by Sam Lipsyte
“A parfait glass?”
“No, think flatware.”
We sit, after, for tea.
“When are you going to get a job?” says Hilda.
“What, are you my mother?”
“Your mother was a saint.”
“I have a job,” I say. “I’m freelance, self-employed.”
“The bums are freelance, too,” says Hilda.
“It’s okay,” I say, “I don’t expect you to understand. Although, I must say, Mrs. Lizzari has been very supportive.”
“She hated your mother,” says Hilda.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Nobody believes anything anymore,” says Hilda. “Why would I make something like that up? By the way, did I tell you already that I want to die?”
“Yeah, you told me. But I don’t believe it.”
“Why would I make it up? What’s the point of living? And the rent going up. They want me dead anyway.”
“Your rent’s not going up,” I say.
“Well, it’s not going down, either,” says Hilda. “I’m done here. I can’t even read. I love books and I can’t read them.”
“I’ll read to you.”
“Read what?”
“Books.”
“I don’t think so, dear. I don’t really care for them. But one thing you could do for me is kill me. No one would know.”
“I would know.”
“You’ve done worse, I can tell by looking at you.”
“You’re blind, Hilda.”
“I’m not blind to the world.”
I’m not blind to it, either. There are all sorts of possibilities out there. You just have to be able to think sideways, is all. You have to know how to predict demand. My ideas are a bit subtle, and they may look funny on paper, but somebody’s bound to bite. I’ve always been far-thinking. I could always listen to Top Forty radio and tell you which song would be a hit. Same thing with the Fall TV lineup. I know what the kids want, too. That’s easy, though. It’s just a crapshoot whether you get the colors and the chemicals right. But the old ladies who want to die, or have their lightbulbs switched, that’s an untapped market. I’m living in a gold mine, or maybe a silver one.
Mrs. Lizzari comes to the door in her brassiere. It’s the old kind, a severe network of clasps and fastenings, which is the new kind, if you pay attention to these things.
“Hey, Mrs. L.,” I say. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything, honey.”
“Can you fill out this consumer research survey I’ve worked up?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“It shouldn’t take you long at all.”
“No, honey, I’m sorry. I’m on a government roll. I get money. I wouldn’t want to anger anyone.”
“No one will mind,” I say.
“No, honey. Come back tomorrow. I’ll have some more cookies.”
Mrs. Lizzari closes the door before I can get a fix on the smell coming from her rooms. That’s something right there. Old Lady Smell. You could market objects scented with it. A mild version. For the grievers.
Sometimes I take out my mother’s cremains and set them on the dining room table. I keep them just the way the undertaker gave them to me, sealed in a cardboard box, cinched up in a velveteen sack. People like to call them ashes but it feels more like a couple of rocks, especially if you hold the whole thing in your hands, or swing it, as I do, on occasion, bolo-style from the sack cord. I’m still not sure why I do this, but it feels good, standing there in the dining room, windmilling my mother around.
One of these days we’ll decide where to scatter her cremains. People say water is poetic but I think they just secretly like the convenience. Any creek or river has a little God in it. My mother’s old neighborhood would be a good spot, but they bulldozed it for condos years ago. Besides, as I may have mentioned, she never seemed to care where she was, as long as the right people were around. The great sorrow of her life was that they tended not to be, and a sunshot vista, or a sparrow on the windowsill, this was no consolation.
Once she told me the story of the time a minor movie star was leaving a party and motioned her to join him in the elevator. She hesitated. The door shut.
“I was waiting for your father,” she said. “He was in the can.”
“That guy just wanted to fuck you,” I said.
“How do you think anything beautiful begins?”
I’m a little worried about the morphine supply. I’d better get myself a crooked doctor or cancer soon. I’d better get myself a winning business plan or I’ll be twitching the nights away on the flower-print couch.
Hilda hands me something in the hallway.
“Read it,” she says.
“It says you’ve died, Hilda. Congratulations.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s just your light bill. You should see Mrs. Lizzari’s.”
“She’s afraid of the dark.”
“Guess so.”
“I’m not,” says Hilda. “Know what I mean?”
