Stephen Dixon - Time to Go

I went downstairs. Magna was still upset. I said I hate for her to be so upset. I said lots of things. I’ll skip most of it. I said I know I must change. She said she thinks so too. I said if I changed somewhat does she think she’d still want to live with me? She said maybe only if I changed more than somewhat. How much more? I said and she said A little more than a little more. One very important thing though, she said, No, two: you have to think more of me than you do. Not to dote on me, but just to be more considerate of my feelings than you’ve been and, this is the second thing, more aware or just more truthful of your own. All right, I said, And I’m not saying this just because it sounds good: I’ll do everything I can to be that way and do what you say. I will, I said, I promise, okay? Okay, she said. I then wanted to kiss. She said Not quite yet. She asked what I’ve been typing upstairs and I said The beginning of something. It’s not working out. I started it several times. I think I was feeling too miserable because of what happened between us and what I knew you were feeling. It includes something of what we recently went through, I’m afraid: last night, my dreams, our breakfast, that I want our relationship to work out so much. She asked if she could see it. That she knows I don’t like anyone but editors and agents to see my work till it’s published, but could she? It’d give her the assurance, she said, that I trust her more than I seem to and value her opinion of my work more too and even if I might not agree with what she says about it each time, that I’m at least able to listen to it. And also that she can perhaps be of some use to me in my work more than just as a fictional character, just as she likes it when I give good advice in the work she does. I said You know I don’t like to show my work — but you already said that. Okay, but you have to realize it’s junk. That it’s something I’m almost sure I won’t be able to or just won’t want to end. That I started it, and probably in the wrong mood for such a piece — a dejected mood or just about — to be something, started it to, but nothing much materialized. That I’ll probably dump it into a trash bag in a few minutes to an hour if I don’t save it for half a year and then look at it and dump it then. She realizes all that, she said. She knows most of my work habits by now and also that I’ve occasionally searched frantically through garbage bags and cans for the beginnings of stories I threw in and then worked on them and finished a few and one even got published and became if she’s not mistaken my only major anthologized piece. Which reminds me, I said. While I’m down here I should get a paper bag for my trash, because I’ve a cold coming on — You do? she said. I’m sorry, you must’ve gotten it that last rainy night in Paris when I insisted we see St. Chapelle and Notre Dame — And I already have two wet tissues upstairs that should not only be in a trash bag but for your sake probably burned. She laughed. I smiled. I took her hand. I said Please let’s just have one small kiss? It’ll mean a lot to me. How much is a lot to you? she said. A lot more than a lot, I said — I don’t know, but a whole lot, which should be enough. Sure, she said, Fine by me. We kissed. Kissed several times. I love you, I said, You know that. Sometimes I don’t, she said, But I love you too. Oh Christ, she said, Let’s be good to one another and helpful and truthful as two people can be to one another, though I know you must think this is all garbage psychotherapy talk, or at least work towards what I’m asking for and not so often hurt one another and all the other good things? All right, I said. You are right and as my dad used to say, though that’s not to say he practiced it. In fact — well anyway, When you’re right you’re right, he used to say, and you are right. That’ll be the program from now on: truth, help, not hurt, all the good things together, etcetera. Good, she said. Will you now let me see your upstairs’ work and even let me comment on it if I feel my comments might help it? Yes, I said. And your comments couldn’t do anything but help this work, not that it’ll end up to be anything — the work, that is — and I think your comments could probably help all my work. So get it, she said. The bag first, I said. I got a large paper bag from the kitchen, went upstairs, got the ten pages, brought them downstairs, she read them, said I don’t mind The wind is wet. It’s in a way, well, poetic. And the wind can be wet, so why are you fretting so much over it? Sure the wind can be wet, she said. A foggy wind. A rainy wind. The kind of wind with rain in it we get so much of around here. Wind with rain in it, I said — I like that. I don’t know why, but I really like that line. Wind with rain in it. Wind with rain in it. And the truth is, she said, If you rewrite this as it is, or without, if you’ll permit me, adding much more to it except maybe a quick curious finish, it might to a lot of readers be an original story; if that was your original intention. If it wasn’t, well, accidents happen, so think about making it your intention. Not of course that a work has to be original to be good, though I think this one would have to. Wind with rain in it, I said. The wind is wet. This wind with rain in it is. I don’t know about all that, she said. Nor, if you want my advice, about including all those, if that’s what you have in mind, for the purpose of originality or not. But if this turned out not to be a story or not quite one or not quite much of anything publishable, let’s say, original or not, or whatever happens to a story once you think you’ve finished it, it had some purpose. It helped you think about us, if I got it right. It brought you downstairs to talk things out with me. So it served a very useful purpose, or just a useful one, and that’s as a reconciliatory story for us. So maybe it only deserves two readers, you and me, and for our purpose the story’s finished, and for the story’s purpose — well, it might not have one except for the reconciliatory reason I gave. And so actually, and without much regret for the work you put in and the time I did right now, it could be thrown out, depending on how important you think that reconciliation is. Very important, I said. Wind with wind with wet with rain in it this is. That makes a lot of sense, she said. Oh, it doesn’t? I said. And if you are planning to keep this piece and maybe even add to it, she said, I suppose you or both of us should try to recall if others might not have done something of the same order as this. Maybe you know but you’re not saying. No I don’t, I said, though I don’t read as much as a lot of others do. Wind with with with wet with rain within it is this. Whatever, she said, But I have to get back to my work. Want to go for a run in an hour or so? If I’m not too busy with my wet wind writing, I said. See you then, she said and handed me my ten pages and I went upstairs and recorded or tried to record as close as I could what went on since the end of the last paragraph, or rather, since I went downstairs to try to work things out with Magna. Things seem to have worked out. I feel good about that. Now to finish and later read it over — say in a few hours or tomorrow morning or after my run with Magna, if she still wants to run and if I want to — to see if I have anything here. I did bring up the bag — I mentioned that — and will now put in it those tissues and eraser pencil shavings and a third tissue, because I have to blow my nose again, and that page which begins with This time I’m going to make it work.

Magna says “It’s Ruth. She sounds a little upset,” and hands me the receiver, collects her students’ exam papers and goes into the bedroom.