Stephen Dixon: Gould

He was almost forty, never married, childless, seeing a woman for almost two years, they’d broken up several times during that period for a few days, weeks, once for a month, had lived together for half a year till she said she wanted her own place for the first time in her life — she was with her folks till she got married at eighteen, separated from her husband a few years ago and moved in with an old high school friend — and got a small cheap apartment and he stayed in his, now he was seeing her one or two nights a week and spending most weekends with her and they were also planning a month’s bicycle trip in Holland and France this summer and when he came to her place on a Friday night for a long holiday weekend she immediately looked distant or cool, said “Gould, hi, how are you?” and swiveled around after he said “Fine, you?” and went into the living room, hadn’t kissed him when she opened the door, he thought that surprising, couldn’t remember her not giving him at least a perfunctory kiss hello on the lips or cheek when he made some kind of head or body move toward one when they were alone unless they were still angry at each other over something from the previous day or two or that hadn’t been resolved from a week back or only she was still angry at him or thought it hadn’t been resolved, and things had been pretty good between them the last few weeks, holding hands or his arm around her most of the time when they were walking outside, her head against his shoulder in the movie theater and a few kisses initiated by one or the other of them snuck in during a particularly dark scene, long deep lively conversations or just chats with lots of play, not a single argument or minor spat, nothing either of them said or did to tick the other off, exchanging I-love-yous and things like that at dinner in a restaurant and at night before they fell asleep after they’d made love, when he phoned her two days ago she said she was looking forward to a three-day weekend with him, he thought they might even resume living together after the summer trip if things continued to go this well though he’d tell her to sublet her tiny apartment just in case it didn’t work out, it might even end up in marriage in a year or so, he thought, even if she told him a few months ago she was dead set against getting married again to anyone, so soon after her divorce, for three more years and if he didn’t like that arrangement he better stop seeing her now, that she just wanted to continue being out on her own and entirely paying her own way for that long, and he said now when he caught up with her in the living room, she putting a record on the turntable, then turning the machine off and looking at him standing beside her, “Anything wrong?” and she said “Why, I look it, something I’m giving off?” and he said “Yeah, sure, it seems obvious to me and even more so after what you just said; what is it? and your racing in here away from me, turning the record player on, turning it off,” and she said “You’re right, something is the matter, in a way. I’ve something important to tell you, didn’t want to say it the second you got here and probably couldn’t hide that it was bothering me . something you might not like but which you have to know,” and he said “Come on, what, what? From you I’m up to hearing anything with equanimity unless it’s that you’re very sick with an incurable illness, God forbid, or you want to give me the can,” and she said “The can?” and he said “‘Get rid of me’—it’s not the right use of the expression or even an expression to you?” and she said “What I want to say is nothing like that, but you have to wait, I’m not done with the preparations before I go into what I’m going to tell you if we don’t want any music let’s sit on the couch,” and he said “I don’t want any — it’d just interfere,” and they sat on the couch and he said “Can I get even a smidgen of a kiss to alleviate this a bit?” and she said “Let’s be serious,” and he said “I’d really love one but okay, serious, right, let’s . so what is it, you have a lover in the closet and you want me to leave for the next hour?” and she said “What are you talking about? What does it even mean that you’re not aware it does?” and he said “Nothing, only kidding, it was dumb of me, really dumb, and he isn’t in the closet, he’s downstairs waiting for me to leave . no, sorry, dumb again, knock knock, what’s there?” banging his skull with his knuckles, “I’m just nervous because of your so-serious face and everything else about you that seems so serious — I’m expecting the worst,” and she said “Once again, it is serious, but please no more silly other-lover talk — men are the furthest thing from my mind,” and he said “Good, I’m glad to hear that . okay, then this: after all your . . your, wanting to hold off no, I shouldn’t say it, I’ve been dumb enough, not that what I was about to say was,” and she said “What?” and he said “For two or three more years as you’ve said — marriage, that now you want to with me after all and are afraid I’ll think, after everything you’ve said about it, that it’s the most outrageous request I’ve heard and I’m going to stomp right out of here, when I actually wouldn’t look at it as too bad an idea, and I’m now being serious,” and she said “Oh yes, that’s it; I wish it were as easy as that but this is much more complicated in what’s involved between us and on my part solely in the yes or no,” and he said “Don’t ask me why but I’ve no clue as to what you’re saying. Let’s go back a bit: what preparations did you want to make for me before you got into the heart of what you have to say?” and she said “I’m not sure; hoping you’ll be calm and truly consider my viewpoint and so forth — most of it by now I forget. Thinking of what you’re going to say beforehand and how you’re going to say it shouldn’t be done, I think, when it comes to something like this. All I should have done at the door was say ‘Hello, I’ve something very important to tell you, it’s not about my health or someone else, come in,’ or ‘it is about my health in a way and to some people, but not me, it is about someone else,’ and then ‘come in,’ and even given you a kiss because I’d really want to and you expect one when you come and then we’d sit where we are now and I’d say it,” and he said “You’re pregnant with our dear little baby, and I’m not joking there, I swear,” and she said “That’s right, though it can’t show, it’s too early. But I am, I just found out — yesterday; I even went to my gynecologist for a test — and I’m going to have an abortion, but how’d you know?” and he said “What do you mean?” and she said “Why, what do you mean? Wait, you don’t think I’m having the kid, do you? — is that what you’re saying?” and he said “Let’s talk about it first,” and she said “Do you or don’t you?” and he said “Why not have it?” and she said “‘Why not?’ We’re not married, for one thing, but almost the least thing, but let me get this straight: you are talking of my having the baby and not having the abortion, right?” and he said “Of course, and why can’t you?” and she said “That marriage business, to begin with, and also because, and this a more important reason, I don’t want a baby now and even if I did I wouldn’t have it on my own,” and he said “So situation solved. We’ll get married and have it and if you don’t want to zip into marriage because of it then you’ll stay with me at my place unmarried or we’ll get a new bigger place and that way you won’t have to have the baby on your own. Because as I’ve told you—” and she said “You and a bigger place? You can barely afford your low-rent slum some months so how do you expect to pay for a more expensive apartment while also supporting me when I’m out of work having the child and also paying to have the baby and then taking care of it? There’s doctors, hospitals, all sorts of expenses — carriage, crib, clothes, diaper service. And neither of us has medical insurance and if we wanted to get on a plan they wouldn’t take me because I’m pregnant and if only you got on I couldn’t join it because we wouldn’t be married. Even if we were married they’d disqualify the pregnancy part for me,” and he said “We wouldn’t tell them you’re pregnant,” and she said “They’d count the months, and besides, it’d be wrong,” and he said “How many months pregnant are you, one?” and she said “Whatever I am, I wouldn’t participate in anything illegal and by the time you joined a plan there’d be lots of months gone,” and he said “Listen, I’ll work harder at getting a lucrative job — two jobs, what do I care? For I’ve told you, to get back to before — plenty of times I said this — I’d love marrying you and having kids. One kid now, more later; or just a second, and it could be much later. So one or the other or both: marriage or no marriage but living together somewhere and having the baby — it’s all fine with me, great, what I want most,” and she said “Really, you’re going crazy with this talk, none of it has anything grounded in reality,” and he said “It’s not that way at all. It’s real and I meant it and it’s possible and—” and she said “See? Calm. I wanted you to be calm, reasonable, I knew this would happen, and you’re not. That’s why I should have been persistent in preparing you for this. Because as you told me, then as I told you: my marriage disgusted me so much about marriage that I won’t be ready for another one for a few years and I’d probably never be ready for it with you. That I got pregnant with you is the mistake of my life. Excuse me — just letting myself get pregnant was, or almost as big a mistake as my marriage. No, more so, because now there’s a life-and-death question involved. Anyway, to answer your thing about marriage, simply because we were all right for each other in bed and a few other things and felt very good about each other now and then doesn’t mean we’re right for each other forever — for marriage — for however long marriage is,” and he said “Wait, don’t jump into inextricable positions. Ones you can’t — places, I mean, where you bind your — for things are different now, a kid’s a kid, a pregnancy’s not an ordinary . a — But let me get my thoughts collected, on line, I’m altogether confused. I won’t say nothing like this has ever happened to me, but not at this age. Let me start again, that didn’t come out sounding right, where—” and she said “Look, Gould—” and he said “Stop using my name, please,” and she said “When did I?” and he said “That way, I mean, for I hate it when you use it like that, saying it as if — for I know what’s coming next and I don’t like what I see,” and she said “What?” and he said “The worst, the goddamn worst,” and she said “Now you’re getting angry and I—” and he said “I’m not, my face isn’t, I don’t feel it, in the face or building up in the body, or my anger,” and she said “Then worked up, because that’s another thing I wanted to avoid,” and he said “I’m not that either; I’m listening and maybe at times commenting or just answering,” and she said “Then just listen, all right? Now: it’s fun a great deal with you, this by way of introduction—” and he said “Oh boy, some woman said that to me years and years ago and the introduction meant the end,” and she said “Will you please just listen?” and he nodded, and she said “It is fun and has been most times — well, not fun now, and it’s been more than fun, of course — and I like you a lot, I think you’re a very dear person,” and he said “Watch it, Jack, here comes the kiss off,” and she said “It isn’t; now listen. And I once thought I was in love with you, before we—” and he said “Either you were in or you weren’t and if you felt you were — thought it — you were,” and she stared at him and he said “Vow: silence,” put a finger over his lips and she said “love with you before we started living together . I’m sure it’s what made us live together or encouraged us to,” and he said “Excuse me, I know I shouldn’t be talking, but I want to remind you that you said last week you loved me. It was at dinner, the Egyptian Tavern, over that mixed Middle Eastern appetizer platter if you want to get exact about it — I can even tell you what we wore, your hair was up not down, the main dishes we had,” and she said “And what we drank, because we were a little tipsy at the time, bock beer at home—” and he said “Shared, one twelveounce bottle shared,” and she said “Wine you brought to the restaurant. I think we drank a whole bottle, before even the main dishes came, and French too, which I always feel is more potent than the others,” and he said “A cheap French wine, probably from Algeria, so not so potent; I even told you that at the table, making the Middle Eastern connection. And almost the whole bottle, though maybe half before the main dishes came, but we ate a lot over a long period because the service was slow. And we were feeling fine, just fine, couldn’t be better, we held hands, kissed over the table — lips and hands, you even kissed mine,” holding his hands out, “and a week or two before that in bed after making love we said it too — I love you, you love me — I don’t know who said it first; you did, or I, but the point is we both felt it at the same time — it was obvious to me, obvious,” and she said “Where’s this conversation getting us, Gould? — oh, I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to use your name,” and he said “I’m trying to replicate the circumstances of the events, disputing you amicably in proving that we said we loved each other then so were in love, for after you told me it at the table and in bed, I