This Old Man (5 page)

Randy's parents, both teachers, took it all very well. They were already repainting the furniture Randy had outgrown not so long ago.

“If you knew Mr. and Mrs. Stemmons, you'd know it's the best thing for the baby,” Pammy said. “Until we're ready for him.”

Darlene, the allergic one, came in and slammed the front door. She flew by us and up the stairs, without a word. Well, she was never very talkative at the best of times, but we knew something was wrong. By dinner the word was out: Darlene's social worker was arranging for her to go to a foster home the day after Easter. We didn't take the news well. Darlene was the first limb to be cut from the tree, at least since I'd come to Anza House. Not that we liked her much; is a tree crazy about all its limbs? Still, it hurts to have one chopped off.

Easter dinner was a glum affair. Jo and Sylvia had gone home for the holiday, and it was just Elizabeth, Pammy, Darlene, and me around the big dining-room table. Elizabeth asked for a blessing, and I said, “Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat,” but nobody felt much like eating. Darlene made tracks of mashed potatoes around her plate and didn't say much, while Elizabeth tried too hard to tickle us. Finally Pammy brought the subject up.

“The thing is,” she said sadly, glancing from one of us to another, “Darlene won't be here when the baby comes.”

“You think I care about that?” Darlene said, struggling with her tears.

“Of course you do,” cooed Elizabeth. “Now, everybody have a piece of my cheesecake. I'm practically famous for my cheesecake all over San Francisco.” Darlene shook her head no, and Pammy said it wasn't good for the baby, and besides she was getting weighed in on Monday, so I volunteered to eat for two, three, any number, just so Elizabeth wouldn't get that sunken disappointment in her eyes.

There was a holiday dinner once, on Thanksgiving, not Easter, when I felt Hackey's mother's eyes searching me just that way …

It's pumpkin chiffon pie, and I can't believe how light and fluffy it is, like sweet creamy tan clouds. Mrs. Barnes settles back in her chair with warm satisfaction, until her eyes fall on Hackey.

“Do you like the pie, Son?”

“Yeah, it's great.”

“Is it as good as you remember from when you were a boy?”

“About the same.”

My mother nudges Hackey into more enthusiastic raves. They are almost like husband and wife at this point, so she is free to nag him.

Hackey's mother says, “Well guess what, Son? I have a big old pumpkin chiffon pie put back in the kitchen for you to take home, 'cause I remember how you used to love pumpkin back in Council Bluff.”

Hackey would have left the pie, but my mother runs back into the house for it, and I am allowed to eat every bite of it myself over the Thanksgiving weekend, because Hackey hates pumpkin chiffon.

“Anyway, we have to work out who's going to help me when the time comes,” Pammy said. “What if it happens while Elizabeth's at school?”

“Why, you'll just call a cab. Or Mrs. Martin next door can drive you,” Elizabeth reassured her.

Pammy looked perplexed. “Drive me? Where?”

“To Kaiser Hospital, honey.”

Pammy slammed her glass down and milk splattered all over the front of her red tent. “I am not going to the hospital. Whoever said I was?”

“Mercy!” Elizabeth wailed.

“You planning to have that thing here?” Darlene asked. “Good thing I'm getting outa here. Blood and pus and all that cheesy stuff babies come smeared with. I seen it in hygiene. It is so gross!”

“We'll talk about this later,” Elizabeth said firmly.

We all folded our starched napkins into squares and put them in the drawer of the buffet. Darlene crumpled hers like a newspaper: she wouldn't be needing it for dinner ever again.

With Darlene gone from Anza House, Pammy seemed deflated: blown up, but deflated. She carried her belly around in her hands, waddling down the front stairs and walking barefoot up and down Twenty-third Avenue. I couldn't stand it. I took her with me to meet Wing one Monday. The receptionist was nervous when we appeared at the hospital entrance, until I assured her that Pammy had weeks to go and wasn't even remotely in labor.

Pammy hated the hospital smell. “Lysol makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Everything does,” I reminded her.

“That's not true. Not for months now. But this place—” she tilted her head back and scanned the ceiling “—makes me sick.”

