Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

THE PINCH

Night came. I went to the window. My mother said, “What are you looking at?” I looked. She stood beside me and touched my arm. “What are you looking at?” Swinging through the windy blackness were spooky whites. My mother looked. She said, “Sheets. Sheets on a line.” I saw pale neurasthenics licking bodies of the air. She said, “You don’t believe me? Put on your coat.” She took me to the alley and held my hand. We stood beneath the sheets. I heard a dull spasmodic flap as the wind released them. We went home. I stood at the window. “Sheets on a line,” she said. I was crying. She pinched my arm. “I pinched your arm,” she said. Her face came closer to mine, as if to bring my face closer to mine, pleading, “I will pinch your arm.”

LEFTY-RIGHTY

Running in a fast game, I was pushed and went running off the court into a brick wall. My palm flattened against brick, driving shock into my wrist. The city wasn’t big enough for that pain. Other players left the game to watch me. Buildings grumbled in their roots. In tiny grains of concrete I saw recriminations. I rolled onto my back. A circle of faces looked down. I looked at the sky and didn’t scream. I might have broken my nose, my cheek, my left wrist. Why had it been the right? Then someone replaced me in the game. It resumed before I left the playground. I was abolished by tenements. For six weeks I wore a plaster cast. It itched in warm rooms. The left hand held forks and spoons, combed my hair, buttoned shirts. It could soon knot a tie. But it took passes like a wooden claw. It threw them like a catapult, not a hand. Broken this way, a wild animal would have been noticed, killed, got out of sight. I appeared daily, lingering on the sidelines, shuffling in among the healthy when they formed teams. Not saying a word, I begged: “Choose me.” Nobody looked in my direction, but being there gave me a right. Begrudged, but a right. Sooner or later, at least once a day, I’d be chosen. Any team I played on lost. Before and after games, alone, I practiced running to my left, dribbling lefty, shooting lefty I became less bad. The left hand became a hand. In a tough, fast game, a few days after the cast was removed, my opponent said, “Hey, man, you a lefty or a righty?” I mumbled, “Lefty-righty.” My team won easily. He came up to me and whispered, “How do you wipe your ass?” Out of noblesse oblige, I laughed. He grinned like a grateful ape, then offered me a cigarette, which I declined.

ANGRY

I heard that he had come to town. He hadn’t called me. I supposed he was angry. I became angry, too. I wouldn’t call him. When he called I was polite and agreed to go to his place. Dinner was pleasant. We talked for hours. When I yawned he raised new subjects, offered more cognac. His wife offered more to eat. I lighted another cigarette. His child, a two-year-old boy, came into the room. It seemed appropriate, delightful. But something was wrong with him. A distortion, quite serious, impossible not to notice. He was told to say hello, then sent back to bed. The air resisted words. We became flat and opaque. I put out my cigarette. They didn’t try to detain me. We shook hands at the door.

WHAT YOU HAVEN’T DONE

Wildly piled, pinned black hair. A face of busyness interrupted.

“Ever think of anyone but yourself?”

“You.”

“Bullshit.”

I shut the door, waited. Nothing changed. Bullshit banged my head.

“I haven’t cleaned my apartment or done my shopping. My cat has to go to the vet. My mother will phone in twenty minutes.”

I rushed forward, hugged her, kissed her neck — deep — as if to plug a hole. She hung in my arms. I quit kissing. She looked at me with fatigue, an expression like apology but distinct from it. Then she touched my hand.

“Take off your clothes,” I said.

“So much to do.”

“Everything off.”

Her face flashed through spaces in her black wool sweater. Her skirt dropped. She walked away naked, rapid, matter-of-fact, and sat on the bed.

“I want to know something,” I said. “What have you never done with another man?” I sat beside her.

“This,” she groaned, then plucked out hairpins.

“A man used to ask a woman if she’s a virgin. Now I ask you a question of the heart.”

“What do you want to know, exactly?”

“What you haven’t done …”

She smacked her fists to her ears. “Cleaned my apartment. Expect a phone call. Cat has to go to the vet.”

