by Gordon Lish
I loved saying things for Miss Donnelly.
I had the feeling that it was going to make me into being a Christian for me to say gossamer for Miss Donnelly, or even to say anything. In all sincerity, I had the feeling that the Christians were listening to me say it whenever Miss Donnelly asked for us to say either one of those two things, or say other things; certain other ones which Miss Donnelly hadn’t said to us for us to say yet. You know what? I always had the feeling that probably the most important ones were coming up next.
It was all just a question of everything being the same thing as playing Builder in the sandbox and making buildings better than anybody else. What I am saying is this—that I had the feeling, that I could never get rid of the feeling, that something tremendous was always depending on it, that even maybe my life was, that my life itself did, that I was being watched and listened to by people who were going to have to make up their minds about me and decide one way or the other about me, and that everything was going to come into it, that the business of the cess would, or of how I played in the sandbox would, or if I was neat enough and put things back away all right and never spilled any of the sand out and even dusted it all off of my feet before I got back out of the sandbox to get my shoes and socks back on, or the thing of me having to sit and sit and never having anything much of anything to show for it, that that, that even that, was going to come into it too, that sitting on the toilet would, or that eating what I ate would, that what the food was which I ate would, or how my mother cooked it for me, or something else which I had totally but totally no control over, but no, no, they wouldn’t see it that way, they would see it that I did, I did, that I actually had powers which no one knew I did—except, you understand, but they themselves.
It’s crazy, I know that it’s crazy, but this is just exactly what I thought when I saw the Blue Coal truck showing up—namely, that the man who got down to shovel the coal out and that the man who stayed inside of the truck were there to really see what was going to have to be decided about me—that the whole thing of the Blue Coal truck coming to deliver the coal was really just another test, was just another way for them all to check up on me in and of itself
I am fifty years old and I know what I am saying.
Not just about this, not just about this—this is nothing so far—I’m telling you, I’m telling you—it’s so far, it’s not even anything so far!
THERE WERE THINGS WHICH I LOVED with all of my heart back then. But now look, now look—what do I love like that now? Not one single solitary thing, I can tell you, I can tell you, setting aside, of course, the question of Florence and of Henry and of this apartment, which, for your information, cost me plenty. We paid through the nose for it, through the nose! What we paid for this place was a small fortune, a young fortune—what we paid for it was enough to choke a horse.
Even if you completely and totally wipe out seeing things and think only in terms of, for instance, smelling them or of hearing them, then you would have to say that I was an almost totally happy little person—just smelling Miss Donnelly’s hankie, for instance, or Andy Lieblich’s hair, or hearing, take just hearing my corduroys on the way to school and back, or the ladies when they clicked their fingernails on the tiles, or when they tapped their fingertips on the tiles, the ladies when they came to play at my house and said things like, you know, “One bam, two crack.”
It was the only thing which kept me company when I walked to school and back—my corduroys, my pants.
Or hearing Iris Lieblich’s underpants coming down from up around her and almost coming down all of the way off, hearing the different sounds of when Iris Lieblich was getting ready for you to look at her and have your look, hearing her getting them down far enough and then getting just the one leg out of them and keeping the other leg still in—so that Iris Lieblich could get her underpants back on again fast enough if anyone ever started to come down to the cellar when we and Sir were in it.
But you want to know the truth?
I liked the sound of my own coming down off of me more than I did the sound of hers.
I have to break in here and tell you something—Steven Adinoff had big white buttons on his overalls.
But no one ever started to come.
We were only down there twice, and I don’t think that either time it was, I don’t think that it was a very long time either one of the times which we were.
When I looked at hers, I remember saying to myself when I looked at hers, that part of what I was probably seeing was the dust of Blue Coal.
I probably wasn’t even thinking about looking at her place so much. I was probably just waiting for her to say that it was her turn so that I could be the one, so that then I could be the one to take my own off enough and lie back down and then look back up at her and see her looking back down at mine.
The things you remember!
Listen to this.
I can tell you the smells of everybody.
Cocoa butter, the smell of cocoa butter—you could always smell the smell of cocoa butter when you got your nose up close enough to the smell of Andy Lieblich’s hair—or you would smell the smell of citronella if you said to yourself that you were smelling the smell of his skin instead, even if your nose was almost right in Andy Lieblich’s hair.
Or smell the smell of dusting powder if the nanny had made Andy Lieblich go in and have his bath first.
Steven Adinoff, he smelled of the iron going, to me he smelled of someone having the iron going—whereas Mrs. Adinoff, she just smelled of the air from outside and of her bust line and how it was binding her.
As for my own particular mother, the answer in her case is the smell you get when the first puff of the cigarette has been puffed out and the smoke of the cigarette is mixed in with the smell of the smoke of the match, but only if the match itself was blown right out before it burned down too much and you are smelling the two smells together.
Guess who smelled of lilac.
Always of lilac.
My father smelled of glue.
