by Bo Caldwell
Still a blank look. I remembered the oak tree with the knothole in the Porters’ front yard. “The house with the tree with the secret hiding place,” I said frantically, and she nodded. “Go to the house with the secret hiding place. Take Heather with you. Tell Mrs. Porter to come quickly.”
Eve nodded hard, then took Heather’s hand and said, “Run!” and the two of them hurried out of the house.
I turned back to my father. His breathing was labored, and his body jerked. I put my hand on his chest and felt a heartbeat. “You’re all right,” I whispered, “your heart’s beating, and you’re all right, you’re all right.” I rested my hand on his chest and felt his body working to breathe. I stroked his hair and I whispered, “It’s Anna, Dad. I’m right here with you.” I leaned close to him and put my cheek against his, which was too cool.
“Please,” I said. “Please don’t die yet.”
As if on cue, my father stopped breathing.
I looked at the clock, then back at my father. It seemed as though Eve and Heather had been gone for an hour. I had no idea what to do for him. I had never felt so useless.
A minute passed. I kept talking to him and stroking his face and holding his hand. And then, finally, I heard hurried footsteps in the living room, and Sally burst into the kitchen. “Oh, my God,” she said. I looked at her, then at the clock. He had not breathed for two minutes.
“Can you do something?” I said. “Can you please do something?”
Sally knelt next to him and put her hand on his wrist. “He doesn’t have a pulse,” she said, “I don’t know,” and then she placed her hands on my father’s sternum and began to press down, counting each push. The scene was nightmarish and grotesque, and I thought of my daughters.
“The girls,” I said.
She was pressing and counting. When she reached fifteen, she said, “They’re at my house. Doug’s home. Don’t worry.” And then she breathed into my father’s mouth, and I thought, Make this work.
She was starting to press and count again when we heard the ambulance. There was a lot of noise in the living room, clattering and running and urgent voices, and three men appeared with a stretcher. They asked hurried questions that Sally answered in words I didn’t understand. I did understand the grimness in their expressions and in her voice. I leaned against the refrigerator, wanting to give them room, and I saw, on the counter, my father’s leather gardening gloves, fresh with dirt. He had taken them off twenty minutes ago.
The men lifted my father onto the stretcher, then said I could ride with them, and I nodded, and asked Sally to call Jack, and said his number was next to the phone. She was crying, and I thought, Why is she crying? And I looked at her and knew that my father was gone.
At the hospital, a nurse told me to wait, and she asked if I needed to call anyone. I said my husband would be here soon, then I sat down on a dark blue scratchy couch. I held my head in my hands and tried to will Jack there.
I didn’t wait long. A man who introduced himself as Dr. Pearson came within the half hour and told me what I’d known in my heart: that my father was dead. He had died shortly after reaching the hospital of cardiac arrest, probably caused by ventricular fibrillation, very rapid irregular contractions of the muscle fibers of one of the lower chambers of the heart. He had never regained consciousness.
I listened carefully, wanting to understand what had gone on in his body—what had gone wrong, and why. I found myself repeating some of Dr. Pearson’s phrases: myocardial infarction, ischemia, ventricular fibrillation, cardiac arrest, sudden death. A part of me wanted to sit down with him and have him explain everything in detail, so thoroughly that it all made sense, moment by moment. I wanted causes and events, reasons why, a sense of order.
But when Dr. Pearson finished his explanation of my father’s death, I couldn’t say what I wanted. I found him watching me carefully. I was waiting for him to tell me something useful.
And then he said, “Would you like to see your father?”
I felt an odd sort of relief, an almost hopeful feeling—I can still see him, I thought, he’s still here—and I said, “Yes.”
Dr. Pearson nodded. “Give me a minute,” he said, and he disappeared.
