A Gesture Life

A Gesture Life

A
Gesture
Life

Chang-rae Lee

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

New York

1999

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © 1999 by Chang-rae Lee

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The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

Lee, Chang-rae.

A Gesture Life / Chang-rae Lee

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66004-1

I. Japanese Americans—New York (State) Fiction. 2. World War II, 1939–1945—Women—Korea Fiction. I. Title.

PS3562.E3347G4         1999

813’.54—dc21               99-28382 CIP

First Riverhead hardcover edition: September 1999

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: October 2000

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

PEOPLE KNOW ME HERE
. It wasn’t always so. But living thirty-odd years in the same place begins to show on a man. In the course of such time, without even realizing it, one takes on the characteristics of the locality, the color and stamp of the prevailing dress and gait and even speech—those gentle bells of the sidewalk passersby, their
How are you
s and
Good day
s and
Hello
s. And in kind there is a gradual and accruing recognition of one’s face, of being, as far as anyone can recall, from around here. There’s no longer a lingering or vacant stare, and you can taste the small but unequaled pleasure that comes with being a familiar sight to the eyes. In my case, everyone here knows perfectly who I am. It’s a simple determination. Whenever I step into a shop in the main part of the village, invariably someone will say, “Hey, it’s good Doc Hata.”

The sentiment, certainly, is very kind, and one I deeply appreciate. Here, fifty minutes north of the city, in a picturesque town that I will call Bedley Run, I somehow enjoy an almost Oriental veneration as an elder. I suppose the other older folks who live
here receive their due share of generosity and respect, but it seems I alone rate the blustery greeting, the special salutation. When I buy my paper each morning, the newsstand owner will say, with a tone feigning gravity, “Doctor Hata, I presume.” And the young, bushy-eyebrowed woman at the deli, whose homebound mother I helped quite often in her final years, always reaches over the refrigerated glass counter and waves her plump hands and says, “Gonna have the usual, Doc?” She winks at me and makes sure to prepare my turkey breast sandwich herself, folding an extra wedge of pickle into the butcher paper. I realize that it’s not just that I’m a friendly and outgoing silver-hair, and that I genuinely enjoy meeting people, but also because I’ve lived here as long as any, and my name, after all, is Japanese, a fact that seems both odd and delightful to people, as well as somehow town-affirming.

In my first years in Bedley Run, things were a bit different. Even the town had another name, Bedleyville (this my attribution), which was changed sometime in the early 1970s because the town board decided it wasn’t affluent-sounding enough. The town in fact wasn’t affluent at the time, being just a shabby tan brick train station and the few stores that served it, some older village homes, several new housing developments, and the surrounding dairy cow pastures and wooded meadows, nothing fancy at all, which was how I was able to afford to move here and open a business. There were perhaps a few thousand residents, mostly shopkeepers and service people, and the small bedroom community who were their patronage.

I’d read about the town in the paper, a brief slice-of-life article with a picture of a meadow that had been completely cleared for new suburban-style homes, just white stakes in the frozen ground to mark where the streets would be. It looked sterile and desolate,
like fresh blast ground, not in the least hopeful, and yet I felt strangely drawn to the town, in part because of the peaceful pace of life that the article noted, the simple tranquillity of the older, village section that made me think of the small city where I lived my youth, on the southwestern coast of Japan. I had already driven through the more established suburbs nearer to the city and found them distinctly cold, as well as too expensive. I’d ask for directions at a garage, or buy some gum at a candy store, and an awkward quiet would arise, that certain clippedness, and though I never heard any comments, I could tell I wasn’t being welcomed to remain too long.

When I first arrived in Bedleyville, few people seemed to notice me. Not that they were much different from those in the other towns, at least not intrinsically. Fundamentally, it seems to me, the people in a particular area are given to a common set of conditions and influences, like the growth in a part of a forest. There may be many types of flora, but only the resident soil and climate provide for them, either richly or poorly or with indifference. I suppose it was because Bedleyville was still Bedleyville then, and not yet Bedley Run (though desperately wanting to be), and pretty much anybody new to town was seen as a positive addition to the census and tax base. It was 1963, and from what I’d seen during my brief travels in this country, everyone for the most part lived together, except, I suppose, for certain groups, such as the blacks, or the Chinese in the cities, who for one reason or another seemed to live apart. Still, I had assumed that once I settled someplace, I would be treated as those people were treated, and in fact I was fully prepared for it. But wherever I went—and in particular, here in Bedley Run—it seemed people took an odd interest in telling me that I wasn’t
un
welcome.

