Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  I did.

  I won.

  It was 1944 and I was ten years old and I was better than all of the other boys at that camp and probably all of the boys at any other camp and all of the boys everywhere else.

  I felt more wonderful than I had ever felt. I felt so thrilled with myself. I felt like God was whispering things to me inside of my head to me. I felt like God was asking me for me to have a special secret with him or for me to have a secret arrangement with him and that I had better keep on listening to his secret recommendations to me inside of my head. I felt like God was telling me to realize that he had made me the most unusual member of the human race and that he was going to need for me to be ready for him for me to go to work for him at any minute for him on whatever thing he said.

  They gave me a piece of stiff cloth which was in the shape of a shield and which was in the camp colors and which had five blue stars on it. They said that I was the only boy ever to get a shield with as many as that many stars on it. They said that it was unheard-of for any boy ever to get as many as that many stars on it. But I could already feel that I was forgetting what it felt like for somebody to do something which would get you a shield with as many as that many stars on it. I could feel myself forgetting and I could feel everybody else forgetting—even my mother and father and God forgetting. It was just a little while afterwards, but I could tell that everybody was already forgetting everything about it—that the head of the camp was and the camp counselors were and the other campers were and that the other mothers and the other fathers were and that my mother and my father were and that even that I myself was, even though I was trying with all of my might for me to be the one person who never would.

  I felt like God was ashamed of me. I felt like God was sorry that I was the one which he had picked out and that he was getting ready for him to make a new choice and for him to choose another boy instead of me and that I had to hurry up before God did it, that I had to be quick about showing God that I could be just as amazing again as I used to be and that I could do something, do anything, else.

  It was August.

  I was feeling the strangest feeling that I have ever felt. I was standing there with my parents and with all of the people who had come there for the field day and I was feeling the strangest feeling which I have ever felt.

  I felt like lying down on the field. I felt like killing all of the people. I felt like going to sleep and staying asleep until someone came and told me that my parents were dead and that I was all grown up and that there was a new God in heaven and that he liked me better than even than the old God had.

  My parents kept asking me where did I want to go now and what did I want to do. My parents kept trying to get me to tell them where I thought we should all of us go now and what was the next thing for us as a family to do. My parents kept saying they wanted for me to be the one to make up my mind if we should all of us go someplace special now and what was the best thing for the family, as a family, to do. But I did not know what they meant—do, do, do?

  My father took the shield away from me and held it in his hands and kept turning it over in his hands and kept looking at the shield in his hands and kept feeling the shield with his hands and kept saying that it was made of buckram and of felt. My father kept saying did we know that it was just something which they had put together out of buckram and of felt. My father kept saying that the shield was of a very nice quality of buckram and of felt but that we should make every effort for us not to ever get it wet because it would run all over itself, buckram and felt.

  I did not know what to do.

  I could tell my parents did not know what to do.

  We just stood around with the people all around all going away to all of the vehicles that were going to take them to places and I could tell that we did not, as a family, know if it was time for us to go.

  The head of the camp came over and said that he wanted to shake my hand again and to shake the hands of the people who were responsible for giving the Peninsula Athletes Day Camp such an outstanding young individual and such a talented young athlete as my mother and father had.

  He shook my hand again.

  It made me feel dizzy and nearly asleep.

  I saw my mother and my father get their hands ready. I saw my father get the shield out of the hand that he thought he was going to need for him to have his hand ready to shake the hand of the head of the camp. I saw my mother take her purse and do the same thing. But the head of the camp just kept shaking my hand, and my mother and my father just kept saying thank you to him, and then the head of the camp let go of my hand and took my father's elbow with one hand and then touched my father on the shoulder with the other hand and then said that we were certainly the very finest of people, and then—he did this, he did this!—and then he went away.

  MR. GOLDBAUM

  PICTURE FLORIDA.

  Picture Miami Beach, Florida.

  Picture a shitty little apartment in a big crappy building where my mother, who is a person who is old, is going to have to go ahead and start getting used to her not being in the company of her husband anymore, not to mention not anymore being in that of anybody else who is her own flesh and blood anymore, the instant I and my sister can devise good enough alibis for us to hurry up and get the fuck out of here and go fly back up to the lives that we have been prosecuting for ourselves up in New York, this of course being before we were obliged to drop everything and get down here yesterday in time to ride along with the old woman in the limo which had been set up for her to take her to my dad's funeral.

  It took her.

  It took us and her.

  Meaning me and my sister with her.

  Then it took us right back here to where we have been sitting ever since we came back to sit ourselves down and wait for neighbors to come call—I am checking my watch—about nine billion minutes ago.

  Picture nine minutes in this room.

  Or just smell it, smell the room.

  Picture the smell of where they lived when it was the both of them who lived, and then go ahead and picture her smelling to see if she can still smell him in it anymore.