“Upstairs it's worse,” Wing reported. Some help he was. “It smells like one giant tongue depressor.”

“I don't like hospitals at all,” Pammy said firmly.

“Which hospital do you, uh, will you, uh—?” Wing clearly found Pammy's situation distressing.

“Kaiser,” I replied, thinking of Hackey and his flowers.

“No!” Pammy shuddered.

“Yes! You know that's the official hospital for Anza House. It's all paid for.”

She shook her head emphatically. “I'm not going to a hospital, even if I've gotta have the baby on the kitchen floor, all by myself. Understand?”

Wing turned pale and leaned against the elevator door. He fell on the chest of a nurse as the door slid open. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, excuse me,” he said, blushing like mad.

Inside the elevator, Pammy continued. “I read a magazine, and it says the most secure place for a baby to be born is in her very own home, with his father there to catch him when he, like, pops out.”

At the third floor I motioned for Pammy to be quiet and not to ask questions. We tiptoed to Old Man's door. Wing knocked gently and slipped in after a feeble greeting from Old Man. I took advantage of Pammy's presence, brazenly peering into the room before Wing could close the door in my face. To my frustration, Old Man's bed was situated in such a way that I could only see his feet sticking up like two twigs under the white blanket.

Old Man's voice grew a bit stronger. “Oh, he's in fine form!” I told Pammy. “He's yelling at Wing. That's a wonderful sign.”

“
Kyi! Kyi!
” we heard.

Pammy whispered, “What does that mean?”

I shrugged.

“But what do they talk about every day?”

“Who knows? All I know is that Wing's usually pretty happy when he comes out. They must have a very special relationship, grandfather to grandson. How about you, Pammy? Have you got any grandparents?”

Pammy stared at me. “Are you kidding? Do you?”

“Are you kidding?” We both giggled.

“My baby will,” Pammy said, and for just a second I envied her for having a third-generation baby.

We heard the bowls being cleared from Old Man's bed table, then the peculiar squeaking sound of the basket as it was repacked. “He'll be out in a minute,” I whispered. But strangely, he wasn't. Old Man began to drone on as though he were reading, and now and then Wing said a couple of words. For fifteen minutes I kept my ear pressed to the door. Then the conversation grew a bit more heated, and Wing's voice was louder, closer to the door. I jumped back just in time, startling Pammy. “I wasn't listening at the door,” I hastened to assure Wing.

“And you didn't hear the poems?”

“What poems?”

Wing was laughing at me. Would I have known what I had heard anyway?

“Old Man is recalling the poems of Ch'u Yuan, who drowned himself in the Mei Lo River in the fourth century
B.C.
”

“Why did he do that?” Pammy asked.

“Oh, he was an idealist, like Old Man. He couldn't reform a bad political situation, so he took his life instead.”

“What a coward,” I said huffily.

Wing cocked his head, considering this.

Pammy said, “Why's your grandfather still worrying about it? It had to be, like, two thousand years ago.”

Wing smiled at her sweetly. “And is your baby going to be christened?”

“Well, of course. What's that got to do with it?”

“I rest my case.”

Pammy shook her head in puzzlement. She and Wing weren't going to be friends, I could tell.

Wing said, “This is the month of the Dragon Boat Festival in old China, to remember Ch'u Yuan. He left a lot of poems, which Old Man has memorized. He'll be reciting them after dinner all this month.”

“Oh, Wing, what a total bore,” I said sympathetically.

“It is,” Wing nodded. “But Old Man looks so lively when he recites. And his mind is so sharp. He remembers every word he learned seventy-five years ago. You know, when he gives me these poems after dinner, I let myself believe he's going to live forever.”

Once we were out on Jackson Street, I threw an arm in each direction, to stop Wing and Pammy in their tracks.

“Be careful of the baby,” Pammy said irritably.

“I'm having one of my horribly clever ideas.”

Wing snickered, prepared for the worst. Tourists passed us, smiling at my proclamation and modesty.

