by Gordon Lish
What we're told is the poet's here to lend a hand—help sort the dead man's papers, be good company, a goodly solace, a presence in an empty house. So we see the women being women together, being the bereaved together, fingering what the dead man wrote.
(Was he a poet, too? More than likely. Nowadays, there are many, many poets.)
We see them grieving lightly, smoothing skirts, reminiscing, sipping tea, making tidy. Well, we hear this, see that—I don't recollect if the poet really keeps her senses keyed to this or that event. So we see, or hear, their speeches when they reach into a carton to read aloud a bit of this, a bit of that.
You know—fellowship, fellowing. A little weeping. Women's shoulders. Women's sweaters.
Nice.
When—didn't I say you'd guess it?—there's the wife with her hand at the bottom of a carton, and then her hand up and out, a neat packet in it, envelopes, a certain shape and paper, a certain fragrance, the dead man's record of the poet's indiscretion—letters that record the couplings, letters that give account.
My God!
Etc., etc., etc.
BUT LET'S NOT BE non-poets here. It's not as bad as all that. After all, the man's dead and buried. Quite beyond a scolding. The widow's seen plenty. The poet is a poet. Life is . . . life.
Oh, well.
So there we are (at the poet's placing), watching women being wiser together—cry a little, laugh a little, and then at last, seeing them, as the worldly will, embracing.
I'm not so sure who speaks first, nor what the poet said was said—the poet's poem being somewhere here among my trophies but I being too caught up in this to get up to go check. Let's just say the widow says, "All these years, all these years, and who was he? He was who you talked to in these letters."
And the poet?
Who remembers?
But I expect she says whatever's said to someone being spacious for your benefit. Perhaps this: "No, no, it was you who had the better of it—the husband, the man."
Etc., etc.
The deceased, in pursuit of this assertion, is then celebrated, in two deft lines, for his performance in the two domains indicated.
Is there guile in this? Does the poet mean for us to take a tiny signal? Consider—why the symmetry? Is this the actual or the artful? And consider even further: What are we to do about the difference?
Anyway, who's the kidder here—the poet in the poem or the poet not in it?
Balance, don't I detest it! Some ghastly disproportion, now there's the thing!
SO THERE THEY ARE, poet and widow, usurper and usurped. Unclothed, as it were, disrobed—each jumpy to reach out and grab for cover what's nearest.
So they hurry to hide themselves in other people's bodies.
Another embrace. Sort of sisterly. Sisterly hugging. But it goes from this to carnal. At which point, the poem has furnished us with the great fraction of its text, the day (get this!) having, in its pliant time, accomplished (the poet tells us) a like progress.
So it's dusk when the two women make their way to bed, to do what the poet then gives us to imagine. But before we know it, the poet reappears, having projected (she explains) her astral body back to the room where she'd left us. We see, via her sight, the letters lying strewn among the papers. We see teacups, saucers, purses, shoes, sweaters. We see these things as things at first, as enumerations on the widow's Chinese rug.
The rest of the poem?
Now here you have it! For the poem now labors to extract from the figure of these particulars a facsimile of the human spectacle, something serviceable in the way of a teaching, the event freed of the uneventful, the meaningless made to make way for a meaning.
THIS WAS THE POEM the poet published and that I—genius that I am for spotting where a work has turned away from the unendurable vision in it—have since rewritten and passed along for a small disbursement and the fun.
Now let me tell you what I did.
In my poem, nothing's different. Word for word, it's all the same—up until the astral body comes back for a summary. Just like the fake poet, I take a look around. I see the same junk the poet saw. But in my poem, where I see the crap is on a decent grade of wall-to-wall broadloom bought at the mall and installed when the rhyme—sorry, the price!—acquired when the price was right.
And, notice, was I ever even once a person in that house?
Skip it.
It is all the same to me—the goddamn fancy phony rug, what's on it and its fucking whereabouts.
WHAT IS LEFT TO LINK US
I WANT TO TELL YOU about the undoing of a man. He's not a fellow I ever knew very well. It is only the key erosions that built to his collapse that I know well enough, the handful of episodes that toppled this fellow from the little height he thought he had. I, in fact, was present at what you might call the critical moment. I mean the turning when our man was tipped, as it were, all the way over. As for the math after, how he has since fared in the grip of his ruin, that is a matter I know, and care, next to nothing about.
He had a marriage, children, and a second woman whom he would see from time to time. As far as I could tell, his relations in all these respects were perfectly correct, the usual make-do life of a fellow residing in urban circumstance, a fellow in his forties, a moderately accomplished chap, which statement is meant to convey the impression of a fellow exceptionally able—if you will allow the assertion that passing accomplishment in our parlous times often calls for surpassing ability. His was that sort of urban circumstance—the work he did and where he did it. But this is just a particle of what I mean.
