Land of Dreams: A Novel (25 page)

I was so furious with the woman, but mostly with myself for caring, that I fumbled in my bag for a pack of cigarettes and found that I had left them at home.

Who was I after all? Was I just a pushy mother who wanted her son to “be somebody?” Was I even an artist anymore, or simply the mother of a boy who wanted to be a film star? Perhaps that was a mother’s role—to sublimate who she was for the love of her children. That was why that woman had offended me. Not in her competitiveness—that was merely a misguided love for her child—but in the ordinary way she was dressed and the way she had immediately been able to intuit why I was there. I was not a makeup artist, or a set designer, or a musician or, God forbid, an actress. She had recognized in me a fellow ghost of somebody else, made invisible in the light cast by a talented child; a conduit for somebody else’s life—nothing in ourselves. Everybody in that room was “somebody,” or wanted to be “somebody.” That woman and I were the dowdy mothers—rooting for our sons to be somebody because we couldn’t ourselves be anything special in the world.

I looked around the room and I realized that I was utterly invisible, a nobody. I had been John’s wife—he was gone. Charles’s wife—he was gone. Leo’s mother—now he was leaving me too. Of all my roles, the one I had come to understand the value of most was Ellie the artist—but now, it seemed, she had deserted me too. Perhaps I had never been a true artist, and she had just been an invention of my ego. Perhaps this was my destiny: to hide in the shadows and let my son shine. After all, I loved both my sons more than life—why should I want for any more than their happiness? Why could I not be fulfilled simply with that alone?

A man passed me and I asked him for a cigarette. He handed me one and lit it for me, offering only a cursory smile, before moving on to more glamorous company.

With a suddenness and an urgency that surprised me, I wished that my friend Stan were here.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

The rental on the house had been paid until September, and there was no sense in rushing back to New York before Leo was due back in school. Of course I could have packed us all up when the film wrapped, and dragged us all back to Fire Island, which in many ways was what I longed to do, and might very well have done, were it not for the fact that Los Angeles wasn’t just about me and Leo anymore.

Tom had settled into Los Feliz in a way I had never imagined. I had always thought of my youngest as a happy, carefree child. He had spent his first year living in a commune of women (which is where I had first met his young mother, who had abandoned him into my care when he was only a few months old), and this had doubtless shaped his easygoing, sociable nature. Tom was a happy child and was always able to occupy himself. Content with his own company, he would play for hours on his own along the shores of Fire Island: collecting driftwood, building intricate sandcastles, hiding out in makeshift dens and making friends of the rabbits. Life was so peaceful there—reading contentedly in front of the stove as the sun went down, my little companion and I tucked into the blanket-covered settee, it seemed to me then that I had made the perfect life for us both.

Los Feliz made me see that I was wrong. Whereas Leo was sensitive and could be awkward with boys of his own age, Tom was in his element with other children. Attending school and living in this sunny, family neighborhood had been a revelation to both of us. As soon as Tom’s school day ended there was a constant stream of kids coming in and out of the front and back door, with Bridie insisting on feeding them all most days, rather than have “the waif eating in that other woman’s kitchen—sure, you wouldn’t know what she’d be feeding him.” That “other woman” was our neighbor and the paternal grandmother of Tom’s best friend, Angelo Trapani, whom Bridie had gotten to know over the fence, so to speak, and was in arch competition with for the title of Best Mama. The two boys played them off against each other brilliantly—often gorging on Bridie’s apple tart before hopping over to tell Francesca, who would scoop them up some of her homemade ice cream, just so as not to be outdone in spoiling them.

The other element in not returning to New York just yet was Bridie. Maureen and I exchanged regular letters, and she and Patrick seemed to be particularly happy of late. Happy and enjoying a spectacular resurgence of love for each other: “Honestly, Ellie, I cannot remember the last time Patrick and I so enjoyed spending time together! This Thanksgiving/Christmas/ Easter was truly wonderful!” The closer it came to my possible return, the stronger the subtext of her pleas came. My friends were enjoying having the house to themselves and were praying that I wouldn’t send Bridie back to them.

