Dear Mr. You (20 page)

“Before I met your dad I had no idea that men like that actually existed,” one friend said to me, and I heard that more than once. Those who met him in later years only knew him as unfailingly sweet and open, someone you could talk to about anything. Here was the man who found the interesting “fascinating,” the amusing “hysterical,” and the sad “heartbreaking.” The rage from my childhood nearly vanished, and the positive, inclusive man was the one we could count on seeing when he opened his door. He was nearly healed but I meanwhile still had no idea what a normal level of emotion was in either direction. Was all that passed down? Did it soak into my subconscious, or was I born with it, a birthright? If terror creates adrenaline, does the fear just evaporate, the stain coming out in the wash? That cortisol was in his bloodstream. Meta-analysis shows that shock changes the size and structure of your brain, and I am half him.

The study of epigenetics says that the response to a traumatic event can be handed down as distinctly as the color of your eyes. Fear and rage can be ancestral. We love watching soldiers return home, their wives and children leaping into their arms with embraces and kisses that won’t end. I myself have stood against a wall at the airport basically spying on a group of soldiers as they begin to deplane. I know those soldiers couldn’t leave all that horror on the airplane, and some of what they had to bear may be handed down to their children. This isn’t to take away from free will and all the heroic and damning aspects of accountability, it’s just to suggest that genetic markers can’t be wiped clean after traversing through Hell. If the science of heritability is correct you could be born afraid of things you’ve never seen and can’t even name.

Near the end, when he was ill and all of us were on the couch next to him, telling jokes to cut the tension, my mother came in and put her hand on his shoulder, asked him if he needed anything, he said

Aw it just feels so good, to see them all sitting there together and laughing

He put a hand up to her face and lacking the strength to lift his face to her, he said

But you are the best medicine

My father took a level of pride in his children and grandchildren that was nearly freakish. The boys on my brother’s football team
thought my dad worked for the high school. They didn’t know who that guy was who showed up at every scrimmage and every away game, even when it was snowing. He would stand there, staring at my brother, who left the bench just once when he intercepted a pass and then ran in the wrong direction, only to be tackled by his own teammate. He was crushed but shared such a good laugh with my dad that it seemed like his blunder was better than scoring the winning touchdown. He was back at the next game, never bored, in the same way that he was when he came to town to see me in a play for opening night. He’d shyly ask if it was possible to come back for the matinee, after which he would make it clear that if they needed help filling the house that evening, he was pretty sure he was available for that show, too. Birthdays were thought out months in advance. He’d pull me aside and say, look what I got your mother for Valentine’s Day when it was not even Christmas. He didn’t need a holiday as an excuse, though. My mother was heartbroken over the city tearing down her childhood home, where my father had picked her up for their first date. He drove over and dug, with his cane, through the refuse at the site until he found a brick representative of the house. He had the address carved into it and placed a picture of the house on top so she’d have something tangible to remember it by. He would sit around and think of things like that, what would make others happy, and then he actually did it.

When he first got sick he knew he had to tell us. My mother asked, what do I tell them and he said, tell them the truth, but

Damn, I just don’t want this to upset their lives at all

He was very ill and I’d come in to help. We managed, after days of trying, to reach a monk in Mysore, India, who would give him a blessing. Daddy called himself an Episcopalian but was very interested in Eastern philosophy and Judaism, and open to most everything, really. Skyping with the monk, he grew so weak that he hunched over and rested his head on his cane while still attempting the chant of “om mani padme hung.” The monk asked him how he was and he tried to pull himself upright, saying

Oh, I’m all right. How are you doing?

I got my father to his chair to rest. I decided to leave my parents’ apartment for an hour and go to my hotel across the street. I walked toward the door and turned to him. “Anything, Daddy? Anything at all?” I asked. He caved in a little, collapsing on the idea of a wish being granted. He was not a man to ask for anything, or give himself much more than books, his one indulgence. Most requests to even get him a glass of water were met with, “No thanks, I’m driving.” I saw him wrestling, and then realized I knew what that answer was. I knew before he said it. I felt like an ass for asking. If it had been a game show I would have won a car because he only managed to say

I don’t suppose . . . I know it’s too much to ask

when I held up my hand to stop him.

