Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

He reaches over to the night table for his watch and presses the button on it to light its face. But he’s holding the back side of it up and turns it over and presses the button again. Five after seven. Thought so — seven-ten, quarter after — because of the light outside. It was like that early yesterday morning when he looked at his watch. Doesn’t want to try sleeping some more and is bored with just lying in bed. Read? No. Time to get up, he supposes. Later he’ll take a long nap when the kids are out. Reaches over to the other night table on what used to be his side of the bed and turns the radio on to the Baltimore classical music station. The dial’s always set to it; he hasn’t moved it since Gwen died. At night, if they were preparing for bed, or he was going to bed before her, he’d turn on the radio to the music. He’d listen to it no matter what it was. Low, though, if it was something he didn’t like. If she didn’t like what was playing she’d say something like “Do we have to listen to that?” or “Oh, no, not another Strauss waltz” or “Sousa march.” In the morning, if they were getting up at the same time — if she was still sleeping or even just resting in bed, he wouldn’t turn the radio on — she’d ask him to switch to the public radio station for the news. She didn’t read newspapers anymore. Maybe the Book Review in the Sunday Times , but that’s about it. “I’m tired of turning the pages and seeing the same stories or daily continuations of them, but mostly ads.” For the last three years she got all her news from the radio and her computer and what he’d tell her he read in the paper that day and she might find interesting. “You’re not missing much,” he told her a number of times. A Beethoven piano sonata was on. The volume’s low because he doesn’t want to wake the kids. He sits on the edge of the bed and listens to it for about two minutes while he does some stretching exercises. It’s a late sonata, but not one of the last three. Those he’s heard so many times on records and CDs and the radio, he knows them almost by heart. Or at least knows when it’s not one of them. Maybe the “Hammerklavier,” the 26th or 29th, or whatever number it is. Why’s he so sure it’s opus 106, when he couldn’t give one of the other opuses? The “Appassionata”? Knows it’s not “Les Adieux.” Liked that one a lot once but hasn’t for years and doubts he ever will again. Too schmaltzy. No, definitely the “Appassionata.” He’d say to her now, even though he knows she didn’t, “You played this once, the ‘Appassionata,’ didn’t you?” And she’d say something like, which she said for another piece he once asked her about, “Never. Much too hard. The only Beethoven I learned to play, or let’s say, practiced, was several of the Bagatelles . Those were what my piano teacher thought I was ready for after Brahms’s Intermezzo , not that they were simple. But I never gave enough time to them, so played them quite badly.” “I’d still like to hear you play them,” he’d say, “and also the Intermezzo again. I loved it. More than anything you played. Would you do that for me one day?” and he could see her saying something like “The piano isn’t what it was. I have to get it tuned and one of the keys replaced. And I haven’t practiced those for years. I’d embarrass myself, even if the piano was in good shape. But maybe.” He turns the radio off, Not because the kids might hear. Well, that too. Beautiful as the piece is, or gets to be, he doesn’t want to listen to any music; wouldn’t care what was on, and doesn’t know when he will. He does some stretching exercises on the bed. Oh, what the hell am I exercising for? he thinks. If I hurt, I hurt, and I’ll take a couple of aspirins to relieve it. Meaning? He stretches so he won’t hurt later, after he exercises, but it’s boring and isn’t what he wants to do now. Who knows about later. He’s been going, before Gwen died, to the Y just about every other day for an hour for years, but isn’t sure if he’ll ever go back. Just doesn’t see himself there anymore. And some people he knows there will ask, and he’ll tell them and break down, and he doesn’t want that. He gets off the bed, pees, makes the bed — that, he’s always done, even before he met Gwen; can’t stand an unmade bed — brushes his teeth, flosses out a few irritating pieces, sits on the toilet. While he’s sitting, kicks one leg up twenty times — counts as he does — then the other leg twenty times, then each leg twenty times again. Why? To do something while he’s sitting here and also maybe it’ll get something started. Then he rubs his scalp briskly for about a minute, digs in deeply at the end as he rubs, scratches the back of his head so hard he draws blood. Well, so what? Finds the rubbing and scratching, which he does every morning on the toilet, but not scratching as hard as he did today, make him more wide awake faster. That what he wants? Sure; why not? Sits some more. Nothing comes or even seems to be there, but he thought, as he does every morning, he’d try. Likes to shit first thing in the morning, but should give up trying so hard to. Should try not to obsess over it and to just let it come naturally. Doesn’t, then there’s the next day, and not that day, the day after. But don’t force it. It’ll come. If it doesn’t by the end of the third day, take some milk of magnesia or mineral oil — there’s still some of Gwen’s in the refrigerator. Or mix together water and orange or grapefruit juice — she preferred cranberry — with the psyllium husk fiber she used to use once or twice a day. There’s almost a whole container of it in one of the kitchen cupboards. He was planning to throw it out, but now he won’t. Her medications, she said, made her constipated, and constipation gave her a bellyache. “I don’t like talking about it,” she once said — oh, not so long ago. Months. “Why not?” he said. “It happens to everybody, or every adult, and you and I have been through everything. I’ll do what I can to help you with it, though I don’t know what that could be. Shaking up the fiber drink for you till it’s absolutely smooth. Anything you ask me to do to make things easier and more comfortable for you.” “I still don’t like talking about it,” she said. “While I’m still able to, I’d like to deal with it myself quietly.” “My baby,” he said, “I love you, shit and all,” and she said “Please don’t talk like that, and it’s not because it’s not a joking matter. It makes me feel worse. And I’m not your baby,” and he said “I meant ‘my darling, my sweetheart.’” “Did I ever tell you about one incident with my father?” he said to her that time or another, but when they were on the same subject. “When I was living up the block from my folks? I used to make sure every night, around eleven or twelve, that he was all right in his hospital bed in their apartment.” “You told me,” she said. “I told you that if I came into his room and he’d had a bowel movement since my mother had put him to bed, and you’d know it before you got there, I’d clean him and it up?” “Yes,” she said. “I suppose most children couldn’t have done it. I doubt I could have.” “That’s okay. But did I tell you it almost always made me gag and want to throw up? But then I told myself ‘You have to get used to it. If you’re going to do it, you can’t be put off by it. It’s just shit. So stick your fingers in it once and that’ll cure you of your squeamishness,’ and I did and it worked. Didn’t gag again, neither coming into the room or taking care of him. Did it like a pro. So don’t be concerned about it with me. I’m used to it. I’ve done it. I can handle it.” And she said “I don’t want to hear anymore. If it happens, do what you have to, or what I can’t do, but please don’t talk about it,” and he said “I just thought you’d feel easier, knowing.” Feels the back of his head. Blood seems to have dried. Should remember to wipe the back of his head with a wet towel in case there’s any