Collected Fictions (26 page)
Read Collected Fictions Online
Authors: Gordon Lish
MYRNA, LINDA, LILY, JANICE, SHIRLEY
, Phoebe, Barbie, Barbara, Sylvia, Marilyn, Elaine, Georgia, Iris, Natalie, Patty, Joyce, Binnie, Velma, Molly, Mrs. Shea, Lucille, Marie, Maria, Valerie, Barbara, Grace, Stephanie, Caroline, Tina, Eliza, Edwina, Evelyn, Edna, Joanna, Jeanne, Janet, Enid, Edith, Laurella, Lorrie, Lorraine, Myra, Emily, Kate, Cathy, Constance, Hedy, Heidi, Barbara, Katrina, Denise, Josephina, Carolyn, Cousin Lettie, Leslie, Lettie, Barbara, Geraldine, Theodora, Patricia, Lena, Lena's sister, Felicia, Emmie, Effie, Ellie, Nettie, Nancy, Blissie, Nell, Nellie, Lilly, Nora, Barbara, Lillian, Helen, Helene, Mrs. Rose, Joy, Ann, Nan, Jan, Deb, Sue, Barbie, Susannah, Suzanne, Mary, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Martha, Sheila, Sheilah, Deirdre, Barbara, Cynthia, Cindy, Belle, Betty, Belinda, Bertha, Bettina, Barbie, Betsy, Blossom, Brenda, Brigette, Bronwen, Bessie, Barbara, Barbara, Barbie, Barbara, Barbara.
There have been buckets more than these, of course. But it would be indecent of me for me to list beyond the last name listed. It is sufficient to say I proved to exhibit an exorbitant fondness for the name Barbara and that I finally offered marriage to a person whose name was concludingly thus.
She accepted.
We were wed.
Have lived blissfully ever since.
O Bliss!
Have been joyful ever since.
O Joy!
This heart is overflowing.
O Accepta!
O Wedda!
O, hoshana in the highest!
HOSHANA?
I EXPECT THAT IT IS NECESSARY
for me to tell you the true story of my father's shoes—for I have so often told—if not you, then others—such false stories of my father's shoes, sometimes claiming for my father's shoes some sort of formal irregularity that would enforce the thought of there being a certain abnormality of the feet my father had.
But there was nothing exceptional about my father's feet. My father's feet were perfectly routine feet. My own feet seem to me no different from my father's feet, and my feet are—can I not see my feet as they are?—entirely routine.
Ah, but here I am, already cheating.
I mean, it is shoes, my father's shoes, that I have been inviting you to prepare yourself to hear me tell the truth of, not the feet my father fitted into his shoes.
The firm of Balzano & Son made them, made all of them, dozens of them for each of the four seasons and for all of their uses, all with the maker's mark worked somewhere cunning into the buttery lining of each shoe's interior, Balzano & Son in the left shoe, Balzano & Son in the right shoe, and for each Balzano & Son shoe there would be a bespoke Balzano & Son shoe tree, each rubbed contour a vortical conjugation in wood grain, all formed to fit the exact form of each shoe exactly, this foot, that foot, it too, each shoe tree too, declaring its demand to argue for the theory of its provenance, the name Balzano & Son burnt into each layered grip of each shoe tree, into the grip of the left one and into the grip of the right one, Balzano & Son in the grip of the left one, Balzano & Son in the grip of the right one.
But where is the truth in any of this?
I cannot prove Balzano and his son were not liars.
Who is to say what Balzano's name was before it was Balzano? And the son, what of him? Great Jesus, who's to say the fellow wasn't adopted?
Fellow!
Why
fellow?
How
fellow?
This Balzano, could not the swindler have elected to change a sex or make an offspring up!
No, I cannot tell you the true story of my father's shoes. I withdraw the statement of my ambition to do so. It was foolish to have boasted of such a project. Such a project is not projectable. Indeed, it may even be that I cannot tell you anything true of anything, save—irrelevantly—to remark that when he succumbed—I mean, of course, my father—I came to have his wristwatch and that it is an Audemars Piguet wristwatch and that it is said to be possessed of such properties as to fetch—appraiser after appraiser so stated to me when I took the object around to them to make my aggrieved inquiries—just shy of $18,000.
