Garden of Stones (21 page)

Maybe Reg would leave Jessie alone.

“Lucy, I want you to know something else,” Jeanne said. “In a case like this, where someone has suffered, as your mother suffered, God can be...compassionate. I believe forgiveness is possible, even for the gravest of sins. Even for taking a life.”

It took Lucy a second to understand that Jeanne meant God’s forgiveness, not her own.

“You mean she won’t have to go to hell.”

Jeanne nodded. “I have been praying for her soul, Lucy, and for the intervention of the Holy Spirit.”

Sister Jeanne was kind, but Lucy knew, without even a hint of doubt, that her mother was finally at peace, that all she ever wanted was to be safe. In death, no one could ever hurt Miyako again. Lucy wasn’t sure she even believed in hell, at least not for someone like her mother. Someone who’d done her best all her life, whose failures were never for a lack of trying.

Before she died, Miyako had made sure no one would ever try to hurt Lucy either. If her mother’s gift had been bound up with suffering, Lucy knew it was also a gift of mercy.

She would never tell anyone what her mother had done to her. Miyako was past suffering, but people would never understand. Lucy couldn’t even tell Jeanne, which made her sad: already, she was learning how lonely it was to be a keeper of secrets.

But she would manage. That would be her gift to Miyako.

25

Weeks passed, and the pain receded. The bandages were gone now, and sometimes in the dark Lucy snuck her fingertips over the landscape of her scars. She begged the nurses to give her a mirror, but they said it was too soon. “Just a little while longer,” they always promised. “So you can see how you are healing.”

So you don’t see how ugly you are now,
Lucy imagined them thinking. It was disturbing to think that next time she saw her reflection, it would be a new face, a stranger’s face. But she still wanted to know.

In a few weeks the risk of infection had passed and Lucy was allowed to have guests. Auntie Aiko and Mr. Hamaguchi were the first to come visit her, and Lucy was sitting up in bed when the nurse led them into the room one Saturday, her breakfast tray barely touched at her bedside. Mr. Hamaguchi was wearing a suit that was too large for him, the cuffs overhanging his wrists and the shoulders sitting awkwardly on his thin frame. Lucy thought that if Miyako were alive, she would have insisted on helping Aiko tailor his suit. She would never have allowed Lucy’s father out of the house in such badly fitting clothes.

Aiko was dressed up as well, like the privileged woman she once was. The dress she wore was one Lucy remembered from before—a green bouclé with three-quarter sleeves—but the privations of camp life showed in the way the dress hung on her. She and Mr. Hamaguchi were like a matching pair of scarecrows.

Aiko clutched her purse and a neatly folded paper bag tightly at her abdomen, smiling stiffly. “Lucy...it is so good to see you.” She held out the paper bag. “We brought you some things from the store. Magazines—
Movie Life,
and
Movie Story Year Book
. And candy.”

“Thank you, Auntie.” Lucy swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.

Aiko’s smile faltered. “Oh, Lucy,” she said softly, her voice catching.

“You can sit in that chair,” Lucy said politely, pointing at the chair Sister Jeanne used when she visited. Aiko dragged the chair so close to the bed that her knees touched the mattress, and took Lucy’s hand in hers.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “With everything that’s happened... Oh, Lucy, I don’t even know what to say.”

Lucy held on tight, not trusting her voice. She remembered how Aiko used to come over with shiny pennies for her when she was little, slipping them solemnly into Lucy’s little white patent-leather purse, whispering that one day she would be rich and famous.

“The nurses say you are healing very well,” Aiko continued gamely. Mr Hamaguchi nodded encouragingly.

Lucy tried for a smile, grateful for once for the pain, since it took her breath away, along with the urge to cry. “They treat me very well.”

“This will help you to pass the time.” Aiko tapped the bag of gifts, the paper crinkling. “Before you know it, you’ll be out of the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Lucy repeated.

“Lucy, I thought you’d like to know that Mr. Hamaguchi’s friend has made a marker for your mother’s grave.”