  I am going to give you the picture of how they walked—always together, never one without the other, her always the one in front, him always shuffling along behind, him with his hands always up on her shoulders, him always with his hands reaching up out to my mother like that, with his hands up on her shoulders like that, her always looking to me like she was walking him the way you would look if you were walking an imbecile, as if there were something wrong with the man, wrong with the way the man was—but there was nothing wrong with the way my father was—my father just liked to walk like that whenever my father went walking with my mother, and my father never went walking without my mother.

  I mean, this is what they did, this is how they did it when I saw them, this is what I saw when I saw my parents get old whenever I went down to Florida and had to see my old parents walk.

  Try picturing more minutes.

  I think I must have told you that we made it on time.

  Only it was not anything like what I had been picturing when I had sat myself down on the airplane and started keeping myself busy picturing the kind of funeral I was going to be seeing when I got down to Florida for the funeral my father was going to have.

  Picture this.

  It was just a rabbi that they had gone ahead and hired.

  To my mind, the man was too young-looking and too good-looking. I kept thinking the man probably had me beat in both departments. I kept thinking how much the man was getting paid for this and would it come to more or would it come to less than my ticket down and ticket back.

  I felt bigger than I had ever felt.

  I did not know where the ashes were. I did not know how the burning was done. There were some things which I knew I did not know.

  But I know that I still felt bigger than I had ever felt.

  As for him, the rabbi took a position on one sid
e of the room, the rabbi stood himself up on one side of the room, and me and my sister and my mother, we all went over to where we could tell we were supposed to go over to on the other side of the room, some of the time sitting and some of the time standing, but I cannot tell you how it was that we ever knew which one it was meet and right for us to do.

  I heard: "Father of life, father of death."

  I heard the rabbi say: "Father of life, father of death."

  I heard the guy who was driving the limo say, "Get your mother's feet."

  Picture us back in the limo again. Picture us stopping off at a delicatessen. Picture me and my mother sitting and waiting while my sister gets out and goes in to make sure they are going to send over exactly what it was we had ordered when she called up and called our order in.

  Maybe it would help for you to picture things if I told you that what my mother has on her head is a wig of plastic hair that fits down over almost all of her ears.

  It smells in here.

  I can smell the smell of them in here.

  And of every single one of the sandwiches that just came over from the delicatessen in here.

  Now picture it like this—the stuff came hours ago and so far this is all that has come. I mean, the question is this—where are all of the neighbors which this death was supposed to have been ordered for?

  I just suddenly realized that you might be interested in finding out what we finally decided on.

  The answer is four corned beef on rye, four turkey on rye, three Jarlsberg and lettuce on whole wheat, and two low-salt tuna salad on bagel.

  Now double it—because we are figuring strictly a half-sandwich apiece.

  Here is some more local color.

  The quiz programs are going off and the soap operas are coming on and my sister just got up and went to go lie down on my mother's bed and I can tell you that I would go and do the same if I was absolutely positive that it would not be against my religion for me to do it—because who knows what it could be against for you to go lie down on your father's bed?—it could be some kind of a curse on you that for the rest of your life it would keep coming after you until, ha ha, just like him, that's it, you're dead.

  My mother says to me, "So tell me, sonny, you think we got reason to be nervous about the coffee?"

  My mother says to me, "So what do you think, sonny, you think I should go make some extra coffee?"

  My mother says to me, "I want for you to be honest with me, sweetheart, you think we are taking too big of a chance the coffee might not be more than plenty of enough coffee?"

  My mother says to me, "So what is it that is your opinion, darling, is it your opinion that we could probably get away with it if your mother does not go put on another pot of coffee?"

  Nobody could have pictured that.

  Nor have listened to no one calling us and no one imploring us for us to hold everything, for us to keep the coffee hot, that they are right this minute racing up elevators and running down stairways and rushing along corridors and will be any second knocking at the door because there is a new widow in the building and an old man just plotzed.

  You know what?

  I do not think that you are going to have to picture anything along the lines of any of that.

  Except for maybe Mr. Goldbaum.

  Here is Mr. Goldbaum.

  Mr. Goldbaum is the man who sticks his head in at the door which we left open for the company which was on the way over.

  Here is Mr. Goldbaum talking.

  "You got an assortment, or is it all fish?"

  That was Mr. Goldbaum.

  My mother says, "That was Mr. Goldbaum."

  My mother says, "The Mr. Goldbaum from the building."

  Now you can picture a whole different thing, a whole different place.

  This time it's the Sunday afterwards.

  So picture this time this—my sister and me the Sunday afterwards. Picture the two different cars we rented to get out from the city to Long Island to the cemetery. Picture the cars parked on different sides of the administration building which we are supposed to meet at for us to meet up with the rabbi who has been hired to say a service over the box which I am carrying of ashes.

