This Old Man (2 page)

Mr. Saxe loved that sort of subtle hint. Now he leaned forward. “What about? Anything you'd care to share?”

“Just school and things like house politics.” I made it sound like the House of Representatives. He couldn't help but press for details; oh, but I held out. “We talk a lot about support hose. She takes support hose very seriously.”

“You haven't quite found your place in that house yet, have you?” His tie was positively choking him now, and he gave it another tug. Either it was tightening on its own, or his neck was expanding before my very eyes. I decided to keep a watch on that particular action.

“Anything else going on, Greta? Have you talked to your mother?”

“Oh, sure,” I replied gaily. “We have to talk quick before Hackey shows up. He could even be listening in. We don't risk it too often.”

“Don't worry, Greta, he doesn't know where you are. The more time passes, the safer you are, keep that in mind.”

Time. Time was ticking away, and it would be another whole week before I could be with Mr. Saxe again. I leaned forward to pull up my sock, and to see if he smelled as he usually did. Oh, yes! Soapy, as though he washed his face between each appointment and otherwise practiced extreme personal hygiene.

“Are you married, Mr. Saxe?” I wondered who did his laundry. He sure didn't scrounge around the floor of the closet for the neatly pressed collar that rimmed the neck of his sweater.

“I am, yes.”

“What does your wife do?”

“I'd like to talk about you, not Mrs. Saxe. Are things all right at school?” He was covering everything. He must have had a checklist of Significant Questions. Sometimes he'd jot down my answers, for no reason at all.

“Fine at school. We're dissecting fish eyes in biology. They bounce away under the scalpel if you don't hold them just right. Eyes are interesting. I'm just crazy about eyes.” Mr. Saxe's eyes were small black circles, like a poodle's, but with thick, long lashes. He took his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose and quickly slipped them on again to read my chart. I remembered some crazy thing I'd read about Sophia Loren, who's the most beautiful older woman in the world, I think. She wouldn't take off her glasses for photographers because the glasses left little ridges on the bridge of her nose. I could handle that kind of imperfection, I think, if I had her face and body and hair. But what would I do with them? Then again, didn't she go to jail for tax evasion, or something? Oh, well, nobody's perfect.

“Any nightmares?”

“Just my roommate, Sylvia.”

He smiled. “Night sweats?”

“Nope.” I was having a wonderful time. How could forty-five minutes flit by so fast here, and drag so interminably in History of Western Civ?

“Appetite okay?”

“I eat like a beast of burden.”

“Anything you want to tell me before the hour slips away?” He had a sweet habit of calling our forty-five minutes an hour.

“No, nothing. I saw Old Man, sort of.”

Mr. Saxe leaned forward. His Adam's apple popped out over his tie. “Old Man?”

“You remember, the old Chinese grandfather.”

“Oh,
that
old man.” Mr. Saxe sighed.

“I'm getting closer. Any day now I'm going into his room.”

“Just go in. Knock and go in. Why not?”

“I couldn't,” I replied, quietly. “Not yet.”

2

Partly I couldn't go into old man's room, and partly Wing wouldn't let me. Each evening about 5:00 we'd take a basket of dinner to him. The first time I caught the aroma of that dinner was on the cable car. I was on my way to Mr. Saxe, busy thinking about what I wouldn't tell him. The cable car was packed solid, but I was lucky—I had a seat, such as it was. There I sat squeezed between a woman with Saks Fifth Avenue bags piled to her nose and a blond guy who wasn't bright enough to figure out that it's cold in San Francisco, and you don't wear your shirt unbuttoned to your navel when you're in an open cable car. People stood over us, holding on to leather straps that hung like nooses from the roof of the cable car. No one ever looked directly at anyone, and I probably wouldn't even have noticed Wing (who wasn't Wing to me yet), except that he carried this enormous basket that took up about as much room as a well-fed cocker spaniel. The standing-room-only crowd eyed its bulk with annoyance, but Wing never seemed to notice their glares.

As we jerked up the hill, the crowd began to thin. Suddenly the basket was next to me on the wooden bench, and it was warm to the touch and smelled perfectly wonderful. Wing sat on the other side of it, with one hand hovering over the white linen napkins that covered mysterious lumps. I couldn't resist:

“What's in the basket?”

