This Old Man Read online

  “Too obvious. A cocker spaniel would work just as well.”

  He agreed. “The young have always had a reluctant fascination with old age, as if knowing about aging could prevent it from happening to them. Does that ring true?”

  “Not yet,” I sighed.

  “Then consider this. From time to time we’ve talked about Mrs. Barnes.”

  “Hackey’s mother?” I suspected he was getting closer. Seeing me bristle with anticipation, he zeroed in on his new theory.

  “Mrs. Barnes was sort of a grandmother to you, a stable, older influence. I think you’ve missed her quite a lot in the two years she’s been gone. Old Man is a substitute for Mrs. Barnes, am I right?”

  Only partly. Something was still missing. Many mornings Jo would interpret my weird dreams, in her unique, colorful way. Usually I thought the interpretation told more about Jo herself than it did about me. Sometimes, though, she hit on something absolutely right, and it would be like a door opening at the back of a movie theater—a sudden flash of light that dimmed everything on the screen. There wasn’t that flash of light yet in Mr. Saxe’s interpretation, but he was getting closer and closer.

  He dealt me a crushing blow: “I can’t think of anything else, can you?”

  I shook my head, hurt and disappointed. Neither of us spoke; minutes flew by. It was there somewhere in the room, just out of reach, taunting us to grab it. What was it? What was it?

  Mr. Saxe said, “I’m sorry, Greta, I feel powerless to explain this any further.”

  I raised one eye. He had chosen that word, powerless, as though he’d seen it in my head and plucked it out. He sat back in his swivel chair with his hands pressed together against his lips, like an altar boy. He was waiting patiently.

  I tried to get my words together. They were crashing in my head, and I had to find a way to pull them out of the wreckage. “It has something—a lot—to do with power.”

  He nodded, as though he expected this.

  “Old Man has tons of power, you know?” Where was I going with this? It still made no sense, but at least there was a crack of light in the door. “I mean, he lies there helplessly in that bed and commands three generations with a word, a frown, a wave of his shaking hand.”

  “You envy that power?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Do you wish you were one of the people controlled by that power?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’m still wide of the mark, aren’t I?”

  “It’s that, I guess. Old Man has a real clear view of things. He doesn’t mess around with shades of truth or any kind of compromising. He knows that he’s absolutely right, and God help anyone who disagrees, because that person’s absolutely wrong. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be so sure?”

  “Wonderful, perhaps,” agreed Mr. Saxe, “but how could you get along with anyone, when you were always right and they were always wrong?”

  “Old Man gets along fantastically with his family.”

  Mr. Saxe raised his eyebrows. “Sure?”

  “Well, yeah. They adore him and can’t do enough for him. And you should see the way his face lights up when Wing comes into his room. And look at Wing. He’s spending his whole, entire summer babysitting for Old Man.”

  “Greta, this is only my observation, and you tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems like what’s going on is not so much pure adoration as it is a love-hate relationship between Old Man and his family.”

  I’d never heard of such a thing. Either you loved somebody, or you hated him. You couldn’t hold on to two opposite feelings at the same time.

  Mr. Saxe leaned toward me and looked me straight in the eye. “How do you feel about Hackey?”

  “I hate him.”

  “How do you feel about your mother?”

  “I love her.”

  “Do you ever love Hackey and hate your mother?”

  “No!”

  He leaned back again and closed his eyes. I had a sense of time racing away from me. We were still off the target, as he said, but so close, with so few minutes left. I couldn’t waste time mulling things over, so I blurted out what came to mind before I could stop myself. “I love Old Man and I hate Old Man.”

  “And Hackey?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Is Old Man like Hackey?”

  “Maybe a little. They both control people.”

  Very quietly, Mr. Saxe said, “Is Old Man like your mother? Think a minute. Does his utter helplessness remind you of your mother? After all, Greta, he may run his family like a tyrannical general, but he can’t even go to the bathroom without help. He’s at the mercy of his family, isn’t he?”

