Corrections to my Memoirs

by Michael Kun

DON’T SLIDE IN SOFTBALL GAMES. It’s called “softball” for a reason. If you were supposed to take it seriously, they’d call it “murderball.” If you do slide, here’s what will happen: When you’re forty-two years old, your knees will creak when you walk on hard surfaces.

  BE NICE TO WAITERS, WAITRESSES, AND RETAIL SALESPEOPLE. No one started out in life wishing that someday, if the stars aligned properly, they would end up waiting tables or trying to sell you a microwave. There’s no reason to make their lives worse by being rude. Be polite to salespeople, even when you’re just saying no. Say “please” and “thank you” to waiters and waitresses, and leave them a nice tip.33

  TRY TO MAKE TELEMARKETERS LAUGH. No one grew up wanting to be a telemarketer either. For eight hours a day, they read from a printed sheet and wait for people to hang up on them. Take a moment or two to try to get them to laugh. Speak in a silly accent. Try to get them to buy something you’re selling. Tell them you’re lonely and just happy to have someone to talk to, then ask them their favorite color. Give them something to tell their friends about over dinner.

  GO TO HAWAII. Trust me. I would say to go to Europe, but I would only be saying that to make you think I was worldly, which I’m not. I’ve never been to Europe. In fact, I’ve never been outside the United States. I don’t even own a passport. But I have been to Hawaii, and it was great, so I can recommend it. You’ll come back with a tan, and everyone likes people with tans. Particularly writers with tans.34

  STAY OUT OF JAIL. Have you been to jail? Me neither. But I’ve heard enough to know you wouldn’t last a day there. All the more reason why you should obey the laws—including copyright law! And if you don’t know the laws you’re supposed to be obeying, pick up a book. Then carry it around a lot.

  LEARN FIVE INTERESTING FACTS TO THROW OUT WHEN THE CONVERSATION GETS SLOW. It doesn’t matter what they are, just have them at the ready in case conversation with a date or a client is dying. “Did you know that the Baby Ruth candy bar was not named for Babe Ruth, but was named for Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth?”35 “I was reading the other day that the Beatles almost made a movie with Elvis Presley.”36 “Did you know that white chocolate technically isn’t chocolate because it doesn’t have any cocoa in it?” “Here’s something interesting. In New York City, there is a restaurant called Benihana’s of Tokyo. In Tokyo, Benihana’s is called Benihana’s of New York.” “Modern art is crap.”37 These are just examples. Feel free to come up with your own.

  So, there. That’s everything I’ve learned about life in my forty-two years.

  I hope it helps you.

  In fact, you might want to cut this out and keep it in your wallet. It’s up to you.

  Now, if you don’t mind, it’s almost ten. Seinfeld comes on in a minute.

  And I’ll probably be asleep before the opening credits are done.

  1. But not necessarily. I understand that I have hundreds of thousands of female readers, to whom I say, “Hello, ladies.”

  2. But not necessarily. I understand that I have more than a few readers aged forty to sixty, to whom I say, “Hello, old guys.”

  3. Of course, you can skip this piece altogether and go check out the other stories. I always start with the title story of any short story collection. There’s usually a good reason why it’s the title story. Usually, it’s the story that the writer thinks makes him look particularly profound. That, by the way, is not the case with the title story of this collection.

  4. Only old people use words like “whereof.” Only old people use footnotes.

  5. Tuesdays with Morrie is a book. It has been on the best-sellers list for most of your lifetime. No one knows why. That Morrie guy in the book shares a lot of advice, most of which is common sense stuff, like “don’t kill anyone” and “brush your teeth every day.” Those aren’t real examples; I’m just making a point. If he really wanted to be helpful, here’s the most important thing that Morrie could have said: “Getting old sucks.” And I just said it in the very second page of this piece. Why? It’s a little something I like to call “getting to the point.”

  6. This is not always so. Sometimes, when he fixes his hair, he looks more like an Art or a Hank. I just want to be completely candid.

  7. This will only make sense to readers over the age of forty who understand how quickly time passes.

  8. If you do say that, make sure to attribute it to me. Seriously. This book is copyrighted. The penalties for violation of copyright laws are very onerous. You could end up in jail. Which you don’t want.

