Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

So what’d he do once he got home? And he did walk all the way, right? As he said: why it took him so long to get home. And it was late enough that he was able to get the early edition of the next day’s Times at one of the kiosks on 72nd Street and Broadway, the only places in his neighborhood he could buy it at that hour, and read the headlines, which he always did unless his hands were full, as he walked up the three flights to his apartment. Once in, and maybe even before he took his coat off, he probably went straight to the bathroom to pee. He and his brother always had a notoriously weak bladder, they called it, inherited from their mother, they thought, if such a thing can be passed down to your kids — maybe it was just a smaller-than-normal bladder she passed down — who frequently raced through the apartment from the front door when she came in, dribbling piss along the way to the bathroom in back on the first floor. “Oh, I did it again,” she sometimes said, coming out of the bathroom and pretending to be ashamed. “Awful, awful of me.” Then, if someone hadn’t already taken care of it — one of them or the housekeeper — wiping the urine off the breakfast room and kitchen floors with a rag. The dining room and foyer were carpeted, so little she could do about the urine there till she got them professionally cleaned, which she seemed to do every other year or so, along with the carpeted bedrooms and living room upstairs. Actually, he’s sure he would have peed right before he left the bar as a precaution to having to pee before he got home. But even if he had because he drank the entire beer there and the drinking he did at the party, he might also have had to pee badly as he went up the stairs to his apartment, or even on the street as he approached his building, the urge getting worse the closer he got to his front door. And then struggling to hold it in — this happened a number of times and happens even more today — as he fumbled with his door keys in one hand, his other hand squeezing the head of his penis through the pants to keep from peeing. Not always succeeding, either, and a few times, partway up the stairs or standing in front of his door, but never on the street, giving up and peeing in his pants till he completely relieved himself, later — as quickly as he could do it — cleaning up the mess he made on the stairs or landing. Now — the last two years or so — he pees a lot in his pants. Just short spurts till he reaches the toilet. He just can’t hold it in as well as he used to, even normal pees. After he peed in the bathroom, he probably took off his clothes, which had to be smelly from all the cigarette smoke at the party. It seemed half the people there smoked, so her hair and clothes would have smelled of it too, something he never thought before. If they had somehow hit it off big that night — at the party, not at the elevator: that wouldn’t have been possible unless they continued to talk outside, which they did, and then went someplace for coffee or a snack or drink instead of separating on the street. And ended up at her apartment and necked or slept together — that never would have happened with her the first night, the sleeping together, no matter how much she might have been attracted to him, though it has happened with two or three other women — he would have smelled the cigarette smoke on her, just as she would have smelled it on him, unless they showered before they started necking or got into bed and also washed or thoroughly wet their hair. So? Nothing. Just saying. And it’s ridiculous what he’s thinking. They never would have showered before they started necking. And they would have necked before they got into bed. And the shower, if they thought they should take one because they didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke on their bodies and in their hair, would have had to be taken separately. She said, the one time he suggested they shower together, that it was dangerous and unnecessary and unappealing for other reasons and not at all erotic. When she was much younger, she said, and against her better judgment, she once let a boyfriend convince her to do it, and it practically ruined what was up till then a very nice relationship. “The lucky bastard,” he said, “just that he was able to shower with you and wash your front and scrub your back and whatever else went with it,” and she said “You don’t know what happened. We both slipped and it nearly killed us. He broke his nose, gashes in our heads, my front tooth went through my lip; everything.” He then probably — this was what he always did when he was living alone and came home from a party or bar with his clothes reeking of cigarette smoke and he wasn’t too sleepy or a little drunk — half-filled the bathroom sink with water and soaked his shirt and pants in it and wrung them out with his hands as much as he could and hung them up on hangers or off the shower curtain rod over the bathtub. That was how he washed all his clothes then. He never had his own washer or dryer till he and Gwen married and moved into a fully equipped apartment in Baltimore. Sometimes he rubbed soap on the clothes in the sink or put laundry detergent in with them and washed them by hand. That took a long time, though, rinsing and dunking the clothes in several sinkfuls of water to get the soap or detergent off, and it always seemed to make a mess on the floor. If he also washed his socks — and for them he always used soap and put a sock on each hand and rubbed them into each other — he hung them over the tub faucets after he soaked them and wrung them out. If he came home a little high or sleepy from a party or bar in smelly clothes or just didn’t have the energy to soak or wring them out, he left them on a bedroom chair, maybe brushed