how many radiators do I have

sunday call. he came to the phone himself, which he hasn't since christmas.

"ah, Theo." are you eating. yes. is it cold. yes, very. then he asked how many radiators I have in the apartment. I said three. he said "count again." I walked around with the phone. living room, bedroom, kitchen. and the bathroom, the little one under the window that I hang the towel on. four. I said four. he made the sound he makes, the short breath through the nose that's a laugh, and said "you see," and gave the phone to Obaachan.

his voice was thin. mom got on after and said the doctor wants him back in for a scan this week because the cough isn't clearing.

four radiators. I've lived here eight months.

what I'm going to say tomorrow. read it slow. look at Obaachan once.

My grandfather, Tadashi Nakagawa, counted things. He counted the persimmons on the tree behind the house every October and wrote the number on the calendar in the kitchen. He counted the steps from his front door to the mailbox, which was forty-one, and he told me that number so many times that I counted them myself this week, and it is still forty-one, and I was very angry at the mailbox.

He was born in Wakayama in 1936 and came to Sacramento when he was nineteen with one suitcase and, he always said, two words of English, "yes" and "persimmon." I asked him once why persimmon. He said it was the only thing he was sure he would want.

He fixed radios and then televisions for thirty-four years at the shop on Tenth Street. He could not throw away a screw. When I was little he let me sit on the workbench and sort them by size into baby food jars, and he paid me a nickel a jar, and I understand now that he then poured them all back into the coffee can so I could do it again the next week.

He painted on Sunday afternoons. Ink, one brush, the same six subjects for fifty years. When I told him I was going to art school he did not say anything for a while and then he said, "You will need better paper than I had," and the next day there was a package of paper on my bed that I am still afraid to use.

He was not a talker. On the phone he would say "Ah, Theo," and ask if I was eating, and then give the phone to Obaachan. But he kept every drawing I ever mailed him in a flat box under the bed, in order, with the dates on the back in pencil. Hana and I found the box on Wednesday. The first one is from 2003. It is a heron, or it is a dog. He wrote "heron" on the back, so that settles it.

The last time we talked he asked me how many radiators I have in my apartment. I said three. He said, "Count again." There are four. There is one in the bathroom.

Jiichan, I will keep counting. Thank you for the paper.