Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

He drove to Brooklyn to a friend of Gwen’s who had a very good crib to give them. “And you can keep it,” she said, when he called for directions to her building. “Or after you’re through with it, give it to someone you like. We’ve definitely maxed out at two, so we won’t be needing it anymore.” Gwen was in her eighth month with Rosalind. He left at six in the morning and hoped to be back by midafternoon, avoiding heavy traffic both ways. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” he said, just before he left, and she said “I’ll be fine. It’s you. I don’t want you getting tired on the road with so much driving.” “I’ve driven a lot more by myself than eight hours in a day, and without an hour’s break, which I promise I’ll take — even a nap — when I get there, so don’t worry. Go back to sleep.” He was approaching the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey Turnpike when he heard a piece of music on the radio for chorus, soloists and orchestra. He loved it. It was still playing when he parked near the woman’s building, so he sat in the car listening to it till it was over. He wanted to know the name of it and the composer so he could buy the record soon after he got back to Baltimore. It was an oratorio: A Child of Our Time , by Michael Tippett. And “Sir,” so he assumed he was English, and because it’s a modern piece, maybe still living. Never heard of him, and what a coincidence: the title of the piece and all those sweet children’s voices in it, as he drives in to pick up a crib for his own child. He wrote it down — also the conductor and orchestra — in his memobook; had a Danish and coffee with the woman, got the crib into his car’s trunk and a bag of baby and toddler clothes and a long padded bumper to go around inside the crib and drove back. He told Gwen about the music. “One of the most stirring pieces for voice and orchestra I’ve ever heard, and I don’t think I missed much of it, though I won’t be able to tell till I hear it again. It was the highlight of my trip.” “So let’s buy it,” she said. “From everything you said, I want to hear it, and it doesn’t seem like something the Baltimore Symphony will ever play.” “It might be an expensive recording,” and she said “What of it? Once the baby’s born, think of all the money we won’t be spending on restaurants and concerts and so forth by staying home. And just the coincidence, as you said, that it was about a child.” “I’m not sure what it was about,” he said. “Though it was in English, I was able to make out very few words. I do know there were parts in it with children’s voices, and there’s the title. Okay, I’ll get it, or maybe have to order it at the record store.” He bought the record the next day and played it that night. He didn’t like the first side of it. It didn’t seem the same piece, though he recognized some parts and it was the recording he’d heard in the car and their record player had much better sound than the car radio. He thought he must have been in some other state of mind when he first heard it, or it was because of the small enclosed space of the car, or something, but he just couldn’t explain it. “So what do you think so far?” he said, when he turned the record over to the second side but didn’t put the needle down on it yet. “Oh, it’s pretty good,” and he said “Once again, you’re just being nice. Don’t worry about my feelings. You didn’t like it, say so.” “It’s true. It wasn’t as stirring and beautiful as you made it out to be. It could be I just don’t like twentieth-century English music.” “Ralph Vaughan Williams? The Lark Ascending ? His Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis ? You love those.” “I thought, because of the way his first name is pronounced, he was Scottish or Welsh,” and he said “No, English. And Britten’s Simple Symphony and Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge ? And some stuff by Frank Bridge too?” “I’m unfamiliar with him. And maybe I’m only talking about twentieth-century English music for voices,” and he said “Britten again. Les Illuminations and his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and something else. Strings . But why am I giving you a hard time and acting like a pedant? I’m sorry. I felt the same way about the piece. A disappointment. It had its moments when the kids sang. I love children’s voices — Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and at the end of the first act of Tosca when the boys choir from the church comes in. But it didn’t seem the same music I heard driving on the Turnpike, which was then blanked out in the Holland Tunnel, and then going across Manhattan to Brooklyn and sitting in the car near Penny’s building till it was over. I was overwhelmed by all of it. Not a bad part. What could it be that changed it for me?” and she said “I can’t help you on that.” “Let’s put it away for now and listen to the rest some other time, or only I’ll listen to it and from the beginning. What’ll really make me screwy is if I find I love it again. And I should probably set up the crib,” and she said “There’s no hurry. The baby’s going to sleep in the pram in our room the first three or four months.” “Then just to do something and get it out of the way. I hate things unassembled and in lots of parts and leaning against the wall or taking up too much room on the floor and the chance of it falling down or our tripping on it,” and she said “Okay. I’ll help.”

Her miscarriage. Odd that he hadn’t thought about it till now, or had he? Gwen was in for her annual gynecological exam. It was about two years after Maureen was born. The doctor asked for a urine sample. She sat on the toilet there for half an hour, she said, and couldn’t pee a drop, so the nurse practitioner, he thinks she was, catheterized her and botched up the procedure. She poked the fetus with the catheter. Something like that. Or touched something in the vagina with the catheter that started the miscarriage. He knows they’re two distinctive holes, but that’s what he thinks Gwen told him. It was so long ago; he forgets most of it. And Gwen came home and was never clear about what happened, and he knew it upset her so much that she didn’t like talking about it, so he didn’t ask her about it much after that day to get the details straight. He remembers her saying that night “All I can tell you is that the woman did a lousy-ass job — I actually think she wasn’t adequately trained for it and had her eyes closed when she inserted the catheter — and she and the doctor weren’t very apologetic about it either. Afraid of a suit, you think? They knew we didn’t want another child”—“You mean you didn’t want another,” he said — and she said “All right, I didn’t, so they may have thought they’d done us a favor. But they still could have shown some remorse.” She hadn’t known she was pregnant. So it was very early on; maybe the first or second month. “Did you see it?” and she said “It was almost too small to see — certainly too early to tell what sex it was, and technically not even a fetus yet. And after they scooped it all out and I got off the table, I think they flushed it down the toilet. No, I’m sure they have a special disposal bag for that.” He got sad. Some tears too. “Oh, what’s wrong, my darling? I’m being too cold and clinical about it, I know.” “This was probably our last chance to have another child,” he said. “If it hadn’t been aborted and you had come home and said you’d found out you were pregnant, I would have asked you to have the baby.” “I’ve told you,” she said. “I never wanted to get pregnant again. I want to get on with my life other than just being a mother and part-time teacher. And two’s ideal for me and them, and should be for you too, and affordable.” He would have begged her to have the baby and he thinks she would have gone through with it because it meant so much to him. That so? He’s almost sure of it. He’d have three kids now. The third might be in his first year of college. She did say “We have to be more careful with my diaphragm. I take full blame for what happened because I’m the one who put it in. But I have a bit of arthritis in my left hand. Also, in that hand, this bony knob or swelling below the thumb near the wrist that’s painful sometimes and which I’ll get checked out, but in the meantime get a brace for it at night, so I’ll need to teach you how to put the diaphragm in when I don’t feel a hundred percent able to.” “Glad to, but who’s to say I’ll do it correctly? It’d seem it’d take a lot of practice,” and she said “I can feel when it’s in right. It doesn’t slip or hurt. This time I must have just let it go, or your penis knocked it awry.” “It can do that?” and she said “Sure, although I think I would have felt that too, so I don’t know.”