A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 29

Joseph says he understands too. Perhaps he does. He has offered help with finding Cora, but she can tell that he's not eager to back his offer up with action.

"Perhaps the time is not right yet," he says, thinking this extra dimension of Cora will move them further apart.

Neither of them mentions what they know now, that love is the key, after all; that they are missing that mysterious transformer that turns like to love. They are both pretending.

She finds herself longing for Haru, not so much emotionally, that hunger is fading, but for the physicality of him, for the man scent of him. Joseph smells of soap and cologne, of minty toothpaste and hair cream. There's no balance, it seems to her, between them, they are too compatible.

At night in her lofty room, sleep holds out stubbornly against the ache in her, an ache that she knows Joseph can't cure. She tells herself it's just a primitive urge, the animal part that isn't subject to reason. She's embarra.s.sed by it, but the sensation won't go away. It's like defrosting, she thinks, that painful, burning itch when you hold frozen hands to the fire.

Disturbed by the daily compulsion she feels to run, to scuttle back to a life dictated by her own circ.u.mstances, she overrides her fears with a determination to hold on to the Satomi Baker that Tamura would recognize.

"I'm a kept woman," she jokes with Joseph. "It's got to stop."

"You insist on paying rent, so you're not kept in the true sense," he says. He hardly knows what to do with the cash she hands him every week. He tips hotel doormen more for whistling down a cab.

"You're sort of my protegee." He likes the sound of it better than the kept woman thing.

"Well, at least stop buying me presents all the time. You know I can't return the favor."

"You must have the right clothes. How can I take you anywhere without the right clothes?"

He escorts her to Dior, enjoying as much as her the parade of evening gowns cut from fabrics so fine they feel like gossamer.

"You'll need a fur to go with that, shoes for that bag, earrings if your hair is to be swept up."

There are twelve negligees in her dressing room drawers. A glut, she thinks. Their colors blush reproachfully through sheets of thin tissue, peach and primrose, lilac and eau de nil. No such thing as mend and make do in Joseph's world. She can't deny, though, that she loves the feel of silk, the slope of the high-heeled shoes. It's all a sham, she thinks, but the thrill of dressing up is a childlike pleasure. Will she ever be able to settle now for less?

"Who needs twelve nightgowns?" she had groaned at the sight of them.

"Just a start, dear girl," Joseph had said, the bit between his teeth now.

He has found a new and distracting occupation. He hasn't enjoyed himself so much since what he thinks of now in retrospect as his good war. He was playing a part in that too, playing the straight guy, a guy just like the rest of them.

"I wanted to be like them, not the spoiled rich guy."

She feels pity for him, can't imagine that he pulled that one off.

"It's hard to have secrets," she says.

Joseph had turned down his mother's bought offer to work in the White House as some sort of an a.s.sistant to an a.s.sistant, choosing to spend his war years in the Army instead.

"I don't want to cower at home while the rest of you go to war," he had told Hunter, who was already in uniform.

"What were you doing while I was in Manzanar?" Satomi asks.

"I was in the thick of it in Italy. A bit of a shaky start, I suppose, but I got used to it."

She's surprised. It's hard to picture Joseph in uniform, hard to picture him fighting. When she says as much, he looks hurt.

She couldn't know it, wouldn't guess at it now, but he had been determined not to whine about things; he may have been afraid, but he couldn't bear the idea of being a coward too. Along with his fellows he had experienced the minor and major miseries of war with stoicism and a black sort of humor that his comrades came to rely on; sleeping in wet clothes, the lack of tobacco, stinking mud in their boots were better borne with humor.

The physical difficulties he suffered are forgotten; the memories of dead bodies, bloated silhouettes floating downriver, blood and limbs and the carnal stink, are not so easily let go.

"You're not the only one with unwanted snapshots in your head," he tells Satomi. "Still, I don't regret it. I enjoyed the friends.h.i.+ps. It was good being with guys who had your back."

"You still have friends, Joseph."

"Yes, you and Hunter. The rest are hardly what you would call friends."

"Why don't you have a get-together with your Army buddies?"

"Because it could never be the same again. Money distances you in civilian life, sets you apart."

Joseph's fortune is over thirty million dollars. Less than the Woolworth heiress, which irritates his mother, but he's getting there. In addition, he owns a sixteen-story apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a s.p.a.cious house on Fishers Island above a long white Connecticut beach, and now his father's beloved yacht Windward.

