A Gesture Life Page 8

  I wondered if I could perform the same on Patrick, if something terrible were to happen and his monitors alarmed and no one else could come. If I held the knife in my hand, could I make the quick, deep cut on him, could I reach inside, handle the thing, sustain him for the necessary time? The medic aims to keep a wounded comrade within the realm of being saved by a learned professional, and in this respect I think I was mostly good enough. To cease a hemorrhaging, get a man to breathe again. Pump down on a stilled heart. It is the mode I’ve come to know, that I’m able to sort out and address the primary disaster, at least. But the ongoing trouble, the chronic, complicated difficulty of the kind Patrick Hickey’s parents have faced the last few years of his life is the one that shakes me from all my confidences. To be truthful, I am sure I’m not a creature who was made to endure. I’m not a long-chase antelope. I’m designed to withstand the hard, swift charges, or else am readily overcome. And so to have talked to Mrs. Hickey in the room with her dying son, and amid all their money troubles with my old store, seemed too much; I would never want to depress or disappoint her, in that I wasn’t helping to alleviate her burdens, and so what else should I do but avoid her for now, even as I desperately wished to lend her friendly support?

  Veronica has mentioned the putty-faced boy upstairs with the lavender-tipped fingers, how reserved and quiet he is; he’s like a little old man, she says sadly, who knows his time is near. She’s visited him the last few days, but he was too weak to use the puzzles or coloring books, and all she could do for him one afternoon was read a children’s story for a few minutes until he dozed off. I tell Veronica she ought to visit him every day if the nurses will allow it, that she should talk to him and play with him and let him listen to her strong reading voice. In a funny way, she sounds like Liv Crawford when she reads from her books, a bit strident, overdramatic, with tones of succor. It’s easy to listen to her. Veronica now suggests that I go up there with her tomorrow afternoon, that the sick boy would probably like me, but I can’t answer, not only for my poor reasons concerning Mrs. Hickey but because I don’t want to tell Veronica that I’m to leave in the morning. I haven’t thought out fully or exactly when I am going to tell her, even as her mother is to pick her up any second, for what I really want and wish is that time could suspend for a moment or two, halt right here in my room, but such that I might still enjoy the company of Veronica and the intermittent visitors and the prodding charm of the nurses. And I wish it would stop especially for Patrick Hickey, stop bounding on for his unfit heart, which keeps counting toward its last.

  A woman in uniform appears in the doorway. It’s Officer Como, Veronica’s mother, in midnight police blue. She’s a striking figure, tall and sturdy, with a prominent brow, and with her two-way radio and holster and heavy black shoes she appears almost bristling; she doesn’t look like Veronica at all. But there’s a softness to her around the cheeks and jaw, a fullness that she didn’t have years ago, when she and I conversed regularly on the sidewalk in front of the store.

  “Nice to see you again, Doc,” Officer Como says, extending her hand. She sits down at the bedside chair, while Veronica moves around to the one on the other side. “I hope you’re feeling okay.”

  “I am, very much so.”

  “When Veronica began describing you last night, I realized who it was she was so smitten with.”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, it’s true. Hmm, let’s see, an older, distinguished Asian gentleman from Bedley Run. That’s not many people. I thought I should come up and say hello and see how you were doing. You’re much missed in the village, you know.”

  “And I miss it,” I say, my ready answer. “I know Church Street isn’t on your regular beat anymore.”

  “Not for a couple years, since after you retired. I’m actually working back in Ebbington now. Private security.”

  “There’s more crime in our town,” Veronica says almost proudly. “Especially around the mall. That’s where Mom works. She’s known as the Terminatrix. She’s head of security.”

  “Now who’s talking out of school?” Officer Como says. “Actually, I spend most of my time supervising and doing paperwork. But it’s better hours, if not better money. I can spend more time with the kid here.”

  “You’re right to value that,” I say.

  “I’m trying. But you know it’s amazing, Doc, what kids will do these days. It’s not like it was in the alley behind your old shop. They’re not just drinking and smoking pot by the back door. They’re breaking in now, stealing computers and stereos, VCRs. Not to sell, but to have for themselves. Now these are truly bad kids for you. Most of them are middle-class. They feel entitled, and they’re lazy to boot. It’s a lifestyle. They bum change outside the mall, for candy and cigarettes. Can you believe that, kids with weekly allowances begging money? I’m sorry Veronica isn’t older, so she’d already be away at college. You’re going away someday, aren’t you, darling, to a good school? Tell your mother you will.”

  “Not far away, Mother,” Veronica happily answers. “Not far away at all.”

  Officer Como winks at her, and I say, “You must be very proud, Officer.”

  “We’ll see how proud I can be,” she answers. “Anything can happen. She could fall for some handsome jerk and get pregnant.”

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  “I’m only being realistic, darling. I have to be because you’re too wide-eyed. You’d think she’d be harder, with those gory novels she reads, and with her mother a cop, but it’s exactly the other way. She doesn’t believe the world is the way it is.”

  “I don’t want to believe,” Veronica tells her, now glancing at me. “And neither does my good friend, Franklin. We share the same outlook. Don’t we?”

