Leonard was out of her life. Now she was seeing Spence, who lived in an apartment nearby. Chiyo had stayed on in the house, which was left to her in her mother’s will. She had no siblings; her father had died of chronic lung disease related to the repeated bouts of pneumonia he suffered throughout his childhood in the camps. According to family lore, his health never truly recovered after the years he’d spent in an uninsulated tarpaper shack in the mountains. His lungs, weak in childhood, became weaker in adulthood. He died four years after he married, when Chiyo was a toddler, almost three. She held wisps of father memories: a word uttered softly, a movement, a facial expression, the sensation of safety and abandonment inextricably entwined.

The bungalow that was now Chiyo’s was cramped and poorly planned: a crowded kitchen, two squared-off bedrooms, a front door that opened directly into a living/dining room, no coat closet at the entrance, a boot mat prominent by the back door. Not much had been done in the way of modernizing, but despite cracked linoleum, chipped paint, an outdated kitchen, Chiyo enjoyed the independence of living on her own. Since her mother’s death in April, she no longer reported to a parental inquisitor who followed her every move. Spence, easygoing Spence, made no demands and was as independent as Chiyo. Sometimes he stayed overnight or for a weekend, but by the beginning of the week, he was back in his own apartment. Monday mornings, after his departure, Chiyo expanded her spirit. Her right arm extended high while she reached for the sky; her left arm pushed low. Stork cools wings. She occupied her own widening space and inhaled deeply.

NOW SHE SHIFTED her backpack over her shoulder. The arugula container knocked against her scapula. Film, she thought. Bette Davis, she thought. Bette as Charlotte in Now, Voyager. Charlotte had been locked inside a pattern of bending to the will of a controlling mother. Claude Rains had also starred in that film. Rains had a way of frowning with intensity, the implication being that his thoughts were superior, intelligence reaching into him from some far-off source. Paul Henreid was Charlotte’s love interest. Paul had a high forehead and carved profile that expressed sorrow even if all he did was turn his head to the side. It didn’t matter that Bette Davis shared the space with men who were cast in roles that portrayed them as having chiselled profiles and superior knowledge. She ate up the screen, and there was nothing her co-stars could do about it.

Chiyo found it easy to identify with Charlotte. Five months after her mother’s death, she did not feel kindness, compassion, love each time she thought of her.

I can face that, Chiyo told herself. I can face that shortcoming in myself, now that she’s gone. I can face the fact that I was a disappointment, that I did not produce grandchildren. My mother worked hard to raise me after Father died. She provided for the two of us in this house. She fought like a tiger to support, clothe and feed us both. She spent her entire childhood in a mountain shack. She never forgot the chill that drilled into her bones in the camp in winter. The experience affected her outlook for the rest of her life. For her, the world remained as it had always been: an unforgiving place. But I did not live in the camps. I have to be free of my mother’s experience. For once. For the first time. Even though I loved her.