Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

They all remained quiet for minute, deeply affected by how family members could wound and sometimes even destroy each other.

“I knew that this damn garden was cursed, Becca,” Phillip finally said. He ran his hand through his graying hair and paced the length of the pond. “We should cover it over, like it was before.”

For once, Mas felt sorry for Phillip. Maybe he had misjudged him. Mas knew what it was like to be ignored, your work not fully appreciated. He probably had been struggling to keep Ouchi Silk, Inc., the family business, alive. It was on its last legs, and while his father was the one who had built it up, Phillip would be the one to watch it fall down.

Mas knew that it was his time to step in. He went back into the house and brought a plastic bucket from the laundry room.

“What are you doing, Mr. Arai?” Becca’s black makeup was smeared underneath her eyes.

Mas filled the bucket with water from an outside faucet and motioned for Becca, Phillip, and Mari to come to the far northern side of the pond, by the stone tsukubai.

Phillip knelt by the stone water basin. “What’s that? I never noticed that before.”

“ Tsukubai, ” Mas said. “Makes your hands clean.”

“I think they use it for the tea ceremony, right?” Becca said, wiping tears away on the back of her hand.

“It’s part of a purification rite,” Mari said. “That much I’ve learned from my husband.”

Mas didn’t know much about purification, but he knew that somehow the pond, with all its bloodstains and bad memories, needed to be made clean again. Although the police tape warded them off from disturbing any evidence, they at least could wash themselves of its curse.

Mas poured the water over the hands of Phillip, Becca, and finally his daughter. Mari took the remaining water from the bottom of the bucket and shook it off on Mas’s hands. The bandage had fallen off of Mas’s cut a day earlier, and Mas was surprised to see that the skin was already starting to fuse together again.

The back door opened and there emerged the neighbor, Howard Foster, who had completed his interview with the police. His hands on his hips, he made a strange noise with his tongue and teeth, as if he were calling chickens for their next feed. “I told you. I told you that this would end up a disaster,” he said, shaking his head. “You should have never unearthed this pond.” He walked up to Phillip. “I’ve been talking to my bank. I think that I can make you and your sister a fair offer. Once you’re ready, give me a call.”

Phillip stood above the tsukubai and folded his arms. “I won’t be making that call, Mr. Foster, because we are keeping the house.”

“And the garden,” Becca added with finality.

Before Becca and Phillip left the garden, Mas pulled Becca aside. “Youzu chase Anna Grady away,” he said.

“What?” Becca’s right eyelid fluttered like a butterfly trying to make its escape.

“Youzu don’t want her to marry your daddy.”

Becca swallowed and looked away. “I finally got K- san to myself, you know. After all these years. We shared the same passion for gardens, plants. I can’t tell you how many times we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden together. We even had pet names for each one of the bonsai in their collection. Do you know some are hundreds of years old?”

This woman has too much time on her hands, Mas thought.

“And then he tells me that he’s met someone. And it’s serious. He was talking about marriage, Mr. Arai, after only two months. I had to put a stop to it.” Becca explained that she had hired a private investigator to look into the background of Anna Grady, formerly Anna Miller, both in the U.S. and in Estonia. “She had been married once before, but that wasn’t a big deal, with K- san married three times. But what the investigator found out overseas was highly damaging: Anna’s family had aided the Nazis during World War Two. What if that news got out? K- san ’s reputation would be at stake.”

Mas wasn’t that sure of that. “Ova fifty years ago. Nobody care.”

“That’s what Phillip said. But K- san would have cared. I know it. He prided himself on helping teach military intelligence officers to help end the war. What if people found out his new wife was a Nazi? What kind of PR mess would that be?”

Mas shook his head. Anna’s country had been pulled apart by different world powers. The only reason her family probably had turned to one was to get away from the other.

“I threatened to tell K- san if she kept up the relationship. She refused to break it off, almost spit in my face. Before I could do anything more, K- san ended it. I was so happy at first. But then his mood became so dark. He must have known that he was dying then. I’m sure that’s why he decided to call it quits with Anna. He didn’t want her to feel that she had to hang around while his body wasted away.” Becca hid her face in her hands. “He must have really loved her.” She lowered her hands, black makeup smudges like ash around her eyes. “Do you think K- san would have forgiven me?”

Mas didn’t answer. He didn’t know Kazzy Ouchi, or even much about forgiveness. He did understand emptiness and regret, however. Having those feelings in common, they stood silently at the open gap of the pond, imagining what it would be like for it to be finally filled with clear water and brightly colored fish.

After the police told them that they could go, Mas told Mari that he needed to make one more stop, one more task he needed to do, before returning to the underground apartment.

“I have yoji,” he said.

“Want me to come with you?”

Mas shook his head. “But there’s sumptin’ you and Lloyd needsu to do. Your own yoji. Tell Lloyd to give Ghigo okome can.”

“Our rice container?”

“Let Lloyd handle,” Mas said. His daughter had gone through enough for that day.

Mas returned to the same Parisian flower shop, and indeed the same girl was working behind the counter.

“Hel-lo,” the girl said very deliberately, and Mas figured out that she still thought he was an inspector from Japan.

“I needsu gardenia.”

“You want to send some gardenias?”

Mas nodded. “One dozen,” he said, taking out his credit card. “To Fort Lee.”

For the next couple of days, Mas really tried to take it easy. Both Lloyd and Takeo were discharged from the hospital, so the whole family was again in the underground apartment. Mas, however, couldn’t help but be gasa-gasa. He first began cleaning the moldy bathtub with an old toothbrush and then tried to do something with Lloyd and Mari’s pitiful garden. Finally, Mari moaned. “Dad, you’re so restless; you’re driving us crazy. Get out of the house, why don’t you? You’re going home in a couple of days. Go sightseeing with Tug.”

Mas was not wild about sightseeing, because what was the point? He usually wanted to get from point A to point B with the least wandering. Straight lines were the best, the shortest distance between two locations.

But Tug was a lot like Chizuko. They liked to see things beyond the most direct route. To heed his daughter’s plea, Mas agreed to wander this time. “You have to see the Statue of Liberty,” Tug said. “Up close.”

As they approached the landmark on the ferry, Mas first noticed that the statue seemed squatter in real life. He thought that the green lady’s figure would take his breath away, overwhelm him with her sheer size and grandeur. Instead, she seemed more comforting, like a distant female relative who regularly sent you treats in the mail. But the color-the greenish tinge much like the rusty copper end of an old hose-that was another story altogether. That was indeed incredible.