This Old Man Page 7

  Hackey places a gold box of flowers—roses for me, it turns out—under the seat in front of him. The PTA mothers stare at him. Hackey commands attention when he comes into a room. He’s not really handsome, and his clothes are cheap and ordinary. But there’s a self-confidence about him, in the way he hitches up his pants and jingles nickels in his pockets, in the way he refuses to wear a tie, even when all the other men are wearing them. His shirt is unbuttoned one button too many, and he lets his collar stand up around his ears. You notice Hackey. “I have a way with the ladies,” he always says, with his dark eyes laughing at me. When Hackey tells a joke, it usually has a double meaning.

  The graduation begins. I’m called up to get my award as Captain of the Traffic Patrol. When I stand up, my first bra rides up, and I wish I’d waited until junior high to start wearing it. Everyone applauds for the mornings I’ve been out there in the fog and rain, in my yellow slicker, guiding the little kids safely toward school. My parents are asked to stand. Hackey helps my mother up and nods his head in a bit of a bow. The only thing missing is a spotlight.

  Later Mr. Weil, the principal, finds my mother and Hackey to tell them what a splendid captain I’ve been. Hackey says, “We’re so proud of our little girl, aren’t we, Marla?” And Mr. Weir goes off, possibly wondering how it is that he’s never before met Greta Janssen’s charming father, who doesn’t even wear a tie to graduation. How could he know that Hackey is not my father?

  At home Hackey tells me if I drop two aspirins in the vase, the roses will last for a week. I leave the flowers in the vase even after they’re black and powdery. It seems important. At least he can’t take them away from me anymore and give them to someone else.

  Hackey. Why were all my memories of him so bitter? I thought he must be like Old Man—taking, taking, never giving, or if he gives, it’s only to get something else. Or maybe I was wrong about Old Man. Though Old Man gave nothing, Wing seemed to get so much from him. And as for me, just standing outside his door and listening to his voice squeak with age did something I couldn’t explain.

  Why should I let Hackey keep me away from that?

  “Wing, do you know what I’m going to do?” We were passing the housing project at Stockton Street, where someone had written on the wall ROGER LOCK IS FAG OF THE YEAR.

  Wing pointed to the message. “What do you think he had to do to get the award? The competition must have been pretty stiff.” He blushed. I tried to get him off the hook, though I did like his blushing.

  “I wonder if the award’s for quantity or quality?”

  “Who knows? Maybe not even Roger Lock. So, what have you decided to do?”

  “Well, I have this Chinese English teacher, Mrs. Wong. That’s a genuine Chinese name, isn’t it? What I’m thinking of doing is asking her to translate the Lu Yun poem for me, so Old Man can see it the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “He’d like that. I guess you’ve forgiven him, then?”

  “Oh, sort of.”

  “What did it?”

  “Hackey Barnes.”

  “What are hacky barns?”

  “Who, not what. He’s an old friend,” I said sourly.

  Wing didn’t ask anything else, which told me that Hackey had lied about his name when he’d called Wing. I knew—but it was too late—that I should never have mentioned his name.

  9

  Through some miracle of modern technology, Sylvia had a date. The lucky boy was from her Overeaters Anonymous group, but he hadn’t been going long enough for it to make a real difference in his life. They were going to the Lincoln High School Junior Formal, and out to dinner first. Sylvia was beside herself.

  “I just can’t decide. Should I order a real dinner, from soup to dessert? Maybe he’d be insulted if I didn’t order a real dinner.”

  “Oh, Sylvia,” Jo moaned. “Have a little respect for the guy. He’s into Fats Anonymous, right? He gets weighed every week. He’s humiliated when he doesn’t lose. Do him a big favor and order a lean hamburger patty and dry toast, with a side order of skim cottage cheese.”

  At this point Sylvia’s chest was thrust out and her back arched so I could zip her into her dress. “Then should I eat before I go?” she asked plaintively.

  Jo shook her head in disapproval. “Your zipper would burst. Your guts would spill.”

  “But what if my stomach growls while we’re alone in the car? I’ll just die of embarrassment.”

