“I . . . I think so,” I say.
He takes the steps necessary to catch up with it and hoists the bag off the carousel and brings it to me. I look for its ID tag and there is the name. Elise Dove. For just one second I wonder why it doesn’t say Sontag. Elise Sontag. And then I realize that it’s Agnes whispering that question in my ear.
“Thank you,” I say to the man as I pull up on the Gucci’s handle.
“Certainly.” He smiles and turns back to the merry-go-round of suitcases to await the arrival of his own luggage.
“Idiot,” I whisper to Agnes as I walk away, reminding her I was married to a Dove for decades.
I have been to San Francisco before, a long time ago. I was in my early twenties then. My sister-in-law, Irene, had decided she and I needed a girls’ trip, just us two—no husbands, no children. For fun and shopping and manicures. I had been back in the States for a few years, married and well taken care of, so I hadn’t gone hungry or cold in a long while, but I still had only just begun to understand what it was like to be the wife of a wealthy American man. The concept that I would never want for anything again was still very new to me. Irene, by contrast, had been raised a Dove. Privilege was as familiar to her as oxygen. She’d spent the years of the war in Beverly Hills, getting engaged and then married, and then attending red carpet events in Hollywood, where champagne still flowed despite the state of the world. Irene was unlike anyone I had to that point ever known. Light-years different from Mariko. But she was also the first friend I made when I returned to America, though she was first my husband’s sister. And for a while, she was my only friend. I came back to the States a hesitant newlywed who didn’t know how to trust in the bonds of friendship anymore, and leery of the vulnerability required to participate in one. Irene liked me, though. For lots of little reasons. Irene was lighthearted and irresponsible and self-serving, but she made me forget what I’d lost and what my return to the States had shown me was never to be mine again.
Those long-ago memories of my first trip with Irene to San Francisco—was it my only? I think there were others—swirl about me now as I follow the signs for Ground Transportation and the taxi line. On that first trip so long ago, Irene had made reservations for us at a posh hotel, something trendier than the Ritz as I recall. That first evening of our three-day trip, we’d gotten ourselves dressed up in jewels and cocktail dresses and then went out for drinks, dinner, and dancing at a club she’d been to before and liked. I feel my face grow warm as I step into a taxi now, remembering that other time I was here in this city, getting into a cab rather like this one. I had been alone then, too, like I was now. Irene, who had pressed our hotel key into my hand moments earlier, had laughed conspiratorially and told me not to wait up.
“What are you doing?” I had whispered to her, aghast.
She’d tipped her third martini back and swallowed the rest of it while leaning heavily on a man she had met an hour earlier. I didn’t know what his name was. I don’t think she did, either.
Irene had winked and then walked away with the man, their arms around each other like they were old chums.
She’d returned to our hotel the next day at noon, looking fresh and rested, like she’d been at a spa in the hours she’d been away.
“Did . . . did you sleep with him?” I’d asked.
Irene had laughed, pleasantly, like I had told a cute little joke. “Oh, Elise. You are too dear. Yes, we slept. Come now. Let’s go shoe shopping.”
She didn’t ask me to keep her secret for her. I don’t think she felt any need to. On our flight home, I wanted to ask why she had done it, but even as I considered asking, I knew I didn’t need to. Her infidelity clearly had meant nothing to her. Nothing at all. Everything had always come so easily to Irene. Breaking her marriage vows had likely been as easy as making them.
I push this old remembrance away as the taxi exits the airport. Half an hour later, we are pulling up in front of the Ritz-Carlton. I step out of the cab and look up at the opulent front of the hotel. As the driver and bellman take care of my suitcase, I feel as though a chunk of me has just been knocked loose, like a bit of cliff giving way and tumbling to the sea below. New places will do that to an Alzheimer’s victim—if I may call myself that—or so said the brochure that my doctor had given me. New places might exacerbate the problem with memory loss and brain function. I had originally thought maybe I’d rest up and see about locating Rina Hammond in the morning, but standing here in front of this beautiful but foreign hotel, I know that I should not wait.
Right now I still remember how very much I want to see my old friend again before I disappear. Who knows what I will remember tomorrow.
A bellman follows me in with my suitcase and I waste no time checking in and asking that my luggage be taken to my room. I am afforded every courtesy by the front desk clerk, as I am staying in one of the hotel’s premium rooms. A preferred guest.
So, when I ask the front desk clerk if I might please have a word with one of the hotel’s managers, Ms. Hammond, her perfectly penciled eyebrows rise in concern.
“Is everything all right with your reservation?” the clerk asks. “Is there something else we can do for you?”
“Everything is lovely with my reservation,” I answer. “It’s a personal matter I’d like to discuss with her. But it’s very important to me.” And then I add, “And I’m afraid I haven’t much time.”
“Oh. Of course,” the clerk says, and she reaches for the handset of her phone. “I’ll see if she’s available.”
The clerk makes her request, asking whoever is on the other end if Rina Hammond is in today and can she spare a few minutes. There’s a hotel guest, a Mrs. Dove, who would like to speak with her on a personal matter of some importance. The clerk smiles at me and then hangs up.
“If you’d like to have a seat over there, Mrs. Dove, she’ll be out in a few minutes. Ms. Hammond is just finishing up a phone call. Is there anything else I can get you?”
“No, thank you, dear.” I make my way to a set of exquisitely upholstered sofas and chairs, and as I do so I realize my heart has quickened its beating. I am nervous. A bit afraid. What if Rina thinks it’s not a good idea for me to see Mariko? What if she says no? What will I do then? I lower myself onto one of the couches as I ponder what Mariko’s daughter might say to me.
Perhaps I should ask if Rina and I can speak privately. Perhaps she will take my request more seriously if I ask to speak with her in private. As I am brooding on this, I look up and she is walking toward me, Mariko’s daughter.
Rina Hammond is my height but slim boned. There is a hint of the Mariko I knew in the shape of her nose, but the rest of her face is composed of unfamiliar features, given her by a Japanese father I never knew. She looks to be in her mid-fifties. Rina’s hair is salt-and-pepper and styled into a cute pageboy cut. She is wearing a pencil skirt in a creamy ivory hue and a silk blouse the shade of tangerines. Rina is smiling politely as she walks toward me but she looks tired, like perhaps she did not sleep well last night.
I rise to my feet.
“Mrs. Dove?” Rina says as she closes the distance and extends her hand to shake mine. “I’m Rina Hammond. How can I help you?”
Rina’s voice is gentle and sweetly foreign. English is not her first language. Mariko had been born and raised in Los Angeles, and her English had been as natural to her as the Japanese she spoke at home. But her daughter spent her entire childhood in Tokyo. I’d read in the article on my iPad that Rina had come to America to spend a year abroad at Boston University as part of her international business studies at the University of Tokyo, but she’d fallen in love with a fellow student by the name of Elliot Hammond, and they had eloped. She never returned to Japan to live, only to visit. I had lain in bed this morning rehearsing what I might say to Mariko’s daughter in this moment, but all I can remember now is having lain there and done that but not the words I had practiced.
“Mrs. Dove?” Rina cocks her head. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I finally say. “Yes, I think you can help me.”
Her beautifully narrow Asian eyes widen. “Yes?”
“I . . . I know your mother. I mean, a long time ago, I knew her.” The words I thought weren’t there tumble out awkwardly. “We met ages ago. She was my closest friend, actually, even though I just knew her for a short while.”
“Oh?” Rina says simply, with the tone of the unconvinced. She is looking at me as though surely I must be mistaken.
“During the war. Before she and her family were sent back to Tokyo,” I add.
“Um. I see.”