As for me, I don’t remember the incident at all. Those days have always been lost to me.
Wake
The old man died, and our friend, his daughter, invited us to the wake. On the phone, she told us the circumstances of his death: he’d had a heart condition, and had been prescribed pills in a large green bottle which he was to take three times daily. The prescription could be refilled at any time, indefinitely, and the old man had plenty of money, but a habit of tight-fistedness drove him to short his dosage, presumably to conserve the precious pills. Consequently, he suffered a stroke and died on the way to the hospital.
It so happened that the old man was a connoisseur, and had, over the years, amassed a large collection of fine and extravagant goods: wines and liqueurs and rare single-malt Scotches, obscure and expensive pipe tobacco, black-market cigars. Many of his acquaintances, however, never knew he possessed these things, because the old man would always smoke cheap cigarettes and drink the most pedestrian of drinks out of colorful metal cans.
Not surprisingly, his many children loathed their father’s miserly ways and spent their adulthoods compensating with unbridled hedonism, which aged them prematurely and generated crushing debt. Though our friend did not mention it, the old man’s will was said to have erased their debts instantly, with enough left over to keep them in cars, hotels, sumptuous meals and new clothes for more than a year. The will had also provided for a huge wake, at which the children and their guests were supposed to consume every last precious item in the cellar. It was to this wake that our friend invited us.
It was a memorable party, to say the least. The hundreds of guests drank themselves into a stupor, and a thick, aromatic smoke filled the air until dawn. Everyone had a wonderful time. Our friend, however, could be seen dashing from room to room in a kind of fury, her face red and her hair streaming out behind her as if in a strong wind. At one point we stopped her and asked why she seemed so angry.
She replied that the old man had ruined her enjoyment by martyring himself: all she could think of was his privation, and how he had sacrificed his own pleasure to augment his friends’. At this point we suggested that perhaps her father had in fact taken great pleasure in the anticipation of satisfaction, more than he might have taken in the satisfaction itself, and we noted that he probably imagined this party with great joy, as much joy as the guests were feeling at that moment, if not more.
This gave our hostess pause, but it was only a few seconds before she shook her head and told us that she didn’t know what we were talking about. She stalked off, angrier than ever.
We fell asleep during the cab ride home, and nothing has tasted as good to us since.
Expecting
A local young man, still in high school, announced to his parents that his girlfriend was pregnant and that they intended to marry. His father, eager for his only child to attend a reputable university and major in genetic engineering, which field the father rightly believed held great potential for wealth and fame, grew angry at his son and insisted that the girl have an abortion. He demanded that his son go pick up the girl immediately so that he, the father, could tell her this in person.
The son obeyed, but unwillingly, and his emotional state when he left probably contributed to the terrible automobile accident he became involved in on the way, which killed him.
His girlfriend, in despair over the loss of her lover and reluctant to bring a fatherless child into the world, resolved to have an abortion after all. But when the young man’s father got wind of this, he phoned the girl and insisted that she carry the baby to term. The girl refused. The father then bribed the girl’s best friend in order to learn where and when the abortion was to take place, and was waiting at the clinic for the girl when she arrived.
According to eyewitnesses, the girl and the older man argued through the window of his car, and then the girl got in and the two argued further, perhaps for as long as thirty minutes. Eventually they pulled away from the clinic.
No one has seen either since, though the father, who we now can refer to as the grandfather, is said to have sent photographs of his grandson to certain acquaintances. It is also rumored that the young man’s girlfriend is once again expecting.
The Mothers
Local mothers banded together to exchange advice about and support for the difficult task, which they all shared, of balancing personal ambition and fulfillment with the demands of home and family. Their association was regarded as a great success, and a new sense of confidence and calm seemed to settle over our town, the likes of which had not previously been seen.
So fond of one another did area mothers become that they arranged to take a trip together, an ocean cruise. Area fathers rearranged their work schedules to accommodate the mothers, and prepared to emulate, while they were away, those qualities most commonly associated with the mothers.
While the mothers were gone, our town’s business both private and professional stopped entirely, and the streets filled up with fathers and children acting in a manner that encompassed not only fatherliness and childishness but motherliness as well. It was impossible to pin down exactly what behavior, speech or patterns of thought constituted this motherliness, yet all agreed that there was a surrogate motherliness in the air, neither as full nor as satisfying as the real thing, yet a fair substitute nonetheless.
When the mothers returned, their own inherent qualities had intensified, or perhaps it only seemed that way, as we had grown used to their absence. Whatever the case, this motherliness, combined with that which we had developed without them, created an excess, and emotions ran high for several weeks while we regained our equilibrium.
Though no one wishes to deprive the mothers of further associations, we all found this experience unsettling, and have asked them to refrain in the future from departing all at once. To this, the mothers have agreed, though not without some reluctance.
