Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

  On an unexpectedly warm afternoon during the first week of December, my mother and I sat outside with my grandmother on her patio. It had not changed since I’d seen it when we first arrived from Shanghai. Although it was December, everything was still green, and a few narcissus bloomed near the brick walk. My mother was lying on a chaise lounge in the afternoon sun, a glass of water on the table next to her. She had aged ten years in six months. Her disease was aggressive, to say the least, and it seemed that each day there was less energy, less strength, less her.

  My grandmother and I were on either side of her. I was just starting The Morning Watch by James Agee. My grandmother was reading the afternoon Pasadena Star News and commenting on what she read. The day before, the Senate had voted 67 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy on two counts of abusing the Senate, news that pleased my grandmother, but her relief was overshadowed by her concern for Pope Pius XII, who had collapsed and fallen into a coma the night before. He was seventy-eight years old and suffering from a perforated ulcer, and he had been fed artificially for the last four days. His physician had spent the night at his bedside, and the Pope had received the sacrament of Extreme Unction. And although my grandmother did not usually hold him dear, the fact was that he had traveled to the United States and become an acquaintance of President Roosevelt, whom she did hold dear, and so she said diplomatically, “We’ll pray for a happy death for our Holy Father.”

  Illness was not something I wanted to think about, so I said nothing, waiting for a chance to change the subject, which I did by asking my grandmother what she wanted for Christmas.

  “A new pair of gardening gloves,” she said quickly. “And nothing more. You spend too much as it is. You’ll need to save your money this year.”

  “We are,” I said, already tired of such dull advice. “What about you?” I turned to my mother.

  She had drifted off during my grandmother’s detailing of the Pope’s illness, and she stirred slightly. “I want to see the baby,” she said softly.

  I laughed. “Not till February, with any luck.”

  “I want to see the baby,” she said again, and she looked me in the eye. Her eyes were strangely bright, her face so pale that she looked otherworldly. Her hair was in a chignon, and she looked beautiful and fragile, and I understood that it was not a Christmas wish she was expressing. She was hoping to live until February.

  My grandmother and I exchanged looks, and my mood changed in an instant. “You will,” I said quickly, my chest tight.

  And then she said something I did not understand. “Yu ping c’ai chih chien shih hsien,” she said softly, and I stared at her for a moment. She smiled and said, “Something Chu Shih used to say. ‘Health is not valued until illness comes.’”

  I nodded and asked her to repeat it in Mandarin, for it had been familiar, and when she did, I could hear Chu Shih’s voice and see his large frame in his small room more distinctly than I had since I was a child.

  “Do you remember Chu Shih very well?”

  “Yes.”

  My mother looked pleased. “That’s good. He loved you dearly.”

  We were quiet for a few minutes, and I was thinking about the taste of the tea that Chu Shih made me when I was sick. I remembered its sweetness, and the taste of oranges.

  Then my mother said, “I want your promise about something, Anna.”

  Something tightened inside me, partly in anticipation of what she might ask, and partly because of what her asking meant. “All right.”

  She took a breath and let it out slowly, and I was sure that she was in pain. “I want you to forgive your father. It’s only natural for you to be angry with him, but I want you to forgive him in your heart.”

  I spoke before I could stop myself. “After everything—”

  She cut me off before I could go on. “Yes. After everything. There’s goodness in him, Anna. There was a saying in Shanghai: Hsin chong yu shei, shei chiu p’iaoliang. ‘Whoever is in your heart is beautiful.’ If you hold him in your heart, you will be able to forgive him. It won’t happen overnight, but it’s a grace, and if you ask for it, it will come.” She reached for my hand. “Do you promise?”

  “Yes,” I said, though I did not see how I would keep my word. “I promise.”

  “Good,” she said. “That’s one less thing for me to worry about.” She turned to my grandmother. “Any chance of a glass of cold beer? I’m desert dry and I can’t see that a beer could do any harm.”

