by Bo Caldwell
Moving into the bungalow was a bittersweet experience, a home-coming and a good-bye. Those first few evenings, after long days of unpacking boxes and trying to keep Eve entertained in the process, Jack and I would sit on the patio drinking cheap Chianti from juice glasses, holding Eve and listening to the cooing noises she made when she was happy. The garden was wild again and the scent of jasmine and gardenias seemed to almost bring my mother to life.
I missed her more than I could have imagined. During the winter and spring we’d spent together, she’d become my friend and confidante, and we saw each other or talked on the phone every day. Underneath our friendship was the bond of my father, for she alone understood how I felt. He was the secret we rarely spoke of, the fact that was always there.
With her death, a part of my life just disappeared. Many times a day, I picked up the phone and put it down again, remembering too late. Over and over, I thought to tell her something, or ask her something, or see if she’d like to do something, and over and over, I reminded myself that she was gone—a fact that never made any sense—and the dull ache inside me would start up again.
As the days grew longer over that spring and summer, so did my grief. I had expected it to lessen, but instead there was day after day after day where everything just hurt, one thing after another. Opening a closet hurt because of the scent of Chanel No. 5 that lingered there. Glancing out at the garden hurt because of the sight of the wisteria, growing wild and untamed in the back corner of the garden that my mother loved. Coming home hurt because of the memory of her watering the grass in capri pants and a cotton peasant blouse nearly twenty years earlier, when we’d first arrived from Shanghai. And in a strange way the days that didn’t hurt were worse, days that were just long and slow and flat with absence.
I came to feel like a spectator. I watched myself hold Eve each night and rock her to sleep. I watched myself make waffles or French toast or Dutch baby for breakfast, and I watched myself set the kitchen table and make dinner and clean up afterward. I watched myself fold laundry, read Goodnight Moon to Eve, pay the bills, and make love with my husband, and I watched myself cry when I couldn’t hold it in, all the while waiting for my life to feel familiar again.
When my father and I parted at my mother’s graveside, I assumed that it meant what most of my good-byes with him had meant: that I wouldn’t see him again for years, if ever. There was no talk of exchanging telephone numbers or addresses, there was no mention of getting together again. There was just an embrace and the feel of his solid chest against me, then a whispered “Good-bye, Anna.” And that was that.
So on a warm afternoon in June of 1955, two months after my mother’s death, I was caught off-guard at the sight of his handwriting as I leafed through the mail. I was glad Jack wasn’t home and that Eve was sleeping. I wanted to read whatever it was unobserved, even by my infant daughter. I put his letter aside until I’d looked at everything else. Then I ripped open the envelope and found a piece of folded-up yellow legal paper. I unfolded it and read what my father had thought important enough to write:
My dear Anna,
1. Hope you and yours are thriving. I think of you often.
2. All goes smoothly here. Chickens are laying well. Photo enclosed.
3. Have been drinking V8 juice for breakfast every day for two weeks. Energy is much better. You might try it.
4. The enclosed is for your Eve, with affection.
With love,
your Dad
My dad, I thought, a phrase I’d never used. Inside the envelope was a black-and-white snapshot of my once-upon-a-time millionaire father surrounded by nine wire baskets of eggs. He wore a light-colored T-shirt and dark trousers, and he held a chicken, and he grinned at the camera as though this were really an occasion. Behind him stretched a long narrow structure that I guessed was a chicken coop. I stared at the picture for several moments, trying to absorb it, wondering who had taken it. And then I laughed. He looked so proud, so pleased with himself, surrounded by those hundreds of eggs. I wondered why he’d sent it. Was he hoping I’d feel sorry for him or proud of him? I couldn’t guess.