blood there. Doesn’t want to scare the kids. And give up. Nothing’s going to come, and he stands up and flushes the toilet. Why did he even flush? For a little pee? They get their water from a well, so he’s always trying to conserve water though they’ve never run dry except when there was an electrical outage. And look at him, still with the “we” and present tense, and he does mean Gwen and he and not his daughters. That’ll change, but he bets not for a year or more. After a number of these outages — most of them short, an hour or two, but one for four days, where he had to get their water from a neighbor — he had a generator installed that automatically turns the electricity on a few seconds after the outage. So what’s he saying? Lost track. That he didn’t want to be without water with her the last two years, that’s why he got the generator. Before, except for that four-day outage — or five, or six; he forgets, but it was unbelievably long and very hard for them — they would use candles and the fireplace and gas stove. It would even be romantic and then joyous or at least cause for cheers when the lights came back on. Because sometimes — and this is the main reason he needed the well working — after almost a week of her being constipated, she would shit several times in an hour, and even after that, most of them normal bowel movements but some so large that they stopped up the toilet when he flushed it and poured over the rim with the water and he then had to use the plunger for he doesn’t know how long to unclog it and wipe up the shit and paper and about an inch of water on the floor and give it and the toilet a good cleaning. “I’m so sorry and ashamed,” she said the first time, and he said “Don’t be. Didn’t I tell you that once? It’s not a job I like, and I for sure know it’s not one you wanted to happen, but what can we do?” The second time, after he flushed the toilet and saw the shit and paper rising to the top, he cried “Oh no-o-o-o,” and then screamed when they spilled over the rim, “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,” and banged his fists against the wall. She started crying. He thought “Good God, what am I doing? I’m making things worse. She could have another stroke.” He said “Okay, I’m better; I got it all out,” and told her to kick off her slippers—“Let’s try not to track up the rest of the house — and after I finish here I’ll wash them or throw them out.” Later he said he was sorry. “I swear, I swear; deeply sorry. I obviously wasn’t as adjusted to it yet as I thought. But, cleaning it up, I figured out how to avoid the toilet overflowing again when your bowel movements are that large. And I’m not blaming you for them, just saying. First of all, no paper in the toilet. After I wipe you, or you wipe yourself, we’ll put the paper into a plastic shopping bag and get rid of it in the garbage. Then I’ll get half the feces out with a kitty litter scoop into a pail of some kind with a little water in it and flush it down the other toilet. Or even less than half, but get it down to the size of a normal bowel movement, and do that a couple of times. That should do it,” and she said “I hope it works.” “It’ll work. Why shouldn’t it?” and she said “You know, with our luck.” Lets the sink water run hot. Sometimes he gets the hot water in a large plastic container from the kitchen faucet. It comes there faster, so there’s less waste. Then swishes around his wet shaving brush inside the shaving soap dish — the same cat-food tin he’s used for about the last ten years — and lathers his face and neck. New blade? The last few mornings he’s asked himself that and then thought “Tomorrow. I don’t want to bother.” And today he thinks the shave doesn’t have to be that close, for where’s he going? The lather’s disintegrating, so he starts shaving. Shaves every day. Maybe he should change that. Skip a day now and then, or maybe grow a beard. If he did, it’d come in gray. Finishes the neck and starts on the cheeks, always the right one first. Doesn’t think he’d like having a gray beard. It’d just make him look older than he looks already. Mentioned to Gwen about possibly growing one a year ago and she said “How big a beard?” and he said “Full. A goatee or anything like that wouldn’t be for me. Too foppish, and they look pasted on,” and she said “I don’t like kissing a man with a full beard. I don’t even like touching it with my hand.” “I know; it scratches your face. Lots of women say that. And it probably doesn’t feel good when I’m going down on you,” and she said “Maybe. But that was so long ago I don’t even remember if my bearded man did that to me.” “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” and she said “It’s true. It wasn’t necessary.” Does the chin and above the lip and is finished. He always did a quick shave, with very few cuts. Once did have a beard. Twice. Before he met her. Witch hazel? Don’t bother. Once in the summer and his face sweated so much from it, that he shaved it off after a few weeks. Another time, before or after the other one, it itched and he kept scratching it and pulling on the beard, something he doesn’t like to see other men do, and every so often he had to tweeze a hair that had got ingrown and hurt. That beard he kept longer. It was almost the same color and texture of his head hair — the only difference was that it had a little red in it — and he felt it made him look artistic. One person even said he looked like van Gogh, which he liked, and another like a young Pissarro, which he didn’t know what to make of, and the woman he was seeing at the time said it made him look rugged. But then he felt he was hiding behind it — he wasn’t showing his real face; this was around the same time he stopped for good combing his hair over his bald spots — and shaved it off. Shaves every day because he doesn’t want to look even slightly like a bum, which is what his father said about men who looked as if they hadn’t shaved for two or three days, and he doesn’t want to look artistic or rugged either. His father also shaved every day, even when he wasn’t going anywhere, till he got sick with a couple of diseases and couldn’t shave himself, so he’d shave him almost every morning with an electric razor. Doesn’t think he would have been able to do it with — do they still call it this? — a safety razor. His mother said, watching him once, “You can do it better than me because you’re a man and you know a man’s face. I’d be afraid.” She did, last few years of his father’s life, give him haircuts and shave the back of his neck with a special attachment on the electric razor. Sits on the bed and starts to dress. Socks from the floor. Doesn’t usually start with them, but does today. Then thinks Maybe get a fresh pair. Smells the one in his hand. No smell, but the bottom’s dirty and he must have sweated a lot in them yesterday, and he takes off the one he put on and opens the top dresser drawer. Black or white, that’s his choice. Both are all cotton, but the white’s more an athletic sock and never as tight, and takes out a pair and puts them on. Smells yesterday’s shirt at one armpit. Stinks, and he opens the bottom dresser drawer where all his shirts are. Actually, the tank tops are in the top. There are several long-sleeve T-shirts, black and navy blue and all of them cotton, and he takes out a black one because the material’s lighter and smoother than the blue, and puts it on. Opens the three middle drawers, which her things are still in, and quickly closes them. Why’d he open them? Doesn’t know. Impulse. Wasn’t looking for anything. Got a whiff of her perfume in the most middle drawer, but that wasn’t why he opened it. That’ll always be her smell, more than anything. Thought of something like that last night. Can’t imagine what he’d do if he started up with a new woman sometime and she wore that same perfume. That’s a scene for a short story. He’d say to her next time not to and tell her