The Fathers
The fathers in our town began to worry that they were paying their children insufficient attention, so a coalition of concerned fathers arranged a picnic, to be held at our lakeside park, which all the fathers and their children were expected to attend. Those games traditionally played between fathers and children—baseball and football, for example—were organized; food, such as hot dogs and hamburgers, that children most commonly associated with their fathers, was cooked; and live entertainment determined to be fatherly in nature—specifically, a rock concert—was scheduled.
Few would argue that the fathers and children did not have a good time. Nevertheless, things did not go quite as planned. The children objected to the fathers’ participation in games, as their large size and superior skills upset the balance of play. The food, which the children especially savored, was refused by many fathers, who, concerned about their health, wished to avoid cholesterol, carbohydrates, or fat. And the rock concert, which addressed the generational gap by including both “oldies” and loud contemporary music, succeeded at neither, driving the children to the lakeside, where they threw rocks into the water and at one another, and pushing the fathers into little groups, where they discussed sports and drank beer.
When the picnic was over, some suggested that the very detachment from their children that the fathers displayed was a defining characteristic of fatherhood, and should be embraced, not discouraged. This suggestion was received with approval by fathers and children alike, and no further picnics are planned.
Sons
A prominent prewar writer, whose novels of manners sold briskly in their time, was notorious for his tumultuous personal life, in which he was said to have driven his wife to suicide and treated his only child, a son, with terrible cruelty. By the time he reached the age of fifty, the writer had stopped writing entirely, and fell into a prosperous but miserable retirement in a village not far from here, shunned by critics and forgotten by his readers.
Meanwhile, his son, who had fallen into delinquency and poor health early in life, recovered his civility durin
g a two-year stay at a home for wayward boys, and began to learn the craft of writing himself. He published a series of angry and shocking novels that revealed, in fictional form, all the transgressions of his father, who consequently was catapulted back into the public consciousness, this time as a monstrous child abuser and wife-beater. The son’s novels, unlike his father’s, garnered enormous critical praise and countless literary awards, and were certain to endure, sealing his father’s ill reputation indefinitely.
In time the son himself had a son, and treated him with the utmost kindness and respect, allowing him all possible advantages and rarely, if ever, reprimanding him for any action regardless of how wayward or ill-mannered, with the intention of ensuring his own reputation as a benevolent parent. However, the child fell in with a bad crowd, and after his own period of incarceration grew up to make a series of well-received films documenting his life with an irresponsible and selfish father who lacked the courage to discipline his child.
This turn of events recently drove the critically acclaimed writer to suicide. His father, the forgotten writer, is himself still alive and in his late eighties, and we see him from time to time at the supermarket, thumping melons or examining tomatoes for bruises, like any regular old man. He is said to have altered his will so that his estate will be passed on to his grandson.
Different
My father died suddenly, before I had given serious thought to his mortality, let alone my own, and the effect upon me of his passing was a devastating and completely unexpected midlife crisis which, though no different from those experienced by any number of men and women my age, nevertheless convinced me that I was forever and drastically changed, with no hope of return to the confident days of my youth. I looked the same, but felt certain that my body was only a meaningless shell, the contents of which had been drained away.
The day after his funeral, I found myself hungry and sat at the kitchen table eating marinated olives from a disposable plastic tub. After a while I’d had enough of the olives’ saltiness and took from a bowl a ripe red plum. The plum had a small plastic sticker attached to it, printed with the product code used by the store, which I peeled off. I looked around for a place to put the sticker, and settled finally on the lid of the olive tub.
At this point I noticed an identical product code sticker on the lid, and remembered that I had done this very thing—followed a snack of olives with a juicy plum—just four days ago, only hours before I learned of my father’s death.
My midlife crisis continued for most of that year, but I believe that its severity was considerably lessened by this coincidence.
The Denim Touch
When my oldest daughter was a small child, I invented bedtime stories to lull her to sleep at night. Most of these stories were forgotten immediately, but a few she requested again and again, and to these I would add events and characters, extemporaneously extending them into small epics, the details of which my daughter could recall with fanatic specificity. One such story was called “The Denim Touch.”
The good king of a distant country, the story went, had a single daughter, whom he loved with all his heart. One day a prince came to ask for the daughter’s hand. To win the good king’s favor, the prince gave him a magical candlestick that, if rubbed in conjunction with a strange incantation, would enable its bearer to turn anything he wished into denim. The king accepted the gift and gave his blessing for their marriage. But at the wedding, the king danced with his daughter and, under the candlestick’s power, inadvertently turned her into denim. The heartbroken prince took up his denimed bride and from then on roamed the countryside, wearing her like a suit, mourning her tragic transformation. The story then became episodic, as the prince sought some way to restore the princess to her original form.
