Stephen Dixon: His Wife Leaves Him

Always ? Sorry. Okay, let’s just get the darn thing done with. But, boy, you’re really an expert at making me stop whatever I’m doing to attend to you and then making me feel guilty.” The time he was transferring her from the commode to the wheelchair and the commode’s front wheels weren’t braked, which was his fault — it was his job to brake them — and one of them rolled over his foot and gashed the big toe. “Goddamnit,” he yelled, “your stupid fucking commode.” Yelling in front of strangers in an apartment building lobby when he couldn’t fit the wheelchair she was in through the elevator door: “Why is there always a hassle with you?” Yelling and slapping the back of her wheelchair’s headrest when their van’s electronically controlled ramp wouldn’t lower. Brushing her hair too hard a number of times when he was angry at her or because of something else. A couple of times she didn’t give any indication he was hurting her or tell him to stop brushing so hard, and after he tied the hairband around her ponytail and turned the commode around so he could transfer her to the wheelchair, saw she’d been crying. All of those really happen? Something like he remembered, and some very close to what happened and even a little worse, and there were a lot more. “Dad,” Rosalind says at the end of the memorial, “are you sure you don’t want to say something?” “No, everything seems to have been covered, and more eloquently than I ever could, so I’ve nothing to add. Besides, I’m a little overcome by what you and your sister and so many of the guests here have recounted about your mother, that I doubt I could say anything even if I wanted to. Thank you all for coming,” he says without turning around to the fairly large group of people behind him; he only looked at Rosalind standing in front and who ran the memorial. “Now I think we should all have something to eat and drink, don’t you, sweetheart?” “If no one else has anything to share with us about Mommy,” she says, “sure.” No one does, so she says “Then Maureen and I also thank you for coming to our mother’s memorial and we now hope you’ll help yourselves to refreshments in the dining room.” He has a glass of wine, talks briefly to a few people, mostly thanking them for coming. To one couple he says “It meant a lot to my daughters that you were here.” Then he thinks Maybe that was the wrong thing to say and the wrong tense to use. Is it “were”? Is it “are”? And “means” instead of “meant”? Maybe, he thinks, he should get out of here before he says something even worse. And save the drinking for when everyone’s gone, and he puts the glass down and says “I meant, of course, I’m very glad you came too. Just, you know, the day’s confused me, and I also haven’t been in the greatest shape since my Gwen died. ‘My Gwen.’ I never before referred to her that way. But not to worry, though, not to worry — I didn’t say it for that. For you to worry. I meant about my not being in the greatest shape. But you knew what I meant.” “Oh, God,” he thinks, “I’m losing it. Who knows what I’ll say next. I knew I shouldn’t be here. But then how would it have looked? I should have let them have it in a restaurant, paid for it all there too — room, booze, food, whatever it cost. Then they could have said “My father’s not feeling well and couldn’t be here.” But then people would be worried. “Are you all right?” the woman of this couple says. “Oh, yeah. Excuse me, I have to speak to my daughters about something important. It’s been nice talking to you. Again, thanks for coming.” And he goes over to his daughters, pulls them aside and says he’s become exhausted by it all, physically and emotionally, and if they don’t mind, he’s going to rest. “You can hold down the fort. I was never very good at it. Socializing? Not my forte. That was unplanned. I’m not making jokes today. Haven’t found anything funny in a while, really, and who knows when I’ll next say something funny. I’m all confused. That’s what I was just telling whatever-their-names-are.” “The Smits?” Maureen says. “Do I know them?” “She was a colleague of Mom’s — also French lit, but the century before — and I remember they once came here for dinner, so you’ve probably been to their house too.” “ Oy , I’m really in a pickle. Don’t even know people I know. I hope I didn’t give it away when I spoke to them. All confused. And if I had pronounced ‘forte’ the way some people do incorrectly — the musical version — I wouldn’t be standing here like a schmo commenting about it. You know, the fort line. But tell everyone to stay as long as they want and that they won’t be disturbing me, if they ask. Incidentally, this was very nice — cathartic, in a way — and I’m glad you had it. See? Next time I say not to do something, also don’t listen to me. Oh, gosh, that almost sounded like a joke. I suppose I’m trying to sound lighthearted so you don’t worry about me. Don’t. I’m okay.” “You sure you are?” Maureen says. “Anything we can do for you?” “No. Hold down the fort. Keep things going as they are. It’s great.” His daughters look at each other. They think something’s wrong with him, he thinks. Okay. “You both look mystified. Don’t be. I swear, I’m all right. I know how to take care of myself, believe me. I took care of your mom. Now I’m going to take care of myself. I’m going to retire at the end of this academic year — I’ve recently decided this — and rest, read, work out more, maybe travel. No, I could never travel alone. Did it as a college student and then later in my late twenties when I went by bus and train through France, and was always so lonely. Just what I need right now, right? Though maybe to the shore one day to sit on a rock and look at the ocean or to some state park where there’s a mountain to look out at, but that should do it. But why am I making these stupid plans? It’s too early. It’s all come so fast. I don’t mean Mommy’s illness, but just two weeks since she passed away.” “It’s been more than a month, Daddy,” Rosalind says. “A month, then. Really. I can hardly believe it. Went by so fast when you’d think it’d be achingly slow. What was I doing the last month, that I didn’t notice? Walking around in a fog, sleeping a great deal, listening to a lot of lugubrious Bach, no doubt drinking