by Russ Anderson

 

"I've got a Xerox of it," the social worker said as she handed the envelope across the desk, "but I would really, really appreciate it if you didn't lose the original."

Kyle nodded and took the envelope from her. It was business-sized, with red and blue airmail markings around its edges. It was old and dirty, and looked like someone had folded it up and stuffed it in their back pocket often. The name and address were indecipherable scrawls in Korean script on the front of the envelope; the return address was the same.

"I'm not guaranteeing anything," he warned her. "Translation is tricky anyway, but it doesn't look like whoever wrote this had the prettiest handwriting."

"Of course. Do your best. Either way, I really appreciate you giving this a shot."

"It's the least I can do," Kyle said, and that was the truth, even though the words sounded to him like they should have come out of an adult's mouth, not his own. He'd been saying a lot of things like that in the last couple days.

The social worker-Mrs. McKnight according to the nameplate on her desk-simply nodded.

"Alright then," he said, standing. "Give me a couple of days and I should have it done for you."

"Good, good." McKnight rose and extended a hand. Kyle took it. It was rough and dry. "Did everything work out with the crematory? They didn't give you any problems?"

Kyle shook his head.

She gave him a small, self-satisfied smile. "Well, then, good luck. I'll be in touch."

---

Kyle remembered the smell of the ICU most of all, that almost pungent sterility, so much stronger than the rest of the hospital. It had to be, though, because the smell of sickness and death was stronger here too, lying just under the surface, like a dead rat in a golden cage.

His father was comatose that last time Kyle saw him, tubes up his nose forcing air into his powerless lungs. The doctors called it liver failure, decades of alcohol abuse finally taking its toll. The machines were keeping him alive, but he had to be kept under constant sedation for the pain, and his entire body was swollen, like a paper bag about to burst.

Kyle had held his father's hand, and tried to remember the details of their last conversation. It had almost surely been in a bar, since that was where his father had practically lived for the last seven years of his life, only returning to his seedy, shared apartment when the barkeep told him it was closing time.

Hal's condition deteriorated before Kyle's eyes. Experts told him that even should he fight his way through his present troubles-an infinitesimal chance-he would certainly suffer brain damage, and a bulky machine would have to do the work of his liver every day for the rest of his life. The experts had bemoaned the fact that this terrible decision rested on Kyle's shoulders, but Kyle's mother had divorced his father years earlier, and Hal had no other living kin besides an older sister in Illinois who could only give Kyle her support from afar.

So Kyle thought about it. He talked to his wife, he talked to his mother, he talked to his chaplain. He deliberated and fumed until his head hurt. And then he walked into the ICU one day, took a deep breath of sterility and masked filth, and told the nurses to turn his father's machines off.

The entire process took two hours, slowly cutting Hal's life support until he was gone. Kyle held his hand and thought I love my father, I love my father. Then he had gone out to the waiting area and hugged his wife and wondered why he didn't have any tears to shed.

The following days were a blur; not because they went fast, but because Kyle was sleepwalking through them. He kept hearing his father's voice

(I love you son, goodles and obbs)

and then he would think I killed him, I killed my father. Images bled together: Donna, his wife, lying beside him and whispering love to him; talking on the phone to his first sergeant, saying he needed just one more week to take care of his father's body; he and Donna sitting around a table at Burger King with old friends.

And then, a moment of clarity: he and Donna sat in a social worker's office, the Phoenix skyline blazing at them through the windows. The social worker-Mrs. McKnight-was telling them that his father's body had to be disposed of in one way or another. If he chose to leave the burial to the city, he forfeited all right to ever know where the body was interred.

Kyle had little money-he'd had to borrow from the Red Cross to fly back home from Texas. He thought of his father lying in an unmarked grave in a field somewhere with hundreds of other bums, unmourned, and his hand trembled in his wife's grasp.

(goodles and obbs)

-- Do you have any family members who could help you with the cost of cremation?

Kyle thought of his mother and the seven years of divorce separating her from Hal. She was already letting Kyle and Donna stay in the house while they were in town. He didn't want to drag her any farther into this.

The social worker sighed and shuffled through some papers on her cluttered desk.

-- What did you say you do for a living?

