Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation Read online

“Adam?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Okay, listen very carefully. Your mother bought a new cereal that’s the best cereal I ever had in my life. It fortifies your whole body. You’ll never eat another cereal again once you’ve had this. It’s like eating a whole meal. In fact, I’m gonna have another bowl after we hang up.”

  “Wow, what’s the name of it?”

  “The name of what?”

  “The cereal. What’s it called?”

  Brief pause. Obscure questions like this annoyed my father.

  To himself: “Uh . . . what the hell. What’s the goddamn thing called?” Then to me: “It’s got a hell of a box. You should see all the literature on the back. It’s very educational. It tells you everything about the human body. I’m just trying to remember the name of the damn thing . . . wait, hold on.”

  Muffled crushing sound. His “massive hands” (as he referred to them) were slaughtering the mouthpiece.

  “Joyce?”

  Beat.

  “Joyce?”

  Another beat.

  “JOYCE!”

  My mother, responding from a cave in Tora Bora, issued an unintelligible squawk.

  “Adam’s on the phone! He wants to know the name of that cereal!”

  “Arrayrrrkkkk?” It was impossible to understand her. She was in the other room and the TV was blaring.

  “The name of that cereal you bought!”

  We were getting close to launch.

  “Warrakkaa?”

  “THE CEREAL! WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE FUCKING CEREAL?”

  Liftoff.

  “GODDAMN IT, DO I HAVE TO BUY A FUCKING BULLHORN TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU? OR SHOULD I SEND UP SMOKE SIGNALS?”

  He wearily apprised me of the situation: “Your poor mother’s deaf as a fucking doornail, you know that, right? She makes Helen Keller look like a Rhodes Scholar.” (Ostensibly suggesting that Helen Keller, along with her other difficulties, was retarded.)

  Another yap from the cave. Merv responded in kind.

  “NOT CREAM OF WHEAT! JESUS CHRIST, JOYCE! THE FUCKING CEREAL YOU BOUGHT THIS AFTERNOON! CAN YOU REMEMBER BACK THAT FAR?”

  To me: “She won’t be happy till she blows my voice box out. If you want to know the truth, she’d love to kill me. Then she can eat all the cereal she wants with her next husband. Hold on, let me get the box.”

  He dropped the phone on the counter. It slid off and bounced on the floor a few times. I heard the sound of slamming cabinet doors and a snatch of conversation as my mother entered the room.

  Joyce: “Calm down. It’s right over there—two feet in front of your face.”

  Merv: “If your fucking brother wanted the cereal, you’d have it airlifted to him.”

  Joyce: “My brother doesn’t eat cereal.”

  Some more rustling as the receiver made its bumpy pilgrimage back to his hand.

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got it right here. Just hold on . . .”

  Beat.

  “Let me look at this fucking thing . . .”

  Pause.

  “Okay, you there?”

  “I am.”

  “It’s called . . . [slightly out of breath] . . . Frosted Mini-Wheats.”

  • • •

  Approximately six weeks later, the telltale ring sounded again. My startled telephone, frantic and disoriented, jumped up and threw a pepper grinder through the kitchen window. I ran in and lunged for the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Adam?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Now I want you to listen to me. You there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mother bought some cookies today from Pathmark, and without any bullshit, it’s gotta be the best cookie I ever had in my life. They can’t keep ’em on the shelves.”

  “Wow, really?”

  “Anyone who buys another cookie oughta have their fucking head examined.”

  “What are they called?”

  Silence.

  “Uh . . . Christ, I just had ’em here . . .”

  Beat.

  “Joyce?”

  Nothing.

  “Joyce!”

  Silence.

  “JOYCE!”

  From the other room: “Brayaak!”

  “What’s the name of those cookies?”

  No response.

  “The cookies you bought today! What are they called?”

  “Brayaak?”

  A beleaguered sigh gusts into my earpiece. “Adam, you have no idea what I go through in a single day. She’s so fucking deaf. It wears me out. I can only take so much.”

