Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

He dropped in on his mother the day after he introduced her to Gwen. They sat in the breakfast room, each with a drink he’d made them: Jack Daniels on the rocks with a splash of water and for her with a lemon peel in it. “Cheers,” he said, and she said “Cheers,” and they drank. “So, Mom, tell me what you think of her,” and she said “What do I think? I think she’s wonderful and perfect for you and you for her. She’s charming, precious, elegant, very intelligent, and with such a sweet face and voice. I always wished I had a voice and complexion like hers.” “You have a nice voice. What’s wrong with your voice? And your complexion? It’s still smooth and you hardly have a line.” “Thank you. And you seem to like her parents. That’s a good sign,” and he said “Oh, what they went through. Before they came here they lost everyone in World War II but her mother’s father. To tell you the truth, her coming from people like that I find very attractive about her too.” “So you like that she’s Jewish? Because before you only went out and got serious with Gentile girls, or since you were in college,” and he said “There’s been a Jewish girl or two in there, but it’s fine.” “What I hope she doesn’t end up thinking is that you’re too old for her. More than ten years. That’s a lot.” “You and Dad were nine years apart,” and she said “And when I met him, and I was much younger than Gwen, I already thought of him as a middle-aged man. Something else could work against you. That you don’t have a profession but writing, which is a wonderful thing to do but it so far barely pays you enough to live on for one. If those don’t bother her, then everything should go well between you. I’ve got my fingers crossed. I already foresee myself feeling toward her as if she were my own daughter. I was that impressed by her at our lunch and saw immediately what sort of person she was — the best sort. So I’m warning you,” and he said “Oy, I knew this was coming.” “Listen to me. Don’t do anything stupid to lose her. You’re reaching an age where it won’t be so easy finding another girl like her, especially one with so many child-bearing years left. You want to have a family, don’t you? You’ve spoken of it enough, so I assume you still do. You’d be reducing your chances by getting a woman your own age or one a few years younger. You’re not going to get married right away. That could take a year or two and a child a year more, and two children — well, you figure it. So you’re fortunate she fell for you, or is starting to, and I can only hope and pray it gets even better and lasts.” “Come on, Mom, it can’t be that bad for me. There are plenty of terrific women out there,” and she said “If there are, then how come you always choose the wrong one? Maybe with the exception of Diana, who I liked, but that relationship was bound to fail — she was simply too capricious, which this one doesn’t seem to be. I like it that she gives you a look that she adores you. That can also stop, with a few mistakes by you, so anything you can do to help make it work, do.” “I knew you’d like her. I don’t know if she adores me, like you say, or what she really thinks of me, although she is showing some very nice feelings and seems to like being with me.” “Does she call you if you don’t call her?” and he said “What does that have to do with it? We speak to each other every day on the phone, even if we see each other that day. So yes, she does. And it’s not a case of if I call, then she makes the next call, and then I make the one after that, and so on. We call when we want to, which is a lot. Anyway, I’ll try not to screw it up, I promise.” “It’s for your benefit, you know. Mine too, of course, that I want you to finally be settled with someone so nice, but mostly yours.”

