This Old Man (3 page)

All the time I read, I wondered what was going on upstairs. Did Old Man's dinner please him tonight? Was he asking Wing about school, about the family, about the foreign doctor's report? Later I learned that Old Man asked no questions. He issued proclamations. But that day, the first, I thought he was much like other old men.

And so I began to visit him every day but Tuesday, which was Mr. Saxe day. When I say “visit him,” I mean visit the lobby, the magazine rack. I learned a lot about medical breakthroughs in
Newsweek:

THE MASTER TRANSPLANTER—Dr. Thomas Starzl of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is so shy about his personal life that he won't tell the interviewers how many children he has … Starzl, in truth, is a superstar in surgery: one of the very few men capable of transplanting the liver
.

Newsweek
had a love affair with livers.

I also visited the first-floor rest room and the information booth and the water fountains up and down the hall. I was never allowed upstairs. True, there was no one guarding the elevator, and there was a big sign flashing
STAIRS
that drew me toward it often. But I stayed on the first floor, because there was Old Man's privacy to be considered.

As the days passed, I began to wonder how his privacy could possibly be violated if I were just on the third floor. If I were down the hall from Room 311. If I were outside his door. “Wing,” I asked once, “why do you tell me I have to stay in the lobby?”

“It's only for a few minutes,” he answered. He had a habit of picking at his thumb, where there were always little frayed bits of skin. “How long do I stay up there? Fifteen minutes?”

“I thought I'd just see what color the walls were on the third floor.”

“Yellow,” he snapped.

“You're not being fair. What harm could I do in the hall?”

“Old Man is very sick. He deserves his privacy,” Wing replied. He was immovable on this subject, and we didn't discuss any others.

And then I knew. Wing wasn't preserving Old Man's dignity. He was keeping his grandfather, his family treasure, all to himself. He wasn't about to share him with me, even if we were the best of friends (which we weren't yet). I decided to give Wing a week more of this self-indulgence before I quietly moved upstairs.

The first trip up, the next Monday, seemed very symbolic. I had a little debate with myself: elevator vs. stairs. There were attorneys for both sides, and plenty of cross-examination. But the jury was hung. I had to compromise. So I walked up one flight and caught the elevator on the second floor. The door opened to the third floor, without ceremony. I don't know what I was expecting—a six-piece band? The entire receiving committee was one small Chinese nurse, who asked if she could help me.

“I'm just waiting for a friend.”

She smiled and left me alone, walking soundlessly from room to room. Old Man's room was three doors down from the elevator. If I'd meant to stay away from it, I'd quickly forgotten the resolution. I put my ear to the door. The little nurse came by and said, “Are you a friend of Mr. Kwang's?”

Was I? I shrugged, or smiled, or nodded, or all three, as I listened for voices inside. I heard Wing's voice, soft and monotonous, as though he were reading the paper to Old Man. Then there was the sound of bowls being laid out on Old Man's table, with what I guessed was Wing's terse explanation of what was in each dish. There was no sound from Old Man. He was either eating silently or rejecting the whole meal. I imagined Wing's mother bringing home the freshest, crispest vegetables at 4:00, for his dinner. She would stir-fry the vegetables, heat his broth well past boiling, and steam his rice, before she returned to work at 5:00. I swear, I felt the hot steam that clung to her cheeks and eyelashes. Old Man had better love this meal.

Then I heard the shrill orders coming from Old Man: “
Kyi! Kyi!
” But since I didn't know what it meant yet, I still had my ear to the door when Wing burst out. I caught the aroma of Mrs. Kwang's dinner. Breathing it in, I waited for Wing's reaction, with my hands up as if to ward off blows.

“You aren't very subtle, Greta,” he said. “Old Man always tells me the White Ghosts aren't subtle.” Wing fought back a smile, and I guessed he wasn't angry.

It occurred to me that Wing was very subtle.

3

Hackey was everywhere. I thought I saw him in a Chinatown souvenir shop. The gray pin-striped suit looked like one of his cheap cuts. I recognized the stocky build, the shifting from leg to leg, even the way he rolled his head to ease the tension in his neck.

