Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

But where is the truth in any of this?

I cannot prove Balzano and his son were not liars.

Who is to say what Balzano's name was before it was Balzano? And the son, what of him? Great Jesus, who's to say the fellow wasn't adopted?

Fellow!

Why fellow?

How fellow?

This Balzano, could not the swindler have elected to change a sex or make an offspring up!

No, I cannot tell you the true story of my father's shoes. I withdraw the statement of my ambition to do so. It was foolish to have boasted of such a project. Such a project is not projectable. Indeed, it may even be that I cannot tell you anything true of anything, save — irrelevantly — to remark that when he succumbed — I mean, of course, my father — I came to have his wristwatch and that it is an Audemars Piguet wristwatch and that it is said to be possessed of such properties as to fetch — appraiser after appraiser so stated to me when I took the object around to them to make my aggrieved inquiries — just shy of $18,000.

Oh, but no again!

I just thought of something.

With respect to my father's shoes, it just this instant occurred to me that there is a little tale I might disclose to you and which could at least have the look of verifiability enough.

This:

That I would take a very good square of flannel to my father's shoe closet to take the dust from the shoes therein, this to show the sign of my devotion to him.

After school and before he came home.

Undoing all of the laces to a depth of three sets of eyelets so as to enhance my labor's not going without the small prospect of being at least a little noticed.

It exhausted me, and exhausted it — the playtime of my childhood — this activity of my youth.

Hours, so many hours.

I suppose.

It does not please me that I lost them.

So do not ask me what time it is.

He is dead and I will be no more nimble.

But will have darkened, and preserved, the name.

I LIVE IN A BIG BUILDING and my son lives in a big building, so I meet all kinds and I hear what I hear. And why not, why shouldn't I listen? I am a person with such an interesting life I couldn't afford to be interested in someone else's? They talk, I pay attention — even if when they are all finished I sometimes have to say to myself, "The deaf don't know how good they got it. The deaf, please God they should live and be well, I say they got no complaint coming."

Take years ago, this particular lady — we are sitting biding our time down there in my boy's place, the room in the basement they got set aside for the convenience of the laundry of tenants.

Some convenience.

Who is a tenant?

I am not a tenant.

This lady is not a tenant.

What is the case here is our children, they are the tenants — my boy, her girl — and theirs are the things which are in the washing machines and are in the dryers and why it is that I and the lady in question are sitting in a terrible dirtiness waiting. So pee ess, it's two total strangers twiddling their thumbs in a room in a basement down underneath a big building, when what you hear from one of these people — not from me, should you be worrying, but from her — when you hear from this woman I just mentioned a noise like she wants you to think it's her last.

You know.

You have heard.

It is the one which, give us time, we all hear — because who doesn't, just give yourself time, in the long run finally make it?

So I naturally say to the woman, "What? What?"

And the woman says to me, "Do yourself a favor — you don't want to know."

That's it for the preliminaries.

Here is what comes next.