more than usual and dozing off from it. That’ll kill time. I’m not sure I’m using that expression right. And gardening, seeing to your mother’s garden, something I didn’t like doing when she was well, but got into the groove once it was obvious she couldn’t do it herself. Making it nice and neat the way she instructed me to, as if I could still wheel her around outside so she could admire her garden and fruit trees. I can’t tell you how sad it made me to push her wheelchair from behind and only see the back of her head but sense her smile. Though here I am telling you. I’m making you sad, aren’t I?” and Rosalind says “No, you can tell us anything. It’s good you get it out.” “Is that what I’m doing? I’ll probably let the garden go, though. I don’t see myself continuing at the same pace, and I’ve no desire to keep it in the same condition as a monument to her. No monuments. I’ll snip here, there; that’s all, so it doesn’t entirely grow over and the property loses value. Maybe sell the house if you girls don’t want to assume ownership of it, and give you most of the money from it minus the capital-gains taxes, or whatever they’re called.” “If you retire,” Maureen says, “you’ll need all the money you can to live on, and where would you move to? I’d hope back to New York so we could see you more. But don’t make any important decisions for at least a year, I’ve been told to tell you.” “Who told you?” “People. Guests here.” “How come they didn’t tell me? Anyway, we’ll see. As for retirement, I should’ve done it sooner so I could’ve helped out your mother more. And I don’t need much — in fact, I like living on a little — and your mother made me promise to be generous with you girls. I’ve my retirement income and Social Security benefits and your mother and I have some savings and investments, which I’ll split in half with you or just take a third, and I seem to make a little each year off my writing, and the house is paid off. There’s also your mother’s retirement money, not much but which you kids will get all of. Maybe I’ll buy a small apartment somewhere, although I’m afraid, much as I’d love to see you more, not in New York. I was born and grew up there and went to school, college, my earliest jobs there — and then back to it for twelve more years; did everything there. Met your mother and lived with her in her apartment for a while, before we married there. We conceived you kids there, and then with Rosalind moved down here, though kept our apartment there for years, but that city now gives me the jitters. And I like the easiness of life here and no trouble in finding a parking spot and the tree and flower smells and sounds of the owl.” “What owl?” Rosalind says. “The neighborhood one out on a tree somewhere near, or else his hoots travel as if he is, which he does almost every night. Neither of you have heard him?” and they shake their heads. “You’re young; you’ve few regrets and done little that’s wrong, so you sleep soundly. Nah, that’s too pat. Your mother and I just happened to sleep badly the last two years, she worse than I. She used to nudge me in the dark — last time was about a week before her last stroke — and say ‘Do you hear the owl?’ She was so happy with it. I’d say ‘You woke me for that? Yes, I heard. Now try to sleep,’ and I’d get half an Ambien out of the container on the dresser and drop it into her mouth, only because she asked me to — I wasn’t drugging her so I could sleep — but it usually didn’t start working for a couple of hours. But I’m making plans again, aren’t I? And geese. You don’t get geese flying north or south overhead, depending which season, and their collective honks. You and your people are right,” he says to Maureen; “too soon. And if I get a simple one-bedroom condo, I think is what I’m thinking about and which’d be all I could afford, no owl or geese and probably no flower and tree smells, either, so that’s out. I’ll come up with something. Just so long as you kids get a hefty share. I doubt I can stay here with all my memories of her in it. And that expression ‘passed away’—what I used before? Another one I never say. ‘Died’ is ‘died.” Not ‘she passed away, he did, they all passed away’ or ‘on.’ On what? I never understood that wording, or maybe just not today. You can understand why. But, excuse me, I’m going to nap. Make all the noise you want, it won’t disturb me. I’m that tired, and sleep’ll clear my spaghetti head.” “Spaghetti head?” Maureen says. “I don’t know,” he says, “it just came to me. Isn’t spaghetti disordered and mixed up and roils around in water before it’s cooked? But I’ll be all right — I can see by your faces you don’t think so. Really, I’m fine. Say my goodbyes and thank anyone who asks. I didn’t see any relatives, mine or your mother’s, but I’m sure some were here.” He kisses their cheeks, goes into the bedroom and bolts the door. “Sure we can’t help you with anything, Daddy?” was the last thing one of them said. When he’s not looking at them, he often can’t tell which one’s speaking. Especially on the phone: their voices are that much alike. He thinks that’s why they always identify themselves when they call, because he made the mistake so many times. “Hi, Daddy, it’s Rosalind” or “Maureen.” What an odd thing, he thinks, looking at it; bolt on a bedroom door. It was there when they bought the house and he never thought to take it off. The previous owners, or the original ones before them, probably feared burglars would break into the house after they’d gone to bed and get into the bedroom if the door wasn’t bolted. For that — he’s had similar thoughts, though would never have gone so far as to get a bolt or latch on the door — he has a thick stick the size of a baseball bat underneath his side of the bed, which has been there for about ten years. The cleaning lady, after she vacuums under the bed, always puts it back in the same place and has never said anything to him about it. Would he use it? He would. Imagined himself several times grabbing the stick, if he thought he heard burglars in the house, and sneaking into the hallway naked with it — if the kids were home, he’d quickly put on undershorts — and jumping out at them and smashing down on their heads and hands till they couldn’t get up and their hands couldn’t hold