This Old Man

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  This Old Man

  Lois Ruby

  For

  Chava Beyla

  1

  “Get out of here. Go!” These were the first words I heard Old Man say, in that hummingbird voice of his, and Wing had to translate even that much for me. It was three months more before I ever saw Old Man’s face. He might as well have been a towering figment of Wing’s imagination, except that I heard him behind his hospital door, and I saw how Wing’s moods hung on the tone of that thin, shrill voice.

  He was Wing’s grandfather. Although he’d lived in San Francisco for nearly seventy years, I imagined him to be a young scholar in a silk dragon robe, wandering the courts of his ancestral home in China. The true facts were these: there was no longer a home in China, Old Man was ninety-two, and he didn’t do any wandering now. He lay in Chinese Hospital, issuing deathbed orders to my friend Wing.

  I was sixteen, one year older than Wing, but a lot more worldly. He hardly ever left Chinatown, whereas I, Greta Janssen, had had what you’d call a Questionable Childhood. My mother worked a job you wouldn’t brag about in anybody’s front room. Let’s put it this way. The term old man had a different meaning in my mother’s world. Hackey Barnes was her old man, and would be mine now, if my mother wasn’t such a big fan of Ann Landers, who always says, “Wake up and smell the coffee.”

  So my mother woke up and sent me to this place called Anza House. You’d call it a house for misfits; around here they call it a group home. The group consisted of four other girls—Sylvia, Jo, Darlene, and Pammy; a housemother named Elizabeth, who had a face shaped like a potato; and social workers and welfare workers who dropped in unannounced, especially at dinnertime. We weren’t bad kids. They told us we weren’t, every day. We were just kids from Intolerable Home Situations. The hope was that if we stayed here long enough, the situations would improve, or we would. The goal was to get us back home. Of course, I couldn’t go home, because of Hackey.

  It’s complicated to tell about Hackey, just as it’s complicated to tell about Old Man. But since they’re no doubt the most important men in my life, I’m trying to tie their stories together, like in that giant macramé thing Elizabeth has hanging in the living room here. It’s got feathers and shells and buttons, Christmas bells, jagged stones, Popsicle sticks, even shower rings, tied into it. It looks like the city dump, but Elizabeth says it chronicles her life. She says we’d all be smart to weave or macramé our lives. That theory comes right out of Art Therapy 603, which she’s taking at San Francisco State, for her Master’s.

  The point is, Old Man and Hackey are woven into one tapestry in my mind, though you’ll never in your life meet two men more different.

  Memories of Hackey invade me …

  Hackey Barnes makes a big show of knocking on our apartment door, then lets himself in with his key. My mother, Marla, greets him like he’s her daddy who’s shown up for the school play, smack in the middle of a workday.

  “Grab your coats, ladies, we’re going to North Beach for lunch.”

  “Where are we eating, Hackey?” My mother is putting on her make-up. Now that Hackey’s here, she doesn’t even need rouge.

  “Where else? To Tivoli’s, San Francisco’s finest cheap Italian restaurant.”

  “Who pays?” I’m the practical one in the family.

  “Now doesn’t sweet Hackey always pay?”

  “Silly question. Get something on,” my mother says.

  I go into our cluttered bedroom to find something almost clean to wear, smacking my lips. The first thing going into my stomach today will be sausage manicotti. Beats Cheerios and Pop Tarts, which is what other sixteen-year-old girls eat for breakfast, I hear. How lucky can a girl get? Every time Hackey blows in, a party begins. It also beats your standard father-comes-home-exhausted-at-five routine.

  Only I can’t find a clean blouse in the heap on the closet floor, and after the manicotti, what will we eat tomorrow?

  I guess I should describe myself. Let’s say I was never asked to be on the Teen Board of the Emporium department store. What does that mean? Well, only that sales clerks at the Emporium and student-body reps from my school weren’t particularly struck by my taste. Up until the time I came to Anza House, I wore my hair in pigtails wound into circles behind each ear. Hackey said I looked like a Little-House-on-the-Prairie waif. He said the businessmen dug the look. I thought I looked like my great-grandmother in Sweden. Of course, I’d never met the woman, who was better than dead already, but I was sure that old Swedish ladies wound their braids like cinnamon rolls. I just wasn’t too sure where Sweden was.

