Garden of Stones (24 page)

“I don’t want people in here,” Garvey protested, a note of panic coloring his petulance.

“And I don’t want
you
here,” Mrs. Sloat shot back, “but neither of us has ever got what we wanted, have we?” A moment later she added, in a calmer tone, “Garvey makes good money mounting trophies for other people.”

“Fish,”
he said, as though it were a curse word. “Deer.”

Mrs. Sloat ignored his interruption. “Owens Lake is less than twenty miles down the road. There’s a fellow, Mr. Dang, who runs a fishing camp there. We buy from him sometimes for Sunday dinners. He could give Garvey all the work he could handle. Gentlemen come for vacation, they want something to take home, to show off. And let me tell you, there’s big money to be made from the tourist trade.”

“Well, I’m not about to work for some goddamn Chink, that’s for sure.”

“Not if you can sit in here playing with your little glue pots while other people put bread on the table,” Mrs. Sloat said. “God forbid you should contribute to this household.”

Lucy wasn’t sure of the source of the siblings’ antagonism, and she sensed that her only power lay in alignment. But she would have to choose carefully.

“You Japs eat fish?” Garvey asked.

“Garvey.”

“I know they turned up their noses at perfectly good food in that camp. When our boys were making do with K rations.”

Lucy could have told him about the slop that passed for food, the scarcity of decent meat, the shortage of fresh produce. But instead she remained quiet and focused on the pelt stretched on the stand. She thought she could make out knobby fissures where the creature’s eyes should have been. Seeing them from the inside was strangely fascinating.

“It’s a burn, right?” Garvey prodded, when she didn’t respond. “What happened to you? Grease fire? Electric?”

Lucy knew better than to let him rattle her that way—she’d had plenty of practice telling this particular lie. “It was an oil fire. A stove exploded.”

“Who knows. Maybe getting burned improved you,” Garvey said, but it was his sister he stared at as he spoke. “Nothing uglier than a Jap girl.”

“Garvey!”
This time Mrs. Sloat advanced on him, lurching as her bad leg came down too quickly, and she had to grab the workbench to steady herself. Garvey’s face flickered with victory.

“A pretty face is nothing you’ll need here, anyway,” he muttered. “Now get the fuck out of my house.”

28

This room was an insult, smaller and filthier than the one she’d shared with her mother in the camp. Lucy found it hard to sleep with the dust and odor assaulting her nose and lungs. She experimented with leaving the door open a crack, but it didn’t seem to help the ventilation. She lay awake, exhausted to the bone, staring out the tiny window at the stars sprinkled across the patch of night sky. Searching for sleep, she replayed moments she had spent with Jessie—the first time he held her hand, the way he would push her hair gently away from her face before he kissed her—but even these memories were not enough to take her away. Her heartbeat throbbed in the condensed and matted tissue of her scars. She imagined her blood moving, slow and thick, through her veins, the blood of her doomed family.

Lucy’s room next to the kitchen had never been a maid’s room, as Mrs. Sloat claimed; the moldering debris in the corners was proof that it had served as a larder. A single small, unglazed window was covered only with a rusting screen. The walls were marred with rows of holes where shelves had once hung, entire chunks of plaster missing. A meat hook in the ceiling was surrounded by a spreading stain. The only furniture was a stained mattress on a cot that looked even older than the one Lucy slept on at Manzanar.

Just once—the third morning or the fourth—she failed to get up right away when Mrs. Sloat rapped on her door. Moments later, it was flung open, banging into the wall and sending up a shower of plaster dust. Mrs. Sloat stood over Lucy, bristling with rage.

“Don’t you forget—” she spat the words with cold fury as Lucy scrambled to cover herself with the thin sheet “—that you are here as an act of our mercy. The world does not want you, Lucy, no one wants you. And you have to earn your place here just like the rest of us.”

Lucy cowered, and for a moment she thought the woman was going to strike her. She rolled as close to the wall as she could, sharp lath cutting into her back through her thin nightgown.

“Earn your place,” Mrs. Sloat muttered and turned away to leave.

Seconds after her footsteps faded, Lucy finally breathed.

* * *

A small reprieve arrived unexpectedly on Saturday. Lucy was starting the day’s laundry when an old Chevy High Boy pickup rattled to a stop in front of the house. Three people got out—a middle-aged woman and a boy and girl in their teens—and started unloading tin pails from the back. Lucy watched them through the laundry window, and didn’t hear Mrs. Sloat come in.