There was something else in the envelope: a small pink tissue-wrapped square, as hopeful as a promise. When I’d managed to peel off the tape and unfold the tissue paper, I found a small silver heart-shaped locket on a thin chain. It was clear that it was not new; it was worn and slightly tarnished, and the back of the locket was scratched. But it was lovely, delicate and almost lacy. I held it for a moment, then took it and the photo and put them in a Joyce shoe box on the top shelf of the linen closet, where I kept anything to do with my father. It was a meager collection: the few letters and telegrams that my mother had received from Shanghai, which I’d found after her death, newspaper and magazine clippings telling of his imprisonment and release by the Communists, and a birthday card he’d given me when I was a child.
I wrote a hurried postcard, more a reflex than a decision, the result of my grandmother’s twenty-year emphasis on the importance of prompt correspondence—that and the fact that I didn’t want to feel like I owed him anything. Actually I wrote four quick postcards, but the first three ended up in the trash. The first one sounded too formal. The second one sounded too friendly. The third sounded awkward. The fourth probably wasn’t much better, but I’d had enough: Hi, I started, because I hadn’t called him anything in so many years that nothing felt right. Got your note and the gift for Eve. Thank you. We’re all fine. Glad things are going well for you. Best, Anna. As I walked quickly to the mailbox on the corner, Eve in my arms and the postcard in the back pocket of my jeans, I wondered how many tries it had taken him to write his letter.
I didn’t mention the letter to Jack or my grandmother. It just seemed more trouble than it was worth. And I figured that that letter was a one-time thing, no reason to make a big deal out of it.
But a week later there was another letter, and the week after that there were two, and within a month it was clear that what I’d considered a one-time thing was becoming a regular correspondence, at least on his end. Though my father wasn’t a predictable writer, he was a frequent one. His letters came like the wind, in impetuous bursts. There’d be nothing for a week, and then three letters would come in a row, sometimes two in one day.
At the start, they were like the first one, not much more than a few handwritten lines on a legal pad, the items usually numbered. Later they were typewritten, the type uneven, mistakes X’d out, the style formal, even self-conscious, his comments limited to the baby’s health and well-being and whatever was in the news—George Meany and the AFL/CIO, President Eisenhower’s heart attack, the Warsaw Pact. He often enclosed clippings with his letters, with comments scrawled across the top: This guy knows what he’s talking about, or Can you beat that? But most often he simply said, Please read. There were other enclosures besides the clippings—coupons for baby food, advertisements for vitamins. There was only one constant to all of the letters. My dear Anna was how they always began. I did not respond.
Then a few days before Christmas a package arrived. I opened it angrily, thinking, Now what does he want?, a strange reaction since all he was doing was sending us gifts. Inside the box were a blue-and-red rep tie for Jack, a small stuffed bear for Eve, and a book for me—Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. I stewed around the house for a while, cross with him for upping the ante, and cross with myself for my reaction. I realized I wouldn’t rest until I’d sent something to him in return, so the next day I put Eve in her pram and walked to the Fair Oaks Pharmacy, where I asked the clerk for a suggestion and on his recommendation spent two dollars and ten cents plus tax on the Kings Men Twosome, which contained a bottle of Kings Men After Shave Lotion and one of Thistle & Plaid Cologne. I went home and packaged them up and sent them off as fast as I could, my just-get-it-over-with intentions a far cry from any Christmas spirit. I wasn’t giving anything, really. I was just trying to get him off my mind, and off my conscience. All I wanted was for him to g
o away.
But things with him had a boomerang effect. Three weeks after I sent the package, I heard from him again.
My dear Anna,
I am an ingrate for waiting so long to write. But notwithstanding my sloth in writing, I do appreciate the gifts. You were very generous, and I am feeling quite dapper. The aftershave is so refreshing that it just about makes shaving worthwhile, and the cologne has made me far more pleasant to be around—at least I hope so! All thanks to you. Who knows—maybe I’ll be a gentleman yet.
Thank you, Anna.
With love,
your Dad
I handed the note to Jack. “Another letter from my pen pal.”
Jack read it quickly and laughed. “I’d say his timing is off,” he said mildly.