All this, and he doesn't even have to run the family business, which rolls on, an unstoppable juggernaut, adding to his wealth by the minute. He's the major shareholder in the Rodman group of companies, but it's a relief to the board that he won't be joining them. He may be a Rodman, but they know what he is, and besides, he has no head for business.

"You hardly need to work, Sati," he says, floating the idea of enrolling her in an art appreciation cla.s.s. "You deserve to be educated."

"No, I must work." Her tone leaves no room for argument.

The longer she is with Joseph, the stronger her doubts become, the more she questions her reasons for being with him. As much as it feels safe, it doesn't feel right. If it's a means to an end, she doesn't know what that end might be. She doesn't like the feeling that she's being anesthetized or that she's using Joseph.

At Clare House she can tell by the way her fellow workers have begun to treat her that they know about her changed circ.u.mstances. Some are overly friendly, others almost hostile.

She hasn't told Edward about Joseph; he would be certain to write to Dr. Harper about it. She can't bear the idea of Dr. Harper being disappointed in her.

So a new address, Dr. Harper writes.

Is your room better than the last? No shared shower, I hope. The address suggests that you have had a promotion at work. It's uptown, isn't it? Let me know how life is treating you.

In her reply she is vague. Her uptown address implies more than a small promotion, but it's true that she's no longer the hat-check girl. The director, on Joseph's insistence, has put her on the front desk, where she gives out information, guides people to the exhibits, looks too exquisitely turned out to be there at all.

Returning each evening to the apartment, to its air of serenity, she is always pleased to find Joseph there. He waits with her whiskey and his martini ready: "First drink of the day," he lies. Joseph, she knows, likes her company in the little ritual, and although she often would have preferred tea, she doesn't want him to be the only one giving.

Her life is more comfortable than it has ever been, but nothing dispels her dark days, those times when she wakes with a snake squirming in her stomach, the sensation of panic that there is still something left to be done for her mother. The pain at the loss of Tamura, the fear that she will never see Cora again, are always there waiting to surface. She feels spoiled, imprisoned by luxury, lost.

In the museum she studies the families who come with more than a little interest. Mothers with their children, little hands held fast, and the secret smiles between them. Once, watching a father clumsily attempting to b.u.t.ton his child's coat, she was transported back to the time on the bus that took Cora away, Cora in her little b.u.t.toned-up felt coat.

"It's cold outside," the father said, patting the little girl's head as she struggled against his efforts. "Gotta keep you warm, honey."

She's anxious that Cora might not be in such a family. The picture of that happy little group, the father on bended knee, the mother smiling, often returns to alarm her.

"I know that you can never forget Manzanar." Joseph is good at picking up on her mood. "But I'm going to show you a different world, Sati. Take you to wonderful places. We'll travel and I'll teach you to ski and to sail. Wait till you see the yacht. She's a beauty, and there's nothing as great as being out there on the water. You'll love it."

The months roll on, six of them gone before she realizes that she can't go on working at Clare House. Photographs of her and Joseph are appearing in the society pages. People approach her in the museum, smiling, making a fuss.

"It is you, isn't it?"

She and Joseph are caught at the opera, at the white gloved fund-raisers, at the sort of lush parties she had never before suspected existed.

Mr. Joseph Rodman and his companion Miss Baker at the Plaza Hotel Review. Miss Baker is wearing a stunning full-length Balenciaga dress with emerald earrings from Tiffany's.

She blames herself for the hollow feeling that she can't get rid of, the sense she has that she is an impostor. It seems ungrateful not to appreciate what she has been given, but it's all too much and she wants to start again at the beginning. She's swimming in Joseph's slipstream, not making her own life, and this particular American dream, as indulgent as it is, is not her dream. It's more like Lily's or Artie's dream, she thinks. Joseph's life is like cotton candy, tempting at first, then so sickly sweet that your teeth begin to ache.

Dr. Harper's postcard comes as it did the year before on the date of Tamura's death: Things change, memories fade, but I will always remember Tamura Baker with grat.i.tude.

The same two lines as last year, a tradition now she knows he won't break while he lives. She holds the card close to her heart, picturing her mother's face, hearing again the sound of her voice. It's time to live up to Tamura, to act for herself.

