As when I’d been in the ICU, someone was always with me, often more than one person. Mr. Yoshioka visited so frequently, two and three times a day, that I felt obliged to tell him that he would lose his job. He only smiled and said that he had taken no vacations or sick leave for years and had accumulated a considerable number of earned days off.
He came once with Detective Otani, who questioned me about what I’d seen at First National and recorded my testimony regarding Fiona and Tilton. Aurora Delvane had been arrested but professed ignorance of her comrades’ darker intentions. “We were just this sort of little commune; free love, that’s all I ever saw.” She promised cooperation, but she hadn’t yet made bail. The others were on the run.
On Thursday, when covering for Mother and Grandpa Teddy while they went to lunch together, Mr. Yoshioka sat by my bed, his arms resting on the arms of the chair, in one of his characteristic serene postures. “Jonah, do you remember a great long time ago when you were not yet ten, when you were merely nine, and you told me that you dreamed about Miss Cassidy and Mr. Drackman even before you ever met them?”
“Sure. I brought you chocolate-chip cookies.”
“Most delicious cookies. That day I told you of a prophetic dream of my own, in which my mother and sister perished in a fire.”
“I found their pictures,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Did you indeed?”
“In a library book about Manzanar. I Xeroxed the page to keep.”
For a while he stared at his right hand, where it rested on the chair arm, as if he preferred not to look at me, and I wondered if I had in some way invaded his privacy, his sense of what was sacred, by finding and keeping photos of his mother and sister.
When he looked at me once more, he said, “I told you back then that I believe we who have suffered greatly may from time to time be given the grace of foretelling, so that we may spare ourselves from further torment. In those days, I was a bitter young man, so very angry about our internment in Manzanar. My anger was hot, Jonah, so white-hot that for a while it burned away my faith, faith in this country, faith in my father, whose docile acceptance infuriated me, and even faith that life has meaning. And so although I dreamed of the fire seven days before it occurred, I could not believe that it was more than an ordinary nightmare. In my anger, I could not accept there might be such a thing as grace, that I had been given the dream so that I might be spared the loss of my precious mother and sister. I valued my anger too much to let go of it, too much to believe.”
I said, “You couldn’t know it was prophetic.”
“Yes, I could have. If I had not been consumed by anger. If I had allowed myself to receive the transitions and vicissitudes of life with more wisdom and with a more generous heart. Manzanar was wrong. However, the internment camps were created in a time of fear, and the fear was rational. But fear can lead people to do things they would never contemplate in placid times. Fear can blind us, but so can anger.”
I almost said something, almost issued another assurance that he had no blame for the kitchen fire. But judging by the directness with which he regarded me, by his air of anticipation, I thought that he must be waiting for me to consider what he’d said, to sift from his words some essential insight.
After a silence, he continued: “Surrendering to fear destroys many lives. Indulgence in stubborn anger destroys even more. But guilt, Jonah, is no less a destroyer of lives. I speak to you as an expert on all three. Fear can be overcome. You may let go of anger. And guilt can be forgiven.”
Turning my head away from him, I said, “Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you’re really forgiven. That’s too easy.”
“But you can and must, especially when the guilt is so little earned. The way is simple. You must remember the love you had for the one you lost. Your mother tells me that you adored Amalia. It seems that everyone did. Remember that adoration. Do not let your feelings of guilt turn her out of your heart. Open your heart to her, and bring her back into it, so that she will always be with you. Guilt forbids her entrance. Sorrow instead would be a gift to her, a way forward that allows the hope of happiness. Believe me, Jonah, I am as well an expert in the matter of sorrow and its value.”
83
Later that day, I woke from a nap and heard my mother’s voice and another that I needed a moment to identify. Mrs. Mary O’Toole. She had given me piano lessons at the community center. Something in the tone of their conversation encouraged me to close my eyes and pretend sleep.
“He would sometimes come to the back door of the center in the late afternoon,” Mrs. O’Toole said. “He’d step into the hallway and wait to hear the piano. The piano room is just across from my office. If there was music, he could always tell at once whether it was Jonah or someone else.”
“He doesn’t play an instrument himself,” my mother said.
“But I swear, Sylvia, he’s got an ear. At least he has an ear for that boy. If Jonah was playing, he’d go into the file room next to my office and sit behind the half-open door to listen.”
“And Jonah never knew he was there?”
“No. That’s how he wanted it. He either left before Jonah was done for the day or left only after Jonah had been gone five minutes. To tell you the truth, I thought at first it was a little creepy, but I didn’t feel that way for long.”
Faking sleep, I realized they must be talking about Tilton, that my father had secretly come to hear me play. I didn’t know what to make of that, desperately didn’t want to make anything of it.
Mary O’Toole said, “On only his second or maybe third visit, he stepped into my office afterward and said, ‘Do you feel as I do—that when he plays, God enters the room?’ I guess I misunderstood, because I said Jonah was a great kid but not a saint. So he said, ‘No, I mean to say God enters the room at the sound of Jonah’s playing. That’s how I feel.’ Then he said it was an honor to listen, and he left.”
“I never knew,” Mother said.
“There was a day last winter, I looked in on him in the file room, and he was sitting there so primly, still in his heavy topcoat, holding his hat in both hands, tears just streaming down his face. He apologized to me for his tears, of all things, and said that he’d made of his life an isolation. Those were his exact words. He never speaks so personally, he’s reserved. But he said he’d made of his life an isolation, it was too late for him to be a father to a child of his own. He said, ‘The world is full of beauty, isn’t it? There’s grace everywhere if we’ll just see it.’ He’s such a nice little man.”
Of course, she had not been t
alking about my father. Mr. Yoshioka had come to the center now and then to listen to me play, and I had never known.
The particular day to which Mary O’Toole referred must have been the snowy afternoon when I came out of the community center close behind him, when he had looked so dashing in his topcoat, neck scarf, and fedora. I had delighted him that day when he discovered that I’d memorized a haiku by Naito¯ Jo¯so¯.