That evening was spent reminiscing. June's tears would not, could not, subside, as if they were cleansing a pain that would not leave her. As we talked, I was amazed at how hungry I was for information about Father, anything that would tell me more about the man as opposed to the myth. I realized that June was my only source. She alone knew the truth or truths. She alone could help me bridge the gap to intimacy with him
I felt our friendship, and our mutual need for emotional support, could possibly open the door that had been locked for over five decades. I knew that only June had the key to his heart, and I wanted it. Badly.
June was cautious. As we spoke about him and their shared lives over the decades, I could sense how tentative she was, as if she were trying to avoid a real conversation. I knew this wasn't her nature. I could feel she wanted to open up, share her innermost feelings. But the reluctance, foreign as it was to her personality, remained dominant, and I quickly got the impression that her responses to me were conditioned. As if she had been programmed not to speak about things personal and private. As she spoke, I could feel Dad's presence coming through her. She was hesitant, secret, aloof, and cautious with me. Was this an Asian cultural response to dealing with grief that kept mourners from sharing emotions? I'd never seen it before, particularly when as a P.I. I worked with my Japanese colleagues on criminal cases. Maybe it was only specific to widows. I didn't know, but I also sensed there was something deeper — and it didn't have anything to do with grief.
I walked to the corner of the living room with its wall of glass. It was almost midnight now, and the evening was clear and in sharp focus. The tall buildings below us shone, even with just a few of the many offices still lit. Behind the buildings the dark bay reflected the lights on the broad spans of the suspension bridges, and headlights still moved across them, hundreds of people going on with their lives as I tried to figure out what to ask June next.
I turned back to the room at the sound of June's footsteps across the carpet as she approached and handed me a small object I had not seen before. It was a tiny, palm-sized wood-bound photo album, with twelve golden fleurs-de-lys imprinted on the front. It appeared quite old; my guess was at least nineteenth-century. I hefted it, thinking how much heavier it was than it looked. The little book in my hand had a power to it, almost like a talisman. I took it over to a coffee table where I sat down and opened it and paused as my eyes fell upon a picture of Father and me. June saw me smile and looked away, allowing me a moment of privacy.
Exhibit I
George Hodel's private photo album
I was looking at a picture I had never seen before. I was two years old, sitting on my father's knee. The photograph would have been taken in Hollywood sometime in 1943 and had been cut from a larger photo to fit the small size of the page in the album. Across from it was another picture of my two brothers, Michael and Kelvin. It was the other half of the photograph of Father and me, and both Michael and Kelvin were sitting on our half-brother Duncan's knee. Duncan was a strikingly handsome young man of about seventeen then. He must have been down visiting us from San Francisco, where he was living with his mother and stepfather.
Exhibit 2
Steven, Father, and Kelvin . . . Kelvin, Duncan, and Michael
The next page held a portrait photo of my mother, strikingly beautiful and exotic. Yet one could see the sadness in her face. It had always been there. Rarely had I seen a photo of her that did not capture that terrible sadness, her soul crying out from within her, as her eyes revealed the truth of her unhappiness.
Exhibit 3
Dorothy Hodel
I paused and wondered; was it the unhappiness within her that had made her into the alcoholic she became, or was it her alcoholism that made her eyes so sad? She too was dead, and it grieved me to think about the shipwreck of her life, wasted as it was, all its enormous potential cast away. I turned the page.
The next picture was of my grandfather, George Hill Hodel Sr., who died in Los Angeles sometime in the early 1950s, after our father had left for Asia. Years later, Mother described his funeral. She said she was amazed that so many strangers and people she did not know had come to pay their last respects. "It was as if a movie star or some celebrity had died, except he was not a celebrity." She hadn't known any of these people nor why they had come.
Exhibit 4
George Hodel Sr.
When I turned the page again, I froze, gazing at two photographs of a very young Eurasian woman. In one she was wearing what looked like Native American clothing. These two pictures were of my ex-wife, Kiyo, taken when she was barely out of her teens, years before she met me at a Hollywood party. Mother, who had introduced me to Kiyo, had mentioned that they had known Kiyo during the war, but why would my father include her pictures here?
Exhibit 5
Kiyo
Two more women. Another Asian woman, a Filipina, also taken in her youth. The picture resembled his ex-wife, Hortensia — whom I'd met in Manila in the early '60s. This must have been a photograph taken at an earlier time, perhaps when they lived in Hawaii, in the early 1950s.
The facing page showed a young woman and her dog.
Exhibit 6
It seemed as if time itself was out of place in this photo album. There were photos of my mother, looking exotically Eurasian in her setup for the picture, then a photo of Kiyo, who was Eurasian, dressed as a Native American. What was my ex-wife doing among these family photos? I had no idea, but I found it disturbing. And then I turned the page.
Here were two photographs, both of a vividly beautiful dark-haired woman. She was as young and vivacious, her presence reaching out to you across the years, making you believe for a moment that you could step through the frame and be there with her. The right-hand photo was apparently a nude, artistically taken, from her shoulders up. Her eyes were closed as if in a delicate sleep, a sleep of light dreams. In the other photo she was standing next to a Chinese statue of a horse, her eyes also closed, but now she was fully clothed. How exquisite she looked, with two large white flowers in her swept-back black hair and wearing a collarless black dress. I couldn't take my eyes off her. As if she were calling out to me from a moment in time most likely at the end of World War II. I could almost hear the music of a big band. Maybe I could ask her to dance, and she would say yes.