  “Aw, you don’t know this man at all. You should have seen his self-control when they were wheeling him out to the operating room. It was like he was hypnotized, like he’d crawled into himself to find a huge mountain of courage. I was standing as close to him as I am to you now, and I mean, there was not a clue that he was in pain. It’s the most amazing thing I ever saw.”

  “When they brought him back to the room, what was he like?”

  I said slowly, “Like a baby.”

  “That’s what appeals to you, isn’t it, that contrast of power and powerlessness. You see the same things in yourself. You love the power and hate the powerlessness. You, and your mother, and Hackey are all rolled into one. You’re all Old Man.”

  22

  I looked at Old Man differently after that. He didn’t scare me anymore, as though the earth were quaking under me. I could sit across the room from him and hear him talk to Wing, or not talk at all, and sometimes a blush of tenderness would come over me. If he did something that made me mad—such as push Wing away after he’d tucked in Old Man’s napkin bib—I felt cleanly mad. And if he did something that tickled me, I felt wholly good. The big difference was that he could no longer hurt me; in fact, I could hurt him far worse than he could hurt me. I was there every day, even on the weekends, and sometimes I’d go without Wing, just to watch Old Man sleep.

  On some of those visits I noticed a young woman whose exquisite Oriental features captivated me. I thought she must have been a model at least, maybe even a famous actress. She’d had some kind of surgery, though to see her walking up and down the hall, in her red quilted brocade gown and sandal slippers, you’d never guess there was a thing in the world wrong with her. She wore her hair pulled straight up to a swirl at the top of her head, showing off tiny, flat ears and high cheekbones with a smudge of brownish rouge on each. She wore pale jade studs in her ears and a choker of jade beads just above the mandarin collar of her gown. I found out from a nurse that her name was Paula Ching, and she’d been born in Singapore, but that was all I knew about her.

  Even with Old Man’s door closed, I heard the laughter that poured from her each afternoon. She had so many visitors, Chinese and Caucasian both. Every time I passed her room, I peeked in to see how many people were there. Her room was a jungle of people sitting on her bed and window ledge, and all over the room there were vases and pots bursting with every kind of bright flower.

  One day I was in the hall getting a drink when I saw a man sitting there beside her bed, with an ankle crossed over his knee, and they were having quite a laugh together. I stared at him in dread and fascination. It was Hackey. He spotted me in the hall and got up. A smile spread across his face.

  “Paula, look who’s here,” he said. “It’s my little girl, Greta.”

  I froze. The water I’d just swallowed felt heavy as stones in my stomach.

  “Come on in here,” he said, with just the right amount of that charm he was known for.

  I should have run. I should have run as far as San Jose, and caught a bus to Albuquerque, or anywhere. Instead I stepped into Paula Ching’s room.

  “Oh, her? I see the kid here all the time,” Ms. Ching said, laughing. “I didn’t know she was your girl. She’s a friend of that old man who’s croaking next door.”

  Hackey put his arm around me and pulled me bes
ide him. “Isn’t she a doll?”

  Ms. Ching made some sort of noncommittal remark. I gathered she didn’t think I was a doll.

  “How’s your mother doing, eh, babe?”

  “Okay, I guess,” I heard myself say, amazed that I’d found any voice at all.

  “Old Marla, she took off without a trace,” Hackey said. “Didn’t leave even a shoelace behind. A few bills, yeah, that,” he muttered.

  Ms. Ching said, “I don’t miss her, do you, Hack?”

  “Well, now, old Marla’s been with me a long time. I notice she’s gone.” He stared off into a corner of the room, as if he might spot her there.

  “She—” I cleared my throat. “She has a right to her own life.”

  Hackey’s charm dried up instantly. “I’ve been good to that woman. You know where you’d be, little girl, if I hadn’t come along just in time? Dead. Dead is where you’d be. She couldn’t of fed you on her own. You’d of been a scrawny, starving rat, if I hadn’t come by and pulled your mother out of the gutter. I gave her everything, you know that? Everything. I took her on trips. I bought her every winter coat she ever had on her back. I gave her a home, a family, a career.”