anything and then calling the police, or yelling for Gwen to. He also has a shorter stick in the van lying alongside the driver’s door, but only since the day after the Towers were hit. Gwen was in the back bathroom that morning, the radio on, when she yelled “Martin, come in here, something terrible’s happened; turn on the TV.” He only used the bolt when he and Gwen were about to make love or a little after they’d started and the kids were home and it was daytime and he didn’t want them barging into the room. It’d be awful if one of them found them coupled, or worse. Gwen never wanted him to use the bolt. Kids will try the door, she said, find it locked and imagine much weirder things going on in there than they are. “We just have to make sure they know to knock and wait for permission to enter before opening the door.” Sometimes he quietly bolted the door — well, he always did it quietly, so the kids wouldn’t hear it, but he’s talking about the times he didn’t want Gwen to know what he was up to — when he thought if she was still in bed or washing up in the john, that he could get her to make love. He could, about half those times, and a lot of times she said something like “I was hoping you’d ask,” though more often she said “I’m really too busy right now” or “not in the mood.” But if he wants to that much, she added a number of times, and doesn’t expect but the minimum of help and participation from her and can be reasonably quick, okay. Actually, once, Maureen, or was it Rosalind? — anyway, one of them, when she was around nine or ten, came in without warning them while he was underneath Gwen and had forgotten to use the bolt, and darted out of the room and slammed the door. He didn’t see or hear anything, not even the door slamming; Gwen did. She later spoke to their daughter, saying something like “About this morning, when you came into our room when Mommy and Daddy were in bed without any covers on them? What you happened upon accidentally is an altogether voluntary physical act that adult couples occasionally do. It’s natural and healthy and normal in a marriage, and I’m not going to give you a phony-baloney explanation as to what you saw, for that would only confuse you more.” Gwen said to him “She looked at me as if I were crazy, and said ‘What are you talking about, Mommy? I wasn’t in your room this morning, or all day, so I couldn’t have seen anything you say.’ I said ‘Okay, maybe I was mistaken. I was still pretty sleepy when I thought I saw you in there, so I could have dreamt up the whole thing,’ and let it go at that. Did I say the right thing at the end?” and he said “I guess so,” and she said “With that dreaming-up-the-whole-thing excuse, she’d know it was a lie and think I was now trying to cover up something that I did feel was bad. Listen, we have to impress upon them more forcefully that we don’t bolt doors in this house but also that no one in the family can come into anyone’s room like that either. If the door’s closed, knock; knock; everyone has to knock.” He lies on his side of the bed. The cat scratches the door. He knows what will happen if he opens it. Cat will swagger in, wait till he gets back on the bed, then jump onto it and first want his head petted and then snuggle up to him. For a few days after his brother died — after his mother too — the cat stayed by his side on the bed, which made him feel better or at least comforted him somewhat. Since Gwen died, cat’s stayed mostly on one or the other of the kids’ beds or on the rocker on the porch, when before he almost always spent the night on either side of the foot of their bed. Cat resumes scratching the door. Should he let him in? No, and just have to hope he won’t start whining, which will bring back the kids. “Not now, Sleek. Go away. I want to be alone.” Cat continues scratching. “I said gegen weg . Or whatever it is in German. But why am I speaking German to you? Just stop hounding me. ‘Hounding me.’ What a joke. Just go; vamoose. ‘Moose.’ Another unattended joke. That one also. Oh, God, I give up. Scratch all the hell you want.” Cat stops scratching and slumps to the floor against the door, where he’ll wait awhile for him to open it and then go somewhere else in the house and come back sometime later and probably scratch or tap at the door again. Maybe he’s hungry and wants him to feed him. But he doesn’t get his dinner till five or six, and last time he looked there was plenty in both food bowls, as if the cat had barely touched what he’d laid out for him this morning. Or it might be he’s thirsty. But if his water dish was empty or turned over — one of the guests, getting something in the kitchen, might have stepped on or kicked it — he’d go to the other bathroom and spread himself out on the toilet seat, or if the seat was up, balance himself on the rim of the toilet bowl, and drink from that, if the last person to use the toilet had flushed it. And if it’s that he wants to go out, he’d go to the kitchen or porch and scratch either of those doors or make the mewling sound he only makes when he wants to relieve himself outside and which his daughters are familiar with, and one of them would open the door for him. But he’s quiet now, so maybe he’s already left the hallway or is sleeping by the door. He shuts his eyes. He tried a couple of times since Gwen died to rest or nap in the middle of the bed, place he thought would be the most comfortable. But he felt — it’s a large bed, queen-size — too far from the edge. He likes to be in reach of his night table, where there’s always a pen and pad and where his watch and glasses and handkerchief, or sheet of paper towel, usually are. Also the night table light. He doesn’t like to have to roll over or stretch for it to turn it on or off. He takes off his glasses, folds them up and puts them on the night table. He used to slip them into their case when he lay down for a nap or sleep, but lost it long ago. He’s been meaning to buy one next time he’s in a drugstore, but whenever he gets to one, he always forgets. He even stuck a note up on the refrigerator door: “Martin, you numskull: get eyeglasses case before you break your glasses again,” but the note fell off, or whatever happened to it, and disappeared a few months ago and he never replaced it. “Why