Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

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.