30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  He stays there for about an hour, reads from his book, holds her hand, once gets up and does a few stretching exercises, looks at her, looks out the window, can hear the pigeons cooing but can’t see them so they must be on some other sill or somewhere, thinks about the funeral. She asked to be cremated. Said it the last few times in the hospital. “I know I’ve made a complete turnaround from what I originally wanted, but how I end up’s gotten to be less important to me and I think just going up in smoke’s the best thing now.” And that nothing be done with the ashes. “Just throw them away. Or don’t even bother with that. Leave them at the cremation place after the ceremony, if you have one.” And then the last time in the hospital: “About my ashes? I’ve been thinking. Put them in the ground near your brother, or just sprinkle them over his grave. No, put them in a box and the box into the ground beside him. And no big ceremony. Just a simple graveside service. Everything all in one. Nothing very planned or formal, and no words by a rabbi who didn’t know me from Adam. I never went for that. And it’s already cost you enough keeping me alive the last few years, though I contributed some, didn’t I? And the women who look after me must be costing us both a bundle too. So just a few people at it. This is what I want you to promise to do. Your wife and children, of course. Some old friends if they’re still around and can make it, and anyone from the building if they want to come. And call your cousins—this is what we’ve always done in the family, and I’m the last aunt or uncle on our side to go—and say they don’t have to be there if they have a previous engagement, but that they’re welcome. And certainly Angela, the girl who’s taken care of me most the last few years.” Today on the phone, Angela told him to call her when his mother died. “Hey, wait, maybe she won’t,” and she said, “I hope you’re right. But I’ve seen plenty of people go in my work, and I saw the signs before they went, too.”

  He says to his mother, “Mom, if you don’t mind, I’m going downstairs for a coffee and bagel and to make a couple of phone calls. I won’t be more than twenty minutes. I’m very hungry.” She’s breathing evenly, seems to be sleeping. He takes her hand, rubs it, kisses it. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He comes back a half hour later. Her mouth is open, eyes closed; there’s a sort of glaze all over her face and arms; she doesn’t seem to be breathing. “Mom?” He takes her hand. It’s slimy and cold. Cold and slimy. Slimy, cold.

  Seeing His Father

  HE RARELY SAW his father walking alone on the street. Rather, he saw him only once like that—he thinks it was only once—coming up the block they lived on while he was going down it. He forgets how old he was. No, sort of remembers. No, remembers. It was his eleventh birthday. It all comes back, or a lot of it, though it’s come back before but not for years. He was going down the block to buy something with the money someone had sent him in a birthday card, when he saw his father walking up it. It was early in the afternoon for his father to be coming home from work, he must have thought. No, couldn’t have thought that, because it was Saturday. It had to be. His father on weekdays never got home till six-thirty and lots of times not till seven or eight, and on Saturdays he only worked till noon or one. And Gould’s birthday doesn’t fall on any national or important religious holiday. What he means there is that his father didn’t have a day off that day because the place he worked at was closed for a holiday. Also, his father couldn’t have just taken a day off on his own, since he claimed never to have missed a day of work in his life till he was in his mid-sixties and had become too feeble from his Parkinson’s to go in anymore. “I might’ve gone to work feeling like hell a few times before that—flu, a bad cold—and certainly plenty of times the year before the disease forced me to retire. But if there was still a slight chance to make a buck that day without my being so dizzy and weak that I’d fall on the subway tracks, I didn’t want to lose it.” So it had to be a regular Saturday when he saw him on the street, since stores weren’t open then on Sundays, the kind of stores he’d buy something for himself in, and the mail, of course, except special delivery, wasn’t delivered on Sunday. By that he means he got the birthday card through regular delivery that morning and went down the block a few hours later to buy something with the five-dollar gift. Or just a couple of hours after he got the card, as the mail usually never came before eleven and his father never got home on Saturdays before half-past twelve or one. Anyway, it was when he was walking down the block with the money that he saw his father coming