are you so down on yourself?” Gwen said after she’d read the note. “You’re not a numskull.” Maybe she was the one who took it off, but she couldn’t have reached it from her wheelchair. She could have asked one of her caregivers to do it for her and not told him. Gwen’s glasses in their case are on a bookshelf in her study; he moved them there from her night table soon after she died so they’d be out of the bedroom and he wouldn’t have to see them every day, but he doesn’t want to take the glasses out just for the case. He thinks he’ll give the glasses away with most of her things the kids won’t want, like what’s left of her medical equipment and supplies and he doesn’t know what else — some of her books, especially the scholarly ones and all those, except the dictionaries, in Italian and French; hair dryer, package of razors never opened and another of emery boards, things like that; costume jewelry, clothes, unsealed bottle of perfume, and her computer and portable phone — to some organization like Purple Heart. Sure, Purple Heart, that’s the one they always called for a donation pickup if it didn’t call them first to say its truck would be in their area on such and such a date. His watch he never put on today, which is unusual for him, he thinks, and is still where he left it on the night table last night, and he has a handkerchief in his pants pocket. He takes it out, blows his nose into it, folds over the wet part, and drops it on top of the watch. And he once, maybe a week after Gwen died, tried sleeping on her side of the bed. He thought that because she was much lighter than he — about fifty pounds, and after her first stroke, sixty to sixty-five — the mattress might not have as much of a depression on her side as it does on his, but he found it uncomfortable, or some other word, lying there. Like the eyeglasses case: just because it had been her side and all that’s attached to that. He’ll probably never even take the glasses out of their case. Doesn’t want to see them again and picture them on her face. As for her side of the bed: making love with her there (they never seemed to do it on his side or in the middle of the bed or not after her first stroke); turning her over and changing or straightening her pad; massaging her shoulders when he got her on her stomach; exercising her legs and feet every morning and night when she was on her back, and catheterizing her periodically or whenever she couldn’t pee on her own and was risking getting a urinary tract infection. Leaning over her, after he got her set for sleep, and kissing her, if she wasn’t angry at him or hurt by something he said that day, and saying “Sleep well” or “Sweet dreams” and “Goodnight.” Then he’d kiss her and shut off her night table light. But all on her side of the bed, he’s saying. Though some of those — turning her over away from him to massage her shoulders or change the towel underneath her or straighten her pad — a little to the middle of the bed. Anyway, tried resting every which way that one time on her side of the bed, but nothing worked. They have the kind of mattress — but how does he say it now? He has the kind of mattress that isn’t supposed to be turned over. Though they were advised by the saleswoman when they bought it to turn it a hundred-eighty degrees around every three to four months so no one side of it gets unevenly depressed. He never did it because he either didn’t want to mess up the bed and have to remake it or he didn’t feel like doing it on the days he thought of it or Gwen asked him to do it or he felt he didn’t have the strength at that moment to move a big heavy mattress around by himself, and after they had the new mattress set for a year or so — which would be about nine months after her first stroke — because he didn’t want her lying in the depression his body had made. So he did do some nice unasked-for things for her now and then. Of course he did, several a day. Just, they were heavily outweighed by the many instances of his rage and other awful behavior to her since a little after she got sick, and which made her look at him sometimes as if she hated him. “What I do this time?” he’d say. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.” She usually just kept looking at him. “All right, I know what I did,” he’d say. “You don’t have to look at me as if I’m the worst shit on earth, and I’ll try not to let it happen again.” “That’s what you always say,” she said a number of times. “Your words aren’t to be trusted anymore. It’d be absurd (ridiculous, idiotic) of me to believe you can change.” “Believe, believe, because the last thing I want is to hurt you,” and he tried to hug her a few of those times and she pushed him away or she let him but never hugged him back. He sometimes thought right after: She’ll get over it and he will try not to act like that again. He just has to work on it: see it coming and stop it fast. Do that a couple of times straight and he should have the problem licked. That time they bought the mattress set. A good day for them. They went together — she drove — tested several mattresses in the store: he did it quickly: on and off in about ten seconds and without lying back on the beds: he thought he’d look silly. She lay back on each mattress she tested, turned over on her side, then on her other side, then on her back with her arms out, shut her eyes, looked like she was sleeping, even made snoring sounds once as a joke, causing the saleswoman and him to laugh, and finally, with one mattress, said while lying on her back with her hands behind her head: “I like this one; firm but not hard, and within our price range. What about you?” And he said “You choose, because they all seemed the same to me.” “No, they’re each a little different: soft, firm, rock hard, so I want you to feel as good with the one we buy as I do. Try this one again, but this time lie on it,” and he said “I don’t have to; I know it’s good on your say-so. And I never have trouble sleeping on anything, soft, hard or lumpy, so if this is the mattress you want, let’s get the woman to write up a ticket and we’ll get out of here.” “You’re so easy to please,” and he said “Thank you. But you know me: I hate shopping for anything but food,” when he should have said “No, I can be a