The sun was falling like a helpless thing when I got off from work. Clouds crouched and crowded along the skyline, allowing the orange sunlight to barely squeeze through. There was a line outside the elderly home. There was a ringing ache in my head. There was just enough time to wait, and so that was what I did.
The woman in front of me turned around to look at the people behind her, scowled and shook her head. Her red coat seemed to be reflecting the dying light from the sky, and as she turned and the coat flowed in the air, she seemed, for a second, a flower petal in the gentle breeze. I wanted to talk to her but didn’t know how, so I bit my lip and just stared. The doors opened and the line slowly began to move forward, the air suddenly filled by the quiet shuffling of feet.
“Who are you here to visit?” The receptionist asked the woman in the red coat when it was her turn. “My father.” She answered, rummaging through her pockets for her identification. After receiving an approving nod she turned and strode down the hallway, and I stared at her silhouette as it vanished at the end of the corridor. “Who are you here to visit?” The receptionist spoke pointedly, his voice amplified mechanically through the microphone on his desk.
“Sorry – I’m visiting my father too,” I responded hastily.
“Are you two together?”
“What’s that?”
“The woman just now – are you visiting your father together?”
“Oh no, no, I don’t know her.” I shook my head, showing him my identification. “May I?” He looked slightly confused but nodded curtly, and I took it as my sign to proceed.
The heels of my boots clicked crisply on the marble floor as I walked up the stairs of the elderly home. Along the walls were paintings of oceanside views and coastline cliffs almost too saturated in color to be done by a human hand but also too beautiful to be held in such harsh skepticism. The hallway was wide and the ceiling high above, and the few lonely rays of the sunset drifted wearily through the windows on the walls.
I had to check with a nurse that I was going to the right room: I had almost forgotten where they put him. The nurse seemed to be quite taken aback by my question, looking at me carefully with a slight scowl before checking with her registrar and pointing me to the right place. There was no need for that attitude, I thought to myself as I knocked on the door. How was I supposed to know? They were the ones that built this place like a maze, after all.
My father was wearing a blue striped shirt that was wrinkled in all the wrong places. He was sitting in the couch chair beside the window, watching the television with his back turned to the door. He barely turned to look when I entered and quickly shifted to return his gaze back to the television set.
“You scared me.” He grunted. “I thought you weren’t coming until later.”
I stopped to look around the room as the door shut softly behind me. It was not a big room and the bed filled up half of its space, the patched-up bed sheets crumpled messily above it. I took off my coat and laid it on the bed. “Don’t put it there. Pick it back up.” I stopped suddenly. “Your coat’s dirty. I don’t want it on my bed.” I turned and thought about it some more, but eventually picked up my coat and folded it into a thick square and held it in my hands.
“I thought you weren’t coming until later.” He said again. “You scared me when you came in.”
“Florence is taking some time off of work later so I’m going home early to see her,” I said quietly. He made no sign that he heard me and instead bit into his upper lip and squinted his eyes at the television. I cleared my throat and continued. “Did you go out at all today? The weather is getting warmer.” Still, he was silent. It was then that I finally seemed to hear the sounds from the plasma screen that seemed inches away from my father’s face. It was a news segment on some business conglomerate that was quickly dissolving due to a public corruption scandal with the high executives.
“What a shame.” My father whispered. “Look at that – what a shame.”
The news story went on and I didn’t know what to say. I looked around again, hoping to find some new detail about the room that I hadn’t noticed before, but quickly realized that was also a fruitless endeavor since the walls remained empty and dusty.
“Hey, look, I brought you something.” From my back pocket, I took out a small golden locket with a matching chain and handed it to my father, who at first made no movement to look except glimpse at it with the side of his eyes but eventually picked it out of my hand to examine it with a slight frown. “It’s a picture of Florence and I,” I said with a smile. “We had our anniversary a few days ago.”
“It’s quite nice.” He nodded, turning the locket around before handing it back to me.
“Open it and look,” I said. “The picture is inside. You haven’t opened it yet.”
He took it back and pushed the small locket open with a click. It was a small photo of my wife and I laughing at the camera. We were so close that her hair was brushing against my face and I couldn’t tell if that was the reason that my eyes were shut or if it was my almost pitiful attempt to distill my happiness perfectly for myself in that moment. I looked at my father, who regarded it with the same lack of expression.
