The Scott residence was an imposing two-story Craftsman with a deep front porch. Inside was spacious and airy and surprisingly full of houseplants. Philodendrons sent down tendrils of heart-shaped leaves from shelves and tables; potted palms stood politely in corners as though waiting to be asked to dance. Geometrically patterned rugs were scattered on walnut floorboards, and an eclectic collection of artwork adorned the walls. The sound of a radio droned from within, growing louder as Sarah led him down a hallway and past a dining room. She stepped around abandoned toys: a metal truck, a hobbyhorse, a misshapen castle built from wooden blocks. Through a doorway into a small study or library, Jamie glimpsed his old portrait of her, matted and framed, a brass lamp fixed above it.
“Is Lewis home?”
“No, he runs a clinic in one of the shacktowns on Sundays. He left before the news came, but he would have gone anyway. People count on him. He’s a good man.” This last was said with such obvious defensiveness it gave him a perverse hope.
“And your sons?”
“They slept over at my sister’s so we could go to the opening. I haven’t been to retrieve them yet. I don’t want them to see me this upset. Do you remember my sister Alice? She has two boys almost the same ages as ours. Come into the sunroom.”
The sunroom was bright with flat silver light and crowded with plants. Jamie was reminded of Sarah’s mother’s conservatory, where he had felt so adult when invited for coffee. The windows looked out onto a sloping lawn, electric green under the overcast sky. From a portable radio set amid a thicket of ferns on a side table came the information that Japanese immigrant populations on the West Coast had been put under strict surveillance. Sarah lowered the volume to a murmur, picked at the ferns. “I’m supposed to feel patriotic, I think, but mostly I’m afraid. And so angry.” She gestured to a wicker chair with floral cushions. “I’m sorry. Please sit.”
“I don’t mean to intrude.”
She sat on a love seat at right angles to him. “I’m glad you came. I’ve just been staring into space, envisioning what will follow from this. The powerlessness might be the worst part. And the rage! I don’t know what to do with it. I’m grateful my boys are so little still, but all those other mothers…I can’t think about it. They’ll want doctors. I’m sure Lewis will go if he can. I’d go myself if I could. What will you do?”
The question hadn’t occurred to him, though, yes, of course, he was an able-bodied twenty-seven-year-old man. He couldn’t begin to grapple with the possibilities and so put them aside, saying, “It’s hard to imagine you wanting to go to war. I think of you as being so gentle.”
“Yes, well, I’d prefer a gentler world. But everybody has their limits, don’t you think?”
He remembered his surge of happiness that someone had shot Barclay Macqueen. “It seems so.”
“I feel like I might burst out of my skin with anger. I want Germany and Japan to be nothing but ash and rubble. I want to come down from above in a blaze of vengeance like a Valkyrie and make them pay. Is that at all what Valkyries do? I’ve never thought about killing anyone, ever, and yet I find myself daydreaming about putting a bullet right between Hitler’s eyes. Don’t you?”
“Hitler seems so abstract, like the devil.”
“He isn’t, though. He’s a real man. Isn’t it strange, that one person had the power to start this? That’s an oversimplification, but you know what I mean.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Let’s talk about something else. I don’t want to waste our time together rambling on about the war. Tell me about your life. Tell me everything that’s happened.”
“Everything? There’s so much, but also so little.”
“We need a starting point. How about—tell me where you live.”
“Oregon, for now. On the coast. I lived in Canada before that.”
“You’re not married?” Her tone was carefully neutral.
He shook his head.
“And your sister? Is she married?”
So her mother had not told her about Marian’s visit to Seattle. “Actually, Marian is already a widow.”
Sarah’s tears, so close to the surface already, welled up. “Oh, how terrible. I’m sorry to hear it. Are there children?”
“No. Thankfully.”
“Yes, it’s a mercy they don’t have to grieve their father.”
Jamie hesitated. “I meant something a little different. She didn’t want any. Her husband was a vile man, but even if he hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have wanted any. She only wants to fly airplanes. She doesn’t like being bound to people.”