Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

I did not know what to do.

I could tell my parents did not know what to do.

We just stood around with the people all around all going away to all of the vehicles that were going to take them to places and I could tell that we did not, as a family, know if it was time for us to go.

The head of the camp came over and said that he wanted to shake my hand again and to shake the hands of the people who were responsible for giving the Peninsula Athletes Day Camp such an outstanding young individual and such a talented young athlete as my mother and father had.

He shook my hand again.

It made me feel dizzy and nearly asleep.

I saw my mother and my father get their hands ready. I saw my father get the shield out of the hand that he thought he was going to need for him to have his hand ready to shake the hand of the head of the camp. I saw my mother take her purse and do the same thing. But the head of the camp just kept shaking my hand, and my mother and my father just kept saying thank you to him, and then the head of the camp let go of my hand and took my father's elbow with one hand and then touched my father on the shoulder with the other hand and then said that we were certainly the very finest of people, and then — he did this, he did this! — and then he went away.

PICTURE FLORIDA.

Picture Miami Beach, Florida.

Picture a shitty little apartment in a big crappy building where my mother, who is a person who is old, is going to have to go ahead and start getting used to her not being in the company of her husband anymore, not to mention not anymore being in that of anybody else who is her own flesh and blood anymore, the instant I and my sister can devise good enough alibis for us to hurry up and get the fuck out of here and go fly back up to the lives that we have been prosecuting for ourselves up in New York, this of course being before we were obliged to drop everything and get down here yesterday in time to ride along with the old woman in the limo which had been set up for her to take her to my dad's funeral.

It took her.

It took us and her.

Meaning me and my sister with her.

Then it took us right back here to where we have been sitting ever since we came back to sit ourselves down and wait for neighbors to come call — I am checking my watch — about nine billion minutes ago.

Picture nine minutes in this room.

Or just smell it, smell the room.

Picture the smell of where they lived when it was the both of them who lived, and then go ahead and picture her smelling to see if she can still smell him in it anymore.

I am going to give you the picture of how they walked — always together, never one without the other, her always the one in front, him always shuffling along behind, him with his hands always up on her shoulders, him always with his hands reaching up out to my mother like that, with his hands up on her shoulders like that, her always looking to me like she was walking him the way you would look if you were walking an imbecile, as if there were something wrong with the man, wrong with the way the man was — but there was nothing wrong with the way my father was — my father just liked to walk like that whenever my father went walking with my mother, and my father never went walking without my mother.

I mean, this is what they did, this is how they did it when I saw them, this is what I saw when I saw my parents get old whenever I went down to Florida and had to see my old parents walk.

Try picturing more minutes.

I think I must have told you that we made it on time.

Only it was not anything like what I had been picturing when I had sat myself down on the airplane and started keeping myself busy picturing the kind of funeral I was going to be seeing when I got down to Florida for the funeral my father was going to have.

Picture this.

It was just a rabbi that they had gone ahead and hired.

To my mind, the man was too young-looking and too good-looking. I kept thinking the man probably had me beat in both departments. I kept thinking how much the man was getting paid for this and would it come to more or would it come to less than my ticket down and ticket back.

I felt bigger than I had ever felt.

I did not know where the ashes were. I did not know how the burning was done. There were some things which I knew I did not know.

But I know that I still felt bigger than I had ever felt.

As for him, the rabbi took a position on one side of the room, the rabbi stood himself up on one side of the room, and me and my sister and my mother, we all went over to where we could tell we were supposed to go over to on the other side of the room, some of the time sitting and some of the time standing, but I cannot tell you how it was that we ever knew which one it was meet and right for us to do.

I heard: "Father of life, father of death."

I heard the rabbi say: "Father of life, father of death."

I heard the guy who was driving the limo say, "Get your mother's feet."

Picture us back in the limo again. Picture us stopping off at a delicatessen. Picture me and my mother sitting and waiting while my sister gets out and goes in to make sure they are going to send over exactly what it was we had ordered when she called up and called our order in.

Maybe it would help for you to picture things if I told you that what my mother has on her head is a wig of plastic hair that fits down over almost all of her ears.

It smells in here.

I can smell the smell of them in here.

And of every single one of the sandwiches that just came over from the delicatessen in here.

Now picture it like this — the stuff came hours ago and so far this is all that has come. I mean, the question is this — where are all of the neighbors which this death was supposed to have been ordered for?

I just suddenly realized that you might be interested in finding out what we finally decided on.

The answer is four corned beef on rye, four turkey on rye, three Jarlsberg and lettuce on whole wheat, and two low-salt tuna salad on bagel.

Now double it — because we are figuring strictly a half-sandwich apiece.

Here is some more local color.

The quiz programs are going off and the soap operas are coming on and my sister just got up and went to go lie down on my mother's bed and I can tell you that I would go and do the same if I was absolutely positive that it would not be against my religion for me to do it — because who knows what it could be against for you to go lie down on your father's bed? — it could be some kind of a curse on you that for the rest of your life it would keep coming after you until, ha ha, just like him, that's it, you're dead.

My mother says to me, "So tell me, sonny, you think we got reason to be nervous about the coffee?"

My mother says to me, "So what do you think, sonny, you think I should go make some extra coffee?"

My mother says to me, "I want for you to be honest with me, sweetheart, you think we are taking too big of a chance the coffee might not be more than plenty of enough coffee?"

My mother says to me, "So what is it that is your opinion, darling, is it your opinion that we could probably get away with it if your mother does not go put on another pot of coffee?"

Nobody could have pictured that.

Nor have listened to no one calling us and no one imploring us for us to hold everything, for us to keep the coffee hot, that they are right this minute racing up elevators and running down stairways and rushing along corridors and will be any second knocking at the door because there is a new widow in the building and an old man just plotzed.

You know what?

I do not think that you are going to have to picture anything along the lines of any of that.