“Dad, I’m not sure Sally should be eating that.”
Twenty-seven-year-old food writer Elizabeth Silver-Jackson was sitting on a vinyl-covered stool to the left of her father. Elizabeth’s daughter, Sally, was straddling the knee of her grandfather, Rear Adm. Kenneth “Stone” Silver, who was feeding the three-year-old girl with chopsticks. The three were eating at Chew-Chew, a popular new sushi restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street and Third Avenue.
Silver was dressed in khaki trousers, a beige shirt, and an olive green blazer with an American flag pinned to the lapel. It wasn’t a uniform but he wore it as if it were; the pants and shirt were crisply pressed. He sat straight, as if he were on the bridge of a battleship. But at least he was here. When Elizabeth was growing up, that was a rarity.
Beyond a dark hardwood bar, a conveyor belt carried plates of sushi past diners. Patrons removed the dishes they wanted and the plate count was later tallied by a waiter. Three dishes were in front of Elizabeth and six in front of her father. Another four plates sat edge to edge, spread in a semicircle in front of Sally. The brown-haired girl was wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh jumper and scattered spots of soy sauce were on a napkin tucked in her neckline. She was patiently fussing with her own wooden chopsticks, trying to hold them the way her grandfather did. Occasionally he would help her, his big, sun-bronzed hands dwarfing her pale fingers. But the girl’s determination was equal to his own and she continued to struggle with the chopsticks as she chewed.
“What’s wrong with what Pooh girl is eating?” he asked his daughter.
“It’s raw fish,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, it is. That’s what they serve at sushi restaurants.”
“It’s one of the things they serve,” Elizabeth said. “I thought we agreed that Sally would only have cukes and avocados. Raw fish is susceptible to ciguatoxins, scombroid poisoning, parasites.”
The rear admiral mugged a look that said, I’m impressed. “Did you write an article on that?”
“For New York magazine.” It came out a bit more defensively than Elizabeth had intended. “Contaminants are a real problem with sushi.”
“Hushed up by the big sushi conspiracy, no doubt.” Silver smiled.
Elizabeth made a face.
“We used to catch six-foot eels off the deck of our patrol boat in Vietnam, gut them in the dinghy, and eat them right there,” Silver said. “None of us ever got sick. Shot at, sleep-deprived, trip-wired, and one of us blown all to heck, yes. But not a single a case of scombroid poisoning, or whatever it is.”
“You were lucky,” Elizabeth said.
“Very.” He touched her face.
“Awwwww,” Sally said.
Elizabeth blushed and ate a piece of her own squash roll. “Anyway, that was the Mekong Delta. This is Manhattan.”
The rear admiral took a bite of tuna sashimi. “I’m sure it’s fine. But we’ll stick to the veggies if it makes you happier.”
“Thanks,” Elizabeth said.
He smiled at her, then at Sally, who was wrestling a California roll with her chopsticks. He helped her snare it and move it to her mouth. “Bull’s-eye!” he told his granddaughter.
Elizabeth looked down at her plate. She hated being short with her father. The ladies spent most of their time in New York, where Sally went to private preschool. Elizabeth’s husband, Congressman Sander Jackson, came up on weekends when Congress was in session. Her father lived in Kings Bay, Georgia, where he was working on one of his top-secret projects. It was the story of her youth all over again: she did not see her father a lot. She missed him. She wanted him to miss her and respect her instead of just coming onto the bridge and running the ship.
“This shooshi is chewy,” Sally said.
“I’ll bet that’s one reason they call this restaurant Chew-Chew,” the officer said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What’s the other reason, Grandpa?” the young girl asked around a thick mouthful of rice.
“My guess is it’s the conveyor belt,” the rear admiral said. “You see how it runs around the restaurant just like a train?”
Sally nodded.
“Well, what sound does a train make?”
“Choo choo!” she said.
“You figured it out! Only instead of delivering passengers that food train delivers dinner.”
“That’s funny.” The girl laughed into her hand.
