Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

“It’s my doing,” I say. “I didn’t tell her I was leaving tomorrow morning.”

“She could have looked at your chart, or asked one of the nurses.”

“Yes,” I say, “but I didn’t give her any reason to.”

Officer Como considers this, working it quickly, and I can tell she’s thinking back to the time when she and I knew each other much better than we might today, when we had a number of conversations whose subject was always the same. I recall how strictly we used to speak, and even sometimes disagreeably, so much so that the simple sight of her blue-and-white car slowly pulling up in front of the store would be enough to halt me.

“You know, Doc, it’s amazing how fast the years go by. When we first met, Veronica was a toddler, if that. And your Sunny was what, around the age Veronica is now?”

“I believe that’s right.”

“It’s truly amazing. It’s nice to see how things can turn out fine, when maybe you thought it was going to be only trouble ahead. I guess that’s why, in a funny way, I still worry so much about Ronny, even though she’s generally such a good kid. You never know what’s going to happen, for better or for worse. I’m happy that all is going well for you, except maybe this little mishap at your house. And to be a grandfather, well, that’s just great for you. When I saw Sunny again at the mall, you know I hardly recognized her? She’s such a grown-up now! We even had a nice little talk. Can you imagine, the two of us talking like two ladies at the club? And she showed me a picture of her little boy. Talk about who should be proud.”

“You saw her at the Ebbington Mall?”

“I see her every day now. As Ronny said, I’m the new head of security. Sunny’s been managing the store almost a year, right? She looks fantastic, all dressed up in those nice new clothes. She was always so beautiful. She’s even more so now that’s she a little older. So beautiful. I guess she always will be.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“I should be going. It was good to see you, Doc. I’m glad you met my daughter, or that she met you. Should I say anything to Ronny for you? I know she’ll appreciate it. You might not have seen it, but she really is a good girl.”

“I know she is,” I say, wishing all of a sudden for my lungs to fill and tear, for my skin to burn, for things to fall apart for the benefit of Dr. Weil. “I know she is, I know.”

“Well, so long then. Maybe we’ll catch you at the mall.”

“Yes, yes. Perhaps I’ll see Veronica there.”

“Sure, I’ll tell her that.”

And then that is all. I step to the window and I see a car parked in the circle where the ambulances come and go. It’s hard to make out, but I think Veronica is sitting in the front seat, holding a book in her hands. Then I see Officer Como walk out to the car and get inside. They sit and speak for a moment, but not for long. They drive off and I watch them go down the hill, and I lose them with the angle. But I see their brake lights again when they reach the main road, the two-lane that follows Middle Pete Creek to the west where it crosses over the parkway, on the other side of which begin the stately rises of trees and easy rolling meadows of Bedley Run. They’ll drive swiftly and quietly and without stopping until they cross the buffer zone of old warehouses and railyards, and they’ll see reflected in the reservoir the many-colored lights of working-class Ebbington, home of the fast-food strip and the multiplex, and as well to those who would never get to live in my respectable town, the policewomen and the candy stripers and then all the others in this world who would hardly be known.

SUNNY, if I recall, was particularly hard on Officer Como. At her worst, she would sit diffidently on the hood of the policewoman’s cruiser as it sat parked on Church Street, smoking a cigarette as though she were idly passing the time on a bench in the park, her favorite mirrored sunglasses perched on her head. I remember one incident quite clearly. It was one of those days of transitional warm weather in the late fall, when I had the door of the shop opened to the street. Sunny was one store down, in front of the stationer’s, and I watched her obliquely from inside. This was long after the time that I could say anything directive or even meaningful to her, for I would have if I had thought it would do either of us any good. She was clearly waiting for Officer Como to come back with her lunch. I felt I was witnessing a staged accident, awaiting the trial run of something that I knew would be terrible.

“Get off the car,” Officer Como said, perching the brown lunch bag near the lights on the roof. She stepped back toward the middle of the sidewalk, facing my daughter. Officer Como was still very youthful-looking then, sprightly and angular, and fresh of face like Veronica is now, which of course was partly what compelled Sunny to want to test her.

“Get off the car now!”

Sunny slid her hands behind her and pushed off the hood. She stood there on the edge of the sidewalk, inches from the fender. She wasn’t as tall as the officer but her presence was remarkably severe and stolid and it didn’t seem as though she were yielding any room. She was nearly sixteen and her body had filled out; she was just at the point when she was conscious of how to hold herself, how to gain a certain strength of repose by the set of her stance, her hips, her lofted chin. She wasn’t the kind of bad girl who cursed or talked back, there being little of that loudness and bluster to her (except on rare occasions with me, who somehow inspired her), but rather she was intimidatingly and defiantly quiet. She just looked at you, or more accurately, she made it that you looked at her. There wasn’t a hint of vanity or pride. The way she was facing Officer Como, you could tell she knew how to use her splendid appearance. For Sunny had always understood the cooler properties of her beauty, the ungiving stone of it.

“Now come over here,” Officer Como commanded, pointing down at a spot a half-foot in front of her. “Right here, right now.”

Sunny sighed and dropped her cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out. She acted more bored than anything else. And although she was but a couple steps from the officer, it seemed to take her whole minutes to reach the spot, enough so that I wanted to close the shop and rush out there and shake her to sensibility. But then I’ve always wanted to do that, and yet never have.

“You’re really wasting yourself, you know that?” Officer Como said to her, less angrily than anyone could have expected from her at that moment. “You don’t even know. Others have nothing, not brains, not money, not good looks. They’ve got nothing and they know it and they’re bad. But you have everything going for you. It’s ridiculous.”

“You can’t tell me what I have going,” Sunny answered, keeping her voice low. “So don’t try.”

“I’ll tell you whatever I want,” Officer Como said forcefully, now holding Sunny by the arm. “And you know why? I wouldn’t say a word to you if I thought you deserved it. But you don’t. You drink and you probably do drugs and stay out all night with all kinds of sleazy men. It should make you sick to think what your father must feel, how scared he must be for you every time you leave the house. But you don’t care about that, either. You can’t think about that. All you have time for is being a stuck-up little girl who looks for trouble anywhere she can find it. You’re so damn tough and cool, aren’t you? So you sit on cop cars in your hot pants. Wow, young lady. Big deal. You’re a big deal.”

Officer Como let go of her but Sunny didn’t move. For a moment I was certain that one of them would suddenly reach out and strike the other. There were no customers in the store and so I drifted out to the doorway; a few people were lingering about them on the sidewalk. I was perplexed as to what I should do. It’s a strange thing, to have your daughter being publicly accosted by an officer of the law and to know inside that it’s completely right and warranted, and yet on top of that having the impulse to shield her from criticism and unhappiness, and feeling, too, the purest, unbending aggression toward the officer. All this, I realize, is probably fatherhood in a nutshell, but I’m sure it’s true that for most these instances are what they are, momentary and situational and thankfully rare, and not, as in the case of Sunny and me, our lives’ chronic bout. That day my emotions were running particularly high, I think, because of what was spoken next, by both Officer Como and Sunny, as well as myself.