30 Pieces of a Novel

Seeing His Father

HE RARELY SAW his father walking alone on the street. Rather, he saw him only once like that — he thinks it was only once — coming up the block they lived on while he was going down it. He forgets how old he was. No, sort of remembers. No, remembers. It was his eleventh birthday. It all comes back, or a lot of it, though it’s come back before but not for years. He was going down the block to buy something with the money someone had sent him in a birthday card, when he saw his father walking up it. It was early in the afternoon for his father to be coming home from work, he must have thought. No, couldn’t have thought that, because it was Saturday. It had to be. His father on weekdays never got home till six-thirty and lots of times not till seven or eight, and on Saturdays he only worked till noon or one. And Gould’s birthday doesn’t fall on any national or important religious holiday. What he means there is that his father didn’t have a day off that day because the place he worked at was closed for a holiday. Also, his father couldn’t have just taken a day off on his own, since he claimed never to have missed a day of work in his life till he was in his mid-sixties and had become too feeble from his Parkinson’s to go in anymore. “I might’ve gone to work feeling like hell a few times before that — flu, a bad cold — and certainly plenty of times the year before the disease forced me to retire. But if there was still a slight chance to make a buck that day without my being so dizzy and weak that I’d fall on the subway tracks, I didn’t want to lose it.” So it had to be a regular Saturday when he saw him on the street, since stores weren’t open then on Sundays, the kind of stores he’d buy something for himself in, and the mail, of course, except special delivery, wasn’t delivered on Sunday. By that he means he got the birthday card through regular delivery that morning and went down the block a few hours later to buy something with the five-dollar gift. Or just a couple of hours after he got the card, as the mail usually never came before eleven and his father never got home on Saturdays before half-past twelve or one. Anyway, it was when he was walking down the block with the money that he saw his father coming up it. He first saw him from a distance of around three hundred feet. This, at least, is the way he sees it in his head now, when he counts all the buildings between them and multiplies each by twenty-five feet. They were on the same sidewalk, the north one their five-story brownstone adjoined, and he thought, or something like, This is the first time I’ve seen my father on the street like this. No, is it? Yes, I really can’t remember it ever happening before. When they got close enough to talk — he must have waved while they were moving toward each other or his father did and he waved back, and no doubt both of them were smiling — his father said, “Where’re you off to?” and he said, “To buy something. Aunt So-and-so (he forgets which aunt but remembers it was one on his mother’s side, a sister or widowed sister-in-law) sent me five dollars for my birthday.” “When’s that?” and he said, “You know when it is: today.” “No, I didn’t; your mother’s the one who keeps tabs on that, and she didn’t tell me. I knew it fell on the seventh of some month, but I thought August.” “Today’s May eighth, my birthday. I’m eleven. But you’re kidding me, aren’t you?” and his father said, “Honestly, I’m not. Okay, I am. And I would’ve congratulated you and given you your eleven birthday whacks this morning, but you were still sleeping when I left for work. Good, you should; you need the sleep; your eyes got bags under the bags. So, happy birthday, my little kid,” and approached him with his hand raised as if he were going to paddle him, and Gould stepped back and said, “I’ m too old for that, and no matter how soft you think you’re hitting, it can hurt.” “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to do it. So, five bucks. That’s a lot of dough. Think I can put the touch on you for some of it?” and he said, “You have your own money, and you don’t have to give me any allowance this week.” “Deal. Try not to blow it all at once; save some for another day.” “Maybe I’ll save some and only spend half,” and his father said, “Good compromise.” “What’s that?” and his father said, “You’re eleven and you don’t know? A useful word. Look it up in the dictionary when you get home. But don’t buy a dictionary with the money; we already have a good one you can use,” and ruffled his hair or kissed the top of his head or did something like that — clutched his shoulder and shook it — since he never let him go without some affectionate handling, and continued home, and Gould went to the avenue where the stores were.