Did this suit me? I can’t be sure. I do know that once I decided to remain in this country, and to live here in Bedley Run, the question of my status mostly faded away, to the point it is today, which is almost nothing; and I know, too, that this must have been beneficial to me over the years, to have so troubling an issue removed from the daily turns of my life. I did have a few small difficulties from time to time, but it was always just the play of mischievous boys, who enjoyed making faces at me in the shop window, or chalking statements out front on the sidewalk, even going so far as to slather axle grease on the dumpster handles. I never reported the incidents, or confronted the perpetrators, and eventually these annoyances ceased. Later on, after the boys had grown up into men, some of the ones who settled in town would come into the store, to buy a bed tray, or a walker, or perhaps an ice bag for a feverish child, and they would speak to me as if they had never done the things I knew they had done, they would just make affable small talk and docilely ask my advice as they might from any doctor, their eyes wavering and expectant.

I should mention now that I am not a physician of any kind, and that I only ran a medical and surgical supply store in town, though for many patrons it came to be regarded as an informal drop-in clinic, the kind of place where people could freely ask questions of someone who was experienced and knowledgeable as well as open and friendly, a demeanor that quite a few doctors, unfortunately, no longer feature these days.

I say all this not to boast or self-congratulate, but to remind myself that though I was ever willing to help, it was the generous attitude of the customers that drew me out and gave me confidence, and that every decent and good thing that has come to me while I have lived here is due to some corollary of that welcoming,
which I have never lost sight of. I know there are those who would say I’ve too keenly sought approval and consensus, and if over the years I’ve erred on the side of being grateful, well, so be it. I think one person can hardly understand why another has conducted his life in such a way, how he came to commit certain actions and not others, whether he looks upon the past with mostly pleasure or equanimity or regret. It seems difficult enough to consider one’s own triumphs and failures with perfect verity, for it’s no secret that the past proves a most unstable mirror, typically too severe and flattering all at once, and never as truth-reflecting as people would like to believe.

Indeed, I have long felt that I ought to place my energies toward the reckoning of what stands in the here and now, especially given my ever-dwindling years, and so this is what I shall do. My old store, Sunny Medical Supply, is now run by a youngish New York City couple who three years ago purchased it, with all the stock and inventory, and the two one-bedroom apartments above. They haven’t changed anything, really. A few weeks ago I noticed that the gold-leaf lettering I ordered when the town required all the village shops to put up the same rustic style of sign is now quite chipped and dull, and needs refurbishing. In fact the whole storefront is looking weatherworn, unlike the other shops immediately beside it on Church Street, the stationers and the florists, whose windows change regularly and have colorful sale announcements and displays of merchandise.

I know as well as anyone that it’s challenging for a medical supplier to create an attractive storefront, that bedpans and insulin kits don’t make for a naturally scintillating display, but with a little effort and creativity it’s not long before you can come up with a window that is almost pleasing to look at. And while I never
expected customers to flock into the store because of such attentions, I don’t know how many times someone poked his or her head in to compliment me, saying, “Pretty as a picture,” or “Best on the street,” or “You’ve got some kinda style, Doc.”

Three years later, however, the store still has the very same display from the last Easter window I made up. Really, it’s a sad sight for the eyes. Everything’s been ruined by time and light. The petals of the nylon tulips are dingy with dust and crumbling, and the blue plastic eyes of the stuffed rabbits have faded to a glazed, watery gray, the fur unevenly tufted and bare and generally feeble-looking. The only thing different is that the window’s merchandise has long been reclaimed: the gowns unpinned from the walls, the potty now gone, and finally, left matted in the plastic grass, the faintest impression of a pair of orthopedic shoes.