  9. Sometimes, when it happens at home, I’ll say, “Oil can, oil can,” like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Sometimes my wife will laugh when I do that. The Wizard of Oz was a movie, by the way. It had flying monkeys in it. No other movie has flying monkeys, at least not as far as I know.

  10. And I usually don’t feel like it because, where I live, ten o’clock is when they have the Seinfeld reruns.

  11. Or wear shoes. Have you seen the photos of her walking out of a gas station restroom barefoot? Even hillbillies don’t do that. I know more about hillbillies than I’d care to admit.

  12. And if I were her father, I would tell her to cover up, and to wear shoes when going into public restrooms, which is the kind of common sense advice that guy Morrie from Tuesdays with Morrie would give.

  13. I don’t like it when people lie to me. You shouldn’t either. I mean, when they lie to you, not when they lie to me.

  14. Which is not to suggest that either of those expressions was ever funny.

  15. They are people who have just turned forty, or who are about to turn forty, and are desperate to have people tell them that they’re still young. Well, they aren’t, no matter how often they dye their hair, wear low-cut jeans, and listen to the Killers, the Vines, the White Stripes, and Kanye West. How can you trust anyone over forty who listens to Kanye West?

  16. The last name is pronounced like “cute,” only with an “n” instead of a “t.” It is an old Hungarian name. My great-grandfather Bela Kun led the Communist revolution in Hungary. It’s in the history books, if you don’t believe me. It’s there even if you do.

  17. That’s what I’m referring to when I say I’ve had a terrible, miserable, wasted life. There’s a reason the legal profession has such a poor reputation. It’s because it deserves to have such a poor reputation.

  18. If you have a bizarre and flaking skin condition, I suggest you see your doctor.

  19. Clap! Clap! Clap!

  20. Hiss!

  21. The Soviet Union was a country, a Communist country. They got that way without the help of anyone in my family.

  22. It was not always tiny and black. It used to be big and red. Then I became a lawyer.

  23. If you are concerned about being dishonest, follow these instructions. Get a pad of paper and write “Heaven Help Me” on the top of the page. Directly beneath, write the words “Chapter 1.” Congratulations, you are now writing a novel called Heaven Help Me! In fact, you have already written more than most writers I know.

  24. Might I suggest Scotch.

  25. Trust me.

  26. No, this didn’t happen to me. I told you, I’m a lawyer. However, I have had many clients who have had this situation come up, and they all deal with it the same way: If they find out you were looking at porn at a previous job, they won’t hire you. Too much of a risk.

  27. Pilgrim’s Progress is a good choice because it is one of those books people think they were supposed to have read, but didn’t. As a result, they are unlikely to want to discuss it because they will have to admit they didn’t read it. If they do ask, memorize this statement: “It’s an allegory of moral redemption.” No, I don’t know what that means either.

  28. Oh, and make sure to dry-clean it occasionally.

  29. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the author photos on my books. I look like a tire that has been inflated very slowly over the past fifteen years.

  30. C-SPAN is not the all-Spanish netwo
rk. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

  31. Sorry, but my wife just looked over my shoulder as I was typing that, so I had to type in some low numbers. In actuality, I’d have at least ten or eleven bucks!

  32. I know more about Satanists than I care to admit. Satanists and hillbillies.

  33. Of course, this rule goes out the window if they’re rude to you first.

  34. How’s Heaven Help Me coming along, by the way? Write “Chapter 2” on the top of another sheet of paper. Congratulations! You’ve just doubled the size of your manuscript! What a productive day!

  35. At least that is the story that was told by the original maker of the Baby Ruth candy bar, the Curtiss Candy Company, when they sued Babe Ruth to enjoin him from endorsing a competing candy bar called the Babe Ruth Home Run bar, which they contended would cause confusion in the marketplace. The fact that the Baby Ruth bar just happened to be introduced in 1921, when Babe Ruth was at the height of his popularity, casts some amount of suspicion upon this explanation, particularly since Ruth Cleveland died in 1904, seventeen years before the candy bar was introduced. Who names a candy bar after a girl who’s been dead for seventeen years?

