The Pearl Diver (13 page)

“Of course I remember where the house is,” Andrea said between gritted teeth once she was in the Lexus beside me and Norie had taken the back. I had to slam the car into gear, because after pulling out, Robert Norton picked up speed so quickly he raised a small cloud of dirt behind him. I was edging toward fifty miles an hour to keep him in sight, and the speed limit was thirty. Was this his game, getting me to speed past a cop who would of course give me a ticket, since I was from out of state?

A few turns, and again, these nightmare speeds past fields of fledgling corn shoots and soybeans, fields that should have been enjoyed at a leisurely pace.

“He’s talking on a cell phone!” I could make this judgment based on the way his head was cocked to one side.

“He’s probably calling Lorraine,” Andrea said. “Don’t miss this left coming up. He’s not using his turn signal. I guess he wants us to miss it.”

“He doesn’t have a hand free to hit the lever,” I said, making the hairpin turn right behind Robert Norton. We were on a gravel road now, and going so fast that a piece of gravel struck the windshield, chipping it. I hoped Hugh wouldn’t notice.

The farm was five minutes farther down the road. As Andrea had said, it was a brick ranch house that I guessed had been built in the sixties. A huge satellite dish was the only ornament in the front, but fields stretched on either side of it; the corn that Andrea had mentioned, and something else, low and creeping and green. As soon as we parked, Norie was out of the car, photographing the fields.

“What’s this all about?” Robert Norton, standing outside his pickup truck, gestured toward Norie.

“Of course she’s going to take pictures,” Andrea said smoothly. “My aunt came all the way from Japan.”

I wandered off in Norie’s direction, planning to warn her to rein in her photographic impulses. I could still hear the conversation behind me.

“So they convinced you to bring them down. How did they locate you?” Robert Norton asked Andrea.

“Oh, you can find anyone on the Internet these days.”

“So what you been doing with yourself?”

“I’m the hostess of a restaurant in D.C.,” Andrea said. “You may have heard of it. It’s called Bento.”

“A restaurant?” He sounded incredulous. “I thought you’d do something more than that, with your schooling—”

“Yeah, the D.C. schools are really wonderful,” Andrea said, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “And that community college you sent me to afterward! Wow, that really opened my future!”

He sighed. “You look like an uptown girl. Sound like one, too. Seems like you’re doing all right.”

I gently coaxed Norie out of the field and back to the two of them. As we reached them, Andrea said to us, “My dad’s going down to the basement to bring up the box with my mother’s things. He said we can wait on the patio or in the house.”

“It’s such good weather today,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was get holed up in some
Silence of the Lambs
basement.

“Do you ladies, ah, want something to drink?” Robert Norton offered.

I translated for Norie and she shook her head.

“I could use something,” Andrea said. “You have any Cokes in the fridge?”

“Pepsi,” he said.

“Whatever. I’ll get it while you’re downstairs,” Andrea said.

“Lorraine’ll be stopping by on her lunch hour,” he said. “That’s any minute.”

“Looking forward to it,” Andrea said.

Norie and I settled on plastic lawn chairs set on a newly built cedar deck and looked at the view. I could just make out the soft line of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance, so I pointed it out to Norie.

“I don’t think he is an easy person,” Norie said to me in Japanese.

“Really? I’m not sure he’s all bad,” I said. There had been something, in his conversation with Andrea, that made me understand that he’d struggled with guilt over the years. And the presence of guilt meant the presence of feeling, I thought. It was a good omen.

“He seems dishonest,” Norie said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Let’s see how he answers our questions,” Norie said.

I put a hand on her wrist. “Obasan, please remember, you’re not supposed to speak English.”

“I will ask questions in Japanese, just as I have been doing. You shall translate for me,” Norie said primly.

There was the sound of a door opening behind us, and I turned, expecting to see Andrea. Instead, I saw a very tall, light-skinned black woman of about sixty. Her hair was elegantly upswept, and she wore a black-and-red knit dress with a matching jacket. She had gold bangles on her wrist and a plastic ID card hanging from a chain around her neck.

“Well, this is a surprise. I’m Mrs. Norton.”