up it. He first saw him from a distance of around three hundred feet. This, at least, is the way he sees it in his head now, when he counts all the buildings between them and multiplies each by twenty-five feet. They were on the same sidewalk, the north one their five-story brownstone adjoined, and he thought, or something like, This is the first time I’ve seen my father on the street like this. No, is it? Yes, I really can’t remember it ever happening before. When they got close enough to talk—he must have waved while they were moving toward each other or his father did and he waved back, and no doubt both of them were smiling—his father said, “Where’re you off to?” and he said, “To buy something. Aunt So-and-so (he forgets which aunt but remembers it was one on his mother’s side, a sister or widowed sister-in-law) sent me five dollars for my birthday.” “When’s that?” and he said, “You know when it is: today.” “No, I didn’t; your mother’s the one who keeps tabs on that, and she didn’t tell me. I knew it fell on the seventh of some month, but I thought August.” “Today’s May eighth, my birthday. I’m eleven. But you’re kidding me, aren’t you?” and his father said, “Honestly, I’m not. Okay, I am. And I would’ve congratulated you and given you your eleven birthday whacks this morning, but you were still sleeping when I left for work. Good, you should; you need the sleep; your eyes got bags under the bags. So, happy birthday, my little kid,” and approached him with his hand raised as if he were going to paddle him, and Gould stepped back and said, “I’ m too old for that, and no matter how soft you think you’re hitting, it can hurt.” “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to do it. So, five bucks. That’s a lot of dough. Think I can put the touch on you for some of it?” and he said, “You have your own money, and you don’t have to give me any allowance this week.” “Deal. Try not to blow it all at once; save some for another day.” “Maybe I’ll save some and only spend half,” and his father said, “Good compromise.” “What’s that?” and his father said, “You’re eleven and you don’t know? A useful word. Look it up in the dictionary when you get home. But don’t buy a dictionary with the money; we already have a good one you can use,” and ruffled his hair or kissed the top of his head or did something like that—clutched his shoulder and shook it—since he never let him go without some affectionate handling, and continued home, and Gould went to the avenue where the stores were.

  Was it really the first time he saw his father on the street like that? Remember it again. Going down (must have been very happy), father coming up. Between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, sees his father on the sidewalk (height, girth, way he walked, and what he wore, sort of slumped and always in a fedora and suit when he went to work and a couple of newspapers—crumpled up, but that he couldn’t see from where he was—under his arm and carrying a sample case), some ten to twelve buildings away so almost half a block, and thinks something like, just as all the conversation before was only probable and something like: This is the first time I’ve seen him like this outside, that I can remember. Where he’s alone and I’m looking at him from some far-off distance or just from a lot of feet away. Of course he saw him other times on the street. In all those years? Had to. From his second-story bedroom window: his father climbing the four steps from the areaway to the sidewalk, maybe turning around at the top to look up at him, if he knew he was there or was just hoping he was, and wave. That’s a nice thought: his father hoping he was there. But he thinks he’s more imagining than remembering that scene, since the two can easily get mixed up. But this had to be: when it was still light out and he was playing in the street wit
h friends: stickball, stoopball, punchball, Chinese handball against a building’s wall, Capture the Flag, games like that, or just Running Bases—between the sewers, as they called them, though they were actually manhole covers—and it was around seven or half-past and his mother hadn’t called him in for dinner yet. When he sees his father, watching him from the sidewalk. “Having fun?” he says, when Gould looks at him. “Yes, thanks.” “Had your supper?” “No,” and knows what’s coming next. “Well, sorry to spoil your fun and maybe ruin the game for your friends, but it’s around dinnertime, so you’ll have to come in.” That’s how he’d say it and what he’d do. And that had to have happened a number of times when his father was coming home from work, but he doesn’t remember it. How about just his father watching him and his friends from the sidewalk but not saying anything and then continuing home alone and for a few seconds Gould looking at him? No, though that had to have happened a few times too.