Jack found me while I was waiting. He knew somehow, and he looked at me strangely, as though trying to see how I was. I must have looked odd. I wasn’t crying. I might not have even looked upset. Inside I felt something like calm, but not a peaceful calm—just a sort of numbness that made me feel very quiet. Jack sat down next to me and put his arms around me and just held me there, without speaking. It felt as though he was holding me in, containing me, and I think it was the only thing I could have tolerated just then.
When perhaps fifteen minutes had passed, Dr. Pearson came for me. I told Jack I was all right, and that I wanted to go by myself, and I followed the doctor through the double doors.
We walked down a hall to a door that said lounge. Dr. Pearson held the door open for me, and I hesitated at the threshold. Inside was a small sitting room. A green couch was pushed up against one wall, and a gurney was against the opposite wall. On it was my father’s body, covered with a white sheet from the neck down. Dr. Pearson stood behind me, and I could feel his worry; I could feel him wondering if he should say or do something.
But I was all right; in some strange way that I didn’t understand, I was all right for that moment. Because here, in front of me, just a few feet away, was my father, familiar and solid and real.
I knew what to do then; my father had taught me, just as he’d taught me the names of the buildings along the Bund, how to plant a eucalyptus tree, how to prune China roses. I could hear his words in my mind: Respect your elders, Anna. Shake hands firmly, as though you mean it. Look people in the eye when you talk to them. At my mother’s funeral, he had taught me how to say good-bye.
And so, almost as though the scene were familiar, I rested my hand on his chest. With my other hand, I traced the features of his face: his broad forehead, his brow, his cheekbones, his jaw, his chin. He was clean-shaven, a detail that for some reason comforted me. His skin was too cool, but I did not dwell on that; what I did dwell on was his hair, recently cut, the shade not all that different from what it had been so long ago in Shanghai. Then it was very light blond; now it was light white. I touched it gently; it was as soft as a child’s hair. I thought how handsome he was, and how I loved the way he looked.
I leaned close and pressed my cheek to his and whispered a confession—”I don’t know what I will do without you.” I said a prayer for him and for my mother, and then the Lord’s Prayer. I did not cry. I touched his hair again, and I stroked his cheek. And then I kissed his forehead and I whispered, “Tsaichien.” Good-bye.
When Jack and I got home, it wasn’t even two o’clock. The house looked the same: The garden was freshly watered. The kitchen table was set for four. It looked like guests were coming, except for the broken bowl and tuna fish on the floor.
The girls were still at the Porters’. Jack called and told Sally what had happened, and she offered to keep them there for the afternoon, but I said no. I suddenly wanted them home. And I wanted my grandmother. I called her and told her, and she stayed on the phone only long enough to understand what had happened, and then she said, “I’m on my way,” and she hung up.
I just sat in the kitchen while I waited for her, staring at my father’s gardening gloves. When I heard her and the girls in the living room, I got up to meet them, but suddenly my grandmother was there.
It hadn’t felt real, until then. I’d been waiting to hear there’d been a mistake of some kind; he couldn’t be gone, I thought. But when I saw my grandmother, it all became real. It was as though my life started up again. She was walking slowly toward me, using the cane that she’d finally given in to, and I went to her and let her hold me in her arms, and although I could feel my children watching, their eyes big with disbelief at the sight of their mother falling apart, I didn’t care. There was nothing I co
uld do.
“He’s gone,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said, and she held me close. “You’ll be all right. But it’s going to hurt for a very long time.”
That night after Jack and the girls were asleep, I got up and went into the kitchen. I hadn’t tried to fall asleep; I had no intention of sleeping that night. As long as I’m awake, I thought, he was still alive this day.
For a while, I just wandered through the rooms of our house. I felt as though I was looking for something, I didn’t know what. Finally I poured myself a beer and toasted my father, then I went outside to sit in the garden, the one place where I thought I might find comfort. I can wait out here, I thought, and I realized a part of me was waiting for him to reappear.
