And yet it always is. And when I tried to have Mary meet my gaze, so that I might show at least one momentary glimpse of what I could offer, she patently refused, sitting stolidly behind her shading sunglasses, her wide, thin mouth set with weariness and rigor. Soon enough she got up and slipped the towel from her waist, then quickly stepped into her loose athletic pants. I rose, too, and she hugged me tightly, and she kissed me on the ear and cheek, and held me fast once more, such that I was almost sure our day would simply resume. But she shouldered her jute bag and, smiling weakly, said without a trace of irony, “You’re a marvel, I think.” Then she spoke a barely audible goodbye. And then she walked around the house and was gone.
That was the last time I saw her up close. We spoke on the phone several times, but she was too well-bred and kind to be abrupt, despite the halting awkwardness of our conversations. She had an amazing discipline when it came to me. All I could think to bring up was what I was planning for my autumn garden, the certain coles and lettuces which were the same that year as every other.
Which, I’m thinking, as I slow my pace across the street from her old house, might in fact please her if she were still alive. Perhaps she would make fun and say it was my “habitation.” And I think I miss her, seeing the activity of the young family inside, the movements in the kitchen and the children’s rooms upstairs, the father in the paneled study watching Sunday golf on a large-screen television. I imagine this is more or less how it was for her twenty-five or thirty years ago, those times before her daughters grew up and Dr. Burns passed away and before she ever came upon me working in the front of my yard, the hours spent in those gently lighted rooms not necessarily ideal or happy but full at least with the thousand tiny happenings of her life.
It is those same notices, of course, that have never blessed my house. And as I make my way up the rise of the hill, it now comes fully into view, the staggered pointing of the chimneys, and the double steeples and bluish leaded panes, and the crossed beaming of the stuccoed Tudor style, my house a lovely, standing forgery, pristine enough and old enough that it passes most every muster. Liv Crawford could speak to these elements and others, and then point out the work invested in the grounds, the mature and various species of tree and shrub, the well-chosen perennials and annuals and judicious use of ornamental stones, the scale and shape and proportion of the entire site a realty dream come true, so that all one need do is simply move right in. And yet it seems nearly wrong that the next people will never know what sort of man walked the halls within, or know the presences of his daughter and his lady friend, or wonder about the other specters of his history. Of course I don’t wish them to be haunted. But if they might be somehow casually informed, whispered to that this man was nothing special or extraordinary but, as Mary Burns suggested, particular to himself, I would feel a certain sentence had been at least transferred, duly passed.
There’s a familiar car parked down the driveway near the garage, and when I step around to the back I see Liv Crawford on the patio, peering into the windows. I remain still for a few moments, to watch her looking in as she sizes up the results of her many restorations. She doesn’t seem the least bit covetous, only rather proud. I clear my throat and she wheels, her face beaming, and she floats forward with her arms open wide to embrace me as if I were her only child.
“Where were you, Doc?” she practically cries. “Your car was here and so I figured you went for a walk, but it’s been here over an hour. I don’t care because I had about a million calls to make from the car but I was getting worried. Where on earth did you go?”
“I have a new route,” I tell her. “To the village and the state park but then up past here, to the cemetery. You should have let yourself in. I don’t mind at all, you know. We didn’t have the appointments, did we?”
“That’s tomorrow,” she says, though checking her calendar book anyway.
“How many?”
“Just three of them, Doc. That’s all we’ll need to get it done. I’ve spoken to the parties again. They’re primed, ready for battle, and it looks like we’re going to be holding our own little auction by tomorrow night.”
“I do hope so, Liv.”
“Don’t worry, Doc. It’s already there. Truly. I’m the best.”
And so you are, I think, and mostly I’m content and happy that she’s back to her old self, Crawford Power and Light becoming operational again once Renny Banerjee left the hospital with an excellent prognosis for a full recovery. I haven’t been to visit him at his condo in several days, but I hear from him that he and Liv have been shopping for their matrimonial bed, each of theirs a bit too historied for the spending of restful nights. Like everyone else who has learned I’m about to sell my house, Renny was concerned that it should happen so soon, or at least before I’ve made any decisions about where I’ll go. Liv herself was dubious and hesitant to place it in her listings once she asked a few questions about my grand plans, but I insisted that she do, and when she kept balking I even threatened to call a rival agent at ERA.
“I’m kicking and screaming, Doc,” she replied, and then told me she’d bring over the paperwork for me to sign right away.
That was two weeks ago. In the interim Liv has come by nearly every day, noting all the last-second fixits and sending over workmen to replace some kitchen cabinet hinges and a light fixture, and touch up the chair moldings in the dining room and polish all the brass doorknobs in the house. She’s brought in a crew of professional landscapers as well, to tidy and manicure my admittedly derelict yard work of late, to clip and prune and then rake the lawns and beds of the first fallen leaves of the imminent season.
Liv steps inside to make a last inspection with her pen and pad at ready, as she wants to make sure there’s nothing left to do. I tell her I’ll stay out here. I’m sure there is an important detail left, though I would never see it, as I would never think to order a half-dozen bouquets for around the house, and even rent lead crystal vases to place them in, as Liv has done. Each day up to now has seemed to me a kind of ritualized processional, this step-by-step advance to some defining ceremony, like a wedding or a funeral. But whether it will be a commencement for me or else a last crucible, I do not know.
For my plans, to be true, are nonexistent yet. At least those for me. I’ve instructed Liv to bring all her selling acumen and brinkmanship to bear on this, as I need every last dollar to carry through my other aims. After the sale and closing I’ll call Mr. Finch at the bank and instruct him to buy out Mr. Hickey’s mortgage on the vacant store and building. I’ll ask him to stop the foreclosure, then state any extra price the bank might want for selling the property back to me. Then I’ll call my acquaintances at the hospital billing office and issue an anonymous line of funds for Patrick Hickey, so that he might remain in the PICU for however many days he can hold on and wait.
Concerning Sunny, who didn’t protest that I was selling the house but did ask quite worriedly and sweetly if I were going to move very far away, I’ll place her name on the legal title to the store and building along with mine, and ask if she’ll accept this one thing from me, if she’ll sell the remaining medical stock and inventory and open whatever shop she wants and—if she and Thomas please—come live in the apartments above, which Liv’s contractors are presently reconfiguring and remodeling into one.
And with what remains, if Liv is right and all goes well, I’ll have just enough to go away from here and live out modestly the rest of my unappointed days. Perhaps I’ll travel to where Sunny wouldn’t go, to the south and west and maybe farther still, across the oceans, to land on former shores. But I think it won’t be any kind of pilgrimage. I won’t be seeking out my destiny or fate. I won’t attempt to find comfort in the visage of a creator or the forgiving dead.
Let me simply bear my flesh, and blood, and bones. I will fly a flag. Tomorrow, when this house is alive and full, I will be outside looking in. I will be already on a walk someplace, in this town or the next or one five thousand mile
s away. I will circle round and arrive again. Come almost home.
While writing this novel, I was fortunate to meet with a number of people whose help was invaluable. I would like to thank Prof. Yun Chung Ok, the Rev. Kwon Hee Soon, and Kwon Hyuk Ju of KBS-TV in Seoul. Also, for her help in contacting surviving comfort women and for her translations during our interviews in Seoul, I wish to thank Son Hi-Joo.
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction; A Gesture Life; Aloft; and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest novel, On Such a Full Sea, will be published in January 2014. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” Lee teaches writing at Princeton University.
Click here for more titles by this author
Books by Chang-rae Lee
Native Speaker
A Gesture Life
Aloft
The Surrendered
A Gesture Life Page 33