I won't trouble the initial sentences of this account with a description of the wife—for she will make her appearance later, when that critical moment of ours arrives, and this will do nicely enough for her, given all that she really matters to what is herein unfolding. Nor is it profitable that you know much about the second woman—and indeed I do not have that much to tell you, considering that I have laid eyes on the creature only once—just as I only once saw the woman that is the wife. It was at what I keep calling the critical moment that both women were first revealed to me, a coincidence you must have guessed was coming.
As for the children, they are positively of no particular consequence at all.
What I did know, and knew well before the worst happened, was this: The man who is the subject of this little history had elected to end his relation with the second woman and had gone ahead and done something toward this end. At least this is what he said he had done when he later sought my attention over drinks.
"To which she said what?" I said, trying to concentrate on particularities that interested me no more than the larger chronicle did.
But the fellow was waiting for this. He played with his glass and let a histrionic silence draw the curtains aside. Then, suffering the phrases of his speech as if to place before me a parallel of the desolation he chose to believe the second woman had struggled to surmount, our man said:
" ‘If that is what you want. If that is what you must have. All right, then have it you shall.' "
"Splendid!" I said, and then I said, "You're well out of it, lad!" adding this latter more for reasons of ceremony and rhythm than in response to anything known. Surely, I had nothing substantive to go on, no basis to judge the health of the fellow's spirit one way or the other, with or without his having the second woman to visit from time to time.
But it proved he was waiting for this also.
"I don't know," he said, pretending, it seemed to me, thought.
"Of course you do!" I said. "Well out of it, I say!"
"I'd like to think so," he said, fingering his glass again, not swallowing much except in showily halting motions to his mouth. "But I don't know."
"Ah, well," I said, already fashioning up the sentence that would sponsor my exit.
You see, like the fellow whose dishevelment I record, I too reside in urban circumstance. I had planned to do the household grocery shopping after hours that Friday nig
ht—to do as I have always done in order that I not have to do the household grocery shopping the Saturday morning following, the number of shoppers being half as many Friday nights.
It was, and is, my custom—and I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance. Those city persons strict and exact in their habits, and in possession of a hearty dispensation of them, make it through to their Mondays. I believe I have seen examples persuasive enough on either side of the question to propose the postulate.
Such a postulate guides my conduct, in any case—whatever the validity of its content—and I had been too long drinking with this man and had good reason to be on my way.
Moreover, there was nothing I wanted to hear from him. There would be no surprises in anything he would disclose to me—he, as I, knew exactly what to say.
It is why I am not very interested in people—nor all that much in myself. We all of us know exactly what to say, and say it—the man who sat with me making an opera out of his glass; I, speaking to him then and speaking to you now; you, reading and making your mind up about this page.
There is no escape from this.
Nor is it any longer necessary to act as if there might be.
It was only necessary to say: "Look, my friend, there will be another one after this one. Better to have made an end to the thing and to get a new thing on the march."
He raised his eyes from his fraudulent musing, noticing me for the first time, I could tell.
"That's a shockingly childish suggestion," he said.
"You think so?" I said. "Perhaps my mind was elsewhere. What did I say?" I said.
He studied my expression for a time. I could see what he was after. But I would not let him have it.
"I'll get the check," he said, glancing at his wristwatch, and then, in a stylishly sweeping motion, lifting the same hand to signal for the waiter. "Got to run," he said, polishing off his drink and finishing with me as well. Then he said, "Dinner's early and I have to get the groceries done."
DURING THE COURSE of the events I describe, my son's sled was stolen. Actually, it was removed from the premises by the custodian who services the little apartment building we live in. It was our custom to keep the sled right outside the door, propped against the hallway wall and ready for action—whereas it was the custodian's custom to complain that such storage of the sled interfered with his access to the carpet when he came once a week to clean it.
He comes Saturdays.
I could hear him out there with his industrial-caliber vacuum cleaner some Saturdays ago. The rumpus the thing creates is unmistakable, and I remember having to raise my voice to repeat "Your move." It was midday, a perfectly lovely piece of weather, but we were home playing checkers, my boy and I, while his chicken pox healed and while his mother was out running errands. It was only when she returned that the theft was discovered, the place where the Flexible Flyer had stood leaning now an insultingly vacant patch of clean carpet.
She called the landlord and she called the police.
The sled is, after all, irreplaceable, one of the last Flexible Flyers made of wood, a practice some while ago discontinued. We had to search the city to find it and buy it—and it was very satisfying to display it when the snow came and all those less demanding parents showed up with their deprived children and plastic.
I know he took it. I did not see him do it—but I know, I know.
It was a test of something, a clash of habits, custom pitted against custom—our resolve to show off our quality, his resolve to perform unstipulated work.
On the other hand, it is our carpet that is now uniformly clean those last few inches all the way to the wall, not his!
I am not unwilling to be pleased by this.
AT ANY RATE, the man I am made to call my friend—because it is clumsy to keep referring to him otherwise, and I suppose I must say I know him as well as I know anybody—telephoned me at my office the Monday following. Have I told you that we are in the same line of work?
