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Authors: Mona Simpson
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would, people would be mad if I didn’t. It would be all the same people. In classes, we hated each other, every day. But then at parties everybody got drunk and told all kinds of things. At the last party, a forty-year-old woman came up to the guy I was standing next to and said, “I really have problems with you, and now I’m going to tell you why.” The parties began in one apartment and then rumors started that everyone was going to another apartment on the East Side. And from there the party would divide and congregate again downtown. I never made it past the second move. I probably didn’t stay long enough.
I left before midnight so I could take the subway. I only had two real friends in New York, Timothy and Emily, and neither was from school. Emily was from before. She’d moved to New York after I did and she’d just started working at the Metropolitan Museum. Her father knew somebody there.
Three afternoons a week, I worked at the hospital, for Dr. Chase. Mornings I had classes and the rest of the time I studied or meant to. Memorized. Did you ever want a letter in the mail or a phone call or a stranger at the door, anonymous flowers—some touch from the outside to change your life? If you haven’t, try reading Robbins’s Pathology.
I called information.
“What city, please?” the operator said.
I didn’t know where the FBI was. Everywhere you didn’t want them. “Washington, D.C.,” I said.
“We have a local listing, ma’am.”
I got a nice-sounding woman and I told her what I knew.
“You don’t know me but I’m looking for my father who’s been sort of missing for a long time. The last time I saw him was 1970. You probably can’t help me but I wanted to call because I hoped at least you might be able to tell me what to try.”
She laughed a laugh, not funny. “I’m the wrong person to talk to. I looked for my father for five years and even with my job I couldn’t find him. I gave up. But usually, we usually tell people to call the Salvation Army.”
“The Salvation Army? Why? What do they do?”
“They run shelters all over the country. Lot of men on their own end up there.”
In college, I’d bought a desk from the Salvation Army. It had cost ninety dollars and was the nicest thing I owned. Three men worked tying it down to the top of my car. When they were through, I had to climb in the open window. They’d roped the doors shut. I remembered their faces, nude, capped with wool hats. A roundness poured into their features when they realized the mistake. Their noses seemed too big then. They looked to their hands. They seemed used to trying and getting it wrong. I bellied in as fast as I could to show them it was okay. No problem.
“I don’t think my father would be there,” I said. “He was a college professor and kind of a gigolo. He did things like run off with the department head’s wife or something, but I can’t see him that down and out.”
“No, doesn’t seem likely, huh? I don’t know what to tell you.”
She talked more. She had never seen her father. He’d left when she was six months old.
“Did you look in phone books for him?” I’d never said that I’d done that, to anybody.
This woman could snort without its being derisive. “That’s the first thing you do.” Everything about her voice was soft.
“Oh.” I thought of sights: the Grand Canyon, monuments, space. I’d never seen those places. I pictured Mount Rushmore, a handkerchief of moths turning around Lincoln’s sandstone face. A person could be anywhere in this country. A nation full of privacies, jangling.
“I tried everything. And with my job you know, even then, I couldn’t. But my father wasn’t born here.”
“Mine either,” I said.
“I didn’t have much to go on.”
“Where’s yours from?”
“He’s from Jamaica. Negril Beach.” She said that as if it were a sorrow. “But he left my mother when I was six months old. He worked for the railroad then, I
I left before midnight so I could take the subway. I only had two real friends in New York, Timothy and Emily, and neither was from school. Emily was from before. She’d moved to New York after I did and she’d just started working at the Metropolitan Museum. Her father knew somebody there.
Three afternoons a week, I worked at the hospital, for Dr. Chase. Mornings I had classes and the rest of the time I studied or meant to. Memorized. Did you ever want a letter in the mail or a phone call or a stranger at the door, anonymous flowers—some touch from the outside to change your life? If you haven’t, try reading Robbins’s Pathology.
I called information.
“What city, please?” the operator said.
I didn’t know where the FBI was. Everywhere you didn’t want them. “Washington, D.C.,” I said.
“We have a local listing, ma’am.”
I got a nice-sounding woman and I told her what I knew.
“You don’t know me but I’m looking for my father who’s been sort of missing for a long time. The last time I saw him was 1970. You probably can’t help me but I wanted to call because I hoped at least you might be able to tell me what to try.”
She laughed a laugh, not funny. “I’m the wrong person to talk to. I looked for my father for five years and even with my job I couldn’t find him. I gave up. But usually, we usually tell people to call the Salvation Army.”
“The Salvation Army? Why? What do they do?”
“They run shelters all over the country. Lot of men on their own end up there.”
In college, I’d bought a desk from the Salvation Army. It had cost ninety dollars and was the nicest thing I owned. Three men worked tying it down to the top of my car. When they were through, I had to climb in the open window. They’d roped the doors shut. I remembered their faces, nude, capped with wool hats. A roundness poured into their features when they realized the mistake. Their noses seemed too big then. They looked to their hands. They seemed used to trying and getting it wrong. I bellied in as fast as I could to show them it was okay. No problem.
“I don’t think my father would be there,” I said. “He was a college professor and kind of a gigolo. He did things like run off with the department head’s wife or something, but I can’t see him that down and out.”
“No, doesn’t seem likely, huh? I don’t know what to tell you.”
She talked more. She had never seen her father. He’d left when she was six months old.
“Did you look in phone books for him?” I’d never said that I’d done that, to anybody.
This woman could snort without its being derisive. “That’s the first thing you do.” Everything about her voice was soft.
“Oh.” I thought of sights: the Grand Canyon, monuments, space. I’d never seen those places. I pictured Mount Rushmore, a handkerchief of moths turning around Lincoln’s sandstone face. A person could be anywhere in this country. A nation full of privacies, jangling.
“I tried everything. And with my job you know, even then, I couldn’t. But my father wasn’t born here.”
“Mine either,” I said.
“I didn’t have much to go on.”
“Where’s yours from?”
“He’s from Jamaica. Negril Beach.” She said that as if it were a sorrow. “But he left my mother when I was six months old. He worked for the railroad then, I
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