Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

She goes downstairs with the towel wrapped around her face and goes outside and gets in her car and drives away.

“Where you going?” I yell.

Probably to the hospital. The police she could have called. Or maybe to the police because she thought I’d stop her call. But probably to the hospital or some friend. I got to get out of here. First time I ever hit someone like that as an adult. That finished us, of course. Hitting someone? Worst thing I’ve done in my life. They hate it. Women do. Especially Mona. Said once when I raised my hand to her “Touch me like that and it’ll be the last time I so much as say boo to you. I hate men who knock women around. Hate anyone who abuses with his hands.”

“I got excited,” I write on the blackboard in the kitchen, “Of course: much worse than that. I’m sorry. I love you both. See ya.”

I head down the hill with my bags. No, it’s after six-thirty, the bus is back on Sunset Drive. I go up the hill and wait, put on a different shirt and throw the bloody one into the woods. The bus comes. I should have cleaned up her room. Repotted the plant, scrubbed the bathroom sink and floor. I signal the bus and get on it. Andy Maxwell’s there.

“How’s it going?” he says.

“Don’t ask.”

“Sit next to me,” he says when I sit two rows behind.

“Andy, I’m really feeling lousy right now. Mona and I broke up. Worse. I hit her in the face with a flower pot. She probably went to the hospital for stitches. It’s possible I broke her jaw. Not only did I do that to the person I love most, but the police might be after me now for it.”

“You never should have got so excited.”

“I know. That’s what I just wrote her. But what I really can’t take now is anything like advice after the fact and so on. Commiseration. I’m miserable. I feel as lost as I ever have in my life. Worse.”

He sits next to me.

“Please?”

“Look, whatever you did to Mona, bad as it is, she might have deserved it. She’s a bitch. You’re much better off split up. You’ll feel lousy for a while, but know that she has very few friends here and more than a few who’d like to have thrown a pot at her, though not in her face. She’s a complete fake. Thinks she’s the hottest goods imaginable and lies blue streaks day and night. She’ll do anything to get ahead, and that means buddy-screw her best friends and use them as fools. She’s also a snob. Loves anybody who’s anybody or rich, no matter how rotten that person might be. You did a bad thing in hitting her, granted. But I can well understand how she could push someone to do it. She’s just not nice but pretends to be with that big smile and cheerful disposition and charm of hers, and that kind of twofacedness throws people into a rage.”

“No, no, she’s not like anything you say.”

“You don’t see it. Or you don’t want to admit it. You’re too nice a guy yourself and can’t see’ anything but good in people and cringe at saying anything bad. I’m not saying these things to make you feel better. I’m also not one to repeat gossip, but only what I see myself firsthand. In time you’ll know I’m right.”

“I hope not. And I don’t want to think about it. Excuse me but I really want to close my eyes and maybe sleep.”

We get to the city. Andy takes one subway and I take another to my apartment. I drink a bottle of wine while I listen to sad music and read the papers. Then I call Mona.

Burleigh answers. “Mom’s in bed. She just came back from the hospital and had five stitches put in her chin. Why’d you hit her like that?”

“I feel awful. It was totally my fault. I love your mother, honestly. Please tell her how terrible I feel and that I’ll pay all the medical bills and anything else she asks.”

“Want me to tell her now?”

“Yes.”

He comes back to the phone. “She says to shove it. She told me to say that. And I’ll tell you how I feel, Bo. You did the worst thing.” He hangs up.

I call Sarah. “Sarah, I hit Mona with a flower pot before. We’re really split now, for good. I know I sound a bit drunk, but I wanted to know if you’d go over there now and check in on her. Maybe she needs some help.”

“She has Burleigh, doesn’t she?”

“Sure. He’s home.”

“And other friends, perhaps, so she doesn’t need me. To tell you the truth, Mona and I never got along well. It would have been nice, having a friend living so close, but that’s not the way it is. I’m sorry you hit her. That was wrong. But as far as my feeling for her is concerned, she’s a mite too pushy and self-centered and a stinker of the lowest degree.”

“Really think so?”

“I’m not the only one. Take care.”

I call up the Ludwigs, whom I consider our best friends around where Mona lives. Ben says some of the same awful things about her and says his wife Mary feels the same way. “Besides that, she’s going to get in a lot worse trouble than a flower pot in her face. She goes out with the wrong kind of guys. One’s a pusher. She’s brought a couple of them over here between the times you were in the city and when I thought things were dandy between you two. Who knows what she saw in them.”

They were all very good looking,” Mary says on the extension.

“Nicely built. Big too. She likes men with lots of wild fluffy black hair. I like them also, but not dopes and pigs like these. Like her, they only seemed interested in a good quick time for themselves at the moment and nothing else. Take it from me, Bo, you’re much better off without her.”

“Am I?”

“We both think you were the best chance she had to improve.”

I call up several other people Mona and I know. They all say I should have shown more restraint. Nobody has a nice word for her, though. I begin to feel sorry for her now in a different way. I picture her all alone. Without good friends. Just Burleigh and she. And all these people saying nasty things about her behind her back and even to her face. I see her lying in bed with a bandage on her jaw, planning things, scheming, worried about what the chin scar will do to her beauty, or maybe just sleeping now or in pain. Maybe she did push me too far. Still, I should have held back. Anyway, I don’t feel as bad about myself now and that I won’t be seeing her anymore. Tomorrow I’ll feel better. Days after that, better yet. I’ll send her flowers. Make my apologies more intelligible in a letter or two and wish her a long happy life, and then forget her for good. I drink more wine and get sleepy. “Mona,” I shout, “I love you, what can I say?” I pass out. All night I seem to dream of her making love with other men and enjoying it. I wake up around three and for hours just lie there with the lights on. “Tough days ahead,” I say.

I bump into him. He says “Excuse me.”

I say The same.”

He passes. I say “Wait up.”

He stops, turns to me. “Yes?”

“You forgot something.”

He looks around. “I don’t see anything. What?”

“To say excuse me.”

“Either you didn’t hear me before or you’re trying to fool me.”

“No other alternative?”

“None I can think of now, but what of it?”

“You’re right. You did say excuse me.”

“Fine, then. I won’t begin to try to understand you.” He walks away.

“One more thing.”

He doesn’t stop. I run after him, tap his shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“Good. For a second I was afraid maybe your hearing wasn’t okay.”

“My hearing, my vision, and I’ll tell you, my smelling, are all okay.” He starts off again.

I run after him, grab his arm. “Now listen you,” he says, pushing my hand away. “I don’t quite like this. Not ‘quite.’ I definitely don’t. I don’t know you, yet you stop me and immediately try to fool me. Then you talk some gibberish about my hearing to me. Maybe you even intentionally bumped into me. Now it’s no doubt something else. Well, I’ve someplace to be now. Important work. People are depending on my being there. So if you don’t mind?”