In Ireland the spinster daughter was the one who stayed at home and looked after the aging parents and the farm, which the eldest son and his wife would inherit, leaving her to spend the rest of her days as the sister-in-law’s maid.

I was an only child, both my parents were deceased
and
I had been married twice, yet Bridie was the closest thing I now had to a parent, and I knew the burden of responsibility for her as she got older and frailer would fall on my shoulders. In any case, she was not up to the journey home. Not yet at least. So, in the meantime, I decided that we should all enjoy a blistering summer in Los Angeles and return home in September, the best time of the year in New York.

Of course Hilla had been phoning me, anxious for my return, issuing dark warnings about my career. In any case, every time the phone rang my stomach lurched. If people had something nice to say, they wrote a letter. That was the civilized way to communicate. Telephones were generally used for emergencies and to convey bad news such as a death or a disappearance. Hilla, however, used the telephone as an everyday means of communication, which was wasteful, uncharacteristically frivolous and, frankly, when you were on the receiving end of it, unnerving.

“Bauer is opening in one month’s time. I assume you will be back by then?” she’d say or, more directly, “I am calling to let you know that one of your collectors came into the gallery today and wants to know when more of your work will be ready to view.”

Why she thought these bullying tactics would work, I could not imagine, although in one sense at least she succeeded in getting me back to work on my portrait of Suri.

“Let it ring,” I shouted at Bridie that morning, “it’s only Hilla.” And I went straight into the studio.

I thought I was nearly finished with the portrait. Goodness knows I had been working on it long enough, but there was something about Suri’s demeanor that I found fascinating as a subject for painting. She had an impervious beauty that I was anxious to capture, yet it was also important that I break through her physical realm to reveal the warm heart that I knew lay beneath the perfect, angular structure of her face.

Suri had been preoccupied the past few times we had met, and had twice canceled lunch with me. She was becoming more and more concerned about the plight of her elderly in-laws in the internment camp. Her father-in-law had said that his wife was finding it impossible to adjust. I shuddered when she told me about the cramped conditions and the families sharing makeshift kitchens. “The worst thing is how isolated they feel,” she said. “They cannot understand why they are there. They love America.”

I found it difficult to believe that such terrible things were happening here, in America, the land of the free, in this modern day and age; and yet Suri assured me they were. She showed me one of the letters that her mother-in-law had signed off with the words
“shikata ga nai.”

“It means ‘it cannot be helped,’ ” Suri explained.

The fact that the old couple were becoming resigned to their situation, she said, made it all the more painful for her, on the outside, not being able to do a thing for them. When she spoke with such passionate concern, she reminded me of Charles. I realized, by listening to Suri, how little interest I had taken in my husband’s work—how I had taken him for granted. He would surely have done something about this, were he here now. He would have fought for the elderly couple and not stood still until they were released. Perhaps I could help, but I sensed that Suri would ask for my help if she needed it.

Although I kept quiet on the subject, part of me wanted to let Suri know that I understood something of the anger and frustration she was feeling, because I had been caught up in situations like this myself—both during Ireland’s War of Independence and then in my work helping to salvage the lives and dignity of people during the height of the Great Depression in New York. One day soon, I said to myself, I would find a way to let Suri know that I was willing to help her in any way I could, should the need arise. For the time being, this was her injustice to fight—all I could do was let it be known that I was her friend and would offer my support, if asked.

In any case, the painting was my concern now. I had been fidgeting with it for some time on my own, and it was still lacking some small element that I could not quite put my finger on.

The moment that I looked at it that day, it hit me. I realized that the sketching was not enough anymore. I needed the woman herself in the room to sit for me. One sitting would see it complete. I decided to telephone Suri and ask her to come around that instant. I felt full of artistic vigor for some reason that day, and I was sure she too would be excited for me to finish the piece.

“I’m afraid Suri isn’t here—is this Ellie? Did Stan not tell you what happened?”