  Picture someone carrying ashes.

  Not because I am the son but because the box is made out of something too heavy.

  Now here is a picture you've had practice with.

  Me and my sister waiting.

  Picture my sister and me standing around where the offices are of the people who run the cemetery, which is a cemetery way out on Long Island in February.

  I just suddenly had another thought which I just realized. What if your father was the kind of a father who was dying and he called you to him and he said you were his son and he said for you to come lie down on the bed with him so that he as your father could hold you and so that you as his son could hold him so that the both of you could both be like that hugging with each other like that for you to say good-bye to each other before you had to go actually go leave each other and you did it, you did it, you got down on the bed with your father and you got down up close to your father and you got your arms all around your father and your father was hugging you and you were hugging your father and there was one of you who could not stop it, who could not help it, but who just got a hard-on?

  Or both did?

  Picture that.

  Not that I and my father ever hugged like that.

  Here comes the next rabbi.

  This rabbi is not such a young-looking rabbi, is not such a good-looking rabbi, is a rabbi who just looks like a rabbi who is cold from just coming in like a rabbi from outside with the weather.

  The rabbi says to my sister, "You are the daughter of the departed?"

  The rabbi says to me, "You are the son of the departed?"

  The rabbi says to the box, "These are the mortal remains of the individual which is the deceased party?"

  Maybe I should get you to picture the cemetery.

  Because this is the cemetery where we all of us are getting buried in—wherever we die, even if in Florida.

  I mean, our plot's here.

  My family's is.

  The rabbi says to us, "As we make our way to the gravesite, I trust that you will want to offer me a word or two about your father so that I might incorporate whatever ideas and thoughts you have into the service your mother called up and ordered, may God give this woman peace."

  Okay, picture him and me and my sister all going back outside in February again all over again in February again and I am the only one who cannot get his gloves back on because of the box, because of the canister—because of the motherfucking urn—which is too heavy for me to handle without me holding onto it every single instant with both of my hands.

  The hole.

  The hole I am going to have to help you with.

  The hole they dug up for my father is not what I would ever be able to picture in my mind if somebody came up to me and said to me for me to do my best to picture the hole they make for you when you go see your father's grave.

  I mean, the hole was more like the hole which you would go dig for somebody if the job they had for you to do was to cover up a big covered dish.

  Like for a casserole.

  And that is not the half of it.

  Because what makes it the half of it is the two cinder blocks which I can see are already down in it when I go to put down the urn down in it, the hole.

  And as for the other half?

  This is the two workmen who come over from somewhere I wasn't ready for anybody to come over from and who put down two more cinder blocks on top of what I just put in.

  You know what I mean when I say cinder blocks?

  I mean those gray blocks of gray cement or of gray concrete that when they refer to them they call them cinder blocks and they've got holes in them for you to grab.

  Four of those.

  Whereas what I had always thought was that what they did with a grave was fill
things back in it with what they took out.

  Unless they had taken out cinder blocks out.

  You can go ahead and relax now.

  It is not necessary for you to lend yourself to any further effort to create particularities that I myself was not competent to render.

  Except it would be a tremendous help for me if you would do your best to listen for the different sets of bumps the different sets of tires make when we all three of us pass over the little speed bump that makes everybody go slow before coming into and going out of the cemetery my family is in.

  Three cars, six sets of tires—that's six bumps, I count six bumps and a total of twenty-six half-sandwiches—six sounds of hard cold rubber in February of 1986.

  Or hear this—the rabbi's hands as he rubs the wheel to warm the wheel where he has come to have the habit of keeping his grip in place on the wheel when—to steer, to steer—the rabbi puts his hands on the wheel and thinks:

  "Jesus shat."

  That's it.

  I'm finished.

  Except to inform you of the fact that I got back to the city not via the Queens Midtown Tunnel but via the Queensboro Bridge since with the bridge you beat the toll, that and the fact that I went right ahead and sat myself down and started trying to picture some of the things which I have just asked you for you to picture for me, that and the fact that I had to fill in for myself where the holes were sometimes too big for anybody to get a good enough picture of them, the point being to get something written, the point being to get anything written, and then get paid for it, to get paid for it as much as I could get paid for it, this to cover the cost of Delta down and Delta back, Avis at their Sunday rate, plus extra for liability and collision.

  One last thing—which is that no one told me.

  So I just took it for granted that where it was supposed to go was go down in between them.

  THE MERRY CHASE

  DON'T TELL ME. Do me a favor and let me guess. Be honest with me, tell the truth, don't make me laugh. Tell me, don't make me have to tell you, do I have to tell you that when you're hot you're hot, that when you're dead you're dead? Because you know what I know? I know you like I know myself, I know you like the back of my hand, I know you like a book, I know you inside out.