Sophie Littlefield - Garden of Stones

She was tired of her parents trying to protect her from things they thought she was too young to understand. Lucy supposed that had been all right when her world was limited to the bright-colored illustrations in her picture books, the elaborate tea parties she held for her dolls and stuffed toys, the swings and the slide at the playground in Rosecrans Park.

But she was in the eighth grade now, and her world had been growing steadily for a long time. She’d read all the books in her classroom and begun on the ones on her parents’ shelves—the ones in English, anyway, most of which belonged to her mother. Some were a little melodramatic for her taste, but Lucy preferred to be bored and occasionally confused by Edna Ferber and Daphne du Maurier than by Madeline and Caddie Woodlawn.

Consulting her mother about the future was out of the question. Miyako Takeda wasn’t like other mothers: she was quieter, prone to spells and moods. Withdrawn much of the time. Easily upset. And, of course, far more beautiful, which only made her seem more delicate, somehow.

Renjiro Takeda, on the other hand, would know what to do. He was a businessman, well respected, important. Lucy pretended to read—a book called The Rains Came that had been made into a movie that she was too young to see, in which a lot of people appeared to be falling in love with each other. The book was so confusing that she didn’t intend to finish it, but it was as good as any, since she had too many things on her mind to pay attention to the words.

At last, when dark had fallen and Lucy could hear her mother moving about the kitchen getting dinner ready, the front door opened. Her father’s face lit up when he spotted Lucy reading in the wing chair, but his smile didn’t disguise his weariness. He had been looking tired much of the time lately.

“Hello, little one,” he said, removing his hat and placing it on a high peg of the coatrack. He was a natty dresser and his hat was made of fine wool, smooth to the touch, its edges turned up slightly. Next he hung his topcoat, brushing invisible specks off its tight-woven surface. Lucy liked to watch this ritual, and she waited patiently until he finished. Only then did he turn to her and hold his hands out. Lucy leapt off the chair and put her hands in his, and he swung her gently around, something she suspected she was too old for, but couldn’t bear to give up yet.

“I have something for you,” he said.

“What, Papa?”

Her father pulled a small package wrapped in shiny white paper from his pocket. Lucy unfolded it carefully, revealing a mound of sugared almonds. Sometimes he brought candied lemon peel or crystallized ginger. He owned a business packing and shipping dried apricots, and he purchased treats for Lucy and her mother from the merchants and ranchers who brought their goods to the bustling business district.

“Don’t eat them now.” Her father’s voice was teasing. “You’ll have no appetite for dinner and then Mother will be angry with me.”

“Thank you, Papa.” Lucy carefully rewrapped the package. Then she took a breath. She had to talk to him now, when her mother wasn’t listening. “Something happened today in school.”

He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “You discovered you are actually a princess?” he pretended to guess, wiggling his eyebrows. “With a crown and a kingdom to rule?”

When Lucy was younger, her father would tell fantastical stories of apricots delivered by teams of white horses pulling wagons with silver fittings that sparkled in the sun, apricots so plump and perfect that each had a single green leaf attached to its stem, and he had to hire a pretty lady just to pluck the leaves and drop them into a basket, all day long. Lucy pretended to believe her father’s stories long after she understood that they were invented. She knew they pleased her mother. More precisely, Lucy knew that her own happiness pleased her mother, that the tableau they made, the three of them, prosperous and modern in their kitchen with its sleek metal cabinets and green tiles, was an achievement Miyako could never bring herself entirely to believe in.

Already her father was moving toward the hall. Lucy knew he was anxious to greet her mother; he kissed her each evening as carefully as if she were made of spun sugar, and the smile he gave her was different from the one he had for Lucy. It was almost shy, if a father could ever be said to be shy. Usually, Lucy liked watching her father kiss her mother, but tonight she had to talk to him first.

“Papa, be serious. I want to ask you about something. About the war.”

That got his attention. Renjiro Takeda’s shoulders went rigid, and he turned slowly to face his daughter. His skin was stretched tight across his face; the lines around the corners of his mouth and under his eyes looked even deeper. “There is no war,” he said quietly. “Not in America.”

“But there’s going to be.”

“Who told you that?” His voice hardened, and Lucy was afraid. Not of her father—he was never angry with her, he was always kind—but of what the shift in his mood signified. “Who have you been talking to?”

“Nobody. I mean, the kids at school talk.”

“President Roosevelt will keep us out of the war. You don’t need to worry.” But he didn’t sound as certain as Lucy would have liked.

“But Papa...I was supposed to be lunch monitor today.”

Her mother’s steps echoed in the hall; she was coming to see what the delay was. Lucy put a hand on her father’s arm and spoke quickly, lowering her voice. “Papa, I was supposed to be lunch monitor but Nancy was instead, and Yvonne said it’s because I’m a Jap and her father says things are changing and—”

But her father was cupping a hand to his ear and frowning, and she knew he was about to tell her to slow down and not talk so fast, to speak up so he could hear her. He was becoming hard of hearing; her mother teased him about it and threatened to buy him one of the new Dictograph hearing aids that were advertised on the radio.

“Dinner’s almost ready!” her mother said, sweeping into the room. She’d touched up her lipstick as she always did before Renjiro came home, a slash of stark red against her fine, pale skin. “I made marble cake. And there’s ham.”

Lucy watched her father’s expression change; neither of them had missed the faint edge to Miyako’s voice, the fact that her smile was a little too brittle and her words a little too breathless. But the biggest giveaway was the cooking. Miyako was a good cook, but she rarely had the energy for more than a cursory effort. She was having one of those days, and Renjiro’s outward calm faltered before he recovered and went to kiss his wife.

Many afternoons when Lucy came home and let herself into the house with the key she wore on a chain around her neck, her mother would be lying down, her room darkened, the drapes closed. On her bedside table would be a glass of water and a folded cloth. Occasionally her mother would wet the cloth and drape it over her forehead. Lucy no longer went into her parents’ room on afternoons when the door was closed; her mother had asked her not to.

“You’re thirteen,” she’d said shortly after Lucy’s birthday the prior year, before closing the bedroom door gently on Lucy’s face. “Old enough to take care of yourself for an hour or two while I rest.”

But sometimes, every week or two, there would be a day when Miyako’s mood would swing in the other direction. She would have energy to spare. She cleaned and rearranged furniture, even though a lady came to clean every week. She tried new recipes and produced more courses than the three of them could eat. She met Renjiro at the door in her nicest apron and sat with him after dinner, talking breathlessly, her words chasing each other, instead of working on her embroidery by herself in the kitchen as she usually did. Nights like these were likely to end with the muffled sounds of Miyako crying in her bedroom, her father’s voice a smooth blanket, his words unintelligible through the wall their bedroom shared with Lucy’s. Long after they were finally silent, Lucy would lie awake in the dark, wondering what had made her mother so sad.