“Mr. Kado, he is very skilled. He made the cemetery monument.” Mr. Hamaguchi clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. Lucy knew the monument he was talking about—it loomed large and impressive in the center of the graveyard, which had been cleared and ringed with smooth stones by volunteers. “Maybe you would like to go see it, when you are feeling a little better.”

Lucy had not allowed herself to think of her mother’s body buried under the earth. It was simply too painful. “Auntie Aiko,” she said, changing the subject, “do you have a compact in your purse?”

Aiko froze. She loosened her grip on Lucy’s hand and shifted her gaze to the starched hem of the bedsheets. “I am sorry, I don’t.”

Lucy knew it wasn’t true: Aiko carried a compact with her everywhere. “Please, Auntie, I need to see,” she whispered.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Aiko said. Lucy’s hand slipped from hers. “Give it time—you have more healing to do. The doctor will say when you are ready.”

“Please. It’s my face, I need to know.”

The look that passed between Aiko and Mr. Hamaguchi was full of regret. Years later, it would occur to Lucy that they had been considering taking her with them. They would be married by the end of the war; they could have adopted her, given her a home. And she would wonder if it was in this instant that the decision was made: looking upon her face, calculating the damage, the strain such a responsibility would place on their new life.

“My mother would want me to see,” she pleaded. “She always said you must do the things you’re afraid to do.”

This was, in fact, not something Miyako ever would have said, but rather an approximation of an Eleanor Roosevelt quotation. But in this moment, Lucy was not above lying to get what she wanted. What she needed.

“I still don’t think...” Aiko sighed, but she reached for her purse and withdrew the compact. She opened it and swiped at a speck on the mirrored surface. “Just promise me that you’ll remember that you’ll keep getting better and better, and—”

Lucy snatched the thing from her hands, too impatient for manners. The mirror flashed brightly in her eyes, making her blink. Then: a glimpse of red-washed dunes, fissures and valleys of shiny stretched flesh, half her face twisted beyond recognition.

She caught her breath. Tilted the mirror and slowly moved it down to reveal her chin, her...

Her mouth. She knew it was wrecked from the agony she felt the first few times she tried to speak. But she couldn’t form a picture in her mind of what it must have looked like. The oddest thing was...one side was perfect, her lips rosebud-pink and tipped up at the corner. But the other side dove down in a grotesque leer, the damaged flesh reknitting itself in a new order.

She couldn’t bear it; she tilted the mirror away. She followed the path of the scar up the side of her face to her eye, where the tissue was thick and shiny, pulling cruelly at the part of her face that had escaped. Her lower lid canted down, the scar’s northern reaches stopping just short of the outer arc of her brow (how many times would Lucy have to endure Dr. Ambrose reminding her of her good fortune at not losing the eye?); sometimes she felt that eye water when the other did not.

Finally Lucy held the compact away from her, trying to see her entire face, but the surface of the glass was too small and she managed only about two thirds. Regarding herself this way, it was difficult to believe it was truly her. She switched to her good side, and there she found herself. Her expression was unfamiliar, true, but it was
her
eye, lip, nose, chin. Moreover, it was also her
mother,
captured there in the glass, her spirit, her memory.

“Thank you,” she said, snapping the compact shut and handing it back to Aiko, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Oh, Lucy, please don’t be sad, please don’t—”

“I’m not,” Lucy lied. “I’m fine. It’s what I expected.” Also a lie. Because hadn’t she endured these painful weeks by tricking herself, convincing herself that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?

Pathetic, Lucy now realized, and weak. She wanted to throw something, throw the mirror and watch it break into a million sharp pieces.

“I’m just so tired,” she said instead. “I think I need to rest now.”

Aiko looked as though she was going to cry herself. “We’ll visit again soon. You’ll be moving to the Children’s Village, the nurses say, and we can come every weekend.”

“That would be nice,” Lucy said, pushing her hands under her blankets so Aiko couldn’t see the way she squeezed them into fists, turning her knuckles white and leaving half-moon marks on the tender flesh of her palm with her nails.

