Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“Not true, and don’t raise your voice to me.”

“Ah, forget it,” and I get up, get my coat off my chair and say to her “If you’re ready, I’ll walk you home or wherever you want to go.”

“You don’t have to walk me anywhere. I’d rather be alone.”

“Good, then,” and I turn to go, turn to her, “Goodnight,” she looks away from me, and I leave.

I go home. Phone’s ringing when I get there. “What is it now?” I say.

“What is what?” Murray says.

“I thought it was Vera. How are you?”

“By the tone of your voice, I’m glad I’m not Vera. What’re you doing tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“Want to see Challenges ?”

“Sure.”

“I thought Saturday night you’d be out, but then thought maybe this Saturday, miracle of miracles, you’re not. In front of the Laron at nine?”

“Right.”

I hang up. “Right.” I grab a plant Vera gave me and yell “Right, yes, sure I want to go to a movie tonight,” and throw it against the wall. It breaks, earth and planter parts going several different ways, big stain on the wall, mess on the floor. “Sure I do, goddamn you,” and slam my fist through a closet door.

I wash it, iodine and bandage it, dial Murray with my other hand but he doesn’t answer. I go to the Laron and see him out front.

“What happened?” he says.

“I called before but you weren’t in.”

“But what the hell happened? Your hand. It’s bleeding through the bandage.”

“I suppose you already left. I called to say I couldn’t go to the movie after all.”

“You shouldn’t have come. I would’ve known something was wrong or you got a better date. But it must have just happened. You get into a fight? Catch it on a knife at home?”

“I just came here to tell you, didn’t want to stand you up. I’m not feeling well. I’m going home.”

“Okay, I appreciate that. But how bad’s the hand? You can’t answer a little question?”

I shake my head and start home.

“What’s with you? Look, I won’t go to the movie. I’ll take you to the hospital if you want.”

I keep going.

He says “Okay, I’ll drop it. Hell with your hand. Forget I asked.”

I walk back. “I can’t answer because of how I’m feeling, don’t you see? I got crazy with myself over Vera and punched it through a door and mashed it, and it was so stupid to do, I’m ashamed.”

That’s better. Buzz me if you need me,” and he goes into the theater.

I go home. Vera is sitting on my building’s stoop.

There you are,” she says. “I was going to wait five more minutes and then send it by mail.”

“You mean you finally have an answer for me? Hallelu.”

“Answer? To that question in the restaurant? I forgot about that. No. Your set of keys. There was no room to slip them under your door and I didn’t want to just leave them there. Here.”

She holds my keys out. I take my bandaged hand out of my coat pocket and hold it out to her palm up. She says “What’s this, a joke? No, I don’t want to know. I know it’s bad. I’m sorry if your hand hurts you the way your face now tells me it does, but I’ve got to be going, goodnight,” and sticks the keys into my coat pocket.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” I say as she crosses the street.

“I told you. Save it for another time.”

“I’ll still tell you because I believe in answering a question when it’s asked.”

“Good. You got your big dig in. That should be enough.”

“I’ll still tell you, and I wasn’t trying to get a dig in, because I’ve nothing to hide from you and I think you’ll want to know.”

She’s across the street, stops, says “All right — I’m listening. What?”

“I’m not shouting it across the street.”

“You’ve shouted everything else across, why not this?”

“Come here or I’ll go there.”

“I’ll come. You’re hurt. You are hurt? That bandage with blood isn’t a fake?”

The answer is no.”

She waits for a car to pass before she crosses the street. “Now, what? If you’re not going to act like an ass again with that ‘The answer is no.’”

“First, how do you feel about me?”

“About what? Which way? What does that have to do with anything? And when are you talking about?”

This way. About everything. Your feelings to me. Before and now.”

“A week before — we both knew. Now — let’s be honest — neither of us does.”

“Will you come upstairs with me?”

“Have you been to a doctor or hospital?”

“No.”

Then only to look at your hand and wash and dress it if it needs it.”

“I don’t feel too well anyway, so that’s okay with me.”

We go up the stoop and into the vestibule. She gets the keys out of my pocket, unlocks the door, and we start upstairs, she in front.

“What was the question before that you asked me in the restaurant?” she says, without turning around.

“One at the end? You don’t know?”

That’s why I asked. I’m curious because of what maybe it all led to.”

“I forget also.”

“No you didn’t.”

“No I did. It was an important one for us, though. First the argument and my storming away and eventually smashing my hand through a closet door, which is part of what I was going to tell you I did and why.”

“It was much more important to you. But maybe we better forget it because of what it could lead to now. More arguing and bitterness, and that’s the last thing I want to get involved in again.”

“Now I remember,” I say.

“All right. Though I don’t believe you. But what is it? Bad hand, sour feelings, potential explosion, but you want to have it out, let’s.”

“No, I suddenly forget. Tip of the tongue, off it again. Probably because of the damn pain and a headache now. I’ll remember it, though.”

“Hopefully, when I’m not here, if you did forget.”

“Honestly, I did.”

We’d reached the fourth-floor landing. She unlocks my door, puts the keys on top of the refrigerator, looks around and says “My God, what a mess you made. What could have got into you?”

“I don’t know.”

She has me sit on the toilet seat cover, takes my bandage off, says “Look at this; it’s awful,” washes and dresses my hand, makes me take three aspirins. I say “I still don’t feel too well. Could you stay?”

“All right, but on different sides of the bed.”

I go to bed and sometime later she joins me. My hand hurts like hell. I can’t fall asleep. She says “Your jumping around is keeping me up.”

“My hand.”

She turns on the light. There’s a lot of blood on me and my side of the bed. She says “I better get you to a hospital.”

We go to one. They take x-rays and say I broke a couple of fingers and part of the rest of the hand.

After they put in a few stitches and a cast is put on, she says “Whatever it was you asked me in the restaurant that was so important to you then, I would have said yes to if just to avoid all this.”

“Who can predict anything?”

“I know. But I only said that about your restaurant question as an expression of how I now feel.”

“Anyway, it only proves you never know what can sometimes happen.”

“Now I know, and you frighten me and made matters much worse for us, much.”

“Don’t be.”

“I am. You want me to retract it? I can’t.”

“You’ll feel different tomorrow or so.”

“No I won’t. You scared me silly. Break your hand? Next you’re liable to break my fingers and then my face. I feel awful for your hand and your pain and such, but for us you couldn’t have made matters worse. I’ll get us a cab and see you to your building, but that’s all.”