THE BROKEN LEG

My aunt tapped the spot and described the pain. Big Doctor sneered, “Nothing is wrong with your knee.” She tapped again. Described the pain. Big Doctor slapped his own knee and said, “Nothing is wrong.” She said, “Just give me a prescription.” He refused to prescribe even an aspirin. My aunt said, “My knee is sick. My knee is in pain. That pleases you.” He glanced at his calendar, set a date for the knife. My aunt went home. She read books on diet and health and started doing yoga exercises. Her knee felt better. There was no pain. She dressed and hurried out to see Big Doctor — blue — tinted hair, maroon lipstick, necklace, bracelets, rings, girdle, stockings, high heels — running down Broadway, singing, “Big Doctor, my knee is better,” running, running …

PORNOGRAPHIC

The girl had Oriental eyes with blue pupils in a round, white Oriental face. Blue pupils beneath epicanthic folds in the innocent emptiness of a round face. Her mouth was heavy and long and linear. Beautifully curled. The camera identified it with the genitals of her colleagues, perhaps a dozen males bearing temperamentally stiff or floppy pricks. Opposed to her mouth, not beautiful; but problematic or hysterical. Relieved of this or that prick, her mouth smiled. Personal light went unpricked, smiling along abdominal walls to their owners, reassuring them: “We are actors in a pornographic movie. Nothing is at stake.” Then it recurred quickly to cinematic obligations — to suck and lick with conviction. The camera adhered to it, lucid, neutral, ubiquitous. The camera’s look. Nearly like her mouth, assimilating advertisements of the male, but only in its totalitarian looking. The camera’s invincible distance. The look of looking.

BEING MORAL

“I’ve got a problem,” she said. “I’m obsessed by trivial reflections. When I brush my teeth, I think people are starving. Yet I’m determined to brush my teeth because it’s moral. But brushing makes me hungry. Eat, brush, eat, brush. I’m afraid someone will have to put a bullet in my head to save me from myself. Being moral is a luxury, isn’t it? No, it’s asking the question. That’s why I spend my time stealing, fucking, and taking dope.”

LISTENING

Every seat was taken. Students sat on the floor and window ledges. They barely moved. Nobody smoked. He took off his raincoat, laid it on the desk. At the end of the hour he’d look for his hat. Which was on his head. He arrived with a handkerchief pressed to his lips, wiping away his breakfast. Zipping his fly. He ground fingers into his ears, as if digging for insects. Then, putting his hands in his trouser pockets, he tumbled his prunes. We watched. His loneliness made revelations. Dirty fingernails, nicotine stains, one shoelace a clot of knots. Students followed him to his office. Papers on his desk, piled level with his chest, smelled of rotting food. They defeated conversation. He’d invite you to sit. The chair looked greasy. The floor was splotched with coffee, dried oils, trapped grit. No walls, only book pressure, with small gaps in the volumes for shaving equipment, mirror, hairbrush, and toothbrush. “Please sit.” They never stayed long. They rushed to his classes. Girls with long hair, shampooed five times a week, gave him feeling looks, accumulating knees and ankles in the front row. His life in a pool of eyeballs. He didn’t know he was there. He’d begin. The silence was awesome, as if subsequent to a boom. Nobody had been talking, yet a space cleared, a hole blown out of nothing for his voice. It was like a blues piano rumbling in the abyss; meditations in pursuit of meditations. His course, “Philosophy 999: Great Issues,” was also called “Introduction to Thought” and “History of Consciousness.” He taught one course. He’d blow his nose. The handkerchief still in his hand, he, too, observed a silence. Listening. To listen was to think. We listened to him listening. World gathered into mind. Sometimes the hour ended that way, in silence, then spontaneous applause. His authenticity was insuperable. He scratched his buttocks, looked out the window. Once he said, “Winter.” A girl cried, “January,” eager for dialogue. Toward the end, he sat in a chair, elbows on knees, and shut one eye. Through the other, with heavy head cocked, he squinted at the ceiling, as if a last point were up there. After taking his course, students couldn’t speak without shutting one eye, addressing the ceiling. At a party I saw a girl shut one eye and scratch her buttocks. That was in Chicago, years later, after he was dead. I went up to her, shut one eye, and asked, “Can you tell me one thing, any particular thing he said? He never published a book, not even a book review.” She looked at me as if at moral scum.