Of all the people who would hear the news of the Jabamis’ murder-suicide, Oily was the last person Mas would bet would take it so badly. But he did.
He jumped from his seat and stomped out of the room.
Brushing down his upper lip, the assistant district attorney remained in his chair in the middle of Minnie’s living room after delivering the news. Not only were Oily, Mas, and Minnie there, but also Evelyn and Genessee. It was the old gang minus Shug but plus one, a very important female one.
“You better talk to him,” Minnie told Mas.
Genessee, sitting next to Minnie, nodded her head.
Why does it have to be me?
Oily was a businessman and a playboy, which meant he was an eternal opportunist. When sales were down one day, he always trusted that sales would go up the next. When one marriage failed, he looked forward to the next one. The fact that Ats had given up on Jimi, not to mention on herself, distressed Oily to no end.
“Ats was the one who always pulled us together,” Oily said as they stood in the kitchen.
Mas had been away from their circle for so long that he didn’t quite understand what Oily was talking about.
“Every birthday she’d remember. Every time someone was sick, she’d be there with chicken soup. She took care of us. She’d never give up on life.”
Mas thought Oily was being a little ogesa, exaggerating Ats’s role, because if she were so important to them, where were they when she needed them most?
“Maybe dis way she tryin’ to keep Jimi from doing bad things,” Mas said. From what more he didn’t know.
When the two of them finally went to rejoin the group, the attorney was on his way out. “Let me know what you’re planning to do,” he told Minnie. “You’ll have to get your own lawyer to stop it.”
Hearing the word “lawyer” from a lawyer made Mas feel queasy. After the door closed behind him, Mas asked, “Whatsu goin’ on?”
Seated in her place on the couch, Minnie squeezed one of its cushions. “A judge has cleared the Smiths’ request to exhume Shug’s casket.”
Mas stood back and watched his friends wrestle with this new development.
“That’s sacrilegious. You can tell the judge that it’s against your religion,” Evelyn said.
“But most Buddhists cremate, and I buried Shug, just in case the toxicology report came up fishy. So there goes that argument.”
“I’ll find you a lawyer, Minnie,” Oily said. “We have a good one at Everbears.”
“I don’t know if a corporate lawyer would have the expertise to handle something like this,” Genessee said.
Nobody said anything for a moment. Outside, a garbage truck making its weekly rounds beeped its warning signal.
“What do you think, Mas?” Minnie asked. Both she and Genessee looked up at him, expectedly.
Mas thought about Shug, the kind of man that he was, at least before the Masao. That man believed in justice, that if you did something wrong, you needed to pay for it. Maybe letting Mas take the fall for the theft of the lizard statue had been a thorn in his side. Since he mentioned it to Oily so many years afterwards, Shug apparently still felt guilty even for a little thing like that. He would want whoever killed Laila, no matter how dear, to face the consequences. Mas’s chest heaved as he took in a big breath. “I thinksu Shug would want to be dug up.”
Mas felt bad leaving Genessee in the hands of his friends, especially Evelyn. He did, however, have some business to tend to.
Chiquita bonita, the gardener who was at the mortuary on the day of the funeral had said. Pretty girl. And then he added, Chinita. Chinese. Mas knew that for the gardener Chinita was the end-all word for anyone Asian. And he knew that one person in their circle that would fit that description.
On this drive, Mas took the long way. He completely avoided Hecker Pass; even though Jimi was gone and he was in a new car, Mas didn’t want to tempt fate.
She didn’t seem surprised to see Mas in the doorway of her dorm room. In fact, sitting at her desk next to her long twin bed, she looked relieved.
The circles under her eyes had gotten darker.
“Where are they?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The police.”
“They’su not here.”
Alyssa got up in her bare feet to look down the hallway. Completely empty. She pulled out a chair at another desk. “You can sit down.”
Mas was surprised by this newfound hospitality. He wasn’t going to turn it down and entered the small room. Most of the facing wall was full of windows, so the afternoon sun poured in, causing him to squint as he faced Alyssa, who was back at her desk. Neither of them said anything for a while. Alyssa played with one of her pencils, twirling it around in circles on a blank yellow pad.
“How come I’ve never seen you before Grandpa’s funeral?”
“Haven’t been here long time.”
“You like L.A.?”
“Itsu orai.”
“I have some cousins there. In Orange County. On my mother’s side.”
“Orange County, nice place,” Mas lied.
Alyssa twisted her hair up in a bun, securing it in place with her pencil. “I wasn’t that close to Grandpa,” she finally admitted.
“Oh, yah?”
“I think he liked boys better. He spent more time with Zac, I think.”
“You’zu close to your auntie.”
Alyssa put her hands in her lap and swallowed. “I used to be close to my dad.”
The sound of the hallway door opening and closing. Feet padding the floor. They both waited as a nearby door was unlocked and then shut.
Alyssa was apparently done with small talk. She went right to the core of her anguish. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I know how lame that sounds. Like every TV show, right? But I didn’t mean to. It happened so fast. One second we were arguing there in the greenhouse. She was being so mean to me. Saying I was a no-good daughter, that I was making my dad feel bad by not talking to him. How does she get off telling me that I’m not a good daughter?
“So I called her some names. Really bad names. And then she starts insulting Grandpa. The night before his funeral. She says that I’m just a kid; that Grandpa was involved with weird stuff and everyone’s going to find out about it soon. I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I just reached over for that bat. Zac and I used to play with that bat all the time. It was like the bat was placed there, right next to me. I just wanted her to shut up. So I took it and swung. And it was finally quiet.”
Alyssa pulled her left leg up onto her chair. “I was going to tell Aunt Robin right away. Brandon and I were staying over at her place. I wanted to. But she was out like I was, trying to find Dad. That’s how this all started, you know. Laila came to Robin’s house, all crying, a total mess. She and Dad had been in a fight, and he took off. Drinking and driving. So Robin goes in her car to look for him. I don’t want to be alone with her. Laila. Actually she’s the last person I want to be with. But Robin asks me to. She can’t do her job if Laila’s with her. Laila’s so antsy; I can’t stay in that house with her, so we decide to drive around, too.
“Going to the Stem House was my idea. I knew Dad goes over there when he gets stressed out. I wasn’t planning to hurt her. It just happened.”
“What about your brotha?”
“Zac? Oh, he slept through the whole thing.” Alyssa rolled her eyes. “But Robin knows. I told her after the funeral. I was going to tell her in the morning, but she got that call to go to the Stem House. I was freaking out. I took the bat with me early, before the funeral. I didn’t know what to do with it. I cleaned it real good in Auntie’s laundry room. I was planning to maybe burn it or drive it to the dump, but there wasn’t enough time.”
Alyssa put the side of her index finger next to her lip. “I figure Grandpa’s casket was the best place. We were supposed to leave things there for him, anyway. I thought he was going to get cremated, but I guess Grandma had changed her mind.”
“They’su gonna open up the coffin soon.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard.”
Mas was surprised that the news had reached her already.
“My fingerprints are all over that bat.”
Clouds moved in front of the sun, causing the light in the room to soften.
“My aunt’s on her way to pick me up. I’m going to tell the police what I did to Laila.” The girl covered her face with her hands. Each fingernail was painted a different color. “I’m so, so scared,” she said. “What are they going to do with me?”
Mas felt awful, just sitting there while the girl cried. He remembered one day Shug asking him out of the blue: “Mas, just how bad was it?” They were helping a Salinas farmer haul some tomatoes; dried seeds shaped like green teardrops were all over their clothes.
“Huh?” Mas didn’t know what Shug was talking about.
“Hiroshima. The A-bomb.” Shug removed a rolled-up magazine from his back pocket. It was old, a 1946 issue from three years ago. A publication called The New Yorker that had devoted its whole issue to Hiroshima.
His hand on his hip, Mas watched as a couple of produce men examined the crates of tomatoes. He was surprised that Shug was bringing this up for the first time after living under the same roof for a year. But something seemed to be on his second cousin’s mind those days. He tended to go off on his own for long walks or drives. Mas didn’t know what to tell him. “A lot of friends dead.”
“You don’t seem worse for wear. Never hear you monku.”
“You no monku, too.”
Shug let out a laugh, which actually sounded more like a hacking cough. “Maybe that’s the Japanese way. But Mas, sometimes when I think about my dad and mom and all they lost during the war, this anger comes out, out of nowhere. And sometimes, I hate to say it, I get mad at them.”
“Whatchu mad at?”
“Not sure, really. Not that they could have done anything. I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with the anger.”
Mas had no advice to give. He felt like he was always running from one place to another. Working in the hot sun and sweating. That seemed to help, too. But that didn’t seem to be the solution.
Mas, now looking at Alyssa, didn’t know what to say.
He wouldn’t lie and say that everything was going to be all right. Because there wasn’t any guarantee about that. But she was young, just like Mas and Shug had been. There was time. Time was on her side.
Genessee was staying at Minnie’s house, but Mas tried to keep out of there as much as he could. Through everything, Minnie was still unflappable, offering fresh coffee to guests while her world continued to fall apart. Funny thing was, the girl’s mother, Colleen, had come out of her rabbit hole as soon as she heard that Alyssa needed her. Her stripe of gray hair had gotten wider, but she seemed more vibrant. It was as if her daughter’s predicament had energized her with new purpose.
Billy, on the other hand, seemed to withdraw some, disappearing at odd times in his truck. Mas suspected that guilt was eating away at him—that if he hadn’t had a relationship with Laila, maybe his daughter would be with them instead of sitting in a holding cell.
It was past nine in the evening when Mas parked the Impala across from the Stem House. Someone was there already. Billy in his pickup truck.
They both got out of their vehicles and laughed for a moment underneath a light by a telephone pole. It was funny that the Stem House, no matter its current state, was their elixir during dark times.
“Came from the jail,” Billy said, “to see Alyssa. Her arraignment is tomorrow. The attorney thinks we can get her out on bail.”
Mas didn’t know what to say.
“We had a good talk. We hadn’t spoken to each other like that in, I don’t know, years.” Billy bent over and Mas could see silvery tears hang onto his eyelashes, like dew on blades of grass.
Billy didn’t even bother to wipe his eyes. “I made a mess of everything, Mas. I don’t know if I can make it right.”
They remained silent for a few moments and then Billy walked toward the small plot of land by the greenhouses. Mas followed.
“You know, after Dad died, I thought about going back to Sugarberry. But Mom told me not to. She said I had to find my own way in this industry. As long as I worked for Sugarberry, I’d be seen as Shug’s son.”
They stopped before a barren patch of dirt where an earlier generation of the Masaos had been growing. For a moment, Mas thought about asking him about Clay Gorman and his relationship with Laila. But then he reconsidered. Why? Why put a wedge between Billy and his Everbears boss? Laila was gone, so what was the use?
Billy knelt and patted the ground. “After the press conference, Linus was fired. Sugarberry’s going to be hiring a new hybridizer. A young guy, he’s in his thirties and has been working in Florida. He’s actually the son of a woman who works in the packing shed. You might have been packing clamshells with her.”
Mas pictured the brown faces of his co-workers. Everything came full circle.
“We’re going to cremate Dad now. They have the bat as evidence and now we can do it right. It’s the way Dad would have wanted.”
A seagull, most likely lost, flew above the Stem House.
“I never really talked much to him. Mostly on our fishing trips. One time he told me that we needed to be one step better than everyone else. Because our last name was Arai. Because we were Japanese. I think by making the Masao, he truly thought he would be helping people. Pushing something to the next level.”
Billy looked up at Mas. “What I’m trying to say is I don’t think my father was using you. I think he honestly felt that he was creating something to honor you.”
Mas wondered if that was true. He wasn’t sure, but decided to believe it. That was the best thing that a friend could do.