Lorraine Norton’s voice was so authoritative my first thought was that she was a school principal, but after I took a quick glance at her huge ID tag, it became clear that she worked at the local Social Security office.

“Herro, Mrs. Norton. How do you do? My name is Rei Shimura, and this is my aunt Norie Shimura. We are visiting from Japan.”

Norie popped to her feet, bowed, and murmured the proper Japanese words of greeting someone for the first time. Lorraine Norton arched a pencil-thin eyebrow at her and said, “I thought you were mother and daughter, not aunt and niece.”

Oops. “I—we are aunt and niece. It is sometimes difficult to translate to foreigners, we make mistakes,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” She sounded unconvinced. “I heard you-all came to collect the remaining possessions. A call ahead of time would have been nice. I don’t know if Robert will be able to find anything down there on such short notice.”

The door opened again. This time, Andrea came out with a can of Pepsi in her hand.

“We’ve been here twenty years,” Lorraine said, then her head whipped around. “Andrea, hello. I see you’ve helped yourself to the refrigerator. Please close that door behind you. I don’t want bugs getting inside.”

“Dad said it was okay to get a drink.” Andrea slid the door closed.

Norie said to me in Japanese, “Ask the new Mrs. Norton about Sadako’s things. Why did they save them when they moved from the old house to here?”

I translated, “My aunt is very grateful that you have saved her sister’s valuable things all these years. I know it must have been a burden to carry, can you please tell us why you saved them?”

“We don’t really have much left. Robert gave her clothes to charity. It wasn’t worth much, except for the kimono. We donated that to a church auction.”

“Do you remember what the kimono looked like?” Andrea asked.

“Red. Real stiff and shiny. Or was it orange?” Lorraine asked herself.

“If it’s red, it was the wedding kimono,” Andrea said. “I saw it in the wedding picture Dad gave me. I’m sure her family would have liked to have it.”

“Well, I hate to say it, but where were y’all thirty years ago when this was an issue?” Lorraine retorted. “We had no idea you-all would be interested. Since the time of the wedding, your family had apparently cut her off. Pretty cold, I thought.”

“Do you think so?” Andrea said, giving Lorraine the evil eye.

The moment of tension was broken by the sound of the sliding door. Robert poked his head out. “I found it, but because of my back, I can’t carry it up. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll help,” Andrea said quickly.

“No, Andrea, you’d better keep me company. We have a lot to talk about,” Lorraine said.

I expected Robert to protest, but he didn’t. So I stood up and headed through the door and into the house before anyone could object. Just a half hour ago, I’d felt hesitant to come to this house. But in the time that had passed, I’d lost my fear of Robert Norton and become aware of two things: one, that Lorraine was going to do everything possible to keep Andrea and her father from spending any time together, and two, that I wasn’t afraid of Robert Norton. I felt sorry for him, almost.

Robert was now leading the way through a tidy living room filled with 1980s-style bleached wood furniture, all upholstered in pastel florals and covered carefully with clear plastic slipcovers. Matching end tables were decorated with vases of silk flowers and little glass animals. My mother would have winced at the horror of it, but I tried to refrain from passing judgment—except for the thought that the room had been designed by Lorraine. There was nothing on the beige walls except pictures: Lorraine and Robert on their wedding day, Lorraine with her sorority sisters. I read along the names underneath to identify her: Lorraine Neblett, third from the left. I hadn’t needed to; she looked exactly the same, with a handsome,
high forehead and commanding eyes. She wasn’t a girl I’d want to have as a roommate, I thought to myself, and moved on to the large, framed family portrait of her with Robert standing behind her and Davon at her side, age about ten.

“Your room is wide,” I said, again translating Japanese to English the way so many of my former students had. “May I see?”

“Ah, okay.” Robert seemed uncomfortable as I made a slow sweep through the living room, looking at everything. “Are you sure you can handle this box?” he asked.

“I’m quite strong,” I said. We were passing through a small kitchen, avocado appliances and a coordinating vinyl-tile floor. The color scheme was so out, it was actually in again.

