Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (38 page)

"I'm gonna miss seeing you around these parts, Henry," Sheldon said, cracking a roasted peanut, tossing the shells into the street, offering the bag to his friend.

Henry took a handful. "I'll be back. This is home. Right here. I'm going to China to learn all I can, see some long-lost relatives, but that's not who I am. This place is who I am. This is home for me. Still, it's hard to believe that in one more week I'll set sail for southern China and a village filled with relatives I've never seen with names I couldn't even pronounce."

"You do sense the irony now, don't you?" Sheldon asked, spitting a piece of peanut shell out the side of his mouth.

"That I waited for her--for Keiko--and now I'm asking Ethel to wait for me? I know, it doesn't exactly make sense, but she said she'd wait, and I believe her. She will.

My parents love her. And as much as I hate to see my father so happy under the circumstances, he is. But he did his part. I told him I'd go if he'd do me a favor in return, and he kept his word. He wants to talk all the time now, but I just don't know ..."

"About your old man?"

"We lived under the same roof, but didn't speak for two, almost three years; at least he didn't speak to me, didn't acknowledge my presence. And now he wants his proud son back, and I don't know
how
to feel. So I just let Ethel talk to him, and that seems to work."

Sheldon cracked open another peanut, shaking his head, sucking the salt off the shell before tossing it. "Speaking of ..."

Henry looked up to see Ethel running across the street, crossing into traffic.

They had begun dating the day Henry waited at the Panama Hotel. She'd bought him lunch, and he'd bought her dinner. Although they went to different schools they saw each other as much as they could. They spent all day together on Saturdays--walking arm in arm along the waterfront, or catching the No. 6 bus to Woodland Park, splashing in the wading pools, and chasing each other through the zoological gardens. They even shared their first kiss atop the Smith Tower, thirty-five stories up, watching the sun set over the city, lighting the harbor, shadowy mountains in the distance. Henry kept the admission ticket, a worn stub for fifty cents that reminded him of that perfect evening, in his wallet.

One place Henry never took Ethel, though, was the Black Elks Club. He never even mentioned the smoking joint where Oscar Holden held court and Sheldon played backup. That memory was special to Henry something he couldn't easily share. Sheldon never asked about it. He seemed to understand without needing an explanation.

As Henry stood up, she threw her arms around him, squeezing him, shaking him, looking frantic and ecstatic at the same time.

"Hey ... hey, what's the hurry? Did I miss something? What's the matter, are you okay?" Henry said as she tried to get the words out.

"Shhhh ..." was all she could muster, holding Henry's hand. She was almost hysterical, blissful in her abandon. "Listen! Listen! Can you hear it?" She reached out and took Sheldon's hand as well.

Henry looked down the street in stunned amazement. All the cars on South King had stopped, frozen. Some right in the middle of the intersection with Seventh Avenue.

People were running into the streets, pouring out of shops and office buildings.

In the distance, everywhere, Henry heard bells ringing, then cars honking. The commuter ferries that sat in their terminal moorings sounded their foghorns. The sounds roared from open windows and storefronts. Not the wailing siren of an air-raid drill. Not that piercing, menacing horn blaring from the rooftops, but cheering--that roared like a wave, crashing into all parts of Chinatown, the International District, and the whole city of Seattle.

The news spread from person to person, house to house, block to block--the Japanese had surrendered. Everywhere Henry looked, people flooded into the streets, dancing on the hoods of parked cars. Grown men were screaming like little boys, grown women, even stoic Chinese women, openly crying tears of joy.

Sheldon broke out his horn, slipped in the reeded mouthpiece, and began to wail, strutting around in the middle of South King between a milk truck and a police car, whose sirens flashed in slow, lazy circles.

Ethel wrapped her arms around Henry. He looked down and kissed her. Everyone else was doing it; even total strangers embraced and cried. Others brought out glasses of wine, glasses of anything.

Deep down, Henry had known the war's end was imminent. Everyone knew.

Everyone felt it. He'd wondered what he would feel. Joy? Relief? He'd wondered what his father would do to occupy his time now that the Japanese had surrendered. Then again, he knew the war would go on in his father's mind. This time it would be the Kuomintang, the nationalists versus the communists. China's struggle would continue, and so would his father's.

Despite the years of
scholarshipping
at Rainier, and the hordes of Chinese kids who had shouted "White devil" as he walked to school each morning, Henry had never felt more American than right then, celebrating the greatest victory in the history of history. It was a joy that was simple, unexpected, and carried with it a quiet peace. It was a happy ending that brought the promise of a new beginning. So when Ethel finally let go, her lips still wet and soft from Henry's kiss, the words came out like a secret confession. And somehow it made sense. Somehow it fit. If Henry had had doubts before, they were obfuscated by the ringing church bells and yelling, crying crowds.

"Ethel

..."

She straightened her hair and pulled the seams of her dress, trying to look composed in the frenzy of the moment.

"Will you marry me?" No sooner had Henry said it than alarms went off in his head. The realization that words aren't toys to be played with, and hearts were at stake.

He didn't regret asking, he was just a little surprised that he had. After all, they were young. But no younger than many of the picture brides who had come over from Japan.

Besides, he was leaving in a week for China. He'd be gone two years at least, and she had said she'd wait. Now she'd have something worth waiting for.

"Henry, I could have sworn you just asked me to marry you."

Jazz musicians began pouring into the streets from the clubs on South Jackson, some cheering, other riffing spontaneously.

"I did. I'm asking you now. Will you marry me?"

She didn't say a thing. The tears in her eyes from the happiest day in the history of Seattle flowed again for a whole new reason.

