A Gesture Life

10

ON ANY SATURDAY MORNING in the Village of Bedley Run, one can see everywhere the prosperity and spirit and subtle industry of its citizens. There are the running, double-parked cars in front of Sammy’s Bagel Nook, where inside the store middle-aged fathers line up along the foggy glass case of salads and schmears with chubby half — Sunday papers wadded beneath their arms, impatiently waiting for the call of their number. There are the as-if-competing pairs of lady walkers, neon-headbanded and sweat-suited, marching in their bulbous, ice-white cross-training shoes up and down the main avenue, strutting brazenly in front of the suddenly tolerant, halting weekend traffic. There are the well-dressed young families, many with prams, peering hopefully into the picture window of the Egg & Pancake House for an open table, and if there isn’t one, strolling farther down Church to the birchwood-paneled Bakery Europa, the fancy new pastry shop where they prepare the noisy coffees. And all over the village is the bracing air of insistence, this lifting breeze of accomplishment, and whether the people are happy or not in their lives, they have learned to keep steadily moving, moving all the time.

Though I shouldn’t, given the doctor’s strict orders of convalescence, I now drive through these Saturday streets for perhaps the thousandth time, slowing at the pedestrian crossing and then by my former store, which should be open for customers at this hour but is instead shadowy and shuttered. I notice that a royal-blue-and-white Town Realty sign — PRIME RETAIL & APTS FOR SALE/LEASE — has been placed in the window case, and the name of the agent on the bottom is of course Liv Crawford, whose multiple phone numbers in bold lettering, despite my resistance, I have somehow accepted into memory.

The second-story apartment windows are dark as well, but curtains are up and the Hickeys’ car, a red Volvo station wagon with rusty wheelwells, is parked at the curb. In the past two weeks I’ve been home, I haven’t heard a word about the store or the Hickeys, or news about their son, and I’ve been too afraid to call the children’s ICU to find out what, if anything, might have occurred. I don’t wish to hear the nurse’s voice stiffen and lower. I don’t wish to hear her ask if I am family. During the quiet, inactive hours I’ve been stuck inside the house, I’ve been thinking again, too, of what it would mean for Patrick Hickey to survive, of the awful accident or gradual demise of another young boy or girl with the exactly right heart, and I begin to imagine — or even hope — that the necessary and terrible thing will happen, just come to pass, for it seems that if there should be a price to pay for darkly willing an innocent person’s fate, I may as well pay it, and not the beleaguered Hickeys, who must endure constant torment by such conflicting thoughts.

I didn’t even hear about the store being available from Liv Crawford, who probably thinks I would find it too disturbing in my recovering state to learn that Sunny Medical Supply has finally gone out of business. Well, I do. It’s not that I believed the shop would be there forever, or become a village institution, but I did hold out hope of the store’s being passed along in the coming years, if going by a different name, from the Hickeys to whomever and whomever else, a humble legacy that a decent man had once begun and built up and nurtured. In fact, it becomes even more troubling a notion to consider how quickly the memory of the store will fade away, once it reopens as something else, say a bookshop or a beauty salon, and how swiftly, too, the appellation of “Doc Hata” will dwindle and pass from the talk of the town, if it’s not completely gone already. I realize, probably too late, that I wish to leave something of myself, a small service to Bedley Run, and not simply a respectable headstone, but after seeing the generic, forlorn closedness of the store, I feel precipitously insubstantial behind the wheel, like an apparition who has visited too long.

But I am bolstered by Liv Crawford, whom I haven’t actually seen in some time but whose daily contact with me is most regular, in the form of a different catered box dinner delivered each afternoon by her new assistant, Julie, a cheery, bouncy young woman whose talk and dress are uncannily like Liv’s. Yesterday it was moussaka from the Aegean Shack, with flatbread and a Greek side salad, and though I’ve asked Julie to please tell Liv this catering must cease, when the doorbell rings at six o’clock I find myself swiftly ambling to the door, my senses keen for what Liv has decided on that day, whatever delectation and surprise she’s thought to order for me. In fact, I think I have never enjoyed such a range of dishes, or known they could be had in the immediate area, though even more satisfying than the cuisine has been the simple idea of Liv taking a few moments from her busy afternoon to think of me. For a long time, particularly after Sunny left, I was certain that I would never get to enjoy the pleasantness and warmth of this kind of filiation and modest indulgence, and had resigned myself to a bachelor dotage of one-pot meals and (if careful) one-log fires and the placid chill of a zone-heated house. And I wonder if the spartan clime and space I’ve carefully arranged for myself has nearly shut me off, made me believe I ought never need to know what a sweet acceptance it can be, what good true ache can come by the door-to-door delivery of a hearty casserole in foil and a half-bottle of fruity red wine.