his teeth, took two aspirins or an Alka- or Bromo-Seltzer or that Italian antacid drink an old girlfriend had introduced him to — Briosci; something; he liked the taste better than the others but it was a lot more expensive — and went to bed and soaked the clothes in the morning. The only things he washed in the Laundromat were linens and towels and sometimes clothing that was too dirty to wash by hand. He had two sets of sheets and pillowcases and changed them every other week unless he knew some woman was going to spend the night at his place. Sex was always better on fresh linens, he thought, and when she laid her head down he didn’t want the pillow smelling of his hair. He’d originally bought the second set of linens so he wouldn’t have to go to the Laundromat more than once a month. When he moved in with Gwen he pooled his linens with hers — they both had double beds and only slept on cotton sheets — and used her building’s laundry room for washing everything. Before he soaked his clothes that night — and he’s almost sure he did; the cigarette smoke smell took weeks to go away unless washed or soaked, and he came home sober and alert and full of energy — he took out of his pants pocket the piece of paper with her name and phone number on it and put it by the phone on his night table. Now that he thinks of it, if he did smell from cigarette smoke when he got home, he would have showered soon after he took off his clothes and taken them into the shower with him and dropped them in the tub and sprayed or soaked them there while he was showering and then, standing in the tub with the shower off, wrung them out and hung them from the shower curtain rod, maybe later on hangers. Then he probably put on the terrycloth bathrobe he had then. It had been his father’s for god knows how many years and now his for six: wide blue and white vertical stripes and quite frayed. When he was alone in the apartment late at night he liked to lounge in it with nothing on underneath, the belt, what there was left of it, untied and his genitals exposed, which he’d play with from time to time, usually without looking at them. He probably read awhile in the Morris chair he bought used before he met Gwen — she’d had new cushions made for it while she was recovering from her first stroke — and finished that day’s Times or started tomorrow’s while sipping a couple glasses of wine or a grapefruit juice and vodka drink or two. Or read from one of the Gulag Archipelago books he was reading then. He read all three, one after the other, took him a few months. Gwen had asked the next time they met what Solzhenitsyn he was reading. He always brought a book with him to read when he was going someplace by subway or bus, and she only saw because of the way he was holding the book and then put it down on the drugstore’s luncheonette counter, the author’s photo: a full-face shot that took up the entire back of the cover. Did he intentionally keep her from seeing the front of the cover? No reason to, so doesn’t think so. He had a different book with him the night he first met her. A paperback of contemporary German short stories, thin and small enough to fit in his coat pocket or squeeze into his back pants pocket. He didn’t bring the Solzhenitsyn to read on the subway — which he would have wanted to — he always liked to finish a book or just stop reading it before he started another — because it was an expensive library copy and he felt he wouldn’t know where to leave it once he got rid of his coat and he was also afraid of losing or forgetting it at the party and even of someone taking it. Why would he even bring a book along if he was going to meet her at a drugstore a few blocks from his building? Not to impress her, that’s for sure. He thinks he thought their afternoon coffee date could end up with — at least this might have been what he hoped for — a long leisurely walk uptown along Riverside Drive on the park side, since it was a very mild day for December. Maybe even to the door or lobby of her building if they really got involved in their conversation and agreed to spend more time together than the hour or so they’d planned to, and then he’d take, because she lived forty blocks from him, a subway or bus home. “Agreed” to spend? What would be the right word there? Can’t think of it. And why stop at her building’s front door or lobby? If he walked her that far, he must have thought, he’s almost sure she’d invite him to her apartment for tea or glass of wine or something, but nothing more. But what’s he thinking? He couldn’t have thought she’d walk that far with him. She made it clear in his first phone call to her when they arranged the meeting that she was especially busy with school work these weeks and didn’t have that much time to spare. So they’d walk twenty blocks, he could have thought, or half that, and then she’d take the Riverside Drive bus the rest of the way and he’d take the Broadway bus home. That couldn’t have been it, either — still too far a distance and she didn’t have the time, so he doesn’t know what. Maybe he thought, before he left his apartment to meet her, that after they separated at the drugstore or the closest bus stop or subway station for her, he’d go to a coffee shop on Columbus Avenue near his building — there were one or two of them then — and get a double espresso or something and read there. He held the book up to show her the title on the front cover. She said she liked much of Solzhenitsyn’s early novels and that collection of short stories and prose poems and especially the novella in it— Matryona’s House ?… Home ?