The Tin Man
.............................................. to LaurenThe tin-nose man comes to drag
garbage cans to the curb. I am a little kid.
A memory. It's the thirties.
The nose held with little hooks. He turns
sideways, and through the gap between
the nose and cheek, the light shines.Why do I tell you this? So long ago.
Now I am one, a tin man. What they call us.
Siding to slap up on the sides of old houses.
Aluminum, vinyl. Actually, not tin. So what?
Selling. Trickery, high pressure, but a living.
I answer to whatever name they call.The girl. She was the one. Sunday mornings.
You should have been there. The whole gang.
Our brothers, sisters, Fannie's old man, the kids.
Warm bagels, rolls, smoked fish, cream cheese
like velvet. Coffee, cigars. And such arguing--
politics, baseball, gossip. Andthe little one, apple of my eye, peeking over
the edge of the table, wide-eyed, big eared,
taking it all in. And I would pick her up
in my lap in the ruckus of arguments and laughter
aromas of fish and warm dough smoke of cigarettes
cheap cigars and kiss her hair.I sat on the edge of her bed read Winnie the Pooh,
Babar, Eloise, built castles-in-the-air
all the golden dreams of desire, education,
worldly success, dignity, luxury, a house with wide lawns
tricycles in the driveway. Everything I ever
wanted but didn't achieve.Who should I blame? She was so bright, so brought up
to have compassion for the impoverished, the downtrodden,
caught up in the strife and turbulence of Vietnam--
flag-burning, draft-card burning. These children
raised on Dr. Spock and Howdy Doody. Blacks on the march,
hippies, yuppies, marijuana, LSD-- trip out and turn on.My little girl, my little girl, knew phrases "liberal causes" "social justice,"
fell in with Marxists. The Communist Manifesto, actually read it,
swallowed whole. Demonstrations, rioting, battling with cops.
I get her out of jail. "Adolescent exuberance," says Fannie. "Wait,
it will pass." We rail at each other slam doors storm in storm out.
Castles-in-the-air pie-in-the-sky. The vapors vanish.Awakening to her sexuality she struggles with crushes on girls,
She tries to be asexual-- shapeless clothes eschews makeup chops
her hair. Her mother remonstrates-- "A pretty girl you are.
Dress nice, fix your hair. Will it kill you a little lipstick"
"I am what I am." At eighteen a lover a commune in New Mexico.
They raise goats.The arteries are hard in my heart and my heart too is hard.
A holiday is coming. Fannie calls her. "Come home see your father.
He isn't well. Something could happen. There can't be more
this bitterness between you." She leaves her friend, her partner in
California-- not the one from the goats-- comes with a soft heart
there should not be anymore the gall.So we sit at the dinner table my family my wife my daughter and
for me a special treat the brisket that I don't get to eat
with my patched-up heart the fat the salt, but just sometimes
and the girl the stranger nagging I shouldn't be eating such stuff,
it's bad for me and I'm sitting facing her seeing her as my own mortality
angry how she botched up the promise of her brains and talent out ofrebellion against everything I had faith in, rejecting the love of men
coming from her hatred of me, that she's taken away every dream
I had for her and now she is trying to take away this pleasure a few slices
brisket of beef, and rumbling inside me a volcano that's about to blow and then
and then the eruption-- lava and ash, in front of my eyes fire and I stand
lean over her "Pervert!" I roarinto her terrified face and slap her and she gets up white and seething
strikes me beating her fists against my chest and crying cursing at me
lets go shaking with vast sobbing grabs her coat runs out of the house
blinded into the street and this time it's really the end of it from now on
we are dead dead for one another and I can feel my heart turning to tin
and my face turning to tin.Israel Lewis
Adapted from my story "Brisket of Beef."
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