“Dinner,” Wing said simply.

“Yours?”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if he were wondering why this strange girl in the overalls would care. “No, for my grand
father
.” He said it just that way, and I got the idea that English wasn't his first language. “He's in the hospital. Chinese Hospital.”

“You mean to tell me they don't feed him in that hospital?” I asked.

Wing sighed, but explained patiently. “They feed him spaghetti and meat loaf. He doesn't eat that stuff. He's got to have his Chinese dinner. It's the least we can do.”

The delicious scent drifted up to me and trailed off. I patted the napkins, to plump it up again. The steamy aroma worked its way into my head, unclogging long-ago memories of dinners at Imperial Gardens, one of Hackey's favorite cheap Chinese restaurants. (I always ate with chopsticks, of course, which is something Hackey could never master, and my mother never tried.) For years I'd wanted to order the shrimp in lobster sauce, but it was $6.95, and Hackey always said no. Then a few weeks before I moved to Anza House, he had this burst of generosity, called up, I suspect, because he thought I'd be going to work for him soon. Anyway, he ordered shrimp in lobster sauce for me. It was fine, but two or three bites into it and I wished I'd ordered my old stand-by sweet and sour, which used to leave a pungent taste in my mouth till we got home. I can't say it was a good taste, but it was one that stuck with me, which was better than nothing.

So I asked Wing, “Is that sweet and sour?”

“No, no,” he laughed. His laugh was like wind chimes, not what you'd expect from a guy so solidly built. I had a feeling that even after his voice changed, he'd still have a delicate laugh. “Old Man eats only simple foods. My mother makes him broth, a little steamed rice, some tender chicken cooked the Chinese way.”

It was a disappointing menu. I said, “Why do you call your grandfather Old Man?”

Wing shrugged. “Why do they call me Wing?”

“Because that's your name?”

“Part of my name. I have a very long name. No one remembers my grandfather's whole name, and he is older than anyone else in my family. It makes sense to call him Old Man.” Wing tucked the napkins tighter around the edges of the basket, as if he were wrapping a baby in a buggy.

“Not that you asked, but my name is Greta.”

He nodded yes, as if he'd already guessed, which of course was impossible, since we'd never seen each other before in our lives, and Greta wasn't exactly your most common name among the Caucasian masses. I liked him. He was shy, but somehow also very sure of himself. I was the opposite—not shy, et cetera.

“Listen, Wing, I ride the cable car about this time every day,” I lied. But it wasn't really a lie. I could certainly arrange to ride the cable car every day; there wasn't anything better to do, except fight with Sylvia and pilfer M & M's from her care package.

“Um-hmm. Me too.”

“Well, so, I was thinking.” He waited. Ah hah! I had him on the hook. I decided to let him dangle a second, and for a refreshing change, I thought about what to say next. The thing is, the food smelled so good, and the linen napkin was so starchy white, and the whole operation, from stove to hospital bed, was so carefully arranged, that I wanted to see what happened at the end of this loving assembly line. I wanted to see Wing unpack the basket and spread everything out on the bed table. I wanted to see Old Man's eyes light up as each dish was unwrapped. “So I was thinking that I might come with you to Chinese Hospital and help with your grandfather's dinner.”

Wing looked shocked that I'd suggest something so improper. You'd think I'd propositioned him. “Old Man demands his privacy,” Wing said firmly. “This is my stop.” He hoisted the basket up onto his shoulder and was gone.

Well, you can bet that I was there—same time, same station—the next day, and we continued our conversation as if there'd been no break.

“Why does he demand his privacy?”

“Why!” Wing chuckled. “Because.”

I chewed the inside of my mouth.

“Old Man demands a lot,” sighed Wing.

“Does he usually get whatever he wants?”

“Always. Do you have a grandfather?” Wing seemed to want assurance that all grandfathers were tyrants.

I wasn't sure how to answer. My mother's father lived in North Dakota and hadn't spoken to us since my mother went into her present line of work. That's pretty tyrannical behavior from 1,500 miles away. My father's father was unknown; like father, like son, as they say. I decided to answer no, no grand
father
. If anything, Wing looked envious.

