Stephen Dixon: What Is All This?: Uncollected Stories

He gave the number.

“Keep it in a safe place till you get your bill, which takes about a month,” Kelvin said.

That’s a long time. Suppose I lose it before then?”

“If you lose it but don’t cancel or change before your notice’s in the paper, then nothing will go wrong and the notice will appear as you requested it.”

“Suppose it doesn’t appear as I requested it? I don’t want, for instance, to be paying for something that puts someone else’s In Memoriam above my name.”

That won’t happen. But in the rare chance it did, you’d call this department and give your cancelation number to whoever answers the phone and say your notice appeared incorrectly and you don’t want to be billed for it or that you already sent a check for it and want to be reimbursed. We’ve a policy here where if the announcement isn’t printed as directed, the customer doesn’t pay a cent. What happens then is that the person you speak to sends down your cancelation number to Accounting, which keeps copies of the announcements for sixty days and then stores them on microfilm for ten years. If they find your notice didn’t appear as it should have, which means the way I wrote it up, then you’re reimbursed. If it appeared the way you gave it to me, which is why I’m being so meticulous about it, then of course you’re expected to pay in full.”

“Suppose it doesn’t appear on the day I specifically wanted it to, what do I do then?”

“Again, you call this department, give your cancelation number to the person who answers and tell him what the problem is. He’ll find the copy of your notice in Accounting through your cancelation number, check it with the In Memoriams that ran the day you requested yours to and, if the newspaper was in error — and even if your In Memoriam ran the day before or after you wanted yours to-you’ll be reimbursed in full. So, if everything’s clear to you now, Mr. Berwald. I’ll write up your In Memoriam. What’ s the name of the person the notice is about, last name first?”

“My wife. Same as mine. Berwald. Sarah with an a-h.”

“Do you want to add her middle name or initial or her maiden name in parenthesis or without?”

“Good idea. It’s Wiener,” and he spelled it. “And no parenthesis. Just Sarah Wiener Berwald. That’s how she went.”

“Would you read the notice to me? Slowly, as I’m not a fast typist.”

“‘Sarah, darling. Today is a year, a year of pain, sorrow and loneliness. Only God knows how much I miss you. What can I say? I am so lost without you. My dearest Sarah, no one will ever take your place in my heart. I love you so. Forty-seven years of beautiful memories. I speak to you with tears every night. I will mourn you until I join you. Love, Stan.’”

“Let me read back the notice, Mr. Berwald, and then quote you the charges. ‘Berwald, comma, Sarah’ with an a-h. ‘Wiener’ with an i-e.

‘Sarah, comma, darling. Today is a year, comma, a year of pain, comma, sorrow and loneliness. Only God knows how much I miss you. What can I say, question mark. I am so lost without you. My dearest Sarah, comma, no one will ever take your place in my heart. I love you so. Forty-seven years of beautiful memories. I speak to you with tears every night. I will mourn you until I join you. Love, comma, Stan.’”

That’s right. And all the commas seem fine.”

The notice will be printed in both editions of the newspaper on February 10 th, will take eighteen lines in the In Memoriam column, and the charges, to be billed to you at Three-seventy-six President Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11231, will be sixty-eight dollars and fifty-three cents.”

That’s okay.”

Thank you, Mr. Berwald.”

“You’re welcome.”

The following stories in this collection appeared in different form in the following periodicals, to which the author and the publisher extend their thanks: Ambit (“Getting Lost”), Appearances (“Ends,” “Interest”), Asylum (“Nothing New,” “Ass”), Atlantic Monthly (The Neighbors”), Bennington Review (“The Bussed”), Big Moon (“Shoelaces,” “End of a Friend”), Black Ice (“One Thing”), Boulevard (“An Accurate Account,” “Who He?”), Box 749 (“The Killer”), Brooklyn Sun (“Night”), Cake (The Former World’s Greatest Raw Green Pea Eater”), Caution Horse (“No Knocks”), Center (“The Talk Show”), Chouteau Review (“Sex”), Confrontation (“Dream”), Continental Drift (“Knock Knock”), Croton Review (“Burglars”), DeKalb Literary Review (“Mr. Greene” in earlier version: “Mourning Came”), Departures (“Next to Nothing”), Failbetter (“No Knocks”), Fantasy & Science Fiction (“A Home Away from Home”), Fiction Network (The Wild Bird Reserve”), Flyway (“End of a Friend”), Genesis (“An Outing”), Glimmer Train (“Contac”), Idaho Review (“Wait”), Iowa Review (“The Leader,” “The Cleanup Man,” “Question”), The Hopkins Review —preview issue (“In Memoriam”), Kansas Quarterly (“Getting Lost,” “Long Made Short”), Little Magazine (“The Argument”), Memphis Review (“Biff”), Montana Review (“For a Quiet English Sunday”), Mundus Artium (“Evening”), New England Review (“Can’t Win”), Nitty Gritty (“An Outing”), North American Review (“Overtime”), Ohio Journal (“Stories,” “She,” “The Baby”), Other Voices (“Starting Again”), Pale Fire Review (“Yo-Yo”), Periodical Lunch (“Jackie”), Per Se (“Pale Cheeks of a Butcher’s Boy”), Playboy (“Produce” in earlier version: “Berry-Smashing Day at the C & L,” “The Young Man who Read Brilliant Books,” “What is All This?”), Quarry West (“Getting Lost”), South Carolina Review (“The Phone,” “Piers” in earlier version: “Paul”), Southwest Review (“China”), Stanford Magazine (“The Good Fellow”), Sun & Moon (“Meet the Natives,” “The Chocolate Sampler”), Sycamore Review (“Long Made Short”), The Fault (“Leaves”), Urbanite (“Mr. Greene”), Washington Review (“Reinsertion,” “Storm”) and Westbere Review (“Dawn”). “No Knocks” also appeared in Best of the Web 2009, and “The Young Man who Read Brilliant Books” appeared in the Playboy anthology Just My Luck .

Self portrait of the author, 10.27.05