An orphan and a self-made millionaire. This type of man is different from the rest of us, Mas said to himself.
“But he’s a hard man to deal with.”
“Naturally,” said Mas. “You make it big, have to be hard.” Especially being Nisei in the 1950s, he thought, but he knew that this giant gardener probably wouldn’t understand.
“He has his own private group, the Ouchi Foundation, to fund the restoration of the garden and make the house into a museum.”
“Museum?”
“It’s going to tell about the Japanese in New York. The garden will come first, and then the museum. Kazzy handpicked me to be the director of landscaping.”
Mas almost started to laugh. Fancy title for a low-down gardener.
Lloyd must have noticed Mas’s grin on his face. “No, really. You can even ask Mari. I was working on a special project for the city in Central Park. Mari was there, bringing me lunch. And then this hapa man in his felt hat comes over and tells me that he’ll match my salary and more, with full medical benefits, to be his landscaping director. I checked him out, of course. His company, Ouchi Silk, is still in business, but not as big as it used to be.
“He took me out to dinner and told me about his grand plan: to document the history of Japanese Americans on the East Coast. He said that I was part of the Japanese American community, too, because I was married to Mari.”
Mas scoffed inside. Why would a hakujin person want to be anything other than hakujin?
“Mari even turned down a documentary project to help out on the fund-raising video. Waxley Enterprises and Miss Waxley, Henry’s daughter, have given a substantial amount of money, but we are filing for nonprofit status soon. Mari and I feel really strongly about this project. We’ve even pledged some money ourselves.”
So they had everything riding on this Japanese garden. Mas was a savvy enough bettor that he would have told Mari never to put your money on such a dark horse. But then he hadn’t been around to tell her and she wasn’t in a place to listen.
“I look at it as something I’m building for the future. Our future. And Takeo’s.”
Lloyd was a dreamer, his head not on practical matters. Mas pushed his top dentures hard against his gums. This was not a good sign. With the addition of Mari, there were two dreamers leading the family.
“We’re supposed to open in a couple of months, but recently there’s been vandalism.” Lloyd went through more photographs, which revealed the half-planted garden full of garbage and splattered in white paint.
“Teenagers?” Even at Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles, where Chizuko was buried, somebody had knocked down some of the older tombstones, apparently a youngster’s prank.
“Probably. But the police can’t figure it out. And Kazzy hasn’t been of much help. He’s accused the whole staff; well, he’s fired three of us so far. There’s only the administrative assistant-his daughter, Becca-and myself left. Kazzy said that between the two of us we should be able to take care of the garden, which is crazy. If I could get out now, I would. But with Takeo being sick and all, we need the insurance. Times are tough; it’s not like these jobs are easy to come by.
“That’s why Mari called-to ask your help. Kazzy doesn’t want to pay for extra workers; somehow we’ve already gone over budget by thousands of dollars. I have friends who might have come out, but we figured that they would get tired of it. We were talking to Mr. Yamada about our problems, and then he mentioned you. Said that he thought you’d be open to helping out.”
Mas bit down on his dentures. So that explained it. Mari had cried out to him-not to be a father or even a grandfather, but to serve as a common laborer. Only worse, because they wanted him to work for free. And to top it off further, it had all come from Tug-just like he had thought.
“ So – ka, ” Mas finally said.
“It’s not that we wouldn’t pay you eventually,” Lloyd added. “I know that you’re neglecting your own customers to come here.”
Mas grunted. He had asked his best friend, Haruo Mukai, to look after his nine customers back in L.A. But since Haruo had gotten a part-time job selling chrysanthemums at the Southern California Flower Market, Mas had to also depend on a no-good gardener, Stinky Yoshimoto, who cut down bushes and trees so severely that their forms looked like the bodies of amputees.
“We’d just pay you later, when Kazzy sees that all is going well. And quite frankly, the fact that you’re Japanese may calm his nerves.”
“Nerves?” This Kazzy- san was sounding more and more like a man gone kuru-kuru-pa.
“He’s just a little on edge. The opening is supposed to be in May, but the vandalism really set us back. Now Mari wants us to walk away from the project.”
Not a bad idea, thought Mas.
“But she seems to forget that my work at the garden paid for her insurance when she was pregnant, the rent, and other bills. We’ve used up our savings. She thinks that we can live on nothing, on air. Maybe we once could, but not now, with Takeo.”
Mas hadn’t known Mari was hanging by a financial thread, in spite of the fact that she had some kind of fancy degree from Columbia University. To live from paycheck to paycheck-like father, like daughter.
Lloyd pulled back his hair behind his ears and cradled his head, as if he had been physically battered. He finally looked up, and Mas noticed that his son-in-law had black flecks, like splintered glass, in his muddy-colored eyes. “Here you are, on your first night in New York, and I should be taking you out to dinner. But I have to go look for Mari and Takeo.”
Mas wanted to join Lloyd in his search, but he knew that he would only slow down his long-legged son-in-law. And besides, Mari had probably disappeared because of him. Mas figured he would be the last person she would want to see.
“There’s salami in the fridge and a baguette by the toaster oven. And there’s plenty of restaurants in the neighborhood within walking distance.”
“No worry about me,” said Mas. “Youzu just find wife and kid.”
After the son-in-law left, Mas opened the refrigerator for the salami, but opted for a six-pack of strange beer instead. Made somewhere in Europe, the beer was as thick as syrup and dark as Coca-Cola, but it still did what it was supposed to do: help ease Mas’s troubles. Lloyd had placed a couple of blankets and a futon covering on the couch, as well as two limp pillows. Mas turned on their rickety television and watched the news. The anchors and reporters looked more subdued than the ones in Los Angeles. They didn’t seem to force fake smiles and banter, and instead of bright-blue skies and palm tree backgrounds, the sets were simple, painted in basic blue, red, and black. The stories, however, told of the same kinds of shootings and gang violence, only in neighborhoods he had never heard of. Mas switched from one channel to the next. Unlike L.A., there were no Japanese American reporters, reminding Mas that he was in territory where he didn’t belong. He drank another beer and then a third, feeling the alcohol loosen the tightness in his neck and shoulders. Soon the couch in the Park Slope apartment became his friend, cradling him to sleep amid the muffled noise from outside, where his daughter, grandchild, and son-in-law were wandering somewhere, loose and separate.
A crab was pinching Mas’s big toe. It appeared out of nowhere, and then dozens of minicrabs descended on Mas’s body from cracks in the floor, the walls, the ceilings. As they traveled, their spindly legs made clicking sounds. Soon the sounds became louder and louder, merging together into a shrill pitch.