Was it really the first time he saw his father on the street like that? Remember it again. Going down (must have been very happy), father coming up. Between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, sees his father on the sidewalk (height, girth, way he walked, and what he wore, sort of slumped and always in a fedora and suit when he went to work and a couple of newspapers — crumpled up, but that he couldn’t see from where he was — under his arm and carrying a sample case), some ten to twelve buildings away so almost half a block, and thinks something like, just as all the conversation before was only probable and something like: This is the first time I’ve seen him like this outside, that I can remember. Where he’s alone and I’m looking at him from some far-off distance or just from a lot of feet away. Of course he saw him other times on the street. In all those years? Had to. From his second-story bedroom window: his father climbing the four steps from the areaway to the sidewalk, maybe turning around at the top to look up at him, if he knew he was there or was just hoping he was, and wave. That’s a nice thought: his father hoping he was there. But he thinks he’s more imagining than remembering that scene, since the two can easily get mixed up. But this had to be: when it was still light out and he was playing in the street with friends: stickball, stoopball, punchball, Chinese handball against a building’s wall, Capture the Flag, games like that, or just Running Bases — between the sewers, as they called them, though they were actually manhole covers — and it was around seven or half-past and his mother hadn’t called him in for dinner yet. When he sees his father, watching him from the sidewalk. “Having fun?” he says, when Gould looks at him. “Yes, thanks.” “Had your supper?” “No,” and knows what’s coming next. “Well, sorry to spoil your fun and maybe ruin the game for your friends, but it’s around dinnertime, so you’ll have to come in.” That’s how he’d say it and what he’d do. And that had to have happened a number of times when his father was coming home from work, but he doesn’t remember it. How about just his father watching him and his friends from the sidewalk but not saying anything and then continuing home alone and for a few seconds Gould looking at him? No, though that had to have happened a few times too.

His father drove them to a football game just over the bridge in New Jersey — the old Brooklyn Dodgers football team, he thinks. They sat on the sideline on a special bench set up for them, though he doesn’t know how his father got it and doesn’t remember asking him. After the game, some man — he thinks it was the coach of one of the teams — introduced Gould to some of the players. He doesn’t know where his father knew this man from, if that’s how it came about — there could have been other ways (his father was often initiating conversations with strangers and getting friendly with new people and they had sat fairly close to one of the teams’ benches) — nor how they had even come to go to the game. His father wasn’t interested in any sport but boxing. He’d been an amateur boxer while in high school and had once bought, before he got married, a piece of a featherweight and helped manage him. (“A bum. Lost four out of four, had a teacup for a jaw, and for each bout wanted us to buy him new trunks, gloves, and a bathrobe with his name on it. A bad investment, though my partners were the right kind of guys, so we had some fun.”) Did he buy the football tickets or get them free but choose to use them because he knew Gould would like seeing a professional football game? Again, nice thought and something Gould would have liked to have happened, but not something his father ever did. He also went to the fights with him in St. Nicholas Arena — only ten blocks from their building. They sat somewhere way up; there was lots of smoking and shouting and betting going on right in front of them and plenty of money being exchanged and the place smelled of cigars, and they left after the third or fourth fight, maybe because it was getting close to Gould’s bedtime. So why’d his father take him in the first place? Especially when he liked boxing so much — went to the fights at St. Nick about once every other week — and would no doubt miss the main event. Maybe the main event was between a couple of palookas, as his father called them, so he didn’t mind missing it. Or he’d bought an extra ticket or had been given one and couldn’t get anyone else to go with him on such short notice and didn’t want to waste it — hated to waste anything: paper bag he took his lunch in, wax paper he wrapped the sandwich in, sometimes even half the sandwich if he didn’t finish it and which he’d take to work the next day — so he asked Gould. That’d be more like it, taking him as a last resort, even if he probably knew Gould wouldn’t like the fights or atmosphere they were held in — all that smoke and foul air. He hated it when his father puffed an occasional cigar at home, worse were his mother’s constant cigarettes; he’d frantically wave the smoke away and sometimes open the window if they were both smoking at the same time. “Close that!” his father would say. “What’re we heating the house for if you’re going to freeze it back up? And don’t be such a sissy with the smoke. It’s one of the facts of life you have to learn to live with, and two gets you five you wind up smoking cigarettes or cigars yourself. Nah, you’ll be a pipe man — I can see it now; a definite refined pipe type.” Or maybe he was hoping Gould would like the fights and want to go with him again. “Like father, like son,” he could then say, something he never did and might never even have had the opportunity to, as far as Gould can remember. That true? Too much to think back about; he’d be exploring his mind forever. Though he was at first excited at going to the fights but disappointed once they began. He couldn’t see much from where they were sitting: people jumping up in front of him or just standing, arms waving, and the distance to the ring. And something about the place—“a real joint,” as his father would say: the noise, smells, smoke, cursing, and catching every now and then the boxers pounding each other, and their spit and sweat flying off — made him feel sick. (“I’m sorry, but I want to go home; I’m not feeling well.” “Wait. This is only the second fight. Try to hold out a little longer; you’ll feel better. And if it’s only that you got to make, I’ll take you to the boys’ room when the bell rings or you can run back and find it yourself now. It’s safe enough; there are plenty of cops.”) He also took him to a movie of a Shakespeare play — one with several battles, or at least one big one, and dark skies and English accents and long boring speeches he couldn’t understand — shown in a Broadway stage theater for some reason. And to a play version of Alice in Wonderland—lots of gauzy curtains and a pretty blonde who played Alice but looked to be around twenty — in Columbus Circle when there were still theaters there. His father didn’t like anything on stage but musicals and Yiddish theater — Gould went with him to one of those too and didn’t make out a word but shiksa, shaygets, shmendrick, and putz, or words like that, used around the house, and his father was too busy laughing or didn’t want to miss anything onstage to translate or interpret for him when he asked, so why’d he take him? Again: free tickets, his mother didn’t want to go, and he was unable to get anybody else, so instead of wasting the second ticket he took Gould? But he’s getting away from what he was thinking before, and that’s that with all these events they either walked, drove, or took the subway or bus, so he never, with any of them, got to see his father walking on the street alone from any distance except close up.