why. Anybody would understand. Or he wouldn’t say. He’d just fantasize. Might be nice. If he’d be seeing that woman he thinks he’d eventually be sleeping with her, that’s how it’s always been, and if she had on that perfume in bed? What’s he going into? That he’d make love with another woman? Sure, one day, he’d want to, but a long ways from today. Not a long ways from wanting to but from doing it. Hard to imagine, too. Actually, not hard at all. Naked, feeling each other, kissing, hugging, sucking, breasts, cunt, pubic hair, going down on each other, or just him on her — anything to get him excited — sticking it in? How do you first get to bed, though? You’re at either of your places and drinking and kissing and maybe feeling and one of you, as Gwen did to him, says “Think we should go to bed?” That’s all it took. After that it gets much easier, or used to. But it might never happen again with him. Not just because of the way he is now, his depression, if that’s what it is. And his predisposition to solitude — well, he was always like that a little — that might last and even, longer he cuts himself off from people, get worse. But his age, primarily, and what he’d call his wariness or even his fright at getting involved enough with someone new to make love with, and so on. “And so on” what? Other things he hasn’t thought of, and maybe not so much the ones he gave. So then what? Just jerking off for the rest of his life? Buying girlie magazines, raunchier the better? Those vacant faces in them, those beautiful bodies? Going into a convenience store — parking in front just to buy the magazine — and taking one off the rack and paying for it and getting back change? Doesn’t see himself doing that. Did before he met Gwen, once or twice a year when he wasn’t living with a woman, but never felt comfortable doing it, and now? But he’ll have to, won’t he? What other way? Subscribe? How do you, and he’d just want one issue, not one mailed to him every month. He’d keep it under some shirts in his dresser drawer, wouldn’t use it all the time, because how many times could he do it to the same nudes before he gets tired of them? But maybe the photos are so graphic now, and there are so many different nudes in each issue and a wide variety of poses, that one issue would be good for a year or so and almost every time. Because how often would he jerk off? Once a week? More likely, every other week? Has seen them in those stores. Band around them or shrink-wrapped, so you couldn’t open them at the stand. Lingerie issue. Back-to-College issue. Summer Girls. They have to be a lot more revealing than they were thirty years ago. Has a hard-on but not a full one. Not the first he’s had since she died but the first that’s come while he was awake and thinking about sex. Plays with it a little but with no thought of ejaculating. Just curious. Doesn’t get harder or larger and he didn’t think it would, and stops. Not while his daughters are still here. Think of something else. Finish getting dressed. He’s thirsty and a little hungry too. Did he eat yesterday? Knows he drank. He ate. Little. Baby carrots. A cracker. Piece of cheese. Some celery sticks. He’s not starving. And less he eats, less he’ll need to shit. Should suggest to them they take whatever they want of hers from the dresser and closets. And dishes and pots and pans and cookbooks and cutlery they might be able to use and artwork she owned before she knew him and stuff she bought after they married. Antique goose decoy on the fireplace mantel and several smaller ones of ducks around the house. Miniature Russian icon triptych her parents gave her and her first husband when they got married, but maybe that’s too valuable. Also on the mantel: two tiny porcelain figurines in a bell jar she got at a silent auction in Maine. He likes that piece. “The old couple seems so happily married and physically right for each other,” he once said to her, “I can’t think of looking at them without thinking of us,” so maybe he’ll keep that one too, and the kids move around a lot and the bell jar would be too fragile to travel. Binoculars she observed birds with from her study here and apartment they had on Riverside Drive and desk in Maine. Victorian candlestick he gave her for her birthday a half year after they met. So many things. Too many for one person living alone. Wants to clear out half the house. Furniture and linen if they need some in their cities. But senses it’s too soon for them. They even said so, so why harp on it? He knows how they feel. They feel the way he does. And he’s sure they have enough reminders of her for now. Fresh boxer shorts. The old ones he didn’t have to smell. Thinks it’s been two days, and after he zips up or just pulls up his pants if he’s been sitting on the toilet he frequently pisses or drips a little into the shorts. Pants off the chair. Nah, get your sweatpants. Be comfortable, and no pants are more comfortable, and he hangs these up on a hook in the closet and gets the sweats out and puts them on. Sneakers. Fresh handkerchief. Two ballpoint pens in one side pants pocket and memobook in the other. Doesn’t need his watch because he knows he’s not going anywhere today. Starts out of the room with his dirty clothes. His glasses. How could he have forgotten? And goes back and puts them on and goes into the kitchen and drops the clothes into the washing machine. Some of the kids’ clothes are in it and a tablecloth and dish towels. Tablecloths they should also take. Doesn’t know why Gwen had so many, because they almost always, when they had guests for dinner, used the same green and yellow one from India with matching cloth napkins. On the dryer next to the washing machine’s a note from Maureen. “Hi Daddy. We hope you slept well. We’ll be sleeping late unless you need us for anything. We’ve been meaning to tell you. We have Mommy’s cell phone if you want to start using it. It’s part of a group plan. You must know that. You’ve been paying for it for years. It allowed the three of us, when Mommy was alive, to call each other anytime of the day for free. The phone’s being recharged now in Roz’s room. But we have to warn you. It has Mommy’s voice on it. Just her saying her name when the automated voice says she’s not available and your message has been forwarded to an automated voice message machine. If you do want her phone, and we hope so because that would mean Roz and I would be able to talk to you more, we’d like to keep Mommy’s voice on it. Do you mind? We think it would be nice to hear Mommy every time we call you and the message system picks up. Love from Roz and me. Maureen.” He writes under her note “Dear Maureen. I would like to take over Mommy’s phone. I wasn’t aware of the cell phone message — I suppose I should’ve assumed so — but if you both want to keep it on, fine with me. I’d get upset hearing her speak myself. But there’s no reason that should happen unless I call the cell phone just to hear her voice, which I don’t see myself ever doing. Love, Dad.” Then thinks But what’s with this note business? He’ll tell them all this when he sees them, and tears up the note and sticks the pieces into the recycle bag next to the trash can. It’s almost full. Later he’ll stuff all the paper down in it so they won’t blow around when he brings it outside to the carport, and open up another bag by the can. Looks through the kitchen door. Could have just looked at the inside light switch by the door. Outside lights have been turned off. Now he remembers. Her mother kept giving her tablecloths, ones she brought with her from Russia and others she bought here for Gwen, and she said she didn’t have the heart to tell her she already had more than she could use. “The kids will take them,” and he said “Don’t count on it. Most are a little dowdy.” Her cameras. Two very good ones. She liked taking pictures of birds, especially hummingbirds at the various feeders if she could