A Gesture Life Read online

  “She has much warm feeling to offer, I think.”

  “I know, I know. You’re absolutely right. You know what she said last night at my place? You won’t believe this. She’s talking about the big one. ‘Renny,’ she says, ‘I’m going to be forty-two in a few weeks. I’m past my time.’ I didn’t answer her, because you’ll know, Doc, I was sort of scared to awful death, and then she gets up from bed and goes to the bathroom and starts to cry. She comes back with a washed face and she turns out the light and just clings to me, real tight. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  “She would like to get married?”

  “Oh, God, no. I can’t believe that. But maybe everything just short of it. This morning she’s got that farness in her eyes, staring at me over her coffee mug, the I’m-closing-this-one-if-it-kills-me look. Doc, I feel my life passing before me.”

  “If I may say something, Renny, it seems that perhaps you might want some of the same things as Liv….”

  Renny didn’t answer right away, helping me instead with the screwpull, as the cork was old and crumbling. When he finally got it open he poured it out and I could see from his expression that the wine was no good anymore, if it ever had been. It was brownish and a bit cloudy. But I had nothing else in the house and Renny poured a full glass anyway, and I found him some pretzels to mask the taste.

  “I’ve never been against having children or getting married, never. But in my imagination I assumed it would be with a woman not at all like Liv Crawford. Not at all. Maybe I’m more traditional than I know, but I thought it would be someone more like your late friend, Mary Burns. I didn’t really know her, of course, but this is what I thought. A woman with a quiet grace and stature. But not in the least unproud. Someone who couldn’t help but be a good mother. Now Liv is quite a woman, a real bolt of light, but I’m not so sure she’s motherhood material. Not just from my point of view, but hers as well. She’s right about running out of time, but I’m afraid she’s just doing this because it’s a final opportunity, like coming across a good house whose owner is in danger of foreclosure, just automatically plowing ahead because there’s no other reasonable option. I may be too hard. But should I be the one to plow ahead with her, Doc? I think yes, certainly, I will, I will, and then, definitely, absolutely, not. You’ll know how this is making me quite upset.”

  I could see that, but Renny Banerjee is a fellow who never appears too perturbed. He drank most of the bad bottle of wine and ate the entire bag of pretzel twists, and I would have improvised something more substantial for him to eat, but he had dinner plans with Liv.

  On the way out he noticed the full bin of mail and picked it up for me and asked where I would like it. Usually I opened mail at the desk off the kitchen, and so he walked back in and put it down, and suddenly he had his jacket off and sleeves rolled up and he pulled up another chair. “Let’s get this done,” he said, taking a fat handful. He did the work quickly, first sorting out the fliers and bulk mail and solicitation letters, then separating the bills and credit card statements and other semi-important notices from the other first-class letters and cards, of which there were quite a number. He held one up and I nodded and so he opened it, calling out the name, and then he went through the rest like that, cards from the florists, and from the deli woman, and from practically every other merchant on Church and Main streets who had been there at least a few years, long enough to know who I was. There was a card from the Hickeys, or Mrs. Hickey, with a little “Patrick” scratch. There was one from Liv, and then a few sent by her competitors at Century 21 and Better Homes and Prudential, who also called me periodically and were likely keeping abreast of my general state of health. There was a card from Mr. Stark at Murasan’s Smoke and Pipe, enclosed with a small packet of my favorite tobacco, which I gave to Renny, who has taken up pipe smoking to go along with his cigars and cigarettes. And finally there was a get-well card from no one, subdued in style with only slightly curled script lettering, without even a signature or “Dear…” handwritten around the poetry/sentiment, just a blurred red postmark on the envelope and no return address.

  After throwing away the junk mail and stacking the bills in order of payment, Renny carried the bundle of cards to the family room, where he and I set each one up on the mantel, so that it looked almost like Christmastime, when I still receive many cards from around town, though the number grows steadily smaller each year. He seemed quite satisfied with our work. “I wouldn’t bother trying to respond to all these,” he said. “There are too many. Besides, no one expects it. Just say thanks to everyone you see again in town. That’ll do, you’ll know. Just step out and go around and say how you feel.”

