Chapter Four

“Good morning, Makani Kai,” I greeted the house as I walked up the path from the carriage house.

The grounds around the house were quiet on a Sunday morning, except for the breeze that always picked up during daylight hours, then dropped to a sigh at dusk. When she saw me dressed in my painting clothes, Auntie May “tut-tutted” affectionately as she left for a day at her orchid club. Johnny had already run off with his basketball friends, and that left me free to dawdle over a late brunch of toast and sliced papaya before making my way over to the house.

Only a small corner of the mural was left to be retouched. I squeezed red, yellow, and blue on my palette, added other shades, and began the delicate job of recreating my mother’s vision of the garden and mountain landscape.

I’d left the front door propped open to welcome Jamison, in case I wasn’t able to hear him knock, so my concentration was all in the painting. A little more red here, golden highlights there…yes, that was better.

Finally, with a great sigh, I stepped back several feet to take in the completed wall. Four chimes drifted in from the hall, and I checked my watch. Yes, it was exactly four o’clock. The grandfather clock had been running right on time since...come to think of it, since the afternoon when I restarted the pendulum. Right before Jamison first came to the house. Now he wasn’t coming after all. I tried to tell myself the disappointment I felt was relief and pinned my hair up in a sloppy bun, no longer concerned that I looked like a scrubwoman cleaning my brushes with linseed oil.

A popular tune had been rattling around in my head all afternoon that I couldn’t get out of my mind. “I didn’t know what time it was,” I sang, then hummed the rest to skip over the words, “then I met you.” A reminder of Jamison was not what I wanted right now.

A low groaning noise coming from the back of the house caused prickles to rise on my neck. That darn shutter was flapping again. I must ask Mr. Gonsalves to fix it the next time I saw him, before I started taking ghost stories seriously and conjured up headless phantoms haunting the guestrooms.

“So you sing, too?” A smooth voice sailed across the room. “I apologize for arriving so late.”

I didn’t trust myself to greet Jamison, right away. Much less, acknowledge his apology. My hurt feelings had turned to peevishness because he had…well, not exactly stood me up. It wasn’t a date. Instead, I fiddled with the brushes until I couldn’t stall any longer, setting them on a shelf with perfect nonchalance before I tipped my head toward him to speak. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

His eyes quizzed me, but I held the innocent expression long enough to be convincing. At least, that was my intention.

“You’ve finished the mural.” He stepped closer to survey the wall. “It’s a remarkable piece.”

I couldn’t tell if that was a compliment, and it caught me off balance. “I can’t tell if I’ve done a poor job of retouching, or finished an entirely new painting. The perspective seems to have shifted.”

I didn’t see the illusion developing as I worked closely against the wall. From one side of the room seabirds appeared to be flying toward the mountains; from the other side, toward the ocean. It had taken stepping away to bring out the effect.

The impressionists used the technique well. This was different. I hadn’t considered that as in art, life sometimes asks us to step back and take the longer view. See patterns within patterns that are called random only because they haven’t been deciphered.

Out the corner of my eye, I was aware of Jamison stepping from one side of the mural to the other. During that long silence, I had a hunch he was measuring my success. I braced myself for what was to come. His approval wasn’t important to me, I rationalized. Still, he had seen the mural progress and would have an opinion.

“Wouldn’t you agree that we all put some of ourselves into an art piece?” He was beginning to sound amused, and that made me feel defensive. As if on cue he shifted gears without skipping a beat. “I brought the drawings I promised.”

I thanked him and finished wiping my hands clean in a business-like way.

“They’re on the side table in the vestibule.”

“So, you wanted to see the music room?” I mustered my most professional tone of voice without any unnecessary chitchat and led him into the hall. “Watch out for falling plaster on this side of the house. We’ll get around to patching the walls as far as the door to the salon. Everything beyond that I keep locked up.” His brows were raised in the first glimpse of something other than tempered amusement I’d seen, though I felt there was little that escaped his notice. “To keep prowlers from ransacking every room in the house.”

“You’ve had more trouble?”

