J. Lennon - Pieces for the Left Hand - Stories

A prominent prewar writer, whose novels of manners sold briskly in their time, was notorious for his tumultuous personal life, in which he was said to have driven his wife to suicide and treated his only child, a son, with terrible cruelty. By the time he reached the age of fifty, the writer had stopped writing entirely, and fell into a prosperous but miserable retirement in a village not far from here, shunned by critics and forgotten by his readers.

Meanwhile, his son, who had fallen into delinquency and poor health early in life, recovered his civility during a two-year stay at a home for wayward boys, and began to learn the craft of writing himself. He published a series of angry and shocking novels that revealed, in fictional form, all the transgressions of his father, who consequently was catapulted back into the public consciousness, this time as a monstrous child abuser and wife-beater. The son’s novels, unlike his father’s, garnered enormous critical praise and countless literary awards, and were certain to endure, sealing his father’s ill reputation indefinitely.

In time the son himself had a son, and treated him with the utmost kindness and respect, allowing him all possible advantages and rarely, if ever, reprimanding him for any action regardless of how wayward or ill-mannered, with the intention of ensuring his own reputation as a benevolent parent. However, the child fell in with a bad crowd, and after his own period of incarceration grew up to make a series of well-received films documenting his life with an irresponsible and selfish father who lacked the courage to discipline his child.

This turn of events recently drove the critically acclaimed writer to suicide. His father, the forgotten writer, is himself still alive and in his late eighties, and we see him from time to time at the supermarket, thumping melons or examining tomatoes for bruises, like any regular old man. He is said to have altered his will so that his estate will be passed on to his grandson.

My father died suddenly, before I had given serious thought to his mortality, let alone my own, and the effect upon me of his passing was a devastating and completely unexpected midlife crisis which, though no different from those experienced by any number of men and women my age, nevertheless convinced me that I was forever and drastically changed, with no hope of return to the confident days of my youth. I looked the same, but felt certain that my body was only a meaningless shell, the contents of which had been drained away.

The day after his funeral, I found myself hungry and sat at the kitchen table eating marinated olives from a disposable plastic tub. After a while I’d had enough of the olives’ saltiness and took from a bowl a ripe red plum. The plum had a small plastic sticker attached to it, printed with the product code used by the store, which I peeled off. I looked around for a place to put the sticker, and settled finally on the lid of the olive tub.

At this point I noticed an identical product code sticker on the lid, and remembered that I had done this very thing — followed a snack of olives with a juicy plum — just four days ago, only hours before I learned of my father’s death.

My midlife crisis continued for most of that year, but I believe that its severity was considerably lessened by this coincidence.

When my oldest daughter was a small child, I invented bedtime stories to lull her to sleep at night. Most of these stories were forgotten immediately, but a few she requested again and again, and to these I would add events and characters, extemporaneously extending them into small epics, the details of which my daughter could recall with fanatic specificity. One such story was called “The Denim Touch.”

The good king of a distant country, the story went, had a single daughter, whom he loved with all his heart. One day a prince came to ask for the daughter’s hand. To win the good king’s favor, the prince gave him a magical candlestick that, if rubbed in conjunction with a strange incantation, would enable its bearer to turn anything he wished into denim. The king accepted the gift and gave his blessing for their marriage. But at the wedding, the king danced with his daughter and, under the candlestick’s power, inadvertently turned her into denim. The heartbroken prince took up his denimed bride and from then on roamed the countryside, wearing her like a suit, mourning her tragic transformation. The story then became episodic, as the prince sought some way to restore the princess to her original form.

For years I produced installments of “The Denim Touch” for my daughter. Then, one night, she asked me a startling question: where did the princess go? It happened that earlier this particular week our family had lost a beloved dog to old age and buried him in the woods near our home.

I reminded her that the princess had turned to denim, and the prince was trying to turn her back. Yes, I know, my daughter said, but where is she? He is wearing her, I explained. Yes, my daughter said, but where is she?

Perhaps because it was late, perhaps because I was still emotionally exhausted from the death of my dog, I confessed that I didn’t know. She was just nowhere, I supposed.

This threw my daughter into paroxysms of grief, and for the first time I was given to wonder why I had told her such a macabre story in the first place, or why such a story would even enter my head. Consumed with guilt, I apologized profusely, and blurted a final installment of the story, in which the princess is cured by a good witch and the couple become king and queen of all the land. Unfortunately, this was no longer sufficient, and from then on I read bedtime stories out of books.

Even now, however, I find myself lying awake on restless nights, devising new installments of “The Denim Touch.” I wouldn’t dare tell them to my children, who are grown, or to the children they might someday bear, yet I continue to invent them nonetheless. Perhaps they are a form of prayer: there is considerable comfort in this endless tale of impending resurrection, and since I claim no formal religious affiliation, the stories may fill a need I am not fully aware I possess.

Whatever the reason, when my wife reaches out and embraces me during the night, I am reminded of the loyal prince wearing his own wife, and I am able at last to sleep.

A doctor we know lived, as a little girl, out in the country, in a house on the edge of a forest not far from here. Because of its rural location, and because it was the only one for several miles around, the house developed a mouse infestation, and our friend’s family often found their stored food broken into and eaten.

Our friend’s father bought a number of mousetraps and placed them throughout the house. In time, several mice were caught and killed by the traps, and our friend went with her father to dispose of their bodies in the woods. The father removed them by their tails from a small cardboard box and tossed them out among the trees.

A child of the country, our friend was accustomed to the death of animals and accepted that it was sometimes necessary. Her father hunted deer and game birds, which they ate, and this did not bother her. But for some reason, the capture and disposal of the mice upset her greatly. She decided to trick her father and developed a plan: she would go into the forest and recover the tiny corpses, then bring them home and set them in the traps. This way her father would believe the mice were being eliminated, and she would have the satisfaction of knowing she had saved their lives.