“It’s quite nice.” He repeated, and this time, put the locket directly into my hand.
“I wanted you to keep it.”
“What for?”
“I figured – as a memory.” My voice almost trailed off in a raising tone as if I was offering a suggestion to him. “As a way of remembering.”
When he didn’t answer, I closed the locket and turned it in my hands and put it on the bed. “I’ll let you keep it.” I was almost expecting him to say something or to finally raise his voice to complain that he didn’t like it or that the locket was too dirty to be on his bed or I wasn’t smiling the right way in the picture, but he just looked ahead into the television set, and remained silent.
“This is a big story, right?” I said. “All of my colleagues were talking about it. One of the largest companies in the world coming apart like this. It must be embarrassing.”
“This was a great company.” He said slowly. “It’s difficult to maintain what you have built these days. It’s difficult.”
I let out a breath and frowned because, yet again, I didn’t know how to respond.
“I doubt your colleagues really know anything about this. No, they don’t really know anything.”
“Why is that?”
He turned and looked at me as if I had just said something incredulous and offensive. “Well, why would they?” He said with a slightly raised voice. “They’re not businessmen. You’re not a businessman. You don’t understand any of this.”
I looked away from him and into the eyes of the reporter on the screen and felt a crawling sensation from my chest, tugging at the edge of my throat. I felt confused and ashamed. Even though there was no one around us, I was so seen and nakedly perceived. The moment passed and the crawling bile settled down in my stomach with a hiss.
“I saw mom yesterday,” I said finally after gathering up the courage. “She’s doing well.” I looked closely at him, but my father had no reaction, so I kept on before he could say anything. “She liked it a lot when I showed it to her.”
“She liked the news story?”
“No, this -” I pointed, “the locket. We talked about my anniversary with Florence and she said how she only remembers a few of your anniversaries.”
The news story ended and the channel cut to advertisements, and suddenly the screen was filled with so much colorful nonsense that there was no point for my father to pretend that he could not hear me. For a few seconds, I felt something in me grow incredibly still and my palms began to sweat and I wiped them on my coat with force. I waited; I listened.
“Your mother and I are very different people, you know this. I used to tell her this story all the time because it helped me explain things to her.” He paused. “There was a river where I grew up, and a willow tree beside the water, and a line of reeds that grew on the riverbank. The tree had always been tall and stood there firmly, not shaken by anything. But the reeds were nothing alike – with every passing breeze they swayed and bent to the direction of the wind. They had no backbone. They were weak and fragile.” He paused, rubbed his face and snorted through his nose. “I remember when I was older, there was a storm. A big storm. Something that we were all dreading. I remember running home when it first arrived and seeing that the roots of the willow were being pulled from the ground. I remember crying at the sight of it. I kept running but heard a loud crash and saw the willow uprooted and tossed into the river by the storm. But when I came back the next morning, all of the reeds were still standing in a straight line on the river bank, as if nothing had happened.” He stopped again and looked at me, and I recognized with disgust a sparkle of light that I had wished not to see. “Like I said, it’s hard to maintain anything that you’ve built these days. Nothing lasts forever. Not anymore.”
The words fell around me and I felt naked again as if the edges of my skin had begun to peel off slowly and I was standing in the same room that I had stood in for all of my life and the couch chair that my father was sitting in was going to open its mouth and swallow me whole. I gritted my teeth and stared.
“There are only two kinds of people in this world.” My father said with an air of finality. “You are either a willow or a reed. Your mother and I are different people.”
“That is an oversimplification.”
“Why?”
“Well, what does that make me?”
He looked at me and opened his mouth to speak but then seemed to swallow his words. He turned back to the television as the news segment resumed. “Your mother and I are completely different people.” He muttered again. “You know this.”
The night had begun to fall when I left my father, and its long casted shadows had wrapped itself around my frame when I arrived home. The apartment smelled like rosemary and butter, and my wife had set the table for the two of us and gave me a warm smile when I pushed open the door.
“How did it go?” She beamed and gave me a hug. “Did he like the locket? I know he did. He always likes my ideas.”
“He loved it. Thank you.” I smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s sit down. I’ve been waiting all day for this.”
Dinner was slow, and so was our conversation, and there was something incredibly hard to chew in the food that I kept mulling away at it silently, my jaw clenched tightly shut and my focus shifting away from my wife. By the time I had regained enough self-awareness to feel guilty, she had already noticed.