Mr. Hamaguchi made a sound in his throat as Aiko bent over Lucy’s bed and kissed her gently on the forehead. Lucy suddenly realized that no one was likely to ever kiss her cheek again, not even when it was healed and didn’t hurt anymore. She reached her arms up and circled Aiko’s neck, pulling her closer, pressing the good side of her face against hers. She knew she was giving in to weakness she couldn’t afford, but she closed her eyes and tried to pretend everything was the way it used to be, even if just for a moment.

“We’ll be back again soon,” Aiko said as they turned to go, but her embrace had felt a lot like goodbye.

* * *

The day dragged slowly on. Lucy hoped Sister Jeanne might make an exception to her usual schedule and visit early. Lucy had no intention of confessing to having borrowed the mirror, because she wasn’t sure she could take much more overt kindness today, but it would be a comfort just to have Jeanne’s company. The ward felt even lonelier than usual, the little girl with the measles sleeping fitfully and the weekend nurses scarce.

Late in the afternoon, Lucy was dozing when the feeling of being watched tugged her out of some instantly forgotten dream. She opened her eyes and discovered Jessie standing over her.

For a moment she wondered if he was part of the dream, invoked by her longing. His hair had been cut since the last time she saw him, and he stood with both hands in his pockets, the way he often did when he waited for her after school. “Jessie?” she whispered tentatively. “Is it really you?”

“Hi.” He spoke quietly, as if he was in a church.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Awhile.” The smile he gave her was tentative, almost a little afraid. He was wearing a shirt she recognized, blue with white stitching. She had once put her hand on that shirt and felt his heart beating underneath. “My mom thinks I’m at dinner... She thinks it’s too soon for me to come see you. But I didn’t want to wait.”

Lucy’s joy at seeing him was tempered by the knowledge of what she looked like. She lifted a hand to her face, pressing it against the worst of the scars. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said, eyes downcast.

“It’s all right.” He thought for a moment and added, “It’s not like I thought it would be. It’s still you, but different.”

“I’m not pretty anymore.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud, the first time she’d acknowledged it completely. “I’m... I’m going to be a freak.”

“That’s not true.” Very gently, he put his hand over hers. “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes. Not like before. It’s getting better.”

He pulled her hand away from her face, and she could feel him looking at her and it was almost all right.

“Can I sit with you?” Jessie asked. “I mean, in the bed? Is there room?”

Lucy blushed, the sensation of warmth stealing over her scars unfamiliar and prickly. “Okay.” She wiggled over in her bed and patted the space she had made.

Jessie got under the blankets with great care, as though he was afraid of hurting her. He kicked off his shoes before sliding his legs under the covers, and they echoed on the wooden floor. The last of the sun lit his face softly as he pulled the blankets back up, his body touching hers at the shoulders and hips.

“Will I get in trouble?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t know. Probably, if they see you.” After a moment, she added, “Thank you for coming.”

He nodded. Under the sheet his hand found hers, holding it lightly at first, and then weaving his fingers through hers and hanging on hard. “I just wanted to tell you—he quit, Lucy. He quit coming for me. They say he’s getting transferred.”

For a moment she thought about telling him the truth, about how her mother had led her into the hall, the way she had looked at her one last time before she reached behind the stove. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Once, not that long ago, she and Jessie had spoken of the future as though they might share it. “When the war’s over,” they would say, or “When we’re in college.” Now that future was lost. Jessie might not even realize it yet, but the truth lodged in Lucy’s heart like a pebble in a shoe, impossible to ignore.

If she was lucky, he would remember her the way she had been before, when all the girls in their class envied her and all the boys wished they were the one walking with her after school. Someday, when Jessie had a wife and children of his own, he might think of her sometimes when he was alone. Lucy hoped he would think of the first time he kissed her, the way their hearts pounded as they ran, laughing, from the creek that day, too fast and too clever ever to be caught.

Jessie put his arms around her and pulled her close. She pressed her face into his shoulder and breathed his smell. She whispered his name and he whispered hers and she cried a little and he didn’t say anything when her tears dampened her shirt.
I love you,
she thought, and though she had lost the right to say it out loud, though that privilege was reserved now for some other girl, some girl with smooth skin and a beautiful smile, Lucy thought the words with all her might and hoped that somehow he understood.