Silent Honor (36 page)

“Well have to send her away next summer,” Tak said with the first real humor he'd shown in months. He was in a good mood over the holidays, and even took Reiko to a dance one of the bands organized for New Year's Eve, and they both agreed the music was terrific.

Hiroko had chosen to work that night, to give other people a chance to celebrate, since she didn't care and had no one to spend it with. And Tadashi had signed up to work with her.

They were both holding a sick child at midnight, and the poor kid was retching horribly with a bad case of influenza. Tadashi smiled at her over his head and mouthed the words “Happy New Year,” and afterward, when the child was asleep again and everything was cleaned up, they laughed about how they had spent New Year's Eve.

“There's one to remember,” he said, laughing. “When our children ask how we spent our first New Year's Eve, you can tell them that story.” But she didn't look amused by what he had just said, she looked worried. No one else was around, and they sat down over two cups of coffee he'd made for them.

“Don't say that, Tad.”

“Why not?” For once he was feeling brave with her. Most of the time he was afraid to rock the boat. But just this once, he had decided to take his chances. “We all need a little hope in our lives to keep going. You're mine, Hiroko.” It was the most honest thing he'd ever said to anyone, and no matter what she said, he didn't regret it.

“I don't want to be that,” she said, equally honest with him. “You're a wonderful friend, Tad, but I can't give you more than that. I don't have it to give. It's someone else's.”

“You're still that much in love with him?” They both knew about whom they were talking.

“I am,” she said quietly, praying he was still alive. It had now been many weeks since his last letter.

“What if things are different when he gets back? What if he's changed, or you have? That happens, particularly at our age.” He didn't know how old Peter was, but he assumed that he was somewhere in his twenties.

“I don't think that will happen.”

“You're not even twenty-one, Hiroko. A lot must have happened to you before you came here. You came to this country, and five months later we were at war, you had to leave school, your cousins lost everything, and the next thing you know you're here. And now you have a baby. That's a whirlwind. How can you even begin to figure out what you're going to do from here?” And then he said something that really hurt her. “If you'd been that sure of him before, you'd have married him before Toyo happened. Or am I completely wrong?”

“You're not wrong,” she said thoughtfully, wondering why she was even trying to explain it to him. She owed him no explanations, but he had saved her child's life, and hers, and she suspected that he cared for her deeply. And in her own way, as a friend, she loved him. “I thought it was too complicated, and wrong. I wanted to go back to Japan and ask my father's permission first. And then the war came, and it was too late. I couldn't imagine running away out of state to get married. But …things happened anyway.” She told him something then that he hadn't known before but shocked him deeply. “He doesn't know about Toyo.”

“Are you serious? You never told him?” He couldn't imagine a situation where he wouldn't have wanted her to tell him. It was an enormous burden for her to have on only her own shoulders.

“I didn't think it was fair. I didn't want him to feel he had to come back, if he didn't want to.”

“So you're not even sure of that?” He was surprised and pleased, things were better than he'd thought in some ways, worse in others.

“The only thing I'm sure of,” she said softly, “is how much I love him.”

“He's a lucky man,” Tadashi said, looking at her, wishing that she was his, and he was Toyo's father. How lucky the guy was and he didn't even know it. “Maybe he doesn't deserve it,” he said carefully.

“Yes, he does,” she said, sounding absolutely certain.

He reached for her hand then, and looked at her. There was no other time or way to say it. “I love you,” he said honestly. “I've been in love with you since the first day I saw you.”

“I'm sorry.” She shook her head sadly. “I can't …
I
love you too, but not like that. … I can't …”

“What if he didn't exist?” He didn't want to say, “didn't come back,” but they both knew what he meant, and Hiroko only looked at him, unable to answer.

“I don't know.” She had said she loved him, and she did, as a friend, or even a brother.

“I can wait. We have a whole life ahead of us …hopefully not here.” He smiled, aching to kiss her, but sure that he would have been wrong to try it, and he was right. It would have upset her.

“That's not very fair to you. I have no right to hang on to you, Tad. I'm not free to do that.”