“I think the conveyor belt gets people to chew-chew a whole lot more,” Elizabeth added. “You see something pass and you say, ‘Hey, that looks nice,’ just like we did with those roe wrapped in seaweed. It doesn’t take long for those plates to add up.”
“You’re probably right,” her father said. He leaned closer to Sally. “You want to know a secret?”
“What?” she whispered conspiratorially.
“That’s how the navy gets money from your daddy.”
“How?”
“We show him and the other members of Congress pictures of things and then they buy them.”
“What kind of things?”
“Big shiny jets and missiles and boats and satellites,” Silver replied.
“What’s a saddlite?” Sally asked as she tentatively raised a second piece of California roll from the plate.
“A satellite is a robot that flies through space and protects you,” her grandfather told her. He didn’t help this time, but cupped his hand under the California roll in case it fell.
“Is it like an angel?” Sally asked.
“Just like one,” he replied.
“Is Grandma a saddlite?”
Stone Silver didn’t answer immediately. Sally managed to get the California roll partly into her mouth with the chopsticks. She finished the job with a finger. Elizabeth used a napkin to wipe a grain of rice from her daughter’s cheek.
“No,” Elizabeth said softly. “She’s a special angel.” The young woman looked at her father. “That’s nice. You’re feeding her raw fish and propaganda.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Spy satellites as angels, Dad?” Elizabeth replied. “What does that make the National Reconnaissance Office? God?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “Otherwise you and your fellow southpaws wouldn’t be so scared of them.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not all New York journalists are leftists. We understand privacy issues. We’re humanists. Unlike the military, we don’t have a coordinated agenda.”
“Would you sleep better if the military were uncoordinated?”
“I’d sleep better if there were a civilian oversight board, as Sander has suggested.”
The officer smiled at Sally but was looking at his daughter. “Pooh girl, your mom thinks that I propagandize. Can you say that word?”
Sally smiled and made a noble attempt. It came out “popagundice.”
“Very good,” he told her. “Can you guess what it means?”
“Feed sushi?”
“In a way.” He laughed. “It means that you try to convince someone your ideas are better than theirs. Which you shouldn’t have to do when those ideas have been tested by time and events.” He used his chopsticks to offer the girl a piece of her mother’s roe sashimi. Sally took the entire piece in her mouth.
Elizabeth turned back to the counter. She picked at her side salad. Strike two. The woman did not like getting into political debates with her father. She felt dishonest when she said nothing, disrespectful when she did. And angry because it was another way they wasted time when they were together.
She snuck a glance at his long, familiar face. It was bronzed by years spent under foreign suns and held the softest blue eyes she had ever seen. Seeing them turned her into a little girl again. A little girl who was sitting beside her daddy as they drove onto a base, men saluting him and he turning to wink down at her so she wouldn’t feel left out. He had always been kind and patient with her, just as he was with Sally. But Elizabeth disagreed with his right-wing politics and he with her liberalism. The breach had been exacerbated when she’d married a liberal New York congressman five years earlier. She wished one of them could get past that. Maybe if they spent more time together, they could.
“What time is your plane?” Elizabeth asked, trying to put a little sparkle back in her voice. And bracing for strike three.
“Eleven,” the rear admiral said. “Why?”
“If you can hold off another day, maybe leave late tomorrow morning, I’ll drive out to Mom’s grave with you. I’ve been thinking that Sally is old enough to go.”
The rear admiral’s expression flattened. He selected a plate of octopus sashimi from the conveyor belt. He picked up a piece and pressed it onto the well-worn mound of wasabi he had in a small dish.
“I have to get back.”
“Are you sure, Dad? You’re already here—”
Elizabeth returned to her salad.
It had been nearly a year since Nancy Silver had died of pancreatic cancer. She had been fifty-three. Elizabeth’s father had been up from Georgia three times since then but he had not been to Queens to visit the family plot since the funeral. Elizabeth had gone twice, once with her husband and once by herself. She sensed that her father was avoiding the reality of what had happened. He had been away so much he could pretend Nancy was “at home” and he just wasn’t seeing her.
“Are you going home today, Grandpa?” Sally asked.
“Yes, tonight.”
“Why?”