I’m leaving out the nanny.
The colored man, he always smelled to me like what the chamois cloth smelled like when it first got sopping wet. Even before he even went near it or it got wet, I have to say that that’s what the colored man smelled like to me, like the chamois cloth wet.
This was one of the biggest differences between us, the fact that he had to go inside for things and I never did—the fact that Andy Lieblich might have to go inside for the nanny to give him his tub bath or to take a nap or for him to be served a hot lunch, whereas in my case I didn’t ever have to go back inside even when it came time for me to eat, even if it was then—or even if I did actually go in, then I could just go in to get something and bring it back out with me and come right back out again, a snack of something or a sandwich if my mother had thought about making me a sandwich and putting it on the kitchen counter for me, that and a bottle of something from the icebox, some kind of a, you know, a drink.
The day of—that day—it was a sandwich of leftover meat loaf or maybe of meat loaf left over, not bologna.
I didn’t have to have a nap.
But I wanted to have a nap.
I wanted a nanny who made me have a nap.
He was the one who made me stop having the chance to have tub baths. I think that there were a host of different reasons for it, and that not having enough hot water to go around was one of them, that somebody said that the landlord had come around and said that we were using much too much hot water for us. But I know that it wasn’t just what the landlord said, that it was also what my father said, that when they were alone with each other, that when my mother and father were off by themselves alone with each other, that when he had her off alone with him, that he told her that everybody knew that having a bath was sissyish and babyish and that it made you run the risk of coming down with something, of getting in a draft and then of having to be sorry because you didn’t have enough sense to keep from coming do
wn with something and having to stay home and miss school and be in bed and have somebody have to wait on you hand and foot when they were already too busy to begin with, anyway.
He made me get in the shower stall with him and start always taking showers with him. He said that it was a better idea all around, that it made more sense from every perspective, that this was the right way for us as a family to handle it from every standpoint. But he had the wrong son for this. There are sons that this is probably desirable for, I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it! But it was all wrong for me, however—it couldn’t have been any wronger for a son like me, however—for me it was a mistake of the first magnitude, not being allowed to have tub baths anymore and having to get in with him when he got home from work while he got soap all over himself and got himself lathered all over from it and kept doing it over and over.
However, in all other respects insofar as I can remember, however, there was no objection to me going my own way so long as I made it a point not to go past the Aaronsons’ on the one side—whereas why they never mentioned a point like this on the other side, I for one cannot tell you or even begin to theorize. But not that it was a question which ever even came up, given the fact that I did not want to go anywhere except next door to the Lieblichs’ anyway, that I never was even the least little bit desirous of any of the other alternatives, especially since I wasn’t exactly certain how far you could go before you were where there were only all Christians living there, if whether you could even cross over to the other side of the street and not start running into Christians or worse.
School was a totally different matter, however, the whole thing of who was there when you got there and of having to go back and forth to it and go past the Christians. But I used to just keep my mind pinned on Miss Donnelly—on lilac, on hankie, on bodice—on ladies-in-waiting in gossamer—plus there were my corduroys, plus there were my corduroys to always keep me company.
There wasn’t someone always watching over me every single solitary instant—someone always telling me what to eat and when for me to eat it and all the rest of it—baths and naps and who I myself could and couldn’t have over for me to play with—plus drinking milk with the chill off.
We were friends, Andy Lieblich and I were friends—all told, we were friends, I think, when all is said and done.
I didn’t have any other friends except for Andy Lieblich.
I had to sit there and sit there until I had something to show for it, and not flush it down until she, my mother, had some time for her to come and get a good look at it.
The nanny said that when Andy Lieblich and Iris Lieblich sat down to eat their breakfast, that one of the things which they always had to have in it was a soft-boiled egg apiece because a soft-boiled egg for themselves at breakfast was what every boy and every girl needed if they were going to be able to do their business. Even a shirred egg or a coddled egg, she said that even a shirred egg or a coddled egg or a poached egg, she said that not even one of those eggs could do you as much good as having a soft-boiled one apiece could, even though it was still very important, even though it was absolutely essential, she said, for a child to eat each and every meal regularly if his parents wanted for him to maintain good normal health and not be all bound up and constipated in his bowels the way I was.
You know what else the nanny said?
She said they ate theirs in eggcups, that they ate their soft-boiled eggs in eggcups—that you had to have a knife to crack around the top and get the top of it off and then put your spoon in and scoop out the egg part.
This was about the only thing, I think this was about the only thing which I definitely knew that they had actually had inside of there, that they had eggcups, that the Lieblichs had eggcups, although I have to admit to you that I didn’t have the world’s greatest picture of what an eggcup was—I probably had the picture it was more like a teacup, that it was more like a teacup than an eggcup actually is.