“There’ve been some broken windows again.” I didn’t want to mention my suspicions of being watched. “Here we are.”

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

I swept my hand around the music room with a flourish. “There’s still a lot to be done, but it’ll be worth it in the end.” The high-ceilinged room was empty except for the Steinway and a long piano bench, with a writing desk against the wall.

Jamison wasn’t raising any of the usual objections I’d been hearing about my guesthouse plans. Too much work. Too little experience. In fact, he seemed full of approval when he spoke. “Rooms like these will carry your guests back in time, to the turn of the century.”

“Some of the rooms will have to wait until I have a regular clientele.” Regular cash flow, I meant, but why discuss my money problems in public.

“You said that you played? Please…” He stood back and motioned me politely toward the piano.

I sat at the ivory keyboard and plunked out the first few bars of “Clair du Lune”.

He sat to the left of me, touching his beautiful fingers on the keys ever so lightly, without making a sound. His nearness sparked an icy-hot shiver across my shoulders, though my hands were slow to react. I continued to play in an uninspired tempo from music-lesson days, until he joined me with a more fluid rendition in a lower key. It was enough to cut me loose from the tedious drills I’d resisted while growing up. My fingers were relaxing into the music the way I sketched a drawing—effortlessly playing the high notes, to Jamison’s low ones. I had never played so well in my life. Any resentment I’d been directing at him floated away, leaving a delicious sensation rippling through me all the way to my toes.

We were almost at the crescendo of the piece when Jamison swung into a boogie-woogie version.

I felt my eyes widen as I quickly retracted my hands.

Before I could say anything, he stopped playing and flashed me a playful smile. “I’m sorry. You do like jazz, don’t you?”

“You have quite a repertoire,” I said with undisguised amazement. “Where’d you learn to play?”

“That would make for a very boring story of a college student looking for a diversion.” His voice registered a hint of self-mockery.

I tilted my head and leaned forward slightly, waiting. I wasn’t letting him get off so easily. “I bet you think you can get away with feeding most people a line like that.”

He laughed lightly, but I thought he looked pleased by my interest. “I worked at a restaurant on weekends when I was at M.I.T. The kitchen closed at ten, so after I finished sweeping up… There was an old upright piano. I liked the tones. They complemented the math of my architecture courses.”

“So you taught yourself.”

“And you were sent to piano lessons.”

“Not exactly sent.” I felt momentarily rattled by the obvious point he was making about our different backgrounds. “Daddy had the music teacher come here, to the house. Because of the Steinway, you know.”

A little silence. “Of course.”

“And at boarding school, music classes were on campus.” I dug myself in a little deeper, knowing I had willingly taken the bait.

“I see.” To my surprise, he sounded entertained.

I found myself at a loss for a response, so fell back on the safety of small talk. “Are you working on a project now?”

“Nothing with a signed contract. I’m putting together some drawings for a prospectus.”

Jerry must be right. Japanese businesses were struggling.

“You came back to Honolulu after college?” I was clutching at straws with this one.

I expected him to be evasive again, but he surprised me. “After graduation I had the chance to work in Japan with a company that collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright on a new building.”

“Well, that sounds very respectable.” Here he laughed outright. “I mean, what a great opportunity.”

“Quite,” he said with a wry smile. “My fluency in Japanese helped me on the project, and in my spare time, I tried out some traditional hand tools used for making furniture. I think tables and chairs can be like jewels that decorate a room. Both beautiful and functional. If I’d been born into an earlier generation, I believe I might have worked with my hands.”

I had been inching my way toward the far edge of the bench as we talked until I had to stand up. “What do you think of the music room? Form or function?”

He played a few chords then lifted his head. “See how there’s hardly any echo effect bounced around the walls. It’s all in the ideal dimensions of the room. There’s a saying that ‘architecture is music frozen in space’.”

It was a lovely expression that made me smile inside, as my appreciation of the music room expanded to fill the space around me. I felt his presence too. It wrapped around me, all pleasant and safe, but exciting at the same time.

He got up to examine the writing desk. One drawer was pulled all the way out. “What happened here? The lock’s broken.”

“I had it moved to this room after...well, the desk was jimmied open the other night.”

“Was anything taken?”

“I don’t think so. There were only a few old pictures of Wentworth ships in the drawer. Nothing valuable.”

He asked if he could get it fixed for me, but I shook my head, no. I was already depending on him too much.

“Try Ah Wong Furniture, on North King Street. You can take it there and mention my name. I buy wood scraps from him sometimes.” Jamison set the drawer back on the desktop. He was wearing a short sleeve shirt and the muscles in his forearms rippled with the movement.

The grandfather clock began striking the half-hour. “If you have time, it’s still early enough for us to look around the attic,” I suggested.

He was game if I was, so I slipped my hand through the brass key ring hanging on the doorknob, holding back the anticipation that had overcome my earlier reservations. Jamison’s scent floated in a cloud near the piano, and I was not prepared to admit how much I wanted his company as I passed through the heady fragrance.

This was a chance to find out more about my mother’s paintings, not a rendezvous. Thankfully, the dusty attic wouldn’t offer us any temptations.

My self-restraint began to slip away in the dimness of the attic as I ducked under a beam with Jamison close behind carrying a flashlight. Even with ample headroom, the sultry space was intimate and as hot as a pressure cooker needing a quick tap on the valve. Auntie May, had she known I was alone in the dark with a Japanese man I barely knew, would be having heart palpitations.

“Can you shine a light into this corner?” I asked.

He came up behind me to swipe the light in a slow arc that caught the corner of a wooden box, so we edged forward. I clawed through a cobweb and was about to wipe it on my trousers when Jamison took my hand in his free one and rolled away the dusty silk with his thumb.

“The lid doesn’t seem to be nailed d-down,” I stammered in a nervous reaction to his touch.

“Let me get that for you.” He lifted the thick wooden cover and set it to the side. Slots in the crate held five stretched canvases upright in a row. “You should be the one to take them out, Merrylei. See them for the first time since they were packed away.” His voice was gentle and quiet with understanding.

Stray light from the flashlight illuminated his features, his eyes carefully watching me as I looked up from the crate. Despite the unusual circumstances, I was swept by a sense of the rightness of us being together at this moment. That I was just where I was supposed to be, and so was he.

As if he could read my thoughts, he set the flashlight on a beam to point into the crate and took my two hands in his. In my imagination I felt his pulse beating in time with mine. I looked up into his face to see a barely disguised longing pass over it while his gaze travelled from my eyes, to my lips, and then down to my throat.

“We can take them out together,” I murmured.

“I’d like that,” he said in a husky voice.

“Let’s start from the back,” I suggested, my excitement returning.

I threw the comment across my shoulder as I knelt beside him to breathlessly lift out the first canvas. It was a garden scene similar to the mural in the living room.

The second was a seascape, showing a rocky shoreline with waves dashing against the lava and overhanging trees. “I know this place,” Jamison reflected. “It’s at the end of the old plantation road. Out toward Waipahu, below the sugar mill.”

“That would make sense—my mother grew up near there, when my grandfather was one of the plantation supervisors. That was before Honolulu Sugar was sold, and he lost his job. My mother was already married by then, but she could have painted it from memory.”

“You’ve never been there?”

“I don’t think so, but it does seem kind of familiar. It’d be interesting to see how much it’s changed in—I guess about twenty-five years.”

“Probably not much. My father used to take me there for fishing from the rocks when I was a kid. We’d walk down from our house in the plantation village. We never caught much of anything, but he liked going down to that beach on weekends.”

“You don’t talk much about your family.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” Jamison seemed to have pasted an unreadable expression on his face, belying the interest in his next words. “If you’re willing to set a price on this painting, I’d like to add it to my collection.”