  “Bradley will never hear it,” I told her. “His own will be growling ferociously. He’s got to keep that cummerbund hooked, you know.” I’d seen pictures in Seventeen of dashing seniors in blue tuxedos with frilly shirts and navy, velveteen cummerbunds. Bradley would look—different.

  “Maybe we should just skip dinner,” Sylvia said morosely. She wanted to be talked out of that foolish scheme, no doubt.

  “Hey, why don’t you just go down to Yacht Harbor and park first? A little heavy petting kills the old appetite, at least for food.”

  “Oh, Jo, really!”

  I’d gotten the dress zipped, and while the green satin billowed generously from the empire waist to the floor, it was dangerously snug in the bust. Sylvia reminded me of the hearty Dutch girls I pictured clumping around in wooden shoes all over Holland.

  Jo studied Sylvia with an artist’s squint. “Don’t you have another bra that gives you more of the mashed-potato look? You look like Jane Russell in one of her ‘full-figured’ ads.”

  “I do?” Sylvia asked innocently.

  “No, no, I’ve got it. You look like a wet nurse. Can’t you tone it down?” Jo asked.

  “I happen to know that Bradley Corning is a chest man,” Sylvia retorted. “Don’t you worry.”

  The dress had a high mandarin collar, and when Sylvia sat down, her bust line came up to her chin. Bradley Corning would be pleased.

  Jo pretended to sniffle. “I feel like the mother of the bride, don’t you, Greta?”

  Sylvia beamed at us both, as if we were her parents. It was that awkward time when the girl is ready, and the boy hasn’t come yet, and she wants to watch out the window for the first sight of him but doesn’t dare because what if he sees her watching? So Jo and I were the lookouts. He arrived in what had to be his father’s royal blue TransAm. Bradley Corning, the Chest Man, slid out of the driver’s seat, stuffed into a gray tuxedo and a shirt with lots of ruffles. He made Sylvia look dainty.

  Eight hours later she came home from the formal desperately in love. The two had made a lovers’ pact: they’d lose a combined fifty pounds between them before the Senior Formal in thirteen months. For Sylvia, it was the start of something small.

  I was happy for her, but sad, too. I wondered if I’d ever meet anyone important enough to lose twenty-five pounds for. And something else. I hadn’t exactly seen romantic ties in my life. Randy, Pammy’s boyfriend, seemed so desperate and nervous, as though his main goal in their relationship was to keep Pammy alive until the baby was born. What happened in my mother’s apartment was certainly short on romance. Even her relationship with Hackey, in the good days, wasn’t too tender. I tried to imagine my mother girlishly dressing for a date and fussing with her hair and wondering where to pin the corsage.

  She was only seventeen when Hackey found her. She was already a mother. He gave her a one-room apartment, bought her a crib, and gave her work. Where was I during those days and nights? Did I cry when the clients were there? A neighbor, yes, I must have stayed with a neighbor.

  When I was three I remember we moved to a one-bedroom apartment. I spent a lot of time alone. I was a whiz at puzzles. I taught myself to read by watching TV commercials. McDonald’s was the first word I learned. From there it was a simple jump to Pizza Hut, Burger King, Zim’s Hamburgers, and the Hippo. I branched out from food to Savings and Loans. First Federal, North American S & L.

  Hackey lived with us from time to time, when nothing better was going on for him. He took me to the park while my mother was working sometimes, or to Fleishhacker Zoo or
to the Embarcadero. Occasionally he met some of his other ladies on these trips. I thought he had half a dozen sisters.

  So when did my mother go to proms? Maybe in high school, before she was sixteen and pregnant. But I doubted that. If she’d had any romances in her life, would she have hung around with Hackey Barnes?

