“The Friend”: A Short Story by Gordon Lish

From the Archives is a column that highlights stories, essays, and poems dating back to the magazine’s founding. In this edition Robert Rea looks at a short story by Gordon Lish.

I came to know of Gordon Lish through the Southern-gonzo fiction of Barry Hannah. My love for Airships and Ray eventually led me to Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Sam Lipsyte, whose early careers owed some debt to Lish’s editorial guidance. It was during his tenure as an editor at Esquire that Lish earned the nickname Captain Fiction for his minimalist rigor. At the same time, he was writing his own stories—with the same stripped-down prose and matter-of-fact tone as the famous stories he edited.

“The Friend” is the first of Lish’s three contributions to SwR. It appeared in our summer issue from 1984, the same year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. “The Friend” was later published in the 1988 collection, Mourner at the Door.

—RR

The Friend

by Gordon Lish

I LIVE IN A BIG BUILDING and my son lives in a big building, so I meet all kinds and I hear what I hear. And why not, why shouldn’t I listen? I am a person with such an interesting life he couldn’t afford to be interested? They talk, I pay attention—even if when they are all finished I sometimes have to say to myself, “The deaf don’t know how good they got it. The deaf got no complaint coming.”
Take years ago, this lady—we are biding our time down there in my boy’s place, the room in the basement they got set aside for the convenience of the laundry of tenants.
Some convenience.
Who is a tenant?
I am not a tenant.
This lady is not a tenant.
What is the case here is our children are the tenants—my boy, her girl—and theirs are the things which are in the washing machines and in the dryers and why I and the lady in question are sitting in a terrible dirtiness waiting. So PS, it’s two total strangers twiddling their thumbs in a room in a basement down underneath a very big building, when what you hear from one of these people—not from me but from her, from this woman I just mentioned—is a noise like she wants you to think it’s her last noise.
You know. You have heard. It is the one which, give us time, we all hear—we all make.
So I naturally say to her, “What? What?” And she says to me, “You don’t want to know.”
That’s it for the preliminaries.
Here is what comes next.

SHE SAYS, “YOU—YOU GOT A SON—don’t worry, I know, I know—and don’t think I don’t also know what you are going through, either—because I know—I got eyes—I see, I know—you don’t have to tell me anything—you don’t have to breathe one word—I got eyes in my head to see for myself, thank you—no one has to tell me what the score is—believe me, your heartache is your own affair—but just so you know I know—with him you got plenty, you got all anyone should ever have to handle—but just count your lucky blessings—because I got worse—there is worse in the world than a window-dresser for a son—there is worse than a delicate child—sure, sure, don’t tell me, I heard, I heard—and don’t think my heart don’t go out to you, bad as I got plenty worse of my own—a daughter, not a son—a daughter—Doris—Deedee—forty-odd and still unmarried—and for why, for why—not that someone is claiming the girl is any Venus de Milo—but so who is, who is—and is this the be-all and end-all, to be so gorgeous they all come running—believe me, she is some catch for the right boy—for a boy which knows which end is up, this is a girl which is a catch and a half—but shy—a shyness like this you could not even fathom—a shyness like this, who knows how it develops—even to me, the mother, it is a total mystery, I can tell you—so a rash, a rash—like a dryness even, like not even a rash but just a dryness—the skin here—the cheeks—so like it is not exactly appetizing to look at her at certain periods, if you know what I am saying—so what is this—is this the end of the world, is this the worst tragedy I could cite to you, a little dryness the child could always rub something into and who would notice—but skip it—the girl is mortified—the girl is humiliated—the girl is total mortification itself—because in Deedee’s eyes, forget it, this is all there is, in the whole wide world there is nothing else but her complexion, her skin—so it flakes, so it sheds a little, so for this life should come to a halt—you don’t give them a special invitation, does anyone notice—no one notices—who cares—no one cares—no one even sees—dry skin, you think people don’t look and see character first—first, last, and always they see what is a person’s worth—but who can tell her—who can reason—it is nothing, absolutely nothing, the very mildest of conditions—but for Deedee forget it—for her it is curtains—that shy, that bashful, ashamed of her own shadow—so could you get her to be a little social—you couldn’t get her to budge for nothing—God forbid someone should have eyes in his head—a little nothing here—where I am showing you—makeup would cover it over so who could even guess—but does this please her—nothing pleases her—her own company pleases her—a movie every other week, this is for Deedee a very satisfying experience—but for me, if you want to know, from just when I think about it, alone for all her life, I could cut my throat from ear to ear—forget boyfriend—does the girl have a friend even—because the girl has nothing—the girl has her complexion to look at—forget a nice decent marriage to a nice decent boy—and just to add insult to injury, what with so many of them deciding to be boys like yours, where even are the high hopes any more—but meanwhile is it too much that for my Doris there should be at least a companion to travel the road of life with—because, I ask you, doesn’t everybody have a right to somebody—but her, she wouldn’t even go out looking, God forbid somebody should see a little redness, a little dryness, some peeling where if she only used a good moisturizer on herself and did it on a regular basis with some serious conscientiousness, I promise you, the whole condition would vanish quicker than you could snap your little finger—but her—her—who can talk to her—my Deedee—my Doris—God love her—but just thank God that at her office it is a different story entirely—just thank God that at her place of business they couldn’t get enough of her—always Doris this and Doris that—I am telling you, they are devoted to the girl—devoted—what they wouldn’t do for her—like you wouldn’t believe it, but just this last Christmas they sent her off for seven days gratis—not one red penny did the girl have to reach into her own pocket for—the whole arrangement was bought and paid for—the whole arrangement was signed, sealed, and delivered—and not Atlantic City neither but Acapulco—Acapulco—this is how indispensable to these people the girl happens to be—all expenses paid—every red nickel—first-class from start to finish—the best—bar none—so when I heard this I said to myself, ‘God willing, she’ll get away, it’ll be a change of pace, a change of scenery, etcetera, etcetera—and who knows but that maybe a little romantic interlude is just around the corner—after all, a nice resort, a nice hotel, these Latin fellows, whatever—but now I have to laugh—you heard me—laugh—because you think she didn’t come back worse than when she went—go think again—this is why I am here where you see me right now—this is why I have to be here to do for her—the wash, the cleaning, the shopping, whatever—with my legs, twice a week, from Astoria, I have to come all the way on my feet from Astoria—but thank God the girl has a mother who can still wait on her hand and foot—because thanks to Acapulco, look who’s got on her hands a nervous wreck for a daughter—you heard me, a total bundle of nerves—but totally—but utterly—say boo to the girl, she jumps from here to there—and you know what—I don’t blame her—you wouldn’t either—when you hear what you will hear, believe me, you wouldn’t believe it—upstairs up there and just sits around all the time listless, no color in her face, a figment of her former self—would she go outside for just some air—goes to the bathroom and that’s it—who even knows if she goes when I am not here—me—all the way from Astoria—with legs like these—if you could believe it, twice a week.”

