Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [67]
Just once did Henry catch her crying, but she found reassuring words: it was, she reminded him, traditional for women to weep. The old expression tsuyu meant not only ‘women’s tears’ but also ‘dew’ – a naturally occurring event. Did he believe her? Certainly he wanted to: Suzuki was an essential part of his own happiness; it would be unthinkable for her to be unhappy.
31
As a child Nancy had waited impatiently for the Advent calendar to be placed on the mantel; it was her privilege to lift the covering cards and reveal the picture beneath, each one leading her closer to the final, glowing Nativity. She had been surprised to learn that some children in her class got chocolates and candy on Advent Sundays; Nancy’s Methodist family had never been party to such self-indulgence.
In the school Nativity play she usually played an angel, a benign bit-player, except for one thrilling year when she was chosen to play Joseph, with a grey wig and beard. Christmas was important to her and she wanted it to be special for Joey: carol services, the crib glowing with light . . . even in the worst days she had managed an Advent calendar, a small tree and some lights. Presents, however modest, were wrapped in thrillingly shiny paper.
Busy in the kitchen on a chill December day, she had forgotten this was the second Sunday of Advent. She had a number of things on her mind: her mother’s failing health; Joey at college, another letter from Nagasaki, with a photograph, about which a decision had to be made. She was living simultaneously in the past and the future, bypassing the present.
This was not her usual way of dealing with an imperfect life: usually she got on with things, that was her style. But just occasionally, as when she studied an envelope bright with foreign stamps, tapping it on the table, putting it away in a drawer, she thought of how things might be different, if . . .
She could see her father by the radio, sitting close, doing his usual thing, harrumphing when he disagreed with the announcer, humming along to the tunes he approved of. When the music stopped in mid-phrase he tapped the veneer radio casing, irritably. ‘Darn’ thing.’
But the radio was functioning perfectly. A moment later the silence was broken by the announcer’s voice – a news bulletin: Japanese planes had bombed Honolulu.
Afterwards, when Lois thought about that December Sunday morning, retelling it, reliving it, the scene came up like something out of a movie: a series of dreamy dissolves, houses with curtains drawn, a calm day waiting to unfold, untroubled folk drifting in their dreams. Pearl City jutted out into the harbour parallel to the naval base of Ford Island. Navy ships were tied up to piers on the east and west side of the island, and the south end of the peninsula. The sea placid, the ships, too, seemed to be sleeping, like gulls at rest, like Lois and Jack, deep in the untroubled slumber of the young and blameless.
When Jack Pinkerton married Lois, he decided against sending an invitation to Nancy. He thought it might remind her of another wedding: her own; of another groom, young and bright-faced in white naval uniform. He sent her a letter with a snapshot.
Before marrying Jack, Lois had been a very small cog in the burgeoning movie industry, working in downtown Hollywood and living in the valley. It seemed to her at the time that California was full of Germans, some of them unable to write in English, which struck her as a drawback for people creating scripts. Later she found they were Jews, refugees from Nazi persecution. She was assigned to one of these, a lowly member of the studio chain gang. According to Personnel she was his secretary; she considered herself rather more: she corrected his English before she typed his letters, and learned to live with