told you it too, or the reverse,” and she said “All right, then , I felt and said it then , and we were then , but only after we were half smashed or had made love as you said and I was no doubt feeling good in bed, spirits high and body excited and satisfied and mind relieved of whatever shit this city and practically everyone in it gives. But I shouldn’t have said it when I was in that particular state, not even to tit for tat your I-love-you if yours was first, since it’s the equivalent of saying it when you’re drunk,” and he said “And that could’ve been the night you conceived,” and she said “It’s possible, if it was a few weeks back; but we’re together two to three times a week and usually on those days, unless I’m hemorrhaging or down with a bad cold or flu, we make love. But it’s unimportant now how the baby happened. Whether conceived in love or friendship or doggy passion or out of coercion on your part or generosity on mine when you couldn’t go to sleep without it or because you were so nice that day I couldn’t deny it or that some of your come dribbled off my stomach into me after your interrupted ejaculus, if it was a night when I was too tired to put my diaphragm in or couldn’t find it and had asked you to withdraw, not to say that if I did use my diaphragm then it was the first time in about a thousand for that one that it didn’t work. But it’s still a conception we have to deal with and I’m dealing with it this way by getting rid of it. So whatever was said or done between us, I’m saying to you, ours is not the kind of love that sticks around and goes trippingly on and on and which I want to happen to me to get married again. And even if I were in love with you or anyone, and deeply, which I’m definitely not with you, the first point I made is the truest and most immutable and that’s that I’m not at all ready to have a child now or get married. I have to be on my own more. I’ve said it and I’ll say it again,” and he said “You don’t have to,” and she said “No, I want to, because it’s not getting through: I have to be on my own more — I must. All this comes too soon after my marriage ended, which I got too dumbly into to begin with, so do you understand now, this ‘wrong time’ business I’ve brought up again and again? Do you understand and that nothing will make me change my mind?” and he said “But I want the baby,” and she said “Fine, but not this one and never with me. Break off with me completely and find a woman who does want one now and have it with her — I’m saying you should do that. In fact, I’m saying that this is probably the last time we should see each other; that right after this discussion—” and he said “So it is the kiss off,” and she said “All right, so that’s what it’s ending up being, but it’s not the word I’d use. It’s more a facing of reality, confronting it full out, seeing things as they—” and he said “They’re all the same and they add up to kiss off,” and she said “Then fine, then that’s what it is, this is the kiss off, but I’m also telling you we’re not good for each other anymore. Maybe we were for lots of things—” and he said “Maybe?” and she said “All right, we were, but never for a long-term life-together-for-forever or what for a while could be that type of tie-in and connection,” and he said “You just don’t want to say ‘love affair’ or ‘relationship,’” and she said “Certainly not ‘love affair’: I hate that term worse than ‘relationship.’ But also that the timing isn’t and was never really right for us and we fought that and lost and now you should gather up all your things you have here and go. This will help you find that woman to have that child you want, while I’m—” and he said “But you’re pregnant with our baby and I want that one, not just any woman’s; yours,” and she said “Believe me, Gould, if you want a baby so much that you’d have it with a woman who absolutely doesn’t want it or want to live with you and who’d make your life particularly miserable after having it till you’d want to brain her, I mean that, then you’ll find another more wonderful woman much better in the ways you want from me.” “Speak English,” he said, and she said “Don’t get mean and bitchy, I hate that too. A woman who’s agreeable and very receptive to marriage and kids and who’ll want yours and for them to look like you and you’ll be happy with her because she’ll love and admire you and give in and administer to all your needs and whims while with me you’ll be unhappy and dissatisfied, always, I promise, and often depressed, with a brief respite from the unhappiness and rest of the mess only every now and then. I like and appreciate many things about you but as I said, I don’t want our relationship to go on any longer than today or, if you want, from the time after you drop me off or pick me up at the abortion clinic, though where or why I came up with that drop-and-pick-me-up idea, I don’t know — skip it,” and he said “I have to have this baby. If we do then you’ll see, you’ll want to be with it and me and you’ll love having the baby, you’ll adore it and thank—” and she said “No, absolutely and unqualifiedly not,” and he said “Then I’ll have to force you to have it, that’s all, if there’s nothing else I can do,” and she said “Oh yes, and how?” and he said “I’m not sure — by stopping you from not having it,” and she said “And how do you think you can do that?” and he said “By locking you in your apartment or mine till you give birth, or that’s one way,” and she said “Look, no more playing around — just get out of here, will you? I don’t like the tone or the import and you’re becoming a moron. Collect your stupid stuff some other time when you’re less moronic, or I’ll send it over, but now I want you gone,” and he said “It’s no tone; I’m telling you, I could make you stay here, cutting you off from everything, or I’ll drive you to some remote place someplace — Maine, Vermont — to keep you locked in. And then when it’s too late to abort or miscarry, when your own health would be in jeopardy and there wouldn’t be any doctor or butcher who’d do it, I’ll let you out and you’ll have to have the kid and if you want to give it to me, great, or if you think I’m too wacky to give it to or you won’t to spite me and you want to put it up for adoption or hand it over to some relatives like your parents, then I’ll say I’m the doctor — the father —and claim it and I’ll make a good case for myself why I incarcerated you, and I’ll get it. I’ll get a lawyer to help me. I’ll be willing to go broke and into debt getting a lawyer and other help. I’ll do everything I can to get it. I’ll get my family to back me, I’ll get newspapers and stupid human-interest shows behind me. I’ll contact anti-this-or-that organizations I’ve up till now had nothing to do with or never believed in your own