It was Sunny, of course. And from the silent lingering, I was sure, she had sensed it was me. For the rest of the day and evening I tried to set the house right again, following Renny’s lead with my bin of mail, but somewhere in the course of the good, mundane work I had to rest for what first felt like a shortness of breath. Dr. Weil had warned that I might experience very brief episodes of asthma-like attacks, but the sensation was sharper than that, not like a constriction but a pointed, burning ache deep in the square of my chest, like a rifle shot passing cleanly through. And then, as swiftly as it struck, it was gone, leaving me half-gasping with my temple pressed against the divided panels of the French patio doors, to gaze outside at the late summer colors gloriously burnished by the majestic, clarified light that should, by most any account, be guide to my life’s last sweet dawning.
But the light, alas, is not. Rather, as I now make my way down the half-empty commercial boulevard, the traffic signals all changing to green so that I can hardly slow down or delay, the brightness seems hard and scrutinizing, everything I look upon appears overreal and starkly patent. To my dismay, I’ve arrived in what seems half the usual time. It being just after ten, the immense mall parking lot is practically deserted, save the hulking, older-model and econobox cars of the store employees, which sparsely line the far periphery in a gesture to the large weekend crowds that have long gone elsewhere. I pull in across the wide stretch of blacktop and although I have my choice I park perhaps a dozen spaces from the open spots nearest the entrance, and I wish I could obscure myself somehow as I walk to the grandly hideous, domed building, the lone customer heading inside.
The mall, everyone knows, is failing. There are other shoppers, of course, perhaps ten or fifteen wherever you look, but only a few are holding store bags of purchases. Mostly it’s single parents or teens who have bought an orange drink or cinnamon bun at the food court, strutting about for nothing better to do, or the people my age and beyond, who gather beneath the central glass dome of the mall, sitting on the benches set beneath the artificial palms, which replaced the real ones that looked wretched from Grand Opening day and finally died last year. The old folks await an early lunch, then will take a slow stroll or sit again to watch the passersby until the middle afternoon, when they’ll drive home before the rush hour and shut their eyes for a nap. The sense here, unlike in Bedley Run, is not of brisk and free commerce but rather the near-sickly, leaden atmosphere of a terminal, where people wait and linger under the fluorescent lights and kill time in any way they can.
At least a third of the shops are vacant, the bath and linens store gone under and the oak furniture place, too, and across the sorry divider of plastic ferns the Waterbeds Plus is in the midst of a closing sale, drastic final markdowns and reductions. The few notes of life in this wing come from the bulb-lettered signs of the Dollar Store, which is always in disarray and crowded with children, and the floor-to-ceiling display of the T-shirt and baseball cap seller, and the windows of the fish and pet shop, where dirty puppies climb and tumble over one another to scratch at the thick glass. There is the forlorn plastic playground of the Kiddie Kare hastily set up inside yet another empty store, and where the clock shop used to be, several Middle Eastern — looking men are papering the entrance with cardboard cutouts of goblins and cats and maniacal pumpkins, and unfurling a banner announcing the grand opening of their (temporary) store of Halloween gifts and costumes and crafts. There’s more than a month to go, but a few children already stand by reverently watching them slide their ladders from side to side as they trim the windows with black and orange crepe paper ribbons, hanging witches and skeletons.
The effect is festive, at least, a lively contrast to the dank grimness of this place, even if it is morbidity being celebrated. Perhaps it’s the most the Ebbington Center Mall can hope for now, the commemoration of pretty much anything. As I make my way down to the far wing where the Lerner’s is, the running skylights above dingy with neglect, the dark water stains creeping down the plaster, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a tide of pure and awful feeling. And so the questions beg: Is this the place where her child must play? Is that the seat where she takes her day’s break or lunch? Is this all the world she would have, so as not to be with me?
When Officer Como casually mentioned at the hospital that she had seen Sunny, I instantly saw in my mind the picture of her at the age when she first came to me. A skinny, jointy young girl, with thick, wavy black hair and dark-hued skin. I was disappointed initially; the agency had promised a child from a hardworking, if squarely humble, Korean family who had gone down on their luck. I had wished to make my own family, and if by necessity the single-parent kind then at least one that would soon be well reputed and happily known, the Hatas of Bedley Run. But of course I was overhopeful and naive, and should have known that he or she would likely be the product of a much less dignified circumstance, a night’s wanton encounter between a GI and a local bar girl. I had assumed the child and I would have a ready, natural affinity, and that my colleagues and associates and neighbors, though knowing her to be adopted, would have little trouble quickly accepting our being of a single kind and blood. But when I saw her for the first time I realized there could be no such conceit for us, no easy persuasion. Her hair, her skin, were there to see, self-evident, and it was obvious how some other color (or colors) ran deep within her. And perhaps it was right from that moment, the very start, that the young girl sensed my hesitance, the blighted hope in my eyes.
The Lerner’s, I’m relieved, has fared much better than most of the stores. It’s clean and tidy, for one thing, the display window sparkling and warmly lighted, the wide marble-tiled entrance spotless and waxed. It’s just how I would try to keep it, were it mine, and for a moment I allow myself the thought that I’ve bestowed at least this tiny scruple on Sunny, from years of example. I can’t see back to the main island register because I’m sitting on a bench one store down, happy to watch the steady traffic of women (and their children and some men) go inside and come out. The clothes in the store look to me eminently respectable, of conservative styling and subdued color, not too fancy or too cheap, the blouses and pantsuits and skirts of office managers and junior executives and the young real estate agents who aren’t Liv Crawford quite yet. Part of me still can’t accept the idea of Sunny running this kind of squarely middle-class franchise, or for that matter running any kind of business at all, and then one so expansive and peopled and professionally staffed. From this bench, lodged behind the cover of broad leaves of faux tropical plants, I survey the saleswomen working the floor, guiding customers to changing rooms with armfuls of clothes, offering other sizes and colors, this active squad she’s charged with certain missions for the day. And it’s almost too much for me, too felicitous perhaps, to imagine the fantastic idea of what Sunny Medical Supply might be instead of half-emptied and shut, what kind of vital, resplendent establishment could have been built, not for pride or for riches but a place to leave each night and glance back upon and feel sure would contain us. For isn’t this what I’ve attempted for most all of my life, from entering the regular school with my Japanese parents when I was a boy, to enlisting myself in what should have been a glorious war, and then settling in this country and in a most respectable town, isn’t this my long folly, my continuous failure?