I finally decided the other day to call on the new owners, just to see how they were doing. I take a walk of some length daily, part of my retirement routine, and so it’s no trouble to make my way down Church Street, which is the main thoroughfare of the town. For the first month or so after I sold the business to the Hickeys, I’d make sure to drop by regularly, perhaps two or three times a week, to check on them and see if they needed any help or advice.

Initially, I know, they were quite happy whenever the bell on the door tink-tinkled and they saw me step inside, especially Mrs. Hickey. The Hickeys were both new to the business, not just to selling medical supplies but to selling anything, and their one tenuous qualification for the work was that they were formerly EMS workers, partners in fact, driving an ambulance together down in the city.

I worried, of course, that the Hickeys were gravely inexperienced, and that they’d probably borrowed enough money that their
monthly payments were dangerously high, and that with a young child in tow, they would find the demands of running a retail business more severe than they had ever anticipated. I didn’t speak about these concerns, as I did feel it was finally time to sell the store. But I was concerned. So whenever I visited them, I would do whatever was needed, calling on any past-due accounts at the county hospital and area retirement homes, negotiating with suppliers, and even checking the store books, reconciling inflows and outflows. I must admit that after the new days of inactivity, I found it pleasurable doing the work again, talking (and invariably joking) with former business contacts, appraising new products and brochures, and then taking my deli sandwich and pickles at my old desk with a mug of green tea, a canister of which I always brought with me on those days I thought I might drop in.

Mrs. Hickey would always greet me warmly and immediately ask how they ought to do this thing or that, and I’d set to work right away, until before I knew it, more than half the day had passed. It was Mr. Hickey, in retrospect, who was sometimes reticent, as he would look up and nod wanly when I entered the store, and after a few weeks I’d first check to see if Mrs. Hickey was there before deciding to go inside. And so it happened quite unexpectedly one day, when Mr. Hickey asked if I might let them run the business themselves, that it was what they had paid me for and if I would finally honor that.

I was confused for a moment, mostly by his tone, because it seemed I was merely there at their own wishes, but I realized that he was telling me in his own way that they had received orientation enough. Mrs. Hickey looked mortified and excused herself to go look for something in the storeroom, and Mr. Hickey politely held open the door for me, not saying anything more, and I resolved
then not to disturb them again until they found it necessary to contact me directly, when I should be happy to contribute in any way.

Which they hadn’t asked me to do, I admit, a few days ago when I stopped by. But the sorry state of the window case, and the sobering talk I had recently heard from some Church Street merchants about the illness of their son made me feel that I ought to call on them at least once again.

When I entered the store I found, to my surprise, no one there. The shelves were stocked, though somewhat lightly, and the desk and counter were haphazardly covered with volumes of papers and carbons, the unmanned cash register appearing particularly exposed. The aisles had not been waxed in some time. About the whole place there was the sense of a dwindling, the feeling you get when you enter a house people are moving out of, an alarming spareness and disarray that almost seems to be the cause of the leaving, when of course it’s just the result. I said hello a few times toward the back storeroom, but I got no answer. Then I heard voices, muffled, coming from what one might see as a closet door but was actually the back stair to the second-floor hall, where the two rental apartments were. The doorway was behind the counter, and naturally I went around, and then I cracked open the door, to hear who might be talking. For a moment, I had the alarming idea that the Hickeys were being robbed, and had been taken upstairs to be bound and gagged.

But of course what I heard was their voices, speaking softly to each other in a low, weary drone, as if they had been arguing at length and now suddenly weren’t. They were talking, I could tell, about their son, Patrick. Mrs. Hickey was saying something about getting on Medicaid, now that there was no point in struggling
anymore. Mr. Hickey didn’t answer, and I understood she was talking about the store and business. I thought I should leave then, for I suddenly didn’t like the feeling of eavesdropping on them, when the shop telephone rang out. The sound froze me for a moment, and before I could get on my way, I heard a heavy gallop descend the short stair, and Mr. Hickey opened the door just as I swung myself around the end of the counter.