friends to say I was never nuts but just because I wanted this baby so much I became temporarily deranged or just overimpassioned,” and she said “You know — calm down — but you know, I never knew but you really are out of your mind — how come I never saw this in you before?” and he said “I’m not. I’m just showing you, but being serious in this show, how much I want our baby to live and if it has to come to this, how far I’ll go to keep it. I don’t want to lose this chance. I’ve always wanted one — I told you that the first time we dated, at that bar on a Hundred Thirteenth, whatever its name — that I’d wanted to be a father for years, and now this might be, for whatever reason, my last sentence, I mean ‘chance,’ and the bar was the West End,” and she said “But look, and I’m saying this calmly and I hope you’ll respond in kind, look at what you’re saying. You think they’ll give in to a madman — even let you see the baby for two minutes — who locks up his pregnant ex-girlfriend to have that child? You mentioned ‘sentence’; well, they’ll give you a jail one, that’ll be your baby. A five-year-old one, or ten, and where you can see it all the time, or if you’re lucky just a few jolts with an electric rod to your frontal lobes should do it, if that’s where it’s done,” and he grabbed her wrists and shouted “You’re having the baby, no two ways about it!” and she said “I am not, and get your hands off me, goon,” and he said “Then you’re staying here with me for as long as I want you to,” and she said “I said get your fucking hands off me, you goon; get the fuck off and out of here or I really will sick the police on you and press charges and see that you’re dumped into jail and stay there,” and he said no and held her wrists tighter and stared at her face, thinking maybe she’d agree to the baby if he just stared at her but knew that was stupid and she said “What the hell are you looking at? You think I’m a child and you can get your way that way? You look ridiculous, you look ugly, with your pointed eyes,” and turned away and said “And now you’re hurting me; get off, you’re making it even worse for yourself, goon, much worse,” and he said “I’m sorry, but say you’ll have it, please,” and she said “Yes, I will have it but I’m lying,” and he said “Then I don’t care how much I hurt you,” and squeezed harder and she screamed and he put his hand over her mouth, twisted her around till he was behind her, kept his hand over her mouth and thought What have I got myself into? What am I going to do now? But she has to see she has to have it. You just can’t kill something you say you’ll one day eventually want when there’s a chance you might never have another chance to have that something, and he said “Listen to me, you can’t kill something you say you’ll eventually want one—” when she bit his hand and ran for the door and he caught her, stuck his wrist in her mouth from behind and twisted her around in back till she muttered through his wrist “Sop, you’re baking it . shoking,” and started gagging and he let her arm go and took his wrist out but kept his hand loosely over her mouth and said “Don’t bite; I don’t want to hurt you; last thing I want to do; but I will, I might have to, you’ve got to have that baby,” and she started crying and he said “What utter baloney, every trick in the book,” continued crying, and he said “I won’t go for that crap. Having the kid’s more important than falling for your horseshit. The kid’s what you should be crying for and particularly if you kill it, don’t you see?” and waited but she didn’t make any head motion or say anything but seemed to have stopped crying and he grabbed her hand, thought What should I do now? I should leave, give it up and get the hell away for all time from here, but maybe I can convince her, it’s worth it trying, and said “Please, I’m not going to really lose my head, but change your mind?” and she said “You’ve lost it; you’re going to pay you don’t know how much for this, you goddamn goon,” and he pulled her to the kitchen, she tugged back and he grabbed her arms and pulled her harder, took the dish towel off the refrigerator door handle and tied it around her mouth but there was only enough cloth left in back to make the first half of the knot, knew she could easily rip it off, if it didn’t fall off first, and scream, so it was more a symbolic shutting-her-up and that he might do worse if she fought him, though he just told her he wouldn’t, walked her to the bedroom pushing her arms from behind, she was crying again and he tried not to look and believed the tears but under his breath intentionally loud enough for her to hear, he said “Fake tears, don’t tell me they’re real, but go on, blubber all you want, see how it feels,” though didn’t know what he meant by the last remark: him, her, the baby? and when he got to the bed he shoved her cheekdown into it, knee up against her back but in a way where it wouldn’t hurt and said “So this is what I’m planning. You listening?” and she shook her head and he said “You’re having it, you’re staying here, not leaving till I can sneak you to a place somewhere far away where you’ll also stay. I’ll disconnect the phone in the meantime. Or I’ll answer it and say you’re sick but you’ll be okay, laryngitis, so you can’t talk, or the flu, gastrointestinal, your stomach, and I’m feeding you soup, or sweet tea, taking care of you better than you’ve ever been, but no visitors, you’re that bad off plus in no mood to see anyone. Then in a few days I’ll say you miraculously recovered when you got a call from Europe for a job interview with a production company. I’ll even tell your boss this if he calls, that the prospect suddenly appeared and it was too good to pass up, with the possibility to triple your current pay and complete medical coverage, so up his giggy for that’s what you think of him and his part-time work and cheap company with hourly wages and no benefits or overtime pay, and who am I? Well, I’ll say who I am: your man. I’ll tell him, except for the last, all the things you’ve wanted to but have played too safe, though I can see why: money for the time being. And later that you adopted a cat weeks before and are still in Europe and I’m taking care of it, that’s why I’m still here, not that anyone who knows us would think I need an excuse. Or I’ve sublet my own place for a few months and moved in here while you’re away, that the renter offered me more money than I could refuse because of my apartment’s location, not the building so much, and I was short of cash as I usually am, or something, but I’ll work it out, what I’ll say. Then I’ll get a good friend who’ll help me out — Benny would; he’d like the idea, not letting the woman get away with it and that the guy’s got rights in this too. Not that so much, since