Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

I make coffee and get a stick of butter and sliced bagel out of the freezer, where I left them two months ago, and toast the bagel twice before it’s completely unfrozen. I sit down with the coffee and buttered bagel and read the paper. I look up; after reading a few articles and reviews, and think I still don’t feel bad at all. Either it hasn’t hit me or it never will. I really can’t say why. I’ve given myself a few reasons, but they don’t seen enough. Have I become a cold fish? That’s not it. And it isn’t that I no longer love her. Hell, I love her as much as I’ve loved any woman, but what was different with her is I never wanted to marry and have a child with someone more. That so? It’s so. I also never had more laughs with any woman, enjoyed myself more with one, felt less tension than I did with any woman, and never respected and admired a woman more than I did her or thought I was luckier in being with anyone more, and lots of other things more. Never had an easier relationship, a more compatible and companionable and comfortable one. The three big C’s. This one was as easy and smooth as can be till late this morning when she dropped that news on me. If we had a disagreement, and we did have a few, rarely but a few, we worked it out almost immediately. There was never any anger or sulking or bitterness or continued bad feelings between us. I was confident that nothing would disturb our relationship, that it’d go on easily and smoothly and wonderfully and all the other things, seemingly forever. That we were as absolutely right for each other as two people could be. What Annette said, “Perfect together.” Or was it “the most perfect couple alive”? We were close to being that, close, so how come I’m now not sad or even a little regretful? Really, I don’t understand it. I’ll miss her, won’t I? Miss the sex, her body, presence, wit, intelligence, gentleness and goodness. Miss most everything about and around her, won’t I? Her good friends, having dinner with her parents, the same cottage she rents every summer, her two Siamese cats. Miss all that and more, won’t I? I’ll pass or go to places we’ve been together and think of her wistfully, won’t I? See things, or think of them, I’ll want to do with her and be sad I can’t, won’t I? All the things between two people who love each other and are so alike in many ways, right? So how come I’m not sad? I think I know why. I’m relieved, but relieved I’m not sad. But why aren’t I sad? I don’t know. I give up. But something unusual has happened to me. If I don’t react the way I usually do, that’s unusual. I think that’s right. And maybe it is just because I couldn’t allow myself to go through being sad over a breakup again. But could that be all? Ah, the hell with it. Maybe there’s no sure explaining of it, at least for now.

Just then the phone rings. I think it’s Ben. He knew I was getting back today and probably called Lynn’s place and she told him I was here. I pick up the receiver. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” she says. “Before you say anything, I want to tell you I’m sorry about what happened.”

“So am I. But what can we do? Nothing.”

“Don’t say that. I’ve thought it over.”

“So have I.”

“What did you think?”

Things. But you called me. What is it?”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m not. I’m feeling pretty damn good, in fact.”

“You still sound angry. Not just your tone, but your choice of words. But I’m glad you’re feeling good. I’m feeling very bad, though. I made a mistake, Michael. That’s what I called to say. It could be I had to find out what my true feelings were about you and our future together by creating the worst scenario possible. Well, that I did, and I don’t like it. When you left, I broke down. It’s because I knew I’d made a grave mistake and that I do want to live with you and, if it continues to work out as well as it has before this morning, then for us to eventually get married and have a child.”

“You thought all this in such a short time?”

That’s what you have to say?”

“I’m just asking,” I say.

“Yes, it’s what I thought after you left. It all came to me in a flash. My reaction, my thoughts. We’ll work it out, sweetheart, we win. This is the bump we needed. If there isn’t enough money, we’ll deal with it. At first, we’ll save on just having one apartment between us. You’ll get a job and I’ll do my best to keep working and I’m sure my folks will help us out. They want to be grandparents as much as you want to be a father. But we’ll sacrifice, as you said. Both of us, not just you. But I first have to know how you feel about what I’ve said.”

“I feel relief, but not about that. I wish you hadn’t called, but you have. That you did call, I wish you hadn’t said what you had, but you did. But I can’t ever be with you again. Not see you, not be with you. The truth is, I can’t ever be with anyone like that again. I never want to go through another relationship like ours. I only want to work as hard as I can at what I do for the years that I have on earth and then die. Okay, that’s a lot of melodramatic bull. Simply put: staying involved with you or getting involved with someone else is obviously impossible for me. I see that now, this minute, because of this phone call, clearer than I ever have. Actually, I never saw it before; I’m only seeing it now. I’ll miss you but love my unhappiness over missing you more than any future happiness I’d get from being with you. No, that’s a bunch of bull too, and the quickest way to tell is that it’s so aptly put. In fact, probably nothing much of what I said makes sense or isn’t bull. I’m sure it’s riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions and things like that. I don’t even know why I’m saying any of it except for that there is something there, in what I said, there’s definitely something there, I just know it, and if the words and ideas are all mixed up and maybe incoherent, at least I know the feeling isn’t. No, strike that last line out too. It was said for effect and makes no sense either.”

She’s crying.

“I’m going to hang up now, Lynn. If I don’t I’ll lose my resolve, if that’s what it is, and say yes or maybe to something I feel deeply I don’t want to. You just shouldn’t have hit me with what you did and in the way and at the time you did it. Maybe that’s all it comes down to. We were, I thought, so happy. The thoughts I had about us after that never would have come to me, this phone call never would have come. Right now I’d be at my mother’s apartment, which was where I was off to when you hit me with what you did. I’d be having a drink with her, maybe my second, and filling her in on what we did since she visited us this summer, and then gone to my apartment for the night or back to yours. No, mine. That’s where my typewriter and manuscript and writing supplies are, and I wanted to write tomorrow morning after not having written for two days, one to pack and clean up the cottage, and the other to drive. That’s what we planned, right? when we dropped my things off at my apartment and then dropped the cats and your things off at yours and put the car in the garage and did some shopping. So I would have spent the night in my apartment, worked most of the day tomorrow and then gone to your place around late afternoon, most likely, since that’s when I usually went and we usually saw each other every day. Too late for doing any of that now except for my going to see my mother. But I don’t want to do that now either. I’m in no mood to, and she’d be glad to see me and have company and somebody to drink and talk with, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for her. I’ll call her tomorrow and pretend we only just got back, or got back too late today to visit her, and see her then, tomorrow, when I hope I’ll be in the mood more to visit her. If she’s expecting me today and calls here tonight, I’ll tell her I’m very tired after the long drive and I’ll see her tomorrow. If she calls your place, tell her to call me.”