  Ms. Ching thought this was hilarious. “You sound like a regular social worker, Hackey darling. You’re just too good to us!”

  “Shut up, Paula.” His arm went around me again. He smelled of that familiar hair spray, the kind he always used to keep his hair combed across the bald part of his head. “So, what’ve you been up to, girl?”

  It was like the fifth grade again. Did he really want to know? Would he listen, or would he take out a key to clean his nails as soon as I started talking? “I’m doing okay in school. Biology’s my best subject.”

  “Biology, did you hear that, Paula? My kid’s a scientist. Maybe she’s going to be a doctor.”

  “Wow,” said Ms. Ching, without any enthusiasm.

  “What else you been doing?” Hackey asked.

  There wasn’t much more I could tell him, without revealing where I was living, where I went to school, or where I’d be working.

  “You got a good place to live?”

  “Fine.”

  “You living with your mother?”

  A trap. How should I answer? Yes gets me in trouble; no raises more questions. “Not exactly.”

  “Who with?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He shoved me out to arm’s length again. “What do you mean, can’t tell me? Aren’t I like a father to you, all these years, eh?”

  “No,” I said hoarsely.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re just like your old lady. No gratitude.”

  Ms. Ching swung her legs over her bed. I caught her wincing as her feet groped for her slippers. She stood between us then, like a referee at a wrestling match. “Lay off this girl, Hackey. What do you want with her? She’s not going to do you any good. You’ll never see a penny out of her. In fact, I’ll bet she’ll end up costing you. Who’s going to send her to medical school?”

  “I’d like to know since when you’re my financial advisor, tell me that.”

  Ms. Ching hung her arms around Hackey’s neck. Her hair stood taller than he did. “You, my darling, are definitely not father-type material, so what’s this brat going to do for you, huh? Look at her. She’s a plain girl, no style, no hair, no clothes. She stands like a basketball player, not a woman. Biology is her thing, right? Did you ever know anyone to turn a profit from biology?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was up to with her cold insults, and for a minute I had an overwhelming urge to sock her where her stitches were hidden, somewhere under that red gown.

  To my disgust, she was nibbling at Hackey’s neck, turning him by small degrees until his back was to me. I was out of his mind for a moment, as she worked him over. She kissed him with the kind of passion I’d seen only in R-rated movies. Her tongue swept his lips and darted into his mouth. He was in a frenzy, rubbing his hands up and down the back of her.

  Suddenly her eyes shot open and pinned me. Her head jerked ever so subtly. With a start I realized she was signaling me to get out.

  I got out, clear out to Jackson Street. Riding home on the bus, my heart finally began to slow down, and I consoled myself with the thought that Old Man would be going home in about a week, so I would never have to go back to Chinese Hospital.

  Two days later I made up my mind to go back. I phoned to make sure Ms. Ching was still there. She’d checked out, but they wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone.

  I cornered Jo, who was poring over the want ads. She’d be graduating in a few weeks and would have to find a job and a place to live.

  “Jo, you’ve got to help me.”

  “What have you ever done for me?”

  “Okay, I’ll owe you. I’ll help you move or bring you a hamburger at your new place. Just do me this one favor. Here’s what you’re going to do.” I explained the plan to her, without telling her just why I had to talk to Paula Ching.

  Jo waited an hour, then phoned Medical Records at Chinese Hospital. She gave an excellent rendering of a Chinese-American accent. “Good afternoon, this is Mrs. Fong from Chinese Social Services. A Ms. Paula Ching was referred to me for home care. Ching, Paula, yes.” She waited while Medical Records got Ms. Ching up on their computer.

  “This is terribly embarrassing,” Jo gushed into the phone, “but I’ve somehow copied down the wrong address for Ms. Ching, and now she’s waiting for me, but I don’t know just which house is hers. I’m here in a phone booth at the corner of—”

  I wished I’d picked up the extension to hear what Medical Records said.

