Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

There are some other things I’d like to speak over with you before you go, would you mind?”

“I don’t know what other things, but if you do come in, please leave the front door open.” She motioned him inside, and after flitting around the apartment a few minutes, opening closets and drawers and pushing a couple of empty boxes to the middle of the floor, she started refolding the sweaters that had been neatly crammed inside the television console cabinet.

“Go right ahead,” he said. “Just don’t even think I’m here. Mind if I sit?” She nodded, and he sat down and watched her build a pile of sweaters two feet high. She went into the bedroom, came out in a dress a minute later with the three sweaters she’d had on underneath her housecoat, and added these to the pile.

“When they were here they said I could have a one-bedroom in Queens, not Brooklyn,” she said, “—a building they got a big interest in and which they said is newer and in better condition than this one, though not so near a market. I think I’ll take it anyway — temporarily. I mean with my legs acting up again it’d be a nuisance looking for a Manhattan place just now.”

“Sure, sure.”

“You still don’t believe me? Mrs. Scarlisi — you remember, nobody I was friendly with, but from apartment 45? She’s there, and they told me she likes the neighborhood very much except for that market problem. So she takes the bus when she doesn’t want to walk, and though they don’t come regularly like our buses, they’re regular enough. I think I’ll call her later.”

“Just stop with the talk and tell me how much you got, all right?”

“Got I didn’t get. All they said was it’d be a tidy sum if I decided to leave.”

“How much a tidy sum?”

“Five hundred for the moving costs, and I can keep the balance what I don’t pay the movers, fair?”

“Sounds fair. But for the last holdouts they got good reasons for being big sports.”

“Didn’t I tell you last week they were fair people?” She went into the bedroom and returned with a suitcase and some dresses. She started folding the dresses and putting them in the suitcase.

“When did they say they’d be back to see me?”

“Like I said before, they really didn’t mention you.”

“Not even if I was also ready to move or not?”

“Not even if you was still living here.” She clasped the suitcase shut.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Anyway,” just as she was about to protest, “what’d you finally get for signing away your rights to this apartment?”

“For the last time: I signed nothing; they only offered.”

“All right, all right, but try telling me they gave you more than two thousand.”

They offered a lot more.”

“Twenty-five hundred?”

“A little less.”

“A little less? You took less ?”

“Less they said they’ll offer than twenty-five hundred, but it’s still more than I ever thought they’d offer, so for me it’s plenty.”

“Because you don’t know better, that’s why. And then taking so little you ruined my chances of getting much more. For what you get: twenty-two hundred? Maybe twenty-three? Why, four thousand clear before the five hundred moving costs you should’ve got, or a stupid fool like yourself I’ve never seen before. Goddamn you,” he yelled, “you screwed up everything, and he kicked a hole in one of the empty boxes and kept kicking the box till it was across the room. He walked in circles around the room, slapping his forehead and wringing his hands and saying “What could’ve possessed me? Why’d I ever trust her? What am I to do now? All this time here for practically peanuts, peanuts ,” and flopped down in the easy chair and pounded the chair arms with his fists and shouted toward the ceiling “Moron, absolute moron, I’d like to tear off her rotten hide,” and shook his head back and forth several times and then leaned forward with his hands in his hair and shut his eyes.

When he’d simmered down a couple of minutes later, she was no longer in the room, her suitcase was gone, and the bedroom door was closed. She has to be in there, he thought, because if she went past him out the apartment he thinks he would have heard her. He sat up and calmly waited for her to come out. If it takes till tomorrow, he’ll wait, he thought, though before that he’ll shut the front door. He’s going to apologize, say something about being unable to explain exactly what took hold of him just now, but he’s definitely sorry, as sorry as a man could be. After rewinning her confidence, or a good part of it, he’ll very politely ask her to hold out against the landlords with him for just two weeks more. She didn’t sign anything, he’ll say, so in that regard they’re in luck. After two weeks, they’ll each be a cinch to get four thousand clear and the five hundred moving costs they promised her, plus a freshly painted three-room West Side apartment, a new demand he just came up with — so the hell with the long bus rides in Queens; there’ll be good markets and services right up her block. After all, he’ll point out, doesn’t she owe him at least this extra stay in the building, for in a way it’s actually she who made him so upset before when she misled him into believing she signed the relocation agreement. And then who knows: the realty people might get so panicky after two weeks that the two of them could even pull in more than four thousand — maybe even five thousand, five and a half. The last figures will knock her right off her feet, he thought, and be what he needs to have her go in with him.

The bedroom door shot open, just as he was going over the pitch he’d give her. Anna, lugging the suitcase and dressed in a moth-eaten Persian lamb coat with this veiled black hat pushed down on her forehead and hiding most of her face, hurried by him before he could say anything but “Wait.” She went out the front door, down the hall, and hobbled down the stairs. He ran to his living room window, raised the blinds all the way and saw her trudging lopsidedly through the courtyard. This time she didn’t look up at his window, though he had opened it so he could stick his head out and was prepared to smile and wave and even plead with her.

He was in the local Fairway, buying groceries for dinner tonight. A few hours ago he and his wife and her son returned from Lake Tahoe a day sooner than they’d planned. It had become too expensive for them and Ginny had caught a bad cold there. Just before he left the house he asked what she’d like for dinner tonight and she said “Something soft and simple; I also have cramps. You decide, Rod — you know food better,” so he decided the softest and simplest meal they could afford was meatloaf and yams. He’d make them after giving Jess hot cereal and toast and while Ginny continued to sweat out her cold in bed.

He got two medium-sized onions out of a bin. They were going for four pounds for twenty-nine cents — a good buy; they wouldn’t come to more than five or six cents. The mushrooms he usually chopped up and put in the loaf he’d skip tonight. Even though they were on sale, sixty-nine a pound was still too high, considering how much money he had on him.

He counted what was in his wallet and pants pocket: three dollars and seventy-five cents. He could make a good meatloaf with that, buy a few essential breakfast goodies and still have a little money left over. They’d gone with friends to Tahoe, shared a cabin near the ski lift area for five dollars a day per couple. He’d taken forty dollars with him, but with gas, two quarts of oil for their old car, rented tire chains, rent, $1.25 mittens for Jess, dollar woolen cap for his own frozen ears, cigarettes for Ginny, grocery costs split among the three couples, a few dollars tossed away on the slots and electronic blackjack machines at the casinos, he didn’t have enough money for both Ginny and him to ski. They drove to Heavenly Valley the morning after they arrived, and while he looked after Jess, Ginny, who was much more of a skier than he and had brought her own skis, went up on the slopes and had a good time, he was glad about that. He wanted to get up there also, but it was only after the first day, when he learned what the equipment rentals and ski lifts costs and that his almost equally strapped friends couldn’t loan him a tenner, that he knew he wouldn’t. “I’ll take care of Jess tomorrow,” Ginny had said. “All day, so you can have some fun,” but how could you have fun there without money?