The Distant Land of My Father (50 page)

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 could 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.