Oh, but no again!
I just thought of something.
With respect to my father's shoes, it just this instant occurred to me that there is a little tale I might disclose to you and which could at least have the look of verifiability enough.
This:
That I would take a very good square of flannel to my father's shoe closet to take the dust from the shoes therein, this to show the sign of my devotion to him.
After school and before he came home.
Undoing all of the laces to a depth of three sets of eyelets so as to enhance my labor's not going without the small prospect of being at least a little noticed.
It exhausted me, and exhausted it—the playtime of my childhood—this activity of my youth.
Hours, so many hours.
I suppose.
It does not please me that I lost them.
So do not ask me what time it is.
He is dead and I will be no more nimble.
But will have darkened, and preserved, the name.
I LIVE IN A BIG BUILDING
and my son lives in a big building, so I meet all kinds and I hear what I hear. And why not, why shouldn't I listen? I am a person with such an interesting life I couldn't afford to be interested in someone else's? They talk, I pay attention—even if when they are all finished I sometimes have to say to myself, "The deaf don't know how good they got it. The deaf, please God they should live and be well, I say they got no complaint coming."
Take years ago, this particular lady—we are sitting biding our time down there in my boy's place, the room in the basement they got set aside for the convenience of the laundry of tenants.
Some convenience.
Who is a tenant?
I am not a tenant.
This lady is not a tenant.
What is the case here is our
children,
they are the tenants—my boy, her girl—and
theirs
are the things which are in the washing machines and are in the dryers and why it is that I and the lady in question are sitting in a terrible dirtiness waiting. So pee ess, it's two total strangers twiddling their thumbs in a room in a basement down underneath a big building, when what you hear from one of these people—not from me, should you be worrying, but from her—when you hear from this woman I just mentioned a noise like she wants you to think it's her last.
You know.
You have heard.
It is the one which, give us time, we all hear—because who doesn't, just give yourself time, in the long run finally make it?
So I naturally say to the woman, "What? What?"
And the woman says to me, "Do yourself a favor—you don't want to know."
That's it for the preliminaries.
Here is what comes next.
SHE
SAYS,
"YOU
—you got a son—don't worry, I know, I know—and don't think I don't also know what you are going through, either—because I know—I got eyes—I see, I know—so you don't have to tell me anything—you don't have to breathe one word—I am a woman with eyes in my head for me to see for myself, thank you—so no one has to tell me what the score is—believe me, your heartache is your own affair—but so just so you know I know—with him you got plenty, with him you got all anyone should ever have to handle—but I say just go count your lucky blessings anyway—because I got worse—because there is worse in the world than a window dresser for a son—because there is worse in the world than a delicate child—sure, sure, don't tell me, I heard, I heard—and don't think my heart does not go out to you, bad as I got plenty worse of my own—a daughter, not a son—a daughter—Doris—Deedee—forty-odd and still all alone in the world—and for why, for why?—not that someone is claiming the girl is any Venus de Milo—but so who is, who is?—and is this the be-all and end-all, to be so gorgeous they all come running?—believe me, she is some catch for the right boy—for a boy which knows which end is up, this is a girl which is some terrific catch for such a boy—but shy?—a shyness like this you could not even fathom—a shyness like this, who knows how it develops?—even to me, to the mother herself, it is not fathomable, I can tell you—so a rash, a rash—like a dryness even, like not like even a rash but just a dryness, I'm telling you—the skin here—the cheeks here—so like it is not exactly appetizing to look at this child at certain periods of the season, if you know what I am saying to you—but so what is this?—is this the end of the world, is this the worst tragedy I could cite to you, a little dryness the child could always rub something into and who would notice?—but skip it—the girl is mortified—the girl is humiliated—the girl is total mortification not to mention humiliation itself—because in Deedee's eyes, forget it, this is all there is, because in the whole wide world there is nothing else but the child's complexion, the child's skin—so it flakes a little, so it sheds a little, so for this life should come to a halt—you don't give them a special invitation, does anyone notice?—no one notices—who cares?—no one cares—no one even sees—dry skin, you think people don't look and see character first?