But as to the inside of their house in general, as to what it really was like in there inside of the Lieblichs’ house in general, all I can say is that I never did get any very exact picture of it—my idea of what it was kept changing along with the various different things the nanny said, and then if she said something different, then my thoughts would take off in a totally different direction. Just the fact that she said she always had to make sure that he had a broiled meat pattie for lunch, just a thing like this could get my mind going in a certain direction and give me a picture that would change as soon as she said something different. It was like making it up in your mind what kind of a kitchen someone had if you knew that every day they broiled a meat pattie in it, but then when you hear them say something about something else, like something about always having to have their milk with the chill off, then that’s when you realize that you have to start figuring out a totally but totally different picture of everything, not just of just their kitchen.
She said the stuff in his hair was to keep Andy Lieblich’s scalp from getting too dry and cracking. She said that if she didn’t rub a good dab of it into his scalp every day, that then before you knew it Andy Lieblich’s scalp would start to get itchy and begin cracking.
I wonder how I smelled to him.
This is the first time it ever occurred to me to wonder how I smelled to him. But what could I have smelled of? And was it of something different to different people?
I never thought of this before—but when I came in from being with him in the sandbox, did I smell of cocoa butter to my mother? Or of Steven Adinoff s brains?
Nobody smells like anything to me now—not even Florence and Henry included.
I would have heard it if there had been screams. I heard the water sizzle. I heard the rubber bands. I saw everything—the big white buttons Steven Adinoff had, the blood which got on them, the dents in his hair, the dents which the hoe made in Steven Adinoff s hair, the way the hoe bent Steven Adinoff s hair down into them and how it stayed down in there in the dents, got stuck down in there in them.
Nothing is not seen, nothing is not heard.
You know what I believe?
I believe that there is no one who does not know everything—even the dumbest person.
It was no different for him. Whatever it was for me, that’s exactly, I think that that is exactly what it was for him. I’ll bet he even felt the same buzziness which I did—and felt it in the very same place which I did. There is no way of knowing, I know, but I bet Steven Adinoff did.
Maybe they weren’t so rich. Maybe it was just that they had more money than we had. Maybe they didn’t even have as much money as I myself, as Henry and Florence and I right this instant have—all told, all of our property, all of our holdings, plus, of course, all of our equity in this apartment. Except how do you account for the difference which you have when what you are doing is comparing over the distance of so many years? That and the fact that that was Woodmere, whereas this is New York City.
Manhattan actually.
Upper Fifth, upper Fifth Avenue—East Ninety-first Street, Ninety-first Street just off Fifth Avenue, to state the case for myself exactly—which means that a total of only eight measly blocks was all it would have come to for me and for Henry, for us to have walked it, the duffel bag and the footlocker, walk the whole deal.
Lackawanna 4-1810.
Amazing, just amazing—that I remember it, that to this day I still remember it.
Lackawanna 4-1810.
My God, how amazing.
Not that it all didn’t all work out perfectly okay in the long run. Setting aside the question of all of the screaming and all of the carrying on, and also of the new sport coat and the necktie, the question of the new necktie as well, setting aside the question of all of that, what was it, what was it?
Because it was all a big nothing—a grand total of three Band-Aids plus nothing but some silly upset.
Did Henry miss a day of camp?
Nobody missed even a day of camp.
I
DON’T KNOW WHAT KIND OF DOG IT WAS. It was just a dog—a boy one, a boy one. I mean, I can’t say I didn’t know it was a boy one, can I?
Sir.
Steven Adinoff.
Kobbe Koffi.
The names which you get stuck to you in a life.
The reason she said he wanted to see the Blue Coal truck when they came with it up to our house and then got it up close to the cellar by driving it up all of the way up into the driveway so that they could get the coal chute out and shovel the coal out of the back of the coal truck down along the coal chute and reach with it through the little window into the cellar, what I would like to know is if the reason the nanny said Andy Lieblich should come over and see the Blue Coal men do all of this was because the Lieblichs themselves really had an oil burner and she just wanted to widen his horizons. Because in the years which I have been referring to, didn’t people already have them, didn’t people like the Lieblichs?
Her underpants.
My underpants.
She would get them down off enough and then I would.
And here’s another thing—who picked the brand you got? Was the brand you got, was this something which you decided for yourself, or did the landlord just go ahead and pick one for you—Blue Coal and not another coal?
I actually never thought about this before—whether if Blue Coal in particular was to the question of coal in general as Buick, for instance, was to the one of automobiles. Or if whether in reality it was more like the DeSoto was.
The kind of door it was, you know the kind of door I’m talking about—the kind they used to have to get down into the cellars in those days, the kind which was set into the ground outside of the house and you grabbed a handle and you lifted one side of it up and then went down some steps?
Nobody could have caught us by coming down some other steps through some other door which went down into the cellar from the inside of the house because there wasn’t any other door that was inside of the house like that. The only way for you to go was to go down the same way which we did it—not that we ever really went down there all that much. The facts are that we only went down there to look at each other twice—once with Sir and once without Sir. And nobody ever caught us either time, I think—so you can stop thinking about that!