SHE SAYS, "YOU — you got a son — don't worry, I know, I know — and don't think I don't also know what you are going through, either — because I know — I got eyes — I see, I know — so you don't have to tell me anything — you don't have to breathe one word — I am a woman with eyes in my head for me to see for myself, thank you — so no one has to tell me what the score is — believe me, your heartache is your own affair — but so just so you know I know — with him you got plenty, with him you got all anyone should ever have to handle — but I say just go count your lucky blessings anyway — because I got worse — because there is worse in the world than a window dresser for a son — because there is worse in the world than a delicate child — sure, sure, don't tell me, I heard, I heard — and don't think my heart does not go out to you, bad as I got plenty worse of my own — a daughter, not a son — a daughter — Doris — Deedee — forty-odd and still all alone in the world — and for why, for why? — not that someone is claiming the girl is any Venus de Milo — but so who is, who is? — and is this the be-all and end-all, to be so gorgeous they all come running? — believe me, she is some catch for the right boy — for a boy which knows which end is up, this is a girl which is some terrific catch for such a boy — but shy? — a shyness like this you could not even fathom — a shyness like this, who knows how it develops? — even to me, to the mother herself, it is not fathomable, I can tell you — so a rash, a rash — like a dryness even, like not like even a rash but just a dryness, I'm telling you — the skin here — the cheeks here — so like it is not exactly appetizing to look at this child at certain periods of the season, if you know what I am saying to you — but so what is this? — is this the end of the world, is this the worst tragedy I could cite to you, a little dryness the child could always rub something into and who would notice? — but skip it — the girl is mortified — the girl is humiliated — the girl is total mortification not to mention humiliation itself — because in Deedee's eyes, forget it, this is all there is, because in the whole wide world there is nothing else but the child's complexion, the child's skin — so it flakes a little, so it sheds a little, so for this life should come to a halt — you don't give them a special invitation, does anyone notice? — no one notices — who cares? — no one cares — no one even sees — dry skin, you think people don't look and see character first? — first, last, and always what they see is what is a person's worth first — but who can tell her? — who can reason with her? — it is nothing, absolutely nothing, the very mildest of conditions — but for Deedee, forget it — for her it is curtains — that shy, that bashful, ashamed of her own shadow — so could you get her to be a little social? — you couldn't get her to budge for nothing — God forbid someone should have eyes in his head — a little nothing here — where I am showing you — makeup would cover it up so who could even notice? — but does this please her? — nothing pleases her — her own company pleases her — a movie every other week, this is for Deedee a big adventure, this is for my forty-odd daughter the romance in this life — but for me, if you want to know, from just when for two seconds I think about it, my child alone for all her life, I could cut my throat for her from ear to ear — forget boyfriend — does the girl have a friend even? — because the girl has nothing — the girl has her complexion to look at — forget a nice decent marriage to a nice decent boy — and just to add insult to injury, what with so many of them deciding to be boys like yours is, where even are the high hopes anymore for a decent healthy girl of forty-odd anymore? — but meanwhile is it too much to ask that for my Doris there should be at least a companion to travel the road of life with? — because, I ask you, doesn't everybody have a right to somebody? — but her, she wouldn't even go out looking, God forbid somebody should see a little redness, a little dryness, some peeling where if she only used a good moisturizer on herself and did it on a regular basis with some serious conscientiousness, I promise you, the whole condition would disappear quicker than you could snap your little finger — but her — her! — who can talk to her? — my Deedee — my Doris — God love her — but just thank God the story at her office it is a different story entirely — just thank God at her place of business they couldn't get enough of her — always Doris this and Doris that — I am telling you, they are devoted to the girl — devoted — what they wouldn't do for her — like you wouldn't believe it, but just this last Christmas they send her off for seven days gratis — not one red penny does the girl have to reach into her own pocket for — the whole arrangement is already all bought and paid for — the whole arrangement, to coin an expression, is signed, sealed, and delivered — and not Atlantic City neither, mind you, but where but Acapulco — Acapulco! — this is how indispensable to these people this child of mine happens to certain individuals to be — all expenses paid, every red nickel — first class from start to finish — the best — bar none — so when I hear this, I say to myself, ‘God willing, the child will get away, it will be a change of pace, a nice change of scenery, et cetera, et cetera — and who knows but that maybe a little romantic interlude for her is just around the corner — after all, a nice resort, a nice hotel, these Latin fellows, whatever'—but now I have to laugh — you heard me — laugh! — because you think Deedee does not come back worse than when she went? — go think again — this is why I am here where you see me right now — this is why I have to be here to do for her and to do for her — the wash, the cleaning, the shopping, whatever — with my legs, you see these legs? — twice a week, from Astoria, I have to come in all the way on my legs from Astoria — but thank God the girl has a mother who can still wait on her hand and foot — because thanks to Acapulco, look who's got on her hands a nervous wreck for a daughter — you heard me, a total bundle of nerves — but utterly — but utterly — say boo to the child, she jumps from here to there — and you know what? — I don't blame her — you wouldn't neither — when you hear what you will hear, believe me, you would not believe it neither — upstairs up there in her apartment up there and just sits around all the time listless, no color in her face, a figment of her former self — would she go outside for just some air? — goes to the bathroom and that's it and that's it — who even knows if she goes and makes her business when I her mother am not here? — me!—coming in all the way from Astoria — with legs like these! — if you could believe it, not once but twice a week — you heard me, twice!"