stop the hydrogen bomb. Wisdom only goes so far.” Irene opened the trunk of Dean’s Oldsmobile.

“What do we need then?” Daisy had never heard wisdom held in such low regard.

Irene took out two pieces of luggage, pearly grey with white stitchwork and solid leather handles, and set them on the ground. Daisy gathered up the rest—a leather carry case, also pearly grey, and two large hat boxes. “Seventy per cent of Americans oppose the H-bomb,” Irene said. “You know that.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Keiko could make that number rise to eighty per cent. Or ninety. She could speak nationally, internationally even. We don’t need wisdom, Daisy, we need a political fire.” Irene closed the trunk with her elbow and they made their way back up the walk.

“I’m sure she’ll tell her story,” Daisy said. “She’ll do it when it’s time.”

Irene stopped and looked at her friend shrewdly for a second, then she put the bags down on the grass. “Daisy,” she said softly, “encourage her to speak.”

“I hardly know her.”

“That will change. She’s going to like you. Everyone does.”

Daisy muttered that she hoped so, but she was remembering the look Keiko had given her at Irene’s party.

“You will speak to her?”

“What would I say?” Daisy whispered.

“Encourage her to talk about herself. Draw her out. You’re a wonderful listener, that’s one of your skills.”

Daisy felt a softening inside her. At Sacred Heart she had always volunteered to take the blackboard brushes outside and bat them against the wall. She liked to help.

“Let her know—gently, in your way—that she has an obligation.”

“To the Project?”

“Even to the world, if you like. As soon as she’s had that scar removed, we’ll need to start planning the tour. It will be big news—especially with Bertrand Russell and Albert Schweitzer and Dean Atchity all pushing for a test ban too. But the heart of it must be Keiko.”

“And supposing she won’t.”

Irene smiled at Daisy, then leaned across and kissed her cheek. “She’ll tell you her story. You’re the sort of person everyone talks to. Now let’s go inside, shall we? They’ll wonder what’s holding us up.”

Their conversation was over. Irene carried the two suitcases to the front door. Daisy, equally laden, came up the stairs behind her. “What was the question that frightened her?” she asked before Irene could open the door. “At the press conference, I mean.”

Irene stopped and turned, a small frozen smile on her lips.

“The last question? It had to do with her mother. Why her mother died and she didn’t. You see, Keiko had confessed to Dr. Carney in Hiroshima that she told a fib to her mother on the day of the bombing, saying she was sick and couldn’t go to school. It seems that Keiko’s lie may have saved her—her classmates were doing civilian work close to the centre of the explosion. I said as much to a journalist or two, and so a reporter asked a question about it. It’s terrible, I know, but you can’t blame the reporters for asking. It’s what they do.”

They went inside and set the luggage down. In the kitchen, Dean was ready to go. As he made his goodbyes, he took Daisy’s hand in both of his, shaking it earnestly. He was leaving Keiko in competent hands, he said, and Daisy did feel competent under his benevolent gaze.

Then at last, with a kiss on both cheeks from Irene (Daisy could smell her powdery Eau de Joy), the two went down the path, slammed the doors of Dean’s Oldsmobile, negotiated a wide, three-point turn and drove away down Linden Street.

T
HERE WERE TO BE MANY SURPRISES
as Keiko settled into the routines of Riverside Meadows, but the largest had to do with Walter. Daisy loved him, and she wanted him to be the man that she loved, but sometimes she felt as though their marriage took an act of will, like sucking in her stomach. She had gone into it admiring Walter so much. He had seemed like a puzzle she couldn’t figure out; a foreigner who always sounds mysterious because one doesn’t know the language. But now
that she could decipher the words and phrases, they often seemed to hold less than she had imagined, not more—to be ideas that anybody might have had.

When Keiko moved in, Daisy didn’t know what to expect: Walter might be charming, or he might be brutal—taking out his anger about the Project on Keiko herself, revealing a pettiness that sealed him, once and for all, into a diminished category in Daisy’s head. It was a test, and it was only looking back, after the Project was over, that Daisy realized that she might have set it up on purpose, that cagey dark side of hers crafting a situation that would force both of them to be their true selves.