I sat on the brick step and looked out at my father’s handiwork. The night was cool, the air fragrant, and I thought how beautiful it all was late at night, and I regretted never sitting out there with him at this hour, when the world was so quiet. The garden felt like someone had just left. He always watered last thing, just before he came inside, and the air felt vaguely misty. And although I knew that the moisture was from the dew, it was easy to imagine that it was a remnant of my father. I looked at the beauty that had been his gift to us: the wisteria, the gardenias, the jasmine and bougainvillea, the roses. I breathed in the scent of the garden and I thought that I should feel comforted in that place that he’d loved.
But I didn’t. Everything felt foreign: the air, the stillness of the night, the way Orion shifted overhead, the way the neighbor’s cat glided along the back fence, the feel of my cotton nightgown against my skin. Breathing was different, seeing was different, sitting in the garden on the step was different. In twelve hours, everything had changed, and I found myself faced with something I’d never imagined: the world without my father, a far more desolate place than I could have imagined.
I added up the time I’d spent with him. My first seven years. The ten months that he had lived with us in this house, after his release from Haiphong Road. The two months my mother and I spent in Shanghai, which didn’t really count, I thought, but I included it. And these last six years.
Fourteen years, if you rounded up. I had turned thirty in January, so for many years we had not shared a home or even a name, all of which had led me to believe that I’d lived without him for most of my life. But I was wrong. He’d been there all along, in the background, just beneath the surface of my life, even when I’d been angriest, most hurt, most distant; even during all those years when we didn’t know where he was, even when I’d pretended I didn’t care anything about him, he’d been there, and now I was at a loss without him.
I didn’t have a memorial service. I didn’t know who to ask, and while I knew that my friends and family would have come, I thought that kind of service would be more for me than for my father, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to grieve for him in private, and to keep his passing to myself. It was too hard to talk about, too hard to explain, too painful to bring up. The fact of his absence was too awful. I arranged for a Mass to be offered for his soul, and on that day, I prayed that he was at peace.
A week after my father’s death, I called his landlady and arranged to come by for a key so that I could begin to sort through his things. The landlady, an older woman with a strong German accent, said she was sorry to hear of his passing, that he had been a good tenant, and that his rent was paid through the month, a week away. I’d need to have his room cleared out by then, she said, or she’d have to charge me.
“His room?” I asked. I had pictured an apartment, or the floor of a house.
“Room,” she said. “This is just a rooming house. Nothing fancy.” Then she gave me directions, and I said I’d be there that afternoon. I called a sitter and said I didn’t know how long I’d be, and I set off for my first and only visit to my father’s house.
The house was on South Olive on Bunker Hill, an old Victorian that needed work. I parked and sat outside for a moment, just looking at it, trying to take it in. It was a far cry from what I’d expected. It needed painting, the small garden in front was mostly weeds, and on the porch was cast-off furniture that I guessed was supposed to be hauled away.
The landlady, Mrs. Wendt, met me at the front door and handed me a key. “The door’s around to the back,” she said, and she gestured toward the driveway. I didn’t want her to know I’d never been there, so I nodded, and walked down the front steps and toward the side of the house.
“The garage,” she called. “The door is on the side.”
“Thank you,” I called, and I tried to keep my expression calm until I was out of sight. When I reached the door, I unlocked the bolt and pushed the door open and walked inside, then closed the door quickly behind me.
I was met by my father’s smell, a mix of aftershave and soap and something else that I could identify only as him, and when I breathed it in, I didn’t know if I could stand to stay in the room; it hurt too much. But there didn’t seem to be a choice; there was no one else to do what needed to be done, and so I began.
The room was small and cramped and dark, just an old converted garage that held a bed and a rickety dresser, a torn easy chair and a vinyl ottoman patched with duct tape. Bookshelves lined the far wall. The wall facing the backyard had been knocked down and a small alcove added. The plaster walls were painted white, my father’s doing, I guessed. He said white was the best color for any room, that it looked clean and made the room appear larger. It did neither of those things here. A hook rug covered the floor, and although the day was warm, there was a chill in the room. A space heater sat in the corner.