“Well,” Billy rose, brushing dirt from his hands to his jeans. “I have to go. I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Me and Genessee leavin’ in the morning.”
“You’ll probably be glad to be getting out of here. I’m sure you feel that you’ve been cursed here. Anyway, I’ll be at Mom’s first thing to see you off.”
Billy got into his pickup and pulled out into the dirt road.
Mas stood alone while darkness fell over the hushed fields. The outline of the Stem House strangely comforted him, as if it were the center of a compass. Everything that had traveled away from it would still be connected to its magnetic force.
In spite of everything that happened, Watsonville was not a curse. It could never be one. When Shug’s mother, Satoko, passed away, Mas came to her funeral with Chizuko and Mari. In the Impala, in fact. Chizuko had packed an old Broadway department-store box with lines of onigiri with pickled plums in their centers. As Mas drove along the 101 highway, Chizuko carefully handed him a rice ball in a moistened paper towel, which blew out the window, leaving him with sticky fingers around the steering wheel.
From the seaside they traveled through the green hills to the flatness of farmland. The two-lane highway cut into acres of ranches, lines of green crops stretching out forever.
Normally Chizuko was the master of facts and knowledge, but not in the country. Here it was Mas who knew all.
“Dad, what’s this?” asked Mari.
“Spinach.”
“What’s that?”
“Cauliflower.”
“What’s this?”
“Broccoli.”
Mari would press her small nose against the window as the green rows blurred into one another.
The crops bore no obvious signs of identification, but Mas knew what to look for. The shape, color, and size of leaves. The direction the plant was growing. The time of the year.
This had been his world for two years—his education, in fact. An education that had been better than any junior college degree.
He’d learned much from Shug’s father, Wataru Arai. For all the time Mas had known him, Wataru was pretty much bald, except for a little fuzz on top of his head that resembled algae on a rock in a tidepool.
After dinner on warm summer days, they’d sit on the steps of the Stem House, speaking in Japanese.
“This is my house,” Wataru said proudly. “But it all can disappear. In a fire. Or in a war.”
He stretched out his legs and rubbed his knees. “If it’s taken away, I’m orai. Honto, really. Because my children are all grown. Making their own mistakes. Making their own lives.”
Mas knew that Wataru liked to talk with him because he was among the few young men who actually could speak and understand Japanese. “Nothing’s better than this country. A Number Two, Number Three son can make his life here, a new life. That’s why when they open up for Issei like me to get naturalized, I will.”
It was 1950, and for a Japanese immigrant to talk about becoming a citizen meant he had an active imagination.
Mas didn’t want to be a wet blanket. “Maybe, Ojisan,” he said. “Maybe someday.”
As it turned out, Wataru had been a bit of a prophet, because what he predicted came true. In 1952, Issei could become naturalized. But he, unfortunately, had died a few months earlier.
What would Ojisan have thought of all of this? Mas wondered. Would he have been ashamed of what Shug had tried to do, of how Billy lost the Stem House, of his granddaughter killing Laila? Would he yell out in pain or hide his face from his neighbors?
No, Ojisan was not that kind of man. Mas imagined Wataru Arai standing straight, lifting his head high. For him, Watsonville was a place of second chances, or maybe third or fourth chances.
“Ready?” Mas asked.
“Ready,” Genessee replied.
Mas felt a bit odd carrying Genessee’s bags to the Impala, as if they were off on a honeymoon trip. They weren’t going on a trip, after all. They were going home.
He closed the trunk and looked at the line of people assembled in the driveway. Minnie, Oily, Evelyn, Billy. Even Victor had brought Miguel out in a wheelchair. At his age and some of their ages, Mas wasn’t sure if he would see some of them again alive. He held each face in his embattled brain, hoping that he wouldn’t forget any of them.
Genessee opened the passenger door and got in. Mas lingered for a moment, inhaling the wet, soil-tinged air one last time. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he started the engine, wiping the window with the edge of his sweatshirt. Through the smeared glass, he saw a flurry of hands waving, lips mouthing soundless goodbyes, sending them off down the street and beyond.