  * * *

  I WANT TO DO that very thing now, of course, slow at each door and awning and window case and flip down the passenger-side window of my old and lumbering gray Mercedes coupe and perhaps not so softly call out my general gratitude for the collegial thoughts and kindnesses, but it’s the selling hour, after all, and what would I be doing but disturbing the bustling morning of the town’s activity by showing myself in an odd one-man parade that evokes no one’s great nostalgia or longing. Even with a mantel full of cards, I know that more often than not in the past few years of my retirement, I’ve found the collective memory here to be shorter than I wished to believe, and getting shorter still. I’ve gone from being good Doc Hata to the nice old fellow to whoever that ancient Oriental is, a sentence (I heard it whispered last summer while paying for my lunch at the new Church Street Diner) which carries no hard malice or prejudice but leaves me in wonder all the same. For while I’m certain this sort of sad diminishment befalls every aging gentleman and -woman, and even those who once held modest position in the town’s day, I am beginning to suspect, too, that in my case it’s not only the blur of time and modern life’s general expectation of senescence, but rather the enduring and immutable fact of what I am, if not who; the simple constancy of my face. I must wonder then, too, whether a man like me should be happy enough with the accrued comforts of his life, accepting the minor losses, or else seek out those persons who no matter how sharp their opinion or emotion at least know him in all his particulars.

  And so as I come upon our poor-cousin town of Ebbington, with its shut-in facades and littered sidewalks and grubby rash of convenience stores, I’m struck low with the thought of where I am actually going. Winding around the main traffic circle and then down the commercial strip to the Ebbington Center Mall, the place where my erstwhile daughter now makes her living, I think back to yesterday morning, when I called the store, a Lerner’s, and asked for the manager. After a long pause a voice came on to say, “Yes?” with hardly anything but the most solicitous tone, rising and heedful, the pitch of the word so terribly willing, and thus for me unanswerable, that I gently put down the handset.

  It was Sunny, of course. And from the silent lingering, I was sure, she had sensed it was me. For the rest of the day and evening I tried to set the house right again, following Renny’s lead with my bin of mail, but somewhere in the course of the good, mundane work I had to rest for what first felt like a shortness of breath. Dr. Weil had warned that I might experience very brief episodes of asthma-like attacks, but the sensation was sharper than that, not like a constriction but a pointed, burning ache deep in the square of my chest, like a rifle shot passing cleanly through. And then, as swiftly as it struck, it was gone, leaving me half-gasping with my temple pressed against the divided panels of the French patio doors, to gaze outside at the late summer colors gloriously burnished by the majestic, clarified light that should, by most any account, be guide to my life’s last sweet dawning.

  But the light, alas, is not. Rather, as I now make my way down the half-empty commercial boulevard, the traffic signals all changing to green so that I can hardly slow down or delay, the brightness seems hard and scrutinizing, everything I look upon appears overreal and starkly patent. To my dismay, I’ve arrived in what seems half the usual time. It being just after ten, the immens
e mall parking lot is practically deserted, save the hulking, older-model and econobox cars of the store employees, which sparsely line the far periphery in a gesture to the large weekend crowds that have long gone elsewhere. I pull in across the wide stretch of blacktop and although I have my choice I park perhaps a dozen spaces from the open spots nearest the entrance, and I wish I could obscure myself somehow as I walk to the grandly hideous, domed building, the lone customer heading inside.

  The mall, everyone knows, is failing. There are other shoppers, of course, perhaps ten or fifteen wherever you look, but only a few are holding store bags of purchases. Mostly it’s single parents or teens who have bought an orange drink or cinnamon bun at the food court, strutting about for nothing better to do, or the people my age and beyond, who gather beneath the central glass dome of the mall, sitting on the benches set beneath the artificial palms, which replaced the real ones that looked wretched from Grand Opening day and finally died last year. The old folks await an early lunch, then will take a slow stroll or sit again to watch the passersby until the middle afternoon, when they’ll drive home before the rush hour and shut their eyes for a nap. The sense here, unlike in Bedley Run, is not of brisk and free commerce but rather the near-sickly, leaden atmosphere of a terminal, where people wait and linger under the fluorescent lights and kill time in any way they can.