The fellow often calls me at my office, to speak of business. It is the basis of our knowing each other—business.
"Why did you say that?" my friend said.
"Say what?" I said.
"You know," he said. "Suggesting that I get another setup."
"Haven't you always? I thought this was your practice," I said.
"That's not the point," my friend said.
"Then what is the point?" I said.
"Skip it," my friend said, and hung up.
I was not the least bothered by any of this. To begin with, the man tired me—and conducted a private life no more notable than my own. It is not that I am too fine to hear a man's secrets; it is only that no one has any new ones. Besides, insofar as our joint concerns of a business nature go, the man's need of me was greater than mine of him. At all events, there is no question of it now. You must remember, the fellow has since been reduced, brought down. When it comes to need now, he is the one who has it more.
IT WAS AT THE TOY STORE everyone around here uses that I saw the fellow next. There was nothing exceptional in our meeting there. We both have children; it is the best-stocked store midtown. One is always meeting someone one knows there.
"I'm worried," my friend said. "Please give me your attention. Do I have it?"
"You have it," I said, and stared impressively at the two children whose hands he held.
"That's all right," he said.
"Yes," I said, "but it is not all right with me," at this using my eyes to usher his down to where they would notice the boy whose hand I held.
"Oh," my friend said. "Well, I'll call you."
He called that Monday.
"What's wrong with your kid?" he said.
"I thought you had something to tell me," I said.
"I do," he said, "but I never saw your kid before, and I was just thinking maybe my pal's got his sorrows too."
"Just chicken pox," I said, with my free hand squaring the papers on my desk.
"Takes a while for the scabs to heal, you know. Been through the shit twice with my two, and it can be a bitch, all right."
"Yes," I said.
"You're listening?" he said.
"Absolutely," I said, settling back now for whatever would come.
"I told you I was worried," he said. "Now here's why I'm worried."
No, no, I would never give him what he wanted. "Because you broke it off with her," I said. "And now you're worried that perhaps she's angry—and if she is angry, then maybe she will do something, make trouble—correct?"
"That's it," he said. "That's it exactly. So what do I do?"
"Do something to make her happy," I said. "Then she won't be unhappy."
"But what?" he said. "What could make her happy when she's angry?"
"Something special," I said. "Something uncommonly giving is what I usually recommend."
"You're right," he said, said he hoped my boy's face would soon be without blemish, thanked me for the counsel, and hung up.
THE LANDLORD CLAIMED he was blameless, that he was not responsible for the loss of articles I chose to store outside my door, that if I dared deduct the cost of the sled from my next check in payment of the rent, eviction would ensue. I remarked that the custodian was in the landlord's employ and that logic insisted the employer be held liable for thefts perpetrated by someone acting in performance of his employer's requirements. The landlord said that logic insisted nothing of the kind, that it was not his habit to retain the services of thieves, that his employee was not a thief, and that, moreover, I had no proof of anything underhanded or over-handed and good-bye.
The police said their hands were tied and that the loss, after all, was just a sled. But don't think I did not take down the oaf's badge number, the one who had said just a sled.
As for the custodian, it would appear that the fellow has taken to coming on a weekday.
I am not at home weekdays.
My wife is. And she is afraid, I tell you, afraid.
MY FRIEND CALLED. I was about to leave, and perhaps I was not paying very close attention. Perhaps I should have examined his proposal more carefully. But it was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays I always vacate my office a quarter hour sooner than is otherwise my habit, this to provide time to pick up the laundry before presenting myself at home.
I was courteous enough, I think. I do not think I was especially abrupt. But I expect I was not listening very closely. As a result, I not only failed to hear him well enough to advise him with prudence, but of course I can also have no confidence that I will reproduce his sentences accurately. I believe, however, he said something approximate to this:
"I have the thing, just the thing. A really incredibly good idea, something extraordinary and giving, just as you said. You see, the thing was she was always complaining that I was unreasonably hesitant to let her share in my world, to be with the people I was with, that sort of thing. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about—they do it all the time. I mean, once you're really involved with them, what they invariably want from you is to get really involved with you—hear about your friends, hear about your job, hear about your wife, all the dreariness that you of course don't. It gets that way with them, this pushing at you and pushing at you for more and more of your life. Oh, God, you must have had your own experiences with what I am talking about. Honestly, I really don't think they can help themselves. I mean, they know better, don't they? I mean, they've got to know that if they keep it up, they're going to end up pushing you too far. But they do it and they do it—and you go and do precisely what they don't want, hold back, hold more and more back, until it's yourself you figure you won't hand over to them anymore. The point is, that's exactly why my idea is right on the money. Because the idea I had is to give a party, a sort of going-away party—something that will give her what she wants but end it at the same time. Just me and her and my two closest pals—you and this other pal I have—because I was always telling her about the two of you guys and she was always so terribly interested. It drove me nuts the way she was always asking to meet you two, me always having to invent excuses why she couldn't, these two great buddies I have who happen to be my two best buddies, you and this other buddy of mine."
