Stephen Dixon - Late Stories

This is where I always get stuck. I know where I want to go from here but I just can’t seem to get there or even much started. I thought a few times maybe I should chuck the third person and do the whole thing in first and that will help me. And then I always think no, it won’t, so don’t. Stick with third; it feels right, and that’s what you have to rely on. I want him to explain why the moment their first child born became the happiest in his life and the moment they were declared man and wife dropped down a notch to the second happiest. And then to briefly give the third happiest moment, and maybe why it became that. And then the fourth, and so on, right up to the ninth or tenth, all of the last part taking up no more than three or four pages, and that would be it unless something else came to end it between now and then.

What I had in mind was something like this: The birth of their first child became the happiest moment in his life for a number of reasons, and by “moment” he means moments, hours, even the day. He’d wanted a child for about fifteen years. Impregnated three women in that time but none of them wanted to marry him or have the baby. They all thought he’d make a good father but that he’d never earn enough money to keep a family going, and had abortions. More important was that his wife was going through a difficult delivery in the hospital. It had been more than thirty hours since she went into labor and it had become extremely uncomfortable, exhausting and painful for her. Most important of all, her obstetrician—“Dr. Martha” she wanted to be called — said the baby’s breathing was at risk after so long a delivery and the position in the birth canal she was frozen in — her head or maybe it was a shoulder was caught on something there — and she’ll give a natural birth one last try with forceps and if that doesn’t work, she’ll have to do a cesarean. Fortunately, she was an expert with forceps and turned the baby over inside the birth canal and eased her out. So it was the relief after so many hours that the baby had come out alive and healthy and his wife was all right and had been able to avoid surgery and that he finally had a child, that made it the happiest moment in his life, and which it still is after nearly thirty years.

His third happiest moment was when their second child was born. He’s not sure why it’s not his second happiest moment, but it isn’t. It’s just a feeling he has. There wasn’t any anxiety or relief involved in the birth because there wasn’t any difficulty in the delivery. She felt something at home, calmly said to him “I think it’s started,” they drove calmly to the hospital, thinking they had plenty of time, and she had the baby in less than a total of two hours from the time she felt it starting till the head and shoulders emerged. “That’s about as quick a delivery as you can get,” Dr. Martha said, “unless there’s no labor and the sac’s already broken without anyone noticing and the mother gives birth while she’s cooking dinner at home or being driven to the hospital.”

His fourth happiest moment came during the first day of their two-day honeymoon at an inn in Connecticut, when the pregnancy kit they brought with them tested positive. She screamed and shrieked and then said “Sorry, this is so unlike me, and what will the other guests think? But aren’t you as happy?” “Sure, what do you think?” and they hugged and kissed and danced around their room and then went downstairs and at the bar there shared a split of champagne. “My last drink till the little sweetie comes,” she said, and he said “Why? You can have a little for a couple of months.” “After two miscarriages with my first husband? No. I’m going to be extra overcautious. In the future you can drink my glass if anyone pours me one.”

His fifth happiest moment was in January, 1965, when The Atlantic Monthly took a short story of his, almost twenty years to the month before their second child was born. He was on a writing fellowship in California, had just come back from a month’s stay with his family in New York. Lots of mail was waiting for him. He’d only had two stories published before then, or one published and the other accepted, both with little magazines. Rejection, rejection, rejection, he saw, by the bulge in each of the nine-by-twelve-inch manila envelopes he’d sent with the stories. He opened the regular letter envelope from The Atlantic Monthly , assuming they didn’t bother to send back his story with their rejection slip in the stamped return envelope as the others had. In it was the acceptance letter from an editor, with an apology for keeping the story so long. He shouted “Oh my gosh; I can’t believe it. They took my story,” and he knocked on the door of the political science graduate student who lived in the room next to his. “I’m sorry; did I wake you? But I got to tell you this. The Atlantic Monthly took a story of mine and is giving me six-hundred bucks for it. We have to go out and celebrate, on me.”

The sixth happiest moment was nine years later. He was walking upstairs to his New York apartment with a woman he’d recently met. By that time — fifteen years after he’d started writing — he had eight stories published, about a hundred-fifty written, no book yet. “Another rejection from Harper’s ,” he said. She was in front of him and said “I’m not a writer, but I guess that’s what you have to expect.” “Let’s see what they have to say. It’s always good for a laugh.” He opened the envelope he’d sent with the story. “What’s this?” he said. He pulled out the galleys to his story and a letter from the editor he’d sent it to and a check for a thousand dollars. The editor wrote “I realize this must be unusual for you, receiving the galleys to your story along with the acceptance letter. But we want to get your story in print as soon as possible and there’s space for it in the issue after next. We tried calling you, but you’re either unlisted or one of the few writers in New York who doesn’t have a phone.” That was true. He didn’t. Too costly. And the sudden phone rings in his small studio apartment, when he was deep into his writing, always startled him, so he had the phone removed. “This is crazy,” he said. “ Harper’s took instead of rejected. And for more money than I’ve ever made from my writing,” and he waved the check. They were on the top-floor landing now and she said “Let me shake your hand, mister,” and tweaked his nose.

The seventh happiest moment? Probably in 1961, when a woman, who had dumped him two years before and then three months after they’d started seeing each other again, said she’d come to a decision regarding his marriage proposal. They were in the laundry room of his parents’ apartment building. Had gone down there to get their laundry out of one of the washing machines and into a dryer. “So?” he said, and she said “Okay, I’ll marry you.” “You will?” “That is, if you still want to go through with it.” “Do I? Look at me. I’m deliriously ecstatic. Ecstatically delirious. I don’t know what I am except giddy with happiness. I love you,” and he kissed her and they got their laundry into a dryer and took the elevator back to his parents’ floor and told them and his sister and brother they had just gotten engaged. She broke it off half a year later, a few weeks before they were to be married in her parents’ summer home on Fire Island. A big old house, right on the ocean. Her father was a playwright, her mother an actress, as was his fiancée.

The eighth? Maybe when a publisher called to say she was taking his first book. That was in ’76. He was happy but not ecstatic. He’d been trying to get a story collection or one of his novels published for around fifteen years. But it was a very small publishing house, no advance, a first printing of five hundred copies, and probably little chance of getting any book reviews or attention. So maybe that was his ninth happiest moment, and the eighth was when a major publisher took his next novel and for enough of an advance for him to live on for a year if he lived frugally. But again, not a great happiness when the editor called him with the news, since the novel was accepted based on the first sixty-seven pages he’d sent them and the rest of it still had to be written.