  Once I was at Anza House, it didn’t matter where Sweden was, or Hackey either, so I started wearing my hair loose, like a long brown saddlebag down my back. I was forever pulling it off my forehead and tucking it behind my ears. For effect I’d toss it like a mane in the school cafeteria, but I knew it wasn’t the stuff shampoo commercials are made of.

  At home we didn’t get the paper, but at Anza House we did, and I made a point of grabbing the Sunday paper before anyone else was up. I’d toss the Funnies here, Travel there. I didn’t care a bit if Real Estate and Want Ads were buried under the couch. They were just for lining birdcages anyway. What I liked best were the department store ads. I admired the tall, line-drawn women who modeled tweed suits and big-tie blouses in the I. Magnin ads. I was tall; I would look splendid in that flaring watermelon chiffon, fetching in that peignoir with the white fur collar, stunning in the brown leather knee pants and vest.

  If there was still no stirring upstairs, I’d even trot around in front of the parlor mirror, which had been cracked by some girl who’d had a fit one night, and I’d picture myself modeling jeans that had to be painted on my rear end, with coordinating sweaters so tight that if I let out a war whoop, they’d unravel into something a cat could play with. There I’d be, trying to look malnourished, with sunken cheeks and a concave chest, but the truth was, I was rather curvy. On the whole, I was pleased with what the shimmery parlor mirror reflected back at me. I’d kiss the mirror for its undying loyalty, leaving puppy tracks of hot breath on it.

  So much for the voluptuous Greta and her high fashion. Upstairs I’d slide into the limpest of denim overalls, which were white at the knees, and an Orange Julius T-shirt. I. Magnin and chiffon and white furry peignoirs were great, but I had this idea that if I looked like something out of the road-show production of Jesus Christ Superstar, the businessmen would leave me alone.

  I had to change my image a little once Old Man came along. Sure, Chinese women wear pants. When I was twelve Hackey bought be a pair of forest green Chinese lounging pajamas, with a quilted top and frog-loop fasteners. I though I was something straight out of the pages of The Good Earth. I stopped wearing shoes for a while, like the peasants.

  But carpenter’s overalls? I instinctively knew Old Man wouldn’t approve. Toward the end, when we were really getting to know one another, it seemed important that I look right. I already felt huge and ungainly, towering over his bed or wheelchair like a skyscraper next to a church. I so much wanted to be small and demure for him. I wanted to be … Chinese.

  I spent a lot of time talking to Mr. Saxe about Old Man. Mr. Saxe was my assigned social worker. I guess the county paid him; my mother sure didn’t. He was my Tuesday commitment. It took me no time at all to catch on to the jargon: commitment, negative reinforcement, positive self-image, alternative lifestyles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as the King of Siam says. I could dish it out as well as Mr. Saxe could, which taught him a good lesson. Pretty soon we were talkin
g in normal words. It put him at ease, I think.

  The other social workers would call for their clients in the waiting room, but Mr. Saxe always came out and greeted me with a smile, even though he had been studying my chart to be sure who I was. I’m thinking of our third meeting, that Tuesday in February. He was dressed neck to ankles in brown: khaki jeans, a tan shirt, and a cable knit sweater the color of a chocolate milk shake. A plaid tie was loosely knotted at his neck, and he pulled at it from time to time.

  “Anything interesting happen since last week, Greta?” He started the same way every week—the same tone, the same words, served up on a platter upon which I could unload every sweet agony of my life. But I never unloaded. I told him only what I thought he’d want to hear. I couldn’t believe he’d actually want to listen …

  Hackey’s paying bills at our place. He’s suddenly the respectable businessman, you see, with utility bills, taxes, credit cards. “How ya doing, babe?” he tosses behind him as I blow into the apartment.

  I’ve had a rotten day, in a fifth-grade sort of way, and I take the big risk; I tell him about it. “Mr. Weir, the principal? Well, he came down on me for crawling out the window to recess. Everyone else was doing it, I swear. But I’m the only one who had to stay in at lunch. It wasn’t fair, Hackey. Then I split my jeans climbing out the window, and I had to tie my sweat shirt around my waist, and all the sixth-grade boys kept lifting the sweat shirt to have a good look.” My face is hot with shame, but Hackey doesn’t notice. He says, “That’s great, babe. Get me a diet soda, will you? Never mind, make it a Lite beer.”