In this regard, I suppose, I feel as if I have been warmly taken up, in some manner adopted by Liv and then also by Renny Banerjee, who called on me two evenings ago to see if I was “getting enough rest.” He was his customary bright and lively. Of course his stated intentions could not mask the real reason he stopped in, which was to spy out whether I was possibly growing gloomy and depressed, as can often happen after a physical trauma or accident, and particularly to someone of my age. Renny did not call beforehand but rather showed up just after seven, I thought perhaps to see if I was really eating my Liv Crawford meal-on-wheels, or was in fact spooning most of it down the disposal, as might an old injured man with no more savor. I happily invited him in, and we sat at the kitchen table. Before eating I had changed into pajamas and a robe, and Renny seemed to consider my dress, patting me on the shoulder, as though he were wondering if I had never changed out of them, or had just risen from an unhealthfully long daytime nap. He had just come from work at the hospital, and I urged him to take off his suit jacket and tie and have the rest of the wine, only a third-glassful of which I was able to drink. I rose to get him a goblet but he jumped up first and went to the cupboard, lingering for an instant over the sink, where dirty dishes and utensils from dinner (and lunch, and the dinner before) lay half-submerged in a bath of filmy water.

“Your color seems real good, Doc,” he said, patting about his own chin and cheek. “You look like you’re coming along great. Just great.”

“I feel pretty good. Though I’m not swimming or taking my walks yet.”

“But you will soon, right? I guess we’ve got maybe a few weeks of good weather left, and then it’ll all turn to crap. You’ll have to join a club or something. I think Liv belongs to a posh one in Highbridge, and I’m sure she’ll get you initiated, or whatever they do.”

“You don’t do that yourself, Renny?”

“Are you kidding me, Doc? Renny Banerjee? You know me, if there’s anything I do after work it’s straining my elbow at O’Donnell’s on Church Street.”

“Or paying visits to the area shut-ins,” I added, feeling a bit humorous, and maybe even sharp.

“Now please, that’s unfair,” he cried, smiling widely at me, loosening the knot of his tie. He took a big, washing gulp of the Beaujolais. “I come of my own accord. Really. Not even Liv put me up to anything, at least not in regard to you. Toward the end of the day I just thought, ‘I want to say hello to Doc Hata.’ So here I am.”

“I’m happy you came, Renny. Please don’t let me suggest otherwise.”

“Certainly not,” he said brightly. “Well, what’s it been, almost two weeks now? You sound fine, and you haven’t coughed since I’ve been here.”

“I do, but just a little in the mornings.”

“That’s expected. But no fever, or infections, no other complications, right?”

“I’m fine. You should be my doctor, Renny.”

“I probably should! I don’t think you’re fragile. My medical philosophy is that after troubles, one resumes the normal routine, as long as it’s not totally damaging. I tore up a knee some years ago, when I used to play squash, and for months afterward I religiously did my physical therapy, and then I even changed my diet, and soon after that I stopped smoking and drinking. I was so completely wrapped up in fixing myself, fixing my weak knee, that I began to discover all sorts of other infirmities, and potential ones. I was so health-conscious that I felt sure I was becoming utterly decrepit. This of course coincided with something of a life crisis, and also my first go-round with Liv, and I can tell you she was a monster then, not like now. Not a good combination, you’ll know. So it’s no surprise I became quite deeply depressed.”

“You?” I said, having some difficulty imagining the ebullient Renny Banerjee sitting in a darkened room, dolefully rubbing his face.

“Absolutely. I never told anybody. I don’t go to doctors, you know. But I got bad enough that I asked Johnny Barnes to put me on something.”

“He’s only a pharmacist,” I said. “He could have gotten in big trouble.”

“He’s a good man, Doc. Anyhow, after a couple weeks I stopped taking them. You know what I did? I said hell with a perfect knee and I didn’t bother anymore. The thing clicks a little but it’s okay. I can run around. And the meds were giving me another problem, of a performance nature, and there’s really nothing more depressing than that for a still youngish man. So I go back to eating animals and smoking and drinking, back to the way it was and always should be. Back in my own skin, you’ll know. But you can see this.”