  One more attempt.

  “THE COOKIES! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE NAME OF THE COOKIE? FROM PATHMARK!”

  He’s back to me: “I was better off when I had bladder cancer. See, she’s got those Weissman genes. They’re all deaf . . . their hips go out . . . their knees go out. Her whole family’s held together with Scotch tape.”

  “What about her new hearing aids?”

  “Worthless. I feel sorry for the poor things. It’s like trying to blast through concrete. Plus, she loses ’em all the time. See, it’s a whole process here. I’m telling you, the average man couldn’t take what I take.”

  My mother entered the room.

  “Why are you yelling? You know I can’t hear you from back there.”

  “You couldn’t hear me if we were Siamese twins locked in a trunk.”

  “Don’t give me nightmares.”

  “Look, I have Adam on the phone. He’s in New York, okay? We’re both tired and neither of us has time for this bullshit. What the hell are those new cookies called?”

  “They’re right there on the counter.”

  “How did they end up there?”

  “That’s where you put them.”

  “Oh. Okay”—into the receiver—“Adam, hold on a second.”

  He released the phone. Based on the sound I heard, it plummeted three thousand feet and landed on an oil drum. A bit of faint chatter followed.

  Merv: “Where the hell were you hiding—the east wing? It’s a fucking town house.”

  Joyce: “I was watching television. Next time walk in the room. You don’t have to shout all the time.”

  Merv: “What’s so important on television?”

  Joyce: “Larry King.”

  Merv: “Jesus Christ, how can you watch that asshole?”

  Joyce: “I like his guests.”

  Merv: “He looks like a fucking hemorrhoid.”

  Joyce: “Here, just take your cookies.”

  Rustling, a muffled word or two, the sound of a bag hitting the floor.

  Merv: “Goddamn it! Hand me the fucking thing next time! I’m twenty feet away from you!”

  Joyce: “I did. You dropped it.”

  Merv: “Ahh, go back to your box. Put on some cartoons, you’ll like that.”

  Determined footsteps approached the phone and the receiver was reeled out of a gypsum quarry.

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You still there?”

  “Yup.”

  Crinkling paper in the background.

  “Okay, I got the bag right here . . . where’s the name of the goddamn things . . .”

  More crinkling.

  “Just sit tight.”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay, wait a second . . . you ready?”

  “Yessir.”

  “All right, the name of the cookies are . . .”

  Crinkle.

  “Chip Ahoy . . . Chunky.”*

  • • •

  A few weeks passed. It was evening. A series of pitched tones discharged from my new telephone—a stoic no-nonsense model that comported itself in a detached, almost businesslike manner.

  “Adam?”

  “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”

  “Do you have a minute?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Okay, well, your mother and I have
decided we want to die together. I don’t want to get morbid or anything, I’m just—did I interrupt your dinner?”

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  “Listen, we’ve been together a long time. I could never live without this woman. If, God forbid, she goes first, I’ll blow my head off. I’m not trying to be dramatic—I’m just letting you know.”

  “Well, we don’t have to think about this yet.”

  “And if I go first, I can promise you, she won’t last long. She’ll will herself to die. When you get to be our age, the bullshit’s over. The best is behind you. There’s no reason to—are you sure you’re not eating?”

  “Positive.”

  “Okay, now, point two: no fucking funeral and no Jews. We want to be cremated and we want to go in the lake. You know, the lake behind the neighborhood here.”

  “Right, I know.”

  “I want you to be the honcho on this.”

  “Okay.”

  “So here’s how it works: Whoever dies first, they get incinerated and put in the closet. When the second one goes, mix us together and put us in the lake. Now, if your mother goes first, be patient, because I’ll blow my head off.”

  “We won’t have to deal with this for a long time . . .”

  “And I want the cat in there too.”

  “You want the cat in where?”

  “I want the cat cremated and mixed in with us.”

  “Oh. So Mom’s okay with that?”

  “Hey, she knows what that cat means to me. Here, ask her yourself.”

  He called for my mother.

