30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  What else about his father? Plenty else. Plenty of times at home, plenty of times his father saying, “You been on the phone too long, what could be so important to say? Get off.” Or “What is it, you got stock in Bell? Hang up.” Standing in front of the opened refrigerator and looking inside for something he knows is there or usually there, or maybe just to see what there is to make a sandwich with or snack on, and his father saying, “Shut the icebox door; it costs a fortune to get it cold again when you keep it open that long.” Or, more often, “What are you trying to do, spoil all the food inside?” Or “What is it, you got stock in Con Ed? Close the damn thing.” Or when he’d stop in front of the TV set while his father was watching a program, not realizing he was blocking his view, and his father saying, “What’s your father, a glazier?” He never really understood that line but assumed it meant… well, what? That if his father was a glazier, Gould was somehow made out of glass? In other words, though a stretch: something to do with the seed his father sired him with? No, a glazier cuts and sets glass, doesn’t make it—that’s a glassmaker, but maybe that’s what his father meant to say but got the two mixed up. No, he knew the difference and would have said, “What’s your father, a glassmaker?” Doesn’t sound as good, but his father wasn’t the type who’d use one word for another because it sounded better, especially when he knew it’d make what he said less clear, or that’s how Gould saw him. Then what? That Gould, being the hypothetical son of a glazier, had somehow been placed in front of his father as a pane of glass, perhaps even set there by his father? Not even close. There was the expression, though, when he was a kid and maybe when his father was one too—there was much more of that kind of continuation or overlapping then than today—“I know you’re a pain but you’re not made of glass.” But that has almost nothing to do with what his father said. This is one time—oh, there were many—when he’d love to have a brother who’d had the same things said to him, or even if he didn’t but, just because they had the same father, could help Gould figure out some of their father’s more puzzling expressions, and he’d call now and ask him the one about the glazier. He should have asked his father what he meant by it rather than pretend every time that he understood. What did he say or do when his father said it?—and he said it plenty of times, plenty. He probably just shook his head or said no and laughed, since it was supposed to be a funny remark, and did what his father wanted him to: moved aside. Or have asked him years later exactly what it meant—“exactly” because he wouldn’t have wanted to admit, for his sake and his father’s, that he’d never understood it—but by that time his father had long stopped saying it, and Gould hasn’t thought of it since till now. Asking him for a dime sometimes for a comic book, and his father—but what’s all this got to do with seeing his father alone on the street from a distance, walking to or away from him, and so on? Nothing, maybe, but so what? It’s just a way to see his father as he was then—and his father saying, “If I had a dime I’d build a fence around it.” That was his father’s favorite. He said it to Gould about fifty times. Maybe a hundred. Sure, a hundred: ten or more times a year when Gould was between five and thirteen, he’ll say. And he didn’t ask just for dimes or comic books. Then he got his weekly allowance, which started as a nickel and grew to fifty cents—Saturdays, before his father left for work, if Gould was up, or early afternoon when he returned home: “Can I have my allowance please?” and his father would say maybe one time out of four, “If I had a quarter—” and so on. His father coming into the restaurant Gould worked at five nights a week when he was in college—now here he thinks he did see him from a distance once or twice, or at least that’s what’s in his mind: his father walking down the long wide aisle from the front door to the dining room—Schrafft’s, on 82nd Street and Broadway—waving to him as he passed the bakery counter on his right and the soda fountain on his left, bakery closed for the day and, if it was past nine—that would be late for his father after work, which was when he dropped by—fountain closed too. Maybe even seeing him come out of the revolving door, since his father came to see him a few times the year and a half Gould worked there, suit, hat, and tie on, hat quickly in his hand right after he stepped out of the door, newspapers, sample case, and after sitting at one of his deuces—he usually asked the manager or one of the other waiters which tables were his son’s, since their stations changed nightly—and saying, after Gould said hi and maybe even kissed his cheek, “I just wanted to see you at work. It gives me a special kick. I should probably order something too, no? I