The Distant Land of My Father (33 page)

I wondered the same thing about my father: When had
he
changed? Just after he’d left us, or just before we’d arrived in Shanghai? During our first few days there, I thought he was just nervous around us, and that the newness of a wife and daughter were what made him so unpredictable. But when he was still that way the second week and then the third and after that the fourth, I realized that this was who he was now, and that the impulsive man who’d taken us to dinner that first night was the real thing, and not an act.

“Impulsive” was a compliment; “completely unreliable” was more accurate. We never knew when we would see him, and we rarely saw him two days in a row. He would say he’d come for dinner, then call an hour after he was to pick us up to cancel. One night he would be dressed immaculately—pressed shirt, silk tie, linen suit—and two nights later he’d show up in the same clothes, only by then they’d be rumpled and stained, and it was clear he had not changed since he’d seen us last. When he did keep his promise for dinner, he might take us to one of the nicest restaurants in town—Senet and St. Petersburg were his favorites—but it was just as possible that we’d end up eating noodles on Foochow Road, elbow to elbow with shopkeepers and clerks. Whatever the mishap, change of plans, or faux pas, his one-word explanation was always the same: business. Business was what made him late, kept him away, and delayed the work on the house at Hungjao.

The one thing my father did do, the one thing we could depend on, was financial support. There was always money. He passed a handful of bills to my mother each time he saw her, he offered a few to me when we said good night, and he had cash delivered to our apartment on Rue Ratard several days a week, a gesture that seemed crazy at first, but which soon seemed as necessary as providing running water. Shanghai’s economy was in chaos. Rumors of civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists in northern China made people distrust China’s paper currency, and it was worth less every day. By that fall of 1946, you needed a suitcase of cash to shop for the day.

During our first week in Shanghai, my mother accepted unconditionally my father’s constant use of business as an excuse. She began making up some of her own, to boot. She said his undependability was a phase, that he just hadn’t been ready for us, that he was embarrassed because the house was not prepared. He had always been a good provider, she said. Now he was afraid that he had lost face in our eyes, and he was frantically trying to make up for it. She was gracious without fail. Every time he canceled or showed up late, she made excuses for him and told me not to hold it against him.

I nodded silently and tried, for her sake, to hide my anger, not always with success. “Don’t hold it against him, Anna,” she said. “Resentment does not become you.” I turned from her and said I was hoping to grow into it, because it probably wasn’t going to go away soon. In fact, resentment was something I clung to. I resented our apartment, I resented Shanghai, its dirtiness, its beggars, its crowdedness. And I resented everything about my father: his lateness, his cancellations, his inattention, his general disregard of us. Most of all, I resented the way he treated my mother, as though she were an acquaintance, nothing more. But resenting him, I knew, was a good thing. It meant that things didn’t hurt so much.

On a Thursday morning in September, my mother and I celebrated the Feast of the Nativity of Mary at the early Mass at the Cathedral in Ziccawei. We had been in Shanghai for a month and a day, though it felt more like a year to me. All I wanted was to go home, but if I so much as mentioned the idea, my mother was short with me. We hadn’t seen my father in six days, a record. When she’d asked him about when we might be able to move to Hungjao, he had only shrugged, then changed the subject.

After Mass, we took a pedicab back to the Concession. We’d almost reached our apartment—our cell, was what I had begun to call it—when my mother said suddenly, as if in answer to some question I’d just asked, “We’re going to move to Hungjao tomorrow. This is crazy.”

I could only stare at her.

“It’s ridiculous,” she went on. “We came here to be a family. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t join him. The house can’t be that bad, and it’s not as though we’re accustomed to luxury. We’ll pack up this afternoon. I’ll ask him to stop by this evening, and we’ll tell him. And all this foolishness will be over.” She looked at me, her expression hopeful and calm, so that it almost seemed like things had already changed. “Don’t you think?”

I nodded, and did not tell her how wrong her plan seemed.

We packed that afternoon. I felt like a child pretending to get ready for a trip. I couldn’t believe that he would come, that we would go. If my mother was uncertain in any way, she did not show it. She was all efficiency, packing as though our move had been planned for weeks, sorting the things we’d bought since our arrival in Shanghai into various boxes and crates. At seven o’clock she hadn’t mentioned dinner, and although I was starved, I knew she was hoping that my father would appear. Finally, at almost eight, she sat down and smiled, and although she looked tired, she also looked happy.

“I know what we can do,” she said. “We’ll go to Jimmy’s. Do you remember it? We haven’t been there in all this time, because I was saving it for a celebration. But I think we’ve earned that today.”

I was too exhausted and too confused to say anything but yes. My mother told me to hurry and clean up, and half an hour later, we were on our way.

In that month, there had been much about Shanghai that I had not remembered, but when my mother and I walked into Jimmy’s that night, I remembered the Saturday my father took me there immediately. I remembered his suave assurance and his attention to me. I remembered his argument with Will Marsh, and the stolen yen in my shoe, and the shock of the kidnapping, which I hadn’t thought about in a long time. And I remembered how much I’d loved him then, and how he could do no wrong.

