Garden of Stones. Sophie Littlefield

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СКАЧАТЬ all the trucks bringing the apricots, the crates carrying them away, beautifully wrapped and packed and bearing her father’s name, all over the country. And she was her parents’ suzume, their little sparrow, and as she knelt to help pick up the broken pottery, she tried to hold on to the warm feeling that came from knowing that here in her home, she was the center of something.

      * * *

      The week passed slowly. Nancy took her place at the head of the class each day at noon, and Lucy pretended not to care. The boys on the playground found someone else to taunt. Miyako’s mood steadied, and when Lucy came home each day she found her mother embroidering in the parlor. She finished a rose-patterned scarf for her dresser and began a matching one for Lucy.

      On Saturday Renjiro wasn’t feeling well. The next morning, he stayed in his dressing gown to read the paper, and Miyako told Lucy that if she liked, she could go to church with the Koga family from down the street.

      Lucy welcomed the chance to sit in one of the pews up front between the young Koga children, her hands folded on her lap as she stole glances around the congregation, knowing she was being admired. Rarely did a week go by without someone stopping her family outside the church to tell her parents how beautiful and well-mannered Lucy was, how much she resembled Miyako. And Lucy knew that she would receive even more compliments than usual after she spent the service seated between the squirming Koga boys, helping their mother keep them quiet.

      She wore her navy coat with frog closures and her patent shoes and combed her hair until it shone. Lucy knew she was a beautiful girl, but for some reason this impressed adults even more than the other children in her class. Maybe it was because she had grown up with many of them, seeing each other every day. Now that she was fourteen, Lucy thought she could see signs of maturity in her face when she looked in her mother’s vanity mirror—a narrowing of her cheeks, an arch in her brow that more closely echoed her mother’s. Lucy wasn’t particularly vain, but she had observed her mother carefully enough to know that beauty was a tool that could be used to get all sorts of nice things. The best fish in the case at the market, say, or a seat on the trolley on days when it was crowded.

      As the reverend came to the end of one of his long and boring sermons and the congregation stood to sing the hymn, Lucy kept her eyes downcast as though she were praying. In reality, she was staring at Mrs. Koga’s brown pump, noting smugly how dowdy the plain, unadorned shoe was compared to the dressy high-heeled pairs in her mother’s closet. Lucy’s feet were still smaller than her mother’s, but soon they would be able to share—if she could convince Miyako that she was old enough for heels. By the age of fifteen, surely? These were the thoughts she was entertaining when the doors at the back of the church creaked open and two anxious figures burst inside, interrupting the listless singing of “Faith of Our Fathers.”

      Later she would remember the unfamiliar words repeated over and over by the adults all around her, Pearl Harbor and torpedo and casualties—but in the confusion inside the church, all Lucy could think about was that some unknown disaster had taken place and she was here, daydreaming, thinking selfish thoughts while her parents were over a mile away by themselves, her father ill and her mother barely able to take care of either of them. It was the first time Lucy understood that it would fall to her to help them if something bad had happened, the first time she realized that in some ways, her childhood was already far behind her.

      * * *

      Somehow, in the confusion following the news, Lucy ended up walking home alone. She imagined the Kogas realizing that she was missing, and feeling terrible about it—“How could we let that poor girl out of our sight?”—but even that was small comfort. She had a sense of foreboding, and though her shiny shoes pinched her toes, smashing them together, she hurried, almost running, her breath ragged in her lungs.

      When she turned down Clement Street and saw the ambulance in front of her house, she was horrified but not surprised. She’d known from the moment the strangers burst into the church that tragedy had come for her—that no matter what other cyclones of disaster had swept the world that morning, one was bearing down directly on Lucy. Everything that led up to this day had been a portent: her mother’s moods, the children’s cruelty, the glassy look in her father’s eyes—disaster.

      Two men emerged from her front door as she ran toward her house. Between them they carried a stretcher bearing a figure covered with a blanket. Behind them, a woman came out onto the porch, holding the door—Aiko Narita, her mother’s best friend.

      Lucy ran to the stretcher and threw herself upon it. Her father’s shoe jutted out underneath the blanket. If she could just get to him quickly enough, before they took him to the ambulance, there was a chance she could bring him back. If she touched his face, he might feel her hands and choose not to go. If she called his name, he might hear her, and understand that he couldn’t leave them behind, not like this.

      The two men didn’t see her coming, and they were startled. One of them said a bad word. Lucy’s fingers barely brushed the blanket when she was seized from behind and held in strong arms. She fought as hard as she could, but Auntie Aiko held her more tightly, and the men carried her father to the back of the ambulance, where the doors stood wide to receive them.

      “No, no, no, Lucy,” Aiko’s familiar voice crooned in her ear. Lucy kicked as hard as she could, connecting with Aiko’s shin; she tried to bite Aiko’s arm but couldn’t quite reach. She heard her own voice screaming, couldn’t get enough air. “It’s going to be all right,” Aiko gasped, struggling to contain her. “It’s going to be all right.”

      Auntie Aiko was a liar. Lucy knew that she wanted to help, but everything was wrong and Aiko wouldn’t let go, and she saw her chance slipping away as the doors to the ambulance closed and after a moment it started slowly down the street. Aiko tried to carry her back up the steps into the house, but Lucy twisted savagely and almost managed to slip away. Aiko caught the hem of her coat and dragged her back. The coat’s buttons popped off and went rolling down the sidewalk. One went over the curb, through the grate, and disappeared into the blackness below the street.

      One more loss, and finally Lucy gave up and allowed herself to be dragged, limp in Aiko’s arms. The button had been etched with the design of an anchor. They would never find another to match. The button would disappear in the muck and rotting leaves in the sewer, as the ambulance carrying her father’s body was disappearing out of view.

      5

      The doctor had given her mother something to help her calm down, which seemed to make her mostly sleep. Aiko had moved into the house and slept in Lucy’s parents’ bed. Lucy could hear her during the night, getting up to go to the bathroom or to get a glass of water. She missed the sound of her father’s snoring. She missed everything about her father.

      The funeral would take place tomorrow. Mrs. Koga had taken her yesterday to buy a suitable dress. She and Aiko had had a whispered conference in the parlor, and Lucy had taken the opportunity to slip into her parents’ bedroom to check on her mother, something Aiko had discouraged her from doing.

      Miyako had been sleeping with her hands folded under her chin, the covers pulled up neatly, almost as though she too were dead. Her face was smooth, her lips dry and pale, her eyelashes fluttering slightly as she exhaled. The flutter of the lashes was proof that she was still alive, at least. Lucy watched her for a moment and then tentatively touched her hand. It was warm. After a moment, Lucy went around to the other side of the bed and got in, lifting the covers carefully and inching slowly across until she was pressed up against her mother.

      She burrowed her face into her mother’s arm. She could smell her mother, an unwashed smell that was both unfamiliar and welcome. Usually, her mother smelled like perfume and hair spray and СКАЧАТЬ