“A little thing like you.” He shook his head. “Well, I know Japanese women can be small, but strong. Sadie told me there was a saying, something about small peppers—”

“‘The Japanese peppers may be small, but they are hot.’” I said it first in Japanese, then in English.

“I think that was it. And Andrea, well, she’s a tall one, but she fits that bill, too. Takes right after your aunt.”

“Heh?”
I was confused. Aunt Norie was so small, smaller than me, even.

“She’s like her mother was. Always asking questions, and then getting upset about the answers.” As he spoke, he was opening a door papered with notices about recycling and their church choir. Then he snapped on a light, illuminating a steep staircase covered in golden-brown plaid. Robert held tightly to the rail going down; I could see that he had some stiffness to his gait. Nothing was going to happen with a man whose knees hurt, I thought to myself.

Once downstairs, I discovered that the basement was brightly lit and tidy, with a pool table covered in smooth green felt and a case behind it containing some basketball and track trophies won by Davon. On the wall here, there was a line of plaques recognizing Robert for his military service. It seemed to me that the basement was the men’s domain, while upstairs was Lorraine’s.

There was a pile of boxes in a corner. A medium-sized one was on its side, papers spilling out of the top.

“It was up high, and I knocked it over coming down,” Robert said. “Lorraine says I should use a stepladder for things like that, but I was in too much of a hurry to get one.”

I squatted to pick it up. Forty pounds, maybe; it wasn’t bad at all.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said.

“It’s not so heavy.” I moved toward the stairway, with him behind me.

“My back’s not good because of all the standing in the diner,” Robert said. “And my knees are bad from the war.”

“Oh, what happened?”

“I received some friendly fire to one of my knees. It was shattered.”

“War is a very bad thing,” I said.

“Yes,” he said shortly and started up the stairs.

In the kitchen, I paused. “Please, where shall I put this?”

“Right in your car would be fine,” he answered, heading toward the front of the house.

I put the box down on a counter instead. “Norton-san, my aunt and Andrea-san may still have question.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about these things now. My wife, Lorraine—”

I was beginning to lose patience with this man who’d fought in a war and been shot, and who was afraid of his wife. “We have made trouble for you. I am so sorry. Maybe we should not have made travel.”

“No, I apologize. I still feel real bad about what happened back when—back when we married. I guess that’s why I hung on to everything, hoping it would mean something to somebody later on.”

“Can you tell me the reason for Sadako-san’s death? I don’t understand it completely,” I said, making my face look puzzled, not suspicious. “They say she drowned in water.”

Robert seemed to reflect for a moment, then spoke. “I always thought it would be hard for her to die that way. As your family knows, she was a very strong swimmer.”

And, I thought to myself, she’d supposedly gone in nude. She wouldn’t have been able to weight herself down with stones, like a depressed Virginia Woolf had, to help herself sink.

“Was she ever found?” I asked, expecting him to tell me what Andrea had.

But he surprised me. “There were some remains of a female body found in the river a couple of years later. They thought it might be her. I couldn’t tell, but I guessed they were probably right. I said yes. The case was closed.”

For him, maybe, but not for me. “What about teeth?”

“We had no dental records because Sadie refused to visit the dentist. It was all I could do to get her to go to the obstetrician.”

“One other thing,” I said. “You and Mrs. Norton married close to the time that Sadako-san was declared dead, didn’t you?”

“Two weeks later,” he said. “Lorraine said she’d waited long enough.”

“But…that must have meant you and Lorraine were seeing each other for a while. During the time you had no idea what had happened to Sadako.”

“I’d known Lorraine since high school. Then, she was working at the Pentagon while I was…she was a great support for me. I needed that. All along I thought that even if Sadie
hadn’t
committed suicide, she wasn’t coming back.” I must have looked blank, because he added, “I thought she’d deserted me.”

“
Honto
? Is that the truth? Japanese women are usually very devoted.” I couldn’t think of a single woman I’d met in Japan who had divorced.

“She found it hard to become American, make friends, fit in. It was real different in Virginia during the seventies. There was a Japanese-American group in Washington, but she never wanted to go, said it was too far. She didn’t drive, and the Metro lines were just getting built. She felt trapped.”