  “We certainly do,” I answer her, though in truth the sound of the words is deeper than the feeling. I’m not sure anymore what I see when I “look out,” if it’s real or of my own making or something in between, a widely-shared fantasy of what we wish life to be and, therefore, have contrived to create. Or perhaps more to the point, what ought we see, for best sustenance and contentment and sense of purpose to our days? Veronica already seems rich in these regards, and seems, as much as a girl of fourteen can, quite unshakeable. So let her believe. I, Franklin Hata, retired supplier of home medical goods, expatriate and war veteran and now suburban lap swimmer nonpareil, can operate only provisionally at present, even in the wane of my life. I would gladly look to Veronica for a lead, and for the past two days, I probably have.

  “Well, we ought to be going,” Officer Como says, motioning to Veronica. “I can’t leave the car out front forever. I’m not a public servant anymore. We’ve got to get dinner together, Ronny. And I want to thank you, Doc, for my daughter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been very good for her. Most of the time she comes home plain tired, and I think this job is mostly a waste of her time. She should go right to studying after school. But she’s been working hard at home the last couple days, full of energy. You two must have something special going.”

  “She’s the one who has been providing the energy,” I say.

  “Well, I’m happy you’re being discharged tomorrow, but I’m sorry for Ronny.”

  “You’re going home?” Veronica says softly, knowing well that all discharges happen in the morning.

  “Yes,” I reply, though I’m looking at her mother. “Dr. Weil thinks I’m recovered.”

  Officer Como answers, “I talked to him as he was leaving the hospital. He helped a partner of mine once. He says you’re coming back like a thirty-year-old.”

  “Do thirty-year-olds always feel like this?”

  Officer Como smiles, touching my arm as she rises from the chair. “Don’t get up, Doc. Ronny, it’s time to go.”

  Veronica comes around the bed and stands next to her mother. They’re opposite in shape, a white radish and a pear, the daughter seemingly half her mother’s height, though of course she isn’t. For a
moment I wonder if she is an adopted child, but the thought chills me somehow, as if the possible fact should mean a certain set of complications and unhappiness is imminent for them, no matter how loving they are now. But I’m forlorn because Veronica seems forlorn, and all because of my stupid cowardice.

  “Well, goodbye, then,” Veronica says. Her face looks pale. She doesn’t seem to know what to do. Then she reaches out and squeezes my hand for a second, and before I can say anything she’s already out in the hall.

  Her mother stares after her and, not wanting to leave abruptly, calls and tells her to wait in the car.

  “I’m sorry, Doc,” she says to me, her expression soured, “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. It’s not like her to run off like that.”

  “It’s my doing,” I say. “I didn’t tell her I was leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “She could have looked at your chart, or asked one of the nurses.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but I didn’t give her any reason to.”

  Officer Como considers this, working it quickly, and I can tell she’s thinking back to the time when she and I knew each other much better than we might today, when we had a number of conversations whose subject was always the same. I recall how strictly we used to speak, and even sometimes disagreeably, so much so that the simple sight of her blue-and-white car slowly pulling up in front of the store would be enough to halt me.

  “You know, Doc, it’s amazing how fast the years go by. When we first met, Veronica was a toddler, if that. And your Sunny was what, around the age Veronica is now?”

  “I believe that’s right.”

  “It’s truly amazing. It’s nice to see how things can turn out fine, when maybe you thought it was going to be only trouble ahead. I guess that’s why, in a funny way, I still worry so much about Ronny, even though she’s generally such a good kid. You never know what’s going to happen, for better or for worse. I’m happy that all is going well for you, except maybe this little mishap at your house. And to be a grandfather, well, that’s just great for you. When I saw Sunny again at the mall, you know I hardly recognized her? She’s such a grown-up now! We even had a nice little talk. Can you imagine, the two of us talking like two ladies at the club? And she showed me a picture of her little boy. Talk about who should be proud.”

  “You saw her at the Ebbington Mall?”

  “I see her every day now. As Ronny said, I’m the new head of security. Sunny’s been managing the store almost a year, right? She looks fantastic, all dressed up in those nice new clothes. She was always so beautiful. She’s even more so now that’s she a little older. So beautiful. I guess she always will be.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “I should be going. It was good to see you, Doc. I’m glad you met my daughter, or that she met you. Should I say anything to Ronny for you? I know she’ll appreciate it. You might not have seen it, but she really is a good girl.”

  “I know she is,” I say, wishing all of a sudden for my lungs to fill and tear, for my skin to burn, for things to fall apart for the benefit of Dr. Weil. “I know she is, I know.”

  “Well, so long then. Maybe we’ll catch you at the mall.”

  “Yes, yes. Perhaps I’ll see Veronica there.”

  “Sure, I’ll tell her that.”