And so when my mother and I walked inside, I just stood in the doorway for a moment, a little stunned by the presence of so much past. I breathed in that same American smell from years before—barbecued chicken and hamburgers—and I smiled and looked at my mother.

At first I thought she must be ill. She looked stricken, as though she might faint, and I was afraid all the packing had made her sick. And then I followed her gaze and saw a familiar face.

My father was there, and I felt a wave of relief and gratitude. I started to wave to him and to call out, but my mother grabbed hold of my wrist so hard that I tried to pull away, more out of anger than hurt.

“Don’t,”
she said firmly. “Just leave.”

But it was too late, for I saw that he was with a Chinese woman I’d never seen before. She was leaning against him familiarly, and just as I looked, she said something and my father laughed and kissed her cheek. I was stunned at first. And then I had a worse feeling, for I realized I’d been expecting her all along. Things had been too strange; of course there was some explanation beyond business. As I stared hard and tried to see her more clearly, I was even more surprised; she wasn’t even pretty, really. When she laughed, there was something coarsely appealing about her, but she was no match for my mother. Which for reasons I couldn’t explain made everything seem worse.

My father said something to her and looked around the restaurant. And then he saw us.

For a moment, he just stared. Then he said something to the woman. I wanted to see her reaction, but I saw no more. My mother took my arm and guided me out of the restaurant and into Shanghai’s streets of beggars and hawkers and who knew what else, and she said that we were going home to our flat.

There she gave me a glass of sherry, a first, which I drank as an act of trust, despite the horrible taste. She put me to bed as though I were a child, soothing me, talking in a low voice. She was gentle and seemed inexplicably calm, and I thought she must know more than I did, but I had no interest in knowing what that was. She told me to sleep and that we would talk in the morning. I shut my eyes gratefully. I felt sick and tired and sad.

It was after midnight when I heard someone knocking on the door to our flat. It was quiet at first, then more forceful. I heard my mother’s steps moving toward the door, and I heard the door open and close, then my father’s heavier footsteps over my mother’s muffled ones.

My room was on the second floor of the apartment, and my mother had closed the doors between us—my bedroom door, the door to the hallway, and the door to the living room—so there was no way to make out my father’s words. All I heard was the rise and fall of his voice, the tones going up and down, louder and softer, as he spoke to my mother. I did not hear my mother’s answers. Her voice was too hushed.

For a long time, I stayed in bed. When I finally got up, I walked down the stairs and toward the double doors that led into the living room. I guessed my mother had meant to close them, but she’d left a crack, and I stood behind it, not really caring if they saw me. I was suddenly tired of both of them, and impatient. I just wanted whatever was going to happen to have happened. I wanted to go home, either to the one in Hungjao or the one in South Pasadena. Just not this sad apartment anymore.

They were sitting on a worn chintz loveseat, like some old prop from a second-rate play. Both of them looked exhausted. My father’s linen suit was rumpled, his tie loosened. My mother was next to him, her back straight, and she seemed to be staring at the floor.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Finally my father faced my mother and looked at her carefully. “Could you
possibly
have thought that I wanted the two of you here? Could you
possibly
have thought that I wanted a family again?”

My mother did not move. “I wanted to believe you did,” she said softly. “And Anna—” she started, but she did not finish.

My father nodded. He took her hand and held it between his own, but said nothing.

Later, I remembered going upstairs and getting back into bed, but I did not remember falling asleep. When I opened my eyes and saw my father sitting on the edge of my bed, I thought only moments had passed.

“I’d forgotten you did that,” I said.

He shook his head, not understanding. “What?”

“You used to watch me sleep when I was little,” I said. “I’d forgotten that till now.”

He nodded and smiled slightly, and the conversation I’d overheard came back to me. I glanced at the window and saw that it was morning.

My father was quiet for a few minutes. He looked even more tired than he had in the night. Finally he said, “Do you know what I do every day?”

I shook my head and thought that he was the most unpredictable person I knew.

“The way I look at it, I fix things,” he said. “Every day, I get out of bed and people come to me and tell me what they need. They need tires or newsprint or a truck chassis. They need a generator or a radiator or scrap metal by the pound. So I get it for them: I know where to buy just about anything anybody can think of, and I deliver it back to the guy who asked. All day, all week, I get things no one else in this city can. I’m the guy who can make it work.”

He looked at me to see if I was listening. I nodded.

“But you,” he said softly. His voiced cracked, and he cleared his throat and looked toward the window. “You’re a problem I can’t fix, Anna, the first one in a long time. And now I’m stuck.” He tried a casual smile and failed. “I can’t have you and your mother here. It’s not safe. Shanghai’s not a city for a young girl.”

I nodded, suddenly wanting the conversation to be over with. “You don’t love my mother,” I said matter-of-factly. I was so tired of not knowing, of my mother’s weak excuses for him, of telegrams that said nothing and evenings where he barely noticed us. I just wanted to understand.

“No, I—” he started, but he stopped and let his silence be his agreement.

I went on without hesitating, as though I were the one in charge. “So we’re going home, and we won’t see you again.”

He nodded and I watched him for a moment. I decided I wanted to see what he knew. So I said, “How old am I?”