Something Special
After returning from a two-week sales trip one Friday evening, my father swept through the door like a gust of leaves and dust, a wind blowing through the rooms of our apartment. He heaved his suitcases onto his bed and unloaded his samples first, hanging them in the closet, and then his wilted shirts and pants. “Don’t make a mess,” my mother said — too late. He always made a mess. Debris was scattered on the floor, and she began sweeping around him with a broom she kept handy in their bedroom closet. Out of the suitcase, my father lifted a tiny bronze-colored roulette wheel. “I bought this for you,” he said. “It’s one of a kind.” It looked like something that might have come from a Crackerjack box. I stared at it for a moment and then he placed it in my hand. “Don’t break it.” He had promised to bring home something really special, an early Chanukah gift. I didn’t hide my disappointment. He laughed. “Here’s your real gift.” From his pocket, he plucked a shiny coin, larger than a quarter. “Do you know what this is?” he asked. “A Kennedy half-dollar,” I answered. I reached for it, knowing I could buy ten packs of baseball cards or ten Nestle Crunches with it, but he closed his palm on the coin. “Not so fast. I’ll keep it for you,” he said. “Someday, it’ll be worth something.”
* * * * *
My Mother the Realtor
Hiding from men like a gorgeous nun, my divorced mother was wedded to her spotless car. She sold houses to newly married couples who were loaded with cash, lucky out-of-town buyers, who took in everything she said about real estate in California as though hypnotized by her beautiful but impractical dresses. She drove them from posh neighborhood to posh neighborhood and talked to them about dreams and possibilities, about living in the silks of luxury and standing with their cocktails on the lovely verandas as they leaned toward the hills, talked to them about the exotic birds that fly out of the twilight and change the lives of everyone who sees them. “Beautiful people become beautiful by living in these houses,” she would say. At home, late in the evening, she’d tell me, “The business is drying up.” And I learned how to assure her that it wasn’t, learned how to sell her back her own dream that the future was ours.
* * * * *
The Salesman Grows Sad
How can he survive if everyone is staring at their television screens instead of answering the door when he rings or knocks? How can he show them the miracle Dust, Clean and Wax that will clean the stains off everything without leaving behind a film or another stain? How can he show them the beauty of his boar-bristle brushes? and the crumb roller that is used on the tabletops and tablecloths in all the best restaurants? He thinks hard. Maybe he could hold up a sign in their windows that says in big bold letters, “Free Green Basting Brush — Just for Opening Your Door.” Who doesn’t want a good basting brush? The crows follow him up and down the block. He throws a free basting brush at them, but it sails over their heads. They laugh at him. For all he knows, he might be a crow himself. He opens his wings and flaps rapidly. And now he imagines flying into the trees with his suitcase, planting himself on a branch. But when he looks down, he’s standing in front of someone’s door, knocking louder and louder.
* * * * *
The Salesman Gets a Suit
My father walks into a clothing store. “Sell me a suit,” he says to a thin bald-headed man. Without even looking, the bald-headed man pulls a blue silk suit off the rack. “This suit is made for you,” he says holding the hanger in his right hand and letting the pant legs drape over his arm. “Just feel it.” My father brushes it gently with his fingers as though smoothing out the curls of his own hair. “I’m a salesman too,” he says. “I knew it,” the bald-headed man says. “I could tell the minute you entered the store.” The suit is shiny like the lobby in a posh hotel, shiny like a brand new Cadillac parked in the car dealer’s window. My father takes it into the dressing room, and when he comes out, the suit swells with his plump belly. The sleeves of the jacket swallow his hands. The pants legs sweep the floor. He looks short and fat, lost in cloth. “This suit makes you look like a whole new man, like someone ready to make a killing,” the bald-headed man says and leads him to the mirror. In the mirror, the suit shapes itself to his body, fits him to a tee. In the mirror, he’s as graceful as a shadow, as light on his feet as a cool breeze rustling his pant legs. He leans forward as if telling the suit a secret. He smiles, and the suit smiles back.
/ / /
On Writing The House of Grana Padano
Back in February 2020, we started out by sending prompts to each other based on our own stories and meeting on Zoom every Tuesday to chat. The prompts and our giddy conversations led us to the idea of writing a book together. At that point, we had no idea how we might proceed (though now we have several approaches to writing together). Meg asked if she could do a version of my piece “Bear Fight” from Floating Tales. I, in turn, wanted to do a version of a microstory of hers from The Dog Seated Next to Me. “Bear Fight” is about someone in love with someone who is love with a bear. Before I could even make it up the steps, Meg had written a version of this piece that introduced an ex-lover and a secret affair with a moose at a costume party. Then I wrote a version of her version of my piece, and in turn she wrote another version of my version of her version of my piece. All of a sudden we were rolling in new microstories, some longer than others. In a short time, we developed several techniques for writing each piece together from scratch. We have been having such fun making up our own collaborative writing exercises. We see this as not very distant to the idea of improvisational theater. So much of this process is about trusting the other writer, learning to take risks and to let go of control. Over the course of the next six months, we wrote a book that was about 200 pages in length. Then we began revising it, cutting pieces and adding new ones. We had several titles, but settled on The House of Grana Padano, titled after a sequence of pieces in our book, which is scheduled for publication by Pelekinesis Press in April, 2022. — Jeff Friedman