Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“I’m sure it won’t. Just by the statistics they give, the second operation has a much greater chance of success.”

“Oh, no. I hate to admit it. What I’m saying is I hate to be the prophet of doom or callous or a person like that, because I know your family is no better off financially or any other way with your problems. But I have a vegetable on my hands for the rest of my life, and so do you. I don’t know where we’re ever going to get the money.”

His father was the only patient awake when they entered the room.

“Andy? That you?”

“He’s here, Mr. W.,” Mrs. Dodd said, stroking his cheek, “so don’t be worrying none. You’ve a very nice boy here. And we’ve just had a pleasant chat and I assured him everything’s going to be all right with you. You’re a lucky man, Mr. W., a very lucky man.” Then she went over to the other patients in the room, made sure they were covered, and sat on her husband’s bed.

“Andy — where are you?”

“Right beside you, Dad. Anything wrong?”

“You’re here? Good.” He moved his hand through the bed rail.

“You want to take my hand?”

He nodded and Andy held his father’s hand and kissed his forehead. Then his father said “Lila? Your mother, Lila…I mean…”

“She’s home.”

“Home?”

“Her home. You’ve been divorced close to ten years, don’t you remember? You live alone with Sheila now.”

“And you?”

“You know I live alone too.”

“You come and live with us too — understand?”

“You’re speaking much better now, Dad.”

“Nice girl, nice woman, your mother.” The thought seemed to please him. “We never should’ve split up. It was bad for you kids.”

“I don’t know. It was good for you two, so I guess good for us.”

“No, no. Never should’ve split up.”

“Okay, if you say so. And you really are speaking much better. Keep it up and you’ll be out of this place in a week.”

“Nice woman, very pretty. Came from a good family, true class. Why isn’t she with us, Andy? I mean, I mean, you think after marriage to one woman for twenty years…thirty years…”

“Mom told me she wants to come. I spoke to her yesterday and she was very eager to know everything about you. But coming here means leaving her job early. Also, the long subway ride at night, and this dangerous neighborhood. It’s too much for any woman, Dad.”

The daytime. The daytime every time the daytime, Andy.”

“Try and go back to sleep, Dad. Just rest.”

“But the daytime, Andy. She has a day off Wednesday in the daytime — I know. And Sunday all day.”

“You mean you think she ought to come during the day? I’ll suggest that to her. She wants to come badly. She told me so just yesterday.”

“Today. She’ll come today and I’ll be better, Andy.”

“I’ll tell her. She’s very concerned about you — as much as Sheila and I are.”

“I know. A lovely woman. If we would’ve stayed together this wouldn’t have happened. She knew how to take care of me best. Call her again. Tell her to come. Do me a favor.”

“Right after closing tonight I’ll call her. I’m sure she’ll be here in the next few days.”

“Few days?” He looked puzzled. “Few days? Few days?”

“Don’t be repeating everything I say. It’s not good for you.”

“You and Sheila and she come next few days, Andy, and I’ll be better.”

“I know you’ll be better also.”

“Also, Andy…”

“Also what, Dad?”

“Also what, Dad?”

“Dad, please. Now I already asked you not to repeat everything I say. Just please.”

“Please,” he said, shutting his eyes. “Please, Andy…please, just please.” Then he seemed to be asleep. Andy, still holding his father’s fingers through the bed rail, opened a newspaper in his lap with his free hand. When he raised his wrist to look at his watch, Mrs. Dodd, sitting beside her sleeping husband with her arm around his shoulders, called out from across the beds “We got more than half an hour yet. I checked. I check every five minutes, in fact. It’s some ordeal, isn’t it?”

I said I only have one thing on my mind to tell her. She didn’t ask what. Sat there, reading, looking over her shoulder out the window. Then at her hand. Way she was holding it, in what I’d call a relaxed fist, probably her nails. Shut her eyes, seemed to be drifting into thought. Then, when her face tightened, into deep thought. Opened her eyes — popped them open, is more like it, and still without looking at me. She was looking to the side at the coat rack filled and covered with our sweaters, hats, coats and scarves. Seemed about to say something, to me without looking at me or to herself aloud. But she closed her mouth, shook her head, began blinking rapidly as if she had a tic, which she never had before that I was aware of, so I didn’t know what to make of it. Blinking stopped, and her irises rose till they were partly hidden by her eyelids. I’d seen her do that before. Put her finger to the inner corner of her right eye as if she was trying to take something out of it. That speck, if that was it, could have been what caused the blinking before, or the blinking might have been her way to get rid of it. Wiped the finger on the back of her other hand. Looked at where she’d wiped. From where I was sitting opposite her — about ten feet away — I couldn’t see anything there. Then the book slid off her lap and the bookmark fell out. Could be she forgot she was holding it. Could even be that for the last half minute or so she’d intentionally let it rest on her lap without holding it. Book made a noise when it hit the floor and the sound startled her. Leaned over, picked the book and bookmark up, slipped the bookmark into the book and seemed to look for the page she’d left off at. Seemed to find it, because she held the book in front of her and resumed reading. After that: little motions of her face, eyes and hands, though none to me. And her foot tapping intermittently, not because of a tic but out of impatience it seemed. All while she was reading or pretending to read, because in more than five minutes — and she was a fast reader — she still hadn’t turned the page. I wanted to say “As I was saying before, I only have one thing, or you could even say ‘one point’ on my mind to tell you,” but didn’t think she’d respond in any way no matter what I said or how urgently or emphatically I said it. By taking her eyes off the book, for instance. By looking at me. By saying she heard me the first time. By saying something like “I know what you’re going to say, knew what you were going to say the first time, didn’t think much of it then and don’t think much of it now, so don’t bother saying it.”