-- I'm in the Air Force; I'm a linguist.

-- The Air Force, huh? Where are you stationed?

-- San Angelo, Texas.

-- My husband was in the Air Force for a while; how many languages did they teach you?

-- Just one: Korean.

She looked at him sharply then, and Kyle thought about how his father had railed against this woman while he was alive; called her the Anti-Christ, even.

She tapped her pencil on the desk thoughtfully and said:

-- I might be able to get you an at-cost rate for your father's cremation; run you about three hundred and fifty dollars. Could you afford that?

Kyle looked at Donna and slowly nodded.

-- I can call in a favor or two, I think, but you need to do something for me in return. How good are you at Korean-to-English translation?

-- Not bad. Give me a dictionary, I have no problems.

-- Good. I've got a letter found in the home of a Korean girl killed in a hit-and-run last month. We're trying to find next of kin for this girl, and the letter's the only clue we've got; only problem is it's in Korean. You think you could handle it?

Sure he could handle it, no problem.

-- Great. I'll call the mortuary right now. Don't worry about a thing. You'll need to come back and get the letter tomorrow, but you should be able to take care of the paperwork to have your father's body cremated today.

Kyle looked at Donna. Tears were shining in her eyes, but there was a smile underneath them. She had hardly known his father, but the idea of leaving him in an unmarked grave had upset her nearly as much as it had upset Kyle. He squeezed her hand reassuringly and looked past her out the window at Phoenix's skyscrapers. He wondered if maybe he should feel in some way absolved.

Because he didn't; he was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

---

Now Kyle sat at his desk and stared blankly at the two undersized, college-ruled sheets of paper packed with cramped Korean handwriting. As far as his translation went, he had the name of the recipient and the first sentence down on paper. They read:

HONG-SU,

HELLO, I AM WRITING TO FIND HOW YOU ARE DOING.

He had already read through the letter and got the gist. The dead girl's brother had written to her about her father's imminent death. The irony of that was not lost on Kyle.

He wasn't into this tonight. He was working under strict time limitations-he was due back in Texas in a few days-but he just couldn't make himself be interested in this right now.

He heard the bedroom door open and close behind him, but didn't bother to look around. He knew who it was before she placed her cool hands on his shoulders and kneaded the cramped muscles there. He sighed and slouched down in the chair, submitting to the therapy.

"How's it coming?" his wife asked, looking over his shoulder. "Doesn't seem like much for an hour and a half's work."

"It's not."

"Are you okay, hon?"

"Yeah, I'm just not in the mood for this right now." He took her hands from his shoulders and kissed them, one after the other. "What're mom and Lou doing out there?"

"Watching TV. They said something about going out to the casino tomorrow night. Think you'll be up for it?"

He looked at the letter laid out on his desk and shook his head. "I don't know. I'll have to see how far along I am with this. We don't have any money to blow at the casino anyway."

"Well, maybe we'll win big; walk in with five dollars and walk out with a couple grand." He looked up at her, cynical. "Hey, it could happen."

"Yeah, we could get struck by lightning too. You know, you're-"

"'Six times more likely to be struck by lighting than win the Arizona lottery'," she finished. "Yeah, I know. Thanks for the encouragement, sunshine."

He smiled. She could turn a dark mood around so easily. They had been married six months and he loved her madly-her thick, wavy black hair, her suntea-colored eyes. He loved her with every pore of his body. She was the only thing that kept him going sometimes, from not falling prey to a growing sense of disillusionment as his childhood faded into the past behind him. At the age of twenty, when the rest of his peers were getting married only if they had an accidental baby on the way, he had married strictly for love's sake. God knew children were still years down the line, but until then they had each other, and that was enough.

He stood up suddenly and kissed her. It was a long, lingering kiss, and when it was over, she smiled at him conspiratorially, like a little girl who knew she was about to do something bad. "Kyle, what are you doing?"

"Kissing my wife. And there's more where that came from."

"We're in your parents' house!"

"Let them listen."

---

Later, with the lights out and the soft sound of the large-screen TV filtering in from the livingroom, Kyle lay awake, watching Donna sleep soundly beside him. She had rolled onto her side, away from him, but the room was cool, and she'd ended up scooting back to his side of the bed, until her back was pressed against his side. He played with her hair and tried to hear what was playing on the TV in the other room.