horror.” But he was much less of one then, right? It was her illness that did something to him and he got worse and worse. He became so goddamn…ah, it’s old news. He has to stop thinking about it. He has to stop thinking about it. After, they had lunch at a Mexican fast-food restaurant next door and then lattes and a biscotti between them — little bits of chocolate and walnut in it, his latte with skim milk, hers with soy — at a coffee place in the same shopping center. Only drinks sold in the restaurant were sweetened iced tea and soda. “We ought to do this more often,” she said when they were back in the car, she at the wheel again, he reading a book in his lap, “Go out for lunch or just coffee, take a break from work at home.” “Deal,” he said, and went back to his book. Someone knocks on the door. “Yes?” he says, and one of his daughters says “It’s me, Daddy. Just seeing how you’re doing.” And he says “I’m fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. I’m going to take a nap.” “I didn’t wake you from one, did I?” and he says — it’s Maureen, he’s almost sure—“No, I’ve just been resting. We’ll go out for dinner tonight after the house is cleaned up, okay?” and she says “Good, we have no plans. Would it be all right if we invite three of our friends along? I don’t know if you noticed, but they came to the memorial — drove down together from New York this morning — and I don’t think it’d be right to just leave them like that.” “Sure,” he says, “invite anyone you want, and our treat. Very nice of them to come so far for it. They can even sleep over if you two don’t mind doubling up and you bring out the futon. Are they all girls? You’ll work it out. But we’ll eat Chinese, to keep the cost down, when before I thought we’d go to Petit Louis — okay?” and she says “Of course. I’ll tell them of your sleepover offer, but I think they want to get back tonight so they can be at work tomorrow.” “Maybe, then, you want to drive back with them — I’ll be okay alone,” and she says “We planned on staying two more days — that is, if you don’t mind us to,” and he says “What are you, kidding? I’m thrilled that you’re staying.” “And if you’re still napping by six, can I wake you so they can start off around eight?” “Sure, wake me, but I’ll be up. And forget the Chinese. What do I care about the expense? We’ll all go to Petit Louis. Make a reservation for six-thirty,” and she says “Let’s stick with Chinese. It’ll be quicker and Petit Louis is where we went most to celebrate our birthdays and New Year’s Eve once and your wedding anniversary a few times, even the twentieth, I remember. It’s too loaded. Have a good nap, Daddy.” “Yeah.” Did he turn off the phone ringer? Thinks he did. Doesn’t want to be jarred out of a nap. The twentieth. That’s when they had their best meal there. Told them to order what they want, don’t worry about the cost, it’s a special anniversary, by all rights they should be at a more opulent place but this will do, and he got a good bottle of wine, not the least expensive French red on the wine list, which is what he always did, though the least expensive of the various categories of red they have there are always good. She had filet mignon, said she feels like she wants a very rich piece of beef. “Strange, huh?” But she’s been a good girl, she said, with no red meat for several years, and what harm is one small portion of meat going to do her? And he, what’d he have? Oh, something with scallops and a plate of pâtés and crab soup to start with and a crème brûlée, when he usually had the croque monsieur or slice of quiche or some other less expensive dish, even on his birthday, and took a little from the appetizers and desserts the others had. So he has two hours. Enough time to rest, and he assumes everyone but his daughters and their three New York friends will be gone when he gets up. Suppose someone needs to use the bathroom here because the other one’s occupied? Just don’t answer. Does he want to be with their friends? Not much. Actually, not at all, but what’s he to do? Wants to make his kids happy. Does he want them around for two more days? Rather be alone, doing anything he wants, not worrying about having enough food in the house and getting them dinner and what time to sit down for it and so on. Drinking as much as he wants and falling asleep sloshed if that’s what it ends up being. But he has to do what they want and not anything to make them worry about him. He does, they might think of staying longer or urge him to speak to someone like a psychotherapist, something he definitely doesn’t want to do. All right, he knows he’s depressed, but whatever his problem, it’ll go away. He just wants to sit in his armchair in the living room and put on whatever music he wants, or not put any on, no music and none of theirs from their rooms or the TV or DVD going. Just silence except for things like the washer or dryer running in the kitchen or the cat’s tapping toenails on the wood floor as he crosses the room, and fix himself a drink and read the Times at eight or nine at night (the Sun he reads in the morning) and then who knows what? Eat a carrot and celery stalk and that’s all for dinner except maybe a piece of cheese on toast, masturbate in that chair, but better and less messy in bed. Sit with no undershorts on under his regular shorts or just in a bathrobe, but nobody walking through the room or sitting on the couch near his chair and saying “You okay? Need anything? Do you know what tomorrow’s weather will be like? Have you ever read” such and such book or author? “Is there anything you want to talk about, Daddy, that you may be holding back?” And disturbing his concentration or redirecting his attention or startling him, because he fell asleep in the chair. But why even think about it? He can’t change it. Any mail today? What’s with him? It’s Sunday, and even if there was, and there always is — not one delivery day in their thirteen or so years here (he always had to ask Gwen how long they’ve lived here or what year they moved in) except maybe in the first week or two, has there not been some kind of mail, and today there’d be mail from yesterday and the day before — not interested in it. Since she died, he’s only gone to their mailbox every three to four days, other than to stick something in, for a medical insurance check that might have been delivered and the bills that have to be paid. A large bird, maybe a crow or hawk — no, too graceful and fast for a crow — swoops past the picture window opposite the bed and then back again, if it’s the same bird, and it could even be a bluejay, and disappears. Loves this about the house: the woods around it and the birds and, a few times, one or two deer. “Martin, Martin,” she shouted once from her study, last time either of them saw deer by the house, and by the time he ran there, thinking something was wrong with her, they were gone. “You didn’t see them.” “Yes, I did. Three.” “Baloney. You just wanted to alarm me. Otherwise, you would’ve shouted ‘Martin; deer!’ What a faker.” “No, I’m not. You’re just sorry you missed them.” “Faker, faker.” “I swear.” Did he then kiss her? Might have. Wouldn’t have wanted her to think he was being serious with that faker business in even the slightest way. She was so excited by the deer. Why didn’t he say “Ah, you lucky stiff.” Not “stiff.” “You lucky” what then? “Doll.” Leaning up against the left side of the window is a 9-by-12-inch framed photo of her holding Rosalind in the air when she was…October: June; eight months, both smiling at the camera, Rosalind pulling on Gwen’s hair but apparently not hurting her, or maybe she’s tolerating the pain for the shot. Asked her about it a year or two ago and she said it was too far back to remember — only he pretends to remember exact wordings and actions from years before — and with her mind now in such sad shape, doubly impossible to. “I don’t even remember who took the picture.” “I know but I’m not saying.” He really say that? Something like it, he thinks. “Ask me something from today or even yesterday,” she said, “though even there I’m only good for remembering half the things that happened.” What a beauty she was, he thinks, looking at the photo from the bed, though with his glasses off — where’d he put them? Always has to know. Looks at his night table and sees them — he really can’t see it that well, though knows from before how beautiful she is in it, and such gorgeous hair. He’s looked at it he doesn’t know how many times; can hardly avoid seeing it in this room except when he’s getting ready for bed or is doing his stretching or barbell exercises and pulls the drapes closed, covering the photo, but this is the first time he’s thought of getting rid of it. It’s been in the same spot for years since one of the eyelet screws in back came out and the frame fell off the bedroom wall and the glass broke. Gwen said a few months ago — came out of nowhere, or that’s how he saw it — she had her back to it — that if he likes the photo on the window ledge so much—“I don’t like how I look in it, though I’ll admit I look immeasurably better than I do today, with my sunken cheeks and frozen face.” “Oh, come off it,” he said; “you’re still a knockout,” and she said “Sure, enough to be first runner-up in the Mrs. America Stroke Victim pageant. Anyway, you should get a new frame for it, if for nothing else but to preserve the great shot of Rosalind,” something he thought of doing lots of times but never did. For what would it have taken? One of the four times a year or so he goes to Target to buy toilet paper and paper towels and such in bulk, he could have bought an inexpensive frame. Maybe Rosalind will want to take it. Why wouldn’t she? It’s a terrific photo of Gwen and her. So then why doesn’t he want to keep it? Doesn’t want to be reminded of Gwen ten times a day. So put it in a drawer. It’ll tear. Then on the top shelf of one of the closets. There are things of his he’s put up there that he hasn’t looked at in years and probably will never need, including unfinished and old unpublished manuscripts, so he should get rid of them. Also things Gwen asked him to put up there because she couldn’t reach any of the top shelves, before and after her first stroke — what should he do with those? Just start clearing out the place, get rid of everything he’ll never and he doesn’t think the kids will ever use, without even asking them. And maybe Rosalind doesn’t want to be reminded so much of Gwen either, though for different reasons than his. She’ll break down every time she looks at the photo, or not that much, but enough times to warrant not taking it. He wants to get up to turn the photo around so he doesn’t see it or put it away someplace, but feels too tired to. That pleasant ache in his fingertips that till now only seemed to come when he forced himself to stay awake to type some more. Was the photographer of that photo at the memorial? A good friend of Gwen’s from college, or good friend then, who came down from Princeton to take a few hundred photos for one she’d include in a photography book she was putting together of just literary mothers with their daughters, but he doesn’t think it was ever published. Gwen would have bought a copy, even if she was given one by the publisher or photographer — she bought almost all the books by writers and scholars she knew, even the prolific ones and even when he told her not to because she knew neither of them would ever read it and the scholarly ones didn’t come cheap — and shown it to him. Or maybe she did get it and showed it to him and he forgot. Maybe he’ll give all the photos he has with Gwen in them to the kids and they can do with them what they want. Only one he’ll keep is a small one in a plastic sleeve, or whatever it’s called, in the wallet compartment with his credit and health insurance cards and driver’s license and so on and which he only sees when he takes the bunch of them out when he’s looking for one. Gwen once said, after he laid all the cards and IDs out on a table to go through them for the one he wanted, “You have a stacked deck. I’ll raise you mine.” He laughed but wasn’t then and isn’t now sure what she meant, unless — just thought of this — he heard “mine” when she said “nine.” In other words…in other words, what? Nothing. She was simply commenting that they looked like a deck of playing cards, and because they did, she used card game and betting terms—“stacked,” “raise you,” and, for no special reason he can see, the number nine. Or maybe he’s missing something and