East is East

But wait: what was that? Out there, beyond the trees and the crack of the storm? A voice. A human voice. The thunder rolled across the sky, harsh and angry. The lightning sizzled. But there it was again—he knew that voice. It was, it was—

“Hiro, Hiro Tanaka, can you bear me? It’s Ruth. I—Want—To—Help—You!”

Help me.

“Hiro. Listen to me. I—Want—To—Help—You!”

It was, it was—his mother, his haha, his mama!

He was on his feet, rain in his face, the silly grinning T-shirt swirling round him in tatters. “Mama!” he cried. “Mama!”

A silence, deep and expectant, a silence that reverberated over the swamp and through the storm. “Hiro?”

the voice called and it came from everywhere, from nowhere, ubiquitous as the voice of an angel.

“Haha, haha!” he cried, over and over, till he was breathless, till he was cold, till his brain locked up on him and there was no other word in the language. And then he saw it, the boat breaking the mist as in a dream, coming toward him, the anxious white face in the bow—his mother, it was his mother, come for him at last—and behind her, crouched there at her side, hippie hair and hippie beard, he knew that face—it was Doggo, yes, Doggo, his own Amerikajin father.

And he stood there, in the rain, and he called to them, called till he was hoarse, called Mother, called Father.

Part III

Port of Savannah

Journalism

The day was high and clear, warm without being oppressive, and about as dry as Savannah gets. It was mid-September, the seasons grudgingly changing, the scorching humid endless days of high summer giving way to something milder, expectant, the rich long Indian summer that would push back autumn to the edge of winter. Ruth was unpacking, finding hangers for her things, clipping the tags from a new three-quarter-length Italian cloth coat with dolman sleeves and oversized buttons, and a drop-dead black-and-white suit that featured slashing triangles against a flowing field of parabolas. Saxby had called it a fish dress. Fish? she’d echoed, holding the skirt up for him to admire. They were in her room at Thanatopsis at the time and she was in her bra and panties, trying her new things on for him. It’s the scales, baby, he said, punching the sobriquet with all the lewd innuendo of a disc jockey. Is that all you ever think about? she’d responded and he’d said No, I’m thinking about something entirely different right now. Prove it, she said, and she dropped the skirt to the floor.

But now she was in Savannah, for the week, a guest in the glossy bright high-arching home of Dave and Rikki Fortunoff, a home that had been featured in the pages of Architectural Digest and the New York Times Magazine. Dave was a friend of her father’s from law school and he often stopped by the house when business brought him to Los Angeles—Ruth had known him all her life. Still, she hadn’t really wanted to stay with the Fortunoffs—they were thirty minutes by taxi from the hospital where Hiro was gradually regaining his strength, under guard, and refusing to speak to the press, the police or his speckle-faced tormentor from the INS—but the advantage of the arrangement was obvious: she could stay here for nothing. A hotel would have cost her sixty or seventy dollars a night, minimum, plus meals, and she didn’t have that kind of money. Not yet.

She studied herself in the mirror for a long moment, thinking she might just use a rinse on her hair before she left for the hospital. It would highlight her tan—and show off the new suit too. Outside, beyond the French doors to the courtyard, lay the bright vacancy of the pool, and beyond it the massed oleanders and potted begonias that fed off its reflection. She wished Saxby were here with her, but he was home at Thanatopsis, awaiting her return, his tanks and buckets overbrimming with pale little fish the size and color of a gum eraser. When she’d left for Savannah he was wearing a yellow hardhat and supervising the dredging of the reflecting pool, future home of the pygmy fish and their happy descendants. He’d waved as she pulled out of the drive, a look of pure rhapsody on his face.