Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara

Author:Naomi Hirahara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press

CHAPTER 13

The next few days were torturous. Art and I were extra polite to each other in front of my parents but in the privacy of our bedroom, an invisible wall had been erected between us. I replayed our last interaction—a fight over his late night with an army buddy. I had blown it out of proportion, but I knew that our problems went beyond one argument.

“Art seems to be gone a lot.” Even Mom, despite her nightly exhaustion from physical labor, seemed to notice the growing gulf between Art and me.

“Shigoto,” I said.

“Ah, shigoto.” She said it in such a knowing way, like work may be an excuse for overdrinking or dalliances. My father didn’t have affairs but we knew plenty of Issei men who had. I was always shocked to learn of the mistresses, who sometimes were physically unremarkable or quite plain. “Maybe you need to learn to cook better,” she added.

I resented her insinuation, that our happiness as a couple rested on my mastery in the kitchen. My marriage wasn’t arranged, a transaction between families; it would be based on communication and romance—red roses, kisses, the holding of hands in public, love notes. I was desperate to forge a different kind of marital relationship even though I had no clue how to sustain it.

On Saturday morning, as my mother could have predicted, I was alone again in the house on Malabar Street. Before I could go into the kitchen to have my morning coffee, three hakujin men knocked at the door. They identified themselves as detectives, but only one of them wore a uniform and sported a badge. The other two were in ill-fitting suits that seemed too formal to wear in spring. The fabric around their elbows and knees had lost its sheen, as if the men were called to do physical labor on a regular basis. I supposed that detectives would have to get on all fours to examine fallen bodies or crouch in tight crime scene spaces.

They didn’t ask who I was but got right to the point of why they were there. “We’re looking for Babe Watanabe.”

“He’s not here,” I told them. “I have no idea where he is.”

“But he hangs out here,” the husky man in plain clothes asserted. His right ear was a bit mangled, as if an animal had chewed through it. Behind him stood a thinner man with pale skin. He was freckled everywhere, including his neck and the back of his hands.

“No, he’s never been in our home. How did you get that impression?” I wasn’t sure that Babe even knew where we lived.

“Your husband is Art Naka-sony?” the big man continued. I supposed that he was the spokesman out of the bunch. The freckle-faced man couldn’t look me in the eye for some reason.

“They were in the same company in the army. That’s about all.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he’s living now?”

My heart pounded as I shook my head.

“Are you working together with Detective Morgan?” I asked.

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