“No, no, I got it. I know what you want, Daddy,” I said. I ran. I raced down the hall of my parents’ apartment and out onto the
street. I kept running down the street to my hotel where I bolted to the elevator and made it up to my floor only to hit the button to go back to the lobby again, through which I barreled, back to the concierge just in case they had an idea, but they did not. The concierge could not find me raw oysters, could actually not find any oysters at all that night. They suggested getting frozen clams from the Piggly Wiggly on the interstate and thawing them in the microwave.

In the Pacific Northwest where you were it was not yet dawn. You were already busy wading through low tide. Was there ever a pride in knowing you were harvesting something rare? Like most things, I never wondered how it ended up in front of me until I couldn’t find it. Maybe you were cursing us that morning, the people who would enjoy the result of the gashes on your arms and frostbite in your fingertips. Filling one bushel wouldn’t grant you enough pay to buy a half dozen in one of those fancy bars. Despite his appreciating quality seafood, my father was far from fancy. If he’d been introduced to you I guarantee you he would have shaken your hand warmly and said, “John Parker, glad to meet you,” and been actually glad. He would have listened to you with a soft and sincere chorus of “I’ll be darned”s and “that’s fascinating”s falling from his lips set in their crooked half-smile. His wide eyes with their bottomless dark would search yours, looking into you rather than at you, in the way of certain people who are always listening. Listening even when they are speaking.

He would carry our questions and problems into bed with him at night, truly considering them and aching to produce even
a tiny solution. He’d call hours or days later and respectfully, he’d offer up

Hello, just your father. Correct me if I am wrong, but something occurred to me late last night

So yadda yadda Google, yellow pages, etc., gratuitous displays of emotion to strangers on the phone, my friend in New York City going on every food blog in the D.C. area; gross, shameless overuse of the phrase “beloved dying father,” to messengers, restaurants, and caterers: groveling, offering, praying, and then, jackpot. The door to my parents’ apartment opened that evening and my brother and I entered with bags containing clam chowder, corn bread, and one dozen each raw Blue Point and Olympian oysters; harvested by you, the hero of this book, wherever and whomever you are.

I now know, after saturating myself with info (the children forced to shuck them for thirty cents a day during the Industrial Revolution is another boo-boo in the arena of this experiment called homo sapiens and also, I don’t know if you’re aware of the illegal harvestings with a bunch of unlicensed pickers who ship contaminated crops to Britain?), about the harvesting of oysters. You, sir, would never have kept your job one day had you not been fast, nimble, and capable of withstanding enormous amounts of discomfort without complaining, quitting, or cheating. All of that makes you precisely like him, this man you’ll never know. He went without plenty in his life, worked in coal mines and suffered on battlefields and in jungles. He was betrayed, abandoned, robbed, shot at, hit by a train twice, electrocuted, dropped from
a plane with a faulty parachute (later meeting the rigger of said parachute in a bar and buying him a drink because “he was a nice fellow and he admitted it”), he was shunned and publicly humiliated for being a whistle-blower, went hungry and bankrupt, was left for dead, and survived brain and heart valve surgery. In spite of all that, by the end of his life he was the most grateful of men. His gift for receiving and for being appreciative was profound. The handwritten thank-yous he wrote were letters, not “notes,” and he would go on for pages, describing how

the goodies arrived and I put the candy with my stash. I finished one book already, and the one on Buddhism, I can’t put down. These gifts are a reflection of all the hard work on your part. We are so proud. Did you happen to get the last poem I sent?

and

If the Rolling Stones can tour at their age, we can too. Here I am in my hotel robe, in a room fully half the size of our house. I’m looking out at the Arno as the sun goes down, and oh, yes! Having a glass of champagne with your mother! It’s almost too much to realize. You’ve made this such a memorable time in our lives. It just doesn’t get any better than this

His fight to live honorably merited more rewards than I could dream up, but at the very least, he deserved those oysters. I swear he would have gone out there in waders and gloves himself if he’d been able to get up from his chair, but he couldn’t, and this is why we needed you.