get her camera quick enough, and flowers and the star magnolia in bloom and their cats. Those he thinks the kids will want to take when they leave. They’re not as personal as most of the other things he mentioned, and a number of times they needed a good camera to take pictures a photo lab would turn into slides of their work. Doubts he’ll be taking pictures anymore. Took a lot of them of the kids and her, in Maine, mostly with cheap throwaway cameras. Plenty of her alone too, even though she never wanted him to, when she was still healthy. How could he not? She always looked so great in them. And those Polaroid nude shots of her — how’d he ever get her to let him? — when she was seven months pregnant with Rosalind, ones he ended up with only one good one of and she said she tore up. Maybe she didn’t and only threatened to and then forgot about it. One day he’ll look for it and the two or three others he took that time and which were too dark and blurry to see anything and would probably, if they survived, be worse now. Go through all the boxes and file drawers in her study she kept most of their photos in. They’re certainly not in any of the albums. Didn’t he think this last night? Yes, but not that they might still be around. Wishes he’d taken a few of her nude when she wasn’t pregnant. Standing facing him. Sitting in a chair like an artist model — that’s how he could have worded it to her. Lying on the bed or couch with her back or front to him. But he knows she wouldn’t have let him if he’d asked. But he should have asked. What a dope that he didn’t. “They’re Polaroids,” he would have said. “Nobody will see them but me.” “What do you want them for?” she might have said. “You have me,” and he would have said “For when I’m away.” Well, he didn’t know things would turn out like this. Her feeling, he thinks, was that her body in the pregnant photos no way resembled hers, which is why she went along with the two or three she let him take. He thinks she even said something like that. “I’m unrecognizable. Look at my breasts and stomach and from what I can see of my buttocks. Even my face is a bit bloated and my thighs seem fatter too, though I suppose everything but my breasts will go back to the way they were before.” Anyway, he doesn’t know how to use either of her cameras, or even load them. She showed him once, but he’s long forgot. I’ll never remember,” he said. “I like simple cameras.” So he’ll insist the kids take them. “They’re wasted here,” he’ll say. “And you each can use one, and it won’t take you anything to learn how. I’m sure you have friends who’ll show you. If there’s film still in the cameras, just develop them and send me the ones you think I might find interesting. I’m sure there’s none of Mom. And while we’re at it,” he’ll say, “maybe you can take back with you a lot of the photographs too. Help me to start getting rid of things.” Opens the dishwasher. Nothing in it. All the dishes and such from yesterday have been washed and put away. Good. They did everything right. Countertops even look cleaned. Not a crumb. Opens the refrigerator. Plenty of food in it in plastic containers and bowls covered by saucers and plates. He never had plastic wrap — the environment — and Gwen agreed they didn’t need it. And then the stuff that’s always in there. So, plenty for them, and if there isn’t there what they want for breakfast and lunch they can take his car and get it. He’ll give them money or say “Use the credit card you have of mine.” They’ll probably want to go for coffee at the nearby Starbucks on North Charles as they do almost every morning when they’re here together, and ask him if he wants to join them, and he’ll say “Not today and maybe not tomorrow. I don’t know when. But enjoy yourselves and use the credit card I gave you for anything you want there,” and they might say they have their own credit cards. The one they have of his is only for plane and train fares and taxis late at night and emergencies, and he’ll say “While you’re here, everything should be on me. That’s what Mommy would want for you too.” Or maybe not the last. Sleek seems to have been taken care of before they went to bed. Still plenty of kibble in his food bowl and water bowl’s full almost to the top. All the cat food on the saucer’s been eaten. They may have even given him some sliced turkey and other deli meat that was out there. He gets the saucer off the floor and washes it with the scrub side of the sponge and puts it in the dish rack by the sink. Only thing in the dish rack; not even a spoon. That’s how thorough they were, and dish rack mat’s been cleaned too. He’ll open a can of cat food — didn’t see an opened one in the refrigerator, but he might have missed it it was so crowded in there — and spoon half a can of it onto the saucer next time he sees Sleek. If the wet food’s been out there too long — a half-hour, an hour — he won’t eat it. Thinks he hasn’t seen him since yesterday, and then not much. Could he be outside? The girls wouldn’t have let him out at night intentionally. But he has a way of scooting out the door when you open it without you seeing him. And some days he lets him in and out so much he doesn’t know if he’s out or in. Gwen used to ask him “You see Sleek?” and he’d say “Cat makes me dizzy. I don’t know if the last time I saw him was when I let him in the house or let him out, I have to do both for him so much.” Maybe he’s sleeping somewhere or just keeping to himself. Sleek loved Gwen — he could say that about a cat? He swears it sometimes seemed he was looking adoringly at her — and it’s possible he knows she’s dead and misses her deeply. Sleek came into the room when she was being lifted onto the gurney by the Emergency people that last time — the door was closed till then — and sniffed at all their shoes and the wheels of the gurney and then ran out of the room and hid somewhere in the house till that evening. When she was sick in bed with the flu or a bad cold or worse or was just reading or resting, he’d lie beside her and raise a front paw with the claws out and hiss at anyone who came near her but the kids. Even him. Scratched him a few times when he got too close. “Sleek, n-o-o ” she’d say, and then to him once, “Don’t worry. He loves you as much as he loves me. It’s just he thinks you can take care of yourself and I need protection. He has such old-fashioned notions about females.” One hears of dogs suffering when their owners die, but cats? Wasn’t it Gwen who told him that her dissertation advisor’s dog, a corgi, hours after the man died of pancreatic cancer in his summer home in Maine, walked out of the house and down to the shore that bordered the property and swam out into the ocean and drowned? It was Gwen, this happened the summer before they met, and it was another type of cancer, one also very quick and with a small chance of curing, and the dog kept swimming farther and farther out — the man’s children on shore were calling her back and then went after her in a rowboat — till the waves went over her and she disappeared. “Was she found?” he remembers asking, and she said “Days later, a couple of coves away.” He’d never heard anything like that with cats. Devoted, but dying? He’d have to ask someone who knows much more about them than he, but he won’t; he’ll forget. Or something. Gwen said she took her advisor’s death very badly. He and his wife by this time had become close friends of hers. He unlocks and opens the kitchen door and goes outside. Maybe he is out. “Sleek? Sleek?” he says. Walks to both ends of the carport and a few feet along the driveway. “Sleek, you out here?” We don’t want to lose you. That would be too much,” and he starts crying and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “Oh, shit, what the hell is happening to me?” he says. “This whole fucking thing is making me crazy. Please, Sleek, if you’re out here, listen to me. You have to come home.” He whistles