The first night she bustled around the kitchen, preparing fried chicken and biscuit dough. She had made a jellied Waldorf salad the day before, a recipe she had never tried, and there was chocolate cake for dessert. Daisy felt watched, though not by Keiko (at Daisy’s suggestion she had retired to the bathroom to have a long soak in the tub), but by Irene and Dean, and the whole Hiroshima Project committee. To create a congenial atmosphere, that oft-maligned yet coveted atmosphere of the American suburb, was Daisy’s job. She wanted to do it impeccably. She wanted it sung from the rooftops:
Daisy Lawrence is a wonderful hostess.

She dredged the chicken, then poured a cup of oil into the electric fry pan. That moment stuck in her head for days afterwards, covering the white, goosebumped chicken skin in flour, tiny hairs sticking up, human almost. There were layers of feeling in that one moment. She was worried that her efforts wouldn’t pay off, and also that something about their house wasn’t right, had never been right, and that Keiko would sense this. But sense what? A darkness at the edge of Daisy’s vision, a feeling in her stomach. Then there were more simple feelings: she wanted Keiko to be happy—but would she be? Could she
be? She was also surprised that Keiko was taking such a long bath, and now—could this be possible?—following it with a shower. She would use up the hot water, and Daisy would need to boil water for the dishes. Somehow, tactfully, Daisy would have to let her know that the hot water was limited.

She wished that the committee had given her a primer on Japanese habits. She had heard that long baths were the custom of the people: a clean society, that was what one heard, never wearing their shoes in the house, bathing every day. Because of their water problems, and old habits learned in their youth, Walter and Daisy bathed three times a week and felt that to be sufficient. Growing up on Puget Sound, Walter had bathed once a week in a tub in the kitchen, his mother heating pots of water on the wood-burning stove.

Daisy stood looking out the kitchen window at Ed’s greenhouse. The window was quickly steaming up, the chicken spattering and frying, the biscuits sat in buttery dollops on a cookie tray, ready for baking. In another few minutes, Keiko came out of the bathroom dressed for supper. She had taken care, looking formal and uncomfortable in a burgundy cotton dress with a white bolero jacket overtop. Her skirt had a crinoline under it, and it rustled as she moved.

“Refreshed?”

“Yes, Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Oh, don’t call me Mrs. Lawrence—it makes me feel so old. Daisy is fine.”

Keiko nodded. Her scar was brightly washed, the ridges shining. Her voice when she spoke was curiously without undertones. It had no burrs or thorns in it, nothing to catch you. “You are very kind,” she said.

“Come. Let’s make you comfortable until Walter gets home. He won’t be long—then we’ll have a
lovely
dinner.” Oh,
she sounded like the advertisement, often played on the radio, for Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice. We’ll have a
lovely
dinner.

She gestured for Keiko to sit at the kitchen table.

“May I help prepare the dinner?”

But there was nothing left to do except slide the biscuit tray into the oven. Daisy wished she had had the foresight to leave more undone, so that they could have worked industriously together. Nothing to do. Daisy checked the chicken, then turned to see the girl watching her, freakishly quiet, scrubbed, well dressed. How long had they been alone together? A minute. If they were to spend six months together, would each minute be this agonizing?

Daisy took a bunch of carrots from the refrigerator, cut away the tops and rinsed them under water.

“Let’s prepare these together.”

Keiko sat in one chair, Daisy in the other, a bowl between them, and they peeled the carrots. Keiko had not seen this kind of peeler, but Daisy showed her how it was done and she mastered it immediately, letting the translucent orange shavings fall into the blue bowl. There now. That wasn’t so bad—each of them caught in their task, doing something with their hands. Keiko’s fingers were slender with moonlike nails, the cuticles exposed. No hangnails. She obviously took care of them. Daisy could hear the ticking of the clock stove; the ticking of the linoleum floor, which contracted after the sun went down, a series of hurried clicks, like a voice tsk-tsking. The peeled carrots glowed naked under the fluorescent light.
Draw her out. That’s your skill,
that was what Irene had said. If only she could see them now, bathed in such awkwardness, such silence. It occurred to Daisy that if she had had children, she would have known what to do. She had felt awkward in just this way with the frightful twins, Junie and Jimmy Warburgh, the time that Fran had left them in Daisy’s care. The girl had curled up beneath the kitchen table and refused to come out,
saying something about being a bear, while Jimmy Jr. had sat out on the front step picking a scab, wiping blood on his face, then had run inside screaming that he’d been hit by a car. Even the Warburghs’ baby, Patti, seemed to hate Daisy: she never shushed or calmed in her arms, but squirmed and writhed as though about to eject a massive amount of spit-up. She was a terrible baby for spitting up, always had a spatter of yellow stuff on her bib.

