Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “a lot you all care.”

“We do, a lot, me, especially. That television report your friends gave was totally false.”

“Well, the doctors say he’ll live, thank God, though with so much of his body burned, they say he’ll have to get skin grafts on the parts burned most,” and it occurred to me that she if anybody would know the answer as to which of the two degrees was worse. I first said “Listen, and I swear to this, I’d be glad to give some of my skin to Nelson, if the doctors think the color is right and all, as I’ve big thighs and an even bigger behind and I know that’s where they take the donor’s skin from.” Then I told her about the question that had been bothering me for two days now and which was worse, if she didn’t mind my asking, second-or third-degree burns?

“Well, the main difference, Nelson’s main doctor told me—” but then she broke down. I felt very bad for her and said “Now, come on, don’t cry, Rita. It’ll be all right; everything’ll work out okay,” but she said “I can’t talk anymore; I’ve been like this since the firebombing. Oh, what’s wrong with this world, anyway?” and hung up.

I stood there a few seconds with that sobbing plea of hers still in my head, then went to the dictionary in the living room while Jennie was calling me back to the table in the kitchen, but all it had in it were the words “second” and “third” and “first” and “burn” and “-s” for the plural, but no word “degree” after them, neither with hyphens, separated nor anything. I decided I’d never get to know the answer to this question. That none of my friends knew and nobody at work knew and that maybe the only person who could tell me would be one of those great skin-doctor specialists like the one working on Nelson, who wouldn’t give me the time of day on the phone if I called him, he’d be so busy. Then I remembered my promise to Rita and I said out loud “Good God, what the hell you get yourself into this time?” and I all of a sudden felt stomach-sick and woozy, because just the thought of being operated on for skin for Nelson’s grafting scared me to no end now. I hoped Rita would forget my suggestion, or maybe in her condition she hadn’t even heard me make it, but I had promised her and I knew I’d have to go along with it if I was asked.

At the state unemployment office this morning, David met a woman in line who told him, after giving him the once-over and then deploring the long wait and interminable California rain, that she had five beautiful daughters at home from whom he could just about take his pick if he liked. “You seem that good-natured and sensitive to me,” she said, “and just look at the way you read those brilliant books. And then, strange as this sounds, sonny,” and she looked around the room suspiciously and then stretched on her toes to speak into his ear, “I think it’s high time they began seeing men who aren’t always so stupid and wild.”

David thought the woman was a little eccentric, so he politely told her he wasn’t interested. “What I’m saying is that, enticing as your offer sounds, I’m really much too busy with my studies to go out with some women I don’t even know.”

“ Girls ,” she said, “not women. Young gorgeous, unattached girls, the homeliest of which looks like nothing short of a glamorous movie starlet. And who said anything about going out with all five of them? One , just one, we’re not perverts, you know. And my daughters are smart and obedient enough to realize that what I say is usually the right thing for them, so you can be sure you’ll have your choice, like I say.”

Thanks again,” he said, as he was trying to finish the last few pages of the paperback he was reading and then get to the one sticking out of his jacket pocket, “but I’m afraid I’ll still have to say no.”

“Why no? Listen some more before you shut me off. One’s even a blonde, though with fantastic dark black eyes. You ever go out with a blonde with fantastic dark black eyes? Ever even seen one, no less? Take it from me, they’re the most magnificent female creatures on God’s earth, bar none. Writers write endless sonnets about them, swoon at their feet. One handsome young biochemist actually wanted to commit suicide over my Sylvia, but I told him he was crazy and he’d be better off discovering new cures for cancer, instead. And listen: Each of them has a beautiful body. You interested, perhaps, in beautiful bodies?”

“Of course I am,” and he closed the book on his finger. “I mean”—he tried to harden his face from showing his sudden interest—“well, every man is.”

“Like Venus and Aphrodite they have beautiful bodies,” she said dreamily. “And cook? Everything I know in the kitchen and my cordon bleu mother before me knew, I’ve taught to my daughters. Now, what do you say?”

She was next in line now and the clerk behind the window asked her to step forward. “Listen to that jerk,” she whispered to David. “Someone like that I wouldn’t let one foot into my house. Wouldn’t even let him say hello on the phone to my daughters, even if he was pulling in five hundred a week from his job. But you ?”

“Madam,” the clerk said irritably, “if you don’t mind?”

“ You ,” she continued with her back to the clerk, “sandals, long hair, mustache, face blemishes and all, I’d make an elaborate dinner for and introduce to my girls one by one. Then I’d give you a real Cuban cigar and Napoleon brandy and show you into our library till you made up your mind as to which of my beauties you want to take for a drive. And you want to know why? I like brains.”

“It’s nice of you to say that,” David said. “Because nowadays—”

“Brains have always been taught to me by my father as the most important and cherishable part a man can bring to a woman. Clerks like that dullard don’t have brains, just fat behinds with sores on them through their whole lives. But you I can tell. Not only because of your intelligent frown and casual way you speak but also how you concentrate on your brilliant English novel here,” and she slapped the book he held. “So, come on, sonny, because what do you really have to lose?”

“Okay,” he said, smiling for the first time since he met her, “you broke my arm. But just for dinner, if that’s all right. And only to meet your lovely family and have a good home-cooked meal for a change, with some stimulating conversation.”

“Now you’re being smart.” She wrote her name and address on the inside cover of his book, told him to be at her home around six and went up to the clerk’s window to sign the form for her unemployment check.

“You act like you don’t even need the money,” the clerk said, shoving the form in front of her.

This paltry sum?” she said for everybody to hear. “ Peanuts . But I and my employer put good money into your insurance plan, so why shouldn’t I make a claim for it if I’m looking for work?”

“Next,” he said over her shoulder, and David walked up, said good morning extra courteously, as he didn’t want to give this man even the slightest excuse for becoming unfriendly and ultimately overinquisitive about him, and answered the same two questions he’d been asked since he started getting the checks.

“Did you work any days last week or receive a salary or payment of any kind for any type of labor?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you make an effort the last week to look for work in your field?”

“Yes, sir.”

“See you tonight, then,” the woman said from the side, twiddling her fingers goodbye as David signed the form. “And don’t worry about any fancy dressing for our cozy dinner. We’re informal people — very informal, though we’re not exactly beggars, by any means.”