  “No, not much has happened since last week,” I replied.

  “Um-hmm. Are you having any luck with …” Mr. Saxe looked over my chart. “With Sylvia, or Jo?”

  “Not really. They’re a closed corporation. But the one who’s pregnant, Pammy? She’s been nice to me. She’s in her sixth month. She goes to the bathroom all the time, so she has to pass my room. We talk about a lot of things.”

  Mr. Saxe loved that sort of subtle hint. Now he leaned forward. “What about? Anything you’d care to share?”

  “Just school and things like house politics.” I made it sound like the House of Representatives. He couldn’t help but press for details; oh, but I held out. “We talk a lot about support hose. She takes support hose very seriously.”

  “You haven’t quite found your place in that house yet, have you?” His tie was positively choking him now, and he gave it another tug. Either it was tightening on its own, or his neck was expanding before my very eyes. I decided to keep a watch on that particular action.

  “Anything else going on, Greta? Have you talked to your mother?”

  “Oh, sure,” I replied gaily. “We have to talk quick before Hackey shows up. He could even be listening in. We don’t risk it too often.”

  “Don’t worry, Greta, he doesn’t know where you are. The more time passes, the safer you are, keep that in mind.”

  Time. Time was ticking away, and it would be another whole week before I could be with Mr. Saxe again. I leaned forward to pull up my sock, and to see if he smelled as he usually did. Oh, yes! Soapy, as though he washed his face between each appointment and otherwise practiced extreme personal hygiene.

  “Are you married, Mr. Saxe?” I wondered who did his laundry. He sure didn’t scrounge around the floor of the closet for the neatly pressed collar that rimmed the neck of his sweater.

  “I am, yes.”

  “What does your wife do?”

  “I’d like to talk about you, not Mrs. Saxe. Are things all right at school?” He was covering everything. He must have had a checklist of Significant Questions. Sometimes he’d jot down my answers, for no reason at all.

  “Fine at school. We’re dissecting fish eyes in biology. They bounce away under the scalpel if you don’t hold them just right. Eyes are interesting. I’m just crazy about eyes.” Mr. Saxe’s eyes were small black circles, like a poodle’s, but with thick, long lashes. He took his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose and quickly slipped them on again to read my chart. I remembered some crazy thing I’d read about Sophia Loren, who’s the most beautiful older woman in the world, I think. She wouldn’t take off her glasses for photographers because the glasses left little ridges on the bridge of her nose. I could handle that kind of imperfection, I think, if I had her face and body and hair. But what would I do with them? Then again, didn’t she go to jail for tax evasion, or something? Oh, well, nobody’s perfect.

  “Any nightmares?”

  “Just my roommate, Sylvia.”

  He smiled. “Night sweats?”

  “Nope.” I was having a wonderful time. How could forty-five minutes flit by so fast here, and drag so interminably in History of Western Civ?

  “Appetite okay?”

  “I eat like a beast of burden.”

  “Anything you want to tell me before the hour slips away?” He had a sweet habit of calling our forty-five minutes an hour.

  “No, nothing. I saw Old Man, sort of.”

  Mr. Saxe leaned forward. His Adam’s apple popped out over his tie. “Old Man?”

  “You remember, the old Chinese grandfather.”

  “Oh, that old man.” Mr. Saxe sighed.

  “I’m getting closer. Any day now I’m going into his room.”

  “Just go in. Knock and go in. Why not?”

  “I couldn’t,” I replied, quietly. “Not yet.”

