A Gesture Life Read Free Page A

in arrears. Business wasn’t booming, given that the local economy was in recession (which seemed to befall the area, unfortunately for the Hickeys, a short time after they bought my store), and that Sunny Medical Supply now had to compete with a franchise of a large regional supplier, which had opened in the neighboring town of Highbridge.
    And yet with all this negativeness, Mrs. Hickey was still cheerful, joking and kidding and trying to put the best face on things, telling me how she took strength from Patrick, who never once complained about sleeping at the hospital, or eating the food. I had never actually met the boy, though I thought I could see him easily in his mother, whose sanguinity and resolve I admired without bound. I pictured him with her fair coloring and giddy spray of freckles, and the same sea-blue eyes, and then, too, possessed of the odd calm that very young children can sometimes have, even when they understand that dark fates may be near.
    Eventually some customers came in, and I urged Mrs. Hickey to attend to them, while I should be getting on home. But before I could leave the store she had come over to see me out.
    “Would you like to come see him sometime?” she asked me. “We take shifts, so you wouldn’t have to worry about James, if you came when I was there. I could call you from the room.”
    “I’d be very happy to meet him,” I said. “Anytime you wish to call me.”
    Mrs. Hickey seemed pleased, and she stepped outside. It was asocial custom, strangely enough, that she’d picked up from watching me years before, the polite duty of a host or proprietor in bidding a respectful goodbye. It brought a warm feeling to my chest to have her come out accompanying me. But the customers were still inside, and I asked her please to go back and attend to them. I very nearly bowed, as if that might convince her, but then she did go in, and I’d already turned down the street when she called out to me once more.
    “I just remembered,” she said, her face brightening as she approached me. She was holding a dusty box, the kind photographic paper comes in. “I was cleaning out the storeroom last week, and I found this in an old briefcase. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but look inside. There are all kinds of neat pictures in there.”
    I could hardly remember leaving anything personal behind in the store.
    “I noticed there’s a young woman in many of them,” Mrs. Hickey said. “She’s very pretty. She’s in quite a few, with you. Is she a relative?”
    “Yes,” I heard myself reply, accepting the box from her. “You must be talking about Sunny.”
    “Sunny? Did you name the store after her?”
    I said, “I suppose I did.”
    “Where is she now?”
    “She came from Japan,” I said, “many years ago, and stayed for some schooling. She went back.”
    “Well, she’s certainly lovely. She must be a grown woman now.”
    “Yes,” I said, taking my leave. “I haven’t seen her in quite a long time. But thank you.”
    “Will you call about our walk?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Patrick, too?”
    “Yes.”
    Before she could say any more I quickly made my way down Church Street, following it to the traffic square where it meets River and then Mountview, which is the street I live on. As I climbed the gentle rise of the old road, I wished that I hadn’t spoken inaccurately about Sunny to Mrs. Hickey, but the moment, like so many others, passed too swiftly, as I didn’t feel I could explain things without further complication and embarrassment. I went the half-mile to the road’s crest, where the house I bought nearly thirty years ago stands amid a copse of mature elm and oak and maple. Inside, the house was warm and lighted. As usual I’d left the lamps on in the hall and kitchen, and I turned them off before going upstairs. I often prepared myself an early dinner of soup noodles or a casserole of oden with rice, but I decided to go straight up to my bedroom and read. It wasn’t until