SHE GIVES ME on the knee like a tap with her fingers and then she picks herself up and with another groan again she goes and checks on the things she put for her daughter in the machine, whereupon this woman then turns herself around and says to me, she says, “Your boy, tell me, you got just the one son?” But why should she wait for an answer? Unless there is something which whenever you look at a parent’s face, you don’t need to ask another question. “Sure, sure,” she says, sticks in two more quarters, and comes back to where she was in the first place and then plunks herself down with another new groan in the row of chained-down chairs.
She says, “Pardon me, but do I still have your undivided attention? Because you didn’t hear yet what happened, which is that the child goes down there and it couldn’t be more perfect—the weather, the service, the accommodations—everything is absolutely first-class, so all she has to do is jump into a bathing suit and start being the happiest girl in the whole wide world. But does she go sit around the pool like the other youngsters do, so that maybe there might arise a little excitement from whichever direction? The answer is no, the girl didn’t even begin to. Instead, she drags herself all the way out to the beach with the wind and the sand, which is utterly unnecessary, and with a book and not even a little bag with at least a lipstick in it, she knocks herself out finding herself a place as far away from everybody else as is humanly possible—and, lo and behold, this is how the girl spends the five days, the six days, whatever you actually get when they give you a week’s free vacation, and not once, when all is said and done, not once does the girl have a single solitary conversation with a person of any gender. She reads a book, and this is the entire nature of her entertainment, period—with the sole exception of this friend she makes, this little animal which comes running along the beach and comes up to her, like she thinks a little Mexican hairless or whatnot, like this tiny little dog like the bandleader, this Xavier Cugat, if you remember, used to hide in his pockets, a Chihuahua is what they call it, Chihuahuas, a different Chihuahua in each pocket. So the whole first day, would the thing go away? Forget it, what it loves in this world is all of a sudden my unmarried daughter, it couldn’t get enough of my own personal daughter, huggy-huggy, kissy-kissy, two lovebirds from the first minute they laid eyes on each other. So the next day the girl can’t wait to get back out to the beach again, God forbid her friend should miss her for two minutes, and this time she’s got with her what? Because the answer is a handbag. Do you hear this, a handbag? But for lipstick and mascara and eye shadow? Don’t make me laugh. Because the answer is it’s not for something serious, but instead so she can sneak her brand­new one-and-only in through the lobby and up in the elevator and for the rest of the whole vacation feed it scraps from the table and watch it sleep between two clean sheets in a bed like a person, please God it shouldn’t have its little head on a pillow. And why not? In all the girl’s whole life, aside from her mother, who ever paid her such attention before? But on the other hand, outside of her mother, who ever got the chance? Even the girl’s own father, may the man rest in peace, had to hire an army every time he wanted the child to hold still so he could talk to her or get even a good look at her.