  At a checkup with my obstetrician during the third week of January, he told me he was concerned about the baby’s growth and about my health. My blood pressure was still high, and I’d had the flu a week before and lost a few pounds. And so he suggested that the baby be delivered by cesarean section, and that it should be scheduled for the next week. He smiled. Was there any particular day I preferred? I was, after all, choosing my child’s birthday.

  I knew immediately, and I asked him to schedule the surgery for the thirty-first, a nice stroke of luck. It was the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, whose Introduction to the Devout Life was one of my grandmother’s favorite books. But more important, it was my mother’s birthday.

  And so on Monday morning, Jack and I drove to Huntington Hospital. We parked and walked inside, Jack carrying my small suitcase, the two of us as nervous and afraid and not talking much. Jack was not easily rattled, but even he was anxious. I knew that he’d barely slept the last few nights. I’d heard him in the living room, shuffling cards and dealing, over and over and over again, as he played Solitaire until he thought he could get back to sleep. The dark circles under his eyes reminded me of his worry.

  It was early, and I knew that my mother and my grandmother were offering prayers for the baby at Mass just then, and I added some of my own as I undressed and put on a gown and lay on a gurney and held Jack’s hand for all I was worth. “You’re going to be fine, Anna,” he whispered, “both of you,” and I nodded, because he sounded so sure. As the anesthesia took effect, I looked into his blue eyes and thought they were the most amazing eyes I’d ever seen, clear and honest and intense, and that if the baby could just have his father’s eyes, he would be beautiful, and all would be well.

  I woke to find my mother sitting in the chair next to my bed, and the sight of her made me panic and think that something had gone very wrong. I started to speak, and she looked up and smiled and said, “Jack, she’s awake,” and I heard footsteps and then Jack was there, too. He was smiling like crazy, and he held the baby toward me and said, “We have a daughter,” and I could not imagine that life was so good, that God was so good.

  I took her in my arms and looked down at the small sleeping face of an angel. She had eyelashes as pale as down, and a shocking amount of dark brown hair, and hands and fingers so tiny that I could not believe they were real. And then she opened her eyes and looked up at me, and I knew that I would never be the same.

  I looked at Jack and his boyish can-you-believe-it? expression. I was woozy and unsure of what was real. “A girl?” I whispered, wanting confirmation, trying to take everything in. He nodded.

  I looked at my mother then and was struck by how healthy and how beautiful she looked. Her skin glowed, her cheeks had more color than they had in weeks, her eyes were bright. It was as though we’d found the cure. “Happy Birthday,” I said, and she laughed. “Do you want to know her name?”

  She looked surprised. “You already have it?”

  Jack nodded. “We’ve known the girl’s name for months,” he said. “It was the boy’s name that was tough, but that’s a problem we don’t have to solve.”

  “Well?” she said.

  Jack looked at me and smiled. “Her name is Eve,” I said simply. “Genevieve for the record, but we’ll call her Eve.”

  February was a golden month. My mother’s face lit up every time she saw her namesake, and it was even possible to believe she was getting better. She laughed and joked with us, she talked and sang to Eve, she danced gracefully around o
ur living room as she rocked her to sleep, all of which I watched with joy and desperation. This was fleeting, I knew, and precious, and I wanted to somehow stop everything and somehow capture what I was seeing. The time was going too fast.

  At the beginning of March, my mother’s health grew suddenly worse, and by the end of the month, she had been hospitalized twice. The hospital stays were not only painful but humiliating. She had always been modest, and to have strangers taking care of her was a great indignity. I saw that a request for a long life was not always the best prayer.