don’t want to be taking up your table for nothing—they might toss me out on my ear. What looks good? And I promise not to ask for a discount,” and he says, “You want ice cream? Some people call it the best in the city. So’s the coffee, I hear, though I’ve never tasted it. Dark and rich like you like it.” “I like it light with two spoons of sugar,” and he says, “I mean before you put in those things. I’ll bring a little pitcher of milk,” and his father says, “Cream is better, if you got it, though don’t go to any trouble on my account.” “I can get you the cream. And freshest there is—from the back of the refrigerator, which we’re not supposed to take out till we use up the older cream in front. Or their English muffins—they’re special, made by their own bakery in Queens. Or a sandwich, though you can still get dinner if you want.” “No dinner, I want to get home soon. Just a scoop of pistachio, or should I have the coffee too? I don’t want to make the check too small; that wouldn’t look good. But tell the guy inside I’m your dad and to give me a hefty scoop. He’ll do it for you.” His father chatting with him if Gould wasn’t too busy and reading the paper or watching him when Gould was serving other customers. Then, after he got the check—“I feel funny about giving you this,” Gould would say, “but okay, I got to”—tipping him generously, while with other waiters his father was always pretty cheap. Never above ten percent no matter how small the check—“Ten percent’s good enough if you get it from everyone. What’s with this fifteen all of a sudden? Who’s the guy who decided that?”—and using any excuse to tip even less: waiter forgetting to bring something, dirty silver or sticky plate or lipstick on a cup or food coming cold: “Look, I don’t care how menial or lousy-paying the job is, if you’re hired to do it, you do it well, and giving him a regular tip is like a reward for bad service. He’s lucky he wasn’t stiffed.” But for Gould: each time maybe the biggest tip, as far as the percentage of the check, he ever gave; sometimes as much as the check, which was the best tip Gould ever got for such a small order in all his years as a waiter. And a few hours later, when Gould got home: “So how’d it go tonight?” and Gould saying, “It went okay,” and his father saying, “No, I meant in tips,” and Gould saying, “Probably because of yours, better than I expected.”

  More things about that time he saw his father walking toward him on the street. Meeting him just about halfway between their building and the avenue corner his father had come up from. Or maybe his father had started on the opposite sidewalk and then crossed the street a few buildings from the corner before Gould spotted him. He thinks he kissed his father when he first saw him then too. Not “first saw him,” of course, but when he reached him. His father always insisted on being kissed when they met or parted. Would extend his cheek for it and, when Gould was much younger and shorter, lean over and kiss the top of Gould’s head and then put his cheek by Gould’s lips to be kissed and even, a few times, Gould remembers—a few times? one time, anyway, he remembers it—lift him by his underarms and kiss his cheek or head and then say, “Now you kiss Daddy’s cheek.” And not “always” and he didn’t “insist”; he’d just say something like, if Gould didn’t kiss him when they parted or met or when his father or Gould came into the apartment and the other had opened the door for him or was just standing there… what? “My father insisted on being kissed”—that’s probably where the “insist” comes from in all this—“even when he was in his seventies and I was more than forty, and I hope I get the same from you right up till I�
��m that age.” Or whatever age his grandfather was when he was still insisting on being kissed by his son. He didn’t die in his sixties? All his grandparents did, his mother said. “That was old then,” he sort of remembers her saying, “so consider yourself to have good genes, as far as longevity’s concerned.” His own father would have felt hurt if Gould didn’t kiss him during those times he mentioned: on the street when they met, greeting him at the door or in his office, and so on. And possibly his father’s father would have felt hurt too if his father didn’t kiss him at similar times. Gould didn’t mind kissing his father. He in fact took pride in it—“boasted,” he could say—to his friends and wife: “I kissed my father right up till the time he was an old guy. I didn’t stop kissing him then; he just died.” He’s even told his daughters: “My father kissed his father till he died, I kissed mine till he died, for all I know my father’s father kissed his father till he died, and though I’d love to end this death cycle—at least talking of it regarding me—I hope you’ll never stop kissing your father. Of course I was a male kissing his father, as he was to his father, and so on, which is different and not as easy to do publicly as a daughter kissing