She seemed completely removed from me, and not because she was too absorbed in the book to look up or say anything. She knew as well as I that it was a dull and almost unreadable book. Unreadable meaning a chore to read because it was so dully and unimaginatively written and had so little to say. That there was nothing new or intriguing about it. Nothing about it in subject, style, structure or whatever else there is that makes a book interesting and rewarding and grabs your attention from the start and holds it, or the kind of attention she was pretending to give it. When she suddenly looked up. Not at me but at everything else in the room: coat rack, window, wall art we’d collected individually, before we knew each other, and together; her book again, which was back in her lap, or maybe, she was just looking at her lap. Who knows with her, but that’s it, I thought, and I stood up and went to the kitchen. Thought I’d make myself coffee or tea. Even a hot chocolate, which I hadn’t had in years and didn’t even know if we had any hot chocolate mix, or mug of vegetable broth made from a cube. Then got so angry right after I grabbed the kettle to put water in that I slammed it down. At her for ignoring me. For using the book as an excuse not to look at or listen or talk to me. And everything else in the room and on her person like that as a device against me. Ran back to the living room. Didn’t actually run but sort of walked quickly, still angry and pumped up to say what I thought of her treatment of me. All the improvisations and stratagems or just tricks, I’ll call them. Her nails, which didn’t seem in need of any further trimming or cleaning. Coat rack — maybe something to do with it being so filled it might topple over, but it had to be looked at three to four times? And what could be out the window that wasn’t there when she looked a minute before? Same tree with the same bloom. Same back fence in no need of repair. Same redwood picnic table and four plastic chairs. Patch of grass I mowed a few days ago and bushes I recently clipped. Maybe a bird standing on one of those or fluttering in place in the air before flying off. That would be something worth looking at if it was that, for a short time at least. But she still, if just for a few seconds, could have given some sign she was prepared to listen to me. All to most of which I was about to tell her, when she started smiling. Not to me but the book on her lap. Something in it was making her smile, it seemed. Or maybe she was just looking at the book but smiling at what she sensed I was about to say because of the way I’d stormed in here and possibly over that one-thing-on-my-mind I’d never got to say. If it was the book, then something in it that reminded her of something else that was funny. Or a passage or line in the book that was so bad she had to smile. Or she recalled something that made her smile that had nothing to do with the book or me. Or maybe something to do with me but not part of my storming in or that one-thing-on-my-mind-to-say. Something we once did together that was pleasant or funny or both. Something either of us had said to the other or our child had said or done to one of us or both. Or anything. But she’d smiled and was still smiling, so how could I go up to her angrily and berate her about something when she was like that? It’d seem awful or just not the right moment or totally out of sync or whack. Anyway, it’d be a lot more difficult to do than when she wasn’t smiling disparagingly or cynically or any other way like that at me. And her smile was real. I know her too long not to know that a smile like that can’t be faked. So I turned around, thought of going back to the kitchen to make coffee or one of those other drinks. Thought also of turning back to her and saying there was still one thing on my mind I wanted to tell her, since what was on my mind then and was still on it now had nothing to do with any criticism or dissatisfaction with her. Thought to ask if she had any idea what that one thing on my mind was that I’d wanted to tell her, for I now forget what it specifically was. Thought also of asking what she was still smiling at. But she looked so content smiling that I didn’t want to distract her from whatever was causing it. I just wanted to sit down opposite her and look at her face made even lovelier by her smile. And then perhaps, when she was finished smiling, ask if she had any idea what I’d started out to say before about that one thing. It was something concerning the two of us, I remember, and as a result, our child. That’s right: that it was silly to continue fighting when we know we always eventually work it out. And work it out to such a degree that we always feel good about each other after, and as a result, our child feels better. So why don’t we take a shortcut this time and forget what’s eating us about the other and sit together and talk about things the way we do when we’re feeling good with each other? She stopped smiling and looked up from her book at me. I smiled, was about to sit in the chair opposite her. She looked down at the book in her lap without smiling. I thought “Give it time,” and went into the kitchen to get away from her and not — at least it wasn’t in my mind at the moment — for anything to drink.