  36. True. The movie was to have been called The Beatles Meet Elvis.

  37. Technically, this is an opinion, but few people will dispute it.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Hang on a second. That last one wasn’t even a short story. We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I paid twenty bucks for a short story collection, and that one wasn’t even a short story. We’re thinking the same thing. Or something similar. We’re thinking, We paid Michael a $500,000 advance for a short story collection, and now he’s including things that aren’t even short stories. What’s going on here?

  The next one had better be a short story, that’s all we have to say. We don’t care how great a writer he is. We don’t care what Philip Roth had to say about Michael at the World Literature Forum. We paid for a short story collection. That’s what it says in the contract. Michael should know that contracts are binding in a court of law. Not that we’re threatening to sue him, but he should know that. He is a lawyer, after all.

  And another thing: We did, in fact, change the title of the book from The Handwriting Patient to Corrections to My Memoirs.

  However, it would not be accurate to say that it was based upon “test marketing,” as the author claimed.

  Unless you would call us asking our receptionist which title she likes better “test marketing.”

  Now, where were we?

  Oh, yes, that’s right: The next one better be a short story.

  CIGAR BOX

  When Simon Cooley died at the age of seventy-seven (bad heart, too many cigars and cigarettes, too many desserts, not enough exercise or willpower), his eldest son, Clifford, moved two doors down the hallway, assuming his father’s eccentrically decorated, tall-windowed office and, with it, the role of chairman of Cooley, Hewitt & Mackabee. There was no dispute over Clifford’s new role as chairman of the law firm. Repeatedly, his father had announced his intention that Clifford should succeed him, and no one ever challenged that intention in life or, now, in death, not even Hewitt and Mackabee themselves (Tom and Scott, respectively), who were alive and kicking and not even remotely intrigued by the thought of running a law firm at their ages (seventy-two and seventy-three, respectively.) Clifford was well suited for the bureaucratic role of chairman. Or, at least, he was the best suited of the remaining partners. He even looked the part, as the expression goes. He was a man whose droopy features suggested a life of tedium. A jowly face with a chin that melted into his chest, shoulders that curved inward, a bulge at his waist the size of a country ham; his body appeared to have been formed out of clay by a disinterested child, one who tugged and pulled at the clay in all the wrong places with a flurry of thumbs before setting it aside unfinished. His ill-fitting clothing (what tailor could work the necessary magic with the body Clifford possessed and the small amount he could afford to pay?) suggested that he did not mind working long hours or performing dull tasks, which is what the role of chairman demanded. If Clifford Cooley wants to be chairman, he can have it was the sentiment of the remaining partners. He can have it with my blessing.

  There were some quiet rumblings, however, about Clifford’s decision to move into his father’s office. There were nearly a dozen partners, all men, with longer tenures at the law firm than Clifford, and most of them had not-so-secretly coveted Simon Cooley’s office. It was larger than the other partners’ offices by about twenty square feet, which was enough room to fit a small couch. It had floor-to-ceiling windows that provided distracting views of the harbor, sailboats bobbing on spring and summer days like toy ducks in a warm bath. Not incidentally, the office was also close to the secretarial station occupied by Christine Datto, who had been with the firm for just three years, joining shortly after her twenty-fourth birthday. She was a pretty, athletic-looking girl with blond hair that hung over her eyes like a canopy. The male attorneys occasionally and half-jokingly referred to two distinct periods in Cooley, Hewitt & Mackabee’s history as B.C. (Before Christine) and A.D. (After Datto), the latter of which some acknowledged made no sense since Christine, after all, was still there.

  “It would only be A.D. if she left,” new attorneys were wont to say.

  “Don’t even speak of such a thing,” would be a common retort.

  Occasionally, when they had had a few drinks, some of the attorneys would make less seemly comments about Christine Datto, remarking upon her breasts or legs or hips. Occasionally, they would drink to her in her absence, acknowledging how she had changed their firm and even their lives.