“The thing is, I'd give anything to drop in and see Old Man for just a minute.” I felt Wing stiffen slightly beside me. “I know that's impossible, at least until he gets much stronger.” I watched Wing out of the corner of my eye. Would he ever let me in, even if Old Man were well? “Naturally, I don't want Old Man to think I'm just an orderly out there, or some stranger lurking in the halls. I want him to know that it's Greta Janssen out there for him. Does he ask about me, Wing?”

“Well …”

“My point exactly. I'm anonymous. My idea is positively dazzling in brilliance. Tonight I will go to the library, and I will find a real, genuine, authentic, actual Chinese poem.”

“What are you going to do with it when you find it?” asked Pammy. She hadn't caught on to my brilliance yet.

“I will write it down on a piece of onion-skin paper, and Wing'll give it to him, and tell him it's from me, the girl in the hall.”

Wing nodded. “He does love poetry. It's a good idea.”

“Do I have to come to the library with you?” asked Pammy.

“Why not? It's a good way to read some more of those terrific articles that tell you how to have babies at home. See you, Wing. We've got to go.”

I wanted to dig right into the Chinese literature books and find the oldest, most boring poem I could get, for Old Man's pleasure.

5

We were at the library until it closed, Pammy drumming her nails on the oak table and me searching for just the right poem. It would take a special one, I knew, because Old Man not only read poems, but wrote them as well. I'd seen the brushes he once used, and the rich, cream ivory parchment he drew his poems on. We'd brought these things to the hospital for him, and Wing said he kept them on his bedside table. But he didn't use them anymore. Since his stroke, he had made the poems up in his head and saw them laid out, up and down, right to left, on a page in his mind.

I didn't have calligraphy brushes, and even if I'd had them, I wouldn't know how to use them. And I didn't have parchment. So I typed
the
poem on the best thing I could find in Elizabeth's supply cabinet, which was erasable bond. I typed it fourteen times before I had it perfectly spaced in the middle of the page, with no errors. It had to be just right. I had a feeling Old Man hungered for perfection. I carried it between two blank pieces of paper, inside a manila folder, with the folder inside my binder. I took it out to read in history, holding it by the corner so it wouldn't wrinkle or smudge. At the hospital that day I handed it over to Wing.

“Please give this to Old Man. Tell him it's from Greta.”

“From Greta,” he repeated, in a faraway voice.

“Oh, I see. Then tell him it's from Fragrant Blossom.”

“Yes, that would be better.” Brimming with confidence, I watched Wing read the poem.

THE VALLEY WIND BY LU YUN

Living in retirement beyond the World
,

Silently enjoying isolation
,

I pull the rope of my door tighter

And stuff my window with roots and ferns
.

My spirit is tuned to the Spring-season;

At the fall of the year there is autumn in my heart
.

Thus imitating cosmic changes

My cottage becomes a Universe
.

When Wing finished reading it, I waited for his pudgy smile. Instead he looked worried.

“What's wrong with it?”

“Nothing, nothing. It's a good poem for him.”

“Well, it should be,” I said hotly. “It's by some guy who wrote in the second century, Lu Yun, or however you pronounce it. Old Man's probably heard of him, even if you haven't. Old Man's probably related to him.” I felt a familiar fog of anger rising higher, Hackey anger. “What's the matter? Am I only One Thousand Pieces of Gold?”

“This poem is just fine, Greta.”

No, it was better than fine. It was perfect. Wing just wouldn't admit it. He was jealous, that's what he was, jealous that he hadn't found the poem first. With his brow set, he took it in to Old Man.

I paced outside the room. All I heard was silence. Maybe Old Man was reading it over and over. Then I heard Wing's voice, soft, slow, halting. Silence again. Then Old Man began to yell, in the thick, fuzzy voice of age. All that I could make out clearly was his usual “
Kyi, kyi,
” which I'd heard a dozen times. I released a deep sigh of relief. It was always a good sign when Old Man yelled.

“He likes it,” I whispered to myself. The Chinese nurse walked by on her soundless crepe soles. “Listen to him, he likes my poem!”

When Wing came out of the room, he looked forlorn.

“What did Old Man say?”

“The poem was perfect, Greta.”

“Is that why he was yelling like a madman? What did he
say?
”

“I read him every word, and he—”