  There were times when my mother and Hackey and I were a family. When I was eight we took a trip to Los Angeles in Hackey’s old Chevy. He’d sent away for tickets for us to watch him be a contestant on a TV game show. We sat in the audience cheering for him, like the other wives and kids did. Oh, Hackey had the audience under his spell. Even the host was half in love with him. He sailed through three rounds of questions undoing his opponents with his boyish self-assurance. Finally, the payoff. He had to pick the prize behind one of three doors. One of them was a trick prize, a giant tease to punish the contestants for their greed. But behind one door was a fantastic home communication set, with a stereo, a tape recorder, a twenty-five-inch color TV, two AM-FM radios, a portable tape deck, a complete wardrobe of fashionable telephones for the entire home (where would we put them all, in our three-room apartment?), an intercom system, including a doorbell that played “Mi Casa, Su Casa,” and a Captain America Walkie-Talkie “for the children from seven to seventy.” I had my heart set on the walkie-talkie. I could already imagine the voice of my neighbor, Sarabeth, on the other end of the forty-foot wire: “Can you hear me, Greta? I can’t believe it, can you? I’m in the kitchen, and I can hear you clear as a bell.” We could run the wire under our apartment doors and talk from one apartment to the other in the dark, even when my mother was working.

  But Hackey picked the other door, the one with the new Buick Skylark, and it was all over. I watched the taped show on TV three weeks later, hoping the outcome might be different. But no, it was the Skylark. I kept waiting for the day to come when Hackey would drive up in that ugly car instead of his comfortable old Chevy.

  Hackey always surprised us, though. He turned down the car so he wouldn’t have to pay income tax on it. As he explained, he had a cash-flow crisis, and besides that, he didn’t always declare his income absolutely accurately. My mother said you couldn’t expect a man like Hackey to be such a stickler for details.

  Much later I wondered why he’d risk a mess with the Internal Revenue Service by going on TV and winning. Then I realized that Hackey enjoyed risks. Maybe he should have been a Hollywood stunt man.

  I was telling Wing about Sylvia and her Chest Man on the cable car the following Monday, but Wing was clearly more interested in some news of his own.

  “My cousin Chen comes Saturday from Hong Kong.”

  And who was Cousin Chen? Chen was actually Old Man’s first great-grandson, the grandchild of his oldest daughter in China, and therefore, Wing quickly explained, Chen was not first in Old Man’s heart. Besides that, Old Man had never met Chen.

  My next question was, why was Chen coming?

  Wing shrugged, brushing off the question.

  “And where’s Chen going to stay?”

  “With us, of course.”

  “But where? Four Chinese brothers in one bed?” I teased.

  “He will sleep in Old Man’s bed.”

  Then I knew just how important the visit of Old Man’s great-grandson truly was, and how close Old Man was to dying.

  “What do you think of Cousin Chen?”

  “I haven’t met him either.” Wing busied himself reading an ad on the wall of the cable car, something he’d read at least a hundred times before. Chivas Regal, I think it was. “I’m sure I won’t like him.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll like him either.” That seemed to surprise Wing.”

  “And what have you got against the poor guy?”

  I wasn’t sure. I tossed off a joke. “I think he’s going to be Roger Lock’s main competition for the award next year.” What did I have against him? Something told me Wing’s treasured position would be threatened by this stranger. Then, I wasn’t sure Chen would be good for Old Man. How possessive I’d become! I, who never used to hang on to anything or anyone, was suddenly fiercely possessive about Pammy’s baby, Wing, Old Man, Sylvia. I wondered how I’d decayed to such a state, so quickly.

  “He doesn’t speak a word of English,” Wing said, smirking. “He’s a Chinabug, fresh off the boat. I’ll bet he doesn’t even read. What will he talk to Old Man about?”

  Wing’s stop was close, and I wanted to get to the end of this curious conversation. We headed toward the exit. “I guess they’ll talk about the old country.”

  “Hmph, old country! Chen has lived in Hong Kong most of his life. He’s never been to Sunkiang. He’s probably a wild street kid, some thief or doper.”

  We jumped off the cable car and started up the hill toward the hospital, as naturally as ever, until I stopped suddenly and realized I wasn’t supposed to go back to the hospital.

  “I thought you’d changed your mind about all that,” Wing said mournfully.

  “I’m not going back—just yet. But when the poem’s done, I think that will be a sign that it’s time for me to go back. I’ll take it up to his door myself.”

  “What about that man?” Wing asked.

  I pretended that there was no threat, that my knees didn’t give out each time I thought I saw him on the streets of Chinatown. “Oh, him. Forget him.”

