Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

She’s sitting up, eyes closed, resting, maybe sleeping. “Mom, hi, it’s me, how you doing?” Doesn’t answer. “Mom, it’s Gould, I’m here. You’re okay, the doctor said. Just nausea, nothing else. You sleeping?” “No”—opening her eyes—“thinking. Thanks for coming back.” “Good. I’m staying here till closing. They’re not kicking me out again, so don’t worry, though that time it seemed necessary.” “If I’m so okay, go home and come back tomorrow, you must be tired.” “Come on, I’ve hardly been here.” “No, I know how tired one can get. I did it with your father and younger brother.” “What younger brother? You mean my older one, Robert, who died so young?” “My younger brother, Harris. Stayed in his room from morning to night and sometimes slept over, we were that close. Someone had to, because by that time my folks were long dead and his wife had deserted him.” “She didn’t desert; they got divorced years before he died.” “Then because his shoulder deserted him.” “His shoulder?” “His children, I mean; you knew that.” “They had none.” “What? He had no children? Harris and Dot? That’s what he told you? Oh, he was a hell-raiser. Had children all over. Did you ever see any of them?” “Why would I?” “They’re your family; you want to stay close. They’re the ones you go to in the end. And they all looked like him, and good thing too. Dot was an eyesore. Her entire family was. Ugly as sin, as your father would say. He only married her for her money, which was the one wrong thing he’d ever done, and she for his good looks. There’s something to say about having good-looking children. He never told us who they were, though.” “His kids from other women? Or who the women were?” “I stayed with him for days. Never left the hospital except to get you to bed at night and sing you to sleep, and then I came right back. He needed me. You can never get too much attention in a hospital. Your father was very good about it. He looked like I must look now but younger, much younger. But just as sick, so just as sick-looking, and look what happened to him. He was such a sweet man but a real schlemiel. He let all his women step on him. You never want to be like that. And no head for business, which is why he died broke. If he got into a big argument with his partner, he walked away from his store, leaving everything behind. Then I went out of the room for something, probably to smoke, and when I got back he was gone. But I’d said my goodbye to him hours earlier, when he was in a coma. They say the person can hear, that it’s the last sense to go, but I couldn’t tell when I was talking to him. He was my favorite brother.” “He was your only brother.” “No, I had two.” “Mom, what are we talking about?” “We’re talking about family: yours, mine.” “Then let’s be clear, you had two sons and one brother.” “My father was a hell-raiser too. Lots of children around from other women, and — this is odd — all boys.” “But you never met any of them, these stepbrothers?” “Never; he was too discreet. He didn’t want to hurt my mother. And that was that.” “And your mother? No hell-raiser, right?” “Don’t even say the word when you talk about her. Like me, she didn’t play the field, which she could have. She was so beautiful. And also the kindest person who ever lived. Kind: now that’s the thing to be, over everything else. My father didn’t deserve her. Everyone who met her said so. You know, you remember her.” “I couldn’t have; she was dead before I was born.” “Don’t tell me.” “It’s true, if that’s what you meant.” “You’re named after her.” “How could I be? We don’t even have the same first initial, neither my first nor middle name.” “You were, I’m telling you. I insisted on it once she died. That my first child be named after my mother.” “But I’m your second. And Robert, as a name, has nothing to do with hers either. What was her middle name?” “I wouldn’t know; it was so long ago.” “Maybe you thought if your first child was a girl you’d name it after her. Could that be it?” “Someone was named after her. Possibly one of my sisters’ children, though their names I forget too.” “Who was I named after, do you remember now?” “Who were you?” “You don’t want to remember, that’s why you won’t say.” “No, I’ll remember; who were you named after? It’s only because I’m sick that I forget.” “Was it Dad’s father?” “Don’t be mean. You know his name and you know I hated the man. He would touch me when your father wasn’t looking. Not try to but actually touch me. My thighs. And once even a place more intimate than that, but through the clothes. When I told your father that, he said it’s impossible. That his father didn’t even like women much, something his mother complained about. So I said, ‘Watch him, he’s been fooling everybody. Watch him next time he sits beside me at the dinner table.’ So I purposely sat him there the next time so your father could watch. His hand, it was everywhere under the table. What an old fool, and so coarse. But your father was always looking elsewhere. It was like a game.” “What, that his father was playing? Or Dad?” “I don’t know, except it was disgusting.” “This really happened, though?” “He also made passes at me when he visited us in Long Beach. And in front of the children. You were very young, almost a baby. Because I think we stopped summering there in 1940. This was after your dad’s mother died. We felt sorry for him, invited him for a few weeks. I knew it would be a problem, even if he was old, or old to me then. He acted like a drunken laborer. Well, that’s what he was. He refused to learn how to read, not even in his own language. He lived for his schnapps and to embarrass women and his son. He said, ‘Let’s have fun in my bedroom.’ Dad was at work in New York, took the car. He meant the guest room where he slept. It was yours and your brother’s room, but when guests were there you both must have slept in ours. It was more like a small bungalow than a house, but was right on the beach. I think we saw sunsets.” “I’ve no recollection of it and have never even seen it in any of the old photos you have.” “He took my hand and tried pulling me to your room. I said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re ugly,’ and to leave now. He wouldn’t, though.” “Where were Robert and I at the time?” “Your brother was sick, as you know, almost from birth. It’s what he died from. He slept a lot and was usually lethargic. And you were only a baby. So your grandfather had the place to himself except for me. I would have killed him with a kitchen knife if he had continued to try and force himself. I never would have allowed something like that to happen to me. To have the second man in your life be your father-in-law? And think of it, it was you he said he had come to see most, his grandchild. He oohed and ahed over you whenever you were around.” “There was Robert too.” “So sick and because he slept so much and was mostly unresponsive, your grandfather considered him dead. If I remember, you were barely one.” “How did you finally get rid of him?” She looks away. “Did you tell Dad what his father tried to do?” “He wouldn’t have believed me. And my father-in-law would have denied it or lied that I’d made eyes at him.” “But this is all true?” “Or maybe barely two, so you were probably napping. That’s what kids do a lot then.” “I mean the story about Dad’s father and you.” “Oh, a hell-raiser. Girl in every port.” “He was a sailor too? I thought just a weaver and darner.” “He was a hell-raiser, but of the worst kind. He cheated on his wife left and right. And if he had had three wives he would have cheated on them all, but with other women.” “Funny to find out now.” “I didn’t take him up on it, you understand.” “Of course not, but how did you finally resist?” “Imagine, asking me that. Pawing at me, pulling me to the bedroom. Some men are oversexed. Your father was normal. I did what he asked me to even if I knew he had other dames.” “It’s all right, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.” “I’m embarrassing you?” “It’s not that.” “Then what? It’s not upsetting me. I’m too old to be talking about it? First you’re too young and then you’re too old? Your father was normal. So that’s good. Better that than a cold fish. We had our good times. But some men aren’t. And some are like your grandfather. They say, when he was much younger, there wasn’t a woman under twenty-five on the Lower East Side he didn’t have his way with or who hadn’t been tried.” “If everyone knew this, how come Dad talked about him not liking women?” “He told you that? It’s not true. The man was an animal, though by the time I knew him, not such a young one. So if I said it—” “It’s all right, you don’t have to explain.” “No. If I said it, it’s not what I meant, so it could be I was talking about someone else.” “Good. But what perplexes me is why Grandma … what was her name again, Dad’s mother?” “I forget.” “But why’d she marry him?” “Why not? He made a decent living, though he blew half of it.” “I mean, if she knew he was always cheating on her and had this terrible reputation and might have already drunk heavily before they met.” “Who says he did?” “The drinking or the women?” “Both. And from what I heard, she was as much of a slut as him, or whatever you call the man. She had a terrible reputation, on the Lower East Side and then when they moved to Brooklyn.” “Dad’s mother? That’s not what I heard of her or what you used to say.” “Is that what he told you?” “I give up,” he says. “No, I give up. I wish they would give me up. They’re not keeping me alive for anything, are they?” “You mean like for a New Year’s Eve dance or something?” “Yeah.” She smiles. “That’s good. You can be funny. I like that in a man. It took you a little while, but you finally got it. Your dad was the same way, but a different kind. Mine? Cold as ice. Never a kind word, though I was his favorite. And sharp, sardonic. It would have been nice, though. …” She shuts her eyes, her forehead furrows, she starts shaking her head, looks pained. “You okay, Mom?” “I don’t know what’s wrong.” “But you’re feeling okay?” “Why does everything have to happen to me?” “Why, what’s the matter?” “You’re here?” “Yes, sure, I’m here, right beside you.” “I’m sleepy. And I don’t like my thoughts.” “What are they?” “They’re mine.” “Okay, I can understand.” “Huh?” she says sleepily. “Just rest, Mom.” “I’m not?” “But more; sleep.” He fixes her head on the pillow, folds the sheet over on her chest. “Sleep,” she says, “yeah.”