Stephen Dixon - Gould

One night she threw a glass of wine in his face. It was his wine, he’d been holding it, but he’d put it down to make a call on the kitchen phone. The wine sprayed all around him — cabinets, ceiling, floor; glass flew out of her hand by mistake, she later said, and hit his face and cut him but smashed against the wall. She’d overheard him making the call. He was telling a woman he’d known before he’d met Evangeline that he was going to pack his essential things right away and somehow get to her place in Berkeley, and if the buses weren’t running this late along El Camino and then from San Francisco or no friend would drive him to the Greyhound in Redwood City or all the way, he’d even splurge his last buck on a cab, for that was how much he wanted to get away. He and Evangeline had had a terrific fight that night, he then said he was leaving; she said “Shut up, you’ll wake the kid,” he said “What do you think our row was doing, and don’t you think he should know by now how we really feel about each other?” she said “Great, couldn’t be better, what a deal I won’t pass up: get your ass out of my house, you filthy bastard; disappear for good.” The woman said she could put him up for a few days, or more if it worked out between them, but they’d see. He said he should be there in a couple of hours if he made good connections, less if he got a ride right to her. “Anyway, don’t wait up; put the key behind that brick, if you still use it and it’s still a safe spot. I have your address and I think I remember where it is. Just tell me, does the key turn to the left or right?” Then the wine came and next the glass and then the threat not to use the phone again to call a friend or she’d get the cops. Knapsack and typewriter packed, he’d wiped the wine off the cabinets, ceiling and floor, looked in on Brons but didn’t bend down to kiss him or touch his head, knocked on her bedroom door and said “Just want you to know, I’m going now. I’ll try to catch the last bus at the stop. If I don’t make it, don’t worry, I’m not coming back. I’ll slide the keys under the front door after I lock it, and tell Brons I’ll call him tomorrow afternoon or night and of course that he had nothing to do with my going and that I absolutely love him,” and she said “Why are you telling me all this?” and he said “I thought it was important, especially that I wasn’t leaving the front door unlocked; so, I’ll see ya,” and she said “Hold it, will you?” and opened the door and she was crying and he said “What the hell are you crying for?” and she said “Please don’t be obtuse,” and he said “Okay, and I didn’t mean it that way,” and he cried and then, maybe the tenth time since he started living with her — about to go, his things on his shoulder and in his hands, his things by the door, his things on the other side of the door and once on the sidewalk while he waited for a cab he’d called to take him to a friend’s place — they made up and went to bed. He called the woman first and said he was staying, Evangeline and he had worked it out, and she said she was disappointed but understood and probably it was for the best—“No doubt it was, if you patched it up so fast; though after what you said happened tonight and what I could make out from her in the background in our first call, who can say if you’re not risking your life by staying another night — excuse me, because you probably love her.” “Do you think we get into these uncontrolled howling brawls just to have the greatest times in bed?” Evangeline said after and he said “I don’t think so; I hope not. They’re real, unfortunately, at least on my part; I truly hated you and wanted to flee,” and she said “Then flee, nothing’s holding you: no kids or contract or dues,” and he said “That what you want?” and she said “You can see that right now it’s not, but who can say for later if we have another mad brawl. We should try to work out what causes them. I know we’ve said that before, but this time to really work at it: therapy together, speaking to people whose judgments we trust, reading about it; whatever helps. Even if it doesn’t result in any long-standing arrangement for us with the whole caboodle kit of wedding rings and children thrown in, we’d find out for future relationships, and some perhaps of longer standing than ours, what bugs us about living with someone. And for the time being just to make it better for each other and Brons, since our fights damage him.” She’ll change her mind, he thought; if he just does his best to keep things smooth between them for a year and goes along with everything she says about helping them stay together and learning why they’re at each other so much, she’ll want to get married and have a kid with him and then maybe a second one, when she sees how helpful a husband and good a father he is with the first one, and even three kids if her body can take it. Three’s the number he wanted for years, he thought, but of his own. “What I’d love,” he said in bed that same night, “is just to have one good solid no-great-spats year,” and she said “That’d suit me. But I have to admit that another side of me says it wouldn’t be altogether healthy, or right for our natures, not getting things out fast and furiously that way, and think of those terrific screws we’d be missing right after we made up again. But we’ll work toward it. More than anything, there’s Brons to consider, as I said. You’re my dear.”

