A Glass Swan 1

THE JOURNALIST DIDN’T look like a Veronica. She was petite, had lovely legs, a pert nose, and always wrapped scarves around her neck. But she was Japanese. During her interview with the editor at the San Diego Sun, he asked her if “Veronica” were her real name. She said, “It’s my American name. I’m an American now.” He nodded his approval. She was excellent at being American. The editor gave her the job, and she was excellent at that too. She inspired a loyal following among the readers of the Women’s pages but kept a low profile. Other lady journalists jockeyed to cover social functions where they met old-money scions or handsome naval officers. Veronica was content to know all about society without being in its midst.

Her prowess lay in her imagination. Once in a while, while rendering all of those recipes week after week, she loved to attribute a mundane dish to the First Lady. It gave a lift to her readers, especially the patriotic wives and esposas who hung portraits of JFK in their living rooms. Where was the harm? Those overtaxed housewives deserved relief from all of the unsettling talk of A-bomb tests and long-range missiles.

Jacqueline Kennedy glides into the kitchen of the White House. She strips off her gloves, ties an apron over her green shantung Dior suit, and fingers her pearls while pondering whether to put one egg or two in tonight’s meat loaf. Understanding the significance of such a decision, she phones Laura Petrie, who answers in the kitchen of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Rob Petrie’s wife is whipping up a batch of biscuits but always has time to share a few household tips with the First Lady. After hanging up and rolling out her dough, Laura dials her favorite West Coast reporter to pass along a hot culinary tip.

A reliable source assures me that a certain doña en una casa blanca prepares this Fiesta Meat Loaf for her family when no heads-of-state are in town . . .

The finished piece sparkled in Veronica’s mind as she handed it off to a passing copy boy. By then it was lunchtime. Most of the Society Page girls preferred to gather in the break room. She needed her place with them, since their meals felt familiar, like those at school back home, where everyone wanted to be exactly the same. Over homemade sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, she gleaned tidbits from the lives of other working women, which she then used to fill up her articles and her imagined home life. None of the girls guessed that the family members who populated her lively Monday morning tales were composites of their own relations. And no one need know that Veronica spent almost every Saturday night alone at home in her tiny bungalow watching the Saturday Night Movie and eating popcorn cooked in bacon grease (a habit she picked up from a transplant from Houston).

That day she opted for the livelier atmosphere of the Sky Café and the bustle of newsmen crowded around several tables. The restaurant-bar was down the block from the paper, and a regular could get a shot in his morning coffee if his hip flask were empty after a long night. Her favorite newsman, David Wick, beckoned her over as soon as she entered the Sky. He was on the city beat, so sometimes they covered the same event from different angles. The year before, David had published exposés of the deep-pocket connections between city councilmen and the developers of the new Mill Valley Shopping Center. Meanwhile, Veronica advised her readership on outfits to wear to its grand opening. Despite their differing aims, David always had a joke and a flirtation for Veronica. He even asked her out. She didn’t take his offers seriously, as much as she wanted to. She just couldn’t risk it. He kept trying, though, and she appreciated that.

“Ronnie, come sit over here,” David said to her, trying to shove Stan Phillips out of the seat next to him.

Stan covered sports, and although he was excitable, he wasn’t easily moved. He swatted back at David but then got up. “I was just leaving, anyway. Veronica, my dear,” he said and held the chair for her to sit.

Veronica smiled as she picked up the menu. Of course she would have her usual, tuna salad on white, toasted, but she needed something to hide her amusement with Stan. He was a gentleman, the sort that didn’t know what to do with women, so he generally kept his distance. He was always polite and formal with her. If he only knew. She was not a woman, nor was she really American, but those were just hard, useless facts to her. They were not the truth. Look at the way men treated her. That was the truth.

After Stan left, Veronica nodded at Timmy Nichols and Tommy Thompson across the table. They did leg work for the city beat and were always together. To many they seemed interchangeable, with their flat top haircuts and constant cigarettes, legendary even among the smokestacks of the pressroom. When one was encountered alone, often as not he would be called Timmy-Tommy. But Veronica knew that Timmy had brothers who were cops. He had the back door connections at City Hall and the courthouse. Tommy had drifted into nosing around for a large law firm after the War. He had the smarts. David gave him credit for uncovering the slimy trail that led from the shopping mall to the city council.