On the morning she hands her notice in at the museum, the city looks shabby, uncared-for. It has rained in the night and the steaming sky suggests there's more to come. A chemical sort of green streaks the clouds, gobbling up the light. The buildings and sidewalks have morphed to gray, litter flaps around in the gutter. She pa.s.ses two down-and-outs sleeping in the hard bed of a doorway, their heads beneath old newspapers, their feet slippered in paper bags.

Inside Clare House the glow of the overhead lighting lifts her mood. The air is warm, centrally heated, so that people loosen their scarves and take off hats as soon as they are through the door. She loves the place, doesn't want to leave, but her colleagues there have become as ill at ease with her as she is with herself. And it's not fair to the director, who forgives her lateness, forgives the Mondays she can't make it in because Joseph wants to stay on Fishers Island, go sailing with her and Hunter, and lunch at the Yacht Club.

Joseph's generosity to the museum a.s.sures indulgence, a looking the other way at lateness, at absence. The director thinks it a small price to pay, a little lateness, a day or two missed. Strange that she should be there at all, but the museum has the best of the deal.

It's not the way it was meant to be, she thinks, as she apologizes to him. Things were meant to be normal, a job, meeting someone, marriage and children. Oddly, those things seem harder now to attain than the lifestyle of the Manhattan rich.

"Of course I understand," the director says. "Your life has changed since you started here. I could tell you were meant for better things. When will you go?"

She hadn't thought of when. She will need time to tell Joseph, for him to get used to it. The director will need time to replace her, and she will need time to find another job, a place to live. She is suddenly nervous about what lies ahead.

The director, noticing her hesitation, feels a stab of sympathy. She seems unsure, a little afraid. He can't help thinking the girl is out of her depth, pitched in the middle, in the tug-of-war between ordinary and extraordinary.

"Take the rest of the day off and think about it," he says kindly. "Weeks, months, if you would prefer. Whatever you decide is fine with me."

She walks around the city at a loss as to what she might do to fill the day. Joseph will be out, but the housekeepers from the service he employs will still be cleaning the apartment. He can't bear being there while they're working.

She had laughed at him when he told her how uneasy he is with them, but she can't face the cleaners herself today.

In a half-smart cafe she idles time away nursing a coffee that's weak and tastes of chicory. From her window seat she watches a bunch of girls coming out of a bakery, biting into giant pretzels and laughing; there's a woman in a phone booth wearing a red shallow-bowl hat, a match for the velvet collar of her coat. She is shaking her head, gesticulating with her hand as she speaks; a man flags down a cab, but it doesn't stop. She can't hear his shout, but guesses it's a curse, recognizes his crude finger gesture.

Nothing out here is perfect, the weather's bad, people don't smile much, everyone seems in hurry, but it's real life and she wants to join in.

By the time she gets back, the apartment, dim in late afternoon shadow, smells of polish, and the freesias that are Joseph's favorite flower. She turns the lights on and a Charlie Parker record for company, and makes herself a cup of tea to drink while she bathes.

It still feels strange to be in Joseph's apartment without him there. His afternoons are spent at the country club drinking with Hunter or at the Racquet or Union Club being smart with the Madison Avenue tribe. He whiles away his days waiting for the evening, when he will take her out, show her off in uptown restaurants and the smart functions that have melded into one in her mind now.

Tonight they are going to a hospital benefit. Just the thought of it brings on a sigh. She knows she will feel as nothing against Joseph's people, their sureness, their smart show of boredom.

When Joseph has had enough of it he will send her home in a cab, go on to indulge in the life he keeps secret. She doesn't mind, she tires long before him and would prefer to read anyway. He is always there when she wakes, though, making-without vodka, he says-his morning b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, her tea.

"You're a man for the moon hours," she tells him, and he laughs.

Before he showers she can smell the night on him, kerosene, she thinks, and something sharp, it's not unpleasant.

"Why kerosene?" she asks.

"You imagine it," he says, not wanting to tell her it's the lamp oil from Li's place, where he buys his share of bliss.

He wants her approval, can't imagine that he would get it if he were to tell her the truth of his life. Never mind his need of opium, what would she make of his lovers, those uptown boys who claim to be the sons of Russian princes, and the less salubrious breed who strut between Seventh and Hudson dressed up in boots and Stetsons?

But she has guessed Joseph's secret. He is living a lie, and the damage of it is always there between them. It's not so much that he looks at men when he is out with her, more that he never notices women, unless to observe how badly they are dressed, how overperfumed.

