Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

I took a bus up to see her the next day. We went to dinner at some friends of mine she’d never met and when we were driving back I said “So what do you think of them?”

They certainly are a couple, with that always working things out to perfection and complete integration and staying two feet away from each other so they don’t step on the other’s toes. It all reminds me too much of my own marriage and which I never want to go through again.” Later, when she was undressing in her bedroom, she said “I feel uncomfortable now because I don’t feel anything like having sex tonight, and with all your hints hidden in suggestions before, I think it might tick you off.” I said “No, it’s fine. We’ll just go to bed. Or I’ll read downstairs and for now just you go to bed.” “My uncomfortableness comes only because the last time you got angry when I didn’t feel like making love,” and I said That last time was after a couple of weeks when I was sort of expecting it or wanting it very much but didn’t think, or only thought of myself, and reverted again to being the same old schmuck.” We went to bed, read awhile and shut the lights. She started crying about fifteen minutes later. I was holding her from behind, thought she was already asleep. I asked what was wrong. She said “I’m feeling a bit skittish, hopeless, edgy, skew jawed, doldrums. Maybe it’s my mother, or my period about to pop. But she was so strange on the phone today that it scared me, and I’m also beginning to dread more and more facing a hundred-thirty kids every school day.” This will seem hackneyed,” I said, “but I promise you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep. If you want I’ll massage your neck and back till you feel more relaxed.” “No, thanks.” “Come on, I’ll do it just the way you like. Turn over.” “I’m too sleepy, so don’t waste it. And I’ll be okay. You’re a love. What’s the time? But why should I care? Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

