Reading the new Richard Price novel, Lush Life.  It's not a whodunit, or even a whydunit -- there's a murder, and you know pretty quickly who did it, and then watch it ripple through a NYC neighborhood.  I like it -- his best since Clockers, I think, maybe better than that. 


            "What am I supposed to tell myself," Billy hissed in his ear, "it was his time? He was summoned? It was for 
            his own good? He's better off now? He's romping in some, some cloud meadow? He was sacrificed to prevent 
            some great evil from happening?

            "OK, look -- " Matty began.

            "And my son isn't watching over me. He doesn't live on in my heart. He doesn't talk to me. I talk to me and 
             what I say to myself -- "

            "OK, hang on, stop."

            "Cherish your memories . . . My memories feel like knives and I would gladly burn them out of -- "

            "Just stop." 


---

Another passage I liked from Cormac McCarthy, this time from The Road, as the unnamed father in the book sits through the night, fearing that he is watching his son die: 


"He tried to stay awake all night but he could not.  He woke endlessly and slapped himself or rose to put wood on the fire.  He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air.  His hand on the thin and laddered ribs.  He walked out on the beach to the edge of the light and stood with his clenched fists on top of his skull and fell to his knees sobbing in rage." 


---

"Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" 

-- Robert Frost, "Home Burial"


"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy."

-- Ben Jonson, "On My First Son" 



------

A little something I liked from Cormac McCarthy's excellent No Country For Old Men, before I return it to the library:


I talk to my daughter. She would be thirty now. That's all right. I dont care how that sounds. I like talkin to her. Call it superstition or whatever you want. I know that over the years I have give her the heart I always wanted for myself and that's all right. That's why I listen to her. I know I'll always get the best from her. It dont get mixed up with my own ignorance or my own meanness. I know how that sounds and I guess I'd have to say that I dont care. I never even told my wife and we dont have a whole lot of secrets from one another. I dont think she'd say I'm crazy, but some might. . .

I listen to what she says and what she says makes good sense. I wish she'd say more of it. I can use all the help I can get. Well, that's enough of that.



---

Ran across this today, in an article about Flash Fiction. It's a SIX WORD short story, written by Ernest Hemingway, who is alleged to have said that it was his best ever work:





For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.




--

Happy Birthday, buddy.

He tried to write today.

Before, he liked to write on Mondays. It was his second day off of the week -- the first for resting, the second for writing. She worked on Mondays, so he had the whole house to himself. Sometimes he would bathe, other times not. Sometimes he would put on pants, other days not. But he was always write on Mondays.

That was before.

Afterwards, like a lot of things, he found writing hard. Anything that required too much thought was hard. He had done a lot of reading -- nothing too heavy, crime stories and graphic novels and the like. He had watched a lot of movies, even gone out to the theater for a few.

But he hadn't done much writing.

He tried everything to make it easier.  Bought a new computer.  Went back to the old one.  Tried longhand.  Switched to yellow legal pads.  Went from pen to pencil, then back again.  Anything to get him going again.  But nothing worked.

Today, he sat down in front of a blank screen just a few minutes after noon.  It was Monday, so he was alone, nice and quiet.  It had been a long week at work, so he had slept in a bit to restore some lost energies.  A shower, a bite to eat, and a quick trip to the post office to sign for a package -- she had ordered "organizational things" for the closet -- had used up the rest of the morning, and before he knew it, it was ten minutes after twelve.

His stomach rumbled as he sat down -- lunchtime already.  He needed a sandwich.  A quick inventory of the kitchen revealed no bread suitable for eating, necessitating another quick trip.  By the time the sandwich was prepared, it was nearly one o'clock.

He flipped on the TV for some company while he ate, found an old college basketball game on Classic that he hadn't seen in years.  He had been at that game with his dad, remembered exactly where the seats were, still had the stub; three overtimes,  a real classic.  He watched the whole thing.

By then it was nearly four, and he needed to start his laundry.  She would be home from work in an hour or so, and dinner plans would need to be made.  Not enough time left to write, much less anything of any quality.  Or quantity.  Maybe tomorrow night after work.

His heart just wasn't in it.  Like a lot of things these days.  Like everything these days.  His heart, it seemed, was still in an impossibly small box, buried at the foot of a small slope in Union Cemetery, where the wind and the bugs sing softly to his boy, all day long, forever.  
   

He would have never thought it would be so educational. He was wrong.

He learned, for example, why funerals are rarely on the weekend: they cost more. You have to pay for the gravediggers' overtime.

And he learned the two categories into which undertakers divided their offerings: services and merchandise. Flowers, prayer cards, caskets, all considered merchandise. Like socks, or DVDs, or flatware. He guessed it must make their job easier, seeing a casket as merchandise, rather than what it truly was: a box to seal up everything he ever wanted, and bury it away.

He knew he shouldn't like it.  He should hate to go, a chore; real men, real adult men, don't do therapy. 

Let's talk about it.  How do you feel.

Fuck that.

But he did like it.  And he did go, every Monday.  She'd come home early from work and they'd go, every week, and he'd like it. 

He couldn't say why at first, other than it was something to do on his day off.  It took him a few months to figure it out, but then, one day in December, he worked it all out.  A few months later, and everyone had forgotten.

A few months later, the doctor was the only one who still gave a shit that his son was dead.

 

There was a shower, of course. A big blowout affair, friends from work, old friends from school, friends from church. Neighbors. Family.

Too much family.

Too much mother-in-law.

There were, of course, silly party games. Presents. Some wine, a cake, a vegetable tray. More food.

Too much food.

But for all the family, for all the food, his lasting memory of the shower was of a balloon. They had decided -- or, rather, like a lot of things in their relationship, she had decided and he had merely acquiesced -- months ago on a circus theme for the baby's room.  Gender neutral, worked for a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be.  The walls of the nursery were painted in bright vertical stripes, red and yellow, in the style of a big top.  The slats of the crib the bars of the lion cage, cotton candy and balloons stenciled on the dresser.  

In keeping with that theme, someone -- a sister, maybe, or a church friend, he couldn't remember --  someone had brought a balloon.  One of those helium-filled mylar numbers, a lion printed on the front, perfect for their circus theme.  They had tied the balloon to the back of her chair out on the patio in the early minutes of the party, and it had stayed tethered there the rest of the afternoon, two hours bobbing back and forth in a light summer breeze.

She had called him over, eager to share with him the cutest set of onesies from her mother.  He came up from behind her, a plate of cake in one hand, gripping the back of the chair with the other.  He leaned in for a closer look -- and set the balloon free.

He saw it go right away, unable to do anything to stop its awful ascent.  And then she saw it go, and the look on her face as she watched crushed him. 

The balloon rose lazily, each minute more agonizing than the last.  He watched it rise, twisting in the wind, unable to look away, unable to meet her eyes.  

His watch said minutes, the ache in his heart said days; but finally, the lion balloon was a tiny black dot against a cloudless, impossibly blue sky.  And then it was gone.

When he was sure it was gone, when he was sure that there was nothing he could do to bring it back, he looked down, finally, into her soft, damp eyes.

Even then, he knew the thought was irrational, but he couldn't help it.  He didn't think it possible for her to hurt any worse.

He was wrong.