He once thought he saw his father on the subway when they were both coming home from work. He wanted to shout, “Dad, Dad!” but there was a earful of people between them, so he made his way to him. It was a man about the same age, height, and build of his father, wearing the same kind of fedora he wore and in the same way, brim pulled down over most of his forehead, and reading the same large afternoon newspaper his father read when he rode the subway home, and folded to one-quarter its width and held straight up about six inches from his face, but in a sport jacket and open-neck shirt, clothes his father never wore to work: even when he went in only to do paperwork it was always in a suit and tie which, no matter how hot the street and subway were, didn’t come off or get loosened till he got home. They worked near each other in the Garment District for a couple of years when Gould was in high school, his father selling linings to women’s coat-and-suit houses, he pushing a handcart through the streets for a blouse company and then one that made belts for cheap dresses and then another that only made skirt crinolines and, when they went out of style, other lingerie. Sometimes when he got off work late he’d go to his father’s office, usually wait around awhile doing his homework, and then go home with him. When they got near the subway turnstiles his father, coins already in his hand, would scoot in front of him and pay both their fares. They’d stand or sit together during the ride, Gould sometimes reading the newspaper article his father was on but not as fast, so he usually missed some of it when his father turned the paper over or continued it on another page. If there was only one seat available, his father would urge him to sit—“You’ve had a long day at school and work and you never get enough sleep, and you still got your homework to finish and dinner to eat and then to help your mother clean up after”—but he always made his father take it: “It’s good exercise for me, standing…. I like looking around at other people from this position, and you can read your paper better from a seat,” and so on, for he could see his father was tired — he was overweight by now, way out of shape and always seemed beat when he came home — and really wanted to sit. “I’ll hold your books on my lap then.” They’d leave the station and walk home, but again it wasn’t seeing his father from any big distance, walking up or down a block or from anyplace that way outside. That, he’s almost positive, only happened the one time he mentioned.

