City of Monterey Park is the setting for a quiet but morally charged encounter between The unnamed narrator and the widow and children of The crapulent major. Its bland suburban surroundings frame his attempt to make amends after the major’s death: he arrives with money, but finds that restitution cannot be separated from grief, guilt, and the fear that the dead remain present.

Setting and Visit

After visiting The General and Madame, The unnamed narrator drives to Monterey Park for an appointment with The crapulent major’s widow. The city’s suburbs strike him as soft and bland as tofu. He carries the other half of a check he has cashed, intending to give it to her, even though he recognizes that the money might have served revolutionary purposes. His choice makes the visit more than a routine act of charity: he frames helping the family of an enemy as a radical form of forgiveness, while admitting that he is also seeking forgiveness for what he did to The crapulent major.

The encounter takes place at the widow’s apartment building. The unnamed narrator sees no physical trace of what he did in the carport, yet the building’s apparent calm does not reassure him. He believes in ghosts despite not believing in God, and fears that the hand on the doorknob might belong to The crapulent major. The door opens to the widow instead.

The Apartment and Its Inhabitants

Inside, the widow welcomes The unnamed narrator and seats him on a floral sofa covered in transparent plastic, which squeaks as he shifts. Chinese tea and French ladyfingers wait on the coffee table. The domestic details turn the visit into an intimate scene of mourning rather than a formal exchange: the widow weeps for her husband, and The unnamed narrator moves across the plastic-covered sofa to pat her shoulder.

The ladyfingers connect the apartment’s present comforts to The unnamed narrator’s childhood. He recognizes the brand from the biscuits of his youth and remembers that they were his mother’s favorite, given to her by his father. The food offered in hospitality therefore also recalls the troubling history of his parents’ relationship and his father’s role in it. The widow’s ordinary kindness opens a memory the narrator cannot keep separate from guilt.

The apartment also holds a small altar bearing a photograph of The crapulent major as a young cadet. Before the photograph are modest offerings—an orange frosted with mold, a dusty can of Spam, and a roll of Lifesavers—set beneath blinking Christmas lights. The narrator contrasts these with the abundant offerings made by wealthier descendants to their dead, and promises the major an additional paper offering. The altar gives the absent man a material presence in the room, sharpening the narrator’s fear that death has not ended his claim on the living.

Restitution and the Family Left Behind

The unnamed narrator tells the widow that he had promised her husband he would do his utmost to care for her and the children if the need arose. He explains his supposed accident in the Philippines and gives her the money from the envelope. She initially resists, but yields when he asks her to think of the children. His act is both practical assistance and an effort to answer his own guilt; the widow’s acceptance does not resolve the moral burden that brought him there.

At her insistence, he visits the bedroom where the twins are asleep. They are one year old, and their mother describes them as the joy keeping her alive through bereavement. The unnamed narrator calls them beautiful for her sake, while acknowledging that he does not see them that way. He instead imagines their sleeping faces as those of frightened new immigrants, newly exiled into the world and still unconscious of guilt. The visit thus leaves City of Monterey Park marked not only by the narrator’s attempted repayment to the dead, but also by his encounter with the vulnerable family continuing to live in the dead man’s absence.