Stephen Dixon - Gould

She put an ad in the newspaper of the university he’d been a grad student at: “Garden and lt. handyman work for room and bd; 2 months minimum, 3 preferred.” He calls, says that if she does take him he can only give her two weeks. That he was driving to New York with a friend in the friend’s car and his apartment lease will be up in three days and he’ll need a place to stay. She won’t even have to provide him bed linen; he has a sleeping bag and pillow and pillowcase, though he would like a real bed or mattress to sleep on and to have his own room to write in a few hours a day before or after he does the work she wants done.

She says to be honest the ad’s been running for several weeks and no one’s answered it so far and she’d like to get the work started, so could he come by for an interview and to see if he’d like staying here? She has a young son; he has nothing against children, does he? and he says “No, why ever would I?”

He bikes over that afternoon, rings the bell, nobody answers. Walks around the house calling her name. “Mrs. Tylic? I’m here, Mrs. Tylic — Gould Bookbinder, at the time you said.” “In here,” she says when he passes a screen door at the back of the house. The laundry room. A beautiful blond boy, around two years old, is sitting on top of the washing machine, stretching inside for clothes and dropping them into the laundry basket on the floor. She pretty, girlish-like; in shorts, T-shirt, long hair in pigtails, thin, almost no breasts, though a bra on, small, five-two at the most, bright blue eyes, black hair, pale skin, holding clothespins, one in her mouth which she takes out, shy smile, very white teeth and perfectly formed it seems, slender muscular legs, high behind, young, twenty-two, twenty-four. They talk while she sticks certain clothes in the dryer and hangs on a line above his head other clothes: man’s sweatshirt, seems an extra large; two bras, several small underpants, but a woman’s, not a kid’s, and all with bloodstains in the crotch; leotard, the boy’s socks, which he’d think would go in the dryer. She says another reason she’d like a man here is for her son, since he’s missing even a semi-steady male image with his father almost never around. He points to the boy, shakes his head a little and she says “Bronson knows; his biological pa, B-senior, pops in every third month for lunch to bitch as to how much of his inherited dough he’s given us and to spin Brons-J around in his newest nifty sports car. Now it’s a psychedelic-painted Lotus; that goofer’s loaded.” She doesn’t work, for the time being takes marketing courses at a community college and is also trying to sculpt and pot, lives off the little money her ex-husband is forced by law to give their son and what she manages to pad on the kid’s medical and daycare expenses, which her ex also pays; the house was bought with the money she got from the divorce settlement. “So I don’t have much; the meals will be skimpy. Lots of pasta and canned tomato paste and jug wine, unless you feel like springing for the real McCoy and also one night treating us to a restaurant meal. I need lots of work done that I can’t afford anyone to do. I don’t expect major plumbing repairs but I do want simple electric jobs beyond just changing light bulbs, and the fence fixed, some bamboo dug up from a friend’s property and replanted here, and if there’s time, help in wallpapering the two bathrooms, besides all the ugly old rose bushes removed. Their roots go deep, I want you to understand before you sign on.”

She takes his references, calls that night to say they all checked out and could he start in two days? and he says “As I said, my residence is only a single small room in a large house full of other small rooms filled with rowdy grad students and at night their loud mates, so I can even move in tomorrow. I’ve almost nothing to pack and I can use the sleep too before the long mostly sleepless drive back to New York.”

Years later, maybe twenty, she writes “Why are you still writing me? I don’t think our correspondence is healthy. It’s been enjoyable hearing from you. You always wrote interesting and occasionally witty letters, not that I was ever interested in anything that happened in your rat nest of a city or thought that wit was such a great thing to have. I prefer sincerity and plain-spokenness and not to think of cockroaches and rowhouses. But you’re married now and your wife probably resents your writing me and I don’t want to be the cause for any strain in your marriage. I know I’d resent a husband who was getting letters from a former lover he says he was once in love with and almost married to.” He wrote back saying “Sally accepts what I say, that we’re only friends now. And how often do we exchange letters, three times a year? I get the feeling the main reason you want to end the correspondence is because there’s nothing in it for you; in addition, you don’t like the act of writing: it takes too much of your energy and time. The phone would be far simpler and less physically taxing if all you want to know about is what’s happening and not what I’m thinking. So okay, I’ll stop, and a long good life to you and of course always my love to B-J.” She sends him a postcard: “That was extremely UNFAIR!!! Don’t be the louse and bastard you once were; I thought you had climbed out of that. And sure: ‘good life’ to me but ‘love’ to Brons. You couldn’t be more obvious. You’re a fuck!” He sends her a picture postcard of the New York skyline, and says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I apologize; I swear my remark on the physical cost of letter writing was only a little dig I was giving and I meant no deep harm. As for the good life instead of my love, I thought saying anything approximating affection to you would be inappropriate after what you said about it. I hope this clears it up. Best ever, Gould.” She doesn’t write back, so her postcard was the last he ever heard from her.

Thinking about it soon after, he was glad to be through with the correspondence. He always answers when anyone writes him, so he felt stuck in it. But she was cutting him up too much in her letters and for no reason he could see and he’d wanted to say something about it but hoped she’d stop on her own. “You were usually such a sourpuss and at times acted like a fruity prude. Everyone we knew here felt that but they also thought there were decent and worthy things to you too. . You bitched too much when we were together, but about everything (especially the music and movies I liked and what I read and how I was raising B-J) and I’ve been wondering if you complain as much now to your wife. Nothing was ever good enough for you and I doubt that anything will ever be. You thought California culture the dimmest but you never convinced me that your depressing falling-apart East was superior or even its equal. And as for Europe: oh, you loved that place despite its fastidiousness, oob-la-la-ness , long serious faces and cruddy toilets and all their bloody wars and what they did to your poor Jews.

Our weather was always too beautiful for you, our shores too uninhabited and pristine. The people around here too open, good-natured and lighthearted and just all-around easy to be with and relaxed. You craved New York nastiness, impoliteness, uptightness, backstabbingness and hardships of every sort and snow so cold your skinny balls froze till they cracked. Things shouldn’t be so ‘naturally good.’” He doesn’t remember saying that, nor does he see himself as ever saying it, since he never believed it, so if she wasn’t quoting him why’d she put it in quotes? “I’m delighted you’ve finally found a woman to marry — not ‘delighted’; that was one of your fake poofy words. I’m just glad you’re getting married and I hope it works and changes you for the better (like helps you mature) as every marriage should. But honestly, I thank all the stars there are that I didn’t become your bride and that you’re no longer hassling me. . Brons doesn’t consider you his second father anymore. He became disappointed and then disgusted with you when you refused to fly out here for a week in what had become your ritual annual visit. You said you couldn’t afford to any longer because the plane fares had gone up, but do you know what it did to that kid? Now he’s too busy making money to be interested in anything you do: your work, who you marry and what’s on your mind. If there’s one person you can bet will be a multi-m man by the time he’s thirty, it’s our junior B. Why deny things for yourself so much? You were the same skinflint with us too. True, you only had menial jobs then and were basically supporting us — your ‘family’ as you liked to say ( that I appreciated) — but you still could have treated yourself to something when you had a little money, or not been so penurious (cheap, man, CHEAP!). What I’m saying is that you inherited your cheapness from your father and because it is genetic it’s probably impossible to eradicate.”