Sol Stein - Other people

And so we went through them, Shushan Bedrossian, a very young somewhat pudgy girl. "Write down," he said, spelling the name, "write down she a cousin of a cousin from Zeytoon."

Then he said, "Your mother sometimes cry when I take that picture out to look at it. Jealous of dead girl. Have to look, to remember. When I poof, you have to keep these pictures, look at all the dead so they are in your memory for your children."

I did not speak to him about the chances of a forty-four-year-old bachelor continuing the family.

I must have written on the back of pictures for more than two hours, spelling out the Armenian names and the Turkish names and checking them with the old man to see that I got them right.

"We ought to get these into albums," I said.

"What for?" His anger at the idea seemed very important to him.

The stew he warmed up wasn't bad. We sat at the table in silence for a while, and then he pushed himself up with his arms and went for the stairs. He had only gone up one or two when he turned to me and said, "George, by my bed, three small bottles, big white pills, small white pills, pink pills. Bring pink pills."

I went up the stairs two at a time. His room was as messy as I had remembered it. On his bedside table there was a pharmacy of bottles. But three small ones were in front and apart from the rest. I tried to read the labels for hints as to his condition. I learned nothing.

Downstairs he said, "You take too long." He swallowed the pink pill with cold coffee. "Doctor terrible," he said. "Always new medicines. Gets kickback from drugstore."

"You could try another doctor."

"All crooks. All got drugstore kickbacks."

"What's wrong with you, Pop?"

"Too old."

"You're not old. Pop, by today's standards."

"I not today. I yesterday. Tired. Stairs hard, prick soft, no good."

"Maybe it'd be a good idea to come down to the city. I'd have you checked out at one of the good hospitals. How about it?"

"What for?"

"You have to know what's wrong. Doesn't the doctor tell you?"

"Tells me mumbo-jumbo. I tell him write it down for you."

He took a piece of paper out of the drawer. It said, "Arteriosclerosis." He was watching my face.

"You can live a long time with that. If you follow the doctor's rules."

"I follow my rules. I take pills okay when I remember. Just like you, George."

"Who chops the firewood?"

"Who you think? You think I crazy buy wood with trees all over?"

"You shouldn't do strenuous things."

"Bullshit. Pretty woman walk in here, take clothes off, I do what I do, who cares strain?" He laughed through his brown teeth. "I not dead yet. You send two women, okay too." He laughed again, gestured at the coffee pot.

"Does the doctor know you drink all that black coffee?"

"George, you nuts? I think I gonna call doctor four five times a day say okay I drink coffee now?"

I made tea for us both.

Then, sitting by the fire, he sang an Armenian song. It sounded like a lullaby.

"You no remember?" he asked.

I remembered my mother singing, not him.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"You getting old up here," he said, gesturing at his head. "How's your girl?" he said. "Better make sure you don't get old down there." And he was singing again. A love song, I think. I wish I had learned Armenian, however useless it was for dealing with the world.

When it was time to leave for the last plane from Syracuse to La-Guardia, I got him to promise that next time he would come and visit me, and stay as long as he wanted to. He didn't believe I meant it.

"I mean it," I said, and I kissed his rough cheek.

At the door, he steeled himself not to let his wet eyes run. "When I dead," he shouted after me, "you can put pictures in albums, okay?"

I have been neglecting Bill.

I have not been neglecting Bill. He doesn't interest me.

He is such a nice man.

George is not a nice man. He is an interesting man. Can't a nice man be interesting? I must ask Joan and Margaret, they're both married to such nice men.

I have been neglecting my sisters.

Joan and Margaret come in to town from their respective exurbias once each month to do Bloomingdale's, have a wicked two-cocktail lunch, take in a matinee, exchange gossip.

Dear Joan and Margaret, I thought I'd join you for lunch today. You are older, more experienced. Tell me, am I looking for trouble with George Thomassy, what do you think? I'm making him sound like a sheriff? Oh no, he's a lawyer, Gary Cooper Thomassy.

How old is he? Let's see now, Joan, your husband is two years older than you are, and Margaret, your husband is three years older than you are, and George Thomassy is seventeen years older than I am, isn't it obscene? Have I what, gone to bed with him? Now Joan, I haven't asked you about developments in your predicament, as you called it, does Bob still fall asleep in the middle of things? And Margaret, is Harvey still too shy to you-know-what? I see, you want to know if my lawyer friend and I are compatible, considering the difference in our ages and that he's an ethnic? Well, I enjoy his company afterwards, is that a good sign?

Is he successful? Mmmmm. I assume that's a money question. I don't know about his money, he has his eye on the process, not the destination. It's called drive. I have no idea what his annual income might be. He lives modestly compared to J. Paul Getty. By the way, did I tell you I was raped? I didn't? I don't suppose either of you have ever had the experience or you would have told us, I'm sure. A gas station owner in my case, not very classy. He's going to jail, if he's not already there.

Why thank you. Without sisters, who would wish me luck?

I don't believe in luck. Sometimes a fortunate coincidence comes along to help, but the engine isn't driven on luck. Virtue doth not beget its own rewards. I am not a cynic. I am a realist.

What in stupid hell is a realist doing getting in deep with a kid of twenty-seven?

She is not a kid. I hate to remember what I was like at twenty-seven.

She is demanding. I have no respect for rugs and dishrags in the form of people. I am demanding, why shouldn't she be?

What evidence, Your Honor, is there that she and I are right for each other?

Is it objectively verifiable that I'm happy when I'm with her and unhappy when I'm not with her?

Your Honor, that is circumstantial evidence, at best. Besides, I got restless as hell in the studio the other night.

I was not with her? A spectator, watching her? Your Honor, if she came to this court, she would be a spectator watching me in my arena.

Should lovers watch each other performing professionally? Their acts for the world are what?

Theater.

Your Honor, life happens offstage, in private, unnoticed by strangers.

I feel convicted. I didn't do anything. Your Honor. I request a stay of sentence.

I couldn't wait for my interview with Mr. Straws. That show with Butterball started a chain reaction in my head. For the first time, I had not been putting stuff together for others to use, but speaking my own mind, I loved it! If my vocation wasn't in broadcast, it had to be in something like it. Dealing with Butterball not in someone's drawing room but on the air, live, with people listening to me skewer him, gave me the biggest high I've ever had in a work situation. It wasn't work, it was play, and people got paid for it! And the notoriety was not incidental. My ego was flowering.

Straws's first name turned out to be Henry. He was wearing one of those suits with overly wide lapels and slanted pockets, Cardin or something Italian. He popped up from his chair and came around to shake hands enthusiastically. His shoes had tassels.