Donna shifted beside him, muttered something in her sleep, and was still. She was beautiful, and he wondered for the fifth time that night how the two of them had gotten so lucky as to find each other. Certainly, neither of them had inherited effective marital techniques from their parents-hers had divorced around her eighth birthday, and it had taken Kyle's own parents two marriages to figure out they couldn't live together.

Kyle hadn't been like the children of other divorcees he knew: he'd never harbored illusions about his parents getting back together, nor had he even hoped they would, above a subconscious level. Things just seemed to run smoother when his parents were apart. Even the last couple years, when his father literally lived in a bar and got paid under the table for janitorial duties, Kyle had preferred that to having his parents living under the same roof.

Not that there hadn't been good times. Hal and Carol Marz had not spent eleven non-consecutive years together just to torment each other. The Christmas of his twelfth year stuck in Kyle's memory in particular. Hal had lost his job with Eagle's Warehouse the year before and hadn't worked since. The drinking was getting worse; so bad that even Kyle, who had grown up with his father almost perpetually drunk, couldn't help but notice it. The year as a whole had not been good, but that Christmas was amazing. His mother was working two jobs and, for once, could afford to buy the action figures Kyle coveted. There had been other presents, and a large dinner, and his aunt had visited with her children, but those action figures, and the playset that came with them, had really made that Christmas. Hal had sat in his ratty old recliner and cussed and laughed in equal measure while he put the playset together. The three of them drank egg nog (no rum), watched Jimmy Stewart go through his paces in It's a Wonderful Life, and generally acted like a real family. Kyle saw his parents kiss and snuggle more on that day than he did throughout the rest of their marriage.

Then, shortly after New Year's, reality had come crashing down. Hal disappeared, along with the car, for a week. With the help of some family friends, they'd found him sleeping in the six year-old Ford Escort on the edge of the highway outside of town. He'd spent most of their meager savings on booze during that week. Carol let him back in the house, but the marriage never really recovered from that week Hal had gone missing. Kyle's parents managed to stay together fifteen more months, probably for Kyle's sake more than anything, then Carol had asked Hal to leave. He had and, after the divorce was finalized, Carol had met another man and made him Kyle's stepfather.

But that was years ago. In the here and now, Kyle smoothed Donna's long black hair, kissed her bare shoulder, and slid out of bed, careful not to wake her up. Throwing on some shorts, he walked to his desk and turned on the small lamp. The light didn't illuminate much more than the desktop, but he glanced back at Donna anyway. She continued to sleep soundly.

The letter and the beginning of his translation were out where he'd left them. He had a seat and picked up his Korean dictionary. It was better than nothing when it came to keeping the memories away.

He started where he'd left off, slowly at first; he needed to distract himself from his thoughts more than anything, so he still wasn't feeling a lot of enthusiasm. As time passed and the night wore on, though, the letter began to suck him in, to make him care about what was going on between its lines. At midnight, the TV out in the livingroom clicked off, his stepfather finally retiring for the night, and still Kyle wrote. He poured through the dictionary until his eyes ached, jotted down notes and vocabulary until his hand hurt. At around two AM, he flipped one of the letter's pages over in anticipation of finding more writing on the other side. He found nothing. With a start, he realized he'd finished the translation; finished it in one night. It was a rough draft, and every part of his body above the waist was in pain, but the translation was done.

Amazing what a little avoidance behavior could do.

He returned to his bed and snuggled close to his wife's side. Let the dreams come, he thought. For tonight, at least, he'd done what he could.

---

-- My dad's a truck driver.

-- My dad's a lawyer.

-- My dad's a Marine sergeant.

-- My dad's a-

Young Kyle looked around the room while the other kids watched him expectantly, waiting for him to share the great work his father had devoted his life to.

-- Kyle?

His teacher was looking at him too. Mrs. Gonzalez, second grade teacher extraordinaire. She was wearing Coke bottles-real Coke bottles-on her eyes and she peered at him through them. But that wasn't right. Mrs. Gonzalez had worn big thick glasses that reminded you of the bottom of a Coke bottle, but not the real thing.