her father. It at least didn’t used to be easy, though maybe back when people had just come over and settled here from Europe or were still living over there—I’m talking about our ancestors, grandfathers and great-grandfathers and such—it was.” “I don’t think so,” one of his daughters said—forgets which one. “It could be embarrassing to a girl if she thinks people around her don’t know he’s her father.” “True,” he said, “though I hope not something you’d worry about,” but to get back to it: when he brought girlfriends over to the house for dinner he’d kiss his father hello—his mother too, of course—and say, “This is Phoebe”—or “Dolores” or whoever—and the girl would shake his hand and say hello, but when they left to go out after dinner she always seemed to kiss his father goodbye. Because when they were about to leave, Gould would say, “Well, good night, Dad,” and kiss him—he said good night then because his father would probably be in bed asleep by the time Gould got home, if he did go home that night—and the girl would say, “Goodbye, Mr. Bookbinder,” and his father would smile at her in a way, he’s sure, that must have said—and move his face to her too—Come on, you can also kiss my cheek, I shaved today so it ain’t going to scratch, and she’d kiss it; he can’t remember a time when one of his girlfriends didn’t. And if his father was in bed reading while listening to what he called “light classical music” on the radio—mostly heavily orchestrated show tunes, without the singing, or something resembling Boston Pops—which he did for about half an hour before he turned off the bed lamp and radio on his night table and went to sleep, Gould would usually knock on the door if it was closed or the outside jamb if the door was open, ask if he could come in, and say good night and kiss him and, if his mother was also there, say good night and kiss them both. He did this up till the time he moved out of the apartment, when he was around twenty-two. So what’s he saying here? Just how often he kissed his father and the variety of places, and so on the street that day when they met he must have kissed him too. But how come that’s the only time he remembers seeing his father on the street: distance, walking up it, and so on? Could it have really been the one time he did see him like that? It’s possible their hours just didn’t correspond. In all that time? Seems so, but also seems next to impossible. For one thing, far back as he can remember—no, not as far back as that; regarding this, he means from the time he was eight or nine—he was up before his father almost every weekday morning except holidays and such right through high school. For his early grades his mother would get him up and off to school, and when he was old enough he’d wake himself up with an alarm clock, make breakfast, and leave on his own. In fact, his mother started sleeping an hour later then. His father would come into the kitchen to make his own breakfast just around the time Gould was setting off. Gould would always kiss him before he left. His father would leave about a half hour later and come home some four to five hours after Gould did, at least till the time Gould started working in the Garment District while in high school. Saturdays he already touched upon, and summers he either went to sleep-away camp for two months or to a bungalow colony upstate with his mother, his father only coming up weekends and the week that included July Fourth and the one before Labor Day. Once Gould graduated college he was out of the house for good: jobs in Washington, D.C., and California, and so on and his own apartments in New York. Which is another thing: he doesn’t ever recall bumping into his father in New York other than that one time on their block, not from a distance or anyplace. If he had bumped into him on another street or in a park or a museum or building of any kind, would he have kissed him? Probably, though maybe not on a subway or in a bar. But first he would have watched him from a distance on the street, if that’s what it was and where it took place, and thought, This is the first time I’m seeing my father from a distance on a street that isn’t our old block, far as my memory tells me. And he would have watched his father approach him, maybe even slowed down his own approach to his father, just to take it in more. And if his father was walking on the street in the same direction as him but from some distance in front, he would have followed him awhile just to have the experience of seeing him from behind like that. Then he would have hurried up to him, since it could be a crowded street or it suddenly could get crowded and he wouldn’t want to risk losing him or for whatever reason—following him so long he might begin to feel peculiar—and said, “Dad,” but said it lightly, so as not to scare him, and not touched him either, for the same reason, “Dad, it’s me, this is amazing, how are you?” and surely they would have kissed.