Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“You mean,” Shakespeare says, “‘All’s ill that rends Will’s.’”

“Aye,” Anne says.

“‘Neigh,’ I should have the beleaguered Richard say.”

While watching the movie, Piers writes Lucia a letter. He folds the writing paper into quarters and with magic markers draws a picture in each square. The top right one’s a self-portrait, the caption beneath reading “Hello, Lucia, I’m Piers, the man you telephone-talked to the other night, remember? I decided to send you this letter instead of a postcard — think back. As you can tell from that think back. I don’t like repeating words like remember in so short a space made even shorter by the little space I have to write, and I’m sorry not only for this long sentence, which could have been broken up with a period in place of a comma twenty or so words and a contraction ago, but also for using plurisyllabic words like repeating, remember, shorter, little, sentence, contraction and maybe even sorry, broken, period, comma, using and maybe even maybe and even even and surely surely and plurisyllabic. I’m sure I left out one or two but not one and two, as they’re not plurisyllabic words. Though if I hadn’t used all those underlined words in that sentence before the last (please turn over and continue reading in box 1), the sentence would have read ‘As you can tell from that I don’t like words like in so short a space made by the space I have to write, and I’m not for this long, which could have been up with a in place of a or so words and a, but for words like and and and and and.’ Not that I couldn’t find any meaning in that quoted sentence no matter how unwittingly it was written, but I would have used an an instead of a in front of in place of. Anyway, I promise not to write any more big words like anyway and promise. But since I don’t know if you can read these big words I promised not to write, I’ll just write them without assuming you can’t read them or that they can’t be easily taught to you. By the way, I don’t have yellow hair but felt I should use that color in my self-portrait, since I already drew my face red and neck blue.

The above drawing in square B is my dictionary. I don’t think you’ll be interested in seeing it, but a book is an easy thing to draw.

“Above is my typewriter. I write stories and letters on it. This letter to you, though, I’m writing by hand. I could write it by foot, but I have slippers on. The man in the first joke tells bad squares. Turn that sentence around a bit and you’ll see what I mean when I say ‘Maybe that’s what makes his red so face.’ Turn red so face around and you won’t have a proteron hysteron. Keep turning and you’ll get dizzy. (From now on TPO means turn page over, so TPO to box 2.) Getting back to the more rollicky topic of sad jokes and bad oxymora, I guess in my second letter my face will have to be purple, which might be your primary art lesson, though I won’t tell you what I heard or said to make my face that way.

This is my room with me lying on the floor in front of a television set. The figure on the screen’s left is a woman. The one on the right a man. Now the man’s on the right and she’s on the left. Now they’re falling together onto the bed. Now a blanket’s on top of them. Now a cat jumps on the blanket and snuggles in between them. Now the light fades till the screen’s dark. (TPO to box 5.) I can’t draw all these movements and different shades of light in the little space I have for the TV screen in my drawing, so I’ll leave the figures the way I drew them: two vertical sticks, the ganglier one standing for the man, the small tire surrounding them being my TV set, which is on loan from my parents so I could see the presidential debates tonight: I don’t own: do you? One day I hope to see you where you live or where I love, which as I told you on the phone is many hours away from you in New York by plane. That’s bad English (please continue on page 2), but the only language I know well enough to illiterately know. The man in squares A and D on page 1 makes veriberi bad jokes, or tries to joke, as he just tried to, and unfailingly fails, as he just succeeded in unfailingly failing again, and again. What is the color of dumbness, which is the color I’d draw the man’s face in those two pictures if I hadn’t already drawn them read I mean red. That’s even worser English, and what I just wrote then the worsest, and there can’t be any worse English more than that, except maybe that, if I hadn’t capitalized the E in anguish and made it i. By the way, what I seem to be poking with a big stick in my self-portrait on page 1 is this letter I’m writing to you.

“P.S. The movie I’m watching ends with this rich lady getting sick from a strange disease known as kakemonomania scribbledibblebe, and the fiction writer in the film, ten years younger than I and much better-looking and whose name I think is Dom, saying, as she lies asleep in her hospital suite, ‘I’ve had enough of you and your lowdown friends for a lifetime, Mrs. Brawn, and I just wish I had the guts to say it to your face,” which he actually is doing, since he’s standing over her and she’s lying on her back. The young woman editor, which to make a long story short is a worker who makes short sentences and large spaces out of toiled-over compressed passages and long paragraphs, loves Dom or Rom or some hom-nom like Strom or Pom but only one of thom, comes to the hospital room, and she and the writer kiss and hug. The unedited editor says ‘You were truly in love with her, weren’t you, and there’s nothing in life worth living for more than that, in spite of it often ending in agony, fiasco and utter distress,’ and he nods yes-s-s. ‘Will you two idiots get the H out of here,’ the older woman says. ‘I’m exhausted with you both and want to get some shuteye before I die,’ and they smile at her, she at them, they leave the room and race downstairs and through the lobby. She whistles for a cab and they run to it hand in hand, while the doorman yells after them ‘That sure must’ve been a quick recovery,’ for you see, Lucia (as the closing credits and cooing music come on and the cab pulls away with the couple visible through the rear window kissing to beat the band), when the two of them came to the hospital separately a few minutes ago (TPO), the doorman saw they were very sad.

“No, no, all wrong. Say, who do I think I’m writing this letter to anyway? I’m about as adept at sending off epistles to bissles as I am missles. I mean missives to missies as I am apostles. But there again: too much effort. Too many wisecracks, lies, cricks, tricks, and gimcracks. There again. Never ends. In edition t’ ill wit y’ll git whit I premised mit (pleez T to new P last time),” and he draws a fullscale facsimile of the message-address side of a picture postcard, writes her name and address underneath a canceled stamp of a straddle-backed Don Quixote attacking a tilted windmill, and on the left side of the meticulously printed “Made in Spain (reproduction prohibida)” he writes: “Dear Lucia: Here’s the picture postcard I said I’d send. Having fun. Hope you are too. Wish you were here. Wish I were two. That heroic grave structure on the card’s front is not the posh posada my apartment’s in but this country’s largest bibliocrypt photographed right after the heaviest snowfall in a hundred years. Warmest regards to your mom. Love Piers.”

He goes out and mails the letter and calls Chloe an hour later.

“Hi, is it too late? Lucia and I had such an enjoyable talk before that I thought we could do it some more.”

“She’s in the camper, not feeling well. I shouldn’t have even taken her to the store with me.”

That was sudden. What’s it, something serious?”

“Hey. It’s presumptuous getting anxious over the phone when you can’t in any way help. It’s an earache, which she woke up with today. Painful, yes, but she’ll be out extroverting tomorrow morning after tonight’s antibiotic kicks in, so don’t be unnerving me with your concern, okay?”