Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

“What did you say about me staying out at night?” Sunny asked, her voice sounding higher and milder than I’d heard for some years, more like when she was just-arrived, the tone cut-off and vulnerable and like that of anybody else.

Officer Como answered, “Just what the whole town knows.”

Sunny’s face hardened, and she pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes and bent to lift her bicycle from the sidewalk. She began walking away with it, an expensive French racer I had bought for her recent birthday.

“Hey!” Officer Como spoke briskly. “Don’t be running off. I haven’t said anything about our being done, have I? We haven’t finished our conversation.”

Sunny stepped in front of the seat and straddled her bike, not answering the policewoman. There was a peculiar hint of innocence to the stance, despite how grave her expression was, as if she were simply asking the local officer for directions. She was on her bike because I hadn’t allowed her to get her driver’s permit and license, for I was deathly afraid of where she might end up if she had a car. After many weeks of intense arguments she finally gave up and took to riding the bicycle all around town. So much so, in fact, that it was a customary sight for everyone to see Sunny Hata pedaling on her powder-blue twelve-speed, here and there and at all hours of the day and night.

“Why don’t you ask me again what I know about you?” Officer Como said. “Because I’ll let you know.”

“Sure,” Sunny replied severely, sounding like herself again. “Go ahead.”

I was at the door to the shop and as there were no customers on that unusually warm afternoon I couldn’t help but head toward them. Officer Como’s back was turned, but Sunny could well see me. She didn’t give any indication that I was within earshot. She just glared defiantly at the officer without the least expression.

“I hear you’re over at Jimmy Gizzi’s house a lot these days.”

Sunny didn’t answer.

“Jimmy Gizzi. Now there’s a nice young man,” Officer Como said thickly. “Someone worth befriending. Let’s see. What, he’s twenty-five, a high-school dropout, and he’s never had a real job? He used to beat up his mother every once in a while, before God blessed her and she had a heart attack and died. We had to go to the house and break things up. I know he’s been selling pot and speed out of the garage, but I guess these days he’s also scoring coke for rich kids at Bedley High.”

“I guess you know everything,” Sunny said.

“I sure do,” the policewoman answered quickly, stepping closer to her. “I know you’ve been spending some weekend nights there, at his house, for example.”

Sunny glanced at me, as if she were actually uncomfortable with my hearing the disclosure. I hadn’t known for certain where she was spending those weekend nights, though I was confident that it was always with one of her girlfriends in the city. She’d go for trips to Jones Beach or for shopping or just “hanging out” in the downtown Bohemian neighborhoods, and if she was getting into trouble there, too, I hoped it was in the spirit of joyful rebellion and independence and enjoyment with her own set of comrades, which I should be glad to tolerate and understand. But to hear that she was staying in town, with a dubious young man whom she didn’t seem to care to defend, was alarming to me, and even hurtful.

“I know a lot of the people who hang out at Gizzi’s,” Officer Como went on. “I hope you know that some of them are serious felons. They’re not like you. They’re not just there to have fun. It’s life to them.”

“Who says I’m there for fun?” Sunny said sharply. “You think I want fun? You think I’m having fun right now?”

Officer Como seemed surprised by her response, as was I. But the policewoman quickly took back her ground. “Don’t ever talk to me like that again. Don’t ever raise your voice. Do you hear me? I’ll make things miserable for you, I promise. I don’t have to care about you. I can write you off like any other good-for-nothing slut who’s pissing her life away. Your father deserves better. I hear the stories about the parties, from Jimmy himself, actually. He was run in yesterday, as you probably know. He’s out but we’ll get him soon. He’s a little punk who’s in over his head with those brothers from the city. But he had a lot of colorful things to say about you especially. How generous you are to all the guys. What a good sport you are. He said you never get tired.”

“Fuck you.”

Officer Como lunged at Sunny, grabbing the handlebars and pulling them down to the sidewalk. Sunny fell over the bicycle, landing hard on her knee and forearm. Officer Como shouted, “Fuck me? Is that what you said? Little bitch!”

“Stop it!” I cried, barely able to keep myself from assaulting the officer. She’d turned just in time and by training had automatically unsnapped her holster. The sight of her reaction enraged me. “You cannot speak to my daughter that way. How dare you make such horrible accusations? This is slanderous. A public servant should not exhibit such unbecoming conduct.”

“Doc—”

“I must ask you to leave her alone! If she’s not done something illegal, you should move on and pursue your duties elsewhere. There are many other young people who are in fact committing crimes in this district, vandalizing and loitering. Why don’t you berate and intimidate them? My daughter does sometimes go to the city with her friends, and what a felon says to you has no weight at all. None at all. Now please let us end this, Officer. You and I have a good relationship and I don’t wish to see it ruined.”

The officer nodded to me and stepped back from Sunny. With anyone else, certainly, Officer Como would have set in her heels, leaned in and returned to me what I deserved, but in deference (and respectful gratitude for my past efforts on her behalf) she grabbed her lunch bag from the roof of the cruiser and went around to the driver’s side.

“I’m truly sorry, Doc, that I upset you,” she said, opening her door. “I am. I wish you hadn’t seen me just now. But I think you know better, too, about the real truth of things. Your daughter is this close to getting into some serious trouble, the kind you can’t ignore or forget once it happens. I don’t mean to upset you, but you’re a good man and so I’m telling you just as I see it. I’m sorry that I am, but there’s nothing else I can do. I don’t really like your daughter and maybe I don’t even care about her, but I owe you too much and so I won’t lie. I’m sorry, again. You can call the station and ask for me whenever you want.”

She drove off and left the two of us there by the parking meter, Sunny picking herself up from the pavement. I made her follow me inside the shop, for onlookers had begun to gather. The skin on her elbow was raw but not broken. When I tried to examine the abrasion more closely she shook me off, her hands raised diffidently in that long-familiar gesture of hers, as if my closeness were an unbearable weight. But this time the feeling was also mine. For the first time, I felt cold to her, like an ice sheet had fallen between us, and a picture of her began entering my mind, her dark form moving through the corridors of a dingy, slovenly house, peals of surly laughter trailing after her.

“Why must you insist on always provoking the police?” I said. “Officer Como wouldn’t have bothered you had you not been so insolent. But you gave her no choice.”

Sunny wouldn’t answer me, instead propping her bicycle against the counter and drifting down an aisle, her back to me. When she was a young girl, she would skip along the racks and shelves, ticking the merchandise with her little fingers as she went, murmuring a made-up song. Back then I used to toy with the thought of her taking over the business when I retired, running Sunny Medical Supply as her own, even expanding it to open satellite stores across northern Westchester. I imagined her as a kind of mini-mogul who was raised in the trade, that she’d be well known in the business circles and be asked to speak before the audience at the colloquiums and conferences. Of course none of these hopes had much to do with who Sunny truly was, her personality and character, though it was my belief that she was actually well suited to the commerce of every day, for although she wasn’t overly talkative she was strangely comfortable dealing with people, whether for better or worse.