Lost?

By Danae Wilkin

Simpkins drew closer to the house. It was the place of his childhood; it was the place of his children’s growing up. His feet were almost quicker than his heart; it outran his pacemaker. He was blocky and short, just like his parents, but he didn’t hold that against them. Even people with stocky bodies had a right to procreate.

Upon arriving at his place of beginnings, he stood outside for 2, 5, 10 minutes, slowly passing. The brownstone stood like a legacy. He was too embarrassed to knock on the door. It was rent-controlled back when he was a kid and so it remained until his family left. His children had hated him, though he showered them with love. They rebelled as all adolescents do, eventually. What had he done that was so wrong? He held back tears. There was nothing I could have done better, he thought.

The winter sun was shining at such an angle between the identical houses across the street and the homes on his side that his shades couldn’t win out over the brightness. He squinted, which only made the tears more likely to fall out of his eyes. Be strong, he whispered to himself.

Perhaps to ease the pain, he envisioned a stripper who he’d become fond of: his only connection to humanity as a single widower. In the last two years up to this moment, he was self-employed, which simply meant that he scraped by with odd jobs and computer skills that afforded him to find solutions as a freelancer tech-guy from his house, (actually it was a tiny studio apartment in the as of yet gentrified part of the island…well…Chinatown). New York City had a way of sucker punching a guy in the stomach to see if he could handle it. He believed like Frank’s old song that if he made it there, he could make it anywhere. But was he making it? He didn’t count money as success, like everyone else did. He wasn’t really into the money of his old job, he simply needed it to raise a family. His wife looked after the kids, at least until Susan was 5 and Laura was 8.

A big honk made him swish around like a pigeon new to NY. It was a Beemer trying to collect a rich kid to take him to school. The boy came out, grasping a lacrosse stick that he roughly threw in the back seat along with his backpack or whatever they called them now. Suitcases with the collapsible handles? he wondered, a bit annoyed. Twenty years ago had changed everything here. Not the ‘stones, but the wealth. The thing that couldn’t let kids be kids, over-protection from everything and being taught that they were special and good regardless of their actions. He’d learned to be tough, but not his kids. They acted like the world owed them something. He thought he might have been too indulgent with them. But they were nothing like these chauffeured spoiled darlings that knew nothing of the world outside their precious little neighborhoods and crested jacket uniforms announcing that they were gentlemen-in-training going to private schools. The only time they cried, or so he imagined, was in their ice cream falling off their cones, making a sticky yet crack-free sidewalk.

Having had enough of that distraction, his body swept and feet turned slowly left and back to the house. He couldn’t take it anymore and walked west and north, jaggedly toward towards Union Square. His favorite coffee house, “Pete’s Beans,” was located just south of it. It was too close to what he hated, the commercialization of chain stores like Whole Foods, a Virgin superstore, Barnes & Nobles, and of course, a Starbucks with a Trader Joe’s just a couple of blocks east. He felt like time had passed him over, like he was a reject or an old man and turning cynical about the changes. He wasn’t “that” old, he mused. His brown businessman’s penny loafers, however, challenged that thought.  

Arriving at his destination and walking inside, he said hi to Pete and Pete said, “Good to see you again, old faithful” and then he belly laughed. You’d think a man with non-stop coffee at his disposal would be skinny with its metabolism and energy properties, but he wasn’t. Pete was as fat as a Macy’s parade Santa. Maybe he ate too many pastries also ever-within his reach.

Simpkins sat down on his favorite bar stool where he could see outside and the other patrons at the bar, but not the barista. He looked at the stool beside him; it was empty. He could only visualize Susan, his 6-year-old of long ago, trying to balance on that stool awkwardly, but never falling down. He was all she had now. That and her sister, who was already at school. He used the time between shuttling Laura to school and then having to wait an hour before Susan’s school started, to get to know Susan. She was bright and articulate. Pete always made her a warm chocolate, not boiling because with experience he knew that children want to gulp the stuff immediately. Susan spoke of science and ponies. What an odd combination, he used to think, though it made sense now. He joined Facebook to look for her and her sister. He could only find Susan’s page, though. She had apparently become an astrophysicist and owned a ranch up in the Hudson River Valley. He never contacted her since he found out two years ago. There was no way she would forgive him, so he avoided rejection. He’d had all of that he could handle in these 50 years he’d just attained. He thought of his girls often, but hadn’t made the pilgrimage to the old house since moving out.

