Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

At that point my conjuring would cease, and I would close up the store, go home as I did every evening, to a long swim and dinner in a bowl and a pot or two of tea. Of course it doesn’t require a psychologist or guru to figure the significance of my fantasy, and I don’t recount it here to suggest anything but the most simple truth. I felt guilt about Sunny, no doubt. But I know I was also truly concerned for her, and taken hold of by the worry a real parent must have, the kind that reaches far down into the gut, that wakes you from sleep and constantly breaks your thoughts and keeps you from sitting still. As much as I had hoped to, I never quite felt that way when Sunny was living with me, not when she fell down once and chipped several permanent teeth, not when she went off to sleep-away camp for the first time, not even when I let her drive alone to the city in my newly delivered Mercedes-Benz coupe. I was uneasy at those times, quite thoroughly concerned, but never gravely ill-feeling, never infected to the marrow as I assumed a real father would or should be, lying there in bed inconsolably perturbed, unable to think, to read, even to drink calmly from a glass. And though I never thought I would desire such a set of sensations for myself, in the days and weeks after she was gone from my house, in those cycles that seemed to pass like fast-turning epochs, as if I were some inconsequential rock hurtling past the warm blue sphere of human time and history, yet unseen and unknown, I finally wished I might remain in the sickness I was developing when I was sure Sunny was about to be a mother. It was not pleasant at all but somehow distinctly worthy and inhabitable, a nightly pool of deep worry and remorse and unexpected comfort that I could wade into and do my long-distance crawl, for once not forgetting who I was, for once not blacking myself out.

And yet, eventually, this feeling passed as well. Routine triumphs over everything, as it always does with men like me, and I returned to the living of Bedley Run and its vested, untouchable ways. In truth I was beginning to understand my position after so many years, my popularity and high reputation, one that someone like Liv Crawford would say was “triple mint,” or “among the finest in town.” Because that in fact is what it was, and has been, and no doubt will be until I die. It was during Sunny’s absence that I finally awoke to this notion, that I was perfectly suited to my town, that I had steadily become, oddly and unofficially, its primary citizen, the living, breathing expression of what people here wanted — privacy and decorum and the quietude of hard-earned privilege. And so much so that my well-known troubles with Sunny were not a strike against me or a sign of personal failure but a kind of rallying point, silently demonstrated by somebody’s solemn, shut-eye nod at the lakeside gazebo on the Fourth of July, or a lingering handshake out front on Church Street, or a light, friendly honk from a passing car I knew.

So why am I not fine now? I ought to be, for I’m unexpectedly driving over to pick up Thomas and bring him to the Bedley Run pool club, as the one in Ebbington has been derelict for several summers now, fenced shut and emptied of water. Sunny has relented on never letting him step back into my town, his eyes begging for a day in the water. The Bedley pool is actually a small man-made lake, chlorinated and filtered, and I’ve told Thomas I’ll teach him how to swim, a lesson a week until the season ends, and then indoors at the racquet club if he wishes to continue. I believe he likes me. He calls me Franklin now, and not Mr. Hata, after he asked what my full name was. I don’t mind at all. “Franklin,” he says, as though we have been associates for many years, “I think we ought to stop for a snack now.” He seems satisfied that I am a “family friend,” not questioning me any further.

One day after that first shopping trip, I took him down to the city, to the natural history museum, where we toured the longtime exhibits, and then a new one on the development of mammalian sea life, in particular the evolution of dolphins and whales. All he could talk about after I read the accompanying plaques to him was how he would like to be a fish but breathe air, so that he would be jumping out of the water all day and all night. He was focused on the joys of leaping, of course, but I was thinking of the endless necessity of having to leave one’s element for another and so depend on the resource of another realm, that no matter how automatic and natural it was or became there should always be the pressure of survival, this pointed, mortal condition of being.

I didn’t speak of this to Thomas, for obvious reasons. I didn’t tell him, either, of my other notions of the pastime, that in fact some of us longtime swimmers often wish for ourselves that submerged, majestic flight, feel the near-desire to open one’s mouth and relax and let the waters rush in deep, hoping that something magical might happen. Once, I will admit, during the very time I was thinking often of Sunny and her pregnancy, I attempted this, or let it occur, just a tiny inhalation, just a little taking in, and though my mind was clear and placid, every cell in my body at once objected, my limbs practically jetting me out of the water and onto the slate surround of the pool, where I lay on my side coughing violently. Did I wish to do away with myself? Did I truly wish to die? Or was I hoping for a transmogrification, complete and however strange, a wholly different heart and shell and mien that would deliver me over to a brand-new life, fresh and hopeful and unfettered?

And here, perhaps, it is. I turn up the steep drive to The Conifers, a rental condominium in what might be described as the “better” section of Ebbington, a string of modern attached units set in a sparse stand of evergreens, each with a carport in front and a private balcony in back, overlooking the humble town below. There is a guardhouse halfway up, though it’s locked shut and unmanned, and the only thing preventing me from going through unchecked is an old speed bump worn down to a nub. This is the sort of place that in Bedley Run would have a clubhouse for the tenants with a large-screen television, a wet bar, an exercise room and sauna, perhaps even a pool and hot tub and tennis courts, where Liv Crawford or Renny Banerjee might privately and conveniently reside until they settled down and began a family. But here at The Conifers you see tricycles and candy wrappers strewn outside; you see perennials and shrubs aplenty but all badly in need of sprucing and pruning; you see the domestic cars and economy imports; you see the subtle and varied indications of both decency and decline. By living here it’s clear these folk are aspiring to a more privileged life, though perhaps it’s true that most will never see better than the West Hill of Ebbington, which by all rights should be as good as any place in what really matters, just as righteous, just as valued, but isn’t all the same.

When the door opens it’s Sunny, dressed in a smart-looking dark business suit and white blouse, fastening a string of pearls about her throat. The reason I have the chance to take Thomas swimming is that she has an interview in Stamford and two hours earlier was called by her sitter, who canceled for the afternoon. But I’m late when I needn’t have been, and I apologize.

“I do appreciate this,” she says tightly to me, not having to add that I am indeed her last resort. “I had to send him to the neighbors so I could get dressed in peace. He’s absolutely crazy that he’s going swimming. I’ll call over there now.”

While she rings for him I sit on the sofa in the living room, where she also has a comfortable armchair, and cocktail table, and mini-stereo on the mantel of the gas fireplace. There’s a small dining area next to the open kitchen with a pine table and four chairs, and then two bedrooms down the short hall in the back, the whole place perhaps just a bit larger than the family room of my house. But she’s painted the walls a creamy, warm peach and the trim a glossy white. There’s a nice rug here and under the dining table, and the kitchen is papered with Thomas’s handiwork, the career of his finger paintings and scrawls. A soft, sweet smell of lavender lingers from the bowls of dried flowers, and all throughout there is a sparkle to the surfaces, a steady gleam that goes straight to this old man’s heart, even as he knows it’s not in the least for him.