  “Joyce!”

  A hush.

  “Joyce!”

  Radio silence.

  “JOYCE!”

  She hollered back from the laundry room: “What?”

  “Adam’s on the phone! Tell him about the cat!”

  “What about the cat?”

  “The ashes! When we’re dead!”

  “I don’t care! Whatever makes you happy!”

  Merv (to me): “Did you hear that, Adam?”

  Me: “Yup. Sounds like she rubber-stamped it.”

  My father chuckled and called out to her again: “Adam said you rubber-stamped it!”

  Joyce: “I stamped what?”

  Merv: “The cat!”

  Joyce: “What about the cat?”

  Merv: “Never mind! It’s like talking to the fucking lamp!” To me: “I told you she lost her hearing aid again, didn’t I? They have a shrine to her at the hearing aid factory. Listen, once we’re all dead, mix me, your mother, and the cat together. Then put us in the lake. Right by the birdfeeders.”

  I heard footsteps in the background.

  “Here comes Seattle Slew. They built the Panama Canal in the time it takes her to move her ass from one room to the other.”

  Joyce: “Can’t you walk back to me instead of yelling?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Joyce, I’m telling Adam about the lake!” Back to me: “Adam, by the way, remember—no ceremony and no Jews.”

  I egged him on a bit for my own amusement.

  “But Pop, you don’t want to insult your fellow congregants, do you? What will they say at the temple?”

  “Fuck them and the temple.”

  Still having fun with it: “But, Daddy, I always heard Jews stuck together.”

  “Whoever told you that’s been reading too many comic books. If I told you half the shit I went through growing up, you’d vomit.”

  My mother picked up the other phone: “Not all Jewish people are like that. Adam, don’t get him started.”

  It was too late.

  “They basically killed my grandfather. Can you imagine? He was one of the most respected rabbis in Russia, and he gets over here and has to work in a fucking butcher shop.”

  “Unbelievable,” I commented on the oft-told story.

  “We were so fucking poor I had rickets. My sister too. We couldn’t afford milk. And he’s killing chickens in a butcher shop. See, the European Jews looked down on the Russian Jews.”

  “Did the Russian Jews stick together at least?”

  “Maybe in outer space. These bastards, they’d come in to pick up their chickens from my grandfather and it was always the same shit [mimicking a Yiddish accent]: ‘This is not my chicken. The chicken I brought you was much larger than this chicken.’”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “All day long. ‘This is not my chicken.’ I would’ve shoved the chicken up their ass.”

  Joyce: “I bet you never heard that one before, Adam.”

  “Well, it’s interesting. It clearly had an effect on Dad.”

  “Then they made me get rid of my dog. [Yiddish accent]: ‘A shochet should not have animals in the house. Animals are dirty.’ Meanwhile, their fucking beards are full of—aw, fuck it.”

  “Crazy.”

  “That dog was the only friend I had.”

  Joyce: “Well, that’s how they were back then. They were old-fashioned.”

  Merv: “I got no use for any of ’em.”

  Me: “Sucks.”

  Merv: “So, make sure we’re mixed together real good, the cat too. I don’t know how you do it, but you’ll find some literature.”

  Me: “So you’re okay with the cat, Mom?”

  Joyce: “If it makes your father happy.”

  Merv: “Listen, Adam, we’ve only been married sixty years. If that’s not love, everyone can go fuck themselves. I mean, next to us, Romeo and Juliet were a couple of assholes.”

  Joyce: “Can’t you find a nicer way of saying it?”

  Merv: “We were just kids, for Christ’s sake. All the Jews said it wouldn’t last. They said she was pregnant. Meanwhile, we’re still together and they’re all dead.”

  Me: “It’s quite a love story.”

  “I almost had a heart attack the first time I laid eyes on your mother she was so beautiful. I didn’t have a penny to my name. She’s gotta be the kindest human being who ever lived.”

  Me: “I agree.”

  “She makes Jesus Christ look like a prick.”