he doesn’t understand why any man would want a child, and one to raise on your own, if it came to that, even more incomprehensible, ‘for how do you get done the things you want to get done,’ he’d say, ‘like your womanizing and getting drunk and sleeping till noon and going to the track anytime you want?’” He hoped for a laugh — that might start something good — but she kept her eyes shut: thinking, planning a way out or just saying, with her lids tight and face pointing away from him: This is the way I’m locking you out. “But Benny would help, get his brother’s car and drive us up to this place the two of them rented for the year in upstate New York, near Albany, a shack, or ‘electrified cabin,’ as the owner called it, where they fished and swam from and hoped to do some cross-country skiing, but I’ll convince him this is more important. It’ll be nippy at first, but we’ll get lots of blankets — you’ll have your own bed or cot, don’t worry, and I won’t touch you. And kerosene heaters or the electric ones, since the kerosene ones really aren’t safe, if it already doesn’t have some kind of interior heating, and line the windows and tape plastic sheets over them inside and out and do everything possible to stay warm, and then I’ll let you go once you’re ready to deliver. Late April, early May — when do you figure?” and took the gag off. No answer or look, eyes never opened, but the way they were clamped tight he knew she wasn’t sleeping. And of course no one was going to think anything funny, as she didn’t to his Benny routine before, with a gag on. “Anyway, once the time comes, or I’m saying the month or two before — you be the judge — I’ll take you to the hospital for a checkup and whatever preparations you need to have the baby, but I’m not leaving you till then. Benny can drive up with food and things once a week. He’d do that for me and I know he can get his brother to go along with it or at least to let him have the car and me the cabin. They’re very close, one’s friend is the other’s automatically, and Benny’s been a true pal, though I was always disappointed in him never seeing the good — the worth, what you are — in you that I did. It’s strange, two people you like so much but they can’t get together. He thought you too wiseass, he said, sarcastic, a ballbreaker — my balls, and I’m not saying this to make you feel to disparage you in any way. But you knew what he had to say already and never cared anyway. You thought him a jerk and could never see why I hung out with him. But he was loyal, never two-faced — no betrayals — or reproachful, and we had fun. Though he did say ‘Okay, go for it if you dig her’—his words, ‘go for, dig,’ he was once a jazz drummer so that’s how he still speaks — when I first met you and introduced you two; and I do, love you, I mean, and he also thought you pretty while I found you beautiful. And it—” and she said with her face still down in the bed “Oh stop with the love, your talk and what you’re going to do with me in Albany and this Benny business — he thought me pretty, you found me beautiful; oh, big mushy pigwash, for it’s all such manure,” and he said “It isn’t, I’m telling you, and after it’s over that’ll be the end of it,” and she looked at him and said “End of what? What are you talking about? Do you know? Do I know? Endless minutes of it and it’s all empty. You’re talking like a jerk, worse than Benny, as if you’ve lost your intelligence and common sense, which you once had some of but he never did. Besides — but forget it — but your decency, anything good in you that was there before but which now resembles take-what-you-can-get-grab-beg-steal-embezzle-from-life stick-it-up-their-pisshole-asses giggy-giggy Benny. Just let me up — get your stupid leg off me, you goon — and out of here. No, you get out, this is my apartment, so I’m ordering you to and you have to comply,” and started squirming under him, tried sliding off the bed and he said “Please, relax, I’m not letting you up right now unless you calm yourself, and certainly not out, and I don’t want you getting hurt falling to the floor. I swear it won’t be so bad — having the kid and the months up to it with me. It might get a bit boring sometimes but it could also turn out to be interesting and even enriching. Anyway, different. All the books you want to read, good air, time to think, a healthy intellectual period and physical one too and I’ll treat you beautifully throughout what you’ll call an ordeal. Read to you, cook for—” and she said “Will you please!”—”do everything for you, that’s the absolute minimum I can do, and we’ll listen to music if you want, whatever kind, the radio, good TV, but this is what I’m going to do. I’m not fluffing off this kid to the nearest scalpel or suction pump or spoon, so face up and confront it yourself as you told me to do with something else. What was that?” and she said “What do I care? You’re sending me to sleep with your talk,” and shut her eyes, face rested on the bed. “Maybe if I say and do nothing you’ll give up trying to communicate with me and just leave peacefully and quietly but making sure the front door’s locked when you go.” He got off the bed, sat across from it, thought “What now, the next step?” said “Scream once and I’m putting the towel back around,” but this time, the way her lids came together so loosely and forehead was uncreased, he thought she might be asleep. Later — half an hour, what he thought most about was how pretty she looked, soft features, beautiful hair and skin, wouldn’t it be something now if she had gone along with it, he’d be flipping, maybe calling people, probably lying on the bed with his arms around her, and her head, as she used to like to nap, snug in his neck, maybe if he persisted gently and came up with some other strategy she’d come around but he didn’t know what — she stirred, rubbed her eyes, he said “Have a good nap?” and she snapped her head to him as if just realizing he was there, sat up on the bed, he said “What’re you doing?” and she looked contemptuously at him and stood up and he said “Where’re you going?” she said “To pee, do you mind?” and he walked behind her to the bathroom. “Excuse me,” he said, when she stood in front of the toilet, waiting for him to leave, “but I’ll have to stay by the door while you go. I don’t see what else I can do, under the circumstances,” and she said “So ridiculous, so nuts, and the language: ‘under the circumstances’ indeed. Don’t you feel stupid? Well, screw you, you stupid prick, that’s what I have to tell you. You like to hear it? You don’t know it yet? It takes that many times to sink in? You’re even shallower than I thought. Then ‘screw you, you stupid prick’ again. I don’t know how long you expect me to amuse you but don’t count on it much longer,” and sat