the number is significant and he should think about it more. Some other time. Photograph of her in his wallet was taken by another photographer friend of hers at an art gallery opening they were at a few weeks after they started seriously going together. In other words, not long after they first made love. Here’s something odd. She claimed he didn’t tell her he loved her till about a year after they met, although, she said, she knew he did by the way he looked at and acted toward her and made love. He said once “You’ve said that before and it can’t be true — it’s absolutely not like me to hold back like that,” and she said “Believe me, my dearie, it’s not something I’d make up, and it always stuck with me.” And she? Said she loved him about a month after they met. A weekend morning, bright out, she just woke up, it seemed, he’d been reading awhile in bed beside her — her apartment was on the seventh floor, faced the Hudson, and didn’t have curtains or shades. When she was sick — the flu, a virus — and wanted the bedroom dark so she could rest or sleep, she had him stretch a blanket across both windows and fasten the ends to the old curtain-rod brackets up there. But that time, she just looked at him, head still on the pillow, smiled, said it, and started crying a little. Must have seemed a bit strange to her that he didn’t, instead of saying “What’re you crying for? It’s all right. I’m glad about it,” say flat out he loved her too, since by then, she later told him, she knew he did. She said that what he used to say that first year — in bed, on the phone, at a restaurant once, etcetera — whenever she told him she loved him, and she didn’t say it more than a few times, were things like “Same here” or “Me too” or “I feel the same about you,” but never “I love you” or “And I love you” or “I love you too.” Her eyes, in the wallet photograph, are looking off to the right, as if someone or a particular art work had caught her attention. She has on a white turtleneck, an opened suede jacket or coat (to fit the photo into the plastic sleeve he cut off the lower part just above her breasts), a shoulder bag strap’s over her left shoulder, and her long hair’s rolled up and knotted or tied or whatever it is in back but where it stays above her neck, and is still very blond. “A beautiful Jewish natural blond,” he said to her around this time; “what more could I ever want? And, oh boy, would my father have been happy. ‘Finally,’ he would have said — and not because you’re a real blond; in fact, that might’ve made him suspicious—‘finally, one of my boys does the right thing.’” Photograph’s been in the same plastic sleeve in a series of wallets for the past twenty-five years. Before that it was in a billfold she gave him as a Christmas gift the year after they met and which he never used — wanted to; because she gave it to him, but had no pocket to put it in his clothes except a sport jacket he wore once or twice a year — and kept in a dresser drawer for about two years before giving it to Goodwill in New York when he took his teaching job in Baltimore. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I thought you’d like to move up to a billfold. I promise, that’s the last time I’ll try to change you.” He’s feeling even tireder now, so maybe a good time for a nap. Also feels cold. One of his daughters turns on the central air conditioning or fan because of all the people in the house? Doesn’t hear any air blowing through the room’s register, but that goes on and off, depending on what temperature was set. Tries to just lie there without a blanket, but now he’s feeling chilled. Doesn’t want to get under the covers. That’d be too much like sleep, and he’d never wake up. Gets up, turns the frame around on the window ledge — now she’ll be looking at what she wants to, he thinks, but oh, so hard on himself, so hard, but he deserves it — and gets a cotton blanket off a chair — same one he used to put over her when she napped in bed or in the wheelchair — and gets back on the bed and covers himself with it. Puts the satin border or hem or edge — he always had trouble with the right words for certain things and would go to her for them — to his nose. Doesn’t smell of her and he didn’t think it would. But she was practically odorless, even when she hadn’t had a shower, which means he hadn’t given her one, in days, and also her hair, without a shampoo for a week, never seemed to smell, and her mouth, if she didn’t brush her teeth that day, and if she ate a food that usually gave one bad breath, then he did too, so he didn’t smell it. Cunt, too — he doesn’t remember ever detecting an odor there, but that she probably took care of before they made love. But she couldn’t have all the time. They’d be waking up, or he’d nudge her in her sleep or fondle her till she awoke, or he’d interrupt her working in her study and say “I don’t mean to bother you, but like to take a break?” or “like a change of scenery?” and often they’d go straight to the bed without stopping in the bathroom. Gets a hard-on. Well, what’s he expect? Their sex was always good before she had her first stroke, and after that he just took it when he could. Only time she had some aroma about her was when she had him spray her one perfume on her left wrist, she’d always stick out the left wrist, which she’d then rub on her neck or somewhere. Then she’d ask him, or she’d ask him before the perfume, for one of her necklaces and for him to put it on her, and they’d go. Last times for that were about a year ago, when they went to a concert or play or opening party for his department or dinner at some couple’s house. It was always a couple’s. But maybe he’s wrong about the blanket. Smells it. This time, takes a deep whiff. Smells like a cotton blanket that hasn’t been washed in a while. Tomorrow, if he remembers — anyway, one of these days soon — he’ll stick it in the washer, and after he dries it, put it away for Purple Heart. And the perfume. Spray bottle’s not even half finished and she’s been using it for about ten years. Cost a lot — she had him buy it for her birthday — and he knows it’s still good. That will also go in one of the boxes for Purple Heart along with her socks and bras and scarves that are in the same drawer with the necklaces and