Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

“Where heezu learn Japanese?”

“I guess his dad had been educated back in Japan. Although here the old man did mostly domestic work and gardening, he knew a lot of formal Japanese. Tutored Kazzy, I guess. Too bad the father died so suddenly when Kazzy was just a kid. Must’ve been rough to be orphaned like that, but that helped him later to be an independent sonafugun.”

“What happened to the mother, anyway? She was Irish, right?”

“I heard that she died in childbirth. Second kid. The baby didn’t make it, either. Kazzy’s father died soon after. Probably from a broken heart.”

Finishing up their conversation with Jinx, they searched for Tug’s florist friend, Happy Ikeda. Happy Ikeda, as it turns out, looked nothing like his nickname. He had heavy lips, the lower one more swollen than the upper, giving him the appearance of a permanent pout.

“Yeah, I know Danjo Kanda’s Mystery Gardenias,” Happy said. “Order them all the time. But trying to find who sent that particular gardenia, that’s a hard one, Tug. That’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

After Tug and Mas drained all the information they could from Happy, they left the church for the train station. “I guess you’re wondering what’s going on with Lil and Joy,” said Tug in front of the stairs to the platform for trains en route to Brooklyn. Mas could tell something had been weighing on his friend’s mind.

“I promised Lil that I wouldn’t tell you, so I can’t get into the details, Mas. But I’ll just say that we’re having a problem. A big one.”

“Gotsu to do with Joy leavin’ medicine?”

Tug laughed. “I wish it was just that. We could get through that.” He smiled weakly, and Mas was afraid for his friend and himself. Tug and Lil had been Mas’s rock. Life had enough uncertainty already; with the Yamadas teetering on the brink, Mas didn’t know what he could actually count on.

“It’s just like that childhood rhyme,” said Tug. “The one about Humpty-Dumpty sitting on the wall. Well, my daughter’s fallen, and I don’t know how to put her back together again.”

When Mas came home from church, there was a telephone message for him from Becca Ouchi. Kazzy’s body had finally been released from the coroner’s, so they were going to have a memorial service on Tuesday, with a reception at the Waxley House. Could Mas come over to clean up the garden and treat the sycamore on Monday? “Sylvester’s looking bad,” she said. Mas couldn’t tell whether the warbling in her voice was from emotion or just the worn-out phone message tape.

“They don’t want me going over there,” said Lloyd later that afternoon. “Both Mari and I were told not to come to Kazzy’s memorial service. I guess I’m still suspect number one. With Kazzy gone, I guess Phillip now is calling the shots.”

Mas and Lloyd hadn’t spoken about the bullet Mas had discovered on the dirt floor of the shed. Mas had left the bullet on the coffee table, only to have it disappear an hour later while he was taking a shower. It was now the son-in-law’s responsibility, not Mas’s.

“He fire youzu?” Mas asked, fearing that his grandson’s medical coverage would dry up.

“Not yet. But I’ve been asking around for work, just in case. Everywhere seems to have a hiring freeze.”

Mas wasn’t quite familiar with the term “hiring freeze,” but he could figure it out. It was a place that was cold and barren, a place where you had to stay outside. That night he dreamed of ice, Eskimos, and igloos. There was a hole in a frozen lake, where penguins, one after another, seemed to slip and fall right in.

Church seemed to have a strong effect on Mas, more powerful than even a six-pack of foreign beer, as it knocked him out until noon the next day. Lloyd had told Mas to sleep in his and Mari’s bed, since both of them were going to stay at the hospital. Their bedroom was like a bear’s cave, dark and insulated. Mas cursed his son-in-law’s hospitality, and then Haruo’s failure to call him at daybreak. He finally got out the door at one, the time he usually called it quits from work.

Already in a bad mood, Mas felt even more irritated to see another delivery truck parked outside the neighbor’s house. The neighbor, the one who had reported the gunshot to the police, was pacing in the driveway, talking on his cell phone. When he saw Mas, he abruptly ended his call and walked down his driveway. “You’re that Japanese man, the one who’s helping with the garden, right?” he said to Mas.

Atarimae, of course I’m Japanese, Mas thought, making the mistake of making eye contact.

The man introduced himself as Howard Foster and gestured toward his open front door. “Come over here. I want to show you something.”

“I gotsu work.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Mas hesitated, but he remembered Elk Mamiya’s theory. That people were out to destroy them. Did this neighbor hate people different from him so much that he had killed Kazzy Ouchi? The only way to know was to get close, and entering the man’s house was one way to do it.

Mas didn’t think Howard would risk his grand lifestyle by killing Mas in broad daylight. So whether it was pure stupidity or a good hunch, Mas climbed up the brick stairs and followed Howard into his wood-framed home.

It was different from the Waxley House-more light, more openness. The hardwood floors were pristine, and all the furniture looked as if it had been created for the space. Chinese vases and plates were on display on cherrywood tables and chests.

Howard went into the dining room area and pointed to a long, narrow screen on the wall. “My prize possession.” It was a Japanese brush painting featuring a ball with bug eyes.

“ Daruma, ” Mas said.

“Yes, this is a Zenga painting from the Edo Era. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Mas usually saw daruma figures in Japanese gift stores in Little Tokyo. Made of papier-mâché, the daruma ’s round figure was all red, while his eyes were blank, missing. When Mari was a child, she asked him and Chizuko if he was a Japanese Santa Claus, but Chizuko explained that Daruma had been a Buddhist leader who looked at a blank wall for years and years. After a while, he lost use of his legs, thus turning into a ball. He also became blind, so when you bought a daruma figure, you were supposed to make a wish and color in one eye. Once the wish was granted, the other eye would be painted in.

“Nice.” Mas never thought much of art, even though he had a torn screen in his home. But his was the generic kind, with an image of a couple of sparrows resting on a bare tree branch. The screen that this Howard Foster had was the real deal.

Mas circled the core of the house. Unlike the Waxley House, which had a staircase in the middle, a staircase appeared on the side of the building, across from the fireplace. “You here all by yourself?”

“Yes,” Howard said, and then frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Mas replied, but he was actually wondering about the neighbor’s alibi. Sure, he had called in a report about hearing a gun going off at nine that night. But couldn’t he have shot Kazzy first and then called the police when he got back to his house?

Howard stood in front of his prized Buddhist painting. “So, looking at this, would you say that I was a Japan hater? That I’m a racist?”

Mas didn’t know what to say. It reminded him of one of his customers, who had decorated his house with moose heads and bear rugs. Did that mean he was an animal lover?

“Well, I’m not a racist,” Howard answered his own question. “Just a man who takes pride in his house. Can you imagine if they make the Waxley House into a museum? There’ll be visitors coming through there every day. I want peace and quiet, not crowds. That’s all that I was doing with that petition. Now I’m getting crank calls, angry letters. Being harassed by the police. Somebody even threw eggs at my house a couple of days ago. So tell your people to back off.”