Daisy glanced at the clock.

Walter would be back on the
6
:
06
train—another ten minutes. But filling that time felt like its own form of hell, this particular circle being saved for charitable American women who didn’t have the knack of making their foreign guests comfortable. Daisy drew a deep breath and began to speak, a patter of goodwill.
I do hope you’ll like it here. Bedroom faces south. Comfort. Riverside Meadows pleasant in spring. Calm out here, in the suburbs.
Perhaps it was the mention of “calm,” but all at once Keiko looked up, as though deciding to take a risk.

“Are we far from Manhattan, Mrs. Lawrence?”

“Not far. Not far. Easy as pie to get on the train. An hour’s ride.”

Keiko nodded.

“Are you—I mean, is that all right?”

“I am very pleased to be here. But I was told I would be in Manhattan. I didn’t think this was Manhattan.”

“Oh my, no, not by a long shot!” Daisy got up and found a pot in which to boil the carrots. “I mean, everyone thought you’d like it here. An American suburb and all that.”

Keiko lowered her head—at last, at last, that standard Japanese gesture. But it didn’t seem to be an answer.

There was a long pause, and then Keiko spoke. “Do you not have a television set, Mrs. Lawrence?”

Her voice was so feathery and soft that Daisy wasn’t sure she’d heard her.

“A television set?”

“Yes.”

Well, this was a surprise, and a bit of a sore point. Walter refused to buy one, being a radio man. “Oh dear, I’m afraid we don’t. Not yet—the new ones are so expensive. I hope you don’t mind.”

“You are very kind. Of course not.”

“Are you used to television then?”

“I never watched television in Japan. But Miss Day had a television set, and when I stayed there before the operation, we watched several interesting shows.”

“Ah, so you’re a TV fan already. Well, don’t tell Walter, my husband, he hates the thing. Writes for radio. That’s his style.”

“I enjoy radio too, Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Well, you’re in luck. We have one of those.”

At that moment Walter opened the front door. Daisy sped down the hall to greet him, wiping her hands on her apron, miming delight. In about one second she must have signalled her alarm, because he gave her what Daisy thought of as his Walter look, raising an eyebrow as he kissed her cheek.

“All this excitement for me?”

When he entered the kitchen, Keiko stood up, and Walter made a most civil bow. Keiko bowed back.

“We were just discussing our lack of a television set,” Daisy said.

“Ah. My wife’s sore point. So, you’re Keiko,” he said. “Well, I’m Walter. I don’t suppose that’s a tremendously hard name to remember. You got many Walters in Japan?”

“I have met two Walters.”

“So many—now tell me how you’ve managed to do that.”

“One was the husband of a customer at my aunt’s hair salon. The other Walter taught English at my old school.” Her face had
brightened at his entry. She had been waiting for him, perhaps, just as Daisy had—both of them like actors sitting in their places, ready for the lights to go up. Daisy looked at Keiko curiously: yes, the girl was definitely brighter. Coquettish even.

Walter put his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels and looked her straight in the eye, a long cool look, then he muttered something about leaving the two of them to get better acquainted.

“No, don’t,” Daisy practically shouted. “Keiko and I have spent lots of time together. You stay. I’ll mix you a drink.”

“Daisy’s always trying to get me drunk.”

“He’s joking. Stay, Walter—” But he was gone, down the hall, past the porcelain shepherdess in the telephone alcove. They heard the click of the bedroom door. Daisy smiled, more of a flinch really, then turned to check the biscuits. They were almost done. Keiko was watching her, waiting to see what would happen next. Her expression remained unaltered, but Daisy was pretty sure she detected a ripple of alarm beneath the surface.