“Yes I do,” I told him, appreciative of his friendly disclosures. And I began to glance about the kitchen and family room, and in my mind’s eye back to the hall and parlor, and I put myself in Renny’s place, or Liv’s assistant Julie’s, to consider if on initial impression there were obvious indications that I was conducting myself differently since coming home. It was true that I had not been swimming or walking or doing much of anything outdoors, not even the early raking and planting or the minor restorations about the house and garden. But someone who knew me would probably wonder about the unswept walk or the dishes in the sink or the pile of held mail in a bin by the door that hasn’t been gone through yet, despite sitting there for a week. If they went upstairs, they would see several hampers of laundry to be done, my bathroom basin and tub and toilet in dire need of a scrub, and all kinds of robes and towels hung over the doors. Perhaps most other seventy-odd-year-old men of decent means would have the usual help, especially in a house as large as mine. But I’ve never required it even when I was running the store full-time, as I’ve always been active and vigilant and perched right atop the ever-threatening domestic entropy and chaos. Though now, or in the recent now, I’ve begun to understand how easily one can stand by and watch a pile of dross steadily grow, allow the fetter of one’s quotidian life to become an unwieldy accumulation, which seems somehow much more daunting to clear away once it has settled, gained a repose.

“You probably don’t see, Doc,” Renny said, pouring out the rest of the small bottle into his glass, “how critical and difficult it is for me to remain my own wretchedly constituted self. Particularly now that I’m back with Lightning Liv. Yes, it’s true. We’re at it again. Just a few weeks now. You could say I hold you solely responsible.”

“It can be said I lighted the fire,” I murmured, going to the pantry in the hope of finding another bottle for him, which I did, a crusty-looking Italian-style wine in a basket. He gave me a thumbs-up, and a sly Renny grin for my modest joke. I said to him, “I hope you know I’m very pleased for you both.”

“I know you’re happy about the development, Doc, but what about us? We’re sort of thrilled about it all, sure, but also definitely miserable again, like we’re sharing the same low-grade fever. At least I am. To tell the truth, I’m not sleeping so well at night, and I’m not talking about when we’re together. I’m a nervous wreck, thinking about all the things Liv is talking about me doing.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Oh, it’s a mess, you’ll know.” He had pulled off his tie and was winding it around his hand, then letting it unravel. “For starters, she has me looking around for a better, bigger job. But really I don’t want a bigger job. She thinks I’ve settled, gotten too comfortable at the hospital. I say what the hell is wrong with too comfortable? I’ve got a pretty much worry-free system for myself. Next thing she brings up is how I should sell my condo and buy a real house. And what a ‘real house’ really means scares me. Liv herself is one big stressor, with a host of others ready in her pockets. She’s MIRVing, Doc, targeting me all over.”

“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 immense 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.

But how near, indeed, all this presently ends. For there, inside the scratched and hand-smudged Plexiglas windows of the Kiddie Kare, is Sunny Hata, once daughter of mine, whom I have not seen in almost thirteen years, bending down to kiss a young boy on the crown of his head. She looks almost exactly the same, except her figure is fuller and her hair pulled neatly back with a band. She’s still quite beautiful, in her way, perhaps more so than ever as Officer Como had said, now that she is a woman. She must be thirty-two. I think the boy must be hers, bestowed as he is with her high, narrowing eyes and her black hair, though it’s tightly curled, near-Afro, and her warm, nut-colored skin (though I wonder why he isn’t darker). She cups his ear and his cheek and before leaving gives him a quick, tiny wave of goodbye with her finger, which he tries to dismiss with a diffident shrug. But he can’t, and runs to her, not with open arms, but with his head lowered and his shoulder dipped, throwing a slight, willful block into her side. She roughly runs her hand through his hair, then scoots him off.

As she comes out of the Kiddie Kare she sees me, which happens almost by accident, for she drops her keys and turns on an oblique angle, back toward me, opposite her way to Lerner’s, and finds me where I’m standing stock-still in the middle of the mall. She stares, and for a moment we are transported back in time, as if we are caught up again in the long dry stare of her youth, that severe, bloodless regard she’d offer up from across the kitchen table, or the dark water of the pool, or from the sidewalk in front of the store, where she’d lean against the parking meter and smoke her spice-scented cigarettes. But now I see that more than anything else she is simply acknowledging me, her eyes half-angry and half-sad, and I wonder if in my threadbare red cardigan and bulky corrective shoes and loose-hanging slacks I am something of a horrendous sight for her eyes.

“Don’t let him see us,” she says, slowly approaching and then passing me by. “We’ll talk at the food.”

I realize what she means and start walking past the Kiddie Kare without glancing in, though now I wish to look upon him, once again take in his shape. Instead I loop around the large planter and head back toward the food hall smelling thickly of tacos and burgers and Chinese food warming in steam trays. Sunny is sitting at one of the tables on the inner “veranda” of the court, a plastic cup of iced coffee in her hands, and when I sit down she rises and asks if I want some tea. The consideration surprises me, and as she heads to the Java Hut I think we must both be glad for the momentary reprieve.