  “Yes, of course I could call the office to get the correct address. Try to understand my predicament. This is my very first assignment with Chinese Social Services; I just graduated from Cal last month. Oh, dear me, I’d probably lose my job if they knew I’d made such a silly mistake on the very first address they ever gave me.”

  I could hardly keep from laughing. I limited myself to exaggerated gesturing.

  “Of course you can’t give out addresses, I understand fully. Perhaps I should talk to your supervisor? Oh, yes, well, you could give me Ms. Ching’s phone number, then, and I could call her to get the address directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

  This was going so well!

  “That’s very kind of you,” Jo said, scribbling down some numbers. “Tell me your name? Oh, no, no, I promise not to tell your supervisor. Would I do that to you? You’ve practically saved my job, my whole yellow neck.”

  “Stop!” I whispered, waving my arms. Jo was definitely getting carried away and would blow the whole thing in a second.

  “And may the goddess of the monsoons rain havoc—” I yanked the receiver out of her hand and slammed it down, and both of us burst into wild laughter.

  I didn’t phone Paula Ching until Jo was out of the house. I was nervous dialing. What if she was working? What if Hackey was there with her? Once I heard her voice, though, I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Ms. Ching, this is Greta.”

  “I don’t know anybody by that name,” she replied. Although she spoke in a casual American fashion, there was the hint of an accent in the way she clipped the end of her words.

  “From the hospital,” I explained.

  “Oh, you. We pulled a fast one on that Hackey, didn’t we!”

  “Well, I was wondering—” There was so much I wanted to ask her. I wanted to know if she actually worked for Hackey and how well she knew my mother. “What I was wondering was, why did you do it?”

  “To Hackey? Oh, just to see if I could. I was afraid that something had changed when those doctors cut into my gut. But I’m the same old Paula Ching. And he’s the same old Hackey Barnes. It’s so easy to outsmart that man, haven’t you figured that out?”

  “I didn’t know that, no.”

  “He’s got some very big weaknesses, like all men who think they wow the ladies.”

  “Ms. Ching, you know m
y mother, don’t you?” My mouth was so dry that my throat rubbed against itself. I was afraid to swallow, afraid I’d miss a word.

  “Oh, slightly,” she replied. “Same union, you could say.”

  “Do you think she could have outsmarted Hackey, the way you do?”

  “Well, baby, it’s a little different with your mother.” I pictured Ms. Ching looking at her impeccable manicure while she spoke, or maybe she was sifting through some heirloom jewelry, with the phone nuzzled up to her ear. “Your mother had a little problem with Hackey that I’m never going to have.”

  I think I was supposed to press her for details, but I waited out the embarrassing silence instead. I figured that was the only way I could be in control of this conversation.

  “You see, your mother’s hung up on Hackey. Love, you got it?”

  “Don’t you love Hackey, too?”

  A great gust of laughter hit me, the same one I’d heard from her hospital room time after time. She cleared her throat. “Let’s just say no,” she finally stammered.

  Then how could she kiss him with such passion and tolerate his hands on her? Even as I asked myself the question, the full realization of my mother’s life came back to me once again. I chewed my knuckles, grateful that Paula Ching couldn’t see me.

  “You should hear how that man brags about you. He’s always telling me how smart you are. Well, you can keep two or three steps ahead of that old fool, baby.”

  “I really don’t understand you, Ms. Ching. You and Hackey seem like such good friends, the way you laugh together and tease each other and kiss and all.”

  “Hackey and I are good friends. He’s lots of fun, and he’s been great for me professionally. I was new in town, and he set me up in business. Now I’m one of his most profitable investments. But I’m way ahead of him upstairs, where it counts.”

  I had something else I wanted to ask her; it seemed so silly now, but so imperative.

  “So, uh, is that it, Gertie?”

  “One more thing. Do you speak Chinese?”

  “What do you think, I wear this face for decoration? Of course I speak Chinese. My English isn’t bad for a Chinese girl, don’t you think?”