  On a Tuesday morning in the middle of April, I went to her house at a little after ten. She’d been in the hospital the week before but had grown strong enough that her doctor thought it safe to send her home, the one thing she wanted. I found her sleeping, so I just sat with her for a while. I usually brought Eve with me, but I’d gotten a sitter that morning, and I wasn’t used to the leisure of just sitting quietly with her. My grandmother called and asked how she was and said she’d be by at lunchtime, and my mother woke for a few minutes and asked if the roses were fresh, a nonsense question—there were no roses in the house. A short time later when she woke again, she seemed more alert, and she remembered asking about the roses. She said she’d dreamed she was walking in the rose garden at the Huntington Library. Then she asked about Eve, and whether I was getting enough sleep. She told me what a good baby I’d been, and that Eve had gotten her good nature from me. I noticed she was flushed, and I asked if she’d like a cool washcloth, and when I brought it to her and put it on her forehead, I found that her skin was so hot that it frightened me, and I started to cry.

  “Oh, Anna,” she said softly. “You’ll be all right. Don’t you know that?”

  I nodded, embarrassed. “Would you like some water?” I asked, “Or something to eat?” mostly because I wanted to leave the room for a moment.

  She tried to clear her throat but ended up coughing a hard, painful-sounding cough that did no good. “I’m so tired,” she said, “and hot. What did Chu Shih call hot weather? I think it was tashu, for ‘great heat.’” She licked her lips and swallowed. “Maybe I’ll be better this afternoon.”

  “You will,” I said, and I wished I could hide the fear in my voice. I stood to go get a glass of water from the kitchen, where I rinsed my face and scolded myself for crying in front of her. I put ice in a glass and filled it with water and picked up an apple that was on the counter, an offering. I wanted to give her something—health, love, reassurance, hope, comfort, any of those would have done. The apple was the only tangible thing I could find. I heard the first drops of rain from a sky that had been threatening all morning, and I called, “It’s finally started to rain. It sounds lovely. Do you hear it?”

  When I came into the room, she was dozing again, but she turned toward me when I sat down, and she held out her hand. I sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand as gently as I could, afraid of its frailty, and I whispered, “You look so beautiful.”

  She smiled, barely, and she murmured something I couldn’t hear. I squeezed her hand lightly, hoping she would repeat it, and she said, “The roses are so beautiful, Anna. Can you smell them?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, a last try at comfort, and she smiled and her face relaxed. She inhaled as though she were breathing in something wonderful, and a breeze brought the scent of rain into the room, and I breathed in, too. And then she exhaled, her breath making a soft sandpapery sound that made me want to hold on to her, to keep her here, to do anything in the world to keep her here. But she was gone, and I was alone.

  On Wednesday morning, the mortuary called to tell me that my mother’s body was ready for viewing. I nursed the baby and dressed quickly, then told Jack that I would be back soon. I wanted to do this alone. He nodded and hugged me before I left. One of his best qualities was his habit of respecting people’s privacy. He never asked me to explain.

  At the mortuary, I was directed to a small chapel, silent and dimly lit. There were perhaps ten pews on either side of a center aisle, and my mother’s open casket was in front. I was alone, and I sat down on a pew halfway from the back, because it felt more private there. I wanted to be close to her, but I didn’t want to be too close, in case anyone else came in. I wore a black veil of my grandmother’s, and in the interest of anonymity, I had it pulled down over my face, and I didn’t feel like myself. It seemed that all I’d done for the last awful day was talk to people—on the phone, at my mother’s house, at the mortuary, at the church. Everything felt wrong, and I had no idea how to make it better.

  I had been sitting for only a few minutes when I heard the door at the back of the room open and the sound of someone coming in. The door closed softly and a man cleared his throat, and I heard his muffled steps on the thick carpet. He came closer and I braced myself when I felt him near, ready to make conversation if I had to. But I didn’t. He made his way slowly toward the casket, and when he was past me and I could see his back, I held my breath. The way he walked, the slant of his shoulders, the close-cropped hair—it was my father.

  When he reached the casket, he leaned over and kissed my mother, and I heard him whisper, “Oh, Eve.” Then he crossed himself—something I had never seen him do—and he knelt at the casket, his head bowed, one hand on my mother.