He gave as much of a smile as he could summon when he saw your oysters, he put his hand up and touched his white V-neck T-shirt and said

Be still my heart.

Aw, thank you, sweetie, will you look at that

I have the last white T-shirt that he wore in a bag inside another bag in my closet. I still haven’t opened it, but I wonder if it carries the scent of your oysters, or the echo of one of his trademark two-note laughs that he let out when he looked at them on a plate before him. That little high-pitched giggle served as punctuation for just about anything, but usually one of his oft-used refrains: “That’ll really take the wind out of your sails,
heh-hah
!” or, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play,
heh-hah
.” It was sometimes accompanied by serious eye-rolling but today he couldn’t manage that.

My father went after your oysters with reverence. There was no show, just my brother and I watching him savor every bite with a stunning lack of ceremony. We gazed at him with complicit rapture, giving full respect to the experience you brought him. There was no after and no before.

I want to tell you now, that you who reached your bruised hands into the sea to bring my father his last meal: the shells you pried loose from the beds are in a bowl on my bookcase. I treat them like Fabergé eggs. I look at one up close and turn it over. I count them.

Because you got zero fanfare before, now you matter the most. Dearest Oyster Picker, you are like a change-of-life baby, showing up late and thereby cementing your position as favorite. You represent all of it, the men we never consider who slave for the safety and happiness of others, like my dad. It’s man at his highest, don’t you think? Besides, in looking for you I know so many terrifically cool things. I know how oysters help the environment by filtering ocean water and improving its quality like you can’t believe. They provide a habitat for species of fish I had no idea existed, and help with nitrogen pollution by their consumption of phytoplanktons, whatever the heck those are, and I think help the quality of nearby bodies of water. Maybe. I’m not completely sure how they do that. Anyway I’m pretty sure they do, AND four oysters gives you a whole day’s worth of copper, iodine, and some other thing. They are super-rich in vitamin B12, which is key if you are moody or have memory issues. The aphrodisiac component is sweet when you consider that oysters can and do change their gender midlife. Oysters are trannies! How can you not love them! It completely makes sense that Aphrodite chose to bust out of one, in her love goddess glory. Can you picture that moment with her springing up all ripe and golden, but out of a jellyfish? Or some algae platform? Oysters are so key and so fly that there is a whole movement to save them to keep their briny mojo working on the world. There are groups of hard-core oyster-lovers heading recycling projects, so the oyster never really dies. They plant new babies right on the old shells and send them back in. It’s an easy way to contribute to Mother Earth and say sorry for all the hairspray and oil spills. You just drop them off at designated spots
and they take care of it. It’s another thing I never considered before I considered you: Where did all those shells go? I just ate them and forgot about it, as they became sky-high monuments to hot sex and burgeoning zinc levels. All that landfill that could have been going back home with a fresh start on a shell so happy to be reincarnated.

I know you don’t have time to do the recycling part but here’s the thing:
we can do it for you.
I’ve been looking at your shells in the bowl and I’m going to find one that is giving me signals and I’ll send it back for both of us. I know how important your job is now and I don’t really forget those kinds of things once I learn them. It’s a tiny something I can do for you.

I will tell you now, Oyster Picker, the night after he had your oysters he stopped speaking. Everyone went to sleep except me and I sat next to him holding his hand. The last thing he said to me was, he said

Squeeze my hand, please

I held it until that last breath flew out and he went wherever it was he’d found where he wouldn’t be scared or lonely for us. Where he could continue on with the things you and I don’t know about yet.