Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

I didn't either.

I'd get a jar to go home with. It wasn't enough for the whole thing, of course. But they said the idea was for me to try it out on a little spot of it to see how a jar of it goes.

The thing of it was, there wasn't any one little spot of it for you to try it out on, being as how it was all one big one now. Who could pick a place for you to stop at? I mean, where did you draw the line? It was the same thing with the dictionary, I noticed. You start with paraplegia and you go right to paraselene . It turns out to be all one big spot of it — the dictionary, your skin, probably everything.

I WOULDN'T WANT to tell you what they tried.

They probably tried it on you too, and it didn't work, did it?

I just went from one age to another age — by which adulteration, it did too. You might say the psoriasis and me, we reached our growth together. It was isochronous, you might say. That's if only you had a vocabulary as powerful as what you see. Or is it that you hear?

I was on my own by then. I can see how this was best for all concerned, being as how my folks could just not bear for them to look at it in order for them to get a look at me anymore. To tell you the truth, I didn't, couldn't, either.

I guess you know all about that part of it — the cathexis you get for always looking parallax to a mirror or not looking at all. Everything is askance, the way you see it. You keep getting stuff from a jar, but never can look for you to see where any of it's going.

But I'm not here to bellyache. What I am here for is for me to give you the cure.

It's a diet. It's what cured me and it's what'll cure you — so long as you follow directions to the letter.

Here goes.

Eat your heart out, sucker!

IF YOU WANT COPIES of this diet for your afflicted friends and relations, just remember I am protected by the copyright laws. It took me a lifetime to adumbrate my diet and I can't just go giving it away to every fool for free.

But maybe you don't want the cure. Maybe you really don't crave salutary skin. Maybe you would sooner sit there and be lonely but not without what you got. Maybe it gives you a conversation piece. Or maybe you just knocked wood that you didn't come down with Siamese twins.

I can understand this. Some people just don't want to be worse off. I didn't, either, until I decided I was.

Not anachronism.

Anachorism .

All your life, anachorism, anachorism!

Look it up.

FIRST MAKE SURE you have enough time. It is crucial that you have enough time to make things up. Myself, I do not have time enough for anything like that.

But I'll just tell you what's what. It will not be hard for you to follow me doing it.

Just listen.

Just watch.

I'm composing these instructions on an I.B.M. Selectric. I got it back in 1961. I did not buy it. I finessed it or I finagled it or I stole it.

The person who is the unexpressed indirect object of one or the other of these verbs was rich. He said you can borrow this thing, use it for a while. Then he stuck his other thing in my wife's thing. They still have their things and I have this thing and I'm not giving it up.

It's given tip-top service. I really loved it when I first saw it, and I still love it just as much.

I never cover it over with anything. I don't cover it over with anything like a cover or anything — because I like to look at it — the shape. I.B.M. is good at giving a thing a nice shape. I always look at the shape of things before I snap off the light in a room.

I think 1961 was the Selectric's first year.

I talk to engineers whenever I get a chance. I don't mean the kind that build bridges. I mean the fellows that service things. Those are the engineers I talk to.

You know what one of those fellows once told me once? Buy the first of whatever it is! He said buy the first one of whatever it is because the maker of it is never going to knock himself out like that again — making, you know, all of the others after that. That's why this one's still going fine after so many wonderful, wonderful years.

The same goes for the Polaroid camera I've got. I've got the oldest one there is. You know how old it is? Here's how old it is. It's called, they call it, the Polaroid Land Camera.

That's how goddamn old it is!

No shit, it was a first one — it was the very first Polaroid the Polaroid people made!

You want to see pictures? Look at these pictures! Tell me when in your life you ever saw in your life pictures as sharp as these pictures!

Because they're this big when I start out with them. You see how big? Next to nothing, right? But then what? But then I go get them all blown up as big as life! See them? Look at them all over the walls if you don't know what I mean!

That's resolution for you, isn't it?

Well, that's my second wife, okay?

They're framed all over the place.

People come in here and then they look at them and then they smack their heads.

My God, they say, such pictures!

I say, original issue, a maker knows his game.

MY DAUGHTER CALLED from college. She is a good student, excellent grades, is gifted in any number of ways.

"What time is it?" she said.

I said, "It is two o'clock."

"All right," she said. "It's two now. Expect me at four — four by the clock that said it's two."

"It was my watch," I said.

"Good," she said.

It is ninety miles, an easy drive.

At a quarter to four, I went down to the street. I had these things in mind — look for her car, hold a parking place, be there waving when she turned into the block.

At a quarter to five, I came back up.

I changed my shirt. I wiped off my shoes. I looked into the mirror to see if I looked like someone's father.

SHE PRESENTED HERSELF shortly after six o'clock.

"Traffic?" I said.

"No," she said, and that was the end of that.

After dinner, she complained of insufferable pains, and doubled over on the dining-room floor.

"My belly," she said.

"What?" I said.

She said, "My belly. It's agony. Get me a doctor."

There is a large and famous hospital mere blocks from my apartment. Celebrities go there, statesmen, people who must know what they are doing.

With the help of a doorman and an elevator man, I got my child to the hospital. Within minutes, two physicians and a corps of nurses took the matter in hand.

I stood by watching.

It was hours before they had her undoubled and were willing to announce their findings.

A bellyache, a rogue cramp, a certain stubborn but un-specifiable seizure of the intestine — vagrant, unamusing, but not worth the bother of further concern.

WE LEFT THE HOSPITAL unassisted, using a chain of tunnels in order to shorten the distance home. The exposed distance, that is — since it would be four in the morning on the city streets, and though the blocks would be few, each one of them would be a challenge to a person of gentle bearing. So we made our way along the system of underground passages that link the units of the hospital, this until we were forced to surface and exit into the jeopardy of experience. We came out onto a street with not a person on it — until I saw him, a man who was going from car to car. He carried something under his arm. It looked to be a furled umbrella — but it could not have been what it looked to be. No, no, it had to have been a tool of entry disguised as something innocent.

He turned to us as we stepped along, and then he turned back to his work — loitering at the automobiles, trying the doors, sometimes using the thing to dig at the windows.

"Don't look," I said.

My daughter said, "What?"