“It’s not that he doesn’t want me to go to college or to become a writer, it’s just maybe that he’s dreading the day when Malcolm leaves, too, because then it’s only the two of them and the parakeet, which would be a kind of hell.”
“He resents you getting more education,” Malcolm said, “because already you have more than he does. Quote, ‘Pomerantzes don’t need college, they never did, we don’t mix with the hoity-toity.’ ” Malcolm turned to me, and his magnified, sad eyes were haunted by the fear that she might not take the scholarship. “She’s afraid to go to the university and leave me home with them, because I’m already a social misfit.”
She said, “You’re not a social misfit, Malcolm. You’re just awkward, and that will pass.”
“I’m an awkward social misfit, and proud of it. If you don’t go to college in September, it’ll be my fault, all mine, and I can’t live with that, so I’ll blow my brains out.”
“You won’t blow your brains out, little brother. You faint at the sight of blood, and you don’t have a gun.”
“I’ll get a gun, and I’ll be dead before I have a chance to see the blood. You better go to college.”
I tried to help out. “He won’t be a social misfit when I’m done with him, Amalia. And there’s Grandpa Teddy and my mom, and with them he’s welcome here anytime.”
After we finished the rice pudding—which Malcolm ate with a clean fork—we never did get back to making music. We talked while we cleaned up the kitchen, and then we sat at the table again and talked some more—mostly she did—and the time flew.
One thing she said about Malcolm that I’ll never forget. “He thinks he’s got music in him because he got it growing up with me, from me always with the clarinet as far back as he can remember, but that’s not right. What music I have, I got it with iron-headed determination and grueling practice, and it’s a thimble of spit compared to the ocean of natural talent in Malcolm. You heard me play, Jonah. I’d be fine for some dance band at the VFW and the Moose hall, but Malcolm’s like you, he’s got the real thing, and he’s got it all. Mom and Dad, they’re as interested in
music as they are in chess tournaments, so Malcolm can’t believe somehow his music came through them, but it did, just like my way with words.” She turned those lime-green eyes on her brother and said, “Without me here to buck you up and keep you focused on how wonderful you are … what if I come home for Christmas my freshman year and you’ve already given up the saxophone and bought your own parakeet?”
“If you don’t go to college in September,” Malcolm said again, “I’ll blow my brains out.”
“And even if you could do that, little brother, where is a twelve-year-old going to buy a gun?”
“There’s a lot of bad people in a city like this, a lot of completely wicked degenerates who’d sell a kid anything.”
“And you know a great many of these wicked degenerates, do you?”
“I’m working on it,” Malcolm said.
When they picked up their instruments to leave, it was nearly four o’clock, but I didn’t want them to go home. Well, I didn’t want Amalia to go home. I was equivocal about Malcolm going home.
I stood on the porch, watching them cross the street. When I’d first seen Amalia, I’d thought she was pretty but not beautiful. Now I had no doubt that she was major beautiful. I felt bad for having compared the way she dressed to Gidget, even though I hadn’t said as much aloud, because I now saw that she had real style. In that blue-striped slashed-neck top and white slacks with a big red belt, she was cute. Sometimes a girl can be not classically beautiful but so cute that you wouldn’t even notice a dozen classic beauties if they walked past naked. Amalia was really cute. And smart. And funny. And caring.
I was in love. Understand, at ten years of age, I didn’t mean romantic love. I had not begun to save for a wedding ring and brood about ideal honeymoon locations. This felt like the same kind of love I had for my mother and for Grandpa Teddy, that I had begun to feel for Mr. Yoshioka, a noble and platonic love but so intense that I wished I owned the world so that I could give it to her.
55
Out there in Charleston, Illinois, Setsuko Nozawa proved to be as good as her word. In fact, she would become so intrigued with the investigation that she would not only report by phone to Mr. Tamazaki of the Daily News but would write a detailed account to mail him later, which was very useful to me in the colorful reconstruction of these events. Among her many interests, Mrs. Nozawa attended writers’ conferences at the university, for she hoped one day to tell the story of her years in the internment camp, and she thought that writing the report would be useful practice.
In the company of her dog, Toshiro Mifune (named after the Japanese actor), she drove her custom-painted candy-apple-red 1967 Cadillac Eldorado to the neighboring town of Mattoon. Being a petite woman, she needed a booster pillow to see over the steering wheel, but Toshiro Mifune required no pillow, for he was a large chocolate-brown Labrador retriever.
At the military academy, she parked in a space behind the campus library and left two windows all the way down to ensure that the dog wouldn’t overheat in the warm July day. Although she had heard hair-curling stories about some of the rowdier students at the school, she had no fear whatsoever that the Cadillac might be taken for a joy ride by one rich-boy ruffian or another. Toshiro Mifune had always been as gentle as others of his friendly breed, but Mrs. Nozawa had taught him to glower like a fierce samurai, growl, and bare his immense teeth when anyone put a hand on the Eldorado. She knew that this required great discipline on the dog’s part, that it troubled his good heart to frighten people whom he would have preferred to lick copiously. But when she returned, she would reward him with kind words and two cookies.
Not many students—cadets, the librarian called them—were in the library when Mrs. Nozawa inquired at the main desk. In spite of her wartime experiences, she feared no one in uniform, but she found it disturbing to see boys as young as thirteen dressed like parade-ground soldiers. She told the librarian, Mr. Theodore Keckle, that one of the academy’s students had done her and her husband a great favor, years earlier, and that she had always regretted not better thanking the boy. She wished to locate him now that he had graduated.
Unfortunately, though she knew the cadet had been a member of the class of ’59, she could not remember his name. Even eight years later, however, she felt certain she would recognize his face. She assumed that the school library kept copies of the annual yearbook with senior photographs. Mr. Keckle—whom she would later describe to Mr. Tamazaki as “a stuck-up noodle with a mustache he shapes with pinking shears”—confirmed her assumption and directed her to a span of the history shelves that contained the volumes dealing with the five decades during which this highly esteemed institution educated, inspired, and formed young men of character.
Within a minute of opening the yearbook for the class of ’59, Mrs. Nozawa found Lucas Drackman’s photograph. She Xeroxed that page. On the way out of the library, she told the mustachioed noodle that she thought she recognized the young man but wanted to show the Xerox to her husband to see if he agreed that she’d found the right cadet.
In the front passenger seat of the Cadillac, Toshiro Mifune began to wriggle and whimper with delight when he saw Mrs. Nozawa approaching. She showered him with kind words, and he took the cookies from her fingers as gently as a rabbit nibbling grass.
After returning to Charleston, she went to the office-supply store owned by Ken and Betty Norbert. She and Betty volunteered time to a dog-rescue nonprofit and were in the same quilting club. Ken Norbert and Mr. Nozawa were tennis buddies and members of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce. If someone other than the Norberts had owned the business, Mrs. Nozawa would most likely have known them, too.
In addition to business supplies, the store offered private mailboxes for rent, which was an almost unknown business in those days, at a time when the closest competition were mail drops where you had to wait at the counter for a clerk to take your mail from a bank of pigeonholes and personally hand it to you. The boxes were in demand, because the local post offices never had enough available. It was here that a box had been rented in the name of Douglas Atherton, to which the cruise line sent the ticket for the Caribbean holiday.
In order to avoid renting to someone who might be engaged in fraudulent or otherwise dishonest business, the Norberts required two forms of identification from those who wished to secure one of their ninety-six mailboxes. In those more innocent times, however, almost any two items had been accepted, and photo ID hadn’t been essential.
Ken had left for the day when Mrs. Nozawa arrived; but Betty was there with two employees and her Labrador retriever, Spencer Tracy.