J. Lennon - Pieces for the Left Hand - Stories

As for me, I don’t remember the incident at all. Those days have always been lost to me.

The old man died, and our friend, his daughter, invited us to the wake. On the phone, she told us the circumstances of his death: he’d had a heart condition, and had been prescribed pills in a large green bottle which he was to take three times daily. The prescription could be refilled at any time, indefinitely, and the old man had plenty of money, but a habit of tight-fistedness drove him to short his dosage, presumably to conserve the precious pills. Consequently, he suffered a stroke and died on the way to the hospital.

It so happened that the old man was a connoisseur, and had, over the years, amassed a large collection of fine and extravagant goods: wines and liqueurs and rare single-malt Scotches, obscure and expensive pipe tobacco, black-market cigars. Many of his acquaintances, however, never knew he possessed these things, because the old man would always smoke cheap cigarettes and drink the most pedestrian of drinks out of colorful metal cans.

Not surprisingly, his many children loathed their father’s miserly ways and spent their adulthoods compensating with unbridled hedonism, which aged them prematurely and generated crushing debt. Though our friend did not mention it, the old man’s will was said to have erased their debts instantly, with enough left over to keep them in cars, hotels, sumptuous meals and new clothes for more than a year. The will had also provided for a huge wake, at which the children and their guests were supposed to consume every last precious item in the cellar. It was to this wake that our friend invited us.

It was a memorable party, to say the least. The hundreds of guests drank themselves into a stupor, and a thick, aromatic smoke filled the air until dawn. Everyone had a wonderful time. Our friend, however, could be seen dashing from room to room in a kind of fury, her face red and her hair streaming out behind her as if in a strong wind. At one point we stopped her and asked why she seemed so angry.

She replied that the old man had ruined her enjoyment by martyring himself: all she could think of was his privation, and how he had sacrificed his own pleasure to augment his friends’. At this point we suggested that perhaps her father had in fact taken great pleasure in the anticipation of satisfaction, more than he might have taken in the satisfaction itself, and we noted that he probably imagined this party with great joy, as much joy as the guests were feeling at that moment, if not more.

This gave our hostess pause, but it was only a few seconds before she shook her head and told us that she didn’t know what we were talking about. She stalked off, angrier than ever.

We fell asleep during the cab ride home, and nothing has tasted as good to us since.

A local young man, still in high school, announced to his parents that his girlfriend was pregnant and that they intended to marry. His father, eager for his only child to attend a reputable university and major in genetic engineering, which field the father rightly believed held great potential for wealth and fame, grew angry at his son and insisted that the girl have an abortion. He demanded that his son go pick up the girl immediately so that he, the father, could tell her this in person.

The son obeyed, but unwillingly, and his emotional state when he left probably contributed to the terrible automobile accident he became involved in on the way, which killed him.

His girlfriend, in despair over the loss of her lover and reluctant to bring a fatherless child into the world, resolved to have an abortion after all. But when the young man’s father got wind of this, he phoned the girl and insisted that she carry the baby to term. The girl refused. The father then bribed the girl’s best friend in order to learn where and when the abortion was to take place, and was waiting at the clinic for the girl when she arrived.

According to eyewitnesses, the girl and the older man argued through the window of his car, and then the girl got in and the two argued further, perhaps for as long as thirty minutes. Eventually they pulled away from the clinic.

No one has seen either since, though the father, who we now can refer to as the grandfather, is said to have sent photographs of his grandson to certain acquaintances. It is also rumored that the young man’s girlfriend is once again expecting.

Local mothers banded together to exchange advice about and support for the difficult task, which they all shared, of balancing personal ambition and fulfillment with the demands of home and family. Their association was regarded as a great success, and a new sense of confidence and calm seemed to settle over our town, the likes of which had not previously been seen.

So fond of one another did area mothers become that they arranged to take a trip together, an ocean cruise. Area fathers rearranged their work schedules to accommodate the mothers, and prepared to emulate, while they were away, those qualities most commonly associated with the mothers.

While the mothers were gone, our town’s business both private and professional stopped entirely, and the streets filled up with fathers and children acting in a manner that encompassed not only fatherliness and childishness but motherliness as well. It was impossible to pin down exactly what behavior, speech or patterns of thought constituted this motherliness, yet all agreed that there was a surrogate motherliness in the air, neither as full nor as satisfying as the real thing, yet a fair substitute nonetheless.

When the mothers returned, their own inherent qualities had intensified, or perhaps it only seemed that way, as we had grown used to their absence. Whatever the case, this motherliness, combined with that which we had developed without them, created an excess, and emotions ran high for several weeks while we regained our equilibrium.

Though no one wishes to deprive the mothers of further associations, we all found this experience unsettling, and have asked them to refrain in the future from departing all at once. To this, the mothers have agreed, though not without some reluctance.

The fathers in our town began to worry that they were paying their children insufficient attention, so a coalition of concerned fathers arranged a picnic, to be held at our lakeside park, which all the fathers and their children were expected to attend. Those games traditionally played between fathers and children — baseball and football, for example — were organized; food, such as hot dogs and hamburgers, that children most commonly associated with their fathers, was cooked; and live entertainment determined to be fatherly in nature — specifically, a rock concert — was scheduled.

Few would argue that the fathers and children did not have a good time. Nevertheless, things did not go quite as planned. The children objected to the fathers’ participation in games, as their large size and superior skills upset the balance of play. The food, which the children especially savored, was refused by many fathers, who, concerned about their health, wished to avoid cholesterol, carbohydrates, or fat. And the rock concert, which addressed the generational gap by including both “oldies” and loud contemporary music, succeeded at neither, driving the children to the lakeside, where they threw rocks into the water and at one another, and pushing the fathers into little groups, where they discussed sports and drank beer.

When the picnic was over, some suggested that the very detachment from their children that the fathers displayed was a defining characteristic of fatherhood, and should be embraced, not discouraged. This suggestion was received with approval by fathers and children alike, and no further picnics are planned.