down and peed and he looked away. After she wiped herself and pulled up her underpants she said “You’re trying your darndest to humiliate me, your way of settling scores, and over something in the past — I don’t believe this baby bull at all — but it’s not working. This is what I’ve learned today about you: you’ve the mentality and emotion of the crude jailer, and you should have become a real one. Perhaps then you could have—” and he said “I don’t, not at all. I—” and she said “That’s my very last word to you on anything till you leave,” and went back to the bedroom and he said “Oh, you’ll — and I say this with no pride or self-gratutory congratulatory self-congratulatory feelings or self-congratulation — but you’ll say more in coming months. You’ll have to, for I’ll just about be the only person you’ll see,” and she said “I’m breaking my silence oath, so don’t tell me I did. If you don’t let me go — meaning if you don’t leave in the next five minutes — then I’ll not only shout and scream but bite and fight and break windows and lamps and your head if I have to. And after I’ve drawn attention from the outside or the other tenants and the cops smash the door in or get you or the super to open it, I’ll make sure you’re put in prison for as long as possible — not only for keeping me here, and ‘kidnapping’ they’ll call it — but I’ll say you did ten times worse than that: beat me, threatened my life, anything where I don’t have to furnish visible proof; the beating I can do with little pinch marks to myself. I’ll lie my heart out, that’s how I’ll settle my score with you,” and he said “I’m sorry you feel that way, but it doesn’t scare me off,” and she said “Who cares about scare? It’s what I’ll do to end this satire of male brainlessness, brawn and day-dreamy revenge,” and he got a scarf from the dresser and stuck it in her mouth as a gag and knotted it in back, tied up her arms and legs with other scarves and tights, knew absolutely he shouldn’t, that he should untie her and go but he still hoped, at the same time knowing he’d made the whole thing hopeless, that he’d think of something to change her mind about the baby or she’d change it on her own, quickly made two sandwiches and a salad and dressing, got a glass of water — no, water, she’ll tie it to being a captive and say something like “How come also not just crust or dry bread?”—dumped the water and filled the glass with apple juice and ungagged and untied her and told her to come to the table to eat. She stayed on the bed, said “See the stain?” touching a dark spot on the bed cover; “that’s urine — I had to go again — and I don’t care. I don’t want to go to the bathroom again while you’re here and pull down my pants,” and he said “Then do it that way, but you’ll get a bladder infection and rash, and I’ll eat in here,” and brought in the food though he didn’t want to eat, wasn’t hungry, was only doing it for effect and she no doubt knew it — so why did he persist in doing it if he knew she knew it? because maybe she didn’t — tossed the salad and put the sandwich plates and salad bowl and utensils on the bed and the glass on the night table — no, he was doing it because he didn’t know what else to do, or was stalling, doing futile things to give her time to change her mind — and sat beside her and ate. “Surely you got to be hungry,” putting salad on her plate and sliding it to her and she pushed it back. Phone rang and he said “God, the phone, you could’ve called when I was bringing in the food — let’s let it ring,” and she said “Anything you want,” and looked away from it and then lunged for it on the fourth ring; he blocked her hand, knocking over the juice as he did, picked the phone up and held it till the ringing stopped. “Sorry for the mess,” wiping it with his handkerchief and she closed her eyes and peed and he said “How do you expect to sleep in that smelly stuff?” and moved to the chair with his food. “Anyway, I know you’re doing it intentionally, and it’s not going to get me to release you,” and she said “Intentionally, sure, like I now don’t have to make number two. I was holding it in long as I could but I can’t anymore. Will you let me do it in private or do I have to do it in my pants? Even when we were together I wouldn’t let you see me and you also didn’t want me to see or hear you,” and he said “What do you mean ‘not hear me’?” and she said “By turning the faucet on,” and he said “That was a habit I got from my mother and I thought it polite, like lighting matches over the toilet after,” and she said “I don’t care; what about me now?” and he said “There’s a little window in the john, so I wish I could but I can’t. What I will do is not look,” and he let her go inside the bathroom, turned around but kept his foot in the door in case she ran up to it and slammed it on him and tried to lock him out, and she turned the tub faucet on hard and flushed the toilet several times. “I’m a little tired from all this,” he said, when she wanted to get past him; “we should probably clean up— I should — and go to sleep. You want to brush your teeth first?” and she said “I could care less what my mouth smells like with you. Worse the better I’d think,” and he said “I was thinking of your teeth, but do what you want,” and took the phone out of the socket, brought it with him when he took the dishes back to the kitchen, peed into the sink because he didn’t want to make another stop in the bathroom, put the phone back in and said “I’m only doing that so everybody will think things here are normal,” changed the sheets, said “If you don’t mind, though even if you do, and again I’m not going to try anything with you, we’ll sleep together, but this time I’ll take the side of the bed by the phone,” she changed behind the closet door into another pair of pants, he always slept nude with her but kept his boxer shorts on and they got into bed. “Maybe in the morning you’ll wake up,” she said, “—know what I mean?” and he said “And maybe you, I’d like that,” and shut off the light. She had her back to him and after a few minutes he said “You want to talk about it some more?” and she said “No thanks,” and he thought The “thanks,” and it wasn’t said harshly, was she softening or just saying it that way so she wouldn’t hear anything harsh back from him or just anything back and she just wanted to go to sleep? And after about fifteen minutes, when because of her faint steady breathing he thought she was sleeping, he moved closer and tried holding her but she threw his arm off. “Are you kidding? Never have I detested the guts of anyone more. You’re scum to me, the worst perfect scum there is. I’ll never be able to be anything but thoroughly repulsed by you, is that not clear?” and he said “I’m sure you’ll get over it,” and she said nothing and he said “Good night,” and she said “Shut up.” She slept awhile, or at least she didn’t move around, he thought, and she made occasional grunts and sputters and snoring noises. When she got out of bed in the dark he said “No phone calls or running out,” and she said “I have to pee — you don’t see the direction I’m heading? Anyway, haven’t you given this thing up?” and he said “No I haven’t,” and followed her and turned around and waited at the door. Phone rang in the morning and she reached over him for the receiver but he grabbed it and said hello and the woman who called said “Maria?” and he said “No, a friend, Gould; she had some very early appointment today and I’m still a little tired; I’ll tell her you called, good-bye,” and she said “Who was it?” and he said “A woman. I shouldn’t have answered, maybe — so early, and tired, I could’ve blown the whole thing with my words — though giving my name out like that makes it less suspicious and now you know I’m serious,” and she said “Oh yes?” and he said “About the whole matter. We’re almost in day one of your double confinement—” and she said “Oh, wordplay, no less,” “—and I’m still hoping you’ll come around. Please, Maria?” and she said “I can’t believe you’re still harping on this. It’s wrong, insane, inane and everything else, don’t you know?” and he said “That line seemed rehearsed; you’ve been thinking of using it the last hour?” and she said “I’m not able to think of it spontaneously? What arrogance,” and he said “You’re right. I’m sorry, that was inane. All I should have said about it was ‘So you’ve said, but here we are,’” and she said “It can’t last . . what, till this afternoon before you feel totally debased and revolted by yourself?” and he said “I’ll try to hold off on that longer. We only have seven months, a feather in time or something, or maybe only six — I’ll have to do some research on that; but at least here till tomorrow night or Monday, when I’ll call Benny.” “Suppose I said I would have the baby, why would you ever believe it now?” and he said “I wouldn’t. This forced confinement is for the next six months or so no matter what you tell me,” and she said “Boy, are you ever going to be bored with me. I won’t even say what I’ll be with you. You’ll be lucky if I don’t stab you in the chest in the next two days, and not out of anger so much as your presence driving me crazy,” and he said “I’ll look after myself, but one thing for sure is I’ll never hurt you. I’ll disarm you, overpower you gently . hold it, I have to pee,” and he took out the phone, shut the bedroom door, kept the bathroom door open and went to the toilet, wiped, wanted to wash his hands and also brush his teeth but thought “Better get back, she could yell out the window,” and went with the phone to the bedroom, put the phone back in and said “So where was I? About your stabbing me. I’d overpower you gently, if it came to that, but I promise—” and she said “What a good noble man,” and looked away. “We have enough food for the next two days?” he said, and she shut her eyes, her expression: “Will this creep never shut up and leave?” He took her hand and went into the kitchen with her, looked inside the refrigerator and cabinets and said “There’s plenty of food but just one beer and no wine. You’d like some tonight, wouldn’t you, if just to blot me out?” and she kept her eyes shut with the same expression. “That didn’t get to you? I didn’t say what you felt? I’m not making this worse? No, I should sacrifice everything, right, everything, for you once said a self-sacrificing person is the best kind of person there is, or ‘to be,’ or whatever you said, for when everyone else is trying to get what they want, the self-sacrificer . well, he oh, the hell with that sentence. But I should sacrifice the whole thing of it — the kid, what I want most in life, and after that the most, you, because you think it’s the right thing for me to do, but you shouldn’t give up anything, right? You’re not looking at me. I’m not here for you now. And I sound angry-mad to you, don’t I, but don’t worry, I’m not. Because I’m going to get my way after all, except it’ll be hard. And I’d have some wine and scotch sent over but I have no credit card or check account and I don’t want to blow all the cash on me for that and I certainly won’t use yours. I’ll live,” and he made coffee, toasted two English muffins and heated a little milk and set a plate of buttered muffins and a mug of coffee on the counter for her, with warm milk and half a teaspoon of unstirred sugar in it as she liked it in the morning, but she didn’t touch them. “You going on a starvation diet? Very unlike you. One thing I loved about you, along with many other things of course, was that you always loved food and appreciated wine, when you were well,” and she said “It’s a way of aborting too, you know — fetus needs food,” and he said “Then I think I’d force it down you gently if I saw it was becoming a problem for it,” and she said “Okay, though don’t take it as a surrender to your threat — half a muffin I’ll eat, and food for energy to zip out of here when I see my break,” and stood by the sink and ate the muffin while looking out the window. After she finished he said “Want the other half, or mine, which isn’t buttered?” and she shook her head without looking away from the window. She looks so beautiful, he thought, so dreamy, in thought but nothing about what he’s saying; maybe at what she’s seeing, the sky almost, a bird gliding around up there. “All right, you win,” he said, “no reason why now and not before or later, but there it is, maybe it was hearing myself with that forcing-the-food-down-you that did it, but I’ve gone on long enough with this, right? Right,” because she was only looking out the window. “It is idiotic, debased, all the other things you said. It’ll never — this baby — materialize, or it’d just be too hard for me to get it to, and I don’t want to make you feel even worse than you’ve been. Seeing you at the window . I won’t ask you to say what you were thinking then — before, right after I asked do you want my English muffin? — because you won’t tell me and it’s none of my business . but that too; so that does it. I do — speech, speech — want the baby more than anything and secondly for you to want it and thirdly, or really tied firstly, for you to want it with me, but if you got sick while I was keeping you here or in some cabin that does exist but never could have been, what would I do? It could happen, and the baby could have been lost that way, something I also hadn’t thought of before, so, and with my usual confusion and tied-up tongue . just too many things working against it, that’s all. So you’re free to go — I hate putting it that way. It does suddenly make me feel more like a jailer than someone