They drove to Washington State to visit her folks. Another of his old cars, this one a station wagon he bought for a hundred dollars and had to keep filling up with oil, backseat down, she and Brons sleeping most of the way on a double-bed mattress. “Where’d you ever find that goof?” he overheard her father say to Evangeline. They were in the kitchen, he was upstairs in the guest room just for him — her parents had given them separate rooms — and heard it through the floor. “The nose, the jug ears, the beefy lips and he’s half bald; he’ll be hairless as an egg in five years, and he looks like a bath is an on-and-off thing with him, or maybe that’s because his clothes are so old and unkempt and the half-assed way he shaves. Not at all attractive. If I was a girl and had to face that face every day, I’d puke,” and she said “Some people would disagree with you.” “Who? He’s also got no personality or bite. He’s all brains, I’ll give you that, but of the useless kind — clever remarks and bon mots and facts and dates no one else cares a zig for. He’s a full-fledged dud as far as I can tell; nothing compared to the men you used to date here and even the shitheel you married,” and she said “Gould and I knew you wouldn’t like him that much, which is why I didn’t ask. Let’s say I don’t want to discuss it and it’d be too futile to defend his good qualities to you. I only wanted you two to meet, even if just once — Mom already has — and for Brons and I to see you both again, and I couldn’t afford the plane,” and her father said “You should have told me. If I knew what you were bringing, I would have come up with the fare gladly if you had left him behind.” “Is he fey?” he overheard her father ask her mother from the same room. “She leads such a crazy life in California, who can say what she goes after these days. The new kick down there might be to try and get a homo to do it to you, and they’re supposed to be plenty sensitive, aren’t they? So maybe that’s it too: they know a woman’s needs and aren’t demanding and rough,” and her mother said “He’s good to our grandson and that’s something. And they seem to get along together, and she says they have a good time in bed — don’t you breathe a word of this to anyone — so it can’t be that fey silliness you say. And when I stayed with them he was all over her house doing nice things for her, besides being attentive and considerate to me: getting her coffee, even heating up the milk for it because she liked it in the morning café au lait. Cooking good dinners from scratch and working hard at his own job but tending a lot to Bronson too.” “That’s all she probably thinks of,” her father said, “—sex, and hooking up with another man who’s worth a million, which this dud will never have. It won’t last, that’s my prediction, but if it does then she’s more lost than I thought,” and her mother said “I hope you’re right, because I also know — remember, not a word of this! — that there’ll be no tears from her once he’s gone, not even the onion kind.” Evangeline introduced him to her cousins and friends still living in the area. Friendly but uninformed people, he thought, and unsophisticated and dull and a couple of them fairly dumb and with not a single funny thing said by any of them and not one interested in anything he was. “I fart on art,” one guy said and she laughed and the guy said “Should I make one, to emphasize my point?” and lifted his leg and this really cracked her up and later Gould said “How could you laugh so hard at that idiotic art-fart remark?” and she said “Because it was hysterically funny, why else? — I’m no phony. Not only what was said and the way he combined those words to make a rhyme and then with his leg like he was about to lay one, but also because I knew how it’d annoy you. They’re great fun, my old chums. Fun and real people, earthy, homey, plain-speaking, unheld-back and direct, and you can’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t babble on about high culture and character and ethics and farty art and all that and who also isn’t a gasbag and cryptic nitpicker to go with it. I’m sorry, but to me this is humor. What you pass off for it is intellectual chitty chatchat told to tickle and riddle,” and he said “God, what am I doing with you? And stuck in this nowhere land no less,” and she said “That’s what I’ve been asking myself too. If you want, Brons and I can stay a few extra days and take the plane back and you can set out early tomorrow morning,” and he said “Yeah, I heard, your big daddy will come up with the fare and there won’t even be any onion tears from you when I’m finally gone. Won’t he be glad to see me go, but I’ll be ecstatic. Your mother, I’ll admit, I like a lot and have from the first time I met her; a real mensch,” and she said “Oh, aren’t you nice; she’ll be so happy to hear what you said, and the particular word you used.”