Collected Fictions (27 page)

"God bless him, the man can see with his own two eyes the girl is positively hysterical—so he quick puts everything to one side and takes her right in, says to her, ‘Sit, wait,' he'll be right back with his diagnosis, first he's got to get out his instruments, first he's got to examine, the child meanwhile shrieking, ‘Don't hurt him, please don't hurt him!'"

The woman looks at me and she says to me, "So did you hear me with both ears—instruments, examine—don't hurt him, please don't hurt him, please?"

She gives her chest a grab like there is gas inside of it, and she says to me, "Go check your machine—there's time yet—because with problems like ours, who are we kidding, where do we think we are running?"

YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW
a storyteller like this one? I promise you, I myself in this department was not exactly born yesterday, these people with their teasings, with their winks, with their punch lines. But by the same token, who wanted to offend such a person? Because, for one thing, you never know when you might require the company, and meanwhile let us not forget who else of my acquaintanceship also makes his residence in the very building and could always use a friendly neighbor's mother with an open-minded opinion. So this I can give you every assurance of, I myself did not intend to go burn up any bridges behind me.

This is why I got up and felt inside of the dryer—even though I did not even have to actually touch anything to see that they all had for them a little way still to go yet. And then, like a perfect gentleman, I come back and I sit down and I signify to the woman I am all ears and at her beck and call whenever she is ready to please continue. But strictly between you and me, so far as punch lines go, in all of history they still never invented a second one.

She says, "Two seconds."

She says, "The man is inside of there all of two seconds with his instruments and his examining."

She says, "The man comes out with his white coat and with his rubber gloves and he says to the child, he says, ‘Darling, I am afraid I must inform you your pet has a mild case of rabies—you didn't get near any of its saliva, did you?'

"‘Oh, God, God!' my daughter screams, and then it dawns on my Deedee, rabies, and she shrieks, ‘No, I'm fine, I'm fine—just give me back my dog, I want to get a second opinion, I want to see another doctor!'

"So what does this one say to that?

"Mister, are you listening to me when I ask you what this one says to that? Because here is the answer the whole wide world has been waiting for. Which is that this man, this doctor, this specialist, he gives the girl a look and he says to her very calmly to her, he says, ‘
Dog?
That animal in there is no
dog,
lady. That animal which you brought in here is a
rat!
"

YOU KNOW SOMETHING?

Because I am telling you the truth when this is what I sit here and tell you.

For some crazy reason, after I hear what I hear, I do not know what the next thing for me to do is. I mean, my son's clothes—I do not know if I can bear to touch them anymore—not even when I know that if I go to get them, they would be as clean and as dry as—that's right!—a bone.

AGONY

IN THAT INSTANCE, THERE WERE
two men and a woman. The photographer may also have been a woman, for there to be someone to go with one of the men. But I never looked to see. I only looked to notice the others—which is to say, the three persons who were readying themselves for the photograph and who, accordingly, kept their backs turned to me.

Perhaps their span hid the fourth party—which is to say, the party with the camera.

Which is to say, why did I not notice the photographer, since the persons getting themselves ready for the photograph faced away from me and, therefore, I must have faced the fourth party?

I cannot say what the three of them looked like, since I only saw them from the back—except that the men were husky by my standard, wide-waisted, one man considerably the taller of the two. And there was this: the woman had no appeal that I could see.

My attention was mainly elsewhere. It was captured by the placement of the arms of these people as they prepared themselves for the photograph, the woman between the men, the men reaching back behind the woman to rest a hand on each other's shoulder, the woman with both arms reached out behind the men, to hold each man from behind, her fingers taking the man tight by the waist—wide waists, as I remember it, in each case, the men's waists.

They all hugged like this when they were ready.

Then they dropped their arms, and you knew, without your needing to be notified, that the photograph had been completed, or don't we say taken?

I kept standing there, to see them stand there for a while, facing away from me, all three, the two men and the woman, their arms at their sides—each of the three of them with arms no longer involved in the exertion of a pose.

I remember something else now.

One of the men—the shorter, I think—wore very bright corduroy trousers, a very bright green, I would say, and a very pale yellow sweater.

Ah, but then they had their arms reached back up into place again. Or places, do we say?

They were getting themselves in readiness again.

They hugged.

I could tell they were hugging hard.

Then they let their arms fall to their sides again, or is this to say that each person lowered his arms promptly to his sides?

You could anyway see another photograph had been made—or taken—and that this was to be the last of the photograph-making or photograph-taking. Or photography, don't we say?

MY SON WAS IN MY COMPANY
for the day.

It was to be a day for us in the park.

He was riding his bicycle and I was with him to see him do it. But for the time I was noticing the people with the camera, I was not seeing my son ride.

