Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Except for maybe Mr. Goldbaum.

Here is Mr. Goldbaum.

Mr. Goldbaum is the man who sticks his head in at the door which we left open for the company which was on the way over.

Here is Mr. Goldbaum talking.

"You got an assortment, or is it all fish?"

That was Mr. Goldbaum.

My mother says, "That was Mr. Goldbaum."

My mother says, "The Mr. Goldbaum from the building."

Now you can picture a whole different thing, a whole different place.

This time it's the Sunday afterwards.

So picture this time this — my sister and me the Sunday afterwards. Picture the two different cars we rented to get out from the city to Long Island to the cemetery. Picture the cars parked on different sides of the administration building which we are supposed to meet at for us to meet up with the rabbi who has been hired to say a service over the box which I am carrying of ashes.

Picture someone carrying ashes.

Not because I am the son but because the box is made out of something too heavy.

Now here is a picture you've had practice with.

Me and my sister waiting.

Picture my sister and me standing around where the offices are of the people who run the cemetery, which is a cemetery way out on Long Island in February.

I just suddenly had another thought which I just realized. What if your father was the kind of a father who was dying and he called you to him and he said you were his son and he said for you to come lie down on the bed with him so that he as your father could hold you and so that you as his son could hold him so that the both of you could both be like that hugging with each other like that for you to say good-bye to each other before you had to go actually go leave each other and you did it, you did it, you got down on the bed with your father and you got down up close to your father and you got your arms all around your father and your father was hugging you and you were hugging your father and there was one of you who could not stop it, who could not help it, but who just got a hard-on?

Or both did?

Picture that.

Not that I and my father ever hugged like that.

Here comes the next rabbi.

This rabbi is not such a young-looking rabbi, is not such a good-looking rabbi, is a rabbi who just looks like a rabbi who is cold from just coming in like a rabbi from outside with the weather.

The rabbi says to my sister, "You are the daughter of the departed?"

The rabbi says to me, "You are the son of the departed?"

The rabbi says to the box, "These are the mortal remains of the individual which is the deceased party?"

Maybe I should get you to picture the cemetery.

Because this is the cemetery where we all of us are getting buried in — wherever we die, even if in Florida.

I mean, our plot's here.

My family's is.

The rabbi says to us, "As we make our way to the gravesite, I trust that you will want to offer me a word or two about your father so that I might incorporate whatever ideas and thoughts you have into the service your mother called up and ordered, may God give this woman peace."

Okay, picture him and me and my sister all going back outside in February again all over again in February again and I am the only one who cannot get his gloves back on because of the box, because of the canister — because of the motherfucking urn — which is too heavy for me to handle without me holding onto it every single instant with both of my hands.

The hole.

The hole I am going to have to help you with.

The hole they dug up for my father is not what I would ever be able to picture in my mind if somebody came up to me and said to me for me to do my best to picture the hole they make for you when you go see your father's grave.

I mean, the hole was more like the hole which you would go dig for somebody if the job they had for you to do was to cover up a big covered dish.

Like for a casserole.

And that is not the half of it.

Because what makes it the half of it is the two cinder blocks which I can see are already down in it when I go to put down the urn down in it, the hole.

And as for the other half?

This is the two workmen who come over from somewhere I wasn't ready for anybody to come over from and who put down two more cinder blocks on top of what I just put in.

You know what I mean when I say cinder blocks?

I mean those gray blocks of gray cement or of gray concrete that when they refer to them they call them cinder blocks and they've got holes in them for you to grab.

Four of those.

Whereas what I had always thought was that what they did with a grave was fill things back in it with what they took out.

Unless they had taken out cinder blocks out.

You can go ahead and relax now.

It is not necessary for you to lend yourself to any further effort to create particularities that I myself was not competent to render.

Except it would be a tremendous help for me if you would do your best to listen for the different sets of bumps the different sets of tires make when we all three of us pass over the little speed bump that makes everybody go slow before coming into and going out of the cemetery my family is in.

Three cars, six sets of tires — that's six bumps, I count six bumps and a total of twenty-six half-sandwiches — six sounds of hard cold rubber in February of 1986.

Or hear this — the rabbi's hands as he rubs the wheel to warm the wheel where he has come to have the habit of keeping his grip in place on the wheel when — to steer, to steer — the rabbi puts his hands on the wheel and thinks:

"Jesus shat."

That's it.

I'm finished.

Except to inform you of the fact that I got back to the city not via the Queens Midtown Tunnel but via the Queensboro Bridge since with the bridge you beat the toll, that and the fact that I went right ahead and sat myself down and started trying to picture some of the things which I have just asked you for you to picture for me, that and the fact that I had to fill in for myself where the holes were sometimes too big for anybody to get a good enough picture of them, the point being to get something written, the point being to get anything written, and then get paid for it, to get paid for it as much as I could get paid for it, this to cover the cost of Delta down and Delta back, Avis at their Sunday rate, plus extra for liability and collision.

One last thing — which is that no one told me.

So I just took it for granted that where it was supposed to go was go down in between them.

DON'T TELL ME. Do me a favor and let me guess. Be honest with me, tell the truth, don't make me laugh. Tell me, don't make me have to tell you, do I have to tell you that when you're hot you're hot, that when you're dead you're dead? Because you know what I know? I know you like I know myself, I know you like the back of my hand, I know you like a book, I know you inside out.

You know what?

I know you like you'll never know.

You think I don't know whereof I speak?

I know the day will come, the day will dawn.

Didn't I tell you you never know? Because I guarantee it, no one will dance a jig, no one will do a dance, no one will cater to you so fast or twiddle his thumbs or wait on you hand and foot.

You think they could care less?

But I could never get enough of it, I could never get enough. Look at me, I could take a bite out of it, I could eat it up alive. But you want to make a monkey out of me, don't you? You want me to talk myself blue in the face for you, beat my head against a brick wall for you, come running when you have the least little complaint. What am I, your slave? You won't be happy except over my dead body, will you? I promise you, one day you will sing a different tune.