  At least a third of the shops are vacant, the bath and linens store gone under and the oak furniture place, too, and across the sorry divider of plastic ferns the Waterbeds Plus is in the midst of a closing sale, drastic final markdowns and reductions. The few notes of life in this wing come from the bulb-lettered signs of the Dollar Store, which is always in disarray and crowded with children, and the floor-to-ceiling display of the T-shirt and baseball cap seller, and the windows of the fish and pet shop, where dirty puppies climb and tumble over one another to scratch at the thick glass. There is the forlorn plastic playground of the Kiddie Kare hastily set up inside yet another empty store, and where the clock shop used to be, several Middle Eastern–looking men are papering the entrance with cardboard cutouts of goblins and cats and maniacal pumpkins, and unfurling a banner announcing the grand opening of their (temporary) store of Halloween gifts and costumes and crafts. There’s more than a month to go, but a few children already stand by reverently watching them slide their ladders from side to side as they trim the windows with black and orange crepe paper ribbons, hanging witches and skeletons.

  The effect is festive, at least, a lively contrast to the dank grimness of this place, even if it is morbidity being celebrated. Perhaps it’s the most the Ebbington Center Mall can hope for now, the commemoration of pretty much anything. As I make my way down to the far wing where the Lerner’s is, the running skylights above dingy with neglect, the dark water stains creeping down the plaster, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a tide of pure and awful feeling. And so the questions beg: Is this the place where her child must play? Is that the seat where she takes her day’s break or lunch? Is this all the world she would have, so as not to be with me?

  When Officer Como casually mentioned at the hospital that she had seen Sunny, I instantly saw in my mind the picture of her at the age when she first came to me. A skinny, jointy young girl, with thick, wavy black hair and dark-hued skin. I was disappointed initially; the agency had promised a child from a hardworking, if squarely humble, Korean family who had gone down on their luck. I had wished to make my own family, and if by necessity the single-parent kind then at least one that would soon be well reputed and happily known, the Hatas of Bedley Run. But of course I was overhopeful and naive, and should have known that he or she would likely be the product of a much less dignified circumstance, a night’s wanton encounter between a GI and a local bar girl. I had assumed the child and I would have a ready, natural affinity, and that my colleagues and associates and neighbors, though knowing her to be adopted, would have little trouble quickly accepting our being of a single kind and blood. But when I saw her for the first time I realized there could be no such conceit for us, no easy persuasion. Her hair, her skin, were there to see, self-evident, and it was obvious how some other color (or colors) ran deep within her. And perhaps it was right from that moment, the very start, that the young girl sensed my hesitance, the blighted hope in my eyes.

  The Lerner’s, I’m relieved, has fared much better than most of the stores. It’s clean and tidy, for one thing, the display window sparkling and warmly lighted, the wide marble-tiled entrance spotless and waxed. It’s just how I would try to keep it, were it mine, and for a moment I allow myself the thought that I’ve bestowed at least this tiny scruple on Sunny, from years of example. I can’t see back to the main island register because I’m sitting on a bench one store down, happy to watch the steady traffic of women (and their children and some men) go inside and come out. The clothes in the store look to me eminently respectable, of conservative styling and subdued color, not too fancy or too cheap, the blouses and pantsuits and skirts of office managers and junior executives and the young real estate agents who aren’t Liv Crawford quite yet. Part of me still can’t accept the idea of Sunny running this kind of squarely middle-class franchise, or for that matter running any kind of business at all, and then one so expansive and peopled and professionally staffed. From this bench, lodged behind the cover of broad leaves of faux tropical plants, I survey the saleswomen working the floor, guiding customers to changing rooms with armfuls of clothes, offering other sizes and colors, this active squad she’s charged with certain missions for the day. And it’s almost too much for me, too felicitous perhaps, to imagine the fantastic idea of what Sunny Medical Supply might be instead of half-emptied and shut, what kind of vital, resplendent establishment could have been built, not for pride or for riches but a place to leave each night and glance back upon and feel sure would contain us. For isn’t this what I’ve attempted for most all of my life, from entering the regular school with my Japanese parents when I was a boy, to enlisting myself in what should have been a glorious war, and then settling in this country and in a most respectable town, isn’t this my long folly, my continuous failure?