for him and makes tsking sounds with his mouth, something he does to get him back into the house when it’s getting dark outside or into the kitchen from another room when he puts fresh food on the floor. But what’s he thinking? Cat’s got to be inside. It’s what he previously thought: the kids would have made sure he was in before they locked the outside doors and shut off all the lights and went to their rooms. He’s probably with one of them. If he is, they’d keep the door partially open, and he goes in to look and both their doors are closed. He’s still sure Sleek’s with one of them. Just, whoever he’s with forgot to leave her door open so he could get water or food in the kitchen or use the litter box in the hallway bathroom. But they both know if he wants to get out of a room and the door’s shut, he’d stand on his back paws and scratch the door till they opened it. Everything’s all right. Again, he’s making something out of nothing. Well, he’s fragile; has become so; look at it that way, what can he do? He’s grieving, let’s face it, grieving, and that might go on for he doesn’t know how long, so cry all you want. Cry when you feel like crying. Cry when the feeling swoops over you for you don’t know what reason, but don’t go batty, that’s all. And if you can, try to keep it to when you’re alone. If the kids happen to witness it, and it wasn’t that their crying precipitated it, that’d be okay, too. Is he making sense? He thinks so. As he said before, everything’s okay, at least for now. Though maybe Sleek heard him calling his name before and only just came back. He looks outside though the kitchen door and then goes outside to look. No, Sleek’s inside. And while he’s out here, should he get today’s newspapers by the mailbox? It’ll only take a few seconds. But a neighbor might drive down the hill on his way to work or the gym and stop to ask him how he is and he’d have to speak, if he couldn’t wave him off, and then what? He’s not ready. And he doesn’t want to read the news. Knows that much about himself. Doesn’t want to hear it on the radio either. Doesn’t want to look at the papers for anything that might be in them. He won’t cancel his subscriptions, but he doesn’t know when he might want to look at them again. If he thinks it’s going to be a while — more than two weeks — he’ll cancel. But now he doesn’t see himself sitting in his Morris chair with his mug of coffee on the chair’s arm, as he’s done with the Sun just about every morning for around the last twenty years. Or the Times at night before dinner for probably the same number of years, with a drink on the chair’s arm. First reading the headlines of each paper and then the beginnings of two or three of the articles underneath them. Then turning to page two of the first section of the Times to see what section and page the obituaries of noteworthy people are in. If it’s of someone who might interest him — a writer, a war hero, a baseball player or movie actor or actress or entertainer like that who was prominent when he was a kid or till he was around sixteen or eighteen — he usually reads it. The ones of fiction writers and poets and literary critics he always reads. The Sun ’s obituaries he’s less interested in unless it’s someone he knows or is familiar with personally or the obituary headline says he went through some war experience or something like that, and they’re always in the same place in the paper, right after the op-ed page at the end of the first section. Then reading the various sections of the papers in no regular order. And today’s weather, tonight’s, tomorrow’s, sometimes the box that has the national forecast, and on the same weather report page, what the temperatures are in Fargo and Phoenix and Los Angeles and Des Moines. Old friends of his now live in the last two cities, or the friend in Iowa in a small city forty miles from Des Moines, and he liked to see what the weather was like for them there. Fargo and Phoenix because it gets so cold in one and hot in the other and it sort of was a game he played with himself comparing the two temperature extremes on the same day. He also checked almost every day what the temperature and forecast were in Paris. Gwen and he had lived there by themselves at different times in their lives and stayed there three times together for up to two weeks, once with Rosalind and the last time with both kids, and talked about renting an apartment there for a couple of months on his next sabbatical. Could they have done that? Doesn’t think so. Not after her first stroke, or definitely her second. Of course, New York too, and he also would have liked to see what the weather was like every day in the area they summered at in Maine for so many years, but the closest city listed, Portland, is more than a hundred-fifty miles away. Just realized: he exchanges letters with those two friends every month or so, and next time he writes them, and he doesn’t know when he’ll feel like doing that again, he’ll have to tell them about Gwen. “I have very bad news. My dear Gwen…” But very short. If he first gets a letter from them — he forgets who owes whom — they’ll ask about her and hope she’s well, as they always do, and for him to give her their best or love. If he doesn’t write them for months after that, they’ll sense — probably even before — something’s wrong because of her two previous strokes, and call, and he’ll have to tell them then. “I want to make this quick. It’s been months, but I still have trouble talking about it. Our dear Gwen…” Maybe he’d be better off writing them a brief note in the next week. In almost one sentence, that she suffered another stroke at home and died in the hospital and when — the exact date — and that he’s unable to write any more about it now. And if they call to offer their condolences and find out how he is? “As you got from my note, it’s impossible for me to talk about it. Maybe down the line sometime. I’m sorry for being so abrupt — you know that’s not the typical me — but I’ll have to say goodbye.” No, they’ll worry. Just say it’s been a terrific blow, but he’s all right and for them not to worry about him and he’ll call sometime soon, which he won’t. What’s he doing? There is no way; he can see that. Maybe if he gets the kids to write his two friends about Gwen and anybody else who doesn’t know she died but probably should, though he can’t think of anyone else right now. In her address book and computer she has a number of names of friends and scholars in her field and home-care providers — women who looked after her while she was recovering and he was at work — they say they didn’t contact about her death or for the memorial, but he assumes they knew what they were doing. Didn’t mean anything to him who came to the memorial or not. They can say to his two friends that their father asked them to write. But they shouldn’t say anything more about him except, if they want, that he’s all right. Ah, let them write what they want. They’re bright, tactful, sensitive to other people’s feelings; they’ll write good letters. The important thing is to get it out of the way. They can even use the same letter for both his friends and anyone else they might want to write to about Gwen. So that’s what he’ll do. As he said, his friends and whoever else will just have to understand why it’s not coming from him. So where was he? Thinking about something, but what? The papers. News. What he read in them every day and in what order. Important? Doubts it. But he was thinking about it for some reason, so maybe he’ll find out why by finishing the thought. Reviews after what was the last thing he said he read. And that was? Forgets. Sun didn’t have many of them. Maybe a Baltimore Symphony concert during the week and a new TV show or two and a play once a month and always movies — lots of them — every Friday. Times , of course, had them all the time. He rarely read the Times ’ reviews of dance or popular music