  His father drove them to a football game just over the bridge in New Jersey—the old Brooklyn Dodgers football team, he thinks. They sat on the sideline on a special bench set up for them, though he doesn’t know how his father got it and doesn’t remember asking him. After the game, some man—he thinks it was the coach of one of the teams—introduced Gould to some of the players. He doesn’t know where his father knew this man from, if that’s how it came about—there could have been other ways (his father was often initiating conversations with strangers and getting friendly with new people and they had sat fairly close to one of the teams’ benches)—nor how they had even come to go to the game. His father wasn’t interested in any sport but boxing. He’d been an amateur boxer while in high school and had once bought, before he got married, a piece of a featherweight and helped manage him. (“A bum. Lost four out of four, had a teacup for a jaw, and for each bout wanted us to buy him new trunks, gloves, and a bathrobe with his name on it. A bad investment, though my partners were the right kind of guys, so we had some fun.”) Did he buy the football tickets or get them free but choose to use them because he knew Gould would like seeing a professional football game? Again, nice thought and something Gould would have liked to have happened, but not something his father ever did. He also went to the fights with him in St. Nicholas Arena—only ten blocks from their building. They sat somewhere way up; there was lots of smoking and shouting and betting going on right in front of them and plenty of money being exchanged and the place smelled of cigars, and they left after the third or fourth fight, maybe because it was getting close to Gould’s bedtime. So why’d his father take him in the first place? Especially when he liked boxing so much—went to the fights at St. Nick about once every other week—and would no doubt miss the main event. Maybe the main event was between a couple of palookas, as his father called them, so he didn’t mind missing it. Or he’d bought an extra ticket or had been given one and couldn’t get anyone else to go with him on such short notice and didn’t want to waste it—hated to waste anything: paper bag he took his lunch in, wax paper he wrapped the sandwich in, sometimes even half the sandwich if he didn’t finish it and which he’d take to work the next day—so he asked Gould. That’d be more like it, taking him as a last resort, even if he probably knew Gould wouldn’t like the fights or atmosphere they were held in—all that smoke and foul air. He hated it when his father puffed an occasional cigar at home, worse were his mother’s constant cigarettes; he’d frantically wave the smoke away and sometimes open the window if they were both smoking at the same time. “Close that!” his father would say. “What’re we heating the house for if you’re going to freeze it back up? And don’t be such a sissy with the smoke. It’s one of the facts of life you have to learn to live with, and two gets you five you wind up smoking cigarettes or cigars yourself. Nah, you’ll be a pipe man—I can see it now; a definite refined pipe type.” Or maybe he was hoping Gould would like the fights and want to go with him again. “Like father, like son,” he could then say, something he never did and might never even have had the opportunity to, as far as Gould can remember. That true? Too much to think back about; he’d be exploring his mind forever. Though he was at first excited at going to the fights but disappointed once they began. He couldn’t see much from where they were sitting: people jumping up in front of him or just standing, arms waving, and the distance to the ring. And something about the place—“a real joint,” as his father would say: the noise, smells, smoke, cursing, and catching every now and then the boxers pounding each other, and their spit and sweat flying off—made him feel sick. (“I’m sorry, but I want to go home; I’m not feeling well.” “Wait. This is only the second fight. Try to hold out a little longer; you’ll feel better. And if it’s only that you got to make, I’ll take you to the boys’ room when the bell rings or you can run back and find it yourself now. It’s safe enough; there are plenty of cops.”) He also took him to a movie of a Shakespeare play—one with several battles, or at least one big one, and dark skies and English accents and long boring speeches he couldn’t understand—shown in a Broadway stage theater for some reason. And to a play version of Alice in Wonderland—lots of gauzy curtains and a pretty blonde who played Alice but looked to be around twenty—in Columbus Circle when there were still theaters there. His father didn’t like anything on stage but musicals and Yiddish theater—Gould went with him to one of those too and didn’t make out a word but shiksa, shaygets, shmendrick, and putz, or words like that, used around the house, and his father was too busy laughing or didn’t want to miss anything onstage to translate or interpret for him when he asked, so why’d he take him? Again: free tickets, his mother didn’t want to go, and he was unable to get anybody else, so instead of wasting the second ticket he took Gould? But he’s getting away from what he was thinking before, and that’s that with all these events they either walked, drove, or took the subway or bus, so he never, with any of them, got to see his father walking on the street alone from any distance except close up.

