When I rushed to the scene, my parent’s house, the police parameters had already been set up. An ambulance parked right in front of the stairs to the front door. A couple of police cars parked everywhere on the street, near and far, with their noses pointed straight at a beautiful Greek-style modern clay house that belonged to my parents. Neighbors stood across the street, with knit blankets over their shoulders staring this way blandly. Some were still having their morning coffees in their slippers, propped up on their front-lawns like mannequins for a Scandinavian catalog that sells luxury mid-life crises. The police were walking around, headlessly, and with each beep and static sound from their walkie-talkies, they then walked in a different direction.
“Are you Mr. Fei?”
“I am.”
“I am Detective Mortensen. Your parents were murdered earlier this morning in a breaking and entering incident.”
Huh.
.
.
.
I remembered when I was a kid, my father used to take me to the department store. We’d be shopping or we just came out of the movie theater. And suddenly, he would disappear. He’d always disappear while I was staring at some toys in the shopping window or looking at some other kids play in those tiny tacky playgrounds in the department store set up for exhausted parents. They ran around and played Catch, or they went up and down on the tiny seesaw. But they didn’t play Hide and Seek, that’s a game only my father and I played.
It’d only take me three seconds to start panicking after I realized my father was gone. It wouldn’t be more than ten seconds before tears rolled off my cheeks. I wasn’t a loud crier in the public. I probably had a sense of self-image already and I didn’t like to bother other people or draw attention. I thought if I kept the crying to myself then my father being gone would only be real to me and no one else was panicking because they all knew where my father was. So then, he wasn’t really gone.
Then, about five seconds after that, my father would reappear again. Sometimes from behind a mannequin. Sometimes from behind a rack of shoes. He would have this smile on his face, looking me in the eyes. He would hold my little hand with his big warm hand. He would ask me, “Were you scared?” I’d be too busy wiping off tears and snot from my face to answer him, reluctant to admit a cowardice in my character and angry at his terrible scam, all the while still not being able to gather myself. But I’d have a big smile also, because I had just found my dad.
He would tell me, “If you ever get lost from me, find a shopping assistant in one of those maroon uniform vests with a little brass name tag. Ask them nicely to help you find your Papa. Will you remember that?” I’d be rubbing my fingers into my eyes and trying to catch a breath from the kind of crying that sounds like you are having hiccups. Finding my dad always opened up my tear bags for real, more than “losing” him, because I didn’t have to be strong anymore.
My father would wipe off tears from my face with his big warm thumb and tell me, “But don’t worry. Papa will always find you and Papa will always be there for you, ok?” I’d nod a few times, half upset still at this nasty little trick he pulled on me, half happy, feeling warm and safe, like my favorite crayon making my favorite color on a piece of paper because that’s what love is to a five-year-old. Then we’d go get an ice-cream cone together or something.
.
.
.
So, I just left Detective Mortensen standing there, who is professionally keeping a sad face for me still, but slightly confused. I walked around to the back of the house, checking the bushes, lifting the lid of the large trash bins. Who knows where he could have hidden this time, you know? I checked behind the water tank. I looked above at the roof.
Even as I stepped over the shattered glass in the back yard from my parents’ broken back window, I did not cry. Calmly, I checked the shed. I checked behind the ambulance, behind the police cars, behind the mannequin neighbors, and my father was still nowhere to be found.
Ok, I thought. Guess I will have to do it, I thought.
I walked up to Detective Mortensen and said, “Detective Mortensen, will you help me find my father?”
And then I started to cry.