There he is, the hat, the suit, the tie — when it got cold, a long topcoat and muffler — carrying his case of swatches, everything buttoned and always an undershirt, no matter how hot. (His underpants — he occasionally went in and out of the bathroom or around the apartment in them — the Jockey kind, and they always seemed loose, one of his balls hanging out.) Downtown, walking on the street together. “Can I carry it for you?” “Nah, you got your books, and just think where I’d be if you lost it. This case is the most valuable thing I own. Without it I’m dead, and getting another one up with all the orders and names I got in it would be next to impossible. You ought to get one like it — I’ll buy you one — but for books, so you can hold them by a handle instead of a strap and they don’t get wet or slip out and you can also put your lunch in.” “Nobody carries books like that. I’d be laughed at.” “Well, they used to and still should. But you want to go with the fashion, suffer for it.” Men’s and boys’ garment center, about twenty blocks from the women’s one. Meets his father a couple of times a year there to buy pants or a sport jacket or winter coat wholesale from the manufacturers. “Half off, what better deal than that? And if the style’s out of date or just didn’t go over this year and they want to get rid of it to make room, you might get it at one quarter list.” When Gould started making good money in his late teens, he paid for his own clothes; when he was younger or only had a small part-time job, his father did or they split it. They’d meet soon as Gould could get downtown from school. “I’d almost ask you to skip your last classes but I know that’s bad and you’re also not doing too well in some of them, your mother said.” Corner of 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue, by the downtown subway entrance. Raining or snowing, then under the corner hamburger joint awning there. “Want a papaya juice and hot dog before we start off? On me?” “No, thanks.” “The juice is supposed to be healthy for your stomach and the hot dog’s kosher. I’ve had them. They’re not bad.” “No, thanks.” “You want, get a hamburger. It’s probably better for you.” “Really, Dad.” “Then let’s get moving. I can see you’re in a hurry, and I still got a long day ahead of me too.” Often — he in fact can’t remember a time this didn’t happen: “Look, long as we’re in the building”—in the building next door, walking past the building, on the same street, in the neighborhood, down here—“mind if I go to this jacket”—vest, suit, coat, evening wear—“manufacturer to see if I can peddle some of my linings?” “You always do this when we meet for clothes, even after you say you know I have my own job to get to.” “Well, I’ve always got a living to make and don’t want to waste any advantages, so why should I make another trip and the carfare for it when I’m already here? Make sense? Does to me. I swear I’ll be quick.” Then: “Why you coming around the front for?” the receptionist (buyer, owner, partner, owner’s son or son-in-law) says at the showroom entrance to the place. “This is for buyers, not sellers. You want to sell something, go round to service and give your name.” They have to wait there ten to fifteen minutes. It’s dark, grimy, with a big floor-to-ceiling cage around the whole back area that you have to be buzzed into to see someone in the workplace. “Victor Bookbinder, this is my son. I’d like to speak to Izzy Rosen or some other fabrics buyer that might be around,” and gives his card. When the buyer or owner or owner’s son or son-in-law finally comes it’s usually: “You have an appointment, Bookbinder? I thought maybe my mind’s going blotto and I forgot something. So why should I see you? I got work to do.” “I know and I’m sorry but I thought — I was taking my son around here for pants — that as long as I was in the neighborhood—” “Hey, c’mon, what’re you handing me? You’re always in the neighborhood, right? That’s what you sales slobs do. You sell your rags and are always in the neighborhood for it so you come jerking me for orders when you know I’m at my most busy. You’ve no appointment and I’ve work up to my kishkes, so it’s no.” “I just thought—” “Hey, what’d I say, am I talking to myself? You want I should tell Hank here not to let you through anymore? Hank,” he yells, “this Victor sales guy doesn’t pass no more, got it? — only kidding.” And to his father, “Just stop thinking so much, it’s not doing anything for your sachel or your wallet. You want to make a sale and be smart and not so fake dumb, then do what I say because that’s who I buy from. I don’t care how classy your rags are or the buy for the money or what any other manufacturer does, I don’t see no salesman ‘less an appointment. Okay, now get out of here, your time’s up,” and turns around and goes inside. Sometimes the buyer, or whoever, will come out to the cage with “Victor, my friend, how you doing, I got no time for you now, so another day, okay? but call.” Or: “This your little kid? Not so little anymore — he’s a real starker, a real one. You play football, kid? — you look it. Good-looking, too. Going to be a shtupper if there ever was one. I bet the girls already fall for him, do I got it pegged right? He looking for a job? — You looking for a job, kid? — I can fix it for you. We can use a reliable cart hoofer. Ours are all goof-offs or don’t show up when they promise, leaving us stranded. Bullshit artists, that’s what they are; every last one of them should be canned, and they will when we get ones better.” “Actually—” his father says. “Vic, if you’re pitching, I got no seconds to spare, none, sonny. Ring me up first, and I’ll see you if I can. And Junior, I’m serious what I said, so if you’re looking, come in and see me any day at