Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“What is it with you?” She seems to have stopped crying. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Oh? I don’t? Now there’s a wise statement. Or bright, I mean bright.”

“Even there. So cynical and a little mean. You never talked to me like that. Even when you were angry at me.”

“I was once angry with you? I don’t recall it.”

“Several times. And I with you. But you’re in a state I’ve never seen you in, and it doesn’t become you.”

“It doesn’t? And I’m unbecoming? Well, you’re wrong. But I am going to hang up. Please, I don’t mean to hurt you, if that’s what I’ll be doing, but be prepared now for my hanging up.”

I hang up. Tears come. First, a couple of drops, and I think it’s over, and then I cry so hard my next-door neighbor, if she’s home, must hear me. She probably is home; she usually gets back from work around six and then just stays there. I cry for a long time, five minutes, ten. Long for me. I’m usually a quick crier, and almost only at funerals and weddings and sad movies and when I think or talk about my dead brother and sister and father. I’ve never cried over a woman before. Is that right? Yes.

I wash my face in the bathroom, get a bottle of vodka out of the freezer, where I didn’t mean to leave it when we went to Maine, and half-fill a juice glass with it. I drink it slowly. Now I’m just drinking to calm myself, but I think I’d like to drink enough where I eventually pass out. After a few sips, I put ice in the glass and open a small can of V-8 juice and pour some of it in because it’s cheap vodka and it doesn’t taste good straight. I make another drink and then a third and go to my work table with it. I take the typewriter out of its case, set it up with paper in it, and think I’ll write a letter to her. I don’t know what I’ll say, but it’ll have in it an apology for being cynical and a little mean and for acting so rude to her when she took the tine to call me. But I should call my mother, say we just got to the city and I’m very tired from the trip and I’ll see her tomorrow around noon. “Maybe you’ll let me take you out to lunch,” I’ll say. But I’ll slur my speech and she’ll know I’m getting drunk or already there and worry about it and ask a lot of questions, so I’ll call her tomorrow and see her then. I start typing the letter.

“Dear Lynn: I don’t know why I said what I did to you yesterday (it’s now tonight). I know I’ll never be able to completely explain it. I meant it or I didn’t. Or meant some of it, though what part now I don’t remember. (Yes, I’ve been drinking.) Drink or not, I know I love you but I also know that what you did to me today killed it for us forever. Oh, forever’s too big a word. It’s the wrong word. It’s — Lynn. I’m sorry and I know no apology will ever undo the harm I did. Again, slickly written in a momentary lucid moment, so don’t believe a word I just said. I should give this up. I can’t write. Can’t write a letter now. I can barely find the right typewriter keys. I’m going to get up now and go to bed. It’s early, it’s still light out, so really not so long since I hung up on you, but I belong in bed. If I don’t, I’ll pass out at my work table. And I know I’m not going to mail this letter to you. How can I? I’ll give it time, maybe things will get better. Though when I say ‘it’ and ‘things,’ what am I talking about? Us, us! Maybe we just shouldn’t be together. That’s what I think. I might send this letter after all, but tomorrow — I’m in no condition to go out now; even to finding a stamp and an envelope to stick this letter in — just so you’ll get as accurate an account of what happened, or just my take on things, as you can. Then make your own decision. I’m sure what you decide, I’ll want too, or at least I’ll go along easily with it. I don’t know if that’s true. So, I’m sorry, believe me, very sorry, but that person who said all those things to you tonight was definitely me. Best ever, Michael, and of course, much love.”

I think, after I fall on my bed and turn over on my back and feel myself drifting off, that I’ve ruined it with her for good.

Hi.

Hi.

I’m sorry, did I startle you?

No, I think I startled myself.

I must have had something to do with it.

You just about had everything to do with it.

Isn’t that close to what I just said?

I don’t think so. My being startled came from my reaction at suddenly seeing you and being said hi to from you on your bike.

It still sounds close. But next time I won’t rush up on you like that.

I don’t think there can be a next time like that.

You mean next time you’ll be ready for my racing down the street on my bike in the night and suddenly stopping and saying hi to you like that?

I mean next time I won’t be surprised by my reaction at suddenly seeing you and your saying hi to me like that.

But if you’re not startled or surprised by your reaction next time, then it’d mean you either saw or heard me or were told I’m racing down the street toward you on a bike.

What I think is that my surprise to my reaction at suddenly seeing and hearing you on your hike doesn’t make sense.

I’d think that every reaction by someone rational to something real happening would have to make some sort of sense.

Well, they say it’s not supposed to make total sense.

They”? Who’s “they”?

The people who talk about the things I’m now talking about, such as my suddenly being surprised by my reaction at suddenly seeing you and hearing you say hi to me from your bike.

If you suddenly got surprised by my suddenly racing up to you on my bike on this empty street in the night and saying hi to you, then I think your surprised reaction to being surprised still makes sense.

Then the they who are they and not is they are wrong and you’re right and I’m wrong. And though I still think I’m right by being wrong when I say they could be right when they say my reaction to my reaction doesn’t make sense, it does make sense.

I think all this talk about what doesn’t or does make sense is making less and less sense to me the more we talk. And if we’re going to continue to talk we should both feel that what we’re both saying makes sense.

All right, then — you biking back from work?

Yes, and you?

Walking back from the store.

Returning something? For I don’t see any packages.

I didn’t say what kind of store.

Was it a shoelace store where you bought just one pair of shoelaces?

A yo-yo store where I bought just one yo-yo.

Is it in your pocket?

No.

Up your sleeve? I can see it’s not concealed in your hand.

It’s in my mouth, its string end looped around a back bottom tooth. I bet you thought that lump in my cheek was my tongue.

Either your tongue or a large new sourball or even a larger sourball when new that had been slightly sucked.

I didn’t say I went to a sourball store. And of course I couldn’t have just come from a tongue store, as there are none.

I didn’t say what kind of tongue I meant. For you could have gotten a tongue in a shoelace store. And if it were a sourball in your mouth, then had it left over from the last time you went to a sourball store.

I actually did have one left over. Till a minute before I first saw you, when I sucked down and swallowed the sourball in my right cheek to make room for the yo-yo I bought.

You could have put the yo-yo in your other cheek. Or if you like the right cheek for your yo-yos, then taken the sourball out and put the yo-yo in the right cheek and the sourball in the left.

I could have, but I only thought of putting the yo-yo in my mouth after I’d sucked down most of the sourball and bit into the little left and swallowed the pieces. Had I known I was going to bump in to you, I would have saved half the sourball I had left.