Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories (15 page)

Expecting

A local young man, still in high school, announced to his parents that his girlfriend was pregnant and that they intended to marry. His father, eager for his only child to attend a reputable university and major in genetic engineering, which field the father rightly believed held great potential for wealth and fame, grew angry at his son and insisted that the girl have an abortion. He demanded that his son go pick up the girl immediately so that he, the father, could tell her this in person.

The son obeyed, but unwillingly, and his emotional state when he left probably contributed to the terrible automobile accident he became involved in on the way, which killed him.

His girlfriend, in despair over the loss of her lover and reluctant to bring a fatherless child into the world, resolved to have an abortion after all. But when the young man’s father got wind of this, he phoned the girl and insisted that she carry the baby to term. The girl refused. The father then bribed the girl’s best friend in order to learn where and when the abortion was to take place, and was waiting at the clinic for the girl when she arrived.

According to eyewitnesses, the girl and the older man argued through the window of his car, and then the girl got in and the two argued further, perhaps for as long as thirty minutes. Eventually they pulled away from the clinic.

No one has seen either since, though the father, who we now can refer to as the grandfather, is said to have sent photographs of his grandson to certain acquaintances. It is also rumored that the young man’s girlfriend is once again expecting.

The Mothers

Local mothers banded together to exchange advice about and support for the difficult task, which they all shared, of balancing personal ambition and fulfillment with the demands of home and family. Their association was regarded as a great success, and a new sense of confidence and calm seemed to settle over our town, the likes of which had not previously been seen.

So fond of one another did area mothers become that they arranged to take a trip together, an ocean cruise. Area fathers rearranged their work schedules to accommodate the mothers, and prepared to emulate, while they were away, those qualities most commonly associated with the mothers.

While the mothers were gone, our town’s business both private and professional stopped entirely, and the streets filled up with fathers and children acting in a manner that encompassed not only fatherliness and childishness but motherliness as well. It was impossible to pin down exactly what behavior, speech or patterns of thought constituted this motherliness, yet all agreed that there was a surrogate motherliness in the air, neither as full nor as satisfying as the real thing, yet a fair substitute nonetheless.

When the mothers returned, their own inherent qualities had intensified, or perhaps it only seemed that way, as we had grown used to their absence. Whatever the case, this motherliness, combined with that which we had developed without them, created an excess, and emotions ran high for several weeks while we regained our equilibrium.

Though no one wishes to deprive the mothers of further associations, we all found this experience unsettling, and have asked them to refrain in the future from departing all at once. To this, the mothers have agreed, though not without some reluctance.

The Fathers

The fathers in our town began to worry that they were paying their children insufficient attention, so a coalition of concerned fathers arranged a picnic, to be held at our lakeside park, which all the fathers and their children were expected to attend. Those games traditionally played between fathers and children—baseball and football, for example—were organized; food, such as hot dogs and hamburgers, that children most commonly associated with their fathers, was cooked; and live entertainment determined to be fatherly in nature—specifically, a rock concert—was scheduled.

Few would argue that the fathers and children did not have a good time. Nevertheless, things did not go quite as planned. The children objected to the fathers’ participation in games, as their large size and superior skills upset the balance of play. The food, which the children especially savored, was refused by many fathers, who, concerned about their health, wished to avoid cholesterol, carbohydrates, or fat. And the rock concert, which addressed the generational gap by including both “oldies” and loud contemporary music, succeeded at neither, driving the children to the lakeside, where they threw rocks into the water and at one another, and pushing the fathers into little groups, where they discussed sports and drank beer.

When the picnic was over, some suggested that the very detachment from their children that the fathers displayed was a defining characteristic of fatherhood, and should be embraced, not discouraged. This suggestion was received with approval by fathers and children alike, and no further picnics are planned.

Sons

A prominent prewar writer, whose novels of manners sold briskly in their time, was notorious for his tumultuous personal life, in which he was said to have driven his wife to suicide and treated his only child, a son, with terrible cruelty. By the time he reached the age of fifty, the writer had stopped writing entirely, and fell into a prosperous but miserable retirement in a village not far from here, shunned by critics and forgotten by his readers.

Meanwhile, his son, who had fallen into delinquency and poor health early in life, recovered his civility during a two-year stay at a home for wayward boys, and began to learn the craft of writing himself. He published a series of angry and shocking novels that revealed, in fictional form, all the transgressions of his father, who consequently was catapulted back into the public consciousness, this time as a monstrous child abuser and wife-beater. The son’s novels, unlike his father’s, garnered enormous critical praise and countless literary awards, and were certain to endure, sealing his father’s ill reputation indefinitely.

In time the son himself had a son, and treated him with the utmost kindness and respect, allowing him all possible advantages and rarely, if ever, reprimanding him for any action regardless of how wayward or ill-mannered, with the intention of ensuring his own reputation as a benevolent parent. However, the child fell in with a bad crowd, and after his own period of incarceration grew up to make a series of well-received films documenting his life with an irresponsible and selfish father who lacked the courage to discipline his child.

This turn of events recently drove the critically acclaimed writer to suicide. His father, the forgotten writer, is himself still alive and in his late eighties, and we see him from time to time at the supermarket, thumping melons or examining tomatoes for bruises, like any regular old man. He is said to have altered his will so that his estate will be passed on to his grandson.

Different

My father died suddenly, before I had given serious thought to his mortality, let alone my own, and the effect upon me of his passing was a devastating and completely unexpected midlife crisis which, though no different from those experienced by any number of men and women my age, nevertheless convinced me that I was forever and drastically changed, with no hope of return to the confident days of my youth. I looked the same, but felt certain that my body was only a meaningless shell, the contents of which had been drained away.

The day after his funeral, I found myself hungry and sat at the kitchen table eating marinated olives from a disposable plastic tub. After a while I’d had enough of the olives’ saltiness and took from a bowl a ripe red plum. The plum had a small plastic sticker attached to it, printed with the product code used by the store, which I peeled off. I looked around for a place to put the sticker, and settled finally on the lid of the olive tub.

At this point I noticed an identical product code sticker on the lid, and remembered that I had done this very thing—followed a snack of olives with a juicy plum—just four days ago, only hours before I learned of my father’s death.

My midlife crisis continued for most of that year, but I believe that its severity was considerably lessened by this coincidence.

The Denim Touch

When my oldest daughter was a small child, I invented bedtime stories to lull her to sleep at night. Most of these stories were forgotten immediately, but a few she requested again and again, and to these I would add events and characters, extemporaneously extending them into small epics, the details of which my daughter could recall with fanatic specificity. One such story was called “The Denim Touch.”

The good king of a distant country, the story went, had a single daughter, whom he loved with all his heart. One day a prince came to ask for the daughter’s hand. To win the good king’s favor, the prince gave him a magical candlestick that, if rubbed in conjunction with a strange incantation, would enable its bearer to turn anything he wished into denim. The king accepted the gift and gave his blessing for their marriage. But at the wedding, the king danced with his daughter and, under the candlestick’s power, inadvertently turned her into denim. The heartbroken prince took up his denimed bride and from then on roamed the countryside, wearing her like a suit, mourning her tragic transformation. The story then became episodic, as the prince sought some way to restore the princess to her original form.