“SO NEXT COMES THE TERRIBLE CRISIS, are you listening? Because time’s up and now you have to gather yourself together and pack your luggage and face the facts that you threw away your one big chance and say so long to paradise. But could the girl even begin to tear herself away from the first real friend she ever in all her born days had? This thing, could the child just say to it that’s it and that’s it, now goodbye and good luck?”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“Weeks later, when she could open up her mouth to even speak again, the child actually said to me, ‘Mother, I think I would have eaten poison before I could have left it behind. Poison.’”
“Poison, some joke. Believe me, when you hear what’s coming, you’ll say to yourself the same as me, ha ha, poison, that’s a good one, some laugh, poison.”
“So don’t ask me why, but this is how determined the girl is, because even with all the reasons you couldn’t in a million years get away with it, the answer is she did. All the way back to New York, right past all the big shots with their badges and their everything, right out of the airport past the customs and the rest of it, and here into this same building where, God love him, I know he’s got his own problems too, your own lifelong heartache, your boy, with all his gorgeous costumes and his window-dressing, also rents a dwelling.”
“But as soon as it gets here, would it eat? Could she get it to do anything but drink water? Maybe the airplane ride gave it an upset stomach, who knows—meanwhile all it wants is water and to lay around and vomit, and it wouldn’t even touch a single morsel or have the strength to play with her or even let her kiss it. So by now the girl is thoroughly beside herself with panic—she’s so frantic she can’t even see straight—so what does she do but pick the thing up and wrap it up in a towel because it’s cold out and God forbid it should catch a chill and get any worse—and then she runs out into the street with it—like a crazy woman to go find the dog-and-cat doctor which is up the block from here—on the other side—after you pass the big Shoprite.”
“God bless him, the man can see with his own two eyes that the girl is positively hysterical—so he quick puts everything to one side and takes her right in—and he says to her, ‘Sit, wait,’ he’ll be right back with his diagnosis, first he’s got to get out his instruments and examine—and meanwhile the child is shrieking, ‘Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him!’”
The woman looks at me and she says to me, “Did you hear with both ears—instruments, examine—don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him?”
She gives her chest a grab like there is gas inside it, and she says, “Go check your machine—there’s time yet—with children like ours, where are we running?”

YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW a storyteller like this one? I promise you, in this department, I myself was not exactly born yesterday, these people with all their teasings and their winks and their punch lines. But by the same token, who wanted to offend such a person? Because, for one thing, you never know when you might require the company, and meanwhile let us not forget who else of my acquaintance also makes his residence in the very building and could always use a friendly neighbor’s mother with an open-minded opinion. So this I can give you every assurance of, I myself did not intend to burn up any bridges behind me.
This is why I got up and felt inside the dryer—even though I didn’t even have to actually touch anything to see that they all had a little way to go yet. And then, like a perfect gentleman, I come back and I sit down and I signify that I am all ears and at her beck and call whenever she is ready. But strictly entre nous, so far as punch lines go, in all of history they never invented a second one.
She says, “Two seconds.” She says, “The man is in there all of two seconds with his examining.” She says, “The man comes out with his white coat and his rubber gloves and he says to the child, he says, ‘Darling, I am afraid that I must inform you that your pet has a mild case of rabies—you didn’t get near any of his saliva, did you?’”
“‘Oh, God, God!’ my daughter screams, and then it dawns on her, rabies, and she shrieks, ‘No, I’m fine, I’m fine—just give me back my dog, I want to get a second opinion, I want to see another doctor!’”
“So what does this one say to that?”
“Mister, are you listening to me when I ask you what this one says to that? Because here is the answer the whole wide world has been waiting for. Which is that the man gives the girl a look and he says to her very calmly, ‘Dog? That animal in there is no dog, lady. What you brought in here is a beach rat.’”
You know something? Because I am telling you the truth when I tell you this. For some crazy reason, after I heard what I heard, I didn’t know what the next thing to do was. I mean, my son’s clothes, I didn’t know if I could bear to touch them anymore—not even when I knew they would be clean and dry as a bone.