Fujimori possessed a dark sensibility, which wasn’t always easy for me to appreciate. If I met him today, I’m not sure what I would say to him except to offer the standard greetings and inquiries about his work and spouse and family. It’s not that I would feel cold toward him, but his personality was such that he always made you consider the oddest aspects of events and happenings, and so you never felt fully comfortable saying the most innocent things, for worry how he might interpret or reobserve them. For example, I have to consider how he might cast his eye on me now, after having spoken to Mrs. Hickey and once again excused myself from spending time with her dying son. How might he describe me as I step limpidly across this wide parking lot, holding a fading bouquet of my own? What would he say if I told him I had never married, and that the girl I adopted had decided to run away rather than live with me in comfort? And would he devilishly ask why I had been so careless with the fireplace in my most precious home, as if I’d wanted to bring everything down in a self-made conflagration?
The sun has come out from a break in the clouds, and Liv has retracted the convertible top to her brilliantine emerald car. She and Renny are sitting in the front seats, backs against their doors, conversing civilly and politely, without their usual gesticulations. I slow down almost to a halt, the pace surprisingly comfortable for me, this inching septuagenarian shuffle. This is the first instance I’ve had of feeling my age, which does not seem so beleaguering a notion but rather a strangely comforting one, as if a voice inside me is trying to proclaim, I accept. I accept. It’s the way one relents when walking the last half-mile of a hike in light rain, to taste the sweet of the water on your face, and not just feel its chill. Why senescence should not have its hidden charms….
Renny Banerjee smiles wide now, and though I can’t hear what they’re saying, it’s clear they’re getting along, with Liv extending her hand across the center armrest, drawing invisible curlicues on the shoulder of his bucket seat. The back is a gaudy parade float of lilies and carnations and roses in varying states of bloom and wither. He sees me approaching and immediately gets out and skips around the car, taking my forearm to guide me to his seat. Liv thanks him and turns on the ignition, and Renny neatly hurdles the fender behind her, snuggling himself into the backseat nest of petals and stems.
“So, where am I taking you, Mr. Banerjee?” Liv says blithely.
He answers, “I thought we were going to lunch, after dropping off the Doctor.”
“Who said anything about lunch?” she says, quickly turning around.
“You did, going on about the new decor at Sffuzzi’s. I thought you were sending me a message that I should take us out.”
“Isn’t he arrogant, Doc?” Liv replies, telling me more than asking. She’s ignoring Renny, her eyes set low. “He implicates himself in everything.”
“I’m like you that way, Liv,” Renny murmurs from behind me, a sudden warmth softening his voice.
“I guess you are, Mr. Banerjee.” Liv sighs, backing the car out. She puts it in forward gear and we begin to pull away. “Too bad for you.”
From the hospital to home, it’s a straight shot to the northeast on the narrow, curbless two-lane that snakes in tight up-and-down turns beneath the overhanging trees. The dark green canopy is rafter-like over us, a shimmering, tattered vault of cover. Liv keeps asking if we should stop and put up the roof of the convertible, as there is a fresh edge to the air, the sky depthlessly clear, but it feels so good to me, the rushing air and the speed of the open car and the oaty tang of just-cut grass. I know again why I favor it so much here, how I esteem the hush of this suburban foliage in every season, the surprising naturalness of its studied, human plan, how the privying hills and vales and dead-end lanes make one feel this indeed is the good and decent living, a cloister for those of us who are modest and unspecial.
The road routes to an old divided parkway that is faster and tighter still, and then, in a three-mile stretch, becomes the main commercial route of 3A, the signposted six-lane strip of the town of Ebbington. Liv has been taking us forth at a brisk clip, confidently riding the yellow line, but now it’s halting traffic and four-way intersections and the rattle and hum of engines; though she’s irritated and Renny’s nodding off, I don’t mind the sudden heat and exhaust and crowd. I can’t help but notice, too, that beyond the expansive parking lot to my right, there sits the bulbous, tri-domed structure of the Ebbington Center Mall, its stucco facade stained dark along the top in large, creeping patches, the spindly trees infrequent in the mulched-bark landscaping, the whole thing looking weathered and faintly marine, floating in its blacktop sea.
When it was built, there was much fanfare and optimism, and I remember reading an editorial in the local paper about how important the Ebbington Center Mall would be in bringing new vitality to the area, enticing the shoppers (especially the affluent ones in Bedley Run) to stay here with their money, rather than trek down to the city. I myself received numerous solicitations from the mall management, special inducements and incentives to relocate my store as a “founding tenant,” but even as some of my fellow merchants left the old village, I took heed of the comments I’d casually hear around town from the country and tennis club set, the matrons and well-heeled young mothers, that they never went over to Ebbington and would certainly not start now. This instant, unwavering judging did bother me a little, as it naturally made me wonder what thousand other predeterminations had been made, and kept to. Still, I remained at my spot on Church Street, and proceeded to watch the mall go up and grandly open to balloons and flags and enjoy the initial flush of good business, and then, in good time, settle in to its Ebbington-land destiny of steady dwindle and decline.
This being the place, apparently, to which Sunny has returned.
And so I look there now, with the impulse of asking Liv to turn into the lot, simply to drive slowly past the columned entrance, to peer at the scant activity inside. Originally there were plans for sixty or more shops, as well as a few large department stores like Macy’s or Bloomingdales or Sears to anchor the bi-level wings, but the major chains weren’t interested in a lower-middle-class hamlet forty miles from the city with no major highways running near its borders. So after failed attempts by lesser retailers, there are now huge yellow banners on each end of the building, courtesy of the temporary (two-week) tenants, a clearance “wholesaler” of brandless electronics and a discount Christian bookseller, their wares hastily set out on long, folding-leg tables, with pricing by the bunch. The smaller retail spaces are only two-thirds filled, the square-foot rents now around half the price originally quoted to me. Just recently, the grand indoor waterpool leaked one night and left in its wake a dusty, fungal odor that all the pizza and enchilada and chicken stir-fry of the food court can’t seem to mask. Obviously I haven’t been there since speaking to former Officer Como the other day, and I’m having trouble conjuring my former daughter even setting foot in such a place (self-styled anti-capitalist as she was, or at least, anti — Sunny Medical Supply), much less being a manager of a women’s better-clothing store. And if all of this is true, I wonder now about the little boy who was mentioned by Officer Como, where he is staying while his mother works, and with whom, whether it’s the whole day that he’s with someone else, and again I want to tell Liv to tap her turn signal, get over to the entrance lane for the mall.