  Sunny, I am partly relieved, is still nowhere in sight. There is no reason of course she should necessarily be working today. But now I’m moving again, this time, finally, to the store itself, drawn in past the airy entrance to a fragrant, music-filled space. I’m greeted by a redheaded saleswoman who smiles and quickly checks around to see if there’s someone who looks to be mine, a daughter or a wife. At the main register there are only two other employees scanning items for the shoppers. One of them has ASST MANAGER printed on her name badge, and I take a place in the line she’s serving. Although my hands are empty and I’m the lone man, I have only one question for KARI, who looks too young to be assistant managing, with her stooped, spindly shoulders and frosted razor-cut locks, which I learned at the hospital from Veronica Como is the popular style these days.

  “May I help you?” Kari says breathily, trying her best to sound energetic and eager.

  “I wondered if the manager is in today.”

  “Oh, sir, I can help you,” she immediately says, leaning forward and glancing over my shoulder at the line of women behind me. On her collar I see she has a small, rectangular button with a very contemporary-looking portrait of Jesus, under which it reads Luv Conquers All.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I had hoped, actually, to speak in private with the manager.”

  “Oh,” she says, suddenly looking closely at me, and her face brightens. Her voice changes, sounding more girlish and casual. “Sure. Are you related? You must be.”

  “Yes,” I say, amazed to hear myself answering such a question. “We are.”

  “You sort of look like it!” she announces, for some reason excited. “Neat. Because she’s usually not here on Saturdays until three. But she said she would be in early today, around eleven, and then leave early, too, so I’ll have to do double-shift and close up. She should be here
in ten or fifteen. It’s been really busy, actually. You can sit on the couch and wait, if you want. Hey, are you Sunny’s uncle or something? Are you visiting from out of town?”

  But I don’t answer, or can’t, as I’ve already turned back around and gone straight out to the mall, walking with all the speed I can muster, almost skipping into a trot, and I feel my chest start to ache and then balk, and before I know it I’m staring at the tops of my knees and the dirt-colored tile floor and coughing as though it’s for the sake of my very life. And then, too, it is a nearly wondrous sensation, between hacks, for just as I’ve expelled every last ounce of breath, nearly coughed out a whole lung, there’s also a feeling of something like purity again, a razing and renewal, as if I might wholly banish all that I was just a moment ago. It reminds me of swimming the final length of a morning, when in those last yards one refuses to take air, as if becoming something else, almost half-dying in the crawl. But when I open my eyes what is there but the alarmed expressions of unfamiliar faces examining this sorry old Japanese, these others bracing him, patting him, holding him up from under his arms.

  “Hey, pops, just breathe easy now,” a bearded man in a cap says. He looks down at me earnestly, nodding his head. “Guess it’s time to trade in the hookah, huh, chief?”

  A very large woman with a kind, rosy-hued face shoots him a look and then takes my hand and leads us a few steps to a bench, asking if I want her to sit with me awhile. I can’t yet seem to breathe. I just shake my head weakly, unable to thank her, though part of me would like nothing better than to pass some long minutes leaning up against her ampleness, to rest upon the soft pad of her shoulder and arm and try to forget where I am. Soon my air comes back and with it my voice, and I thank her profusely for being patient and kind. It occurs to me, too, that this is probably my last chance to go back and tell Kari not to bother giving the manager any message, that it was my mistaken (and utterly sentimental and foolhardy) impression that this was the right store, or the right mall in the right town, and that I’m doddering and failing and should be completely ignored. But the samaritan woman now wants to walk me to my car, or drive me home if I can’t, her eyes saying I’m in no suitable condition. I assure her I’m all right, and I quickly get to my feet to indicate the extent of my semi-decent command. I’m faking, of course, and desperate to keep myself upright for the time it takes to thank her again and say I’m fine and wave goodbye as she resumes the path of her shopping day. And it is only when she is out of sight and I’ve regained myself and am retracing my steps to the store in a tentative gait in order, I must oddly hope, to persuade the assistant manager Kari of my senility and madness, that I realize how merciful and lucky it is to have avoided such a meeting with all those difficult, murky remembrances.