-- Kyle?

Sitting next to him, a seven year-old Donna put her little girl's hand on his arm and squeezed comfortingly. But that wasn't right either. He hadn't met Donna until high school. There she was now though, staring at him with big, innocent eyes. Behind her, on the chalkboard, someone had written I will not run in the halls, in Korean, fifty times.

-- My father is an alcoholic.

He spit it out and glared around the room, daring anyone to laugh or say anything at all bad about his father. He needn't have bothered. His classmates, along with Mrs. Gonzalez and Donna, were already fading, to be replaced by the inside of the apartment his family had lived in during Kyle's sixth grade year. His father, Hal Marz, sat in his favorite chair with a Budweiser can in one hand while the Cubs played the Cardinals on the thirteen-inch television in the corner. Hal was glaring at his son.

-- What the hell is your problem?!

Kyle tried to swallow his own frustration, his own anger, but this once it wasn't going to happen that way.

-- What the hell is your problem?!

Hal swiped at him, but Kyle's compact, twelve year-old frame backpedaled out of the way easily and was out the front door like a shot. He heard his father bellow after him, but he paid no heed. He sprinted down the road for three blocks, tears of fear and released anger streaming down his face the whole way. Eventually, he found an empty curb and sat down on the hot pavement, cooked by the mid-day Phoenix sun. His head felt like it might burst; he gasped for air and coughed up hot phlegm.

-- You okay, Kyle?

The voice spoke in clipped English, and Kyle looked up into the broad, smooth face of a Korean girl. She had obviously been the one who'd spoken, but she wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed down the road, where Kyle could hear the roar of a diesel engine approaching.

-- Yeah, I'm fine Hong-Su.

She nodded, as if satisfied, and, still not sparing him a glance, stepped out into the road. Kyle watched her go, and wasn't surprised at all when an eighteen-wheeler ran the girl down, dragging her body fifty yards before leaving it in a wet heap in the middle of the empty road. The truck barreled on, heedless of the destruction it left in its wake; and Kyle was suddenly on his feet and running toward the mess that could hardly be called a body anymore, as if he couldn't have stopped this tragedy with a word, with a touch of his hand.

He ran down the road, and as he approached the body, he saw it wasn't really a body at all, but a table, big enough for maybe three people to sit at. His father was sitting at the table, the can of Bud, the Cubs game, his favorite chair, and the drunken argument with his son seven years gone now. Kyle had a seat across from his father. They were in a dimly-lit bar; on the jukebox, Conway Twitty sang about everything he owed his father. Hal lit a cigarette and peered lovingly at his son through the smoke.

-- How've you been, son?

-- Great, dad, great.

-- How's your mom?

-- She's great, too. Got a raise last week.

-- Good, good.

Behind Hal, Mrs. McKnight, the social worker, served beer to the thin, ghost-pale patrons lined up at the bar. Above her head, a poster advertisement depicting Donna lounging on the sand wearing a bikini and holding a bottle of beer was taped to the mirror.

-- Thanks for coming to see me.

-- No problem, dad.

-- You probably have to get going, huh?

Kyle nodded and made a big show of looking at his watch.

-- Yeah. Gotta get to work.

Behind the bar, Mrs. McKnight tore off her apron and tossed it to a young Korean girl, who had just shown up to relieve her. Kyle stood up and stepped around the table to his father's side. Hal had tears in his eyes, but that was all part of the routine. The best thing to do would be to say goodbye and get out before he started blubbering about how he'd failed Kyle and his mother, how Kyle was the only reason he had left for going on. That spiel had stopped being moving to Kyle years ago. Why couldn't his father stay sober for these meetings? Christ, was that so much to ask?

-- I love you, son.

-- I love you too, dad.

-- Goodles and obbs?

-- Goodles and obbs.

Kyle squeezed his father's shoulder one more time, then turned and walked away. He was starting to wake up now, and the bar was beginning to dissolve into a half-wakeful mist. It was time to move out of the dreamed past and into the realized present.

Still, he couldn't help turning one more time, to catch one last glimpse of Hal, but his father was already gone, receded into the blinding light of waking.