Simpkins shuddered when a woman came in behind him. Her voice reminded him of his wife’s voice. His mind instantly turned to what he couldn’t get away from in his dreams. Below his eyes were always dark bags, but not from drinking. He was merely haunted. He dare not turn around and look at her face. He saw it so clearly and horrifyingly black and red, although he wasn’t there when it happened. He’d seen her body in the morgue and had thrown up outside the building. His guilt whooshed in from this memory, how they had separated after a huge argument, and two weeks later, how she would have been home and not at a small hotel where the fire broke out, but the fire escape window on her floor was painted over and stuck. It must have been his fault for driving her away. At least that’s what his daughters thought as they grew older.

He once felt powerful in being a provider, but he wasn’t interested in materialism other than making his family feel loved and comfortable. He had the power to give them a good life and a good foundation. He had failed. The woman’s voice now next to him said “Hot chocolate, please. It gave him chills and he wanted to run right out of there leaving his brew behind. In his mind he saw Maggie’s face, her charred face again and wanted to scream or wake up out of a dream if this was a dream. But it was reality and he knew it. He still wouldn’t look at the woman’s face next to him; so he couldn’t look out the window. For him, a window was calming. He was safe inside, but could see people walk by and have the relief of knowing things were not so bad as they might be in his head. Most people knew no one who had died in a fire back then. He was happy for them. But 9-11 came and now thousands knew of the kind of pain he endured. Like him, it changed them, but not entirely. He proudly mused, New Yorkers don’t back down, his face went stern, they rise up. He stabilized his mind and body with those few words.

He said bye to Pete and walked with his head away from the female customer, leaving the bar behind. A curiosity shop he didn’t notice before was staring at him from across the street. It must be new, he thought. His shoulders were tense, yet slumped as he wearily jaywalked toward it, with a couple of swift moves as traffic headed toward him on the way to the intersection. All Manhattan and the other boroughs’ citizens ignored the jaywalking law, so the police never bothered to enforce it. Another thing he loved about the city.

A woman stepped out of Pete’s after Simpkins. She stared motionless across the street with a great deal of concern on her face.

A bell went off as he pushed the door open and quietly padded onto a small Persian rug. It was multi-colored and therefore hid any spills or stains quite well. Drawing near to a vase-like glass piece on the shelf of a boudoir, he noticed it was broken, yet still for sale. Simpkins turned around finding an Asian man in his 70s standing there, watching him.

He asked, “What you looking for? I can help.” Simpkins said, “Ah, nothing, really. Hey, why is this thing broken and for sale?”

The short Asian man said, “Even broken things can be valuable if they’re old enough.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a slight eyebrow raise.

Simpkins stepped back and rotated looking at a stack of old maps on a sofa table. The storeowner said, “I am curious, is there something wrong?”

Simpkins thought for a few long seconds. “Is there ever something right?”

“You are a cynical man, yes?” he said.

The man, who Simpkins recognized from his facial features, was Chinese. He only noticed after the man asked him the question. He gazed toward a beer stein with a lid and in silver with imagery from the Middle Ages, like knights and peasants on the sides. There were semi-precious stones carved into skull heads around the base of the stein.

“There is nothing in here you are looking for, but I don’t mind you looking, ” said the Chinese man.

It was the first time Simpkins had heard a business owner say that in a New York store. There was a kindness to him…and a wisdom too.

Simpkins faced the man and said, “Why do you think something’s wrong with me?”

The shopkeeper replied, “Your shoulders are slumped and your face have deep frown lines.”

