Stephen Dixon: Time to Go

The waterfall stops for a few seconds, starts. Aline and the woman have finished their food and are drinking from their containers. I stand up to go over to her, sit. I’m nervous. My stomach aches a little. It’s been a long time. I think I’m afraid of a brushoff. No, I’m sure she’ll be polite and probably interested to speak to me. I feel my hair. It’s standing up in places and I comb it back flat as I can get it. I’m almost sure she’ll be glad to see me. After three years she’ll have forgotten or just won’t care what went wrong between us. I have. We’ll be like two old friends meeting by surprise after a long time, so with none of our defenses prepared, or something like that. It’s happened before with others. Only a few people keep that wall up for all occasions, but she’s not like that or wasn’t. That doesn’t change. I look at my nails. Clean enough though the cuticles could use clipping. She used to say I didn’t take care of my nails, but I started to soon after we started seeing one another. Continued to also, but I probably haven’t paid attention to them the last few days. Try nibbling the worst of the ragged cuticles off and they’d start bleeding. If I don’t go over I’ll regret it. I’ll do something stupid later on, like calling her tonight, if she’s still at her old address or in the phonebook. I’ll say something on the phone like “I saw you today, I’m sure you didn’t me, but I didn’t have the courage to go over to you. I was nervous, what can I tell you?” If she then said she also saw me but didn’t have the courage to speak to me or whatever, I don’t know what I’d say. It’d be a departure point for more conversation though. No. I wouldn’t call, though I’d certainly think about doing it. I have to go over. I get up. I carry my sweater and jacket and the paper bag, look for a trash can to throw it in, don’t see one, and approach the table. Her friend sees me approaching, pulls herself closer to the table to make more room for me to pass. “No no,” I say, “I just wanted to say hello to Aline.”

Aline starts to turn to me. “Oh no,” she says, covering her eyes with her hands and turning back to her friend, “I don’t believe it — I won’t. Ty. Oh God, Ty.”

“Yes,” I say. “How are you?”

“I still don’t believe it,” Her eyes are still covered. “Oh God, I knew this would happen one day. What did I tell myself to do if it did? I forget. Well, it’s a nice place for it to happen, but I don’t want it to happen. Deborah, this is going to seem nuts to you, even embarrassing, but this is Ty whom you know about and I don’t want to see him, so put up with me for a few minutes? Ty,” her hands still over her eyes, “I don’t want to see you. I have my reasons. Believe me I do. I told myself the day I last saw you, whenever that was—”

“Three years ago. Three and a half, even.”

“Whenever, that if I bumped into you — now I remember. Told myself several times and never changed what I said I’d do, that I would do my damndest not to speak to you and to do everything I could to get away quick as I could from you. You know why. No, you probably forgot. No — with your mind? — you know why, though watch, watch, you’re now probably going to ask why I’m acting this way.”

“That’s right. I’m standing here wondering—”

“You probably think after so long a time that we could just meet and talk and joke and shake hands and ask after each other — well you know, right? Don’t answer,” when I’m about to say yes. Deborah’s not believing this. She says “If you want me to leave, Aline?”

“You crazy? Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. You stay. We’re both leaving here together,” Hands still over her eyes, back towards me. People at other tables are looking at us. Almost everyone at the surrounding tables. My stomach hurts worse than before. I don’t understand why she’s doing this. “Think I’m crazy,” Aline says to me, hands, back, the same way. “Think anything, but what you did will take six more years to make me bump in to you normally and say hello and how is the family and your mother who I hope is still living and healthy—”

“She is.”

“And your sister and nephew and what you’ve been doing and so on and so on. Six more years. But not now. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I—”

“If you don’t it’s because you don’t want to. Because, if you’re not lying, you’ve pushed the whole thing out of your head because you’re so goddamned ashamed of it. But this,” she says, “this,” turning to me and tapping her nose, “just remember this. Deborah, please help me out of here. If my feet make it I’ll be very surprised.” she stands. Deborah stands, holding their drink containers. “Leave them. I’ll buy us two new ones somewhere. Or a drink. A real drink. I’ll need one. I don’t care if I come back to work high.”

“What do you mean ‘This, this, remember this’?” I say. “Deb, please, lead me out.” She holds out her hand. “What about our garbage?” Deborah says.

“Leave everything. Sometimes you just have to go. Please.” She shakes her hand in the air. Deborah takes it and starts leading her out.

“You’ve really embarrassed me,” I say. “You’re embarrassing me and you’re embarrassing yourself and your friend. Why couldn’t you have just said, hello and goodbye and be done with it?” Deborah leads her around several tables and chairs, lets go of her hand when they’re in the clear, and they leave the park. I don’t understand why she acted like that. And that “This, this, remember this.” People around me are looking at me or doing their best not to. I don’t know what to do. To leave the park or sit someplace in it away from this spot. Right next to the waterfall to think. I leave the park, go the opposite way they went, the longer way for me but I don’t want to bump into her again today. I go back to work trying to figure out why she acted that way. She asked me to leave then and I did. I phoned the next day or a few days later I now remember and asked if I could pick up my things. She said they were already packed and she’d send a friend over with them. Okay. That friend came. A man. Man and woman, actually — they said someone else was waiting in their car downstairs. Their child, that’s right, and Aline had said the man was an old school friend from out of town. I asked them, I think — yes, I did, if Aline was very depressed, because she sounded so over the phone, and they said yes or one of them did, but both looked at me as if I was the worst person they ever met. So what did I do then to make them look at me that way and Aline to act as she did today? I hit her the day I left. That’s right. I didn’t want to leave, she wanted me to, we got into an argument, and I hit her in the face. Probably in the nose. Then she screamed, at me or because of the pain, and I turned around, opened the door, slammed it shut and called maybe a week later it was, maybe two, and asked for my things. Her friends came. I never apologized to her. Never asked if I’d hurt her. All right. I forgot the whole thing.

At night I think of calling her. To say I forgot, that I’m sorry for what happened three years ago, that I didn’t want to bring it up again now but I had to, that she was right about me today, that I now understand why she got so upset. But she’ll probably hang up before I can say a few words. I look for her name in the phone book. I’ve looked it up before — last year. And the year before that. Her name was at the same address those two times. I looked it up then and maybe more times than that to see if she was still living there. Her name’s still at that address. The heck with it, I’ll call. If she screams on the phone, hangs up, then that will be the end of ever calling her. Maybe then I could write her an apology for hitting her three years ago and an explanation for today. I dial her. She answers with a hello. I hang up. I didn’t have the nerve. She’ll know it’s me unless someone else has been doing that to her lately. Then she’ll only think that perhaps it’s me, or maybe not. I get out the book I’ve been reading, make myself a brandy and soda. I have four brandy and sodas while I read and then feel tired and go to bed. Tomorrow’s work.