Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“I felt you were getting to that.”

“If you did, then you should have said so or asked me to confirm it, so we could have avoided all this getting-around business to what we finally got to now.”

“If I had, then we really wouldn’t have said much to each other. For it wouldn’t have seemed right for us, after living this long together, to just wake up, wash up and so on and sit down for breakfast and over coffee say right off that we’re bored silly with each other and must separate.”

“Whether it does or doesn’t, we are and so know now what we have to do.”

“We’ve been bored with each other before.”

“Never like this,” she said. “Admit it. We’ve absolutely nothing to say to each other anymore.”

This conversation hasn’t been that boring.”

That’s because all we’ve left to talk about is our boredom, and we can’t talk about that subject for very long without it becoming boring and then very boring and then the most boring subject of all. If we don’t resolve the problem now, then all we’ll have to talk about the next time we speak at length, for I’m disregarding the ‘Answer the door, please, Louise’ and ‘Don’t forget to get a package of cream cheese,’ is how boring we are to each other. And since we already spoke about it before, that conversation will have to be less interesting than it is now. And the third time we speak about it will be even less interesting than the previous time, and so on, until we won’t be able to speak about it, it’ll be so boring, and then we will have nothing to say to each other but ‘Answer the door, please, and don’t forget the cream cheese, Louise.’ It’ll just be silence between us. Eight minutes. Ten. Broken, perhaps, only by directions, orders and simple requests. Maybe we won’t even be able to say these because our boredom and presence together is disturbing us so. Half hour to an hour of just no conversation at all while we’re having coffee together at this table. Could you stand that? I couldn’t.”

“I’d rather wait till it happens before saying how much I couldn’t stand it. I might like it for a while, for all I know.”

“What about what’s already happened? The five minutes of no talk. You liked that?”

“It wasn’t bad. I stood it. I thought about things other than us. Something in my childhood, for instance.”

“I’m not interested,” she said.

“It’s similar to now. When I was five or six. I can’t know how old I was. Seven, even, or nine, though I doubt I could’ve been older than that. Sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and my mother saying, while sipping a cup of coffee…I know coffee was part of it, as steam was coming out of her cup, and she never drank anything else hot like that, not even cocoa or tea, that I couldn’t leave the table or say another word, just as she wasn’t going to say another word to me, till I finished my milk.”

“I’ll ask. Did you?”

“She eventually gave up, let me leave without finishing it. It must have become too boring for her, once she drank her coffee, sitting there without either of us saying a word.”

“Well, I won’t, and I am not your mother.”

“I know. You’re my girlfriend, or sweetie, or once was.”

“Which could be another thing, Herb.”

That can come back. But before it does, I feel the conversation should come back. And with this conversation, our conversation is coming back.”

“I already told you. This conversation is self-destructive in that it destroys itself by our having it. And now that we’ve had it — and I have had it, Herb, I have — this conversation is destroyed. Make it easy for us both. Agree to separate, which means, since I live here with my things and child and you only with your things, to leave the apartment agreeably. Find someone or somewhere to live with or at, or do what you want once you leave here, like travel, but don’t try to have anything more to do with me once you leave, as I won’t with you.”

“I could and would if only I didn’t enjoy these little conversations, which only you of the two of us think are finished and from this point on or thereabouts can only get more boring and self-destructive. But let me think about it. My first inclination is to say you’re probably right.”

“Maybe what I say now will help you make the decision. If you don’t leave, I will. It’ll be more difficult for me, just as it’ll be difficult to stay without your share of the rent. But what will be more difficult than either of those is staying here if you plan to stay, even if you pay all the rent.”

“I think I plan to stay with you and pay all the rent, and not because I want to be difficult.”

Then Rae Ann and I will have to leave.”

Then wherever you go I’ll try to go too and pay all the rent, even though I know for a while I’ll be making myself difficult.”

“But why submit yourself to what you have to admit, this sophistic argument aside, will be almost total and then total boredom between us?”

“Because I still feel, no matter how boring you say our conversations will get, that if we continue to stay together our conversations will become interesting and soon we’ll have a close relationship again.”

“It’ll become horrible. You’ll make me mad. I’ll yell at and curse you. I’ll plead with you to stop bothering me. I’ll say it’s bad for me, you and my child. I’ll call you a child. I’ll call you worse. I’ll have you locked up if you persist. People will call you asinine and mean, childish and insane. Particularly, your family. They and your friends will say you’re thoroughly wasting your time in trying to live with me. Face it, Herb, we were once close but now aren’t. There’s nothing left between us. Or only the least thing left, which is like a residue of what once was. Or more like a residual, which like insecticide residuals are more effective against insects than sprays are. This analogy might not be exact from A to Z, but you’ll get what I mean, and of course I’m not saying you’re an insect. But once the residual is applied, it stays around. Sprays go away and are really only effective when sprayed on the insects directly. But, if you’re an insect, just try to casually walk over the residual or even leap over it in the kitchen. It gets on your feet — I’m assuming the insect’s not wearing shoes — because it’s been applied in too wide a space for just about any insect to stride over or leap across. And after it licks some of the poisonous residual off, it dies. So you can’t avoid it. And you more than anyone I know like to go into the kitchen, at least thirty times a day. The residual covers every entrance to the kitchen, surrounds every opening and hole. Because the insect, in its own way, knows after a while it can’t go into the kitchen without dying, it must separate from that room. Separate from me, Herb. I am that kitchen. Find another kitchen to get food from. Agree to leaving alone or staying here alone or whatever you want to do so long as it doesn’t include being with me, because obviously the kitchen can’t separate from the rest of the apartment to get rid of the insects. No matter what, I’m not saying another word to you till you agree to one of those types of separation I mentioned.”

“I think I can agree to one of them. Let me think about it.”

I thought about it. Briefly. About other things. Mostly. We continued to sit at the table. She reheated what coffee was left in the pot and poured us each a half mugful. Then I thought about something my sister and I used to do as kids. If we both happened to say the same word or words at the same time, we’d immediately hook our right pinky fingers together and one of us would say “What comes out of an old lady’s pocketbook?” and the other would say “Money.” And the first would say “What color is it?” and the other would say “Green.” And the first would say “What comes out of a chimney?” and the other would say “Smoke.” “What color is it?” “Gray.” Then the first would say “Make a wish and do not speak till someone speaks to you.” And we’d each make a wish and neither of us would speak till someone spoke to one of us. Then the one spoken to would ask the other one something so that one would be free to speak. I said to Louise “I was just thinking of something Caroline and I used to do as kids.”