There was no surprise to his offer. In the first place, his whole reason for coming to the house was to buy a painting. In the second, this scene had moved him to recall his childhood. I had given some thought to what I would say if he made an offer to buy one of the paintings, so I hesitated briefly only for effect. “I don’t know how valuable my mother’s paintings are. She was never famous, you know. If you agree, I’d like to ask Mr. Oswald, at the Art Academy for some advice and we can go from there.”

Jamison nodded his agreement as we lifted out two more paintings.

“Saving the best for last,” I whispered before my mouth went dry. We each put a hand on either side of the last canvas, but it stuck, needing both of mine to tug it free. The effort made me gasp, a sliver of perspiration trickling down the middle of my back. For a moment I thought of the way Jamison’s fingertip might feel tracing a line through the damp gossamer of my blouse.

“Let me adjust the flashlight.” He motioned for me to wait.

Through the veil of dust moats drifting around us, I could make out a winding road with a stone bridge. Just as I’d sketched it. My eyes were filling with pools of emotion that I wanted to hide from Jamison. “That’s okay,” I held back a tremor. “I can tell what it is.”

Too late.

He brought the light around to where it was shining on my face. “Is something wrong?” His voice was muted, though an emotion I couldn’t place, simmered below the surface.

“No, it’s just…it’s the last one, you know.” I had been concealing my suspicions, my sense of déjà vu for so long that evasion had become easier. I didn’t want to deceive Jamison, but I needed more time to sort things out. The ache of knowing I wasn’t being entirely honest pounded in my chest. Heat seared through my body.

“Hey,” he said. Beads of perspiration ran down my temple, and he lifted two fingers to wipe them away. Then he leaned in and touched his lips there instead. I closed my eyes as he moved against the warmth of my face and pressed his lips against mine. They were warm, too, with the faintest taste of salt.

His body was hard against me when he drew me closer, wrapping one arm around my waist while the other held my head against the urgency of his mouth. The intimacy of his embrace was more intense for being deliberate, so unlike the chance encounter of our first meeting. Then I could explain away my breathless excitement with the excuse of surprise. This stirring he’d aroused was no accident.

A low groan escaped through the heat of my breathing as Jamison’s arms tightened to pull me against his chest. Pressure built in my heart to express what I was feeling, but there weren’t any words to describe how the darkness and the paintings were part of a past that I couldn’t clearly recall. I only knew that I wanted him near me, wrapped in his arms and delighting in the scent of his bare skin. All the reasons why we dared not act on that need were melting away.

The flashlight tumbled with a clatter that barely registered on my overwhelmed senses. Jamison drew away from my mouth, then he released my neck and my waist until we were no longer touching and I could see his face. The upward flare of light bounced against the floorboards, painting unnatural shadows on his face, giving it a brutal appearance. No, tortured, was more like it.

In this finale to our first kiss, the mood was uncertain. The attic heat was oppressive, suffocating what little fire was left of our embrace. A small flame can spark intrigue, I decided. Build a bonfire and the pot boils over, leaving a big sticky mess behind. For a few wondrous seconds, I had forgotten all about the differences between Jamison and me. Now I was shaken by his silence in a state I tried convincing myself was regret.

He wasn’t doing anything to cut through my defensiveness. No tender words or passionate declarations. Did he think it best for us to just walk away from what happened?

Then I realized how like him it was to remain quiet. Jamison, like no one else I’d ever known, seemed adept at bending silence to his will.

Something that could have begun as, “I’m sorry…” died on his lips. Instead he picked up the flashlight and slapped it several times into his other palm, then he reached for three of the paintings and made for the stairway. The attic door stuck for a moment, and in an undertone he started again—it might have been, “We should carry these downstairs,” or maybe something about “being carried away.” I’m really not sure and didn’t ask, unwilling to risk his answer. I picked up the remaining paintings and followed him to the upper hallway. The ones he had carried were resting against a wall.

Late afternoon rays poured through the open doors of the upstairs bedrooms, making the hallway as open and light as the attic had been dark and mysterious. What in blazes had I been thinking back there? I leaned against the banister and touched my palm to my forehead, testing for brain fever. I wanted to run out of the house and into the fresh air. Never face Jamison Sumida again.