For years I produced installments of “The Denim Touch” for my daughter. Then, one night, she asked me a startling question: where did the princess go? It happened that earlier this particular week our family had lost a beloved dog to old age and buried him in the woods near our home.
I reminded her that the princess had turned to denim, and the prince was trying to turn her back. Yes, I know, my daughter said, but where is she? He is wearing her, I explained. Yes, my daughter said, but where is she?
Perhaps because it was late, perhaps because I was still emotionally exhausted from the death of my dog, I confessed that I didn’t know. She was just nowhere, I supposed.
This threw my daughter into paroxysms of grief, and for the first time I was given to wonder why I had told her such a macabre story in the first place, or why such a story would even enter my head. Consumed with guilt, I apologized profusely, and blurted a final installment of the story, in which the princess is cured by a good witch and the couple become king and queen of all the land. Unfortunately, this was no longer sufficient, and from then on I read bedtime stories out of books.
Even now, however, I find myself lying awake on restless nights, devising new installments of “The Denim Touch.” I wouldn’t dare tell them to my children, who are grown, or to the children they might someday bear, yet I continue to invent them nonetheless. Perhaps they are a form of prayer: there is considerable comfort in this endless tale of impending resurrection, and since I claim no formal religious affiliation, the stories may fill a need I am not fully aware I possess.
Whatever the reason, when my wife reaches out and embraces me during the night, I am reminded of the loyal prince wearing his own wife, and I am able at last to sleep.
Mice
A doctor we know lived, as a little girl, out in the country, in a house on the edge of a forest not far from here. Because of its rural location, and because it was the only one for several miles around, the house developed a mouse infestation, and our friend’s family often found their stored food broken into and eaten.
Our friend’s father bought a number of mousetraps and placed them throughout the house. In time, several mice were caught and killed by the traps, and our friend went with her father to dispose of their bodies in the woods. The father removed them by their tails from a small cardboard box and tossed them out among the trees.
A child of the country, our friend was accustomed to the death of animals and accepted that it was sometimes necessary. Her father hunted deer and game birds, which they ate, and this did not bother her. But for some reason, the capture and disposal of the mice upset her greatly. She decided to trick her father and developed a plan: she would go into the forest and recover the tiny corpses, then bring them home and set them in the traps. This way her father would believe the mice were being eliminated, and she would have the satisfaction of knowing she had saved their lives.
The plan worked well all through the winter, when the dead mice could easily be found on the surface of the snow and their bodies were neatly preserved in the freezing air. But by spring it became necessary to allow new mice to be caught, owing to the difficulty of recovering the corpses, and to the problem of their rapid decomposition. Our friend became distraught: the lives of the mice were solely in her control, and so she had an obligation to continue saving them. But was it all right to allow new mice to be killed, to save the few she could? Or was it her responsibility to develop a better plan, one that would save all the mice? Her problems worsened when she grew ill and was confined to bed for a week. Though her health improved, she cried and cried, and neither her parents nor her doctor could understand why.
In time our friend grew up and she forgot about her plan to save the mice. She went to college and medical school, and became an obstetrician and fertility expert at the county hospital, which is where we first met her. Often, in recent years, she has administered drugs to women who encountered difficulty conceiving children, and these drugs sometimes result in high multiple pregnancies of five, six, seven or more. When this happens she strongly recommends that the patient permit her to abort several of the fetuses, so that the remaining few will be carried safely to term.
One morning she was performin
g this very procedure on a patient of hers and was overcome, inexplicably, by emotion. She laid down her instruments and stepped back from the table, then asked a young resident to take over. She left the room and sat very still and quiet in her office, and a strange fantasy occurred to her: she would take away the barely developed aborted fetuses, and incubate them and administer the most up-to-date care, and they would grow up like normal children and would be hers to keep, because she had been unable, despite all her knowledge and expertise, to conceive children herself.
It wasn’t long, however, before this fantasy struck her as unprofessional at best and sickening at worst, and many months later she successfully delivered her patient’s triplets. The patient never learned, and the doctor never told her, that the original procedure had been performed by someone else.
Tea
In the years after my father died, my mother took to a certain brand of tea, which she drank four times daily, once at breakfast, twice in midafternoon and once in the evening, after dinner. She drank it with milk and honey, though sometimes I saw her use granulated sugar, when the honey ran out.
This particular tea came in boxes of fifty bags, and every box came with a small pastel-colored ceramic circus figurine. It was a kind of promotion: I believe the tea was called Piccadilly Circus, and there were fifteen different figurines, a lion tamer, an acrobat, a human cannonball. Every once in a while I would be around when my mother unwrapped a new box and took out the figurine. It would sit on the table between us while we drank and sometimes she would pick it up and turn it over in her hand.
Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories Page 8