  Wing nodded, looking so serious. I drilled little dimples in his cheeks and turned back toward the cable car.

  “Tomorrow you meet the Chinabug,” he called out to me, then brightened a bit. “Prepare for doom!”

  10

  The United States had had a solid week to recover from Second Cousin Chen, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He came with a giant chip on his shoulder, just begging to be knocked off. His hair was down to his shoulders, and straight bangs framed his face. He wore jeans so tight that if he had put so much as a toothpick in his pocket, the jeans would have split open in half a dozen spots. I guess he knew that, because he kept the toothpick on his lips a lot of the time, squinching up his face to chew it inside his mouth. His eyes were small and jittery, as though they were accustomed to watching the streets. His hair, his face, his clothes were typical Chinatown, but something in his eyes, in the sneaky way he walked on his toes through the crowded streets, shouted the truth: Chinabug, F.O.B. A regular American Chinese would have nothing to do with a guy Fresh Off the Boat. Even if he came by plane, he was F.O.B.

  Chen hung around on the street corners, drifting through the afternoons and nights. The old men of Chinatown drifted also, but they sat on benches in Portsmouth Square and played Chinese chess and threw crumbs to the pigeons. The young men from Hong Kong, like Chen, had higher aspirations. They wanted cars, clothes, women, and money. Chen, we discovered, had no trouble meeting his needs: he was a talented pickpocket.

  “What will I do?” Wing wailed to me one day on the cable car. “He’ll disgrace my whole family. And if Old Man finds out that his great-grandson from the old country is no better than a street thief, he’ll turn his face to the wall in shame and we won’t get another word out of him.”

  “We’ll find him a job,” I said. “After all, I got one. If I could, anyone can.”

  We sized up Chinatown from a different point of view: the lean side of the job market. What could an eighteen-year-old, unskilled, unmotivated, uncooperative, unscrupulous kid, fresh off the boat, who barely spoke any English, what could he hope to get in a place where there were already too many people and too few jobs? But I wasn’t one to let unemployment statistics stand in my way. We took our time looking in windows: which stores had people waiting in line to pay? which restaurants had full tables, with customers tapping their fingers impatiently? which laundries had bundles tied up and piled to the ceiling, to be taken to the back room for washing?

  Chen trotted behind us, as if he owned the street, deliberately bumping people when he slid sideways past them in the crowd. Wing turned back to see what Chen was up to. Chen hel
d up a thick leather wallet and flashed us a crooked-toothed smile. We waited for him in a doorway.

  “What did you do that for?” Wing hissed, for my benefit, then repeated it in Chinese.

  Chen gave us a defiant smile and said something that Wing translated for me: “Because it’s so easy to take a wallet from the White Ghosts.” Of course, he didn’t discriminate. He also robbed Chinese men and women and filled a pouch inside his sweat shirt with wallets and coin purses and an occasional gold pen.

  Wing told me, in frantic, whispered words, that there had been an ugly argument the night before in his apartment. His mother had kept hushing them, for the neighbors’ benefit. Still, his father yelled. Chen should have been over the effects of the long trip, Mr. Kwang argued. But no, he slept most of the day and roamed the streets late into the night.

  Wing was silent; he never argued with his father. Nor could he think of anything to say to defend Chen. Chen would have to go to school, Mr. Kwang shouted, but how, with no English? Or else he had to take an English class. Or find a job. Otherwise, when his visa ran out, he’d be sent back to Hong Kong.

  “Let him go back to China,” Wing had said quietly. He thought of the wallets Chen hid under Old Man’s thin mattress, the fine leather lady’s handbag that happened to have a small pouch of jewelry in it. What had Chen done to get it away from the woman? Wing’s parents were staring at him, his mother’s eyes darting from his to his father. They were ignoring his English, so in their language he said: “Let them send him back.”

  “Don’t say that again,” his father said, and he reached out and slapped Wing for the first time in at least three years. His mother’s eyes quickly jumped to her sewing; she dared not look at Wing. When he told me about this, I could see the shame still stinging his face: to be slapped at his age, in front of his mother, and with his brothers and sisters watching from the hall. How humiliating.