He had said this so often that he no longer bothered to inflect it with a question mark. He didn’t wait for a reply before turning away to nod at the waitress for a refill of his coffee. His cup full, David smiled his thanks.

David turned the sugar container straight upside down over his coffee. He poured a long cascade and stirred. Veronica waited for him to rat-a-tat a rhythm on the side of his cup, flinging brown spots of coffee around the table, but he didn’t. Instead, he laid his spoon on his plate and subsided into an unnatural quietness.

She didn’t trust any idea that could subdue his body like that because he usually couldn’t sit still. His mouth was going: chewing, talking, blowing bubbles. His fingers rattled his typewriter keys or ripped napkins into strips or pocketed small objects that didn’t belong to him. His eyes scanned a room and saw what its occupants were trying to hide, but when his body was still and his brain was ticking, it was time to worry.

Veronica looked for help, but Timmy rapped Tommy on the arm and said, “We have to get down to the courthouse.”

Tommy still had Boston cream pie on his plate. He scooped up a large bite and stood. Timmy joined him.

The waitress arrived with Veronica’s order. She nipped at the pickle spear and, after swallowing, said to David, “What is it this time?”

“I met this Japanese lady, the wife of a lawyer, at a party at Gaujean and Fleck,” he said.

“You know our man, Tommy, used to work there.” He took a bite of the pie. “Turns out our Tommy did the initial background check on the lawyer husband when the firm was looking to hire him. Only the second Japanese at G&F, but even so, he’s a rising star in international business law.”

“That’s just absolutely fascinating, darling.” Veronica picked up her sandwich. “But I don’t think it’ll make the Society Page.”

“Very funny. Here’s the interesting part. The wife, she’s from Hiroshima.”

Veronica recoiled from the memory. She was good at that too. “Not interested.”

He slurped some coffee. “So Mrs. Kobayashi was just a kid during the War, but her mother could be a really valuable source.”

Veronica shook her head. “It’s been done,” she said, her tone scornful. She wanted no part of this.

“There’s a new angle since some of the ships from the Christmas Island tests are coming back to SD.”

“Yeah, but look.” David glanced around before he plucked an envelope from his battered brief case and slid out a photo.

A giant mushroom cloud bloomed over the ocean and filled the aerial picture. David tapped the bottom of it. There Veronica saw ships inside the bomb’s shock wave. She closed her eyes briefly.

“Civilians working for the Navy, doing stuff like cleaning these ships, are being exposed to radiation,” he said. “Odds are they don’t know about it or what it means.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to know,” she said. “But how are the Hiroshima ladies going to help?”

“Get this. Mrs. Kobayashi’s mother wasn’t at the party because she was part of an entourage for a Japanese diplomat touring US military installations in the Pacific. I bet A-bomb tests would be on his agenda. Maybe the old lady has even witnessed one of them.” David slipped the photo back into the envelope.

“But you don’t know that for sure, and she wouldn’t tell you if she had.”

“You underestimate me. Gotta be careful about that. Anyway, Mrs. Kobayashi and her mother would love to meet Veronica Wills in the flesh. She said so.”

“Just get me in the door and soften up the old lady a bit. You know, talk about the old country.”

She sipped her Coke. She hadn’t been back once since her crossing to California. “Too expensive.”

Her resistance to anything related to her early life was automatic, had been for years. When she first arrived at the paper, David had asked her if her family had been interned. She borrowed the memories of a roommate in LA and told him about it in satisfying detail, but only on the condition that he wouldn’t use any of it in his articles. She could extract promises like that from him. This time, it would have been easy to deny him if he had flailed around and shouted, but the heat of his crusade radiated out from his stillness.

She thought for just a second of all the people she had known, lost. Some vaporized, most burnt, others biting back their moans as their bodies melted. She shut memory’s door again, but the horror lingered. He was right. No one else should suffer like that. As long as she could keep the door to the past firmly shut, maybe she could help. Veronica pushed her plate away and took out a cigarette. “You said they wanted to meet me?”