Stephen Dixon: What Is All This?: Uncollected Stories

I salute her goodbye and step into the rain. Really pouring now. Buckets. I start running north. Every so often I duck under a store awning or building overhang and try to make talk with someone there, and the awnings and overhangs I choose I choose because someone’s there, but have no luck. Could be the clothes and that I’m so wet. And more I run, wetter I get. And there’s nobody I know under these overhangs or who seems to know me. If they do, they’re not saying, something I can also understand. A man so drenched and who keeps running in the rain without any protection can seem crazed. I run a few more blocks, keep ducking under overhangs, more because I’m tired than to talk to anyone, so some of the overhangs I duck under don’t even have anyone there. Run a lot more blocks, but I’m really just jogging now, and walk fast and then at a normal pace the last five blocks till I reach my sidestreet. I run down the block — there’s nobody out or at the window to wave to — and go two steps at a time up my building’s stoop into the vestibule, where the landlady’s mopping the floor under my mailbox or letterbox I don’t open but do peek through and see nothing inside.

“Some day out,” I say, but she’s in no mood to talk. And when she’s mopping while it rains she usually gets less in the mood with each succeeding dripping tenant. “Have a good day, though,” I say, and run up the three flights of stairs to my apartment to do some undressing, showering, maybe soaking in a tub, drying, dressing, wet-clothes hanging, eating, resting and sleep. All that and more till later today or early tonight or tomorrow or tomorrow night or sometime this week, depending if the rain stops and if it’s not too late in the day, I can go out again.

“Don’t worry; there’ll be better days.”

“No doubt.”

“For both of us, I mean.”

“I know, or at least I hope. But you were going?”

She leaves. I putter around the house: sweep up, put away dishes, mop the kitchen and bathroom floors. She comes back.

“I got all the way to the bridge when I realize I forgot something.”

“Forgot to stay away.”

“Don’t be nasty. I’ll get it and then I’ll go and I won’t be back.”

“Promise?”

But she’s upstairs. Comes down with her hair dryer.

“Your hair dryer, no less. Oh, you really needed to come back for that.”

“I thought why bother buying another one as long as I have one here. Because you weren’t planning on using it, were you?”

“Oh sure, can’t you see me under it with my five hairs on top and short side hair. But what you should’ve thought in your car was why have a dryer at all?”

“You can’t let up?”

“You can’t dry your hair with a towel?”

“With a trowel, that’s how I’d like to dry your hair. Anyway, my dryer makes drying quick and easy. Saves me time for more important things.”

“Like prolonging affairs?”

“One affair. The others weren’t even minor romances. Not even mini-minor ones. Just tosses in the hay if there was hay.”

“A turn or toss in the sack, then.”

“If the sack’s supposed to be the mattress on the bed, then for most of them, that’s correct.”

The sack is the bed. Old word for it, and the tossing or turning business, old expression. I think it comes from the navy — if not the expression, then the word, or maybe both.”

“You were in the navy?”

“You saying you didn’t know?”

“I thought it was the Marines.”

“Navy. Private first class.”

“I know they don’t have privates.”

“Sailors don’t have privates? Oh, new joke if it isn’t an old one. They’ve privates, privies and privileges as in liberties, or they did when I was junior grade.”

“You were an ensign, now I remember. Well, I salute you, Ensign Wilkerson, and say ahoy there or whatever the nautical term is for goodbye.”

“Shove off.”

“Shove off. Okey-doke and adieu, my dope, as the French navy might say,” and she leaves.

“Screw you too, once my hope, now my rope. Good riddance, my former deliverance, and…and…nothing. Just nothing.” I throw a coffee mug, only dish I didn’t wash and put away, through one of the front windows. She comes back.

“You know, I was opening my car door when I heard the crash. At first I thought let him get his anger out. It’s good for him. Then he’ll be calm, like seas are calm after a storm, which all JGs are familiar with, right? Then I thought hell, I still own half this house, so my warning to you. Ensign Wilkerson, first class jerk, is don’t go busting up any more of it or I’ll get my rear admiral on your ass, or whatever the legal officer is in navy talk, for more than just a divorce. In other words—”

“In other words, go hang myself or slit my own throat, you were going to say?”

“No.”

“Ah, you were always so considerate and sweet: property, more important than people, in your book. To that I say, screw property, yours and mine, jointly or singly held,” and I throw a lamp through another front window. She runs to the phone, looks in the directory, and dials.

“Police? I’m in your precinct. Thirty thirty-five Waverly, and my husband is tearing up our house and I want him arrested…Yes, it’s a domestic dispute. It always is if it’s between husband and wife, but that shouldn’t stop you from coming here. It’s half my house, and after he gets done destroying it, I fear he’s going to start on me…Good. Edith Wilkerson, his is Walt. Please hurry.” She hangs up.

“So you’re going to stay after all.”

“Till the police arrive and then just long enough to have you put away in jail or a mental institution. In fact, the hell with my beating it out of here. You’re the one who’ll have to go and be barred from this house for life, even if I’m the one who carried on and am ending this marriage.” She picks up the receiver and dials. “Mrs. Silbert, please.” That’s her lawyer. “Miriam? It’s Edith. Walt’s destroying our house. Literally, I mean. I was in the process of leaving…No, I don’t think his breaking up the place is natural.” I pick up the extension. “He’s on the extension so watch what you say. He’s already broken two front windows that are full pane, not little French ones, and I’ve called the police and would like you to be over here soon as you can,”

“I can’t come now, Edith. I’m tied up all day.”

Then get a writ out against him, or something, but quickly, because I don’t want him staying here. He’s going to wreck the whole house, I know it.”

“Did he threaten that?”

“Ask him. I told you he’s on the extension.”

“You also told me to watch what I say. Okay. Walt, this is Miriam Silbert, Edith’s lawyer who’s handling her divorce. You’ve received several letters from me and notices from the court with my name on them, so you know who I am. My question is, are you planning on doing further harm to the house?”

“And her lawyer. And the police who come here. Everything. The front and back yards and basement and Edith too. I am going to murder her.”

“Walt, just what you’re saying now could land you in jail for a while and provide even additional grounds for a divorce, so try to be reasonable and answer me.”

“All right. I’ll only murder her lawyer.”

“I’m serious, Walt. What my advice is—”

“Lawyers always have advice. Don’t you people have marital and social and psychological problems of your own?”

“Of course. I was born poor to insane parents and had a miserable childhood and adolescence and got divorced twice. That’s neither here nor there except for the experience and know-how and insights into human nature it gave me. Now I’m happy.”