five. You’re half the hustler your dad is, you got a job.” Couple of times Gould said, “Why do you take that from these men?” and his father said, “Take what, what men, what do you mean, the talk they give me, like that guy?” “And sending you around to the service entrance when they’re already speaking to you at the front. Also, though, if you know they don’t want us there near the showroom, why do you go? It’s embarrassing to me,” and his father said, “With each buyer it’s different. Some don’t mind my going there, and I do it because I’ve a better chance of catching them sitting and schmoozing than by calling them out from the back. And as for how they talk to me and so on, you got to put up with it if you want to make a sale. They can go to anybody for their fabrics — my company’s aren’t so much superior than another’s — and especially if the other salesman shmeers them. In the end we pull in more a year than they do — they’re just salaried, their under-the-table stuff is their commissions but nothing like mine — which is why they treat us like so much crap. But it’s all playing around, no real harm meant — they know; it’s the way the Garment Center operates.” One time one of the buyers said, after his father had called him out to the back, “Listen, fat man, I didn’t ask to see you today, I got a big headache, so blow,” and Gould said, “Don’t you talk to him like that!” and the man said, “What’d you say, punk? You want to get your fucking ass slung down the elevator shaft?” and his father said to Gould, “Hey, who asked you? Go downstairs … no, we’re both going. Thanks”—to the man—“see you again,” and when they got outside — Gould had wanted to say something about it in the freight elevator, but his father said, “Later; it’s for nobody’s ears”—his father said, “You’re lucky I didn’t clip you in your stupid head right up there. You want to kill a sale for me with that momzer forever? Next time you want me to drag you around for clothes when I should be doing my regular business, keep your trap shut.” But none of those times was seeing his father on the street, alone, from a distance, walking, what he said. Also where his father didn’t see Gould, just in his own world, caught without knowing it. He’s come up the subway exit, and his father was always waiting there or under the awning about ten feet away. “Hi, Dad.” “Hello. Like a quick bite?” “No.” “Then let’s get going.”

What else about his father? Plenty else. Plenty of times at home, plenty of times his father saying, “You been on the phone too long, what could be so important to say? Get off.” Or “What is it, you got stock in Bell? Hang up.” Standing in front of the opened refrigerator and looking inside for something he knows is there or usually there, or maybe just to see what there is to make a sandwich with or snack on, and his father saying, “Shut the icebox door; it costs a fortune to get it cold again when you keep it open that long.” Or, more often, “What are you trying to do, spoil all the food inside?” Or “What is it, you got stock in Con Ed? Close the damn thing.” Or when he’d stop in front of the TV set while his father was watching a program, not realizing he was blocking his view, and his father saying, “What’s your father, a glazier?” He never really understood that line but assumed it meant… well, what? That if his father was a glazier, Gould was somehow made out of glass? In other words, though a stretch: something to do with the seed his father sired him with? No, a glazier cuts and sets glass, doesn’t make it — that’s a glassmaker, but maybe that’s what his father meant to say but got the two mixed up. No, he knew the difference and would have said, “What’s your father, a glassmaker?” Doesn’t sound as good, but his father wasn’t the type who’d use one word for another because it sounded better, especially when he knew it’d make what he said less clear, or that’s how Gould saw him. Then what? That Gould, being the hypothetical son of a glazier, had somehow been placed in front of his father as a pane of glass, perhaps even set there by his father? Not even close. There was the expression, though, when he was a kid and maybe when his father was one too — there was much more of that kind of continuation or overlapping then than today—“I know you’re a pain but you’re not made of glass.” But that has almost nothing to do with what his father said. This is one time — oh, there were many — when he’d love to have a brother who’d had the same things said to him, or even if he didn’t but, just because they had the same father, could help Gould figure out some of their father’s more puzzling expressions, and he’d call now and ask him the one about the glazier. He should have asked his father what he meant by it rather than pretend every time that he understood. What did he say or do when his father said it? — and he said it plenty of times, plenty. He probably just shook his head or said no and laughed, since it was supposed to be a funny remark, and did what his father wanted him to: moved aside. Or have asked him years later exactly what it meant—“exactly” because he wouldn’t have wanted to admit, for his sake and his father’s, that he’d never understood it — but by that time his father had long stopped saying it, and Gould hasn’t thought of it since till now. Asking him for a dime sometimes for a comic book, and his father — but what’s all this got to do with seeing his father alone on the street from a distance, walking to or away from him, and so on? Nothing, maybe, but so what? It’s just a way to see his father as he was then — and his father saying, “If I had a dime I’d build a fence around it.” That was his father’s favorite. He said it to Gould about fifty times. Maybe a hundred. Sure, a hundred: ten or more times