30 Pieces of a Novel (48 page)

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
.

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 with 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.