“I wouldn't mind having a grandfather,” I said.

“I don't have an extra one. And I don't think the one I've got is going to live much longer,” said Wing.

“But he's been in the hospital for weeks. Why isn't he getting any better?”

“Hard to explain,” Wing said, with his finger pressed to his chin. “Old Man has no confidence in the foreign doctor.”

“I can't believe there's not a Chinese doctor in that hospital. He's in Chinese Hospital, in Chinatown. Is this, or is this not, Chinatown?”

“Sure, he has a Chinese doctor, but the doctor practices modern Western medicine. Old Man refuses to get better. He calls the foreign doctor a turtle.”

“Why? Does the doctor creep around?”

“No, his fingers fly over Old Man's flesh. But Old Man calls him turtle because this is the worst insult he can think of. Turtles are revolting to the classical Chinese mind. I remind him that the turtle also symbolizes longevity, and maybe the doctor is preserving his life, but Old Man means the other kind of turtle.”

“I'd be furious, if I were that doctor.”

“Old Man would probably feel better if the doctor did get mad. But he doesn't understand what Old Man says, and he doesn't know about turtles. That makes my grandfather even madder.”

The cable car jerked to a stop, with its tail hanging off a steep hill. People rushed on and off. We stood up and put the basket back down on the floor. A woman yanking a small cranky child came between Wing and me. I stepped on the little girl's foot, but she didn't dare say a word, because she had tromped on mine first. “You brat,” I muttered. She gave me a very ugly look. I said to Wing, “You must have lots of patience,” to which the mother replied, “You have no idea, no idea.”

“Sure I have patience,” Wing said, stepping in front of the mother. “I'm the first son of the first son.” He seemed to think this would explain everything.

Fortunately, he was talking to the right person. I remembered from my feasting on Pearl Buck's books that the birth of a son was a prized event, a festival in the life of a Chinese family. It must have been all the more prized in Wing's family, because Old Man was pretty old when his first son was born. But what if Wing had been a girl? (What if I had been a boy? How would that have affected Hackey's enterprise?) “Would you be the one taking Old Man his dinner if you'd been a girl, Wing?”

“No! My first brother would have the honor. In Chinese custom, a son is called Ten Thousand Pieces of Gold. A daughter is only One Thousand Pieces of Gold. Of course, I don't believe that myself,” Wing said hurriedly. “But we would never send One Thousand Pieces to Old Man.”

“He's a male chauvinist pig,” I bellowed, stamping my foot.

“Momma! She stepped on me.”

The mother winked at me apologetically. She held half a dozen packages by string. The little girl didn't carry a thing. She was too busy tugging at her underpants.

“Yes, he's a male chauvinist,” Wing whispered. “It's his way. Here, let's get off and walk the rest of the way.”

We pushed toward the exit and jumped off as the cable car slowed down. It didn't cost us a cent, I thought with satisfaction. I pictured the mother piling all her packages around her while she rummaged in her purse for some change. It served her right, raising a brat like that.

The steps of the Chinese Hospital were carved out of the grade of the Jackson Street hill: flat on one end and steep at the other end of the first two steps. A pagoda roof hung over the entrance, sloped and curved, in gold, green, red, and rust.

Wing pointed to a window on the third floor of the new section: Old Man's room. He shouldn't have been in the modern section, didn't they understand that? He didn't speak a word of English. He should have had a room just beneath the pagoda roof.

In the lobby, Wing told me, “You can wait here.” So, I wasn't even to be allowed up in the elevator. I picked up a copy of a Chinese newspaper, printed on thin, crinkly plastic. The squiggly characters made tidy columns, up and down. I studied this for at least ten minutes and finally had to conclude that I couldn't make out a single word. There was a copy of
Newsweek
on the magazine rack. I had a little more success with that. I turned right to the section about what's new on the medical front:

A VACCINE TO SAVE LIVERS AND LIVES—Heptavax-B is being distributed as a vaccine against Hepatitis B, the most ominous form of viral liver disease, afflicting up to 200,000 Americans every year
…