a year when Gould was between five and thirteen, he’ll say. And he didn’t ask just for dimes or comic books. Then he got his weekly allowance, which started as a nickel and grew to fifty cents — Saturdays, before his father left for work, if Gould was up, or early afternoon when he returned home: “Can I have my allowance please?” and his father would say maybe one time out of four, “If I had a quarter—” and so on. His father coming into the restaurant Gould worked at five nights a week when he was in college — now here he thinks he did see him from a distance once or twice, or at least that’s what’s in his mind: his father walking down the long wide aisle from the front door to the dining room — Schrafft’s, on 82nd Street and Broadway — waving to him as he passed the bakery counter on his right and the soda fountain on his left, bakery closed for the day and, if it was past nine — that would be late for his father after work, which was when he dropped by — fountain closed too. Maybe even seeing him come out of the revolving door, since his father came to see him a few times the year and a half Gould worked there, suit, hat, and tie on, hat quickly in his hand right after he stepped out of the door, newspapers, sample case, and after sitting at one of his deuces — he usually asked the manager or one of the other waiters which tables were his son’s, since their stations changed nightly — and saying, after Gould said hi and maybe even kissed his cheek, “I just wanted to see you at work. It gives me a special kick. I should probably order something too, no? I don’t want to be taking up your table for nothing — they might toss me out on my ear. What looks good? And I promise not to ask for a discount,” and he says, “You want ice cream? Some people call it the best in the city. So’s the coffee, I hear, though I’ve never tasted it. Dark and rich like you like it.” “I like it light with two spoons of sugar,” and he says, “I mean before you put in those things. I’ll bring a little pitcher of milk,” and his father says, “Cream is better, if you got it, though don’t go to any trouble on my account.” “I can get you the cream. And freshest there is — from the back of the refrigerator, which we’re not supposed to take out till we use up the older cream in front. Or their English muffins — they’re special, made by their own bakery in Queens. Or a sandwich, though you can still get dinner if you want.” “No dinner, I want to get home soon. Just a scoop of pistachio, or should I have the coffee too? I don’t want to make the check too small; that wouldn’t look good. But tell the guy inside I’m your dad and to give me a hefty scoop. He’ll do it for you.” His father chatting with him if Gould wasn’t too busy and reading the paper or watching him when Gould was serving other customers. Then, after he got the check—“I feel funny about giving you this,” Gould would say, “but okay, I got to”—tipping him generously, while with other waiters his father was always pretty cheap. Never above ten percent no matter how small the check—“Ten percent’s good enough if you get it from everyone. What’s with this fifteen all of a sudden? Who’s the guy who decided that?”—and using any excuse to tip even less: waiter forgetting to bring something, dirty silver or sticky plate or lipstick on a cup or food coming cold: “Look, I don’t care how menial or lousy-paying the job is, if you’re hired to do it, you do it well, and giving him a regular tip is like a reward for bad service. He’s lucky he wasn’t stiffed.” But for Gould: each time maybe the biggest tip, as far as the percentage of the check, he ever gave; sometimes as much as the check, which was the best tip Gould ever got for such a small order in all his years as a waiter. And a few hours later, when Gould got home: “So how’d it go tonight?” and Gould saying, “It went okay,” and his father saying, “No, I meant in tips,” and Gould saying, “Probably because of yours, better than I expected.”

More things about that time he saw his father walking toward him on the street. Meeting him just about halfway between their building and the avenue corner his father had come up from. Or maybe his father had started on the opposite sidewalk and then crossed the street a few buildings from the corner before Gould spotted him. He thinks he kissed his father when he first saw him then too. Not “first saw him,” of course, but when he reached him. His father always insisted on being kissed when they met or parted. Would extend his cheek for it and, when Gould was much younger and shorter, lean over and kiss the top of Gould’s head and then put his cheek by Gould’s lips to be kissed and even, a few times, Gould remembers — a few times? one time, anyway, he remembers it — lift him by his underarms and kiss his cheek or head and then say, “Now you kiss Daddy’s cheek.” And not “always” and he didn’t “insist”; he’d just say something like, if Gould didn’t kiss him when they parted or met or when his father or Gould came into the apartment and the other had opened the door for him or was just standing there… what? “My father insisted on being kissed”—that’s probably where the “insist” comes from in all this—“even when he was in his seventies and I was more than forty, and I hope I get the same from you right up till I’m that age.” Or whatever age his grandfather was when he was still insisting on being kissed by his son. He didn’t die in his sixties? All his grandparents did, his mother said. “That was old then,” he sort of remembers her saying, “so consider yourself to have good genes, as far as longevity’s concerned.” His own father would have felt hurt if Gould didn’t kiss him during those times he mentioned: on the street when they met, greeting him at the door or in his office, and so