“Listen,” I say. “Let me ask you something. Say somebody, a messenger of mercy, maybe, was willing to put his freedom, or even his life, on the line, just to make sure yours ended in as quick and painless a manner possible. Would you be grateful? Would you arrange for payment, even? How bad do you want it, Hilda?”
“You’re a sick boy. Your mother said you were a problem, but I always told her it was a phase.”
“I thought it was, too,” I say.
Mrs. Lizzari is down on the corner with her walker, her mesh grocery sacks.
“How’re you fixed on light, Mrs. L.?”
“I’m a Broadway star up there!” she says.
Home, I boil some pasta and peas, fire up my mother’s old Fischer radio. The youth of America sing their anthems of youth. Once I knew the words. I troll for soothing locutions, catch a familiar voice.
“Our culture is afraid of death, and considers it something we must wage a battle against. I say, surrender, submit. Go gentle. Terminal means terminal.”
It’s Tessa, I realize, even as the host breaks her off.
“Well, I guess you’re saying just lie back and pray the Eastern religions are right about reincarnation.”
“No, I’m saying just lie back.”
Mrs. Lizzari calls me for a special batch, almond-ginger. When I get there she hands me a small canvas, lighthouse generica, a hammer and nails.
“Over the mantle, dear,” she says.
“So, tell me,” she says, hoisting her cookie tray, “what made you say those things to Hilda?”
“What things?”
“Horrible things.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“We don’t need any help in that department, thank you.”
When I leave I still have the hammer in my belt loop. I bang it on Hilda’s door.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s your local service representative,” I say, wave the hammer through the chained slit. “Whenever you’re ready, Hilda. Just let me know. There’s no reason you should suffer.”
“Who’s suffering?” she says.
You can hear them in the hallway, their early wheels. Mrs. Lizzari is in her house gown, helping the medics make the corner with their gurney. Hilda is up to her neck in sheet.
“She’s okay, she’s going to be okay,” says Mrs. Lizzari. “She’s not so lucky yet.”
I nod, duck back inside.
My mother’s windows get no dawn light, but there’s a kind of slow undimming going on in the dining room.
I fetch the sack.
All it takes are the tiniest taps of the hammer to make a good part of my mother real old fashioned dust-to-dust-type dust. I crush a little morphine up and sift it in. I add some water, cook it all down in a spoon, draw it up through a hormone needle, roll my sleeve. I stanch the blood with velveteen.
Now I’m on the flower-print couch.
Now I’m thinking, is that
the morphine, or is that my mother?
Something is setting beautiful fires up and down my spine.
The Morgue Rollers
Daddy can’t stand the kikes. Daddy says they look down their kike noses at him in the state store, where Daddy picks and packs, crates up the Liquor Board liquor. The kikes treat him without time of day.
“Those fucking kikes,” says Daddy.
Maybe Daddy’s a little tippy tonight.
“You’re tippy,” says Mother.
“I stopped for a few.”
“But Daddy,” I say, “aren’t we the kikes?”
“That’s what they say,” says Daddy. “I say it’s them. Who needs them? Who needs her?”
What Daddy maybe means is that us Cherskys of the Hill District are not like the Blitzsteins of Squirrel Hill, except maybe my Aunt Rachel, who married in, and who we never see her anymore.
“Who needs her?” says Daddy. “Let her cavort with the kikes.”
Cavort is a smartie word. It was on the vocab quiz. Maybe Daddy knows it because he used to be a smartie, too. Now he’s sore arms, sore neck from him hauling all the Liquor Board crates, sore everything every night, aching, waiting for his salt bath, wanting to know from us which of us needs Rachel. Now he shushes up for in case the Old Lady will hear. The Old Lady is in her room with her high holy silver, the Chersky locket swinging on her collar lace. She never leaves her room. She gets her dinner after, and not the ham we hide away. We are always shushing for in case the Old Lady puts her high holy ear to the keyhole. We never say the name of ham, or the name of Uncle Joey’s Polish girl, Paula, Paula, Paula.