“I'm not asking for anything,” he said fairly. “I'm satisfied just the way things are. We can play at the symphony together.” She laughed, it sounded so ridiculously old-fashioned. They were leading such a crazy life here.

“You're a good sport,” she said, using one of her favorite American expressions.

“You're beautiful, and I love you very much,” he answered, and she blushed, but he was happy to see she was wearing his locket.

He walked her home that night, and they both seemed comfortable. They had reached an understanding. He was in love with her, and she loved him as a friend, and they were going to wait and see what happened. To have stopped seeing each other entirely when they weren't working would have been awkward for both of them, and would have deprived them both of a friendship they cherished. And then, although he had promised himself he wouldn't, he bent and kissed her lightly on the lips, and he moved away before she could even stop him. She hugged him afterward, and they stood there in the cold, wondering where life would take them. And then she told him she'd see him at work the next day and went inside. For the moment, it was all she had to offer.

But when she got up, one of the soldiers was outside talking to Tak, and she wondered if there was trouble. He looked very serious, and Tak kept nodding at him, and then the soldier left, and Tak didn't come inside, he just stood there. Aunt Rei had been watching him too, and after a minute she went outside and stood in the open doorway.

“What was that all about?” she asked, standing in the frigid air without a coat on, but Tak looked so strange and he was staring at her as though he wasn't quite sure who she was, or what she had asked him. “Tak? Are you all right, sweetheart?” She hurried down the two steps to him, and he stared at her, and nodded.

“Ken was killed in Italy,” he said, looking at her vaguely. “They thought he was missing in action at first, but they found his body,” he said, as though telling her about a package that had been delivered. “He's dead,” he said, looking at her blankly as she stared at him in horror. “Ken. Ken, I mean. Ken's dead,” He kept repeating Ken's name as though he didn't understand it, and by then Hiroko was watching them, and knew instinctively that something terrible had happened. She hurried down the steps to help her cousin. Takeo was turning this way and that, repeating himself as people in other houses watched him. His wife couldn't even let herself cry, she was too frightened and too worried about her husband.

“Come back inside, Tak, it's cold out here,” she said gently. But he made no move to follow. “Tak …please …” There were tears swimming in her eyes, she had heard what he'd said, but she couldn't react until she took care of him. He had snapped when they told him. “Darling, let's go inside.” She and Hiroko each put an arm around him and led him slowly back up the stairs and into their tiny sitting room, and sat him in a chair as they looked at each other.

“Ken's dead,” he told them again. It was New Year's Day, 1944, and Sally had just walked into the room and heard him.

What?” She screamed the word and Tami came running, holding Toyo. It was a nightmare, but there was no taking it back now. Sally was suddenly hysterical, and Hiroko went to deal with her while Reiko tried to handle Takeo. And then suddenly Tami was crying too, and Toyo, who saw them all crying and didn't know what it meant, joined them.

Hiroko managed to shepherd all the children back into the bedroom, and left Reiko talking quietly to Takeo. Sally cried for an hour in Hiroko's arms, despite her constant anger at her, and Tami sat on her other side, holding her tightly. It was terrible news, and Hiroko knew just how it felt. She had been devastated when she lost Yuji the previous summer. And now Ken. The war was taking a terrible toll on them, all their fine young men, and in some cases their old ones. There were so many men like Tak, shaken, bitter, deeply ashamed of what had happened to them, when in fact the shame was not really theirs, but they didn't know that. They felt somehow that it was all their fault. And now Tak had snapped, but when Hiroko went back out to see how he was, he had returned to sanity again, and was sobbing in his wife's arms like a child. His firstborn was dead, his son, their baby. And the little table where his photograph in his uniform was kept looked more than ever like a shrine, only now to a dead hero.

Hiroko stayed home with them that day, and took care of the girls, and Reiko and Tak went to the Buddhist temple to see about arranging for a service. There would be no body returned to them. There was nothing they could hold or touch or kiss again. There were only memories, and the knowledge that he had served the country they all loved but had been betrayed by.

Tak looked a thousand years old when they returned from the temple, and Hiroko saw, as Reiko had, that he was having trouble breathing again. No one would have believed that he was fifty-two years old. He looked, and felt, ninety.