---

His mother was in the kitchen when Kyle emerged from his room. The smell of frying eggs and bacon reached down the hallway like grasping fingers, hooking him by the nostrils. The smell alone was enough to clog your arteries.

Carol Jordan, formerly Carol Marz, originally Carol Apodaca, smiled at him as he came into the kitchen. The back door was thrown wide and early autumn air and sunlight flooded the kitchen.

"Morning, sweetheart." She gave his cheek a kiss as she stirred a skillet full of frying hashbrowns. "Want some breakfast?"

"Sure." He tried to sample one of the biscuits cooling on the counter but, without missing a beat in her stirring, his mother smacked his hand away.

"Where's Lou?" he asked, taking the denial in stride.

"Out back, working on Stan's car. You remember Stan, don't you?"

Kyle grunted an affirmative, though he had no idea who Stan was, and went in search of a clean glass.

"So what've you got planned today?" his mother asked, all sunshine and smiles.

"Gotta drop off that translation I've been doing for that lady after I clean it up a little." He found a glass and poured it full of orange juice before returning the pitcher to the refrigerator. "Then I've got to stop by the mortuary and pick up dad."

His mother flinched. It was barely perceptible, but it was there. She stirred the potatoes and flipped a couple of eggs in another skillet. Kyle got a plate down from the cupboard without being asked and handed it to her to pile the eggs on. She nodded a thank-you and he continued to drink his orange juice.

"You know," she said finally, "if you need to talk-about your dad-I'm here. You know that, right?"

Kyle looked at his mother over the half-empty glass. She was a big woman, forty-six years old; her hair was red, but she got the color from a bottle these days. She stirred the potatoes and didn't look at him, and Kyle realized that she was lying. She didn't want to talk about Hal. She desperately hoped Kyle wouldn't take her up on her offer, in fact. But she loved him, and knew he was hurting, so she had to offer something.

He drained the glass and set it in the sink. "No thanks, ma." He kissed her on the cheek. "I'm gonna go wake Donna up, see if she's hungry. Cool?"

Carol nodded and offered him another smile. Kyle turned and went to wake his wife up.

---

It was late September, but the Phoenix sun beat down on South Mountain like it was mid-July. Kyle parked his mother's truck near the peak, at the designated parking area, and picked his way down the slope until he'd left all the other sightseers behind. He set the large blue plastic container he was carrying down among the gravel and scrub adorning the side of the mountain and had a seat beside it.

Phoenix was spread out below and before him like a great, dull-colored crown. The city's muted colors and short, squat buildings made it a sight that-while not as beautiful as cities like LA or New York or Chicago-could still tug on one's heart's strings, asking it to soar. At night, as the city's lights came on, the sight became truly wondrous; but the view by daylight was enough for Kyle. He looked out over the city now, his city, with one hand resting on the blue plastic container.

The container held the cremated remains of his father. Kyle hadn't been able to afford an urn, so his father's final resting-place was this humble plastic box. At least blue had been Hal's favorite color, Kyle thought dryly.

"Nice view, huh dad?" he asked, feeling a little silly for talking to a plastic box, like his father was still in there with his ashes. "I don't think you ever got up here. At least not since you and mom broke up.

"Sorry about the box, but we'll get you a prettier container as soon as we can afford it. And a proper burial too. We almost couldn't afford the cremation, but Mrs. McKnight was really helpful. I know you didn't like her-what'd you used to call her? 'a fat dyke bitch'?-but we couldn't have done anything with your body without her."

Kyle was quiet for a moment, then he reached into the front pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out two folded sheets of paper. "I translated some dead lady's letter for her. Thought it would take a couple of days, but I finished it all last night. I guess the subject matter held my interest. Do you want to hear?" The container didn't reply, and Kyle nodded. Silence was consent.

He began to read:

HONG-SU,

HELLO, I AM WRITING TO FIND HOW YOU ARE DOING? I HEAR MANY THINGS ABOUT AMERICA. PLEASE TELL ME ALL ABOUT THE THINGS THERE. HAVE YOU SEEN NEW YORK CITY YET? I ENJOYED YOUR PICTURES FROM THE GRAND CANYON. PLEASE SEND MORE PICTURES LIKE THESE.