“How observant of you.” Simpkins frowned even deeper.

“People are meant to be happy. Why no happy?” asked the Chinese man.

“I have no family,” he brushed the back of his hand over peacock feathers clustered in a metal bucket.

“Everybody have family or else would not be born.”

“What’s your name?” said Simpkins.

“I am called Goji.”

“Like the berries?”

The owner shook his head. “This is a new craze that people here now eat. I was never teased as a boy for it.”

“That sounds like a Japanese name.”

“They also say that, but white Americans give their children foreign names too. Nothing is really original.”

“No, I guess not,” said Simpkins. “I was going to say, Goji, that you don’t understand because you have a family.”

“Your family is all dead?”

“Mostly, but no.” Simpkins fidgeted with a leather-bound CD or DVD with a Celtic symbol pressed into the cover and plastic sleeves inside. A firebrand had made it and another flashback made him jerk.

“You alright?”

“Yes, sorry. I do have children…two girls.”

“So why you not happy?”

“They don’t want to know me.”

The man went silent.

Simpkins touched an HO scale train set. He remembered having one as a boy and building mountains with a tunnel out of foam and paint and a village and trees—the whole shebang.

“You don’t seem like bad man.”

Simpkins turned and said, “I am and I’m not. I’m confused about which one I am most of the time. My children think I am and I started to believe they were right only months later when I had to…I…I couldn’t take them looking up at me asking where mommy was. I still feel guilty, but mostly I miss them.”

The man looked to the glass door and it jingled as a patron came in. He said, “Welcome ma’am. Can I help you with something?”

Simpkins continued to marvel at the tiny parts of the train…how much detail there used to be in this toy for kids and adults. But the hairs on his neck stood up as the woman spoke.

“Yes, I’m looking for something…well,” she whispered… “someone”.

“You have picture?” asked Goji.

“Yes, but it’s an old one. 20-years-ago,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve not been here that long.” He looked at the picture and his face went a bit red. He spoke softly back to her, “He’s over there.”

“What?” she said almost too loud.

Simpkins didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see this reminder of a voice attached to a face.

The woman touched a few things, trying to act natural before approaching him…a little sugar shell spoon, an old board game in mint condition and factory sealed, a beat up Evil Dead lunchbox, whatever movie that was, and a collection of over 200 pencil erasers from all over the world mounded up into a pyramid. She grew closer behind him. She cleared her throat, but nervously fingered a doll’s dress encrusted with rhinestones.

Simpkins wanted to turn around, but he was frozen.

Then in the softest voice possible, he heard the woman say…

“Dad? Is that you?”

He finally gathered the courage and faced her and the shopkeeper.

“Susan?”

Her eyes welled up. “Dad,” she said calmly.

“That was you in the coffee shop? You remembered there where we used to…I was too afraid to…”

“I know, I know,” she said as she walked toward him and after a few seconds moved to embrace him.

He was so stunned that his arms wouldn’t move, so he patted her back mechanically until he looked down and saw her tears wetting his starched white shirt. Then he embraced her back.

“It’s so good to see you again, honey.”

She breathed again after sobbing and, wiping away the remnant drops, said,

“Why did you send us away?”

“Oh darling, I didn’t know what to do. If I had it all over to do again, I would have never done that. I thought I was protecting you from what happened…you…you…”

“It wasn’t your fault. I see that now. I didn’t know where you lived. You were unlisted. Even in a private detective and background check didn’t…”

“Let’s forget that for now.” He gave her another squeeze and her eyes lit up like they did when she was six.

Simpkins looked over her shoulder to smile at the Chinese man, but he was gone.

A 40-something white guy said, “Can I help you?”

“Where’s the Asian man, Goji?”

“No one here is named Goji.”

“He’s not in the back? He was short with gray hair, 70s.”

“Never heard of him,” said the younger man.

They walked out of the store, arm-in-arm.

He wasn’t lost. There was a future. There was trust.

Image by Pinterest, anonymous