Let them hide the ham away. Let Daddy come home tippy, or call Uncle Joey a bum until Joey bawls how it’s not his fault, it’s the gas he got in France, the mustard. Then he’ll peel off money for Daddy from his copper money clip. Mother says the money is green enough for legal tender, why ask what he does for it? A bagjob, a bet, a favor in a pinch? Bumhood is not Uncle Joey’s fault, either. He gave his mustard mask to a boy with bad breathing. The gas came floating through the trees of France, and now he reads books all day, Astronomy of the Gods, A Century of English Verse, spits dip on the back stoop, gets mustard nervous, waits for the moon to be over the park for Paula.
Let us just be Cherskys, Aunt Rachel’s Blitzstein shame. This is my belief.
Want to know my faith? School does. Mother says to say American.
“Hey,” says Uncle Joey, “how about Alleghenian? That’s what everyone around here is. Gypsy, dago, mick, it’s all Alleghenian.”
What about chink Chinese? I want to ask. What about my best girlfriend Mona Yee, who me and Mona are the front-desk smarties at Duquesne Grammar, tops, not counting Alvin Kwon? We are best friends with our shaved ices on the spit-brown stoop, and we are best friend rollers on our roller skates. Everyone who sees us sees us together, the Chersky girl, the pretty one, the only one, and Mona Yee, Chinese pretty. We are from up the Hill and we roll down it, past the bakery, the butcher shop, the state store where Daddy fetches whiskey for the kikes.
Sometimes I see Daddy through the window. He nods his curved-up jaw at Mr. Vance, the Liquor Board man. Maybe Daddy sees me but he never waves back. That’s okay, it’s like in school, somebody bombs you with an ink bomb on you, but even if the paper sticks to your blouse you better not turn, you better not look. Not if you want to stay a smartie. Only Alvin Kwon ever turns and only Alvin ever looks. He burns his eyes at the boys in back, the ones who vow they’re sending Alvin to the Slabs.
“Never!” says Alvin, who’s going to be mayor someday, and can recite the Gettysburg address in perfect Lincoln.
Today, Mona and me, we are after-class rollers, rolling under steel smoke, over all the broken sidewalk backs of mothers. We roll down the Hill past Paula’s house, to the city pool, where I swim in the no-pee water. Mona is sweet and waits with her books on the lawn. The no-pee pool is no-Chinese. Mona doesn’t mind. She’s getting smarter while I do my crawl, my butterfly, my aqua-ballerina spins. Oh, if only there were more of us Chersky girls, spinning out the letter C, all of us identical, aqua-amazing in our no-pee ballet. Only after, when I’m dressing, do I remember Mona out there under the steel-smoke-lifted dark, under Paula’s park moon. I come out with my hair knotty wet. We sit for another minute, then get ready to climb the Hill, skates laced around our necks. Mona’s having ham at the Chersky’s tonight.
Mother is mad at the Gypsies. What the Gypsies do is come to the back door, never the front door, ask to cut through. Who wants to tell a poor old Gypsy woman she can’t cut through? Don’t be a dummy, says Mother. Don’t be a dingbat, foolish. Sure, let them through, but don’t lead them. Otherwise, say good-bye to any silver on the table. Say good-bye to any nickels in a coin dish on the table.
“It’s not their fault,” says Uncle Joey. He’s got ham-hiding eyes. His fork has the French shakes.
“Whose fault is it then?” says Daddy.
“It’s their way,” says Mother. “We teach our children to read, they teach theirs to cut through.”
“My teacher taught me to read,” says Daddy.
“Are you tippy?” says Mother.
“I’m fine. I stopped for a few. Vance was making a Federal case again, what do you want? You know, I should just join the goddamn army. Be useful. Maybe I’m old, but I could do something. Supplies.”
“They’ll supply you with the mustard,” says Uncle Joey. “They’ll get you good.”
“Knock it off, Joseph,” says Daddy. “And for the month, what have you got?”
Uncle Joey peels new bills from his copper clip. Mother says we know the money is U.S. mint and that’s all we know. We don’t ask. We’re Cherskys, what’s to ask? We all look over to Mona, as though to say, “Oh, Mona, sorry for the family fuss.”
“Mona,” says Daddy, “how’s your ham?”