  Joyce: “That’s awful. Don’t say that.”

  “Adam, let me put it to you this way—if anyone ever touched her, I’d put ’em in the fucking cemetery.”

  “You always made that clear.”

  “So, listen, the next time you’re in town I’ll show you the spot. You know the lake behind the buildings? Right by the big tree there. Just dump us in.”

  “Okay, but there’s no rush. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  “Look, the Bible, if you go for that crap, says threescore and ten, so I already got ’em fucked by nine. I don’t have to be a pig about it.”

  “Yeah, I guess . . .”

  “But I will not live without your mother.”

  “I understand.”

  A pause. Some decompression. The topic had run its course.

  Me: “Anyway, what else is new? Still eating those Frosted Mini-Wheats?”

  Merv: “Eating what?”

  “That cereal you like.”

  “What cereal?”

  “Frosted Mini-Wheats—you know, those little shredded wheat things. They fortify your whole body. Remember?”

  “Oh, those. Ha. No, those are pure shit.”

  “Wow. Seems like you were just telling me not that long ago how much you liked them.”

  “Well, I used to believe in Santa Claus, too.”

  A Fork in the Midway

  The infant was born on the cusp of winter as dawn rose on the twentieth century. Its sick jangly cry whipped across the frigid river and twisted its way through the mills and factories where, for a heartbeat, production of steel and aluminum seemed to halt. Outside the tiny house, a passerby might have observed distressed figures swimming in the dull yellow light behind the soiled window. They hovered around him, frightened and praying, as the broken little boy struggled to prove himself worthy of life.

  Some time later, far away, another child entered the world. Fleshy and full of
want, it sang out, strong and greedy, as if it hoped to devour the earth itself. Those in attendance conveyed obligatory smiles and bland compliments to the exhausted mother. Yet there was an uneasiness in the room. No one dared speak of it, but these were clearly the cries of an asshole.

  My tenth-grade American History class was informed that we would be missing the second half of school on Tuesday to watch a threshing machine demonstration at the York Fair. Within moments of the announcement, I’d already formulated a plan: I would sneak off from the group and go to the freak show. In a weak moment, I invited Roy Hatcher to come along, but he balked—not because he feared getting caught, but because he felt it was wrong. Roy Hatcher, apparently, was in school to learn—and skipping off to see people with birth defects was not his idea of a good time. I had to shake my head. Just another shallow fuck who didn’t get it.

  I was mad about freaks in those days, absorbing every poetic metaphor and lofty allegory that writers of freak books tossed my way. They were indeed “very special people,” and I—a perfectly healthy albeit freakishly pale-skinned boy from the gritty pastures of Pennsylvania Dutch Country—related to them. I, too, was an outcast: I saw things differently! Felt things more deeply! I refused to run with the pack, and the pack had no interest in running with me. (I forget which came first.) And if all that wasn’t divergent enough, I didn’t like the movie Animal House.

  My true place, I was convinced, was among my brethren in the congress of living curiosities, and a trip to the York Fair was my pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I never missed a season back then and consider myself privileged to have met some of the greats in their twilight years: Esther the Alligator Girl, conjoined twins Ronnie and Donnie, Toad Boy Otis Jordan (who later tinkered with his act and rechristened himself “The Human Cigarette Factory”), and how could I forget the talkative black midget in a pinstripe suit whose name escapes me (as the names of midgets often do), who in one long exhale took me through his entire career—from his days of dancing on the sidewalk for chestnuts to appearing on the great vaudeville stages alongside such notables as Sophie Tucker and “Sleep ’n’ Eat.” (A career virtually identical to that of a white midget I once met who also danced for chestnuts and worked with Sophie Tucker and Percy Kilbride from the Ma and Pa Kettle films.)

  But it’s all gone now. Disability groups, handicap associations, and other like-minded busybodies have succeeded in closing the sideshows down, armed with nothing more than common sense and a just cause. Walk into a “Human Oddity” tent these days and what passes for a freak is probably a guy without tattoos who abhors social media.