trying to protect or save his kid, and you don’t have to go, for I’m going,” and collected his things in two shopping bags—”I’m taking two of your big paper shopping bags, the kind with handles, do you mind?” and she just continued looking out the window — books, extra pair of running shoes, clothes, shaving gear, his exercise towel — and went into the living room. She was in a chair reading today’s Times , which had been delivered to the front door — he’d forgot about that — and said “You won’t — last shot? — change your mind?” She didn’t look up. “Only joking; not joking, but of course you won’t. So, tell the cops I’ll be home in about half an hour, that’s how long it should take me if I make good subway connections, and for them not to come with their weapons drawn, as I’m prepared to go peacefully and anyway, long life and much luck,” and put the keys to her apartment on the little table by the door and left. She didn’t call the police or she did and they didn’t come and he never saw nor heard from her again. A few years later he was walking up the aisle of a city bus and saw a friend of hers in a seat and said “Oh, hi,” and she said “My goodness, Gould, hello,” and he stood beside her and said “You are your name? Excuse me, it’s been some time,” and she said “Sharon La Verge,” and he said “Right, I remember you and Maria and once we all went to a movie— Passions of Anna , I think; one of the more intense Bergmans around at the time how’s she doing?” and she said “Anna?” and he said “You know, or maybe you’ve lost contact,” and she said “She’s fine, married, to an extremely nice fellow, living in Worcester, Mass., but she gets in every now and then. They have a house, with a patio with a tree growing right through it, and are trying to have a child . . wait a second, I shouldn’t be telling you this; I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you,” and he said “Why?” and she said “You’re saying you don’t know?” and he said “Some incident she might have told you?” and she said “What else, that isn’t enough?” and he said “You realize — I’m sure she does — I was mostly kidding at the time. It only went on for less than a day — overnight, granted, perhaps making it seem worse in the retelling of it than it was, and right after sunrise I was out and never saw her again,” and she said “She didn’t think it funny. She called it horrible and that she feared for her life during part of it and for more than a week after she was still fearful you’d come back and that she thought of calling the police,” and a man and woman in front of her turned around and looked at them and then quickly turned forward again, and he said lower “And I told her ‘Go on, call them.’ I mean, admittedly I was upset if not in a certain way out of control for a while, but never so out of it where I was going to flip over the edge, because of what I didn’t want to lose— you know . But I knew she wouldn’t call them because she knew I knew . . I mean I knew she knew she had nothing on me. It was a spat, a very troubling argument, a major point I was trying to make about what there was at stake, and I was serious about the objective of it — what I wanted but not what I’d do to get it — because she did tell you the reason I acted up like that, right?” and she said “Yes, naturally, would I be sitting here nodding all this time if she hadn’t?” and he said “Well, I wanted it so badly, so of course I wouldn’t have hurt her for anything; to do that would be to hurt what I wanted more than anything in the world then, and I kept telling her that and she knew it. She also had to know that in telling you different she was only trying to turn it into a larger event in her life than it was. Or maybe, in addition to everything else she was also distraught she was going to have it . an operation,” and motioned with his head to the couple in front of her, “so that did it, or could have, for what woman, even if having the, you know, was the last thing she wanted at the time — a baby — wouldn’t also have tremendous regrets over the—” and slit his finger through the air, “am I right?” and she pointed to where he’d slit and said “That finger across; I didn’t get it,” and he said “The end, the procedure, the termination,” and she said “Ah, I see. But no matter what, you’d never convince Maria you weren’t serious then in your threats. But that was between you two and is long in the past and I’m sorry I brought it up in the short time we have to talk — my stop’s coming soon,” and he said “Oh, too bad. So how have things been with you?” and she said “Fine, fine, but you know what life’s like: the good often looks better than it is and the bad often looks worse, but on the whole everything evens out and is nice. Married too . happy; a good unharried life, exactly the way I like it. We’ve decided not to have children — made that decision; people always ask so I’m telling you this right out. It’s simply not anything we want,” and he said “How would you know so long beforehand?” and she said “We wouldn’t be good parents; we’re both too involved in what we do and see this as a lifetime practice, and we thought this individually long before we met. But don’t start on me too,” and he said “Sure, I wasn’t saying, and I’m glad everything seems to be going so well for you. What kind of work you do?” and she said “Same as then, computers, which I like, my husband too and you, how are you getting along?” and he said “Work, health, spirits, all fine, and I’ve been seeing a woman the last year and a half and we’ll probably get married end of the year or early next — we don’t foresee anything that’ll stop us — and right after that have children I’ve got to before people think I’m their grandpa,” and she said “Why worry about that?” and he said “I really don’t. And, well you wouldn’t know but I don’t live here, I live in Baltimore and only come up weekends to see her, till she eventually moves down with me,” and she said “So she’s still working here; that makes sense,” and pushed the stop tape and he said “Yours, huh? — I forgot where you lived, or you probably moved. Anyway, if you see Maria — I hope she won’t mind this — but please give her my regards and congratulations on her marriage and, between you and me, I hope she has a child if she wants one that much,” and she said “They both do but they’ve taken all the tests and it seems each of them has something wrong for it, so it doesn’t look good,” and he said “I hope the a.b. had nothing—” and she said “No, that’s been ruled out, it must be something since then, though I did say it was both of them,” and she got off and when he got to his woman friend’s apartment he told her about whom he met on the bus and where he knew her from and for the first time about how he tried to force Maria to have the baby.