Stephen Dixon: Time to Go

His wife called and said “If you have a moment I’d like to speak to you.” “I have to rush to an important union meeting, I’ll call back.” “You don’t know where I am,” she said. “You’re not at your mother’s?” and she said no. “Nor at one of the women’s departments in Bloomingdale’s?” and she said “Don’t be such an ass.” “Or at either of your two lovers?” and she said “One I haven’t seen for a month and the other’s on a business trip.” “Oh, I’ll find you,” and he hung up.

His wife brought him flowers in bed on one of his birthdays. He said “The hell with those, I want you,” and lunged for her. She jumped out of his reach; he fell out of bed and landed on top of the flowers. She said “I’m leaving you,” and he asked why. “The way you treat me and the way you treat flowers.” He said” Ah, you both like to be treated rough, don’t tell me, and besides, on my birthday I can get what I want and act any way I please. It’s an unwritten law or maybe even in the Talmud,” and he kicked the flowers under the bed. She packed but didn’t leave.

His daughter lost her first tooth. He said “Go to sleep, put it under your pillow.” She said “First I have to put it under my pillow, then I go to sleep.” “Oh, you’ve done this before?” “How could I — this is my first lost tooth? I know all about it though. I put it under my pillow, make a wish to the good fairy and go to sleep and you or mommy put money under my pillow and take the tooth away.” “No. We take the tooth away while you’re asleep, inspect it, see what it’s worth as a tooth, if anything, and then put money under your pillow according to the tooth’s value. This one — I don’t know. It looks a little rotted. In the long run, eating all those sweets doesn’t pay.” She said “I don’t eat so many. I want my tooth’s money.” “Oh sweetie,” he said, hugging her and wiping away her tears. “I’m sorry. For your first tooth we’ll try to make an exception.”

His mother liked to say he was born in a taxi. Actually, his head appeared out of her vagina just as the cab was pulling up at the hospital. The driver and Dan’s father carried her inside and she delivered unassisted in the elevator going up to the delivery room. “Yours, except for the fact that I thought they might drop me carrying me to the lobby, was the easiest birth of all my kids.”

His second oldest brother died in an air crash. One hundred and seven people, including the crew, died in the plane with him. One person survived. He floated down about three thousand feet inside the tail section and escaped with minor injuries. Don had wanted to phone him and ask what he remembered last about his brother, since they were both actors going to Los Angeles to work in the same film and had sat a few rows from one another, but he never did. He wrote him once about it, care of the film company, but never got a reply.

“Help,” his nextdoor neighbor yelled through the walls, “I’m being attacked by two black panthers.” It was the third time this week she was attacked by a wild animal; the last one was a lion. He rang her doorbell and asked if there was anything wrong and she said “Go away, I’m okay,” and resumed yelling about panthers and, calling for help. He spoke to two other neighbors about it and they said he should call the landlord. He did, saying his neighbor was going crazy or drinking too much and having hallucinations or maybe it was drugs — but she definitely needed help, though not from what she said. His landlord said “If I could get her out I would. She’s only paying one-thirty for an apartment I could get four-fifty for easy, but in this city the tenants have all the rights. You look after her — you seem to do that well for the whole building and block. But as long as she pays the rent, which her lawyer always does for her on the first of the month, there’s nothing I can do. Be the one to get her out for me though and I’ll give you a month’s rent gratis and a complete paint job even before your lease is up.”

His oldest brother seemed to set the standard for the rest of the children. He was very political and social conscious, the rest of them became that way. He listened to classical music, they all listened to nothing but classical music. He married out of his religion, so did the others who got married. He became a sculptor, the rest of them ended up in various creative and artistic fields, though his parents had wanted them all to be doctors, lawyers, dentists, university professors. His father once said to Irv when the whole family got together for a Thanksgiving Day dinner “I blame you alone for ruining your brothers and sister. They’ll all wind up making peanuts and being Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guys to the detriment of themselves and their pocketbooks, just like you.”

His daughter knocked on their bedroom door, said “Mommy, I can’t sleep.” “Tell her she has to sleep in her own room tonight,” he said. His wife said “Maybe she’s not feeling well — let’s find out first. All right, Carole, come in.” She came in, crawled in bed with them on his wife’s side. “Can I sleep between you and dad?” “No,” he said. One of his great pleasures in life was holding his wife while he slept, the two of them on their sides, his genitals pressed into her buttocks and his hand holding her breast or thigh.

During a biology practicum at college his professor came up behind him and said “What do you have in your hand?” “My pencil,” Don said. “Your left hand.” “Nothing.” “Then please open it?” “Why should I?” “Because I think you have something in that hand other than sweat and air.” The whole class watched them. “Go back to the practicum,” the teacher said. “How can they?” Don said. “Then open your hand so they can go back, as they’ve only ten minutes left to this part of the exam.” “Oh, the hell with it,” and he threw the crib notes into the air. They came down on top of the teacher and Don’s lab table. “Get out of this room!” “Save your breath,” Don said, “I’m already gone,”

Their first cat jumped out of their apartment window five stories up and, after two days at the vet’s, had to be put to sleep. His wife and daughter and he made the decision in the vet’s office and that was the first time they all cried together. Only other time was when he slapped his wife in the face. She cried, then their daughter came into the room and cried, then he cried and said he was sorry to both of them. “Not to me — only to mommy,” their daughter said. “Okay, I’m only sorry to mommy, but also to you for slapping your mommy, though thank God I didn’t do it in front of you, and I swear it won’t happen again,” “It does and I’m leaving you for good,” his wife said and she and their daughter started to cry again and he just stared stupefyingly at his wife. She’d never said anything like that to him before.

His sister got a rare form of cancer when she was nineteen and suffered horribly for a year before she died. The entire family stood around her bed in the hospital and watched her pass away, while the nurse and aide tried to get them out of the room. Every time they got two of them out of the room and came back to get the others, the two who’d left came back. Finally the doctor came in and said “All right, though it’s against hospital policy, let the young woman succumb in front of her family — we’re outnumbered and they seem decided,” His parents and brothers and he were advised to go for checkups and body scannings twice a year after that for the rest of their lives, since the disease she died of was supposed to be hereditary, even if no one on either side of the family for three generations back had had it. The first woman he asked to marry refused him because she said their children might get his family’s hereditary disease. “I’m sorry but with your luck it’s almost bound to hit you or one of our children, which I just don’t have the guts to take.”