But when I resumed doing what I had been doing, I saw he was riding very well—and even doing some tricks. Or if we say acrobatics, then that.

I called to him.

I said, "Come over here a minute!" He rode up to me.

He said, "How did you like it?"

I said, "I've got a good idea."

He said, "Did you like the way I did it?"

I said, "Let's go home and get the camera and then we'll come back here and we'll take a picture of you with your bike."

He said, "What do you think of what I did?"

I said, "Let's go home. Let's get the camera."

WE DID IT.

Which is to say, my son and I went home. But we never got the camera for us to go make a photograph of him in the park with him on his bike.

Something came up.

I don't remember what.

But something did.

My plan was to produce a photograph.

My plan is to have the camera with me the next time we go. My plan is to find somebody and show him how the camera works.

My plan is to hand over the camera and then take my place behind my son.

The way I see it, the bicycle will be positioned broadside to the camera, my son situated on the seat, in an attitude of motion and of happiness perhaps. I will be standing just rearward of him, my arm arranged across the shoulders, this or some other such gesture to indicate that I am touching him and am keeping him, will always keep him, from falling over.

And then we will be like this.

DON'T DIE

MY FACTS ARE NOT UNKNOWN
. This notwithstanding, mine is a history which has never been without its share of detractors. But I feel, however, that we can safely say the truth must speak for itself. For example, the period of incarceration was not excessive. As an institution, it was viewed in the highest regard. Each and every member of the staff was of a generously professional caliber. I am not claiming to the contrary, or asserting in any fashion, that there might not have been the infrequent individual incorporated here and there who would not in every respect pass muster under the harsh light of what we so fondly refer to in our thoughts as our contemporary nationalistic standards. But it goes without saying, this notwithstanding, that you cannot judge yesterday's failure by today's success. To postulate the direct negation of this would be to go too far and to currently commit a travesty against the race of mankind and, of course, speech itself, splitting, or cleaving, the complaisant infinitive. Yet speak one must, and this quite obviously means me. My statement is this—more dereliction would be more than welcome. At that time, and since, even I, at my utmost, was not privy to enough information. Therefore, I can, as is understood, speak, only without the benefit of diametric contradiction, unless more is expected of me, in which event I would not be adverse to holding myself, and the other panelists in my party, in substantial abeyance, both now and otherwise. Little, or even less, will it profit us, I think, nor the generation to come after us and to cross-index us, to offer up for ourselves various personal and sundry opinions disproportionately or needlessly. Trust, we can agree, is paramount, now as never before. It is on this account, and only on this account, that knowledge of the facilities must be tolerated if not lauded. Persons to have come before my ken, which, admittedly, is and was the limited ken of the patient, deserved every consideration as one professional to another. Nevertheless, although I was not mental in my mind, nor even under suspicion by those responsible for oversight, I was cared for. My debt is great. I would mention the name, but there are legal reasons. Suffice it to say, due reference has been made in the writings of others as well as can be expected by us as well as by our detractors, both preponderantly and paradoxically. The answer is inescapable, not only for the time being, but also for the good of the community. May God protect us. We can do no more nor do no less. Meekly, mildly, and with consciousness aforethought, neither I nor my family bears them any ill will. Speaking in summation, then, as one who has spoken the truth, let us turn our attention to Nurse Jones.

Now, if we were to turn our attention to Nurse Jones.

Now, if you will please turn your attention to Nurse Jones.

(A cognomen surely.)

WHAT MY MOTHER'S FATHER WAS REALLY THE FATHER OF

THESE ARE THE THINGS
she said to me.

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER
was as strong as a horse—she said her father was as big as a horse, and also as strong as one, too.

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER
was a giant of a man, that he was a regular six-footer, that people were always shouting up at him to try to get him to look down at them and maybe to be their friend. She said people were always shouting, "Hey, Mister Six-Footer, tell us what the weather is like up there? Is it already raining? Is it or isn't it snowing?"

MY MOTHER SAID TOTAL STRANGERS
could not get over it, the tallness and the strongness of the man. My mother said complete strangers were always passing comment on it. My mother said, "Not like with some people I could name." My mother said, "With some people I could name, they go into a room, no one gives them the first courtesy of even taking any notice. You would not, with some people I could name, not even take any notice such people were in the room at all."

MY MOTHER SAID
, "Stand up. Look like you are somebody. Try to look like you are trying to amount to something. Show them who you are. Make believe you are who you say you are. Are you putting your best foot forward? Put your best foot forward. Show them you intend to be a member of the human race. My father was a member of the human race. My father was not like some people I could name—people not big, people not strong, people not even a member of even themselves."

