Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“No. I think—”

“Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“It’s been on my mind a long time.”

“Not the sound or the sight of it, and it’s sounding and looking even worse.”

“I’m sorry, maybe it does sound bad. As for my face, that’s how I feel. I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while. We can’t continue like this, indefinitely seeing each other day after day. It’s reached its limit and doesn’t seem to be going anyplace.”

“What are you talking about? I want to marry you, live here and have a child by you.”

“I’m sure you do. You’ve talked of it before. But I don’t think that can work out. You just don’t seem capable of it.”

“I’m telling you, I am and it’s what I want. That should be enough.”

“You’re devoted to your writing.”

“I’m devoted to my writing for my work and other things, but to you for me emotional life and everything else. I’m devoted to you as much as I am to my writing, but in a different way. The two can go together.”

“I don’t think they can and I wouldn’t want you to stop your writing.”

“I don’t have to.”

“If you had a child you’d have to be making more money than you do from your writing.”

“So I’ll get a job. I’ve always made some kind of money, always been able to find a job.”

“To make enough for you. True, I work, and make more than you. But if we had a child, I couldn’t teach for a while, and there’d be so many other expenses after that, and you don’t have enough “

“We’ll save. What’s the difference? We’ll sacrifice. I’ll sacrifice, though it wouldn’t be a sacrifice. I love you. Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“You said, I don’t know how many times — maybe just a few, but that you never loved anyone more than me. Has that changed?”

“No. It’s been better with you than it has with anyone, but I can see it’s not going to work out.”

“How can you say that, after a happy morning, a happy evening, a great summer vacation — after we’ve been so close for almost a year? How can you so casually dump on it all?”

“In the end it seems we’re just not suited for each other and it doesn’t seem we’ll ever be.”

That’s ridiculous.”

She’s crying out of both eyes now. She says “Wait,” and goes into the bathroom. For a tissue, I suppose. There’s a stuffing up in my neck and I feel tears coming to my eyes too. I can’t believe this is happening. I know that’s trite to say, but the scene is suddenly very unreal. It’s happened before, plenty of times. At least five, probably not too unusual for a guy who’s 43 and never been married and been short of money for as many years as I. But I’ve never been happier with anyone more than I have with Lynn. I’ve been in love as much, but never happier. We’ve been so tight. She’s perfect for me, or as perfect as a woman can be for me. I know I’m slightly neurotic and my compulsion to write can be a problem for the women I’m with, but so far she’s put up with me and we get along very well. Again, this is trite, but it seems I’m in a dream. Or even that I’ve just awakened from a frightening one and am still a bit shaken from it. That’s the image that comes to me while she’s in the bathroom, maybe there for a tissue or to wash her face. Or to give herself more time to think what to do with me, or all three.

The toilet flushes. Maybe that’s a ruse, maybe it isn’t. She certainly didn’t flush the tissue down it, as she always crumples them up and drops them in the wastebasket there. She comes out. She’s wiping her eyes with a piece of toilet paper.

“No more tissues left?”

“Yes,” she says. The box was empty. You know everything, though, don’t you? Or notice it. Listen, Michael—”

“I just can’t understand any of it. I can’t say I deserve it. I know I’m not easy being with sometimes, but I haven’t been too bad. Everything so far between us has been good, I think, with not a single dispute between us.”

“All true.”

“Never a disagreement; not even a tiny one; none. So what you said before might make sense for you but it doesn’t for me.”

“We can continue to see each other but not as regularly.”

“No. That’s what the last one said. Diana.”

“I don’t care what Diana said.”

“She said ‘Let’s see each other once a week,’ after we’d been seeing each other seven days a week for three years.”

“I told you, I’m not interested.”

“I went along. It just dragged out. I don’t want this to drag out. If you’ve made your decision, you’ve made it. It’s not going to change. It’s been my experience that once a woman makes a decision like that, at least when she makes it about me, it doesn’t change. I’m going to look at it like this. I’m not talking about Diana anymore, so do you mind if I continue? It won’t take long.”

“Go ahead. I’m sorry for cutting in on what you were saying.”

This is the way I see it. The — our — relationship is the patient and we’re the doctors. You want the patient to come in once a week or something. I think the patient should die.”

“What?”

That’s not it,” I say. “I was going to speak about it differently.”

“Some metaphor!”

“I don’t want the patient to die slowly, is more what I meant. The disease the patient has is inoperable, terminal, the rest. I don’t want the patient to suffer. It’s better the patient dies immediately. Ah, my imagery, metaphor, whatever it was, was bad. I can’t think straight. I’m too sad, shaken up. I am. I probably look it and I am.”

“I don’t like this either. I hate that this has to happen.”

“You look it too. The tears, your face and voice. Your key.” I take my keyring off the piano. It’s where I usually leave it and left it last night. Her apartment key’s on it and I try getting it off.

That’s not necessary right now.”

“It is.” I can’t get the key off. The ring won’t open. “I’ll get it when I get back to my place and mail it to you along with the money I owe you for the second month’s cottage rent and utilities and whatever else. I can’t believe all this,” and I head for the door. “My things,” I say, “I should probably take them,” and I get a plastic shopping bag from the kitchen, go into the bedroom and bathroom and stick a few clothes and my shaving equipment and hairbrush in it and two books, and head for the door again. My duffel bag and typewriter and manuscript I was working on this summer and other books I already dropped off at my apartment when we drove in, just before we put her car in her garage.

She doesn’t say anything when I think she might, and I unlock the door, don’t say anything else or look at her, and leave.

Her building has an elevator but I like to walk the six flights downstairs. Now it’s not a question of liking or not, I just do, as I don’t want to wait for the elevator by her door and I just want to move. I think, when I’m rounding the stairs, didn’t I see any signs where this was coming? I didn’t. At least right now I don’t see where there were any. Out of the blue, it came, out of the blue.

Round and round I go downstairs, and I open the door on the ground floor and I’m in the lobby. Frank, one of the doormen, is there, and he says “Hey, Michael, good to see you; when you get back?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Made it from Maine in one day.”

“I was on duty yesterday. Probably on dinner break when you got in. Around six?”

“Around then.”

“Get lots of work done?”

“Two months away; nothing much to do up there; it’s the best time.”

“But you’re always working. Me too. This job and reading. Writing I leave to you guys so I can have something to do.”