—first, last, and always what they see is what is a person's worth first—but who can tell her?—who can reason with her?—it is nothing, absolutely nothing, the very mildest of conditions—but for Deedee, forget it—for her it is curtains—that shy, that bashful, ashamed of her own shadow—so could you get her to be a little social?—you couldn't get her to budge for nothing—God forbid someone should have eyes in his head—a little nothing here—where I am showing you—makeup would cover it up so who could even notice?—but does this please her?—nothing pleases her—her own company pleases her—a movie every other week, this is for Deedee a big adventure, this is for my forty-odd daughter the romance in this life—but for me, if you want to know, from just when for two seconds I think about it, my child alone for all her life, I could cut my throat for her from ear to ear—forget boyfriend—does the girl have a friend even?—because the girl has nothing—the girl has her complexion to look at—forget a nice decent marriage to a nice decent boy—and just to add insult to injury, what with so many of them deciding to be boys like yours is, where even are the high hopes anymore for a decent healthy girl of forty-odd anymore?—but meanwhile is it too much to ask that for my Doris there should be at least a companion to travel the road of life with?—because, I ask you, doesn't everybody have a right to somebody?—but her, she wouldn't even go out looking, God forbid somebody should see a little redness, a little dryness, some peeling where if she only used a good moisturizer on herself and did it on a regular basis with some serious conscientiousness, I promise you, the whole condition would disappear quicker than you could snap your little finger—but her—her!—who can talk to her?—my Deedee—my Doris—God love her—but just thank God the story at her office it is a different story entirely—just thank God at her place of business they couldn't get enough of her—always Doris this and Doris that—I am telling you, they are devoted to the girl—devoted—what they wouldn't do for her—like you wouldn't believe it, but just this last Christmas they send her off for seven days gratis—not one red penny does the girl have to reach into her own pocket for—the whole arrangement is already all bought and paid for—the whole arrangement, to coin an expression, is signed, sealed, and delivered—and not Atlantic City neither, mind you, but where but Acapulco—Acapulco!—this is how indispensable to these people this child of mine happens to certain individuals to be—all expenses paid, every red nickel—first class from start to finish—the best—bar none—so when I hear this, I say to myself, ‘God willing, the child will get away, it will be a change of pace, a nice change of scenery, et cetera, et cetera—and who knows but that maybe a little romantic interlude for her is just around the corner—after all, a nice resort, a nice hotel, these Latin fellows, whatever'—but now I have to laugh—you heard me—laugh!—because you think Deedee does not come back worse than when she went?—go think again—this is why I am here where you see me right now—this is why I have to be here to do for her and to do for her—the wash, the cleaning, the shopping, whatever—with my legs, you see these legs?— twice a week, from Astoria, I have to come in all the way on my legs from Astoria—but thank God the girl has a mother who can still wait on her hand and foot—because thanks to Acapulco, look who's got on her hands a nervous wreck for a daughter—you heard me, a total bundle of nerves—but utterly—but utterly—say boo to the child, she jumps from here to there—and you know what?—I don't blame her—you wouldn't neither—when you hear what you will hear, believe me, you would not believe it neither—upstairs up there in her apartment up there and just sits around all the time listless, no color in her face, a figment of her former self—would she go outside for just some air?—goes to the bathroom and that's it and that's it—who even knows if she goes and makes her business when I her mother am not here?—me!—coming in all the way from Astoria—with legs like these!—if you could believe it, not once but twice a week—you heard me, twice!"
THE WOMAN GIVES ME
on the knee like a tap with her fingers and then she picks herself up and with another groan again she goes and checks on the things she put for her daughter in the machine, whereupon then the woman turns herself around to me and says to me, she says, "Your boy, tell me, are you telling me you got just the one son?"
But why should she wait for an answer?
I promise you, people know there is something which, whenever you look at a father's face, you don't need to ask another question.
"Sure, sure," she says, sticks in two more quarters in her dryer, then comes back to where she was in the first place and plunks herself down in the row of chained-down chairs with another new groan like the last one I forgot the meaning of already.
