Stephen Dixon: 30 Pieces of a Novel

The Place

So finish. They’re in a car heading to Maine. Get closer. Sally and he, Gould: eventually they’ll get married, have children, but now they’re about to spend their first summer together. They met in November, about a week before Thanksgiving. Why’s he mention that holiday? Because his mother was giving a Thanksgiving dinner, and though he’d only known Sally for a week and had gone out with her just once, he invited her to it. A cousin and his family and a couple of his mother’s friends were there. They later told his mother, This looks like the girl for him. When his mother told him that, she asked was it true, she’s a very nice girl and does he think she’s the one? He said he hopes so but he’s had this hope before so he doesn’t want to pin any — well, hopes on it and be disappointed. “For now,” he said, “it’s going fine, and for maybe the first time in my life I’m going to take it slow.” He’s driving; she’s looking at him. He can see her out of the corner of his eye. Corners of his eyes. (He’ll find out which one’s right later, probably by looking in a dictionary of slang or asking his wife.) He can see her, though, and she seems to be looking at him, and when people look at him he looks back, so he turns to her and smiles and she smiles, and he puts his right hand on her cheek, other hand holds the wheel, and she kisses it and then holds it and he says—

They left the city two hours ago. Packed, loaded up the rented car, got the cats — her two and her parents’ two — into two cat carriers and started out. She tells him which roads to take. He’s been to Maine only once before, on his way back from hitchhiking through Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia more than fifteen years ago. (That’s not relevant, so delete it.) She’s made the trip several times, always taking the same route, which she got from someone who belongs to Triple A. They’re going to a cottage she’s rented the last three summers. She said a few days ago she doesn’t think he’ll like it up there: the quiet, solitude, almost nothing to do at night, and if it rains or stays foggy for a few days you feel like a prisoner in the place. And the bugs — black fly season’s only just ending; mosquitoes will be pestering them till a week or two before they head home, if they’re lucky — her few friends in the area he probably won’t get along with: older academics, mostly, and she knows what he thinks of academics. He said how can she say that: she’s one, and she said, “You know what I mean.” Anyway, he said, nights will be cool; days, she’s said, never get too humid or warm, and he’ll be with her, and if he just has that he can put up with anything. His one regret, he now thinks, is that his mother will be in New York the whole hot summer, and every time he calls her, which he’ll try to do every day, he knows he’ll feel guilty and terrible about it. Though he is glad for a stay in a real vacation place after working the entire year adjuncting those dumb and useless continuing-ed creative writing courses four to five days a week, hardly any rest. (Make that clearer and more concise. Or just skip it or say, working at poorly paid jobs almost every weekday with barely an hour a day to do his own work.) This is their first summer together. (He said that.) They’re going for two months. (Thinks he said that too.) He’ll have to split the rent and expenses and car rental fees with her, which will be a sacrifice. She doesn’t earn much either as a teaching fellow and also has no money saved, but she’ll be getting a check every two weeks from her university while his school stopped paying him the week his work ended. It’s something he always wanted to do: spend a few summer weeks or more in the country or at the shore with a woman he’s in love with and who says she’s in love — once even said “deeply in love, and that’s the truth”—once even said she’s never been so happy or felt so comfortable with a man as with him. He says to her—

She points out a highway sign for a rest stop in three miles: gas, food, information, the symbols on it say; buses and truckers welcome. He can’t believe his luck. Two summer months with this beauty. This beautiful person. This brain-clever woman with all the right values, it seems, and a heart like — well, something, and a magnificent soul. (He used to say whenever he sees the word “soul” in prose he bolts the other way. So strike out the soul and don’t try to fiddle with it, since nothing can take its place.) He thinks about what they’ll do tonight after they arrive. It’ll be dark. Won’t take long to unpack the car. Or maybe just dusk, remnants of a great sunset, though he doesn’t know yet how much sky hell be able to see through the trees there. Their bags, his typewriter and writing supplies, her box of books, a few of his, mainly his big dictionary and thesaurus—“There’s a terrific library in town,” she’s said, “with a steady stream of new books of all categories, though mostly poetry and fiction, furnished by the book editor of The New Yorker , who summers in the area but keeps to himself except, I suspect, to drop off his weekly bags of books”—some provisions from New York and a little they bought on the way, and, of course, the cats and litter box. There’ll be cleaning up to do: mouse nests, maybe some dead mice and even a carcass of a bird that got down the fireplace chimney, dirt and dust that accumulated over the year, but she’s said there’s never much. Cottage will have been aired out by the caretaker, all he’ll do other than get the hot water heater and refrigerator going and prime the well pump. “The place isn’t entirely mouseproof,” she’s said, “but the moment the cats are carried across the threshold, the mice disappear.” (Does he need all that? He’ll decide when he goes back. And add “case of wine” and “boxed Cuisinart” to what they bring in from the car.) She’ll take care of most of the cleaning and putting away clothes, she said last night. She has a system that gets it done in less than two hours, and she knows where everything goes and was stored last year. If he wants he can take their suitcases upstairs and set up his desk and make dinner: pasta, a quick pesto for it or just good olive oil and freshly grated romano cheese, wine and bread, and a simple salad. They have all that in the car except the lettuce. That they’ll buy, as well as a few things for breakfast and maybe a dessert for tonight at a market about twenty miles from the cottage. (He already said that but in a different way, so it’s okay to let stay.) Tomorrow they’ll do their first big shop in the next town over, she’s said. If he doesn’t want to come along and wants to work or look around or nap, she’ll do it herself. No, he said, he wants to be in on everything with her at first and start getting to know the area. Cats will have to be fed right after they get there, she said, and litter box refilled. He’ll do that, don’t worry, he said. “Pasta, sprinkling of cheese, little white wine in their drinking dish, right?” But which first? Probably the box, since it’ll be a number of hours since they last used it. (The two sinces. That’s always been a problem, since “as” or “for” or “because” just don’t seem right in a sentence like that.) Phone will have been turned on, so he’ll call his mother, if it’s not too late, to see how she is and tell her — she’ll really just want to hear his voice — that the trip went fine and the cottage and grounds, from what he can see, are quite pretty, all of which, because of what Sally’s said about them, he assumes. (He didn’t say that right, though he thinks the meaning got across, but he’ll change it.) Her mother’s coming up for a week. He wonders if she’d mind if his mother visited too. For five days, two less than her mother. His mother’s frail but still gets around, and she can use a break like that from the city. It’d mean a lot to him, he’d say, and he won’t ask for anything else, no other visitors, though she can have as many as she wants. (No, that’s too much like something a kid would say, but for the time being keep.) He should ask her now. They’ll have lots of time to talk about it if she has any objections. That way, if it’s yes, he can tell his mother right after they get there. Or not that quickly. He doesn’t want Sally to think he’s a momma’s boy — she knows he isn’t; he just wants to make his mother happy — so maybe a half hour after they get there, if it isn’t way too late. He says to her—