perfume. First he’ll ask the kids if they want any of it — the necklaces he’ll just give them — and if they don’t, out all the rest of it goes. He won’t offer them the bras. She was a lot larger there than them, though they have her round rear end and long torso and sort of short strong legs, although hers, the last year or so, became atrophied. But he likes the feel of only this thin cotton blanket over him for a nap. So he might have to keep it, for where would he buy a new one, and when? Hates malls. He’ll deal with it all later. So many things to. Of course, he could always ask the kids, as long as they’re here, to go to the mall to buy him the same kind of blanket, though different design. But bank stuff, investments, safe deposit box, titles to the house and van and just about everything else — income taxes, home and car insurance — all in both their names and which he hasn’t done anything about yet. Feels himself drifting. Did he turn the phone off? Thinks so. Yes, definitely remembers — sees his finger switching the on-and-off button to the left. And his wallet. When he’s home he always keeps it on the right side of the top drawer of the table linen chest in the dining room so he always knows where it is. All right. Nobody’s going into that drawer, and if someone did, for some reason — can’t think of one now. Looking for a napkin? — he wouldn’t go through the wallet or take it. Was his brother here today? No, my goodness, what’s he talking about? — he really must be out of it. Died four years ago — five, in March. He’ll never get over it. Photographer’s a much celebrated writer and just a few years older than him. Photographer’s husband, he means. Makes a bundle off his work and readings and commencement addresses, he’s read, and has been doing so for more than forty years, and he’s a serious writer, though not one he likes. Well, who does he, of living writers? Used to see him — his counter on the main floor faced the Third Avenue entrance — when he worked in the men’s pajama shop at Bloomingdale’s: Burberry raincoat — collar up — floppy hat. He must have used the store to get from Third to Lex, probably when it was snowing or raining, or it was just a more interesting route than the long boring streets on either side of the store. Only time he met him was in front of the Whitney, when the photographer — Hilda — yelled out to Gwen. The women talked. He held Rosalind in a baby sling on his chest. Writer didn’t want to talk to him. Looked every which way but at him. Might have known he was a writer, he thought then, and was afraid he’d hit him for a future blurb. But he wouldn’t have. He’d never do that. Wanted to tell him about Bloomingdale’s. Though he was envious of his early success and all that brought. His mother would have taken the memorial badly, if she was able to come down. Well, if she had wanted to, he would have driven to New York to get her and then, after a few days, if she was strong enough, put her on the train back. If he couldn’t, what would he have done, driven her? She loved Gwen, thought of her as her daughter. Used to tell him on the phone “You always be good to her, or you’ll hear it from me.” “Why,” he once said — oh, God, when they were both alive and Gwen thriving—“she say anything to you?” “No, she’s too good a wife to; just I know you always had a temper.” His dog Joan. What happened to her? Fifty, sixty years ago — sixty-one: just disappeared. She had to have been stolen or hit by a car and dumped in an ashcan, because she never would have run away. She loved him. He never feared she’d get lost or not come home when he let her out on the street to make, which he did that day. People sometimes said they saw her sniffing around blocks away — they recognized her by the limp in her right front leg — but she always found her way back and then would wait in his building’s vestibule till he or his mother came out to get her. What a loss. Woman at the memorial he hasn’t seen in a long time. Forgets if she was originally his friend or Gwen’s, and now can’t even think of her name, Hilda? No, that’s so-and-so. Rhea? Rhoda? Rosetta? Something like that, though not necessarily where it starts with an “R,” but what’s the difference? He’ll never see her again. He’ll come out and everyone but his daughters and their friends will be gone. And he won’t be able to go out for dinner, even something as simple as Chinese. Not tonight. There’s also the car bicycle rack he’s been wanting to get rid of for years. He’s sure Purple Heart will take that that too. Plus her wheelchair and overbed table and things like that, though maybe those he’ll give to the same stroke victims loan closet Gwen gave a number of things to — collapsible cane, walker, four-wheel rollator — when, as she said, she grew out of them. Hears ringing. Doorbell? No, he wouldn’t be able to hear it with his door shut and from way back here. Must be a cell phone with a real phone ring, right outside his room. Listens for someone answering it but doesn’t hear anything but people’s garbled voices from farther inside. Sounds like a cocktail party. Good, let everyone have fun. Gwen wanted to get one of those phones but he said it’d always be falling out of her hands and breaking, so one more complication and expense to deal with, was the way he put it. But he should have, early on, gone to the phone store with her for one that she could operate and then taken her to lunch at a nearby restaurant. He should have said “Hang the expense. And it shouldn’t be that much, It can be on the same plan Rosalind and Maureen share.” Why was he always saying no? Anyway, the kids went to the phone store with her and got her one. Wasn’t there something she bought and wanted him to plant her last few weeks and he didn’t? A rose bush? Two? Probably dead by now, if he did want to do it. He also should have said “Good idea, for both of us, the cell phone, in case an emergency on the road and things like that, and you can talk free to the kids all day if you want.” Blanket’s slipped down below his shoulders, and he pulls it up and then over his ears. Way Gwen liked to sleep after her first stroke, both on her side and back. She’d wake him at night and ask him to pull the covers up over her ears or she couldn’t sleep. Читать дальше