“I have to, Pooh girl,” he replied.
“Why?”
“I have a meeting very early tomorrow morning.”
“To sell new things to daddy?” Sally asked.
A little of the rear admiral’s smile returned. “No. I’m meeting with some very special people about a very important machine.”
“What machine?”
He leaned toward her. “I can’t tell you. It’s a big secret.”
“Can I go with you?”
“I wish you could. But after the meeting I have to go away for a while.”
“Oh?” That was the first Elizabeth had heard of a trip. Her father had been hidden in Georgia for so long she had forgotten that he used to go for extended periods to places around the world. “How long is ‘a while’?”
“A month or so.”
“Some place interesting, I hope,” she said.
“A place I’ve never been. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Great,” Elizabeth said. “I hope you’ll be able to tell us something about it when you get back.”
“Maybe a little.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I’ll take what I can get.”
Her father put his big hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze. Suddenly, there weren’t any politics. Whatever opposite poles they found themselves on politically—or even on the question of scombroid poisoning—they always ended up back here. Dad and daughter. Elizabeth was grateful for that.
They went for a walk after finishing their meal. The Jacksons lived on Gramercy Park, on the tenth floor of an eighty-year-old brown-stone. They walked to the gated square at the center of the neighborhood and went in. It was a pleasant night, with a late-autumn sun and a bright, early-autumn moon. Sally played count-the-stars while Elizabeth and her father walked slowly behind her.
It was strange. Elizabeth had her husband and their daughter. They were the focus of her life. She felt whole. She could not imagine what it was like for her father. He had no other children. His only “family” were his colleagues in Georgia and his buddies from the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. They had spent two tours of duty traveling the waterways in the Mekong Delta, battling Vietcong guerrillas and clearing the way for the joint navy-army operations of the Mobile Riverine Force. Elizabeth’s bedtime stories were about those missions. Her dad told them in secret, so her mother wouldn’t hear—just as he did with Sally. She grew up hearing about “Gumby” Meyers, who was always squeezing shapes in clay to stay calm. About “Blade” O’Hare, who, her dad insisted, could cut a fly in half whenever one buzzed by. About “Compass” Carlyle, who never got lost. Elizabeth wondered if they called each other those names or if her dad had made them up to keep the stories kid-friendly. Only later did she learn about how the men had put Vietcong prisoners in piranha-infested waters to persuade them to give up information. Or how the patrol boat was once strafed by friendly fire. Or how Gumby had died when he’d stepped on a land mine. Her dad was the only one who had stayed in the navy. He was probably the only one who found the adversity invigorating. Her dad was like that.
As they walked, the rear admiral’s cell phone beeped. He excused himself and turned away. He did not keep it on his belt but inside his jacket, in a buttoned pocket. There were numbers programmed into its memory that he did not want lost if he lost the phone or was pickpocketed.
Elizabeth watched as his ramrod posture grew even stiffer. She knew that stance. He had received bad news. Her first thought, involuntary and instinctive, was that something had happened to her husband. She looked over at Sally for comfort. But then reason took hold and Elizabeth realized that she would have gotten that call, not her father.
After a moment her father turned back. His expression was grave.
“I’ve got to go.”
“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked.
“One of my people. . .” His voice choked as it faded. He walked quickly toward the park gate.
“Sally!” Elizabeth yelled. “We’re leaving!”
“Where are we going?” the young girl asked as she ran toward her mother. “Is Grandpa coming?”
Elizabeth told Sally that Grandpa had to get back to the airport because of work. Sally accepted that without comment. She was a savvy little New Yorker. At times her mother had to postpone outings and playdates because of deadlines. The young girl intuitively understood about responsibility. She was without question the rear admiral’s granddaughter; maybe that was one of the reasons Elizabeth fought him on things that probably weren’t significant. Sometimes, like now, she didn’t see enough of herself in her little girl.
None of which mattered at this moment. Taking her daughter’s small hand, Elizabeth followed her father as he jogged toward Twenty-first Street and into the apartment building. Fifteen minutes later the two women were hugging the rear admiral before he climbed into a cab.