Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

Next morning, her alarm clock rang. It was still dark out. She had to get up for school and Paula to wash her hair before going to school. I did my morning exercises in the bedroom and went downstairs and sat at the table with my coffee while they finished their pancakes and juice and milk. Dawn wiggled her fingers at me to get my attention, and said “I’m going to the city Tuesday night for my dance class. I’ll drive you back, okay?” and I said “Sure.” “Also, I’ve been thinking we need a little vacation from each other,” and I raised my eyebrows, and she said “I’m saying that I’d like it if we didn’t see each other this weekend — that’s all right, isn’t it?” “What’s the real reason?” and she said “I already told you the real reason.” Paula got up, and Dawn said “If you’re through, bring in your dishes, please?” Paula went into the kitchen with her dishes and started washing them, and I said “What I mean is what’s behind the face of what you said?” “Face? What face? I don’t understand, I just want to do some things by myself this weekend, okay?” “By yourself? Does that mean alone or without me?” and she said “Whatever I want to do — what’s so wrong with that?” “You’ve a date — for all I know, you’ve two — so why didn’t you just say it and that you’ve probably had your share of me for the time being, and what’s troubling you is that I haven’t had my share yet of you.” “I don’t know about you, but I can’t go through these things so early,” and I said “I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. That’s how I immediately felt. Maybe it’s your fault for bringing this on too suddenly for me.” I went into the living room with my coffee and sat in the rocking chair. The cat jumped onto my lap and stayed there. Dawn came in and got down on her knees beside me and stroked the cat and rested her arm on my legs and said “I shouldn’t have said anything before I left. That’s what you used to do before I’d leave for school when you had something I didn’t want to hear or wasn’t ready or sufficiently awake for just then, and it would mess up my whole day.” “Forget it, it’s all right,” and she said Though it does make me a little fearful for us again, but no big deal.” I said “No, it’s had its effect,” and a couple of tears were coming out and she saw them and I thought “Goddamn fucking tears,” and got rid of them. “Oh crap,” she said, “I should have just stuck to ending it between us when I got back from Turkey,” and I said “What a thing to say. Turkey was a summer and a half ago.” “But I’m no good at periodically readjusting the relationship with the same man.” “Look, I’ll never be able to work here today. If you don’t mind I’m going to start the vacation a day earlier and take the express bus in.” I set the cat on the floor and went into the dining room to put my typewriter, which was on the table, back in its case. She came into the room and said “Maybe vacation was the wrong word to use. I meant by it that we could both use a short break from each other — for a couple of weeks or so.” Paula yelled goodbye from the kitchen. We yelled goodbye, and she left through the back door, probably because she didn’t want to pass us to get to the front. “I’ve got to go too,” Dawn said. “I don’t like leaving it like this, but I can’t be late for homeroom.” She put on her coat and got her briefcase and books, I got my typewriter and canvas totebag, and we left the house and walked up the hill behind it to where her car was. She said “Listen, either be here or you’re not here, but that’s okay, right?” and I said “Right, and have a good week.” “Okay. You too. A great creative one,” and kissed me and got in her car and started it up and smiled and waved at me. She was trying to placate me with that smile and wave and those last remarks because she knew I was feeling hurt as I’d been again and again the past two years when she decided to break us up for two weeks, a month, her vacations, her separations, no doubt her other men besides Peter, her other times with other people, when she was feeling claustrophobic with me, as she’d said, and maybe when she gets too close to a man she always has to draw back, as she’d said, and so on. But I don’t want to go into it again. Then why am I going into it again? But anyway, anyway, she was there on the flat part of the little hill, warming up the car not fifteen feet away from me, and when she drove off she probably thought “Who the hell needs the aggravation? I should be asking myself. Let him get used to me and my ways and what I can and can’t do now, or let him go screw himself. No, that’s too hard. Just let him go and maybe for good.” And I was standing there a few feet away from where I said goodbye to her, thinking “God, I love her so much I don’t know why I hate her.” I don’t know what I’m saying. I know it’s going to be a lousy day. I should take the bus. I must take the bus. Just get the hell down there and take the bus already, stupid, and I start down to the stop.

We’re walking through the park when we hear a groan from behind the bushes.

“What was that?” Jane says.

“Sounded like it was from in there.”

“I know, but who is it?”

“Want me to take a look?”

“No. Let’s keep walking. I’m afraid.”

“Why? It could be a harmless drunk or sober man having a heart attack. You push on a ways and I’ll check it out.”

“I said don’t. It’s no joke. We shouldn’t have come this way. The path’s too narrow. The bushes and boulders are too big.”

“We’re in the heart of the wild bird reserve, that’s why the denseness. Part of the eastern flyway in fall and spring.”

Then let’s fly away.” Our boy in the stroller throws his bottle to the ground. “Don’t, Jim. Stop throwing things.” She gives the bottle back to him. “I think he’s made.” She leans over his back and sniffs.

“He’s made. Please?”

“I’m still concerned about that groan.”

“What for? Nobody in his right mind should’ve been in there.”

“But say we read tomorrow it was someone who got killed. Worse than the heart attack. Someone who bled to death because nobody came in time. We could read that.”

“We won’t.”

“We could.”

“I’m going and so are you. Now let’s go.” She pushes the stroller. Jim throws his bottle out. She picks it up and offers him it.

“I wouldn’t give it back.”

She drops it into the stroller bag. Jim tries sliding out of the stroller frontways.

“You’ll break your feet, Jim,” she says. “Now in. I said in.”

“We’ll move quicker if I carry him. Because it’s going to start pouring again.”

“It wasn’t a good idea cutting through the park.”

“Too late. And there’s better tree shelter along the way.”

“Maybe that’s what that groaning man was trying to do — save time. I hate this city.”

“One incident. That’s all it ever takes you.”

“You’re right. I like this city. But I hate people getting beaten up on and robbed and raped.”

It starts to rain. “Want to keep going or duck under this tree?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. You’re in a rush to get out, aren’t you?”

“It’s tough knowing what to do. Get drenched and give Jim a worse cold. Or stand under here and risk getting hit by lightning or mugged.”

“Let’s ask Jim then. Jim? Should we stay or go?”

“Shou,” Jim says. “Ba-ba, ba-ba.”

“He wants his bottle,” she says.

“No chance.”

“Did he at least make up our minds about staying or going?”

“Would you stay here for a second while I go back?”