When I wrote this story, about thirty years ago, I was thinking about Dad. Not my dad, who’s nothing like the one in the story, but my friends’ dads, all of whom seemed a little more indifferent, a little slower, and a little more bored than I remembered them a decade earlier. But when I reread the story this time around, instead of thinking about fathers, I thought about our son Lev, and how he sees me today. Unlike the father in the story, I don’t have an apartment that I rent out and my navel is always dirty, but I do tell a lot of dad jokes, and my inept questions about how to use Spotify and the smart TV give me away as a vintage model.
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I brought him a gold-plated navel cleaner with FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING inscribed across the handle. It was a toss-up between that and Axis of Evil—Axis of Hope. I spent a long time going back and forth. My dad was in a good mood all evening. He was the life of the party. He showed everyone how he brushed his navel clean, and he trumpeted like a happy elephant. My mom kept telling him, “Come on, Menachem, give it a rest.” But he didn’t.
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, the tenant who lives in the upstairs apartment decided he wasn’t leaving, even though his lease was up. “Look, Mr. Fullman,” he said, hunched over a dismantled Marantz amp, like a butcher. “In February I’m off to New York to open a stereo lab with my brother-in-law, and I’m not about to move all my shit out just to move it again in two months.” And when my dad told him the lease was up in December, Electronics Man went right on working as if nothing had happened and said in the tone you use to shake off one of those door-to-door guys asking for donations to a worthy cause, “Lease-shmease, I’m staying. You don’t like it? Then sue me,” and stabbed his screwdriver all the way through the amplifier’s guts.
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I went with him to see his lawyer, and the lawyer said our hands were tied. “Settle,” he suggested, rummaging through his drawer in a desperate search for something. “Try to get another three, four hundred out of him, and leave it at that. A lawsuit, you’ll get an ulcer, and after two years of running around that may be all you get.”
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I asked him why we don’t just go into Electronics Man’s apartment at night and change the lock and dump all his stuff in the front yard. And my dad said that was illegal, and I shouldn’t even think about it. I asked if it was because he was afraid, and he said no, just realistic. “What’s the point?” he asked and rubbed his bald spot. “You tell me, what is the point? Over a couple of months? Forget it, it’s not worth the effort.”
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I thought back about what he’d been like when I was a kid. A towering man who worked for the city. He took me places. He’d carry me piggyback. I’d yell “Giddyup,” and he’d run up and down the stairs, with me on his back like a lunatic. Back then he wasn’t realistic. He was world champion.
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I stood on the landing and took a good look. He was bald, he had a little potbelly, he hated his wife, who was my mom. People kept stepping on him and he’d tell himself it wasn’t worth the effort. I thought of the asshole tenant stabbing amplifiers up there in the apartment that had belonged to my grandfather who was dead, and just knowing that my dad won’t do a thing, because he’s tired, because he hasn’t got the balls. Because even his son, who’s only twenty-three, won’t do a thing. In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I thought about life for a second. About how it spits in your face. About how you’re always letting assholes have their way because they’re not worth the effort. I thought about myself, about my girlfriend, Tali, who I don’t really love, about the bald spot hiding under my hairline, about the inertia that somehow always keeps me from telling a girl I don’t know on the bus that she’s really pretty, from getting off when she does and buying her flowers. My dad had gone back inside, and I was left on the landing by myself. The light clicked off and I didn’t even go turn it back on. I felt as if I was choking. I felt like a Coke that’s gone flat. I thought about my kids, who’d go scurrying like mice through an underground mall just to bring me back a copy of Axis of Evil—Axis of Hope.
In honor of my dad’s fiftieth, I whacked his tenant across the face with a wrench. “You broke my nose,” Shlomi whimpered, writhing on the floor. “You broke my nose.” “Nose-shnose.” I lifted the Phillips screwdriver off his workbench. “You don’t like it? Then sue me.” I thought about my dad, who must be sitting in the bedroom now, cleaning his navel with a brush with a gold-plated handle. It pissed me off. It enraged me. I put the screwdriver down and gave him a kick in the head for good measure.