I saw him from the Geary bus. He was standing outside the Kaiser Hospital with a silly bouquet in his hands, and I wondered if he were taking it to someone in the hospital, or if one of his ladies had given it to him.

Another time I came around a corner at school, between classes, and I heard his voice. I froze. He couldn't know I'd transferred to Washington High School. It couldn't be Hackey.

He was in my dreams. He was taking me horseback riding, English style. He said a lady of my breeding should learn to ride English. He gave me an expensive bridle of fragrant leather. Nothing but the best for the lady, he said. His voice rolled like the gentle hills of the pasture. I loved him more than anything, except maybe the leather bridle. I would do anything for him. He said, “That's what I'm counting on,” and I woke up, sat up so fast that I was dizzy. “Sylvia!”

“I'm sleeping.”

“Sylvia, please wake up. I'm having a terrible dream.”

Sylvia rolled over and turned on her bedside lamp. That was a pretty decent thing to do. “Tell me about it,” she groaned. I had a feeling she was doing what her mother always did.

“I was in a pasture, ready to mount a magnificent black stallion.”

“Um-hmm?” She sat up, holding her head. Her hair stood up in little caverns. She tried to listen to me, with her eyes closed.

“Someone was with me, a man.” I paused. How could I tell her about Hackey?

“So?”

“He gave me a saddle and reins. He would have given me the horse if I'd asked.”

“This is a bad dream?”

I didn't dare get in deeper. “It seemed scary at the time. Never mind. Go back to sleep.”

She turned out the light and flopped back on her pillow.

No, I couldn't explain about Hackey.

On Tuesday I told Mr. Saxe. “I've been seeing him everywhere, or hearing him, or sensing him in a crowd, like on the cable car. He's even been in my dreams.” I told him about the horseback riding, and he nodded gravely. If only he'd been in my room instead of Sylvia. “The scariest time, besides the dream, was when I heard his voice at school. I was scared to death he'd told the principal he was my father and had to take me to a dentist appointment.”

“Greta, listen. He doesn't know where you go to school. I've spoken to the principal at your old school, and he knows not to reveal any information without checking with me first. Your new principal fully understands the situation. If Hackey so much as comes into the school yard, she's going to call the police immediately. Hackey can't get to you.”

“I know, I know.” I shifted in my chair.

“But you're frightened.”

“I see him everywhere.”

Mr. Saxe pulled my chin up so I'd face him. A shiver ran through me. “This is a big city. More than a million people live and work here. Your chances of running into him are nil, zilcho, zero. You understand?”

I nodded, never taking my eyes off Mr. Saxe.

“You only think you see him because you're expecting to see him. Put him out of your mind.”

“What shall I think about instead?” Yes, what—the pictures I had hidden in my room, which Hackey would probably kill for?

“How about school?”

I shook my head. School was a struggle, because I'd transferred midyear. I had to fit into classes, I had to make friends. I hated lunch hour; it made me feel like Charlie Brown.

“Well then, think about your new friends at Anza House. You said Sylvia's coming around.”

“She can keep right on going. Besides, I wouldn't want to be seen with her at school. You've met her, she's a rhino. If I had lunch with her, she'd use up the whole lunch hour just to
eat
.”

“Okay, think about the warm sourdough bread and thick, cold butter you get at Fisherman's Wharf. Think about boys, tall, handsome young men, or even your little Chinese friend. Or books. Do you read? Or movies. There are lots of things a bright girl can focus on.”

In the end I settled on Old Man, to get my mind off Hackey.

“I really would like to meet your family, Wing.” I wanted to see the woman who steamed Old Man's rice. “Since we're in the neighborhood, couldn't we stop by your house?”

“No one's home.”

“Five sisters and two brothers, and you tell me no one's home?”

Wing was wearing a football jersey, number 34, with the sleeves rolled up. It was one of those hot days that pop up, totally out of character, in San Francisco, the kind of day that a tourist would think was typical, but wasn't. Wing wiped his sleeve across his forehead, then down his jeans. “You see, my parents both work. My oldest sisters are married, and all my little sisters and brothers are at Chinese School.”