  The female attorneys did not refer to B.C. or A.D., nor did the secretaries or the file room staff, but there was a sense that they, too, recognized that the firm had changed in some small but meaningful way when Christine Datto arrived.

  Cooley, Hewitt & Mackabee was neither a large nor a prestigious law firm, but it was an old one, and in Baltimore (and, perhaps, elsewhere) things of a certain age are given credit for possessing a grace and dignity that they do not in fact enjoy. Statues and buildings become landmarks after a time, despite their poor craftsmanship or dubious appearance. The same happens with people and law firms, as if something old could not possibly be ugly or mean or mediocre or worse. Where once people snickered and referred to it as “Cruelly, Stupid & Mackabee”—they could not even be bothered to think of a rhyme for Mackabee—those days had passed, and now the firm’s name was spoken in more respectful tones.

  The people who worked at Cooley, Hewitt & Mackabee knew better. They knew they were working for an unimportant, uninspired law firm. They knew that there was little graceful or dignified about the firm, its lobby filled with worn-out chairs, seams torn here and there, those chairs filled by men and women of all ages trying to find a way to obtain monies they knew in their hearts they were not entitled to. You could tell their clients wanted more than that which was rightly theirs. You could see it in the sly smiles lurking behind every sad face. They could not hide the brightness of their eyes, even when those eyes were turned toward the frayed rug, the fact that at the very moment they were telling their well-rehearsed stories of mishaps and wrongdoings—“I was fired even though I was the best employee they had!” “My arm is never going to be the same!”—they were also doing calculations in their minds, adding the price of a new home to that of a new car and a television and the like. The better clients could hide their desires. They could hide the mathematics. Juries give more money to people who don’t seem to want it. The best clients could make it appear to a jury they were seeking justice with a capital J, rather than money with a capital M—that was an expression Simon Cooley repeated hundreds of times at attorney meetings over donuts or chocolate éclairs, before the donuts and chocolate éclairs did him in.

  “Every donut was a tiny bullet aimed at his heart,” Roberta Cooley (Simon’s wife, Clifford’s mother) had said, sitting
in the kitchen following the funeral. “Every cigar was a knife to the chest.”

  “I think you may be exaggerating,” Clifford had said before he noticed something in his mother’s eyes. She was not hiding her desires. She was doing the mathematics, already spending the insurance money. She had been the wife of the chairman of an unimportant, greedy law firm; she did not know better.

  Everyone in the office knew the truth about the law firm except, it seemed, Christine Datto. She seemed to believe that the firm was graceful and dignified and, as a result, she became graceful and dignified as did the things she touched. You could hear it in her voice, the way it rose slightly at the end of each sentence as if she were beginning to smile before catching herself. You could see it in her work. She would not merely do what she was told, ignoring errors in the documents handed to her to type or to file, but instead would bring them to the attention of the attorneys, helping them become better in the process. “I’m sure you would have caught this yourself,” she’d say, “but I think it should read, ‘Please call Mr. Mackabee or me,’ not ‘Mr. Mackabee or I.’”

  You could see it in the way she dressed. She did not wear any of the flimsy blouses or short skirts that had been popular with many of the secretaries when she had arrived. Instead, Christine Datto wore dresses or long skirts and jewelry that was eye-catching without being cheap or flashy.

  “Christine Datto,” Simon Cooley had often said, “has class.” His son could not and would not dispute that.

  One by one, the other secretaries had begun dressing like Christine, until their wardrobes were larger and more appealing than those of the female attorneys, who had adopted a uniform of boxy pantsuits and square-toed shoes. I don’t know how they afford it, Clifford occasionally would think, but it brings class to our office.

  As he packed up his father’s belongings and unpacked his own, Clifford could not help but be reminded of how his father had prized “class,” but could not be described as a man possessing it. He packed his father’s desk clock—a wooden monkey with a clock in its belly. His father’s letter opener had a beer tap for a handle. The only thing that could be said to have any “class” to it was the mahogany humidor on the corner of the desk, in which his father kept his cigars. It had been a Christmas gift from the secretarial staff. The cigars, though, were cheap ones. Cheap cigars in an expensive box.