Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

The Lerner’s, I’m relieved, has fared much better than most of the stores. It’s clean and tidy, for one thing, the display window sparkling and warmly lighted, the wide marble-tiled entrance spotless and waxed. It’s just how I would try to keep it, were it mine, and for a moment I allow myself the thought that I’ve bestowed at least this tiny scruple on Sunny, from years of example. I can’t see back to the main island register because I’m sitting on a bench one store down, happy to watch the steady traffic of women (and their children and some men) go inside and come out. The clothes in the store look to me eminently respectable, of conservative styling and subdued color, not too fancy or too cheap, the blouses and pantsuits and skirts of office managers and junior executives and the young real estate agents who aren’t Liv Crawford quite yet. Part of me still can’t accept the idea of Sunny running this kind of squarely middle-class franchise, or for that matter running any kind of business at all, and then one so expansive and peopled and professionally staffed. From this bench, lodged behind the cover of broad leaves of faux tropical plants, I survey the saleswomen working the floor, guiding customers to changing rooms with armfuls of clothes, offering other sizes and colors, this active squad she’s charged with certain missions for the day. And it’s almost too much for me, too felicitous perhaps, to imagine the fantastic idea of what Sunny Medical Supply might be instead of half-emptied and shut, what kind of vital, resplendent establishment could have been built, not for pride or for riches but a place to leave each night and glance back upon and feel sure would contain us. For isn’t this what I’ve attempted for most all of my life, from entering the regular school with my Japanese parents when I was a boy, to enlisting myself in what should have been a glorious war, and then settling in this country and in a most respectable town, isn’t this my long folly, my continuous failure?

Sunny, I am partly relieved, is still nowhere in sight. There is no reason of course she should necessarily be working today. But now I’m moving again, this time, finally, to the store itself, drawn in past the airy entrance to a fragrant, music-filled space. I’m greeted by a redheaded saleswoman who smiles and quickly checks around to see if there’s someone who looks to be mine, a daughter or a wife. At the main register there are only two other employees scanning items for the shoppers. One of them has ASST MANAGER printed on her name badge, and I take a place in the line she’s serving. Although my hands are empty and I’m the lone man, I have only one question for KARI, who looks too young to be assistant managing, with her stooped, spindly shoulders and frosted razor-cut locks, which I learned at the hospital from Veronica Como is the popular style these days.

“May I help you?” Kari says breathily, trying her best to sound energetic and eager.

“I wondered if the manager is in today.”

“Oh, sir, I can help you,” she immediately says, leaning forward and glancing over my shoulder at the line of women behind me. On her collar I see she has a small, rectangular button with a very contemporary-looking portrait of Jesus, under which it reads Luv Conquers All.

“What can I do for you?”

“I had hoped, actually, to speak in private with the manager.”

“Oh,” she says, suddenly looking closely at me, and her face brightens. Her voice changes, sounding more girlish and casual. “Sure. Are you related? You must be.”

“Yes,” I say, amazed to hear myself answering such a question. “We are.”

“You sort of look like it!” she announces, for some reason excited. “Neat. Because she’s usually not here on Saturdays until three. But she said she would be in early today, around eleven, and then leave early, too, so I’ll have to do double-shift and close up. She should be here in ten or fifteen. It’s been really busy, actually. You can sit on the couch and wait, if you want. Hey, are you Sunny’s uncle or something? Are you visiting from out of town?”

But I don’t answer, or can’t, as I’ve already turned back around and gone straight out to the mall, walking with all the speed I can muster, almost skipping into a trot, and I feel my chest start to ache and then balk, and before I know it I’m staring at the tops of my knees and the dirt-colored tile floor and coughing as though it’s for the sake of my very life. And then, too, it is a nearly wondrous sensation, between hacks, for just as I’ve expelled every last ounce of breath, nearly coughed out a whole lung, there’s also a feeling of something like purity again, a razing and renewal, as if I might wholly banish all that I was just a moment ago. It reminds me of swimming the final length of a morning, when in those last yards one refuses to take air, as if becoming something else, almost half-dying in the crawl. But when I open my eyes what is there but the alarmed expressions of unfamiliar faces examining this sorry old Japanese, these others bracing him, patting him, holding him up from under his arms.

“Hey, pops, just breathe easy now,” a bearded man in a cap says. He looks down at me earnestly, nodding his head. “Guess it’s time to trade in the hookah, huh, chief?”

A very large woman with a kind, rosy-hued face shoots him a look and then takes my hand and leads us a few steps to a bench, asking if I want her to sit with me awhile. I can’t yet seem to breathe. I just shake my head weakly, unable to thank her, though part of me would like nothing better than to pass some long minutes leaning up against her ampleness, to rest upon the soft pad of her shoulder and arm and try to forget where I am. Soon my air comes back and with it my voice, and I thank her profusely for being patient and kind. It occurs to me, too, that this is probably my last chance to go back and tell Kari not to bother giving the manager any message, that it was my mistaken (and utterly sentimental and foolhardy) impression that this was the right store, or the right mall in the right town, and that I’m doddering and failing and should be completely ignored. But the samaritan woman now wants to walk me to my car, or drive me home if I can’t, her eyes saying I’m in no suitable condition. I assure her I’m all right, and I quickly get to my feet to indicate the extent of my semi-decent command. I’m faking, of course, and desperate to keep myself upright for the time it takes to thank her again and say I’m fine and wave goodbye as she resumes the path of her shopping day. And it is only when she is out of sight and I’ve regained myself and am retracing my steps to the store in a tentative gait in order, I must oddly hope, to persuade the assistant manager Kari of my senility and madness, that I realize how merciful and lucky it is to have avoided such a meeting with all those difficult, murky remembrances.

But how near, indeed, all this presently ends. For there, inside the scratched and hand-smudged Plexiglas windows of the Kiddie Kare, is Sunny Hata, once daughter of mine, whom I have not seen in almost thirteen years, bending down to kiss a young boy on the crown of his head. She looks almost exactly the same, except her figure is fuller and her hair pulled neatly back with a band. She’s still quite beautiful, in her way, perhaps more so than ever as Officer Como had said, now that she is a woman. She must be thirty-two. I think the boy must be hers, bestowed as he is with her high, narrowing eyes and her black hair, though it’s tightly curled, near-Afro, and her warm, nut-colored skin (though I wonder why he isn’t darker). She cups his ear and his cheek and before leaving gives him a quick, tiny wave of goodbye with her finger, which he tries to dismiss with a diffident shrug. But he can’t, and runs to her, not with open arms, but with his head lowered and his shoulder dipped, throwing a slight, willful block into her side. She roughly runs her hand through his hair, then scoots him off.