“Don't tell me they go every day. Don't tell me that,” I groaned.

“They go every day. This is my first year not to go, only because of Old Man's dinner. So I study with a tutor at night.”

“Poor Wing!”

“It's not so bad. It's kind of like brushing your teeth. Not much fun, but necessary. And you feel good after it's done.” He ran his tongue across his teeth; I thought he could taste the Chinese words.

What came to my mind was the newspaper with those indecipherable characters strung together in columns. No wonder it took years and years to learn to make sense of those squiggles.

“We have to learn the old ways here,” Wing said, with a gesture that encompassed all the grime, the crowded buildings with pagoda tops, the shops and vegetable stands and second-floor Chinese restaurants.

“What for? You're not going back to China, are you?”

“Not me! But Old Man still dreams of going home and finding it the way he remembers it in 1911.”

“I used to read lots of books about China. Like, I can tell you all about how the women used to bind their feet and let them out each night to breathe. I can also tell you that Old Man's not going back there, unless he goes back in a pine box.”

“Yes, we will probably send his bones back,” Wing said simply. “Look at the store across the street, the one on the corner. That's where my parents work.” We darted between the sightseeing cars and buses along Grant Avenue. The grocery was a small dark hole at the corner of Grant and Washington. Piles of tomatoes faded in the sidewalk sun. There were huge mountains of Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, snow peas, onions, something shaped like large cucumbers, and millions of flies flitting restlessly from peak to peak.

Wing's mother was round, like Wing, with bright eyes and beautiful black hair pulled into a ponytail that swayed as she moved through the hills of vegetables. She carried a red fly swatter. A flood of Chinese words poured from her, apparently summoning her husband from the darkness of the store. She and Wing talked at the same time, in rapid-fire, sing-song Chinese.

Wing's father appeared and talked louder and faster, over the other two, with his hands waving to swat the flies off his vegetables. Suddenly everyone was quiet, turned around politely, and smiled at me. Mrs. Kwang said something in Chinese to the others, and Mr. Kwang smiled broadly and said between his teeth, “
Bak le, bak le
.” He went back into the store where an ancient gray man in slippers waited to pay for his cucumber.

Wing's mother checked to be sure her husband was out of earshot. “Wing has told me about you,” she said in near-perfect English. “Would you like a California navel orange?” She picked one out and polished it on her apron. “You see? The California orange has a bellybutton.” She giggled.

I liked her, and at the same time I wondered what Old Man thought of his daughter-in-law. A heavy woman with a shopping bag came into the store and impatiently gave Wing's mother her order. Mrs. Kwang waved to us in a tiny, girlish gesture behind the woman's back.

“Your mother's so cute. Doesn't your father know she speaks English?”

“Of course he knows, but he doesn't know. That way everyone is happy. He speaks English also. They both went to Galileo High School.”

“I was listening to you talk Chinese, and the only thing I could make out clearly through your father's clenched teeth was ‘
Bak le, bak le.
' What did your father mean? I was sure he was talking about me.”

Wing looked embarrassed as he replied, “
Bak le, bak le
means so white, so white.”

“I see.”

Hackey had parents, almost like a normal person. His father died when Hackey was about twenty, and left Mrs. Barnes all alone. She got to be a little too much for Hackey, but I got along with her just fine. She was from Iowa, transplanted to northern California, where she never quite fit in. It seemed like she ought to be on a farm, fixing biscuits and gravy for breakfast for the field hands. Anyway, I only bring it up because Mrs. Barnes taught me everything I know about proper manners. For instance, when someone has you over, you turn around before the month's out and have him to your place. That's the end of that, neat and shut, unless you get to be good friends, and then nobody counts who goes to whose house how many times.

So, since Wing had introduced me to his parents, it was time for me to reciprocate. I couldn't exactly take Wing home to meet Mom and Dad, and in fact my mother never came around to Anza House, for security reasons. But the least I could do was have him over, if I could only explain to him about living in this group-house setup.