The service they had organized was the next day, for Kenji Jirohei Tanaka. He was eighteen years old, and no matter what one believed about the war, it was a terrible waste of youth and promise. Tadashi came to the temple with them, and he sat quietly between Hiroko and Sally. And for once, she wasn't angry at anyone. She was in despair, and afterward she clung to her father, keening for her brother. But he had no strength to share with anyone. He could barely leave the temple without Reiko's help, and seeing the condition he was in, Tadashi helped her. He was deeply sorry for them, and he even helped her put her husband to bed that night. Tak was in a terrible state. And it broke Hiroko's heart to see it.

The only thing that cheered her the next day was, finally, a letter from Peter.

He was alive, and well, and in Arezzo. But she couldn't even share the news with Tak. He was too distraught over Ken to be able to tolerate the news that someone else had survived their battles. Tadashi came back to see them that afternoon, and talked quietly to Hiroko outside. He didn't want to go
in
and bother anyone, and she admitted that Tak had stayed in bed all day and cried, but Reiko was with him. It was as though the loss of Ken was the last straw, and had broken him completely. He just couldn't take it. But there were other men in the camp who were just like him. They had lost sons, several of them in some cases, and businesses and homes and lives. And somehow they could no longer adjust to what had happened. They felt as though they could no longer face the world. They had been shamed too deeply.

Reiko was deeply upset about Ken too, but she couldn't even allow herself the luxury of time to think about it, and mourn, she was too busy taking care of Takeo. She didn't go to work all week, and everyone understood. Hiroko took some extra shifts for her. And two weeks later, Tak was better, but he still wasn't well. He looked tired and old and breathless, and Hiroko realized suddenly that his hair had been completely white for a while, and she hadn't even noticed.

Martial law in the camp ended completely in mid-January, and a committee of nonextremists were formed to control the No-No's. The committee called themselves the Nippon Patriotic Society, and the strikes ended almost immediately after the committee was established.

It appeared to be a peaceful time again, but not for the Tanakas. Sally was behaving worse than usual, in reaction to seeing her father falling apart, and Tami cried all the time, and Toyo had kept Hiroko up three nights in a row with new teeth he was getting. He was ten and a half months old and into everything. But even he didn't cheer Takeo. Tak no longer seemed to notice him at all. He was completely distracted.

Hiroko left him with Tak one afternoon when she went to work. Usually Sally came home to take care of him, but this time she didn't. And Takeo was at home, since he was still taking time off from teaching school because of Ken, and they were managing without him, though barely. With so many young people in the camp, they needed all their teachers, just as they needed all their doctors and nurses. But he wasn't well, and they'd agreed it would be better for him to spend a month at home to recover. As she left the house, Hiroko thought it might even do Tak good to have to take care of Toyo for a few minutes. It might take his mind off his sorrows. He'd been going to the temple every day, and lighting candles on the table where they kept Ken's picture.

“Sally will be home soon, Tak,” she reminded him as she left for work, and hurried down the long, barren road to the infirmary. She saw Sally coming back from school on her way, and told her that her father was waiting for her with Toyo.

“I'll hurry,” she said, not giving Hiroko an argument for once. She would do anything for her father. And when Hiroko got to work she saw Reiko finishing up some papers.

“How is he?” she asked hurriedly, and Hiroko nodded. He wasn't great, but he was a little better. He had agreed to baby-sit for Toyo at least. That was something.

“I left the baby with him. I just saw Sally on her way home. I told her he was waiting.”

Sally had gone home immediately, just as she had promised. She had hurried up the steps, and gone inside, and saw her father sitting in the chair, holding Toyo. Toyo was playing with a top he'd given him, which he'd made himself, and the little boy was chewing on it happily, as Tak slept peacefully. He had drifted off just after Hiroko left, and Sally smiled as she picked up the baby. And then she bent to kiss her father gently on the forehead, but as she did, his head fell backward. Although his eyes were closed, she knew instantly. And with Toyo still in her arms, she ran all the way to the infirmary to find her mother.