"Is that a yes, or a no?" Henry asked, suddenly feeling naked and vulnerable.

Ethel, on the other hand, looked inspired. Henry watched her climb on the hood of a police car even before the officer could get out to stop her. She turned to the crowd in the street and yelled, "I'm getting married!" The crowd roared its approval, and men and woman tilted their glasses back and toasted her.

As the officer helped her down, she found Henry's eyes and nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I'll wait ... And yes, I'll marry you. So hurry back, I might not wait forever."

It was during that moment, that exchange, when all fell silent in Henry's mind.

The crowds and the horns and the sirens lowered their volumes. And he noticed for the first time a few Japanese families in the crowd. Trying their best to go about their business unnoticed. Saddled with the poor luck of somehow being related to the losing team, or coming from the wrong side of town due to unfortunate circumstances beyond their control. Some Japanese families, scores in fact, had trickled back in the previous months. But they found little left of their belongings and even less in the way of opportunity to start again. Even with the assistance of the American Friends Service Committee, a group that offered to help Japanese families find homes and rent apartments, few stayed.

It was during this stolen moment, this spot of quiet melancholy, that Henry saw what he most wanted, and most feared. Standing across the street, staring directly at him, were a pair of beautiful chestnut brown eyes. What did he see in them? He couldn't tell.

Sadness and joy? Or was he projecting what was in his own heart? She stood motionless.

Taller now--her hair much longer as it drifted away from her shoulders in the direction of the cool summer breeze.

Henry rubbed his eyes and she was gone, lost in the celebrating crowds that still flooded the streets.

But it couldn't have been Keiko.
She'd have written.

Walking home along the littered, ticker-tape-covered sidewalk, Henry wondered how his father was taking the news. He knew his mother would probably prepare a feast, something to celebrate was so rare during times of rationing. But his father, who knew?

Inside, in Henry's quiet thoughts, he couldn't escape the memory of Keiko. The what-ifs.
What if he
had said something differently?
What if
he'd asked her to stay?

But he couldn't forget the love, the sincere feelings Ethel had as she delighted in her engagement, holding Henry close, giving all of her heart so unselfishly.

Around the corner, Henry looked up at the window of his Canton Alley apartment--he'd be leaving it next week for China. As he was thinking of how his mother would hold up during his farewell, he heard her shouting his name. Yelling, in fact. Not the vocal celebration of the others on the street--this was something else.

"Henry! It's your father ..." Henry saw her waving frantically through the open window, the same one she hated for him to leave open.

He

ran.

Up the street, and up the steps to his apartment. Ethel tried to keep up, then shouted at him to go on. She knew, even before Henry knew. She'd spent far more time with Henry's father than anyone but his mother.

In the apartment he shared with his parents, Henry saw Dr. Luke once again.

Closing his black bag, looking broken and defeated. "I'm sorry, Henry."

"What's

happening?"

Henry burst into his parents' room. His father was in bed, looking pale. His feet curled in at impossible angles, rigid and lifeless from the knees down. His breathing rattled in his chest. The only other noise was that of Henry's mother crying. He put his arms around her, and she held him close, patting the side of his face.

"He doesn't have long, Henry," the doctor explained sadly. "He wanted to see you one last time. He's been holding on for you."

Ethel arrived in the doorway, out of breath and looking pained as she saw the condition of her future father-in-law. She patted the arm of Henry's mother, who began to have that vacant look of quiet acceptance.

Henry sat next to the frail shell that was left of his once domineering father.

"I'm here," he said in Chinese. "You can go now, your ancestors are waiting....

You don't need to wait for me anymore. The Japanese surrendered--I'm going to China next week. And I'm marrying Ethel." If the words were a surprise to anyone, no one had cause to show it at the moment.

His father opened his eyes and found Henry.
"Wo wei ni zuo."
The words rattled out between haggard breaths.
I did it for you.

That was when Henry knew. His father wasn't speaking about sending him to China, or about his planning to marry Ethel. His father was superstitious and wanted to die with a clear conscience so he wouldn't be haunted in the next world. His father was confessing.

"You fixed it, didn't you?" Henry spoke with quiet resignation, unable to feel anger toward his dying father. He wanted to feel it, but unlike his father, he wouldn't allow himself to be defined by hatred. "You used your position with the benevolent associations and fixed it so that my letters never made it to Keiko. So that hers never got delivered. That was your doing somehow, wasn't it?"

Henry looked at his father, fully expecting him to die at any moment, leaving him with that question unanswered. Instead, his father inhaled one last time, one long draw, and confirmed what Henry had already guessed. With his dying breath he nodded, and said it again.
"Wo wei ni zuo,"
I did it for
you.

Henry watched his father's eyes widen as he stared at the ceiling, his mouth releasing one long, slow breath that rattled in his chest. To Henry he almost looked surprised as his eyes closed one last time.

His mother clung to Ethel, both crying.

Henry couldn't look at either of them. Instead he left his father's side and looked out the window. The excitement of the Japanese surrender was still palpable in the air, and people wandered about the streets looking for a place to continue their celebrations.

Henry didn't feel like cheering, he felt like screaming. He did neither.

Bolting from his parents' room and out the front door past a saddened Dr. Luke, Henry ran down the stairs and headlong down King Street--south, in the direction of Maynard Avenue, in the direction of what used to be Nihonmachi.

If that really had been Keiko he'd seen in the street, she'd go there to retrieve her things.

He ran first to her old apartment, the one she'd vacated over three years ago. The

apartments in the neighborhood were now being rented to Italian and Jewish families.