Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

They crossed the Bay Bridge and were driving on Route 50, he thinks, to Washington College for a reading he was giving that night. The school was putting them up at an inn: he, Gwen and Rosalind, who was still nursing. Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah , he thinks it’s called, was playing on the radio, or is it by another English composer of the same period — Byrd, maybe? The music was beautiful and he said to her “What a moment. Gorgeous music, infant sleeping peacefully after a long tantrum, sky lit up in several pastel colors by the setting sun.” Then he heard geese overhead and said “Listen,” and opened his window all the way and motioned for her to roll down hers and they heard the geese honking louder and then saw a flock of about a hundred of them flying in formation. “Oh, this is too much, too wonderful, all of this at once. I almost feel like waking the baby so she could hear and see this too.” She said “It is wonderful, all of it. But the best part to me is that Rosalind’s finally asleep, so please don’t wake her,” and they drove without talking and with the sky getting even more beautiful and the geese flying in the same direction as them. Then the geese flew off to the side and they couldn’t see them anymore and only heard them faintly and then not at all. At almost the same moment, the music ended, and he turned the radio off. “That was truly something,” he said. “It was,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” and she put her hand over his on the steering wheel. “Better on my shoulder, so I can drive in absolute safety,” and she put her hand on his shoulder and they drove like that most of the rest of the way.

Whenever they drove back to Baltimore from their apartment in New York, he got off at exit 7 on the New Jersey Turnpike, got on 295, and a few miles south on it pulled into a rest area run by the state. He’d get from the back a take-out container of basil rolls or sushi he’d bought at an Asian fusion restaurant before they left New York and give it to her with a couple of napkins. Then he’d go into the building and use the restroom and get a cappuccino or hazelnut-flavored coffee out of a vending machine there and sometimes either peanut butter crackers or a bag of salted peanuts from the candy machine. He’d sit in the car with her or, if it was a nice day, outside on a bench or at a picnic table and drink his coffee and eat about half his crackers or all the peanuts while she finished her sushi or basil rolls. Sometimes he’d get her both, but she’d only eat one at the rest area — usually the sushi because she was afraid it’d spoil — and save the other for home. Once or twice, after he told her they had them, she asked for an ice cream sandwich from another machine. He doesn’t ever remember her coming into the building. And she never had anything to drink. She didn’t want to have to pee so soon after, she explained. If the kids were with them, they’d get what snacks and drinks they wanted with the money he’d give them, or wait in the car till they got to the big rest stop in Delaware on 95, where they’d always get a plate of spaghetti and a garlic roll with it and iced tea and he’d get another coffee. At the New Jersey rest area, Gwen once said “This is the best part of the trip. Thank you for always thinking of getting me this food. Coffee smells good. Is it?” and he said “Not bad, coming from a machine. And certainly cheap enough, cappuccino for a buck.” Then, about three years ago, they saw a sign a few miles after they got on 295, saying something like “Public rest area open, facilities permanently closed.” “Do you think that means the building?’ he said. And she said “Probably everything but the benches outside, if we’re lucky.” “Damn,” he said. “No restrooms and vending machines and the end of our little traveling ritual. You could still eat your basil rolls there, which is what I got for you today, but it wouldn’t be the same for my bladder.” “Just get the container for me and I’ll eat out of it while you drive.” “It might be too sloppy,” he said, “and it’ll also mean stopping and getting it from the back. Let’s wait till the Delaware rest stop. It’s the nearest one to here, unless we want to get back on the turnpike, and I’ll get gas and maybe something to eat and the kids can get their usual, and we can all pee, if I’m able to hold out that long. If I’m not, I don’t know what.” She said “How disappointing. I hate sounding pessimistic, but it’s like bread in Baltimore. Just when we think we’ve found a good place to buy some, it closes.”

He thinks it was at Alice Tully Hall. Anyway, Lincoln Center. They were at the first of a series of five Sunday afternoon concerts of the complete quartets and Grosse Fugue of Beethoven. It was May or June, they were both done teaching and he was back living with her in their apartment in New York. They sat high up in the balcony, which was all they could afford. He was looking around before the concert began and saw someone he knew. “What do you know,” he said, “Adam Nadelwitz — the bearded guy there,” pointing to a man two rows down and about ten seats over to the right. “He handled my work for a couple of years. First-rate rep as an agent and a really nice guy. So nice, that he didn’t have the heart to tell me my work was unsalable — afraid, if you can believe someone thought this of me, of hurting my feelings — so I had to ask for it back myself. I want you to meet him.” They went over to him at intermission — Adam stayed in his seat, was reading the program — and he said “Adam, hi; Marty Samuels,” and Adam said “Why hello there,” and they shook hands. “My wife Gwendolyn Liederman,” and Adam said “Nice to meet you, Gwendolyn,” and they shook hands. “So how are you? How’s Ellie?” and he said to Gwen “His wife represented my one Y.A. novel and also had no luck in selling it. Well, not much to sell. I went to some great parties they gave at their apartment for their writers — Adam handled the adult fiction and Ellie the juvenile.” Adam said “You’ll have to forgive me, Martin, I thought you knew. I don’t know why I assumed all my former clients did. But my dear wife died a little more than a year ago,” and gave the date in March. Then he seemed about to cry, said “Excuse me,” and covered his eyes with his program and then wiped them with a handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, Adam,” he said, and Adam said “As am I for making you uncomfortable by springing the news. I thought I was finished with falling apart and making a terrible scene when I meet someone who knew Ellie but didn’t know she had died. It was of something rare to do with one of her organs, if you were about to ask. Very quick. I won’t go into it. Please excuse me, you two. I have to go to the restroom. If I don’t see you after the concert, Martin, we should get together someday, although I know it’s difficult for you to, living down South. You see, I’ve kept up with you.” “We still keep our apartment here. Gwen hasn’t moved down yet but will in August, when we’ll be waiting out the birth of our first child.” “I thought so,” Adam said to Gwen, “not that you’re showing much. This is wonderful, just wonderful. Good luck to you both,” and he went up the steps to the exit. “Damnit,” he said when they got back to their seats, “I wish I had known about Ellie before I so smilingly approached him. And I called myself ‘Marty.’ I don’t know why; I never do. Was there a memorial for her and I wasn’t told? I would’ve gone, if I were in New York. They were very close, personally and professionally. Had no children. He was very open about it. Said they’d tried for years and she wanted to adopt and he didn’t. So it must have been a combination of you being visibly pregnant and that we seemed so obviously happy, that upset him so much.” And she said “I’m sure his reaction to seeing you for the first time since she died would have been the same, especially when he had to tell you she was dead. I can’t imagine such a loss,” and he said “Neither can I, and I don’t want to.” Adam didn’t come back to his seat. They looked for him at the next concert and the one after that. “It’s possible he only had a ticket for the first concert,” she said, “or is sitting downstairs,” and he said “Maybe, but I bet he bought for all five. And like us, the same seat, which was empty the last time till someone, probably from higher up in the balcony, took it during intermission, and all the seats in that row are taken today, which could mean he gave his ticket away. Nah, when we weren’t talking about why publishers weren’t taking my work, we talked about music. He was as much a lover of it as I, and Beethoven was his favorite.”