“Got your eye on Hal McEvoy, I see,” she said. “You and every other girl in town.”

Lucy hastily got back to the laundry. “I was just wondering who was here,” she said. She
had
noticed the boy—sun browned, hair cut to bleached-blond stubble, broad back of a hard worker—but not the way Mrs. Sloat was implying. She seemed to delight in even the smallest opportunities for meanness, and Lucy had learned that ignoring her slights was the best way to defuse her.

“That’s the weekend girl, Sharon McEvoy, and her kids. Twins, they must be seventeen, eighteen by now. Ruby helps serve, and Hal helps Leo around the house.”

Lucy picked up a pile of rags and started folding them, feigning indifference.

“You stay out of their way, hear? We’ll have a couple dozen guests for lunch and who knows for dinner. I don’t need you getting underfoot.”

There were few restaurants in Lone Pine, and the Sloats picked up extra business serving family-style meals on Saturday and Sunday. Lucy had seen the menus: a dollar seventy-five bought coffee or tea, an entrée, vegetable and starch, and cake or pudding. Ten could be seated at the big walnut table, and Leo had dragged in two extra cloth-covered card tables that morning.

“Go make sure the kitchen’s picked up,” Mrs. Sloat said. “You can finish this later.”

Sharon McEvoy was already at the sink, a ruddy, stocky ranch wife with brown teeth and a shapeless bosom. Ruby looked like a younger version of her mother. They clattered around the kitchen, making themselves at home at the cupboards and counters and glaring at Lucy, who raced to get the breakfast dishes dried and put away. She wasn’t about to argue with her first opportunity for free time. She could have the six occupied rooms cleaned by one o’clock and the rest of the day to herself. And if her luck held, the same tomorrow. She had been collecting stones all week when she made the trek from the house to the burn barrel with the trash, or to dump wash water on the shrub roses along the back fence. She had in mind to start a rock garden of her own, a miniature version of the ones she remembered from Manzanar.

She had scouted the best location, the scarred and barren earth beyond the porch addition at the opposite end of the house from Garvey’s apartment. From the looks of it, no one ever went there; an untended plot of land separated the motel from the street. The narrow strip was shielded from view on two sides: by a sagging trellis in the front, and an overgrown tangle of blackberry canes that sprawled into the neighboring lot. Her stones were piled next to the house, some as small as a robin’s egg, others larger than her fist. She wanted to plunge her hands into the warm earth, to sift out the pebbles and twigs and create something orderly, something that was hers alone.

Lucy cleaned the first three rooms without incident, but when she got to room nine, she found the door slightly ajar. She knocked, not hard, hoping no one would answer. Lucy usually preferred to avoid the motel guests, with their lingering stares and awkward apologies upon seeing her scars.

From inside the room came the sound of a man hawking phlegm, and Lucy turned to go. But she’d gone only a few steps when he called out. “Hey! Girl! Come on in. You can clean around me, just pretend I’m not here.”

Lucy came back, leaving her cart outside the door as she tentatively entered. The door swung shut behind her. Inside, the room looked much like any other: the bedcovers were mussed, half a dozen cigarette butts were crushed in the ashtray, a suitcase lay open on the bed.

The man at the sink didn’t turn around. He was shaving the underside of his chin with a safety razor. “Start on the bed,” he said, and his voice triggered something inside her, a warning, a memory. Lucy tugged at the handle of her cart and tried to ignore her sudden unease. “Don’t mind my stuff, you can just throw it on the chair.”

A crumpled pair of pants had been discarded across the bedspread, inside out. When Lucy reached for them, she saw that the man’s underpants were twisted in the pant legs. She glanced back at the man, his muscular back and close-shorn, wheat-blond hair, and something snagged in her mind. Her hand hovered in the air as the memory took shape.

And then she knew, and it was too late.

“Well, what do you know.” He turned around and smiled at her. “Little Lucy Takeda. With a face like that, I’d know you anywhere.”

Lucy backed away, banging into the desk chair, but Reg Forrest was fast. He crossed the room in a few strides, standing much too close to her. He hadn’t bothered to rinse away the flecks of soap on his face, but he was as handsome as ever, even in his undershirt and shorts. Another man’s knees would be knobby and his gut flabby; another man would be self-conscious about his state of semi-undress. But Reg watched her like a cat with a mouse.