… Hearth ? he thinks? What the hell’s the name of it? — a lot more than his nonfiction other than the Nobel Prize speech. She got less than halfway through the first Gulag , never touched the next two, so was curious what there was about the book — maybe she was missing something in it that he could tell her — that made him go on to the others, so it must have been number three he took with him that day. One thing he knows he did that night after he got home…Wait, what’d he answer her? He thinks he said that Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of life in the gulag and how the prisoners got there and what they went through and did to survive and also the many accounts of those who slave-labored till they died were some of the most powerful and harrowing writing he’s ever read, good as anything in any novel by any writer; House of the Dead included, and in such clear strong prose. At least that’s what he remembers now of his reading of the three books almost thirty years ago, so probably some of that is what he told her, and no doubt a lot more if he was feeling talkative that first date, for he had only read them the last few months. Although he has to admit — and he may have told her this at the luncheonette counter if it was the third Gulag he held up for her — that Gulag Three was slower than the first two, maybe because it was beginning to read like more of the same. It could be, and he doesn’t think reading them in order was necessary to understanding and appreciating the books more, though he could be wrong on that — he forgets — that if he’d started with Gulag Two and then gone to Three, he would have found One the least interesting and not as powerful and Three more interesting, powerful and readable than he did. But he read them all, he’s certain of that, and he thinks Three was the last thing he finished of his. A few years later — they were married by now, subletting a large beautiful apartment in Baltimore and she was nursing their first child. Morning, rocking chair, newspaper and books on an end table next to her, mug of coffee or tea on the floor by her feet so she wouldn’t spill it on the baby; doesn’t know how he remembers all this, but he does. Even what it was like outside: bright and cheery; he thinks it was early spring. Actually, she wasn’t drinking even decaffeinated coffee then because she was nursing. Only caffeine-free herbal tea, and at dinner, instead of her usual glass of red wine, Guinness stout because she’d read or her obstetrician had said it helped produce more breast milk. And she said to him — he’d just entered the living room, on his way to school, he thinks, for office hours or to teach — a new Solzhenitsyn novel was reviewed in today’s Times . She knows how much he admires that writer, so would he like her to get it for him? He said if it’s new — said something like this, of course — it’s probably very long and expensive because of its length and he’s about had it with that guy’s work. His last two novels, he thinks he went on, read and were written more like history than fiction, so he couldn’t really get in to them. Good history, but not what he wants to read. Then he probably kissed her and the baby too. More than probably. Doesn’t think he ever left the apartment, if he was going to be out awhile, without kissing her goodbye. Except maybe, and this rarely happened then, they’d had a disagreement that wasn’t quite settled, or he, not because of anything she did, was in a foul mood. He remembers saying something like this around that time “We don’t seem to have any major problems in our marriage. It’s looking good. I hope it lasts.” One thing he knows he did that night after he came home and maybe before he showered or soaked his smelly clothes or even took them off was look up her name in the Manhattan phone book, though it seemed the same one the bar had but in much better shape, and of course it was there. And Matryona’s Home is the title of the novella, he’s ninety-nine percent sure. Then he looked up his own name in the book for no better reason than he hadn’t since he got it and one year, a couple of years before, the phone company made the mistake of not putting him in the book. At the time, the only way someone who didn’t have the number could get it — well, if they knew a friend of his or how to reach his mother or something like that, they could — was by dialing 411. Then he checked the number of the page his name was on and went to the page she was on and got its number and thought something like the two of them — he and Gwen — are so far apart in this book. L and S, more than a thousand pages, he figured. And then — he thinks he did this — he subtracted his page number from hers; rather, hers from his, and got the exact number of pages that separated them. A pointless thing to do, if he did it, but she was on his mind almost constantly when he got home. Then for no good reason he could explain to himself later, although he knows it’s a dopey and absolutely ridiculous and even bordering-on-the-nuttiness move he remembers thinking then and thinks now, he tore out the page with his name on it and put it face down on hers. There, he thinks he thought or said, but definitely something like that, the pages with his and Gwen’s listings are pressed together and everything that suggests or implies till he gets next year’s Manhattan phone book from downstairs and throws this one out. Later, he thought — it was the same night — suppose things work out between them and she comes over here one day, or things work out between them enough for her to come over here one day and she asks to use the Manhattan phone book and he gives her it and she sees, because he’d forgotten how he’d left them and didn’t pull his page out before he gave her the book, those two pages pressed together like that. It could happen. She’ll think him peculiar, and he went back to the hallway coat closet where he kept the two phone books he had, the Manhattan and Yellow Pages, and took his page out and threw it away. Then he probably just drank and read and went to bed.