or architecture or Broadway musicals, and in the Sun he doesn’t think he read a single review of a musical that came to Baltimore. Didn’t read TV reviews in either paper, except of Masterpiece Theatre and a few other PBS specials, but only so he could tell Gwen about them. She watched and he sometimes did to have a couple of glasses of wine during them, but mainly to keep her company in the bedroom so she wouldn’t watch them alone, especially the weeks after she returned home from the hospital. He thinks that’s the second time since last night he mentioned that, maybe the third. Why? Pictures her sitting in a chair in front of the television, not looking well but a lot better than when she was in the hospital, and…what? Shudders. Sees her sick. Weak. Everything an effort. Closes his eyes, opens them. She’s gone. She’d look at him from the chair, smile. He’d say “Program’s pretty good. I’m enjoying it,” and she’d smile again, glad he was there, and look back at the television. Did she believe him? Probably not. “Can I get you something?” he’d say several times while they watched the program. “I don’t mind missing a little,” and she’d shake her head or say no. She must have known he was going into the kitchen to fill up his glass. Did she think “He needs to drink to be with me?” No. “Are you comfortable? Do you want a pillow for your back? You’ve been in that position for so long,” and sometimes she’d say yes and he’d get it for her, or something to cover her legs. Oh, if only he could have had her illness for her. He means that. Easy to think it, though, right? But he would have. And then, if that was the deal, she could get whatever was coming to him later on. But she was almost eleven years younger than he, so she’d have those extra pretty healthy years, at least. And then who knows how he’ll go. Maybe in his sleep overnight. Maybe a stroke in his sleep that’d kill him the first time. Stupid thoughts. Why think them? They don’t make sense and what do they bring? Not comfort, that’s for sure. Dreams of her do. The ones on which she’s healthy and not angry at him. The best are when they’re embracing and deeply kissing, better than the ones with sex. Why? They feel real, the two or so he’s had. After he woke up from them, for a few seconds, he still felt her on his lips. Crazy, he knows, but it made him feel good, as if she’d forgiven him. The sex dreams he’s had always ended before he came, and he woke up frustrated. No, in one he came. But the papers. Get to the end of your thought. Which reviews did he also read? Never of video games, something new in reviews and which hasn’t come to the Sun yet. It will. The games have become too popular not to. Also, never of movies listed as having strong violence or were for children or seemed geared to adolescents or even to people in their twenties. Times ’ review he usually read first of the many it’d have of different things on just an ordinary weekday — not Friday — was the book one if it seemed like an interesting subject to get some quick knowledge of or a book he might want to buy and read. Always looking for them, or used to. Couldn’t imagine not having a book to read. Not reading anything now. Looks at the first page of a book he took out of one of the bookcases or the page he last left off at of the novel he was reading before she died and can’t concentrate, reads the first sentence or paragraph over and over again and still can’t quite make sense of it no matter how simply it’s written, and puts the book down or back. Demons , a new translation, was more than halfway through it. Liked it? Kept his interest. Lots of good characters and dialog and he liked that some of what they said was in French with translations at the bottom of the page. Read a much earlier translation of the book under a different title more than fifty years ago when he was eighteen, nineteen, and he read almost straight through everything of his he could find in the Donnell Library on 53rd Street. Seemed the best place to get them. He’s saying it had shelves and shelves of Dostoevsky. He remembers where they were: in back, on the extreme right, first floor. He’ll go back to the book or start another. When, he doesn’t know, but he has to. What else is there for him to do? Make soup, a salad, clean the house, launder his clothes once a week and his linens every other, resume his workouts at the Towson Y three — four times a week when he’s ready to? Maybe, once the kids leave, he’ll go every day, just to be around people and lots of noisy activity for an hour and use the showers there, which are much better than his. And watch one of the cable news shows while he’s on the exercise bike, after he’s done with the resistance machines and weights, or switch around from one news station to the other or movie channel if it’s a good film. In other words, to get out of the house to do something other than shop or take a short walk in the neighborhood around dusk and maybe once or twice during it say “Hello” or “Good evening” to someone he passes. He might even start using the Y’s pool if the water’s warm enough. But he’s a ways from doing any of that yet. Will he go back to teaching? Doesn’t think so, at least not for a while. He can’t see himself seeing anybody who knew Gwen, without breaking down. Did he ever go to the ballet with Gwen? Just thinking. The opera, of course, many times in Baltimore and New York, but the ballet? Once, in Baltimore, with the kids about ten years ago. Forgets the name of the company — it was from France and they sat in the orchestra because the balcony was sold out. One of the dances was to a recording that sounded like a full orchestra in the pit and a singer off to the side of the stage of Strauss’ Four Last Songs , a piece Gwen and he loved before they even knew each other and which was why they thought they had to go. Oh, yeah. Another time, just the two of them, more than twenty years ago at the State Theater he thinks it was still called then in Lincoln Center. Her mother bought them the tickets and looked after Rosalind that night. He thinks they went to a Japanese Restaurant for dinner after — Ozu. No, that’s the one they liked in the Eighties on Amsterdam or Columbus. Dan, on Broadway and 68th. Their first time there. Funny how things come back. Remembers during an intermission looking down to the lobby from one of the top floors and wondering if anyone in all the years this place has been here had jumped from it. And then the hospital she was brought to after her first stroke. There was a walkway — a bridge over a huge atrium, really — to her intensive care unit, overlooking some other part of the hospital three to four floors below. Maternity, the waiting area, and he thought when he stopped on it if anyone…not “if anyone.” He thought if she dies he might come here and check that nobody’s directly below him and throw himself off. Why? Thought it several times when he walked over the bridge and stopped and rested his forearms on the railing and looked down, but not the second time she had a stroke and was brought to the same ICU. Because he didn’t think he could live without her. Well, can he? Has to. The kids. Their mother dying so suddenly? Gwen’s mother, whom they also loved very much, committing suicide six years before? Then their father going the same way? That’s just what they needed. And he’ll find other good reasons not to, but that one stands out. Anyway — get off that subject — since Gwen and he liked ballet and modern dance and most of the music for them, how come they didn’t go more? And both girls were in dance classes for years, as was Gwen when she was young and her mother took her to see lots of ballet, so why didn’t they take them? Doesn’t know. No, not that excuse again. Maybe it never came up. But he’s making himself less observant than he is. He read the Sun every day. He always knew what was playing in town — movies, plays, music, museum shows — since there wasn’t that much. What’s true is that very few dance companies came through Baltimore, and like the one they finally went to, usually for just one performance and at night. And so they might have wanted to take them to other dance concerts but it was a school night, let’s say, or in some other way the timing wasn’t right. Also, the Garry Trudeau comic strip on the op-ed page of the Sun . That, he read first when he turned to that page. And in both papers, he’d say about half the letters to the editor. Although in the Times , all of them if they were on a subject he was deeply interested in and wanted to read other opinions of or get reinforcement of his own — the war in Iraq, for instance; torture there; tax laws that so one-sidedly favored the very rich; the current president. He wrote a few letters to the Times but always tore them up, two or three in the envelopes he’d already addressed, sealed and stamped. Other people were able to write these letters on the same subjects so much more articulately and succinctly and informatively than he and get their outrage across without, like him, sounding a bit crazy. And some of the papers’ op-ed articles and editorials and, in the baseball season, the sports pages. He never opened the Styles section of the Times or that other section in it the same Thursday, rarely looked at its Tuesday science section or the Sun ’s health section unless there was an article on strokes or caregiving or something that might relate to his own health or talked about the aging process or memory loss or drinking too much or the vitamin supplements he takes or should be taking at his age. Starts every morning with one of several different pills, but he can take them later today or wait till tomorrow. No hurry. What’s a day or two? And what do they do for him anyhow? Forgets why he started taking them years ago. Gwen encouraged him to. But what’s folic acid and Vitamin E and B-50 for, and so on? Why not a different B, and why the E 400 pill and not another number? Gwen knew. Maybe he’ll stop taking them altogether or just take C and the baby aspirin once a day? Didn’t open the business section in the papers either unless, as in the Times , it was where the sports pages, and again only during baseball season, or obituaries were that day. He’s back in the house. Doesn’t remember walking to it or even opening the kitchen door to get inside and doesn’t know how long he’s been here. Few seconds? More than a minute? What else has he missed? Later he’ll ask one of the girls to get the newspapers from the driveway. He’ll say he doesn’t want to read them but they can if they want. They also might want to see what movies are playing. If they feel like it, they should go to one tonight. Might be a nice distraction, he’ll say, and he’ll be fine alone. Or just take the papers out of their plastic bags and put them in the recycle bag by the trash can. He empties Sleek’s water bowl into one of Gwen’s Christmas cactuses on the dining room windowsill. They’re so pretty when they bloom. There must be six or seven of them and they all started from pieces of a plant that had broken off, and the first one from a broken-off piece someone had given her when they lived in their first house, and they all always start flowering about the same time of the year. She fed them plant food a couple of times a year, and if he can’t find it — it came in a box with a little plastic scoop — he’ll ask the girls to go to a garden store and get the right one. Feels inside the water bowl. It’s not slimy, which it can get if it’s not washed with detergent every three or four times. He fills the bowl with fresh water and puts it back on the kitchen floor. Thinks: Didn’t he already do that this morning? Knows he thought of opening a new can of cat food and emptying half of it onto Sleek’s plate and putting the plate on the floor next to the water bowl, but only when he comes out from wherever he is. Cat’s gotten so picky. Won’t eat the canned food if it’s been sitting around on the floor for more than half an hour. What next? To do. Coffee he definitely wants and can use. What mug today? Big decisions he’s left with. Looks at the six mugs hanging on pegs attached to the bottom of the spice rack on the wall. Most of the spices are way past their “best by” date and should be thrown out. Will he replace them? Doubts it. Probably just the curry powder and cumin for soups and maybe the red pepper flakes. Last couple of years he really only cooked for her and for a few small dinner parties they gave, but otherwise he didn’t care what he ate. Didn’t he already think that too? Something like it. Nothing new to say. But he doesn’t think he’ll get interested in cooking again, unless it’s for the kids when they’re here. And all those special German knives and French pots and pans she had before they met. More things to give to the kids. For himself, if he wants something more than a sandwich or salad or quick soup he’ll make, he’ll rely mostly on restaurant take-out and prepared and ready-to-cook foods from the local food market. He has more mugs in a kitchen cupboard, no two alike, and he never uses the one he drank from the morning before. Any reason why? Seems silly. He should break the habit. All right, he’ll break it, but some other day. The ceramic one’s his favorite. There were two — a friend’s wife in Maine made them — but he broke one, or Gwen did, just a few months ago. The mugs were given to them as a good-bye gift the last time they saw the couple there. Gwen and he gave them that same day a copy of a book each of them wrote. “I never know what to inscribe,” he said to her, and she said “Just say ‘with love.’ You mean it.” “Is that what you’re going to say?” and she said yes and he said “Well, we can’t say the same thing. I’ll think of something,” but he forgets what. The couple — they’re both around eighty — lives year-round in the woods there, about three hours north of the cottage they last rented, painting and potting, and also don’t know about Gwen. He should make a list. The ceramic mug, and Gwen felt the same way, is not only nice to look at but to put his hands around, so smooth because of the special glaze, which might have been why it slipped out of whoever’s hands were holding it. Odd he can’t remember whose. But the black mug keeps the coffee hot longer; what he wants today before the kids get up: to just sit down in a quiet place and drink slowly. Its better heat containment — now that’s a fancy term for it and possibly a wrong one — might have something to do with what it’s made of, the thickness of it, maybe also the color; something, and the handle’s large enough for him to get his three fingers in, the only mug he has where he can do that. Gwen could do that with most of their mugs; he’s even seen her get four fingers in some, her fingers were so thin. Takes the black mug off its peg and puts it beside the coffeemaker on the other side of the sink from the dish drainer and rubber mat. Some heated-up soy milk with it, maybe half? Easier on the stomach. Too much bother, and then the saucepan to wash. Really has to scrub hard with the sponge to get all the soymilk off the bottom of it. But again, much better for the stomach so early. Nah, a quicker pick-me-up if it’s all black. Turns the coffeemaker on and goes into the living room, where he’ll wait till the coffee’s made. He’ll hear it, after all the water’s gone through: the hissing and steaming and a sound that’s almost like someone gargling. He sits in the Morris chair. No need to turn the floor lamp on. Most times before, when he sat like this waiting for the morning coffee to be made, he did it with something to read. Did he buy this chair or the Maillol print in his bedroom with some of the money from the first story he sold to a major magazine? Whichever it was, the other he bought with just about all the money he got from the first sale of a story