I AM WRITING YOU FOR AN IMPORTANT REASON. OUR FATHER IS SICK AND HAS SPENT TWO WEEKS IN THE HOSPITAL IN SEOUL. HE IS VERY STRONG, BUT VERY OLD. HE DOES NOT SAY, BUT HE MISSES YOU VERY MUCH. IF YOU COME HOME, I THINK HE MIGHT FORGIVE YOU. HE SAYS HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, BUT MOTHER SAYS HE IS LYING BECAUSE OF HIS PRIDE. OUR MOTHER WANTS YOU TO COME HOME ALSO.

WHEN YOU LEFT HOME AND WENT TO AMERICA, FATHER SAID HE NEVER WANTED TO SEE YOU AGAIN, BUT HE IS OLD NOW, AND NOT SO ANGRY. I THINK IF YOU CAME HOME TO VISIT, IT WOULD BE A GOOD THING. YOU CAN SAY GOODBYE, AND SO CAN FATHER.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, WE PLAYED GAMES THAT WERE FOR BOYS? FATHER WOULD SAY "YOU CAN'T PLAY THOSE GAMES, HONG-SU, YOU ARE A GIRL." THEN YOU CRIED BUT CONTINUED TO PLAY BOY-GAMES. OUR FATHER WOULD GET ANGRY AND YELL. WHEN YOU WENT TO AMERICA, IT WAS LIKE THAT. YOU WANT TO BE IN CONTROL, EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE A WOMAN. OUR FATHER DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT PLEASE COME HOME ANYWAY. HE IS TOO OLD TO CHANGE, AND SOON IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE.

I HOPE THIS LETTER FINDS YOU WELL. PLEASE RESPOND QUICKLY, LITTLE SISTER. THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME REMAINING TO OUR FATHER.




YOUR BROTHER,
AHN YOUNG-KIL

Kyle folded the papers back up and tucked them into his shirt pocket. He looked over the city in silence for a while, as if waiting for the blue container at his side to comment. His father's remains had nothing to say, though, and finally Kyle hitched a sigh and raked a hand wearily through his brown hair.

"Is that how it was with you, dad? You were just too old to change? You told me over and over that I was the only thing you had left after you and mom split up, but you didn't love me enough to straighten your life out for me, didn't love me enough to give up the booze."

Again, the ashes at his side had nothing to say, either in his father's defense or otherwise. Now would be a good time to cry, Kyle thought, a proper time; but he couldn't. He hadn't even cried while he held his father's hand and watched the machines keeping him alive slowly abandon their support. When the nurses had cut the air tubes away and pronounced him dead, Kyle had reached deep into himself, past the grief and pain, and grasped blindly, searchingly for his tears. There had been none. His father's alcoholism and his own stubborn independence had burned them out years ago, leaving only a dry, aching grief behind.

Kyle wanted to cry, knew that he should. It felt necessary, in a way, to validate his grief. But grief wasn't about tears, not really. Grief was about working through a loss in any way you could. Hal Marz had never learned that; he'd shed plenty of tears, but he never got over losing his wife, and was convinced every day before his death that he was losing his son. He'd never come to terms, not before death struck swift and sudden, not even leaving enough time to say goodbye.

I hope this letter finds you well, the translation had read.

Kyle took a deep breath and stood up. The container was heavy at his side, maybe twenty pounds. As he looked out over the sun-blasted city below him, he considered prying the container open and setting his father's mortal remains to the wind. He thought maybe Hal would like that, his last resting place the cacti and sand he had spent the last twenty years of his life among.

But no.

If he did that, he would be done with his father, and now, more than ever, that was the last thing he wanted. Hong-Su, the addressee of the letter in his pocket, would never have a chance to make peace with her father, and that was tragic. But maybe Kyle could learn from it. Maybe, once they could afford it, a trip to his father's native Illinois would be in order. Kyle could bury Hal next to his own parents, meet Hal's surviving sister, maybe come to understand his father better, understand what made him what he was. And finally put the ghosts to rest. It was worth a try, anyway.

Kyle smiled.

"I love you dad," he said, grasping the container to his side. "Goodles and obbs."

Then he turned and started back up the mountain, toward the parking lot, with the sun in his face.