“Corned beef,” says Uncle Joey, keyhole loud.
Tonight we will be secret night rollers, me and Mona, after the sink, the towel, the rack. Daddy goes to his newspaper chair, with all the war parts and funny parts of the newspaper we are not to touch. Uncle Joey tunes in the radio scores, shines his shoes for Paula. The way he rocks in the rocker when the college scores come on, the vein in his forehead pumping like a Frenched-up heart, you’d think he went to college, but everything Uncle Joey knows, Mother told me, he read on the stoop, spit into the wind.
It must have been a good day for bleacher blankets, all the college smarties with their cocoa and their cheers. The radio man calls out numbers over brass and whistles, drums. Uncle Joey jumps. He looks afraid, like they’re going to supply him all over again, get him good, a gas bomb through the roof.
“Oh, shit, oh, shit,” he says, and goes.
“Don’t worry,” I tell Mona, “he’s just late to the park.”
Mona and me, we sneak out the back and roll down to Paula’s house, the alley window. Here’s moonlight Paula in a wintergreen slip. Here’s the bone-handled brush she pulls through her bone-colored hair. She brushes it and we wait for her to blow a kiss at Uncle Joey, who’s wallet-sized, tilted with the post-cards in the mirror. He has his brim hat on, his over-the-shoulder belt, his going-off-to-the-mustard-war shirt. We have the same picture in our house, and one of Uncle Ferdie, who didn’t get the mustard, who got a bullet in the neck instead.
Ferdie’s buried under the trees of France.
“Blow a kiss, Paula,” we whisper. But Paula runs her finger on the brush bone, lays it on the bureau top. The Allegheny stars are out over us, maybe the dipper, the bear, or all the god men Uncle Joey showed me in his star book, stuck there bawling in their sky robes.
We are night rollers rolling by the bakery, the butcher shop, down our block and down the Hill. We are rollers rolling past the houses like the Blitzstein house, where Rachel is so pinned-hair pretty, not a Chersky anymore, maybe with a locket on her collar, tearing tissue for the Temple Jews.
We roll by Mona’s house, and Alvin’s with the C
hinese lights. “Alvin! Alvin!” we cry, but he must be busy burning up his mother’s kitchen—liberty or death. When Alvin is mayor he’ll emancipate Mona to swim in the no-pee pool.
We are rollers in the river town. We very much wish we could skate the black waters here. We roll on off state corners instead. Here are all the downtown buildings pointing steelish into the night. This must be where Mr. Vance will make his Federal Liquor Board case. Poor Daddy will have to join up for usefulness and maybe get a bullet in his neck. He’ll be tippy in a brim hat in the sky. The Old Lady will die of holy silver sadness. Uncle Joey will marry in with Paula. He will tell us the truth about his copper money clip, the college scores. What about Mother, though? Who will bring her dinner after, after?
“Go, go, go,” I tell Mona. It’s a basement door propped open at the bottom of a stairwell. It’s a dim, white light.
“Go, go,” I tell Mona, but I go first, sideways, skatewise, down the stairs.
This dirty tile river was made for secret rollers. We are rolling down it, shushing ourselves as everything gets dirtier, dimmer, us wishing our wheels wouldn’t click. We could get demerits. We could go to Juvey, even. The pretty Chersky girl in chains.
The hallway opens on a wide stone room.
It stinks of pickled animal, frog day at Duquesne.
“The Slabs,” says Mona.
She skates off to the far dark behind us.
The dead men here don’t look asleep. They look woken up into picklehood. They are stiff on cots that have skates fixed on. They are swelled up, blued-over, see-through, with black slits for bone to show. There are dead women, too, some the color of Mother, waxed over like hidden ham wax.
You don’t have to touch to know how cold they are.
You don’t need a clock to know how late it is.
Here comes a man in a dirty sky robe. He’s pulling a cot with wheels across the stone.
“You here for this one?” the man says.
Even as I roll over I can see it, the copper money clip, there where the sheet doesn’t reach. It’s sticking out of Uncle Joey’s shoe. “It’s not his fault,” I tell the man. “It’s not. The boy had bad breathing. He couldn’t breathe.”