Jackson sounded irritated at my calling.

“No,” I said, “I haven’t seen Stan for—a while.”

It had been more than a month since Stan had left my house that night. I had not expected him to stay away as he had, and I was hurt by the fact that he had not stopped by or even telephoned me. However, when thoughts of his absence entered my head, I quickly swept them aside, not caring to remember what he had or had not done that had so offended me that night. I did not wish to be pursued by him. Why should I care whether or not Stan called me? I had enough people in my life to care about, without adding another to my list.

“Where is Suri? Has she gone on a trip?” I asked Jackson.

Suri had been talking about traveling down to the internment camp where her in-laws were being held, to see if she could visit them.

“Ellie—Suri has been interned.”

“What?”

I must have shouted out in shock, because Jackson started to mumble apologies to me.

“Ellie, I am sorry. I expected that Stan would have told you, or I would have called you myself.”

The wretched Stan should have called me!

“What do you mean she’s been interned?”

I don’t know what came over me, but I felt a terrible panic overtake me. My heart was thumping in my chest. It was the same feeling I had encountered when Leo had disappeared, and when I had heard the news about Pearl Harbor. I was experiencing the same sense of helplessness—something dreadful had happened and it was completely outside my control. It was as if a bomb had gone off in my brain—a mushroom cloud of white anger exploded in my head.

I bombarded Jackson with questions. When had this happened? How had it happened? Where had she been taken? What was he doing about it?

Jackson sounded very calm about the whole thing. “It happened last week, Ellie. They came for her in the morning. Just two men and a woman in a government car. She didn’t object; in fact they waited while she went upstairs and packed a bag. To be honest, we were half expecting this to happen. They are locking up everybody with the slightest hint of Japanese blood in them. It’s ridiculous, but at least we managed to get her taken to the same camp as her in-laws. She has been really worried about them.”

I wanted to leap down the phone and wring his neck. How could he be so laissez-faire about all this? His wife—the woman he loved—had been locked up in an internment camp! A prison! For doing nothing but being born half Japanese. It was an outrageous turn of events, and Jackson was being so . . . so
calm
about it.

“What can I do?” I asked, trying to keep my cool. “Should we call the mayor, head down there? You know where she’s being kept, right?”

There was a pause.

“She’s in a place called Manzanar, across state,” he eventually said, adding, “but, Ellie, I don’t think there is anything we can do. I’ve contacted everyone I can think of, but there really are no strings to be pulled. It’s wartime, and people lose their reason. I know it’s terrible, but I think now the only thing to do—the best thing, the safest thing we can do—is just wait it out. The war won’t go on forever.”

Best? Safest? What was the idiot talking about? Of course there was something we could do; there was always something to be done—an objection to be made, a door to be stormed. When terrible things like this happened you didn’t just leave them be—you had to get out there and try to change things, to fight for what was right.

I wanted to say all of this to Jackson, but finding that I was near speechless with rage toward the man, I simply excused myself and hung up.

I went straight into the studio and looked at my picture of Suri again. It was unfinished. I would get her—and her in-laws—out of that terrible place and finish the portrait. I did not know how I was going to do it, but I was determined. Let Suri’s wimp of a husband put that in his pipe and smoke it!

I began by looking to see where on the map the camp was. I spread out Tom’s large school map of America on the floor of the kitchen. Manzanar, Jackson had said, northeast of Los Angeles. It was not easy to find, but I located it eventually. It was no more than a dot, a tiny ranch town between Lone Pine and Independence, about two hundred and thirty miles away. If I packed up the truck tomorrow and started early—before Tom left for school—I could be there before lunchtime. I was not stupid enough to imagine that I could walk away with Suri and the old Japanese couple, but I could at least find my friend and talk to her about what could be done to help them. Except, of course, there was no guarantee that I would even be allowed to see her. This was not, I suspected, like an ordinary prison, with regular visiting hours. I needed help if I was even going to get in through the door. I needed some strings pulled.