MY MOTHER SAID ANYONE
could look and see that her father was a person of unquestionable refinement. She said, "You don't have to take my word for it." She said, "Ask anyone." She said, "Why should I all by myself have to be the whole judge and jury?" She said, "Why stand on ceremony?" She said, "You can go ahead and satisfy your curiosity any time you want." She said, "I can wait. I've got the patience. I've got more than enough patience for the both of us." She said, "Believe me, I've got enough patience for the whole country of China, not to mention his brother Siam."

SHE SAID, "YOU NAME THE LANGUAGE
, my father could talk it." She said, "Where was the man's nose?" She said, "The answer is forever in a book." She said, "There was no telling what the man might have made of himself if God had only given him a decent interval to do it in."

MY MOTHER SAID HER FATHER
was the Father of the Steam Engine and the Father of the Refrigerator and the Father of Certain Other Creations, but that the stinking gentiles came in and took advantage of the man's good nature and stole all of the man's blueprints from him, so that now you would not find the proof of it not anywhere in the world, not nowhere on earth was there one stinking way for you to get the proof of all of the things which my mother's father was really the father of, capital F, mind you, capital F.

YOU KNOW WHAT MY MOTHER SAID
? My mother said with just his little finger he could have broken every bone in all of their whole stinking rotten gentile bodies, but that the man was too refined of a person for him to lower himself down to their dirty stinking rotten level where somebody might catch him stooping to do it.

SHE SAID IT BROKE
her father's heart, the dirty stinking way they all stole from him, the gentiles and the government and the landlords. She said, "But you know what?" She said, "The man would not retaliate. The man would not retaliate against them for one filthy dirty stinking rotten lousy single instant."

MY MOTHER SAID
,"Listen to me, I am here to tell you, the man was a saint, and this is what it was which killed him, saintliness, pure and simple."

SHE SAID, "TAKE ONE GUESS
who you remind me of." She said, "Because he, him, this is who, ask anybody, you remind me of."

SHE SAID, "YOU KNOW
what you are?" She said, "You are too decent, you are too good, you are too sweet-natured. That's what you are."

SHE SAID, "I AM GOING
to tell you the truth—you are too good for your own good."

MY MOTHER SAID
, "A creature like you, how could it expect to fend for itself?" She said, "A person has to be a bully, a roughneck, a hoodlum, a criminal."

SHE SAID, "I KNOW YOU
, I'm no fool—wild horses could not make you get down with them on their dirty stinking rotten level—the gentiles and the government and the landlords."

SHE SAID
, "Throwbacks, this is what I call them." She said, "I call them throwbacks—and you know what else?" She said, "I am not ashamed to say so to their face!"

SHE SAID, "DON'T THINK
I don't know." She said, "I know." She said, "I promise you, I could give the whole stinking filthy rotten lousy gang of them lessons!"

SHE SAID, "YOU WANT TO HEAR
something?" She said, "Sit yourself down for two seconds and I will tell you something." She said, "I had to be made of iron." She said, "This is what I had to be made of—of iron!"

WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLD
and sick, she said that when she was a little girl in an orphanage, that they gave out bread and jam in the orphanage, that they gave it out every day at three o'clock in the orphanage, and that she always ate hers the instant they had given it out to her, but that her big sister Helen didn't, that her big sister Helen saved the bread and jam that they had given out to her, and that her big sister Helen always put her share away somewhere for later, but that later, that when it was later and that when my mother got too hungry for her to wait for supper anymore, that her big sister Helen would go get the bread and jam she had been saving for later and that every day she did this, that every day my mother's big sister Helen would have saved her bread and jam for herself but that she would come running with it for her—a sister, a sister!—to give it to my mother.

WHEN MY MOTHER GOT OLDER
and sicker, she said that sometimes the streetcar would come banging up the hill at the same time the clock was banging three o'clock, and that she thought that if you could hear both of them going outside and inside at once, the streetcar in the street and the clock in the orphanage, that then it was a secret sign to you that said that you were going to get a visit, that said to you getting off of the streetcar here comes one or the other of them, that getting off the streetcar your mother or your father was coming to you, but that there never, not once, was either one of them coming to her, not either her mother or her father, and that then when it wasn't, that then she would remember that her mother was crazy and that her father was dead.

MY MOTHER SAID
, "This was why I had to have my big sister's bread and jam—because my mother was crazy and my father was dead."

MY MOTHER SAID
, "Mine wasn't ever any good anymore because of being eaten and soaked with tears."

LISTEN TO ME
—you know what my mother once told me when she thought she was going to pass away?

MY MOTHER SAID
her big sister wasn't really the one who was the older one—this and that their father, that the man just went away.

SO MUCH
for your brother Siam.