Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

“He’s having lunch over there, so he’ll be a few minutes. Do you want something to drink?” Sunny says to me, poking her head around the kitchen opening. “I have soda and tea. You probably would like tea.”

“If there is time.”

“There really isn’t,” she answers, but I hear her running the water in the kettle anyway. She calls, “I don’t have green tea. Just black, and herbal.”

“I will have the herbal, thank you.”

“I thought you never had anything but green,” she says, bringing out a saucer with three butter cookies. I want to say thank you but don’t because I’m afraid of being ardent and scaring her off. But this is her place and she seems only slightly disturbed by my presence, the way she might be if a small, tame bird had somehow flown in.

“May I ask what you’re interviewing for?” I say, taking a cookie. “Is it in retail again?”

“It is,” she answers, sitting forward on the armchair. “It’s to be a manager. It’s a chain store for younger girls, teens and preteens. It’s not exactly what I know, but I guess selling clothes is selling clothes.”

“You’ll have to move out to Connecticut?”

“No, they’re just interviewing there. The chain is actually out in the west, in California and Arizona and Texas. They’re expanding, and they need experienced managers, which I guess they don’t have enough of out there. I haven’t said anything to Thomas, nothing at all, so I’ll ask you not to mention it.”

“I promise to be quiet about it.”

“I’m sure you will,” she says, her old Sunny-soundingness almost sneaking back into her voice. But she catches herself, or I think she does, and she reaches over and takes a cookie, biting just the edge of it, a tiny nibble. It’s a nothing act but I’m taken back instantly, many years, when I would offer her those popular vanilla wafers and she would refuse, not because she didn’t want them but for fear I would think her greedy and selfish for taking more than one, this orphan girl. I would almost have to scold her to make her understand it was all right.

“I know Thomas is going to want to see you more after today. He asked about you a couple days ago. Out of the blue he said he wanted to go to ‘Franklin’s house.’ Did you tell him you had a pool?”

“I may have accidentally mentioned it. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want him to go over there. I’m firm on this. He’ll see the house and the yard and pool and he’ll go crazy. He’s difficult enough, and if he thinks he can go over there anytime he wants to play and swim, I don’t know what I’m going to do. He needs to work on his reading this year. He’s going to be left back this fall, you know. The school said he has to repeat the first grade, unless he passes a test next month.”

“Is that right?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I’ve been trying to read with him, but he’s not really picking it up very well, and I’ve had to leave him with the sitter while I’m finishing up at Lerner’s and interviewing, and we haven’t had much time for it. The sitter says she reads with him, but I’m pretty sure she does nothing but watch TV and call her boyfriend.”

“Why don’t I help?” I say to her. “It’s a good situation for everyone. I’m home all day, or just doing errands, and though I can’t promise what kind of reading teacher I’ll be, I’d be happy to try my best with him. I certainly would be attentive, and I’ll only allow him to play and swim as much as you say. I’m free of charge, too, if that’s all right with you. It’s perfect, as far as I can see.”

“It’s not exactly perfect, you know….”

“But why? You can focus completely on your job search, and Thomas will have constant attention. I’ll come over here, if you don’t want him to come to the house. Or if you’re uncomfortable with that, we’ll go somewhere different each day. The zoo or museum, or the water park. I’ll take him to Jones Beach. You can think of me as his personal day-camp counselor. I’ll make sure he eats well, too, and healthfully.”

“I doubt you’ll be able to do that.”

“But I promise I’ll try. Please don’t invite more difficulty on yourself. I can help, and I ought to help, and I very much wish to. And there would be nothing in this that would be detrimental to Thomas, except that I might spoil him a little. But who shouldn’t do with a little spoiling, especially a good boy like him? I wish I could have done better by you when you were young, but I was just opening the store then and circumstances were spare—”

“Please—”

“I’m not trying to excuse myself,” I tell her firmly, enough that it’s a surprise to me. “I’m not so naive as to be ignorant of how you must feel about things. You have not been anything but generous. But I know I’m on tenuous ground, and I accept it.”

“Do you?” she says, though not unkindly. And I note, too, that there is a certain give in her voice, a new gentility, and whether it’s from the passage of time or a heart of pity or just the automatic lilt of our line of work, I don’t care, I don’t give “two darns,” as Mary Burns sometimes allowed herself to say, I don’t want to understand anything but that I am here and she is here, and that there is a glimmer of gentle days ahead.

She goes on, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that you do. I don’t want to fight today. Or really anymore. There’s just too much to do. I’m grateful for whatever you want to give to Thomas or do with him. I’m not going to be stupid about it. Not about him. But I won’t have you forget or conveniently put away how you felt back then.”

“I simply didn’t want you to go off with that man and bring ruin on your life. You were too young.”

“Of course I shouldn’t have gone with him,” she says with finality. “But I really don’t want to talk about him now.”

“No, Sunny, we shouldn’t. Why don’t we speak about Thomas. It’s Thomas we are concerned with, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, what shall we do for him?” I say, thinking and meaning for the far future, his schooling and training and vocation, what shall remain after I am gone.

But Sunny doesn’t answer, and I realize how much she is restraining herself, though for what reason I do not know. It is as if she has “gotten religion,” as they say, found some secret store of forgiveness in herself, even as I have long been depleting it. Or perhaps it is truer that forgiveness is inexhaustible, that it is miraculously depthless and renewing as long as you so wish it, no matter what has become of it, no matter how residual and meager.

“It’s funny to think now,” she finally says, “that if I had had that first baby, I probably wouldn’t have had Thomas. Or not exactly Thomas. Which is terrible to imagine.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But I didn’t wish for it. Tell me now. You had already paid him, hadn’t you? Doctor Anastasia. Before I even agreed.”

“I did nothing of the kind,” I answer, sitting back a bit into the soft sofa. “I merely discussed possibilities with him, about options for you.”

“It was only just one option.”

I don’t answer, because again for me there is nothing to say.

“I didn’t really blame you, actually,” Sunny tells me. “I certainly don’t now. It was my decision to do and live with. Most any parent would have wanted the same. I was afraid, and you were so certain as usual how my life should be.”

“You seemed to be sure yourself.”

“For you I was,” she answers, gazing right at me. “I wanted that baby more just to be against you. And I’m not happy that in some way, maybe, even though it was years later, that Thomas came from my spiting you. But often I think, where would I be now if I didn’t have Thomas? He’s always been a difficult kid but every day I think he’s saving me, too. I had him maybe for the wrong reasons and now he saves me. Over and over, a thousand times.”