Stephen Dixon: Time to Go

He comes back the next day. I’m at the top of a ladder against Mrs. Cottrell’s house, trimming the second — floor window, frames. Suddenly she’s looking out the bedroom window I’m working on, checking to see how good a job I’m doing, I suppose, or just making sure I’m working at what she’s paying me for. I nod to her, she starts speaking to me while pointing to the park, then she mouths “Wait,” since I can’t hear her through the closed window, and leaves the room. Next she’s standing at the foot of the ladder and says “Howard, excuse me for interrupting you, but what I was saying upstairs was isn’t that man on the park bench the one who used to come months ago with his baby every day — the baby who I was told was in a car crash with the man’s wife where they both died?” I say “Is that what they say happened, Mrs. C.? Because I’ve heard a half-dozen stories about what happened to him and his family,” and she says “What else did you hear?” and I say “Too many to remember, but all different,” and she says “Oh, if I only had the nerve to ask him. Not pointblank but around it. But pity no matter what it was, don’t you think? Of course you do, because he loved that little darling. That was obvious in every one of his gestures.”

She goes into the house, I go back to my trimming, but by now I’m so curious about what really did happen if anything that when the man gets off the bench and starts for the street in my direction, I put down my brush and climb down the ladder, not so much to ask him anything directly but just to get a sense of what happened by what he might say in passing or the way he looks. I take off my gloves as if I’m done for the time being, scratch some dried paint off my arms, and as he’s passing the house I look up and say “Hey there, how’s it going?”

“Can’t complain,” he says, still walking.

“And how’s that lovely little daughter of yours?” and he stops and says “What lovely little daughter?”

“Well, I don’t know if it was a daughter or son — all I’m saying is the baby you used to come to that park bench with almost every nice spring day for a month. We all admired you for the way—”

“I never had a baby,” and I say “You didn’t?”

“Never even came close to having one. I was engaged once — a century ago — but we didn’t get married and certainly never had a child.”

“This is really funny, but you didn’t used to bring a little baby there — no more than six to nine months old at the time? In a yellow snowsuit she had when it was still a bit cool out? And then in just pants”—he’s shaking his head—”or some outfit I don’t know what it’s called, where the feet don’t come out of it and it zippers all the way up, and a sun bonnet and white sweater and maybe a little blanket?”

“Never.”

“In a stroller. Rolled her there, stayed for about two hours, usually put her back in it when you were leaving or sometimes carried her while you pushed the stroller? I mean, I never saw anyone who looked after and was so affectionate to his baby, that’s the only reason I’m mentioning it.”

“Honestly, you have the wrong man.”

“I’d almost swear it was you. I’m not saying it was now, but even Mrs. C. who owns this house and who just saw you would swear, I’m almost sure, that that man with the baby was you.”

“It sounds very nice. In ways I wish I were him. But I never had a child. And since I don’t plan to get married, I doubt I ever will have one, I’m afraid. Nice talking to you.”

I look for him the next day and then a couple of days the next week when I’m working on the drive, and then for the one or two days a week I work around the drive till the fall, but I don’t see him again. I suppose I can get the real story somehow by asking a few people on the drive what else this man’s university student or neighbor or brother of a neighbor or whoever it was who knew him might have heard about him. But after that last talk with him, and because I feel I did enough damage by maybe forcing him away from this part of the park, I decide I’ve been nosy enough.

I’m twenty years older than you,” she says. “I mean twenty years younger. I don’t know if it’s a problem for you but for me it is.”

“Isn’t for me.”

“That’s what I said. That it wouldn’t be — might not. And it’s not that I don’t like you.”

“Or that I love you.”

“See? That particularly scares me. Because I know you do. While I don’t love you. Like you, yes. But twenty years. More. Almost twenty-one. You were born in May, I’m in November.”

“Let’s call it an even twenty-one.”

“Even twenty-one. It’s so much. Tell me what you really think about it.“

“What do you think? That I wish it wasn’t a problem with you and that we should continue seeing each other despite the difference of our ages.”

“See each other perhaps but not sleep with each other.”

“See and sleep both. Or only sleep with each other. We can do everything in the dark.”

“Don’t joke. I’m in no mood.”

“No, listen. You can come to my apartment or I to yours. The lights will be out in either. Let’s say you come and ring my bell. Lights totally out, place pitch black, I’ll open the door and you’ll come in. If you don’t remember the terrain I’ll take your hand and guide you in and shut the door so no light from the stairway comes in. And then kiss you or we’ll kiss and talk perhaps or no talk if that’s not part of the bargain and then go to bed, everything in the absolute dark as it can get. That way we won’t have to see each other.”

“What about the public hallway light?”

“Okay. You ring my bell and shut your eyes. I’ll shut mine, we’ll both put out our hands, and I’ll bring you in and shut the door. Then we’ll go through what I said before till it’s over and you can leave in the dark or in the light with our backs towards one another. Or I will if it’s your apartment where all this is taking place.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea, for a fantasy, but it won’t work.”

“Why, you don’t like my lovemaking anymore?”

“No I do, I do.”

“Then not in the dark”

“No. Dark, light or one of those mini-watters on with a red shirt over the globe, our lovemaking was good. But you’re forty-two, I’m not even twenty-one. I’m a half year from being twenty-one. So that’s actually twenty-one and a half years difference, not twenty. Why’d I always think it was only twenty?”

“Maybe because I was always referring to it as twenty. Not to make it less. Only because what the hell’s a year and a half mean in all that?”

“And if you were forty-three and a half to my twenty and a half, or I was nineteen and no half to your forty-two, that wouldn’t make any more of a difference to you?”

“There is probably an extreme somewhere in age differences between couples. Thirty years difference when the woman or man’s twenty. Again thirty years difference when the woman or man’s thirty. So I suppose thirty years difference is the beginning of the extreme, except if the younger person’s fifteen, boy or girl. Then it’s probably five or ten years difference, and if the younger person’s thirteen or fourteen, three or four years difference, though even with any of those I’m not sure.”

“I don’t agree. And I think that from tonight — I know that from tonight onwards — it has to be over with us, all right? “

“What can I say to complain?”

“Then you won’t phone me, write or any of those things?”

“So it’s both? No sleep or see? You don’t even want to be friends?”