Soon enough, though, she returns with a paper cup of steaming green tea.

As there’s silence, I say, “I was grateful for the card.”

She pauses, but it’s too late to act as if she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Sally Como told me. I bought it that day. I guess you know she works here. I wasn’t going to send it, but then one morning I put a stamp on the envelope and dropped it in the box. It was stupid to think you wouldn’t know who it was from.”

“It wasn’t stupid at all,” I tell her.

She doesn’t answer this, jiggling her iced coffee instead. “Well, now that’s done with, and you’re here. You look okay to me. But you lost some weight. I mean, over the years.”

“I feel quite fine.”

Sunny nods, not exactly smiling. “Did you really almost burn down the house?”

“Not at all,” I say, taken by her sudden feeling and interest. “There was some minor damage from the smoke. Really nothing serious. I’ve had it all fixed, and the curtains and carpet in the family room have been replaced. There’s hardly an odor anymore. If you came by and saw it you might think nothing had ever happened—”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she breaks in, sounding busy all of a sudden. She checks her watch. “I have to be at work pretty soon.”

“It is quite lively there,” I tell her. “It’s a very nice shop, you know, very efficient, very well run. It’s clear that there are good systems in place. You must have been managing the store for some time now, I suppose.”

“No, not a long time,” she answers. She seems a bit nervous, even almost shy, but acting as an adult might in an awkward situation, forward and harried. “We moved here in the spring. I was doing the same job in Long Island, at a Lerner’s in Great Neck, but it was too expensive there for us to live and when this came up nobody else seemed to want it. So here I am.”

“With your son.”

“Yes,” she answers, taking a sip through the straw.

“May I ask his name?”

“It’s Thomas.”

“What a good solid name for a boy. How old is he?”

“Almost six.”

“He looks sturdy, very strong.”

“Well, I didn’t want him to see us together,” she says firmly, unapologetic. “He doesn’t know about you. And I would like it to stay that way. I don’t want him confused.”

I have an impulse to ask about the boy’s father, if he is with them or at least somewhere around, and if it is Lincoln, in fact, but from Sunny’s tone I realize the question is one I should set aside. She’s here now with me, and willing enough. And from where I am sitting, I see how Sunny has aged as well. She’s still someone at whom you must stop what you are doing and take a moment to look, her rich color, her beautiful eyes. I was last this close to her nearly half her lifetime ago, in the bristling flush of her adolescence. But now, too, I see the first lines at the corners of her mouth, a strand (or two or three) of silvery hair, the barest perceptible sag to her cheek. If there’s anything one can say it’s that she’s a young woman of a lovely cast who has been worn down in the course of the years in the ways a woman of privilege or leisure would never have been.

“I’ll let you say hello to him, if you want,” she says now, looking squarely at me, as if I have already asked her and she’s long been considering it. “But you can’t say anything like you’re his grandfather, or related to him in any way. I don’t want you to tell him there was a connection. I’m having trouble enough with all his questions about his father and me.”

“I would be very pleased to meet him,” I say. “If he asks who I am, well, I can tell him you once worked at my store, when you were young.”

“Fine,” she answers curtly. “But I don’t want him to have expectations. Because those would be impossible. You understand me, right? I want you to understand.”

“Yes of course,” I reply, wishing certain expectations wouldn’t be so potentially hurtful or damaging, when all I might do is make myself available to him, in any possible way. “I’ll do exactly as you wish.”

She acknowledges this and we sit in silence, sipping our drinks. And it’s striking to me — almost unacceptably so — how not awful it is to have passed all these years, with a host of all manner of difficult feelings, and have between us now such mild and mature accord. As if there had once been a hint of something more than just duty and responsibility: something like love. It’s what I hadn’t allowed myself to hope for as I drove to the mall, the ambient progression of such a meeting. At the same time, however, it grieves me a little now to see how Sunny has tempered herself, or worse, been thus tempered by her life, how my standing by and letting her leave at such a young age has led her, somehow, right back to this wan town and wan mall, to sit here with this innocently crouched old man who once tried to conduct himself like her father and not despise him to his death.

But how this moment, too, surpasses me. And I say, “I’m not surprised to see how well you’re doing. For yourself and your boy, Thomas. I’ve had some worries, of course. I assumed I would find you in a good way, but like this, I must admit, as the manager of so wonderful a store with such attentive employees. And then to hold an obvious position of leadership here in the mall, which has some lack in this regard, well, it’s quite an accomplishment.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she mutters, looking over at the teens and children milling around the frozen yogurt bar, the burger and fry place. “All I’ve done is be persistent.”

