Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,34

o’clock, Lucy was dozing, her finger marking her place in a book she’d borrowed from the lending library.

“I got the job,” Miyako said. “I already started working, they asked me to begin right then and there. You should see the sewing machines, Lucy—they’re brand-new. They can hold a thread cone this big.”

She held her fingers six inches apart, her voice filled with wonder as she talked about the machines, the converted barrack, the bolts of yard goods wrapped in paper and stacked along the wall, the cutting tables with the heavy scissors, and the bins on the floor for collecting scraps. “Nothing is to be wasted,” she said. “Some of the others are piecing the scraps into a quilt. They’re going to use surplus wool as batting.”

“Do you like the other ladies?”

“They’re fine. I have more experience than all of them except a lady from Bakersfield. Miu something. She worked in a children’s garment factory.” Miyako sniffed, dismissive of the others’ skills or irritated at being bested, or both.

“And your boss?”

Her mother’s mouth pulled down faintly. “My supervisor. Mrs. Driscoll bites her nails. We will see what she knows of sewing.”

Lucy turned away, heeding her mother’s imperious tone.

“And Mr. George Rickenbocker. The businessman from New York,” Miyako went on. “He was there. He walks among the tables, watching us work, like this.” She clasped her hands behind her back, and did a pantomime, walking the length of their tiny room between their beds. “He is an important man, suzume. A big boss.”

“Won’t he be going back to New York soon? To run his company?”

Miyako wrinkled her nose. “He will be staying here for several months to establish the business. He has taken an apartment in the staff quarters. We’ll see how he likes the desert, after his fancy New York City life.”

Lucy watched her mother talk and gesture. Miyako could be witty, even saucy, when she was in her best moods. Maybe this job would be good for her; maybe she would make friends. She still had a chance to be normal, to shrug off the cloak of isolation she’d pulled around herself since they’d arrived in camp. Lucy thought of the clusters of women in the ironing house, gossiping and laughing over their work, or even fussing over sick children together. Sharing moments of levity and of grief. Wasn’t that the way a woman’s life was supposed to be?

As if sensing her thoughts, Miyako placed her hand on Lucy’s cheek. Lucy was startled to realize that she had grown in recent months; she was almost at eye level with her mother.

“You must be careful during the day, when I am working,” her mother said, the levity suddenly gone from her voice, the familiar unease tightening her features. She cupped Lucy’s face and stared intently into her eyes. Lucy wanted to grasp her mother’s good mood and cling to it, but Miyako’s mind followed its own ever-changing rhythms.

Still, her mother’s request came from nowhere. Since their arrival in the camp, it was Lucy who had ventured out each day: enduring the freezing cold, the stinging dust storms; waiting in line at the mess hall to get food for both of them; buying her mother licorice or packets of hairpins at the general store when Deputy Chief Griswold occasionally gave her a dime. Lucy was careful in the way of someone who knew that she could not leave the square mile, surrounded by razor-wire fencing, in which she lived; who never forgot that in the towers above them, armed soldiers stared down and watched her movements.

Staring into her mother’s eyes, with their long, thick lashes and perfect swipes of eyeliner, Lucy understood that even on her worst days, her mother loved her deeply and would stop at nothing to protect her.

“Yes,” Lucy whispered. “I will be careful.”

Her mother tightened her grip, her fingernails digging into the soft skin beneath Lucy’s chin. “You must,” she said. “You must.”

12

San Francisco

Wednesday, June 7, 1978

Patty sipped at her glass of chenin blanc, her third. She hadn’t been much of a drinker before Jay. She hadn’t been much of anything before Jay, just another single girl in the city, waiting for a man to come along before making any real life decisions.

When Patty was younger, she had allowed herself to imagine what it would be like when she met that perfect man, the one who would see in her what everyone else was missing. As the years of awkward dates passed and boyfriends came and went,