“What is it?” She asked with a frown. “Did you two start an argument again? It is always the same with you two, isn’t it?”
I did not answer; I felt like some part of me simply could not. I remained silent and my mind drifted further away from her, away to some distant shoreline where the river ran up to my feet and I could stare at the laughing faces of the reeds.
“Give it some rest. Give yourself and your father some patience.” I heard my wife say from across the table. “What did you two talk about? Care to share?”
She looked at me with a soft and inviting glint in her eyes. I opened my mouth and tasted the ensuing silence, placing it on my tongue and weighing it carefully before speaking.
“Nothing in particular.”
“Is he getting outside often these days? The weather is getting warmer.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What did he really say about the locket? Did you even tell him that it was my idea?”
I sighed and let go of the fork in my hand and saw Florence flinch slightly as it clattered onto the plate. We sat in silence for a moment.
“You know, I find it hard to speak with him sometimes.”
“I understand. I really do. Won’t you talk about it?”
“And every time that I see him it reminds me of family and how I’ve never really gotten a choice in mine.”
“But you have me,” Florence said softly, beaming. “I’m here for you. I’m here to listen to you. Now, what happened with him today that’s got you so down?”
“Nothing, nothing.” I waved my hand impatiently. “But it did remind me of something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“What’s that? Go on.”
“I want a kid,” I said, looking up at her. “I want to have a kid.”
My wife seemed to freeze and there was something in her reaction that greatly upset me – her mouth hung slightly ajar and the incredulous look on her face seemed to coincide with a sight of alarm. It angered me; it felt like some sort of betrayal. “Say something,” I grunted.
“You are being irrational.” She finally said, leaning back slightly. “You are angry. I know you might be upset after visiting him, but -”
“This is not about my father.”
“I don’t think you quite know what you are saying.”
“This is not about my father; it is about us. This family.”
“You are not speaking with a clear head.”
I blinked.
“We should not do this right now.”
“Right now is the best time.” I leaned forward. “I’ve made up my mind; it’s our anniversary. It’s the perfect time to talk about this.” I scowled when I saw her look down into her hands. “I thought you would agree with me. I thought we looked at it the same way. I thought you supported me; isn’t that what you just said?”
“I was looking forward to our dinner.” She said quietly. “You’ve made sure that I cannot enjoy it anymore.”
“Me? I made sure of that?” I asked. “It was me? It was my father. Do you know what he said to me? Do you know?”
“What?”
“There are only two kinds of people in this world, Florence. Only two! Those who live and die for what they believe in and those who sacrifice everything they believe in just to stay alive. The willow or the reed.”
“You are not making any sense.”
“Understand me! Listen to me! Look at me!” I yelled. “I want a kid. I want to build something with you. Something that lasts. This is a choice that I’m making, don’t you see? A choice that we all have to make in life! And you’re running away from it!”
“You are scaring me.” She said quietly. “I need to go.” She stood up slowly and backed away from the kitchen table, looking at me all the while as if I was a wild animal that would run after and attack her once she’d taken away her gaze. She turned the corner and walked briskly to the door and a moment later, I heard the door click and she was gone.
The same tingling feeling of nakedness ran up my body again, and I became even angrier. But I did not feel sorry for my wife; I only felt sorry for myself. I was angry at her, just like I was angry at my father. I picked up the bottle of wine in the middle of the table and poured it into my glass, swirling it between my fingers and raising it to take small sips, feeling the cold spice tingle my tongue. I thought about the woman in the red coat that I had seen earlier in the day and wondered how her visit with her father had gone. I wondered about her name. I wondered if she had children of her own. I wondered about having children and being a father. I wondered about what kind of man that would make me feel like I was.
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. The day was done, and in a few hours it would be tomorrow again. But there was so much that I wanted to say, and I felt so unbearably empty at the realization that I still did not know how to say anything. So I drank some more wine and closed my eyes. I dreamed of many things. That long, lonesome river, that terrifying willow that stood with its back turned against me, and some field of reeds that managed to bloom into little yellow flowers that climbed on top of each other and danced in the wind. I dreamed that I was a cowboy, walking barefoot into that riverbank and looking across the border for the ways of love. I felt like I could sleep forever, and all would be forgiven. //
About the Author
Franklin Dong is a student and writer based in New York City.
About the Author