  He once thought he saw his father on the subway when they were both coming home from work. He wanted to shout, “Dad, Dad!” but there was a earful of people between them, so he made his way to him. It was a man about the same age, height, and build of his father, wearing the same kind of fedora he wore and in the same way, brim pulled down over most of his forehead, and reading the same large afternoon newspaper his father read when he rode the subway home, and folded to one-quarter its width and held straight up about six inches from his face, but in a sport jacket and open-neck shirt, clothes his father never wore to work: even when he went in only to do paperwork it was always in a suit and tie which, no matter how hot the street and subway were, didn’t come off or get loosened till he got home. They worked near each other in the Garment District for a couple of years when Gould was in high school, his father selling linings to women’s coat-and-suit houses, he pushing a handcart through the streets for a blouse company and then one that made belts for cheap dresses and then another that only made skirt crinolines and, when they went out of style, other lingerie. Sometimes when he got off work late he’d go to his father’s office, usually wait around awhile doing his homework, and then go home with him. When they got near the subway turnstiles his father, coins already in his hand, would scoot in front of him and pay both their fares. They’d stand or sit together during the ride, Gould sometimes reading the newspaper article his father was on but not as fast, so he usually missed some of it when his father turned the paper over or continued it on another page. If there was only one seat available, his father would urge him to sit—“You’ve had a long day at school and work and you never get enough sleep, and you still got your homework to finish and dinner to eat and then to help your mother clean up after”—but he always made his father take it: “It’s good exercise for me, standing…. I like looking around at other people from this position, and you can read your paper better from a seat,” and so on, for he could see his father was tired—he was overweight by now, way out of shape and always seemed beat when he c
ame home—and really wanted to sit. “I’ll hold your books on my lap then.” They’d leave the station and walk home, but again it wasn’t seeing his father from any big distance, walking up or down a block or from anyplace that way outside. That, he’s almost positive, only happened the one time he mentioned.

  There he is, the hat, the suit, the tie—when it got cold, a long topcoat and muffler—carrying his case of swatches, everything buttoned and always an undershirt, no matter how hot. (His underpants—he occasionally went in and out of the bathroom or around the apartment in them—the Jockey kind, and they always seemed loose, one of his balls hanging out.) Downtown, walking on the street together. “Can I carry it for you?” “Nah, you got your books, and just think where I’d be if you lost it. This case is the most valuable thing I own. Without it I’m dead, and getting another one up with all the orders and names I got in it would be next to impossible. You ought to get one like it—I’ll buy you one—but for books, so you can hold them by a handle instead of a strap and they don’t get wet or slip out and you can also put your lunch in.” “Nobody carries books like that. I’d be laughed at.” “Well, they used to and still should. But you want to go with the fashion, suffer for it.” Men’s and boys’ garment center, about twenty blocks from the women’s one. Meets his father a couple of times a year there to buy pants or a sport jacket or winter coat wholesale from the manufacturers. “Half off, what better deal than that? And if the style’s out of date or just didn’t go over this year and they want to get rid of it to make room, you might get it at one quarter list.” When Gould started making good money in his late teens, he paid for his own clothes; when he was younger or only had a small part-time job, his father did or they split it. They’d meet soon as Gould could get downtown from school. “I’d almost ask you to skip your last classes but I know that’s bad and you’re also not doing too well in some of them, your mother said.” Corner of 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue, by the downtown subway entrance. Raining or snowing, then under the corner hamburger joint awning there. “Want a papaya juice and hot dog before we start off? On me?” “No, thanks.” “The juice is supposed to be healthy for your stomach and the hot dog’s kosher. I’ve had them. They’re not bad.” “No, thanks.” “You want, get a hamburger. It’s probably better for you.” “Really, Dad.” “Then let’s get moving. I can see you’re in a hurry, and I still got a long day ahead of me too.” Often—he in fact can’t remember a time this didn’t happen: “Look, long as we’re in the building”—in the building next door, walking past the building, on the same street, in the neighborhood, down here—“mind if I go to this jacket”—vest, suit, coat, evening wear—“manufacturer to see if I can peddle some of my linings?” “You always do this when we meet for clothes, even after you say you know I have my own job to get to.” “Well, I’ve always got a living to make and don’t want to waste any advantages, so why