I just stared for a moment, trying to take it all in. Once again I thought about leaving; once again I told myself I had to stay.
There was a single bed in the corner, and over it hung a water-color of the Bund that I remembered from his office in Shanghai. I could not imagine how he had managed to keep it. I went to the dresser and opened the top drawer and found things I knew well: the blue and red bandanas that he always kept in his back pocket, his green fountain pen, an ivory comb, and a strand of pearls that had been my mother’s.
The easy chair and ottoman, both of them worn, were at the foot of the bed, facing the opposite wall, which was covered with the kind of bookshelves that you put up yourself. An old black-and-white TV sat on the middle shelf, wedged into the middle of the books. I recognized the set: it had been Jack’s and mine, and my father had offered to drop it off at Goodwill two years earlier when we’d gotten a new set. I did not see the new Philco Table TV we’d given him last Christmas.
I sank down onto the patched ottoman. The whole place was smaller than our living room, and though everything was clean, it was also worn. The rug was threadbare, the walls dingy, despite the white paint. The bookshelves that lined the far wall were packed with books, and I stood and scanned the titles. It was an odd collection. There were some classics, Modern Library editions of Austen, Freud, Keats, Shelley, Tolstoy, and some history and current events. There was a handful of health and diet books, and plenty of self-improvement books and pamphlets: How to Boost Your Brain Power to Enrich Your Life; How to Say a Few Words—Effectively; The Harry R. Lange Do Sheet System of Personal Efficiency.
But the majority of the books were religious. I was intrigued; I’d never known my father to be much of a reader of things spiritual. But I ran my fingers across the spines of a whole section of New Testaments and counted fifteen of them, including two in something called Pitman’s Shorthand. There were some of the spiritual classics my grandmother loved—Therèse of Lisieux, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing—but there were also books by Billy Graham and Mary Baker Eddy, The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, almost as though my father was trying to cover his bets. And there were twenty-nine books by a Christian mystic named Joel Goldsmith, all of them underlined and highlighted. I opened one called Practicing the Presence and read an underlined pass
age: God is the very strength of my bones; God is the health of my countenance; God is my fortress and my high-tower, my safety and my security . . . God in the midst of me is mighty, and because God is in the midst of me, I need nothing; I lack nothing. Of myself I have no ability; I have no understanding of my own, but God’s understanding is infinite.
At the far end of the room, in the added-on alcove, were a small refrigerator and a miniature gas range and oven. A shelf over the range held a few canned goods: Franco-American spaghetti, a jar of Ovaltine, Chase & Sanborn instant coffee, Campbell’s soup, V8 juice. Taped to the wall nearest the range were two recipes in my father’s handwriting. One was for something called “Diet Stew,” which included hamburger, cabbage, onions, celery, and tomatoes. The other was for chiaotzû, and I pictured Chu Shih as I read the ingredients: 2 lb. pork, 2 lb. cabbage, 3 thumbs ginger, 2 bunch onions, 2 eggs, 2 t. salt, ¼ cup sesame oil, 2 T. soya sauce.
A large window overlooked a postage-stamp garden, most of which was shabby and neglected—I could see a few heads of lettuce and some scrawny tomato vines—but there was a corner that I was certain had been in my father’s care. Four rosebushes were in bloom, plus some gardenias and a small orange tree.
That cramped alcove apparently doubled as an office, for next to the stove and pushed up against the window were an old swivel chair and desk. The desk was nicked and dented and old, the kind of unappealing office desk, huge and metal, found in government offices. I sat down and the swivel chair creaked. The hand-me-down Royal typewriter that Jack had nabbed for my father when the secretaries at Flintridge bought new equipment was in the center of the desk, and next to it was a sheet of paper that said, Résumé—Joseph Schoene. I read my father’s account of his professional life:
