The Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

  I opened my mouth to tell him there had been a mistake, and then I stopped because suddenly things made sense: my father’s silence about his work, his guardedness in conversation.

  “No message,” I said, and I hoped the guard would not tell my father that a young woman had asked for him.

  I watched my father more carefully after that. I saw that he always wore the same clothes when he gardened, and I saw how gratefully he accepted whatever I’d fixed for lunch. In our conversations, he often mentioned bargains he’d found—“Safeway’s got tomatoes on sale,” he’d tell me, “you should stock up, Anna.” Or potatoes or bananas or cereal or noodles, whatever was reduced. That’s my father, I’d thought, the eternal businessman, always on the lookout for a good deal. I’d figured that he was just a good shopper, the type whose day was made by saving a few dimes. I understood now: he could afford only what was on sale. But he never talked about needing anything, or money being tight, or not having enough. And I stopped asking.

  Nor did he talk about the past. He never mentioned my mother, or Shanghai. If the conversation veered in any of those directions, he curtly changed the subject, making it clear that that was off-limits. I honored that preference, though it apparently didn’t apply to the girls. I sometimes overheard him telling them stories and describing places from my childhood.

  “You would never have wanted to leave if you’d been in Shanghai then,” he told them one rainy afternoon. “You could go anywhere in the world from the Shanghai Harbor, you could start up any business, you could be anybody you wanted to. Nothing was impossible there.”

  “Shanghai,” Eve said softly, and Heather, always the mimic, tried to copy her and managed to make a soft shhh sound, which made Eve laugh.

  My grandmother said I was doing the right thing but that I should still be careful. I shouldn’t loan him money, she said, unless I didn’t need it back. I shouldn’t depend on him, I shouldn’t expect anything from him. I listened to her and hoped she would be wrong but I also braced myself for the awkwardness I would feel the first time he asked to borrow money, or the first time he didn’t come when he’d said he would.

  Those things never happened. He never asked for money, he never let me down. He was as faithful as anyone I’d ever known, and when my grandmother told me to look carefully at who he was, what I saw was a changed man, a man whose presence calmed and cheered me. And in the end, I abandoned her warnings and let myself be reclaimed.

  On a cool afternoon in March of 1959, I was putting groceries away when my father came into the kitchen. He’d worked outside, then showered, and he smelled of soap and aftershave. After showering he’d watched Mr. Wizard with the girls, a show he’d taught them to like, and I’d left them alone in the den, the three of them sitting close together on the sofa, all of them entranced. Eve was four, Heather was two and a half, and they were both crazy about my father. The three of them seemed to have their own little world. When Eve had begun to talk a few months before her second birthday, she shortened Grandpa to just Pop, and that became his name to them.

  When he came into the kitchen, my father took two bottles of Schlitz from the refrigerator, opened them, and put one on the counter for me. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and took a long drink. I’d folded his clean laundry and left it on the table for him.

  “You do too much for me,” he said. “You shouldn’t fold all those clothes. That’s what I was coming in here for.”

  I laughed. “I can do laundry in my sleep,” I said. “Not to worry.” The sound of the girls’ laughter floated in from the den, a light, watery sound that I always wanted to capture. “How’s Mr. Wizard?” I asked.

  My father shook his head. “Those two rascals of yours think he’s the real thing, all right.”

  I nodded. “Did you know they’ve taken to calling you Mr. Wizard?”

  He laughed, but I could see he was pleased. “Not this old know-nothing.”

  “Yep,” I said. “They’ve told their friends that their Pop can make anything grow. They call you Wizard of the Garden. They think you know magic.”

  My father took another drink of beer. “They’re smart ones, all right. They’re good girls, Anna.”

  I was filling a canister with flour, and there was a seriousness in his voice that made me look at him. When I did, I found him watching me closely. “I have a favor to ask you,” he said.

  I swallowed. Here it was, I thought, after all these years: the request for money my grandmother had warned me about. I wiped my floury hands on my black slacks and left smudged handprints on my thighs. Then I said, “Of course.”

  My father laughed. “I know that tone of voice,” he said. “You’re thinking it’s money I want.”

  “No,” I said, my voice high and fake. “Why—” I started, but he waved the rest of my question away.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “What I’m going to ask has nothing to do with money.”

  He had a habit of leaving the two middle buttons of his shirt undone and using the shirt as a pocket, and he reached into it and took out a packet of papers, which he unfolded and smoothed on the kitchen table.

  “It’s my will,” he said. “I’d like you to be executrix of my estate.” He laughed softly. “I use the word estate loosely. It just means that I’d like you to handle whatever I leave when I die.”

  I abandoned the groceries I hadn’t gotten to yet and sat down at the table. “All right,” I said.

  He slid a few stapled pages to me across the table and I began to read.

  I, Joseph Schoene, residing in the County of Los Angeles, State of California, being of sound and disposing mind and memory and not acting under duress, menace, fraud, or undue influence of any person whosoever, do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby expressly revoking all other and former wills and codicils heretofore made by me. I hereby give, devise, and bequeath all of the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate of every kind or nature and wherever situated, including property over which I have power of appointment, to my only child, Anna Shoen Bradley. I hereby nominate and appoint her as Executrix of this, my Last Will and Testament, without bond required.

  I tried to read quickly, partly because he was watching me, and partly because I did not want to dwell on it. But the last paragraph was hard to skim:

  I do not want a pagan approach to burial. At long last, I am a believer. When my body has died, my soul will have left this earth. I have few friends, and no desire for a service. My personal preference, unless my daughter has a different notion, would be cremation with ashes scattered at sea.

  When I looked up, I found him watching me carefully. I nodded, trying to tell him that I accepted his wishes, and then I took a good long drink of beer, hoping it would undo the knot in my stomach.

  My father tapped the table four times. “Cheery stuff, eh?” He cleared his throat.

  I nodded. Then I asked, “Is there something wrong with you?”

  He laughed. “There’s plenty wrong with me.” I must have looked shocked, because he quickly said, “No, not like that. There’s plenty wrong up here”—he tapped his head—”but in here”—he tapped his chest—”I’m healthy as a horse.”

  We were quiet for a moment. My father looked out the window, and his expression reminded me of the way he used to gaze at the skyline of Shanghai from the verandah in Hungjao, as though he were searching for something. “I’ve lived longer than I thought I would, all things considered, and maybe I’ll live to a hundred. But at this late stage of the game, I’ve learned that you never know. And I’ve made so many mistakes, and taken wrong turns just about every time I could.” He shook his head. “These papers aren’t about any big estate, and you won’t find yourself an heiress when I die. After all these years, I just want to do things right.” He looked down, and his voice was low. “I guess I’m trying to save face.”

  I nodded. “You already have, in my eyes,” I said.

  He looked st
artled for a moment, then he just looked relieved. He laughed softly and mussed my hair the way he did when I was a child, and I felt my cheeks redden from his affection.

  debt

  MY FATHER’S ASSURANCES ASIDE, I worried about him after that. I worried when he came inside short of breath, and I worried when I looked outside and saw how much trimming and weeding and raking and pruning he’d done. I worried when his energy seemed low, when he turned down an invitation for lunch at New Moon, when I called him and he wasn’t home. I worried late at night when I couldn’t get to sleep and early in the morning, when I woke before Jack and the girls.

  A few months after our conversation about the will, I took Eve and Heather to the beach. It was a Saturday in June, the first summery day of the year. Jack had made plans to golf at Brookside with his father, so the girls and I took off alone for a day at San Clemente.

  When we got home, Jack’s car was in the driveway, and the girls climbed out of the station wagon and ran into the house, calling for him, eager to tell him about our day. I followed after them, happy to have him home so early, and the three of us tramped into the kitchen, trailing sand.

  Jack was sitting at the kitchen table. The girls ran to him and he hugged them, but he was looking at me over their heads. I thought how handsome he looked, and how beautiful his blue eyes were, and how lucky I was, and then I noticed the serious anxiousness in his expression and I stood still and said, “What is it?” only half-trying to sound casual.

  He nodded as though I’d guessed something, and he told the girls they could go outside and rinse the sand off with the hose. Heather stood next to him, and he pulled her T-shirt off, not bothering about the sand, which crumbled around his feet. Eve looked back and forth between us suspiciously; she had caught the tone of my voice and was alert at the unexpected, the way she always was at anything out of the ordinary.

  “It’s all right,” Jack said, and he grinned at her and tickled her belly. “Go squirt your sister with the hose.”

  She nodded knowingly, as though she were aware of the bribe but accepted it. Then she took Heather’s hand and led her outside.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “He’s not feeling well,” Jack said. “I think it’s his stomach. He wasn’t very specific.”

  My father had called an hour or so earlier, Jack said. He didn’t sound good, but when Jack asked what the matter was, my father tried to laugh it off. “Some stomach thing,” he said. “You know how it goes. The parts start to give out after a while.”

  Jack had tried to be casual. “So they say,” he’d answered.

  And then there was a pause, and my father said, “Is she around?”

  It was his voice, Jack said, that worried him. He sounded afraid, a first.

  “Well, shoot, she’s not,” Jack had said, not missing a beat, though he knew something was wrong. This was not my father’s usual call. He never talked about his health; he never told you if something was wrong. “She’s at the beach with the girls,” he told him, and when my father didn’t respond, he added, “What can I do?”

  Another pause, and then my father said that he’d call back later, and he hung up.

  But by the time I called, my father said he was fine—a false alarm, he said, just some indigestion or something. He still sounded odd, but there was no convincing him to come over, or to let me drive over and pick him up, or to see a doctor on Monday.

  “Why are you being so stubborn?” I said finally.

  He laughed. “Anna, you’re about fifty years too late if you want to change me.” He paused and said, “I know your intentions are good. But I’m fine. I just wasn’t feeling so good and I got a little worried, but it’s passed and I’m right as rain. Stop worrying and take care of those girls of yours.”

  I took his advice and tried to stop worrying, and for a long time, my father gave me no reason for concern. For the next two years, he continued to come over every Thursday and whenever else I asked him to. The girls were crazy about him, Jack’s family entertained and intrigued, and little by little, even my grandmother seemed to lose her reservations. He was something I’d never expected—part of our family—and I came to consider both of us lucky.

  On a warm, clear day in May of 1961, he came over a little later than usual, around ten in the morning. Eve was six and a half and lonesome for kindergarten. She’d had chicken pox, and the last few bumps were keeping her home. Heather was almost five and determined to contract the pox, which she seemed to consider a rite of passage, since it had made its way through most of Eve’s kindergarten class. Heather hardly let her sister out of her sight. She drank from her cup, snuggled with her in front of the TV, did everything she could to expose herself to germs. So far her efforts hadn’t paid off, and both girls were tired of the whole affair.

  My father had shown up just in time. When he knocked at the door and said he had something special, all three of us were hopeful.

  What he had was ladybugs. He held a small cloth bag, and inside were twenty-five of them, and when he showed it to the girls, they shrieked and called for me. He said they were the best control, live or otherwise, for aphids, which were threatening to harm his beloved roses, and that Eve and Heather—”my beautiful assistants,” he called them—could help him scatter the ladybugs.

  The three of them tramped outside and I watched from the kitchen window as my father opened the bag. “Now, there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay put,” I heard him say, “but I’ve just got a feeling that they’ll do the trick.” From the window, I saw him lean over his roses, the girls mimicking his stance and concern. Eve, always careful, hovered over the roses carefully, as though if she got too close, she might inhibit the ladybugs and even the roses’ growth. Not Heather. She seemed to have strong ideas about which ladybugs should be where, and began moving them around, trying to create little families, until my father talked her into just leaving them alone.

  The girls stayed close to him for the rest of the morning. I caught glimpses of them from inside as I paid the bills and changed the sheets and folded laundry and picked up toys. I could hear Heather questioning my father about everything he was doing, her voice high and insistent with curiosity: “But why, Pop? Why?” And then I’d hear the low tones of my father’s voice, explaining, the breeze carrying away most of his words, so that only a few made it inside: aphids, roses, pests, harm. Vigilance, reward, full bloom.

  At around one, I noticed that things had gotten quiet outside, and I looked out the window to see where everyone had gone. My father was lying on the grass on his back. Heather and Eve stood on either side of him, leaning over him, peering at his face. It was a game they played often: he would lie down on the grass and pretend to fall right to sleep, while the girls whispered over him, trying to decide if he was really awake. But it worried me that day, and I called to them, and when my father stood up, I felt a rush of relief that surprised me.

  They came inside for lunch then, and I sent Eve and Heather to the bathroom to wash their hands. I was making tuna sandwiches, and my father leaned against the counter, watching me spread tuna on raisin bread. He was breathing hard, and I said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just a little winded.”

  And then he collapsed.

  He fell first onto one knee, then to the tile floor, his body and then his head hitting with a horrible thump. I screamed and dropped the bowl I was holding, then I knelt next to him and held his face between my hands, and I knew that he was unconscious. I grabbed the phone from the counter and dialed the operator. “My father,” I said, “my father,” and I didn’t know what to say next.

  “Do you need an ambulance?” the operator asked, and I nodded, then managed to blurt out our address. She read it back to me and said someone would be there in minutes.

  And then I hung up and saw the girls standing in the doorway staring at my father, their eyes wide. Eve’s chin was trembling; she looked terrified. Heather looked perplexed, as if s
he was just waiting for me to explain.

  “Pop?” she said softly.

  I looked at Eve. “Run to Mrs. Porter’s and tell her to come quick. Can you do that?”

  Eve stared at me blankly.

  “Mrs. Porter,” I said. Sally Porter was the neighbor two doors down. I didn’t know her well, but I knew she’d been a nurse before her children were born. “Get Mrs. Porter.”

  Still a blank look. I remembered the oak tree with the knothole in the Porters’ front yard. “The house with the tree with the secret hiding place,” I said frantically, and she nodded. “Go to the house with the secret hiding place. Take Heather with you. Tell Mrs. Porter to come quickly.”

  Eve nodded hard, then took Heather’s hand and said, “Run!” and the two of them hurried out of the house.

  I turned back to my father. His breathing was labored, and his body jerked. I put my hand on his chest and felt a heartbeat. “You’re all right,” I whispered, “your heart’s beating, and you’re all right, you’re all right.” I rested my hand on his chest and felt his body working to breathe. I stroked his hair and I whispered, “It’s Anna, Dad. I’m right here with you.” I leaned close to him and put my cheek against his, which was too cool.

  “Please,” I said. “Please don’t die yet.”

  As if on cue, my father stopped breathing.

  I looked at the clock, then back at my father. It seemed as though Eve and Heather had been gone for an hour. I had no idea what to do for him. I had never felt so useless.

  A minute passed. I kept talking to him and stroking his face and holding his hand. And then, finally, I heard hurried footsteps in the living room, and Sally burst into the kitchen. “Oh, my God,” she said. I looked at her, then at the clock. He had not breathed for two minutes.

  “Can you do something?” I said. “Can you please do something?”