And yet, I had to admit, I’ll be desolate when he leaves. If I were more experienced about these things, I would have recognized the danger signals sooner.

This was not an insurmountable problem. We had different social circles. We need never bump into each other again after he bought the painting. Anyway, I wasn’t interested in getting involved with anyone right now, I reminded myself, especially since I had my hands full restoring the house.

Jamison was inspecting the canvas of the old bridge with too much interest for comfort, but I wouldn’t sell it to him or anyone else. I’d go hungry, first. He stopped flexing his fingers when I figured out what to say.

“I’ll bring the painting over to the Art Academy early next week, so Mr. Oswald can take a look at it,” I said in a businesslike way. “You can pick it up there, if you like. It’ll save you the trouble of coming all the way out here to get it.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said with an air of breezy indifference, “but that will be more convenient for me, so I appreciate having you make the arrangement.”

“Good, that will work well with my busy schedule, too.” I summoned a thin smile to prove how thoroughly modern I was.

“And the payment?” he said, casually.

“You can mail me a check,” I said in an equally offhand way. “I trust you,” I added too quickly, and wished I could choke back the glib phrase.

He stepped closer to me with an uncharacteristically rigid grace, assuming the posture of a man who has detached himself from emotional reactions. Minutes ago in the attic, I could have sworn he had abandoned all restraint, throwing more kindling on the fire, so to speak. Now, before his eyes flashed over to the paintings, I thought I saw the same hidden darkness I’d noticed at our first meeting.

No. There had been gentleness in his touch. It was possible, I thought with a weakly dawning comprehension, that the demeanor I perceived as standoffish was a kind of inner self-control learned at an early age. From his parents? His culture? My lack of understanding was my undoing when his next words hit me.

“You’re generous with your trust.”

At the time I assumed his comment was tinged with skepticism. Or worse, sarcasm.

“We’ll see how generous I am if your check doesn’t arrive on time,” I snapped, and looked away. “I’m going to bring these paintings over to the carriage house for safekeeping.”

“Let me help you,” he offered.

“I can manage,” I said, turning my back to him.

“I know you can. You’ve got what we call ganbare in Japanese.”

“What?” I gave my voice a hard edge to disguise my curiosity.

“It means perseverance. The spirit to go on, to keep trying, without losing hope. It’s the way of the Issei, like my parents. They’re the first generation of Japanese who came to Hawaiʻi to work in the fields. They’ve passed ganbare on to their children, and we who are Nisei will pass it on to the next.”

How strangely painful his words were. For a few crazy minutes in the attic, I dared to think Jamison and I were making a connection that we could build into more than an interest in paintings. Now he was talking about passing on traditions to his Japanese children. I tried to compose myself and not let him know how much I’d been hurt by a fleeting hope for something we both knew could never be.

“Things won’t always be difficult,” I said. “They have a way of working out.” I lifted my chin. “Until then, there’s ganbare.”

“Yes, there’s that.” His eyes were thoughtful, seeing too much, as he usually did. “Are you ready to load everything in my car? Think of it as a way for me to take care of…my investment.” His voice had gotten soft, willing me to accept more than he said.

“That’d be helpful,” I said, trying to stop biting my lower lip.

****

If she had been home, Auntie May might have detected something hanging in the air between Jamison and myself as we carried the paintings into the carriage house. Johnny, however, back from his basketball game, bulldozed ahead with the abandon of youth, chatting on about cars and basketball until Jamison made his departure.

From the doorway I watched him walk to his car, thinking he might turn around for a last look, give us a wave goodbye. For a minute I almost regretted that Jamison and I had first seen the painting together. I would forever associate his dark eyes with the shadows dappled across the bridge. It hardly mattered, now that he was walking out of my life without so much as a perfunctory, “I’ll call you.”

As in painting, it’s sometimes the contrast that puts things into perspective. Grays became darker next to ivory, reds seemed brighter against black. I would be meeting Jerry for lunch tomorrow. I’d never see Jamison again.

The distinction had never seemed greater as I watched him drive away.