Stephen Dixon: Love and Will: Twenty Stories

The floor-length curtains inches away from him will be fastened together by safety pins. I’ll turn him over as I do every night I sleep home. About once a month I must rush him in his wheelchair to the bathroom so he can make two. He can’t tum over by himself. We’ve been warned he can get bed sores if he isn’t turned at least once a night and that in the morning his muscles and bones on one side will most likely ache. And he can develop red spots on his ankles from the pressure of one foot lying too long on the other and his having dislodged the pillow placed between his feet. And because he’s a diabetic the red spots can lead to open wounds which can lead to a foot being cut off. Before I turn him over I’ll say urinate first. I’ll place the urinal between his thighs and stick his penis inside if he’s too tired to do so or can’t locate it. I’ll hear the splash against the plastic and then say through now? and he’ll say no or yes. If it’s no I’ll take the urinal away a minute later and empty and wash it out. Then I’ll turn him over and place the pillow between his feet. Two Chux between his penis and thighs in case he has an accident overnight. Cover him up with the top sheet folded a few inches over the blankets and place the urinal beside the Gelusils and bell on the table-tray beside his bed. I’ll say comfortable? and he’ll say yes. I’ll kiss him on the forehead and say goodnight. Maybe touch his cheek or run my hand across his face or pat his shoulder or head and shut out all the lights and say sleep well and he might murmur thanks. I’ll close the louver doors to the kitchen. Get a glass of wine from the refrigerator and read in bed with another glass of wine. Maybe return to the kitchen for a third or fourth or fifth glass of wine before I feel sleepy enough for sleep.

Tonight she said that’s your problem when I said I’m sure if I had showed her more affection and attention this past month she never would have become interested in this English guy. She had placed on the table a plate of different French cheeses she had picked up at the same store she bought the closest American bread to a baguette. I said I’ll get a knife. She said break it with your hands. I said it isn’t easy breaking butter with your hands unless the cubes are frozen solid and it also gets very messy smearing it on bread with your fingertips. She said she’ll get it but I said stay. I got up so I could get behind her. Her back was to the kitchen. I leaned over her from behind with the knife in my hand and kissed her lips. She let us linger there but when I tried opening her mouth it wouldn’t budge. Maybe you better go, she said. I spoke about passion. I forget whose. Maybe hers, mine, ours. She said must you yell? I was putting my shoes on at the time. I said when I speak about passion I sometimes have to do it passionately. And passion to me is the essential, Yeats said, I said. I told her that was in a letter he dictated or wrote. I know because I read it yesterday. And I know I read it yesterday, I said, because if I had read it the day before yesterday I wouldn’t have remembered the quote and if I read it today I would have remembered if the letter had been dictated or written. She said someone else once said. I said Shakespeare always said. She said Shakespeare isn’t the one she’s thinking of although one of his characters did say give me that man that is not passion’s slave, which she thinks applies to her here. My shoes, coat and muffler were now on. She said she forgets which play it’s from though it was in one of the textbooks she taught from last term, but let’s call it a night, Will, she said. I said I can’t and I’m not going to transform into the little boy she says I sometimes become when I don’t get what I want. Hamlet, she said. Act scene, seen act, I should have said. But I said my stomach hurts and I’m feeling awful and I don’t want to be alone tonight. She said well what do I expect her to do? I said her sleeping with me now would be a very considerate thing to do. She said not tonight. But you don’t even know, I said. Didn’t one time in bed you didn’t want to do it when I did and I stirred you up into wanting to and later you said you were glad I hadn’t let you fall asleep straight off? She said she’ll call me at the end of the week and we’ll meet. I quickly calculated. Today’s Monday. Four days. Too long. Maybe the end of the week meant Sunday to her. I said we can simply sleep beside one another if she likes, arm around arm, not even that if she doesn’t like. Just in the same bed if she likes. Or if she likes I’ll place a board between us if she has a board or a column of thumbtacks down the middle of the bed if she prefers. I said do you have any tacks? She said no. I said what if I just sleep on the living room couch surrounded by thumbtacks and broken glass and you in your own bed in your room? No that won’t do, I said. What have I come to? I said. What about the time she was so warm to me when I was sick? It started in a movie house. We had to leave before the picture was over but she said she didn’t mind in the least. Not if I was sick. She gave me medicine, a back rub. I had fever and chills. She tucked me in, made me mint tea. Paid for the cab. Untucked me, got in beside me. No clothes on. Oh what a sight. I wore her shirt. She turned down the electric blanket. Warmed me with what she for the first time out of many called her hot box body. And next morning I was well. The infamous ten-and-a-half hour virus had passed. Doctor Dana I said when she gave me tomato juice in bed. Just old Doc Dan to my friends she said when she took the glass. I don’t know if it was when she took the glass. I do know it was tomato. I think she that night stirred me up to doing what I originally didn’t feel like though I’m now not so sure. I think I said you’ll get sick. I think she said don’t fret about me. Did we come? Was it fun? Tonight I said passionately that I won’t speak about passion passionately anymore tonight or even dispassionately or even the word passion or passionate or passionately or passional or even passionless or — ateness or passion fruit or flower or week or — tide or play or Sunday or even pass in or passing or pass sing or passengers sing or passenger pigeons used to sing or any words like that. None. I promise. Heart my cross and die to hope. I’ll be passionless. No words even near to passion. Not even passive, passage, passport, Passaic, passe partout or even passe or partout.

By now I was at the door. At the door I said I’ll stay a while longer if she still wants to talk. I’d like to talk. Stay then, she said, but please not for long. So I again thought there was still some hope. What I wanted most was to get us both into bed. But that I already said. But that I still want to do. Just to get this horrid night through. Because tomorrow, she said, I think tomorrow we both have to go to work. But how am I going to get through work? Should I call in sick and lose a per diem day’s pay? She gets paid when she phones in ill. She teaches at college, I’m at junior high. She works one third of my hours and gets twice as much pay. Her work’s more than not intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying while I come home physically exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained every workday. But she takes the subway to work while I walk the three blocks to school and run home for lunch. I shut the door. Close call I think I thought then. And sit at her table without ever again removing my muffler, coat or gloves. In the movies we used to hold hands. Tonight I said I bet in a month this piggy finger of hers will have rings. In the street it was arms around waists and also hands. And one night at Ray’s place she fell asleep with her head in my lap. I petted and played with it as I would with a cat. Lights were out, logs were on. Later she said she didn’t much care for my friend and his girl but liked their fire. She also had this bad habit of bugging taxi men. You’re taking us too far out of our way she used to say. Shhh, I told her, better gypped than dead. She said in the cab I looked quite strong but wasn’t that brave. But then another time she spoke about my courage but said I lacked common sense. And then a third time she feared how physically weak I sometimes appeared and that—

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