“Oh?”
He handed the letter back. “When you want him around, he’s not. When you don’t, he is.”
I laughed. “That’s a kind explanation. I, on the other hand, just keep thinking, What does he want?”
Jack smoothed my hair from my forehead. “Looks like the man wants to get reacquainted with his daughter,” he said.
I felt my cheeks darken with embarrassment at my distrust of my father. “Are you suggesting I actually befriend him?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t see what ill can come of corresponding with him. From all I’ve heard, you’re all right as long as you don’t get too close.”
“Simple as that,” I said sarcastically.
He nodded. “Yep. Simple as that.”
I turned twenty-five on the seventeenth of January 1956, and when Jack brought me coffee in bed, I gave him the unbirthday present I’d bought the week before: another box of cigars. He looked startled, then scared, then happy, and he had to ask me over and over again when the baby was due—August 7—and how was I feeling—just tired—and how long had I known—two weeks. We opened a bottle of champagne even though it was seven o’clock in the morning and neither of us would be able to drink much of it. We toasted me, we toasted him, we toasted Eve, and we celebrated the idea of a second child while our first one walked shakily around our bed, grinning with delight with her ability to entertain us.
At seven-thirty, Jack left for Flintridge to teach American history to rowdy eighth-grade boys. I wished him luck, then bundled Eve up and met my grandmother at Mass. When we got home, I gave Eve mashed bananas and warm milk, and she fell asleep at nine o’clock, as exhausted as though a day had passed.
I was determined not to miss my mother too much on this first birthday of my life without her, and I’d come up with a plan for how to do that. I’d stay out of the garden, which never failed to remind me of her. I wouldn’t be alone in our bedroom, which now and then still seemed to smell faintly of Cashmere Bouquet soap, though Jack said I imagined it. I would keep busy, I’d decided. I’d finish reading The Quiet American, I’d write a letter, iron shirts, sweep the cobwebs on the broad front porch, clean out closets, work on a crossword, just about anything at all to keep me from dwelling on my mother’s absence.
So when the doorbell rang sometime after eleven, I was grateful for the diversion. Eve was still asleep and the house was too quiet. I’d felt as though I were sinking.
And then the day changed, for when I opened the door, I faced my father.
He wore khaki trousers and a pressed white shirt, no tie. He looked healthy—ruddy faced and barrel chested, and he’d put on some weight since my mother’s funeral, which somehow made me view him as a traitor. Only his hair was the same: the same short blond hair that was his trademark.
He cleared his throat and held a dozen white roses out to me as tentatively as a shy suitor. “For my girls,” he said gruffly, and he took a try at a smile.
I wanted to say that we weren’t his girls, but I didn’t. I just nodded as I took the flowers. I breathed in their scent and said, “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
He nodded. “No trouble,” he said, and he stared at me closely. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re a year older today.”
I smelled the roses again. “I am,” I said. “It was sweet of you to remember.”
“I always do,” he said quickly, and then he laughed grimly. “I just haven’t been so great about letting you know.”
I nodded but did not meet his eyes.
“And this is for you,” he said, and he held out a small package wrapped in white tissue paper. “I’m not much of a gift-wrapper.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I tore the tissue paper away and found a bottle of perfume: Evening in Paris. I loosened the top and breathed in a strong floral scent that was a little heavy for my taste. “It’s lovely,” I said.
He nodded. “That actress wears it,” he said. “That young French girl, very pretty, with your eyes. Do you know her?”
I shook my head.
He tapped his forehead. “Sometimes things take a while to surface,” he said, and then he grinned. “Jeanmarie,” he said. “That’s all she goes by. The photographs of her remind me of you.” He paused. “Wear it in good health, Anna, for a long time to come.”
I heard Eve’s tentative waking cries then, cries that would quickly grow into full-fledged yowls as she woke and found herself alone. I looked at my father and thought, You can leave now.