should I make another trip and the carfare for it when I’m already here? Make sense? Does to me. I swear I’ll be quick.” Then: “Why you coming around the front for?” the receptionist (buyer, owner, partner, owner’s son or son-in-law) says at the showroom entrance to the place. “This is for buyers, not sellers. You want to sell something, go round to service and give your name.” They have to wait there ten to fifteen minutes. It’s dark, grimy, with a big floor-to-ceiling cage around the whole back area that you have to be buzzed into to see someone in the workplace. “Victor Bookbinder, this is my son. I’d like to speak to Izzy Rosen or some other fabrics buyer that might be around,” and gives his card. When the buyer or owner or owner’s son or son-in-law finally comes it’s usually: “You have an appointment, Bookbinder? I thought maybe my mind’s going blotto and I forgot something. So why should I see you? I got work to do.” “I know and I’m sorry but I thought—I was taking my son around here for pants—that as long as I was in the neighborhood—” “Hey, c’mon, what’re you handing me? You’re always in the neighborhood, right? That’s what you sales slobs do. You sell your rags and are always in the neighborhood for it so you come jerking me for orders when you know I’m at my most busy. You’ve no appointment and I’ve work up to my kishkes, so it’s no.” “I just thought—” “Hey, what’d I say, am I talking to myself? You want I should tell Hank here not to let you through anymore? Hank,” he yells, “this Victor sales guy doesn’t pass no more, got it?—only kidding.” And to his father, “Just stop thinking so much, it’s not doing anything for your sachel or your wallet. You want to make a sale and be smart and not so fake dumb, then do what I say because that’s who I buy from. I don’t care how classy your rags are or the buy for the money or what any other manufacturer does, I don’t see no salesman ‘less an appointment. Okay, now get out of here, your time’s up,” and turns around and goes inside. Sometimes the buyer, or whoever, will come out to the cage with “Victor, my friend, how you doing, I got no time for you now, so another day, okay? but call.” Or: “This your little kid? Not so little anymore—he’s a real starker, a real one. You play football, kid?—you look it. Goodlooking, too. Going to be a shtupper if there ever was one. I bet the girls already fall for him, do I got it pegged right? He looking for a job?—You looking for a job, kid?—I can fix it for you. We can use a reliable cart hoofer. Ours are all goof-offs or don’t show up when they promise, leaving us stranded. Bullshit artists, that’s what they are; every last one of them should be canned, and they will when we get ones better.” “Actually—” his father says. “Vic, if you’re pitching, I got no seconds to spare, none, sonny. Ring me up first, and I’ll see you if I can. And Junior, I’m serious what I said, so if you’re looking, come in and see me any day at five. You’re half the hustler your dad is, you got a job.” Couple of times Gould said, “Why do you take that from these men?” and his father said, “Take what, what men, what do you mean, the talk they give me, like that guy?” “And sending you around to the service entrance when they’re already speaking to you at the front. Also, though, if you know they don’t want us there near the showroom, why do you go? It’s embarrassing to me,” and his father said, “With each buyer it’s different. Some don’t mind my going there, and I do it because I’ve a better chance of catching them sitting and schmoozing than by calling them out from the back. And as for how they talk to me and so on, you got to put up with it if you want to make a sale. They can go to anybody for their fabrics—my company’s aren’t so much superior than another’s—and especially if the other salesman shmeers them. In the end we pull in more a year than they do—they’re just salaried, their under-the-table stuff is their commissions but nothing like mine—which is why they treat us like so much crap. But it’s all playing around, no real harm meant—they know; it’s the way the Garment Center operates.” One time one of the buyers said, after his father had called him out to the back, “Listen, fat man, I didn’t ask to see you today, I got a big headache, so blow,” and Gould said, “Don’t you talk to him like that!” and the man said, “What’d you say, punk? You want to get your fucking ass slung down the elevator shaft?” and his father said to Gould, “Hey, who asked you? Go downstairs … no, we’re both going. Thanks”—to the man—“see you again,” and when they got outside—Gould had wanted to say something about it in the freight elevator, but his father said, “Later; it’s for nobody’s ears”—his father said, “You’re lucky I didn’t clip you in your stupid head right up there. You want to kill a sale for me with that momzer forever? Next time you want me to drag you around for clothes when I should be doing my regular business, keep your trap shut.” But none of those times was seeing his father on the street, alone, from a distance, walking, what he said. Also where his father didn’t see Gould, just in his own world, caught without knowing it. He’s come up the subway exit, and his father was always waiting there or under the awning about ten feet away. “Hi, Dad.” “Hello. Like a quick bite?” “No.” “Then let’s get going.”