"Just spray in front of you, dear girl," he advises. "Then walk into the mist. It's vulgar to overscent."

Whenever she thinks of the time after the riot at Manzanar, those boys kissing at their barrack door, she knows that Joseph is like them. She had thought that what she had seen was the result of some strange after-riot electricity in the air. But of course it hadn't been that, it's something more, something she can't get a handle on. It makes her feel ignorant, let down by her years of reading. Where had she missed it in those novels that seemed to leave out nothing of life? Had she failed to see a coded message in those lyrical sentences that more worldly people would have been aware of ? She is irritated with Joseph. Why didn't he tell her? She didn't have him down for a cheat. She doesn't know if she approves or not, but Joseph is still Joseph, after all, whatever his needs.

Alone in her marbled bathroom, she spies the shockingly expensive bottle of Patou's Joy perfume on the beveled-gla.s.s shelf. Its luscious tones call to mind a grown-up sophistication that is not hers. The scent, which she doesn't like, which doesn't suit her, is the real thing-she's the phony.

"You're going to love this perfume," Joseph had said, handing her the exquisite crystal bottle. "It will be your signature fragrance. It's very you."

"Very me?"

"Mmm, smoky and not too sweet. It doesn't smell like makeup as most of them do. You know that powdery Max Factor scent."

She didn't know. Often doesn't know what Joseph is talking about.

She catches a glimpse of herself in the bathroom's mirrored wall and pauses, sponge in midair. With her hair wet, and makeup-free, she might still be the girl from Angelina. She throws the sponge at her reflection and watches a soapy trail sneak down the mirror.

"Where have you been?" she asks quietly, and answers herself: "In a coma, perhaps."

It's hard to hurt a friend, but he must be told that she can't marry him. If she marries at all, she knows now that it must be for love.

And she will tell him that she doesn't mind about that thing he wants to keep from her, the thing she doesn't have a name for. She is glad not to be ignorant about it anymore. And after when she leaves the soft bed of his life they can still be friends. More equal friends. She can't take from him anymore. She must start again, do better.

She will be forgotten soon enough, she imagines, even though she and Joseph have become quite the beautiful couple. Her picture appears so often in Harper's Bazaar that she can't anymore walk Fifth Avenue without being recognized.

"You never take a bad photograph," Joseph tells her when they relive their social life through the magazine's society pages.

And there in the pictures is the polished woman who is her but not her, a manicured, gleaming woman with the light capturing her just so. The girl from the camp is lost, the angry girl in her mother's hand-me-down jacket and twice-heeled shoes. Where's the sense in her life now? It's a film, a play, an ongoing dream.

The articles never mention the j.a.panese in her. Well, who could tell? Who could be sure? Those eyes, the elegantly long neck, the fine skin, all surely good enough indications of breeding. And n.o.body wants to stir up the bitterness, after all. This is New York, the victorious capital of the world, where nothing shocks, where its "pulled-up-stakes" minorities must go on believing in its endless possibilities. There should be no horizons, no barriers to anything in this earthly paradise.

She can't help wondering if Lily, trawling through her hand-me-down magazines, sees and recognizes her. She hopes so, not so much for revenge, more that she doesn't want Lily remembering her as a victim. If Lily is capable of it, she doesn't want her pity.

She has stayed too long in the bath; the water has cooled to the wrong side of comfort, and the skin on her fingers has wrinkled. s.h.i.+vering a little, she examines herself in the mirror, looking to find in her face, her body, what men might see. All she sees, though, is a girl watching. She looks at her nakedness and it is nothing to her, as it is to Joseph, as it was in the end to Haru.

In her wardrobe, s.h.i.+mmering like jewels, hang the evening dresses from Molyneux and Coco Chanel, lavender silk, gold satin, and her favorite, the Dior midnight-blue velvet that she will wear tonight to the hospital benefit.

There are gloves and little beaded evening bags, lace handkerchiefs, nylons so fine they would seem invisible when held to the light if it hadn't been for their seams. It's odd, but she's looking forward to living without such luxuries; such beautiful things are a responsibility. She can't remember, though, where the clothes she brought with her have gone. It's unsettling.

You will be fine, my girl, Tamura's voice comes to her, as though it is there still in the ether. She will always be able to hear Tamura's voice.

She thinks of Cora's little knitting-wool hair bow and everything in her hurts.