He went to his mother’s apartment the day after he got back from Maine the first time. He brought a bottle of Jack Daniels with him because she might be running low — it was the only liquor she drank — and he knew he was going to have two drinks, and then she’d want a second too. It was a hot day, around six, and they sat in the shaded L-shaped backyard that bordered what they called the breakfast room. “Cheers,” she said, and they drank. She asked if he got a lot of work done this summer, and he said “Yes.” “How was it with her parents for a week?” and he said “Fine. Her father only stayed two days. He hates mosquitoes. Reminds him too much of Uzbekistan, where he was in a Soviet internment camp. But they were very easy guests, as you were.” “I’d like to meet them again. I know I’d get to like them, short time I was with them and their having such a wonderful daughter. I could invite them for lunch,” and he said “We’ll see.” “You get along with them, though, don’t you?” and he said “Her mother can be a little overprotective of her, but yes.” “How is Gwen?” and he said “Fine.” “She teaching at Columbia this year?” and he said “Yes. Second year of her post-doc fellowship. Humanities again. I think she starts in a week.” “And you start your own teaching at NYU in a few weeks,” and he said “It’s nothing compared to hers. Continuing ed. Two fiction-writing classes that meet ten times a semester, at five hundred dollars a course. Slave wages, but it’s a start and it’ll get me out of the house.” “You need money? I can spare some,” and he said “I have enough, thanks.” “Enough might not be enough,” and he said “I’m fine.” “You don’t seem yourself, Martin. I thought you’d come in all chipper, but you seem down. Anything bothering you you want to talk about?” and he said “No.” “You don’t want to talk about it?” and he said “Nothing’s wrong.” “Don’t tell me. You know you can’t pull the wool over my eyes. It has to be something to do with Gwen.” “All right. She dumped me.” “She broke it off? I can’t believe it. When I was in Maine, you two were so close. When did this happen?” and he said “When she dropped me off at my building yesterday.” “You had no inkling?” and he said “There was some trouble between us this summer, but I thought we’d worked everything out. So a big shock.” “Is it another guy?” and he said “No. I’d rather not talk about it anymore, Mom,” and she said “What a pity. I was hoping, when you said you were coming over, for so much better news. You’re going to have to look hard for another girl like her,” and he said “I really don’t want to hear it. I feel lousy enough.” “I understand. Of course there’s nothing I can do or that you’d let me try to do to fix things,” and he said “What an idea. I can just see you calling her up and saying what a perfect match you thought we were.” “Well, it’s true; you were. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. But at least you still have your sense of humor about it. You didn’t do anything bad to make her change her mind about you?” and he said “No. I just think that in the long run she thought I wasn’t the ideal mate for her. She eventually wants marriage and children, which is what I want too and with her if I could, but she thinks I’d make a very poor provider because my writing would always come first.” “So tell her you’ll put aside most of your writing for the time being to get a good job and work hard at keeping it,” and he said “She’d see that as a desperate and insincere move on my part to get back with her. She knows me. And it’s not that I can’t write and hold down a full-time job at the same time. I’ve done it — I mean serious jobs; news work, technical writing, editing magazines — but all that’s way in the past. I’ve managed to arrange my life the last ten years where I’m basically unemployable for any other work but jobs like bartending and waiting on tables and driving a cab and teaching in continuing ed at fifty bucks a class, and that isn’t going to do it. I’ve tried to get appointments in writing departments that pay fairly well and have benefits and everything else, but nobody’s interested. I have four books and a hundred published stories and a couple of good fellowships, but they all say, when they answer me — only two have but it must be what the other fifty are thinking — that I need an M.F.A.” “You know what? I think she’s going to call you in two weeks and say she misses you and wants you two to meet to talk things over.” “She won’t call. I’ve been in this situation before. Once they say they’re though, at least with me, they’re through,” and she said “That wasn’t so with Diana. She broke it off with you so many times and then came running back, you stopped telling me.” “I should have stayed broken up with her the first time, which isn’t how I feel about Gwen. But it’s over with, really,” and she said “It’s not. Take it from me, Martin. She’ll call, maybe even sooner than two weeks, and you’ll talk and get back together and be married in a year and have children, or just one child, but you’ll be happy again and a wonderful couple. I could see this summer how much in love with you she was, and that was just a month ago and it doesn’t stop so fast,” and he said “I’m now beginning to believe she wasn’t that much in love with me at all. I now don’t even know why she even started with me.” “Don’t say that. She started with you because you’re a great catch.” “Oh yeah, great catch. No dough, no prospects, just my writing, which doesn’t pay off much. Hair going, in my forties. Sure, great catch,” and she said “You are. Stop belittling yourself. You’re handsome, you’re polite, you’re nice, built like a circus strongman, creative and smart, and you’re tall. Who wouldn’t want you? So let’s try and put our heads together to see what we can do to make things better for you. Here,” and she gave him her empty glass. “Have another drink and refill mine.” “Didn’t Dr. Gelfand say — I know he did; I was there — that for you to stop from falling and to get sufficient sleep, one per day should be your limit?” and she said “Listen to me, not him. One more won’t kill me and it’ll keep you here longer and I don’t drink this much every day.” They had another drink and talked about other things and then he left.