She says, "Pardon me, but do I still have your undivided attention? Because I know you got your own mind on your own kid and your own troubles, but you didn't hear yet what happened, which is the child goes down there, and it could not be more perfect—the weather, the service, the accommodations—everything is absolutely first-class, so all she has to do is jump into a bathing suit and start being the happiest girl in the whole wide world. But does she go sit around the pool like the other youngsters do so that maybe there might happen to arise a little excitement from whichever direction? The answer is no—the answer is the girl did not even begin to give herself credit. Instead, she drags herself all of the way out to the beach with the wind and with the sand, which is utterly unnecessary, and with a book which nobody ever heard of and with not even a little bag with her with at least a lipstick in it, not to mention she knocks herself out finding herself a place for her to sit herself which is as far away from everybody in humanity as is humanly possible and, lo and behold, this is how the girl spends the five days, the six days, whatever you actually get when they give you one week's free vacation, and not once, when all is said and done, not once does the girl have a single solitary conversation with a single solitary human being of any gender. She reads a book, and this is the entire nature of her entertainment, period, with the lone sole exception of this friend she makes, this little animal which comes running along the beach to her and which comes up to her, like she thinks like a little Mexican hairless or whatnot, like this tiny little dog like the bandleader, if you remember him, used to hide in his pockets, like a Chihuahua is what they call it, like two Chihuahuas in his pockets. So the whole first day, would the thing go away? Forget it, what it loves in this world is all of a sudden my unmarried daughter. It could not get enough of my own personal daughter—huggy-huggy, kissy-kissy, two permanent lovebirds from the first minute they laid eyes on each other. So naturally the next day the girl can't wait to get back out to the beach again, God forbid her friend should miss her for two minutes, and this time she's got with her what? Because the answer is a handbag. Do you hear this, a handbag! But for lipstick and mascara and eye shadow? Don't make me laugh. Because the answer is it is not for something serious but instead for the child to sneak her brand-new one-and-only in through the lobby and up in the elevator and for the rest of the whole vacation feed it scraps from the table and watch it sleep between two clean sheets in the bed with her like a person, please God it should not all night long have its little head on its own personal pillow. And why not? In all of the girl's whole life, aside from her mother, who ever paid her two seconds of attention before? But on the other hand, outside of her mother, tell me who ever got the chance! Even the girl's own father, may the man rest in peace, he had to hire an army every time he wanted the child to hold still so he could talk to her or get even in the light of day even a good look at her.
"
SO NEXT COMES THE TERRIBLE CRISIS
.
"Are you listening?
"Because time's up and now you have to gather yourself together and pack your luggage and face the facts that you threw away your one big chance and say so long to paradise. But could the girl even begin to tear herself away from the first real friend she ever in all her born days ever had? This thing, could the child just say to it this is it and this is it, now good-bye and good luck?
"Don't hold your breath.
"Weeks later, when she could first open up her mouth to even first begin to speak again, the child actually said to me, ‘Mother, I am telling you I would have eaten poison before I could have left it behind. Do you here me?
Poison!
'
"Poison, some joke.
"Believe me, when you hear what's coming, you will say to yourself the same as me, ha ha, poison, this is a good one, this is some good joke, poison.
"So don't ask me why, but this is how determined the girl is, because even with all of the reasons nobody in a million years could get away with it, the answer is she
did.
All the way back to New York, right past all of the big shots with all of their badges and everything, and then right out of the airport past the customs and the rest of it, and then right back here into this same building right here where, God love him, I know, I know, your child has got his own problems too, your own lifelong heartache has got his problems too, what with all of his gorgeous costumes and with his window dressing and who also rents a nice dwelling in the building—from Acapulco to New York, here comes my Deedee, my Deedee, with her beloved!
"But as soon as it gets here, would it eat? Could she get it to do anything but drink water? Maybe the airplane ride gave it an upset stomach, who knows?—meanwhile all it wants is water and to lay around and vomit, and it wouldn't even touch a single morsel or have the strength to play with her or even let her kiss it. So by now the girl is thoroughly beside herself with panic—she is so frantic the child cannot even see straight—so what does she do but pick the thing up and wrap it up in a towel because it is cold out and God forbid her adorable darling should catch a chill and get any worse off than it already is—and like a maniac she runs out into the street with it—like a crazy woman she runs to go find the dog-and-cat doctor which is up the block from here after you pass the big Shopwell in the middle of the block.