to any magazine. Someone suggested he do that. His mother, he thinks: “This way you’ll always have a tangible reminder of your first acceptance” or “sale.” He got both so cheap. Chair in a used furniture store at the Columbus Avenue corner of the block he lived on, and the print — actually, a woodcut of a clothed peasant woman sleeping on her back in a field — at Brentano’s bookstore on Fifth. Suddenly he thinks of a dream he had between Gwen’s first and second strokes, but when she seemed fully recovered. Now where the hell did that come from? he thinks. He wrote it down when he woke up from it. Gwen pushed herself up on her elbows — she’d been sleeping on her back, so the peasant woman? Gwen? — and said “Why’s the light on? It’s still dark out. You feeling okay?” and he said “Sorry. Dream I had. I want to write it down or I’ll lose it. It’s so interesting. I’ll tell you about it later,” and he finished writing it in the notebook he kept on his night table and shut the light and probably turned to her — she was already asleep on her side — and held her from behind and went back to sleep. It was one of several dreams he wrote down around that time and he must have read it when he woke up later or sometime after, and maybe a number of times. It seemed pretty clear what it meant then, but you never know. He remembers thinking it was one of the more vivid dreams he’d had with her in it. They were on Broadway, walking north on the west side of the street, between 115th and 116th Streets, which was a block away from where they had their Riverside Drive apartment till a few years ago. They were on their way to a restaurant on 117th Street and Broadway for lunch. There is no restaurant there; no side street, either; none till about a Hundred-twentieth. Just Barnard: a college dormitory or school building, he forgets which. He’d passed it many times on his way to or back from a garage farther north on Broadway. About twenty young doctors, male and female, all in lab coats, he thinks they’re called, or just white coats, the kind they wear when they make their hospital rounds. The doctors stopped at the 116th Street corner and waited for the light to turn green. They stood behind the doctors. Then he said “Let’s go around them. I’m sure they’re going to the same restaurant, and if they get there before us we won’t be able to get a table.” He put his hand on her back and guided her into the street and they started to cross a Hundred-sixteenth against the light. Cars going both ways had to stop so they could get to the other side. A couple of cars honked at them, and she looked alarmed. “Don’t be worried,” he said. “You’re with me. You’re safe.” They got across the street and he looked back. The light hadn’t changed yet and the doctors were still standing on the corner. Most of them gave Gwen and him dirty looks, as if they shouldn’t have gone in front of them and then crossed the street against the light. She said “They look angry. I don’t like people to be angry because of me or something I did. Maybe we should wait for them here and apologize.” He said “And let them get in front of us and to the restaurant first? You’re okay. It was nothing you did.” He took her hand and said “I love you.” She looked lovingly at him and said “I love you too.” “Good, we’re in love,” he said, “so nothing should really bother us,” and they continued walking, holding hands. When they were a few feet from the restaurant, he said “I know what I’m going to have. Their chicken salad platter, if they’re not all out of it,” and she said “And I’m going to have their fried oysters.” “Less chance they’ll have those left than my chicken salad,” he said, “but maybe you’ll be lucky. I hope so. I know how much you love them.” She smiled and said “You bet.” That he especially remembers from the dream. It was something he used to say a lot and she never did. But she adopted it the last few years and he, for the most part, stopped saying it because he felt the expression had become more hers than his, and he knew how much she liked saying it. No, that’s not quite it. Then what is? She used so few colloquialisms in her speech that he didn’t want to make her self-conscious of sort of stealing this one from him and stop saying it. No, that’s not quite it, either. He opened the door of the restaurant and stepped aside so she could get past him. The place was crowded. He took her hand again and led her to the one free table. The dream ended. Oh, there was a little more — they looked at the luncheon specials on a blackboard as they made their way to the table — but that was basically it. A nice dream. Long. Nothing bad happened. The doctors never caught up with them. The day was sunny and mild and the restaurant was brightly lit inside only by daylight coming through the windows. She was well, happy through most of it, and looked so pretty. They were hungry and about to eat. They held hands. They loved each other. But why didn’t they kiss? Would have been a nice way to end the dream or to happen right after they said they loved each other. But what he dreamt was good enough. He doesn’t know if he told her the dream when they woke up later that morning or after they got out of bed. If he ever told her. He told her just about all his dreams she was in except those where she died or was dead or very sick. Or if she was in one where one of the kids died. What’s that smell? Electric? As if a short, or something like that, and coming from the kitchen, it seems, and he gets up and goes into it. Coffeemaker’s sputtering, making almost hiccupping sounds. Thinks he knows what it is; same thing’s happened to him once or twice. Shuts off the coffeemaker, takes the carafe off the warming plate, shakes it, and nothing’s inside. Opens the water tank cover and looks inside. It’s what he thought. Dummy; dummy. He didn’t put water in the tank or a paper filter into the filter basket, so of course also no coffee grounds in the paper. He usually does all this the night before — sometimes even the afternoon before, when he knows he has enough coffee in his thermos for the rest of the day — so he won’t have to do it the same morning he’s going to make the coffee. It doesn’t make for better coffee. It might even make it worse, with the water staying in the tank so long, and who knows if the coffee grounds aren’t weakened or marred or something a little by being in the same closed compartment with the water all night. But he likes the idea of just walking into the kitchen the next morning and, without any preparations, pressing the on switch to get the coffee started. He fills the carafe with water up to the four-cup level inside. Waits another fifteen seconds to make sure the heating coils, or whatever they are, aren’t still too hot to pour the water in, which might harm the machine, and empties the carafe into the tank. He puts a paper filter into the filter basket, flattens the seams of the paper so none of the dripping water goes down the outside of it, chooses the bag of Colombia Supremo coffee grounds over the Kona — it’s lighter, so more a morning coffee, and smells and tastes better; he’s never going to get the Kona again but will use up what he has — and puts three tablespoons of it into the paper and turns the coffeemaker on. Go back to the living room chair while the coffee’s being made? Why? It’ll take no more than four minutes. He can even pour some coffee in mid-brew by taking the carafe off the warming plate, which stops the flow for up to thirty seconds, so maybe he’ll do that. But then the coffee will be too strong for so early in the morning, unless he adds soymilk. He opens the refrigerator and takes the soymilk out. But he wants his coffee hot and black — that’s what he feels like this morning — so better wait till it’s done, and he puts the soymilk back. No, he’ll have some now and sit with it, and he pulls the carafe out and pours the little that’s in it into the mug.