He nodded as though he’d read my thoughts. “Go ahead, go ahead,” he said, and he waved me on, as though he were giving me permission. Then he stepped into our house and closed the front door behind him.
I could only nod, stunned at the ease with which he’d entered my life. As I walked toward Eve’s room, he called, “Take your time. I’m in no hurry.”
Hardly music to my ears. “All right,” I said, my voice tight, and I went into Eve’s room and closed the door carefully behind me. As I took my time changing her diaper and dressing her in a turtle-neck and a blue corduroy romper, I whispered my complaints to her—”I cannot believe him, just showing up, saying he’ll wait, acting as though he owns the place, and what am I supposed to do with him now, just sit and talk and pretend we know each other?” Eve smiled at me and touched my nose and said, “Ohh.” And then we heard whistling, and Eve looked surprised and interested. She pointed to the door and said, “Out,” and she began to squirm in my arms.
“Here goes,” I said, and I smoothed her wispy dark hair away from her face and looked into her brown eyes and thought for the thousandth time how beautiful she was. “You’re gorgeous,” I whispered, and she grinned as though she knew it.
My father was sitting in the old Morris chair that he’d liked during the months that he’d lived with my mother and me so long ago. He stood up when he heard my steps on the hardwood floor, then he turned to face me and started to speak. But he stopped in the middle of a word and just stared at Eve and me, his expression a mix of affection and wonder and interest—a look I’d known but forgotten.
“This is Eve,” I said. She was staring at him and a part of me wanted to warn her about him. Don’t love him, I thought. Don’t get attached.
He whistled softly. “Would you look at her,” he whispered, and he walked to us tentatively, as though we might startle and bolt if he wasn’t careful—which we would have if I’d done what I wanted. “Isn’t she the beauty,” he said. “A perfect mix of you and your mother.”
“With a little of Jack thrown in, I hope.”
He laughed. “I’m sure there is. I just don’t see it. What I see are your mother’s beautiful eyes and that determined expression of yours. You looked so much like that when you were this age,” he said. “I’d forgotten how—” he started.
“Yes?” I asked quickly, perfectly willing to play the role of inquisitor.
He shook his head. “I’d forgotten a lot of things,” he said. “More than you want to know.” Then he gently smoothed Eve’s hair and made a soft clucking sound. Eve watched him warily for a moment, then grinned, then hid her face against my chest and clung to me.
“She’s a little shy,” I said.
He shrugged it off. “
No matter. Doesn’t even know me, I’m a complete stranger. Which is something I’d like to fix. If you’re free for lunch, I thought I’d take you two out. There’s a place nearby with chiaotzû that are pretty good. New Moon, over on Fair Oaks.” He paused and cleared his throat, waiting for my answer and watching me in that sizing-you-up way of his.
I had no intention of going, but as I stood there searching for a good excuse or a plausible lie, good manners won out and I heard myself say, “We’d love to.”
He beamed, and I wondered if I was imagining a look of triumph on his face.
“I’ll just get changed,” I said, for I was wearing an old red pullover and a pair of Wrangler jeans that I’d had since college, clothes that I loved more than ever once I could fit back into them after Eve’s birth.
My father shook his head as he looked me over. “No, no, you look just fine. Like a schoolgirl. We’re not going anywhere fancy.”
I had not heard my father speak Mandarin for nearly ten years, and I had forgotten both the sound of the language itself and of his voice, speaking it, so that when a young waiter came and handed us menus and my father handed them back and began to speak Chinese, I was almost as stunned as the waiter was. The waiter was almost indignant as he rattled off what I guessed were questions having to do with why my father spoke so well. My father answered his questions at some length, and the waiter’s expression relaxed, and I could see that my father had won him over. It was five minutes or more of conversation before the waiter ran out of questions and took our order. The moment was familiar: my father, the hero, the man about town, though we were only in a small Chinese restaurant in South Pasadena, and I was surprised at the pride I felt. I was charmed, even if reluctantly so.
