Because they're this big when I start out with them. You see how big? Next to nothing, right? But then what? But then I go get them all blown up as big as life! See them? Look at them all over the walls if you don't know what I mean!
That's resolution for you, isn't it?
Well, that's my second wife, okay?
They're framed all over the place.
People come in here and then they look at them and then they smack their heads.
My God, they say, such pictures!
I say, original issue, a maker knows his game.
FEAR: FOUR EXAMPLES
MY DAUGHTER CALLED from college. She is a good student, excellent grades, is gifted in any number of ways.
"What time is it?" she said.
I said, "It is two o'clock."
"All right," she said. "It's two now. Expect me at four — four by the clock that said it's two."
"It was my watch," I said.
"Good," she said.
It is ninety miles, an easy drive.
At a quarter to four, I went down to the street. I had these things in mind — look for her car, hold a parking place, be there waving when she turned into the block.
At a quarter to five, I came back up.
I changed my shirt. I wiped off my shoes. I looked into the mirror to see if I looked like someone's father.
SHE PRESENTED HERSELF shortly after six o'clock.
"Traffic?" I said.
"No," she said, and that was the end of that.
After dinner, she complained of insufferable pains, and doubled over on the dining-room floor.
"My belly," she said.
"What?" I said.
She said, "My belly. It's agony. Get me a doctor."
There is a large and famous hospital mere blocks from my apartment. Celebrities go there, statesmen, people who must know what they are doing.
With the help of a doorman and an elevator man, I got my child to the hospital. Within minutes, two physicians and a corps of nurses took the matter in hand.
I stood by watching.
It was hours before they had her undoubled and were willing to announce their findings.
A bellyache, a rogue cramp, a certain stubborn but un-specifiable seizure of the intestine — vagrant, unamusing, but not worth the bother of further concern.
WE LEFT THE HOSPITAL unassisted, using a chain of tunnels in order to shorten the distance home. The exposed distance, that is — since it would be four in the morning on the city streets, and though the blocks would be few, each one of them would be a challenge to a person of gentle bearing. So we made our way along the system of underground passages that link the units of the hospital, this until we were forced to surface and exit into the jeopardy of experience. We came out onto a street with not a person on it — until I saw him, a man who was going from car to car. He carried something under his arm. It looked to be a furled umbrella — but it could not have been what it looked to be. No, no, it had to have been a tool of entry disguised as something innocent.
He turned to us as we stepped along, and then he turned back to his work — loitering at the automobiles, trying the doors, sometimes using the thing to dig at the windows.
"Don't look," I said.
My daughter said, "What?"
I said, "There's someone across the street. He's trying to jimmy open cars. Just please keep behaving as if you do not see him."
My daughter said, "Where? I don't see him."
I PUT MY DAUGHTER to bed and the hospital charges on my desk, and then I let my head down on the pillow and listened.
There was nothing to hear.
Before I surrendered myself to sleep, there was only this in my mind — the boy in the treatment room across the corridor from my daughter's, how I had wanted to cry out each time the boy had cried out as a stitch was sutured into his hand.
"Take it out! Take it out!"
This is what the boy was shrieking as the surgeon labored to close the wound.
I thought about the feeling in me when I had heard that awful wailing. The boy wanted the needle out. I suppose the needle hurt worse than the wound the needle would repair. Then I considered the statement for emergency services, translating the amount first into theater tickets, then into shirts ironed and returned to you on hangers instead of inside those awful bags.
FOR JEROMÉ—WITH LOVE AND KISSES
Jaydeezie darling,
dear cutie fellow,
my wonderful son Jerome,
YOU WILL DO ME A FAVOR and answer me this question, please God it should not be for you too much trouble for you to do it. So you will take all of two seconds and you will tell me, Jerome, since when did you hear of a civilized person which gets rid of a perfectly good unlisted and then goes and gets on top of it another one? Also, darling, assuming you could see your way clear to fit it into your busy schedule, you will inform me as to the whys and wherefores of how come the same aforementioned individual couldn't exhibit the simple courtesy to first communicate to his own father the particulars with regard to the necessary digits. So this is asking too much, Jerrychik? I mean, first and foremost your father wants your assurance he is not causing you too big of a perturbance. Listen, you will be a sport and you will take all of two seconds and you will list for me the reasons for this behavior. Because to tell you the truth, pussycat, in my personal opinion, I think your father is entitled to hear an explanation.
I am waiting, darling. God willing, you will go into private conference with your heart of hearts and think the whole thing over and advise me as to your decision. So you could do this for me, cutie fellow? Because I your father am meanwhile sitting here on pins and needles expecting. Make yourself a promise that in a voice which is calmness itself you will pick up the telephone for the sole and exclusive purpose of advising I your father whether you decided in your mind if this is the behavior of a civilized person.
Meanwhile, who could help himself but to think along the lines of a certain possible conjecture? So plunge a dagger into my breast for giving serious consideration to the following theory, but are we dealing here with a situation where the party of the first part says to himself, "The phone rings and I pick it up, it could be the party of the second part trying to communicate with me, but could he do it if I get another new unlisted?"
So go ahead and plunge a dagger, Jerome, because what your father just told you is more or less along the lines of your father's personal thinking. And may I inform you, darling, that the father who is doing this thinking is also the same father who all of two seconds ago only wanted in his heart of hearts to say hello to you and wish his cutie fellow Happy High Holidays?
Sonny boy, I will tell you something. You got my permission to stab me in a vital organ for passing comment, but I want for you to hear with your own two ears my appraisal of the foregoing situation. Because the answer is it's not nice. Jerome, when I see behavior like this, I have to say to myself it is not nice. And thank God I still got the strength in my body for me to say it. But don't look at me, Jerome — because your father did not make the rules, sweetie, even if the rule is it is definitely not.
And so long as we are discussing the philosophy in this particular department, Jerome, I will tell you something else. Objectively speaking, in my personal opinion your whole area code should be ashamed of itself to have an operator that's got the unmitigated gall to say to a senior citizen get lost. Because in so many words, darling, this is just what the snip up there in 603 said. For shame, Jerome, for shame! And to a person of your father's years and age.