  He seemed to be praying, and we stayed like that for perhaps ten minutes, my father kneeling at my mother’s casket, me watching, unable to move. I saw his shoulders shake and I knew that he was weeping, and when he finally stood, it was with stiffness and difficulty. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his eyes. And then he leaned close to kiss her again, and he whispered words I will never know. Then he turned to go.

  I stared hard at my hands and pulled my veil further over my face. I could not look at him, and so I sat in silence until I was sure he was gone, knowing that I was a coward and a liar, and certain I could never forgive him.

  To those who attended my mother’s Rosary and funeral Mass, I suppose I was my mother’s daughter, perfectly composed. But what appeared as composure was simply denial. I floated through it all, through every part of the official observances of my mother’s death, telling myself it wasn’t real and working hard at not thinking about what was happening. The viewing and Rosary on Wednesday night, the funeral Mass on Thursday morning, and afterward the walk out of the church behind the casket, the drive to the cemetery behind the hearse and the walk through thick grass to the plot, the priest’s quiet graveside prayers, the last condolences of friends afterward—all of it was a blur, dreamlike and indistinct.

  So that when it was finally time to leave the grave—to really say good-bye—I didn’t want to go. As long as I’m here, I thought, she won’t be buried, and it won’t have really happened. And so I lingered at the curb near the Cadillac that was to take my grandmother and Jack and me home, perhaps forty feet from the grave, talking with the few friends who remained and working at keeping them there. I held Jack’s hand tightly and thanked the priest, I talked with my grandmother about anything I could think of and ignored the seriousness and exhaustion in her eyes, and I just kept thinking, Don’t go. When I felt a hand on my shoulder, I turned eagerly, ready for more distraction, and I found myself facing my father.

  For a long moment, we just stared at each other. His eyes were even bluer than I had remembered, and his hair was more white than blond. He wore what he’d worn the day before—white shirt and blue tie, navy blue blazer, gray slacks—and I saw that he was heavier, and that he’d aged. But I would have known him a mile away.

  It was clear that he was waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t, from stubbornness or anger or awkwardness or grief, or maybe all of them at once. I could only stare, and wait for him to say something.

  “Anna,” he said finally. “I’m so sorry.” The anguish in his face was plain.

  I nodded, and fell back on good manners. “Thank you for coming,” I said, and I hated the falseness in my voice.

  He shifted his weight and
looked beyond me, clearly uncomfortable. “Is it all right if I say good-bye?”

  I nodded mechanically, and he turned and began walking toward the grave.

  I followed him, I don’t know why—some sense of propriety, the need to make sure he did nothing wrong, I don’t know, but I went with him. When he reached the grave, he stood for a moment and took a deep breath. “I was so foolish,” he whispered, and though I wasn’t certain he was talking to me, I nodded. It was a sentiment I shared.

  The casket had been lowered into the freshly dug grave, and a large sheet of plywood covered the opening. My father leaned down and took a handful of earth, then held the plywood back and dropped the earth on the casket. He whispered, “Tsaichien”—good-bye—and then he stood and wiped his hands on his pants, and he turned to leave.

  I think it was the sound, the barely heard softness of a handful of dirt falling on the casket lid, that made something come loose inside of me. I caught my breath, and he looked at me anxiously, afraid he’d done something wrong. I shook my head, trying to tell him I was all right, but I started to cry and it was clear that I wasn’t all right at all. Without hesitating, he took me in his arms and held me close. A part of me worried that people were watching and that I was causing a scene. But then I breathed in the scent of Old Spice and cigars and something like sandalwood, and as I felt something inside give way, I let myself be comforted by my father.

  new moon

  IN HER WILL, my mother left me the small bungalow on Bucknell along with most of her estate. While the inheritance didn’t make Jack and me rich, it did make us more comfortable, and in May, when we moved into my mother’s house, it was as though we let our breath out a little. During our almost two years of marriage, Jack had taken just about every odd job he could find on weekends and after school, anything to bring in some extra cash. After my mother’s death, those odd jobs stopped. That was her greatest gift to me: the freedom she gave Jack.