  2

  Partly I couldn’t go into old man’s room, and partly Wing wouldn’t let me. Each evening about 5:00 we’d take a basket of dinner to him. The first time I caught the aroma of that dinner was on the cable car. I was on my way to Mr. Saxe, busy thinking about what I wouldn’t tell him. The cable car was packed solid, but I was lucky—I had a seat, such as it was. There I sat squeezed between a woman with Saks Fifth Avenue bags piled to her nose and a blond guy who wasn’t bright enough to figure out that it’s cold in San Francisco, and you don’t wear your shirt unbuttoned to your navel when you’re in an open cable car. People stood over us, holding on to leather straps that hung like nooses from the roof of the cable car. No one ever looked directly at anyone, and I probably wouldn’t even have noticed Wing (who wasn’t Wing to me yet), except that he carried this enormous basket that took up about as much room as a well-fed cocker spaniel. The standing-room-only crowd eyed its bulk with annoyance, but Wing never seemed to notice their glares.

  As we jerked up the hill, the crowd began to thin. Suddenly the basket was next to me on the wooden bench, and it was warm to the touch and smelled perfectly wonderful. Wing sat on the other side of it, with one hand hovering over the white linen napkins that covered mysterious lumps. I couldn’t resist:

  “What’s in the basket?”

  “Dinner,” Wing said simply.

  “Yours?”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if he were wondering why this strange girl in the overalls would care. “No, for my grandfather.” He said it just that way, and I got the idea that English wasn’t his first language. “He’s in the hospital. Chinese Hospital.”

  “You mean to tell me they don’t feed him in that hospital?” I asked.

  Wing sighed, but explained patiently. “They feed him spaghetti and meat loaf. He doesn’t eat that stuff. He’s got to have his Chinese dinner. It’s the least we can do.”

  The delicious scent drifted up to me and trailed off. I patted the napkins, to plump it up again. The steamy aroma worked its way into my head, unclogging long-ago memories of dinners at Imperial Gardens, one of Hackey’s favorite cheap Chinese restaurants. (I always ate with chopsticks, of course, which is something Hackey could never master, and my mother never tried.) For years I’d wanted to order the shrimp in lobster sauce, but it was $6.95, and Hackey always said no. Then a few weeks before I moved to Anza House, he had this burst of generosity, called up, I suspect, because he thought I’d be going to work for him soon. Anyway, he ordered shrimp in lobster sauce for me. It was fin
e, but two or three bites into it and I wished I’d ordered my old stand-by sweet and sour, which used to leave a pungent taste in my mouth till we got home. I can’t say it was a good taste, but it was one that stuck with me, which was better than nothing.

  So I asked Wing, “Is that sweet and sour?”

  “No, no,” he laughed. His laugh was like wind chimes, not what you’d expect from a guy so solidly built. I had a feeling that even after his voice changed, he’d still have a delicate laugh. “Old Man eats only simple foods. My mother makes him broth, a little steamed rice, some tender chicken cooked the Chinese way.”

  It was a disappointing menu. I said, “Why do you call your grandfather Old Man?”

  Wing shrugged. “Why do they call me Wing?”

  “Because that’s your name?”

  “Part of my name. I have a very long name. No one remembers my grandfather’s whole name, and he is older than anyone else in my family. It makes sense to call him Old Man.” Wing tucked the napkins tighter around the edges of the basket, as if he were wrapping a baby in a buggy.

  “Not that you asked, but my name is Greta.”

  He nodded yes, as if he’d already guessed, which of course was impossible, since we’d never seen each other before in our lives, and Greta wasn’t exactly your most common name among the Caucasian masses. I liked him. He was shy, but somehow also very sure of himself. I was the opposite—not shy, et cetera.

  “Listen, Wing, I ride the cable car about this time every day,” I lied. But it wasn’t really a lie. I could certainly arrange to ride the cable car every day; there wasn’t anything better to do, except fight with Sylvia and pilfer M & M’s from her care package.

  “Um-hmm. Me too.”

  “Well, so, I was thinking.” He waited. Ah hah! I had him on the hook. I decided to let him dangle a second, and for a refreshing change, I thought about what to say next. The thing is, the food smelled so good, and the linen napkin was so starchy white, and the whole operation, from stove to hospital bed, was so carefully arranged, that I wanted to see what happened at the end of this loving assembly line. I wanted to see Wing unpack the basket and spread everything out on the bed table. I wanted to see Old Man’s eyes light up as each dish was unwrapped. “So I was thinking that I might come with you to Chinese Hospital and help with your grandfather’s dinner.”