  And then that is all. I step to the window and I see a car parked in the circle where the ambulances come and go. It’s hard to make out, but I think Veronica is sitting in the front seat, holding a book in her hands. Then I see Officer Como walk out to the car and get inside. They sit and speak for a moment, but not for long. They drive off and I watch them go down the hill, and I lose them with the angle. But I see their brake lights again when they reach the main road, the two-lane that follows Middle Pete Creek to the west where it crosses over the parkway, on the other side of which begin the stately rises of trees and easy rolling meadows of Bedley Run. They’ll drive swiftly and quietly and without stopping until they cross the buffer zone of old warehouses and railyards, and they’ll see reflected in the reservoir the many-colored lights of working-class Ebbington, home of the fast-food strip and the multiplex, and as well to those who would never get to live in my respectable town, the policewomen and the candy stripers and then all the others in this world who would hardly be known.

  5

  SUNNY, if I recall, was particularly hard on Officer Como. At her worst, she would sit diffidently on the hood of the policewoman’s cruiser as it sat parked on Church Street, smoking a cigarette as though she were idly passing the time on a bench in the park, her favorite mirrored sunglasses perched on her head. I remember one incident quite clearly. It was one of those days of transitional warm weather in the late fall, when I had the door of the shop opened to the street. Sunny was one store down, in front of the stationer’s, and I watched her obliquely from inside. This was long after the time that I could say anything directive or even meaningful to her, for I would have if I had thought it would do either of us any good. She was clearly waiting for Officer Como to come back with her lunch. I felt I was witnessing a staged accident, awaiting the trial run of something that I knew would be terrible.

  “Get off the car,” Officer Como said, perching the brown lunch bag near the lights on the roof. She stepped back toward the middle of the sidewalk, facing my daughter. Officer Como was still very youthful-looking then, sprightly and angular, and fresh of face like Veronica is now, which of course was partly what compelled Sunny to want to test her.

  “Get off the car now!”

  Sunny slid her hands behind her and pushed off the hood. She stood there on the edge of the sidewalk, inches from the fender. She wasn’t as tall as the officer but her presence was remarkably severe and stolid and it didn’t seem as though she were yielding any room. She was nearly sixteen and her body had filled out; she was just at the point when she was conscious of how to hold herself, how to gain a certain strength of repose by the set of her stance, her hips, her lofted chin. She wasn’t the kind of bad girl who cursed or talked back, there being little of that loudness and bluster to her (except on rare occasions with me, who somehow inspired her), but rather she was intimidatingly and defiantly quiet. She just looked at you, or more accurately, she made it that you looked at her. There wasn’t a hint of vanity or pride. The way she was facing Officer Como, you could tell she knew how to use her splendid appearance. For Sunny had always understood the cooler properties of her beauty, the ungiving stone of it.

  “Now come over here,” Officer Como commanded, pointing down at a spot a half-foot in front of her. “Right here, right now.”

  Sunny sighed and dropped her cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out. She acted more bored than anything else. And although she was but a couple steps from the officer, it seemed to take her whole minutes to reach the spot, enough so that I wanted to close the shop and rush out there and shake her to sensibility. But then I’ve always wanted to do that, and yet never have.

  “You’re really wasting yourself, you know that?” Officer Como said to her, less angrily than anyone could have expected from her at that moment. “You don’t even know. Others have nothing, not brains, not money, not good looks. They’ve got nothing and they know it and they’re bad. But you have everything going for you. It’s ridiculous.”

  “You can’t tell me what I have going,” Sunny answered, keeping her voice low. “So don’t try.”

  “I’ll tell you whatever I want,” Officer Como said forcefully, now holding Sunny by the arm. “And you know why? I wouldn’t say a word to you if I thought you deserved it. But you don’t. You drink and you probably do drugs and stay out all night with all kinds of sleazy men. It should make you sick to think what your father must feel, how scared he must be for you every time you leave the house. But you don’t care about that, either. You can’t think about that. All you have time for is being a stuck-up little girl who looks for trouble anywhere she can find it. You’re so damn tough and cool, aren’t you? So you sit on cop cars in your h
ot pants. Wow, young lady. Big deal. You’re a big deal.”

  Officer Como let go of her but Sunny didn’t move. For a moment I was certain that one of them would suddenly reach out and strike the other. There were no customers in the store and so I drifted out to the doorway; a few people were lingering about them on the sidewalk. I was perplexed as to what I should do. It’s a strange thing, to have your daughter being publicly accosted by an officer of the law and to know inside that it’s completely right and warranted, and yet on top of that having the impulse to shield her from criticism and unhappiness, and feeling, too, the purest, unbending aggression toward the officer. All this, I realize, is probably fatherhood in a nutshell, but I’m sure it’s true that for most these instances are what they are, momentary and situational and thankfully rare, and not, as in the case of Sunny and me, our lives’ chronic bout. That day my emotions were running particularly high, I think, because of what was spoken next, by both Officer Como and Sunny, as well as myself.

  “What did you say about me staying out at night?” Sunny asked, her voice sounding higher and milder than I’d heard for some years, more like when she was just-arrived, the tone cut-off and vulnerable and like that of anybody else.

  Officer Como answered, “Just what the whole town knows.”

  Sunny’s face hardened, and she pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes and bent to lift her bicycle from the sidewalk. She began walking away with it, an expensive French racer I had bought for her recent birthday.