That night, Heideko and Ichimei returned from San Francisco with an empty van. “That’s the first and last time I’m going with you, son. You’re responsible for this family. We can’t eat flowers, you’ll have to learn how to sell them,” Heideko told him. Ichimei tried to delegate this role to his sister, but Megumi was already halfway out the door. They realized how easy it was to get a good price for their flowers and calculated they would be able to pay for the land in four or five years, providing they lived frugally and did not meet up with any disasters. In addition, when he saw what they had produced, Isaac promised he could get a contract with the Fairmont Hotel for them to maintain the spectacular floral arrangements in the reception hall and lounges that gave the place its fame.
After thirteen years of bad luck, the Fukuda family was finally taking off. It was then that Megumi announced that she was thirty years old and thought it was time she set off on her own. In the intervening years Boyd had married and divorced; he was the father of two children and had yet again asked Megumi to join him in Hawaii, where he was doing well with his garage and a fleet of trucks. “Forget Hawaii, if you want to be with me, it will have to be in San Francisco,” she told him. She had decided to study nursing. At Topaz she had attended several births, and each time she held a newborn baby she experienced the same ecstatic feeling, the closest thing to a divine revelation she could imagine. This area of obstetrics, until then dominated by male doctors and surgeons, was just beginning to open up to midwives, and she wanted to be in the vanguard of the profession. She was accepted in a nursing program specializing in female health, which had the advantage of being free. Over the following three years, Boyd went on wooing her discreetly from afar, convinced that once she had her diploma she would marry him and come to Hawaii.
November 27, 2005
It seems incredible, Alma: Megumi has decided to retire. She had such a struggle to get her diploma, and loves her profession so much that we thought she would never do so. We’ve calculated that in forty-five years she has brought some five thousand five hundred babies into the world. As she says, it’s her contribution to the population explosion. She is eighty, a widow for ten years now, and has five grandchildren. It is high time she took a rest, but she’s got it into her head to open a food business. No one in the family can understand it, because my sister can’t even fry an egg. I have had a few free hours to paint in. This time I am not going to re—create the Topaz landscape, as I have done so often in the past. I’m painting a path in the mountains of southern Japan, near a very ancient, isolated temple. You should come with me to Japan, I’d love to show you that temple.
Ichi
LOVE
That year, 1955, was not just one of effort and sweat for Ichimei. It was the year of his great love. Alma abandoned her project of going back to Boston, becoming a second Vera Neumann, and traveling around the world. Instead, her only aim in life was to be with Ichimei. They met almost every day at nightfall, once his work in the fields was done, at a motel six miles from Martinez. Alma always arrived first and paid for the room to a Pakistani clerk, who looked her up and down with deep disdain. Proud and haughty, she stared him in the eye until he was forced to lower his gaze and hand over the key. The same scene was repeated most every weekday.