“I’ll leave,” she said quickly. “I can come back later, I can—”

“No, Lucy, stay and talk to me a minute.” He maneuvered himself between her and the door. “Tell me what happened to you. How did you end up here?”

“I—I just—”
Act like nothing’s wrong,
she thought, and maybe he would too. Maybe he wouldn’t remember. But
she
remembered.

“Feeling shy, eh? Just like your mother. Oh, she was a quiet one all those nights—fellows breaking their backs trying to get her to look at them and she didn’t give them anything. Except to George, of course.” He laughed, a hard grating chuckle. “Old George. Rest his soul. As for me, I got promoted, you know. Well, you probably don’t know, seeing as you were in the hospital. Sorry we didn’t visit, by the way...me and the boys. Some of them, well, after what your mother did, you can understand.”

Lucy’s fear trickled through her body, immobilizing her. It was like the night in the gardens, when Reg gave her the message from George Rickenbocker: his voice was pleasant, his expression friendly. There was nothing to suggest he intended her harm. Neither had there been that night—even as his fingers deftly pinched the nerve in her neck, causing such terrible pain.

“Please, I just want to get my job done.” Whispering now, giving away her fear.

“And you can in a minute. Hell, I’ll even leave you a good tip, how’s that?” He took his time looking at her, and she could feel his gaze traveling the surface of her face...then down across her dress and back up again.

“Why are you here?” she managed, swallowing.

“Gave up my apartment. I travel between the centers now. I’ll be heading down to Poston tonight.” There was a note of pride in his voice.

Reg reached out then, as though to offer his hand, and before Lucy could react he had rested it lightly on her waist. It hovered there for a moment and then slid down onto her hip, which he gripped more firmly. His hand was warm through the thin cotton of her dress.

“You want to know what the
real
tragedy is?” he said, his breathing going rapid and shallow. His fingers squeezed, kneading the flesh of her buttock, and Lucy laid her hand on his arm. She meant to push him away, but found she was shaking so hard that she could barely manage even a small shove.

“Please,” she whispered.

“You could have been someone, with a face like that.” His other hand settled on her shoulder, then quickly patted its way down her dress front, settling on her breast, which he squeezed. “You were a pretty girl, weren’t you,” he murmured, no longer looking at her face, but watching his hand squeezing. Lucy closed her eyes for a second and focused her fear, sucking in a breath, and then she released a sound like a balloon leaking air as she shoved him away with all her might.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like me?” Reg didn’t look offended, merely amused, as he stumbled away. He wiped a bit of shaving cream from his chin and tugged at his belt loops. “Maybe you’re like your mother—you don’t even know what you want. She was crazy, though. Beautiful lady, but...” Reg looped his finger at his ear and mugged at her. “I mean, George
loved
her. In his way.”

“He lied,” Lucy said hoarsely. “He said she stole.”

“That.”
Reg chuckled. “Lovers’ quarrel. You’ll understand someday. When you’re older... Once a man gets done showing you how to be a woman.”

He reached for her again, this time sliding his hand inside the neck of her dress, deftly unbuttoning. His fingers found the edge of her camisole and slid inside before Lucy could react, but then she jerked backward, running into the chair for a second time and stumbling. Her hand closed on the chair back and then she went down, the chair tipping with her, and she was on her hands and knees crawling, so desperate was she to get away. She reached the door and grabbed the knob to pull herself up to her feet, her hands shaking.

“Aw, don’t go away mad,” Reg said, his voice full of merriment. “It was good to see you again, Lucy. Don’t forget me, hear?”

Lucy finally got the door open. She pushed it open and stumbled outside, into the blinding sun. There was her cart, so familiar she wanted to cry, and she grabbed its handle as the door closed softly behind her. She pushed the cart down the sidewalk, dirty water sloshing over the side of the mop bucket.
Slow down,
she had to slow down, or the thing would upend—its wheels were sprung and its balance was tricky. Her heart pounded and she sucked in air, coughing from the pollen; spring had arrived and tiny white petals drifted down from blooming trees. In the parking lot, a man shouted a greeting to another; people were arriving for lunch.