Stephen Dixon - Time to Go

He couldn’t make himself verbally understood to any adults till he was four and a half. He talked an almost incomprehensible baby talk that only his brothers understood, and they translated it to his parents and other people for him. His pediatrician used to make fun of him when he was brought to his office. He’d say “Donny bonny, still can’t say a word but mmm mmm dadda momma poo-poo too?” He told his parents that mimicking their son would ultimately shame him into talking complete coherent sentences. Then on one visit, his mother said, Don spoke his first recognizable sentence to an adult. The doctor spoke baby talk to him again and Don said to him “Doctor Brandon, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Only one teacher in his entire education ever showed any affection for him. It was in the fifth grade. She’d put him on her lap in front of the class whenever the students had been disruptive, and say “This is the nicest, quietest, gentlest and politest student in the class, and that goes as well for the girls. Why can’t you all be like him?” It embarrassed him but he enjoyed it and she gave him the highest grades he ever got at any school.

His mother enrolled him at ballet school when he was nine to improve his physical coordination. He liked ballet but stopped taking it because his friends said it was only for sissies, and resumed classes when he was twelve and had moved to a different neighborhood. His ballet teacher then said it was too late for him to take it seriously, so suggested he shouldn’t take it at all. He quit and got interested again four years later when he was going out with a girl who was studying ballet. He got so good at it that he switched to a city high school that concentrated on the performing arts, and got a chorus job in a Washington ballet company when he was eighteen. He was considered a promising soloist with a New York company at the age of twenty-one when he broke an ankle crossing a street. He leaped out of the way of a bicycle going in the wrong direction and fell over the pedestrian next to him. His ankle never healed right and he had to stop dancing professionally. He tried choreography, wasn’t very good at it, went to college to eventually become a dentist, flunked most of his predent courses, switched to a degree in political science and became a social studies teacher in junior high school, which he does today. He got a master’s in education and has failed the assistant principal’s test twice. He still limps a little from the street accident and occasionally does a few positions, jetés or parts of dances he danced on the stage or choreographed, for his children or when he’s by himself. He never dances at social occasions, except for a slow simple fox trot, because most partners and observers expect too much from him on the floor.

His wife said on their fifteenth wedding anniversary “The first five years were the pits, the second got a little better, the last five have been almost brilliant. I can’t explain it, can you?” “No,” he said. “Maybe we’re just slowing down” she said, “or getting used to one another, but those reasons sound like gross clichés. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ve really begun to like one another — oh this is going to sound trivial, the cliché of clichés, but it’s what I feel.” “Say it then,” he said, “because I’d also like to know why.” “It could be our having the children and because you are a good father and provider and you’ve mellowed a lot since I first knew you — maybe all those are it. You let me love you now when before you held back. Cliché? Trite? Even if they are, so what? But I never thought I’d stay with you after the first year and then every year after that for the next four. Then we had Carole and I thought what the heck, I have to stay with him till she’s at least in the first grade. Now she’s in the fifth grade and we have Celia and I’m very much in love with you and you seem to be with me and it’s great together most of the time, as a couple, individuals, and a family — am I talking like a schmuck or what?” “No, you’re right. I hate my work but I love you and the kids. And the sex is still good, isn’t it?” “Better than ever,” she said, “I forgot that. Let’s do it now, in fact. My anniversary present to you, or my morning one.” “Celia might get up and want to have breakfast.” “We’ll say we’re still asleep,” and she got up and locked their door.

His mother’s condition got worse. His oldest brother called him from the hospital and said “You better get here right away.” He went into the principal’s office and said “I have to leave immediately — could you send someone to cover for me?” “I’ve no one,” the principal said. “Stay for another period. Then Diamant will be free and he can cover for you.” “I can’t stay another two minutes. My mother’s dying — that’s what that emergency call was about.” “You have to stay. I have no one to cover. We had ten regulars call in absent today and could only get four substitutes.” “You cover for me.” “Me? I don’t cover for teachers no matter what the emergency. I run this school. I have to look after ten things at once.” “Then the girl I appointed to take over my lesson while I’m in here will cover for me.” “I’ll have you fired,” the principal said. “You’re crazy,” Don said and went back to his room, said to the class: “Listen, you’re to be on your best behavior for the rest of the period. My mother’s dying and I have to see her in the hospital and the principal can’t get anyone to take over the class. Please don’t be rowdy or do anything to embarrass me or yourselves. Please, if I ever asked for anything, it’s to be better behaved than you ever were in my class, do you understand? Now finish the assignment and then do schoolwork, homework or sit quietly and read or just think. But damnit, be considerate and mature,” and he left the room. He wasn’t three steps past the door when he heard something smash against his blackboard and then a window break and the class cheer.

When he was a boy his father insisted that all his children kiss him when he got home from work and kiss him when they went to sleep and kiss him first thing when they saw him in the morning. “I kissed my father every day of my life till the day he died and I expect the same treatment from my kids.”

His sister one night scratched his face and pulled his hair and ripped the shirt off his back because she said each of the boys in the family got more things bought for them than the girl.

He met his wife at a party on New Year’s Eve. She was sitting on a couch, looked sick. He sat down next to her and said “Excuse me, but you don’t look well, is there anything I can do?” She said “You can get me two aspirins if you don’t mind,” and he brought them back with a glass of water. She said “That was very nice of you. I didn’t ask for water — not because I forgot — I like to swallow my aspirins whole — but you thought of it for me. If it wouldn’t also be a bother, and because I trust you now and think you have a good pragmatic head for such things, could you walk me to the bathroom and hold my waist from behind while I throw up? I usually do it so violently that I throw my shoulders out of joint.”

His father was a pharmacist and everyone called him Doc. Don had three best friends over the years whose fathers were pharmacists and all their acquaintances and customers called them Doc. Don’s father was the only one of the four who brought most of his pharmaceutical samples home, leaving very little closet space for anyone else in the apartment. After he died, Don’s mother asked Don to sort the good samples from the bad, but he just put them all into about a dozen big plastic garbage bags and threw them out.