Next morning she went to the bathroom, shut the door, came back with her hair brushed, face scrubbed, got back into bed, chin up close to nine, smiled, teeth had been cleaned too, sucked my thumbs, twiddled my nipples till they got hard, moved in her front, positioned me. Later we took a long walk and talked and laughed a lot and, preparing and eating lunch, had fun impersonating various musical instruments in solos and duets to Paula’s frenzied conductor’s hands. All right. Now we’re tight. Nothing seemed wrong. In and out, that’s how we sometimes go. Does she notice how Paula adores me? Does it make a difference that I feel like Paula’s father too? What do her friends say? Do they like me? Does she notice when I anonymously clean her toilet bowls and sweep all her rooms? “Make you tea?” I said “No, thank you. I mean, you bet. For you often bemoan I never need or take anything from you but some of your better spontaneous lines, but from now on I’m going to say yes, yes’m, yes.” “Good,” and later: “Let’s visit the Whipples without calling them,” and I said “You two go; I’d just like to read.” “Reading, reading. It won’t be as much fun if you don’t come along, and remember what you resolved?” We drove across Tappan Zee Bridge and she said “Look!” “What?” “Balloon moon over Tarrytown and it’s not even dark yet,” and I said “Okay, but never surprise me like that while I’m driving.” We burst in on the Whipples and their two kids and four hounds, who never stopped licking and sniffing us, and I said “Someone, throw them a couple ducks, will ya?” We all went to their Pizza and Brew. Rip Whipple winking back and forth at me and the miniskirted legs of our waitress, and I said “Uh-huh,” but thought “Who cares? I got Dawn,” and held her around the waist while we ate. Driving home, I got lost, just as I got lost driving out there. Paula said “Darn, he got us lost again, Mom,” and Dawn said “Vic’s a good loser, you have to admit that. And now we can see what these Scarsdale dudes and dudettes do in their rooms late at night besides watch their tubes.” When we got home Paula went right to her room to make pompoms for her class, and Dawn said to me “I have to be up early tomorrow. Deep dreams,” and kissed me and went upstairs. The phone rang. I was reading downstairs and started for the kitchen, but Paula ran to Dawn’s study upstairs and said “Mom, it’s a man who said in a kind of deep rough voice ‘Dawn Bodein in?’ but refused to give his name. Dawn got out of bed. I moved to the bottom of the stairs to listen. It was Peter, though she didn’t say his name, but it had to be him because he’d been calling once a month for months, and last month I answered the phone and he said in a kind of deep rough voice “Hi, Dawn Bodein in?” and I said “Who is it?” and he said “Just tell her a friend,” and I said “Well, I hate to tell you, but she left for Toulouse for two years,” and he said “Could you let me speak to Dawn, please?” and I said “Dawn Please or Dawn Bodein? We’re rather unique in having two Dawns here,” and he said “Either, and I don’t mean Dawn Either,” and I yelled “Dawn — Friend’s on the phone,” and she got on and I left the kitchen, and later she said “What did you say to Peter? He thought you were insane.” “Who’s Peter?” I asked, and she said “Just what you described him: a friend.” She was speaking on the phone in a normal tone and with the door open, so she probably didn’t think I’d be listening downstairs. It also had to be Peter because one of the first things she said was “But it isn’t for Friday — sure you can make it?” and laughed, and I’d seen Peter’s name on her wall calendar every three weeks for several months under Friday. Also, because she said “Works out perfectly. Sunday I’d have to be in Brooklyn Heights anyway to fetch Paula at her cousin’s where her father’s dropping her off,” and I knew Peter lived in Brooklyn because of a number of things I’d picked up: a letter envelope from a Brooklyn Peter, and so forth. I went away from the stairs while she was still on the phone. I didn’t like hearing her joking and teasing and laughing with a guy I knew she was sleeping with. At a restaurant dinner in my neighborhood a few weeks ago she said, after we’d talked about lovers and serious relationships we’d had before we met each other, “I think it’s only fair to tell you something, even if you won’t like it. I guess I’m having what one could call a relationship with another man. But it’s really nothing much and isn’t going to go anywhere, and is the only one I’ve had since I’ve known you.” I said, mainly because saying what I really felt — that I hated she was screwing someone else, even if only once every three weeks — would damage our own fragile relationship even further and where she’d probably drive home after dinner rather than spending the night with me, “It’s not important. You see who you want and I’ll do the same. And also, when we want, we’ll see each other, like tonight, but slow, we have to go slow as you’ve said,” and she said “Boy, is that a relief that we can both finally say that.” So I went back to the rocking chair in her living room. Drank another glass of wine while I read. Then Dawn got back in bed — her bed squeaks — and I turned down the heat and shut the lights downstairs and opened the front door and said “Here, Snuggy Snuggy; here, Snuggy Snuggy,” and got the cat back in the house and locked up and went upstairs. Dawn was reading in bed. “I thought I wanted to sleep, but got the urge to read. Let me read you a poem by Anne Sexton. It’s about a witch.” I listened to it lying on my back in bed while she was sitting up. I kissed her waist while she rubbed my hair and read, and then her navel and legs and then her vagina, and she said “No, I can’t do it while I’m reading a poem. I mean, you can’t do it. I mean, I just can’t read a poem while you’re doing that.” “So stop reading,” and she said “But I want to read, and if you want me to do it silently, I will. She committed suicide, did you know?” and I said yes and she finished reading the poem. “What do you think of it?” and I said “I liked it,” and she started reading another about snow. I rested my head on her chest and hand on her thigh, and listened. While she read she took my hand off her thigh and pressed two of my fingers into her clitoris and read a few more lines while she continued to press my fingers down and rub them around. She said “She’s too much. I can hardly ever get through more than two of hers at a time,” and dropped the magazine to the floor and kissed me. Later, she said “How come we never encourage each other verbally when we make love? People have told me it really gets them off.” “I prefer being quiet except for the normal sounds.” Later, she said That was great. I don’t know why I felt so much like it tonight, but I obviously did,” and I said “Me the same on both,” but thought “You felt like it because Peter probably oozed on about it over the phone and how you both hadn’t done it together for more than two months. So you thought of him and your upcoming weekend, and maybe he’s very good in bed, and also of me, no doubt, and it was enough to get you hot, dear Dawn, eh not? and also the poems.” “Goodnight,” I said. “Goodnight, love,” she said. She cuddled up to me. We went to sleep.