on. And possibly his father’s father would have felt hurt too if his father didn’t kiss him at similar times. Gould didn’t mind kissing his father. He in fact took pride in it—“boasted,” he could say — to his friends and wife: “I kissed my father right up till the time he was an old guy. I didn’t stop kissing him then; he just died.” He’s even told his daughters: “My father kissed his father till he died, I kissed mine till he died, for all I know my father’s father kissed his father till he died, and though I’d love to end this death cycle — at least talking of it regarding me — I hope you’ll never stop kissing your father. Of course I was a male kissing his father, as he was to his father, and so on, which is different and not as easy to do publicly as a daughter kissing her father. It at least didn’t used to be easy, though maybe back when people had just come over and settled here from Europe or were still living over there — I’m talking about our ancestors, grandfathers and great-grandfathers and such — it was.” “I don’t think so,” one of his daughters said — forgets which one. “It could be embarrassing to a girl if she thinks people around her don’t know he’s her father.” “True,” he said, “though I hope not something you’d worry about,” but to get back to it: when he brought girlfriends over to the house for dinner he’d kiss his father hello — his mother too, of course — and say, “This is Phoebe”—or “Dolores” or whoever — and the girl would shake his hand and say hello, but when they left to go out after dinner she always seemed to kiss his father goodbye. Because when they were about to leave, Gould would say, “Well, good night, Dad,” and kiss him — he said good night then because his father would probably be in bed asleep by the time Gould got home, if he did go home that night — and the girl would say, “Goodbye, Mr. Bookbinder,” and his father would smile at her in a way, he’s sure, that must have said — and move his face to her too — Come on, you can also kiss my cheek, I shaved today so it ain’t going to scratch, and she’d kiss it; he can’t remember a time when one of his girlfriends didn’t. And if his father was in bed reading while listening to what he called “light classical music” on the radio — mostly heavily orchestrated show tunes, without the singing, or something resembling Boston Pops — which he did for about half an hour before he turned off the bed lamp and radio on his night table and went to sleep, Gould would usually knock on the door if it was closed or the outside jamb if the door was open, ask if he could come in, and say good night and kiss him and, if his mother was also there, say good night and kiss them both. He did this up till the time he moved out of the apartment, when he was around twenty-two. So what’s he saying here? Just how often he kissed his father and the variety of places, and so on the street that day when they met he must have kissed him too. But how come that’s the only time he remembers seeing his father on the street: distance, walking up it, and so on? Could it have really been the one time he did see him like that? It’s possible their hours just didn’t correspond. In all that time? Seems so, but also seems next to impossible. For one thing, far back as he can remember — no, not as far back as that; regarding this, he means from the time he was eight or nine — he was up before his father almost every weekday morning except holidays and such right through high school. For his early grades his mother would get him up and off to school, and when he was old enough he’d wake himself up with an alarm clock, make breakfast, and leave on his own. In fact, his mother started sleeping an hour later then. His father would come into the kitchen to make his own breakfast just around the time Gould was setting off. Gould would always kiss him before he left. His father would leave about a half hour later and come home some four to five hours after Gould did, at least till the time Gould started working in the Garment District while in high school. Saturdays he already touched upon, and summers he either went to sleep-away camp for two months or to a bungalow colony upstate with his mother, his father only coming up weekends and the week that included July Fourth and the one before Labor Day. Once Gould graduated college he was out of the house for good: jobs in Washington, D.C., and California, and so on and his own apartments in New York. Which is another thing: he doesn’t ever recall bumping into his father in New York other than that one time on their block, not from a distance or anyplace. If he had bumped into him on another street or in a park or a museum or building of any kind, would he have kissed him? Probably, though maybe not on a subway or in a bar. But first he would have watched him from a distance on the street, if that’s what it was and where it took place, and thought, This is the first time I’m seeing my father from a distance on a street that isn’t our old block, far as my memory tells me. And he would have watched his father approach him, maybe even slowed down his own approach to his father, just to take it in more. And if his father was walking on the street in the same direction as him but from some distance in front, he would have followed him awhile just to have the experience of seeing him from behind like that. Then he would have hurried up to him, since it could be a crowded street or it suddenly could get crowded and he wouldn’t want to risk losing him or for whatever reason — following him so long he might begin to feel peculiar — and said, “Dad,” but said it lightly, so as not to scare him, and not touched him either, for the same reason, “Dad, it’s me, this is amazing, how are you?” and surely they would have kissed.