“Yes, of course,” I tell her, “that’s ninety-five percent of any success. You must know the secret. Sometimes I want to go into a shop on Church Street that isn’t doing so well and tell them just to hold on. People give up so easily these days. A few bad months and it’s time to sell everything off. The economy isn’t helping matters, but it doesn’t mean certain failure. It means having to provide better service, better goods. For a long time, you know, when you were in middle school, I was almost sure the store wouldn’t make it. I had to convince Mr. Finch at the bank to give me more time. I was behind several payments, and I had to beg him.”

“Isn’t that when you were seeing Mrs. Burns?” Sunny asks, the mention surprising me. “I thought she helped you, because she’d known him.”

“Mr. Finch?”

“Yes. I remember her saying to you, at the house, that she’d have a word with him. Their families being close for a long time. I thought she sort of vouched for you.”

“Well,” I reply, “I suppose you can say she did. Mr. Finch didn’t know me then as he does now. But it was nothing irregular.”

“I’m not saying it was,” Sunny says, sighing a bit. “I just remembered her all of a sudden. What she looked like.”

“She was quite dignified, you know. And kind.”

“Yes,” Sunny answers, nodding a little, though perhaps more to herself than to me. And then, almost sadly, “She was the sort of person who was always kinder to people than they were to her.”

I don’t have an answer to this, and after a moment Sunny makes some business of adjusting the cuffs of her suit jacket. I know what she’s going to say but she’s cut off by the sudden presence of Kari, the assistant manager, who’s holding an immense waffle cone of chocolate yogurt. A girlfriend, enjoying the same, is standing with her, grinning through her braced upper teeth.

“Hey, you guys!” Kari beams. “Don’t worry, Sunny, I’ve got good old Sheila at the desk. I waited for you before taking my break, but then I figured you guys might be here, bonding and stuff.”

“I’m coming right now,” Sunny tells her, just getting up.

“Don’t sweat it, boss. Sheila is handling it. You guys take your time. Hey, is Tommy here today?”

Sunny, now sitting, nods.

“Well, let’s go see Tommy,” Kari announces. She and her friend bid us goodbye and march off to the Kiddie Kare.

“I should go anyway,” Sunny then tells me. “It’s not really fair to Sheila.”

“Yes, of course,” I say, though no part of me wants her to go just yet. For sitting right here, I think, is the daughter — considerate, fair, attentive — most anyone could be happy for. And I say, “You must return to your proud establishment.”

“It’s not so proud for long.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Business is terrible.”

“What do you mean? What about all those customers, all the fine merchandise?”

“It looks better than it is,” she says somberly. “It’s not at all good, really. The corporate office wants to close the store. I think they knew it when they hired me. It was a horrible summer. People in Ebbington don’t have much extra money to spend. No one else knows this yet, but we’ll be closing at the end of the month.”

“This month? But that’s less than three weeks from now….”

“I know.” She says softly, “On Monday I have to give everybody notice.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me. When there’s no store, there’s no manager. I’ve been looking around, but this whole town is in the dumps. Lerner’s doesn’t have openings anywhere else. I’ll have to be a salesclerk somewhere again. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get by. I always have.”

“But there’s Thomas. Who will look after him? I know that day care can be very costly. You must look harder. You must find another management position. I can help you. I still know a number of businesspeople in Bedley Run—”

“Please!” she says quite forcefully. “I’ve been fine all these years. Let’s not start. I didn’t send the card to you to start something like this. And you should know I won’t take one step in that town, and neither will Thomas. There’s no chance of that. So please don’t try to change my mind.”

“But I can help you with Thomas,” I tell her. “I’ll pay for a sitter, or for day camp. Whatever else he needs, I’ll provide. Please let me do this, at least. Please, Sunny. It can’t hurt, to let me do this.”

And yet, invariably, we all know how it does. In a few moments Sunny leaves to go back to the store, and I decide to walk about the mall with the last of my tea. We’ve made a plan to speak once again, sometime next week, after which I’ll go to their apartment in Ebbington to pick him up for a short visit; we’ll take a fun shopping trip, for some new sneakers or toys. And now, though I half-promised Sunny I wouldn’t, I go past the Kiddie Kare once more, slowing my pace by the window, to see what he’s up to inside. I can find him too easily amid the plastic barrels and chutes; he’s by far the oldest and biggest, towering a bit too much over the other boys and girls, and I think how it is that Sunny was able to send that card to me, unsigned as it was, a message and non-message for the sole sake of her boy. And the idea entreats me once more, to wonder if something like love is forever victorious, truly conquering all, or if there are those who, like me, remain somehow whole and sovereign, still live unvanquished.