Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

Their phone’s ringing. He’s at his work table and thinks No, can’t be the phone; wouldn’t be able to hear it from back here, especially with the bedroom door closed. But don’t they have one on the dresser? Looks. Two of them, side by side, portable and regular phone, both ringing at the same time. He yells to the door “Please — Gwen, someone, answer the phone. I’m right in the middle of a critical sentence and I’ll lose it if I get up, and I can’t stretch to the dresser from my chair.” But they can’t hear him if they’re at the front of the house, and phones are still ringing. Damn, he thinks, lost it, and gets up and opens the door and yells “Will someone please stop the ringing? It’s killing my ears,” and covers his ears with his hands. “Help me. If it’s the door that’s doing the ringing, and it’s for me, tell whoever’s there I’m not home till I finish the sentence I started. Hello? Can anyone hear me? Then please answer.” Answering machine comes on — the automated voice says to leave a message — and he listens to see who the caller is. “It’s Rosalind, Daddy. I know you hate answering the phone, but please pick up. It’s very important.” He lunges for the phone, presses all the buttons on the answering machine so it won’t record, and says, “Rosalind, where are you? I thought you were here.” “I’m in New York, with Mommy.” “What do you mean you’re with Mommy? She’s resting in bed here,” and he turns around to the bed and she’s not there. “Well, maybe that was yesterday. But where are you with Mommy?” “That’s what I’m calling about. Mommy had to be rushed to the hospital again. Could you come right away? You have her living will and medical insurance cards, and they need them here before they can check her in.” …Gwen nudges him in bed and says “Martin, wake up, I have something terrible to tell you. Rosalind called tonight and said Maureen was killed.” “You call that something terrible?” he says. “There isn’t a word for it. But if there was, ‘terrible’s’ surely not the one. But it didn’t happen and you must’ve just dreamt it, because if it were true, I would’ve found out the same time as you. You would’ve screamed and dropped the phone and I would’ve picked it up and Rosalind would’ve told me. Why do you like scaring me like this? Over and over again. It isn’t funny; it’s reckless. Grow up.” She puts her hands over her face and starts crying. “Okay,” he says, “I shouldn’t have been so harsh. You don’t deserve it. You had a bad dream that seemed real and you believed it. I apologize.” She’s still crying. He takes her hands away from her face. Her nails have dug into her skin so deep that they pierced it, and blood’s running down her face. He looks for something to wipe it with, can’t find anything, so wipes it with his shirt sleeves. “It’s true, then, isn’t it,” he says. “How could you have not told me it before? You’re not crying because you’re ashamed of what you did, but because Maureen was killed. Oh, my gosh, what am I to do? What are we? What are you? I’m sorry, sorry, sorry for everything I said.” …An alarm clock goes off. He’s resting on the bed. Since when do we have an alarm clock? I want to get up, I get up; my body’s the alarm. One of the kids here with one? He looks at his work table where the ringing’s coming from. It’s the phone, always disturbing me, waking me, getting me up. He gets off the bed and disconnects the phone from the outlet in the wall. I’m never again going to use a phone, he thinks. “Never again,” he says to the phone, “you hear? What, you now have nothing to say?” He puts the portable handset to his ear. Maureen’s voice is very low. “What’s that?” he says. “Speak louder. I can’t hear you because I disconnected the phone.” “I was saying,” she says louder, “that Mommy once told me that finding out in a dream that someone very close to you is dead is a good omen.” “When did she say that? And what’s it related to that you’re telling me it now?” “When after she died. She came to me in a dream.” …Lots of people are in his bedroom. Maybe fifty or sixty, he thinks, and all very well dressed. He’s in bed, pulls the covers off and sits up and says “What are you people doing here? This is a private room.” No one looks at him. They keep drinking and laughing and talking to one another and taking canapés off two trays a waiter’s holding out. One woman’s banging on the bathroom door. “Will you please finish in there?” she says. “I have to make and the other bathroom has a line to it that extends outside.” This has to be a dream, he thinks. For one thing, the bedroom’s twice the size of the one he and Gwen sleep in, though all the furnishings look like theirs and are in the same places as in their bedroom. For another, he’s in a suit, and he doesn’t own a suit. And who lies down in a bed in a suit and tie, and under the covers? People in dreams do. The suit’s a dark brown tweed, exactly like the last one he owned. That one got too small for him, or he got too big for it, and he gave it to Goodwill, who left a note in his mailbox that day saying they were junking the suit because it was so threadbare. What’d they do when they picked it up, open the plastic bag it was in with some other clothes and inspect each item to see if they were good enough to sell? He has that note somewhere, and looks in his night table drawer for it and then in his wallet. He bought that suit for his wedding twenty-five years ago. Gwen had insisted he get one. “I won’t have you saying your vows in a sport jacket or rugby shirt. That’s how I met you but not how I’ll marry you. And I swear, this’ll be my last request of you, except for things like opening doors for me if my hands are full and other normal things a husband does for his wife, and vice versa, like helping me move a couch out of the house or reach a cupboard that’s up too high. You’d do all that for me, wouldn’t you?” “Of course,” he said, “what a question.” So how’d he end up in his old suit if it was taken away? He looks around the room. It’s even more crowded now — there must be a hundred people in it — and where’s Gwen? She was lying here beside him, on top of the covers while he was underneath, her dress pulled up, his pants pulled down but his jacket and tie still on, after he told her in the living room “Let’s ditch this crew and go to bed. After all, it’s the traditional ritual to fulfill on such a day, and I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Sharpening my pen, so to speak.” She seemed asleep in bed, eyes stayed closed, didn’t say anything, even when he put his hand between her legs, and now she’s gone. A man, standing by his side of the bed, leans over him. “Congratulations,” the man says, holding up a glass of champagne and slugging it down. “Good champagne. Good taste. You have good taste. You know how to throw a party and pick a woman and what to wear and serve and what to not. We’re all indebted. Three cheers, everybody, right?” he says to the crowd, refilling his glass from a bottle of champagne he’s holding — Piper something; good stuff. How can I afford it? he thinks. No one looks at the man. They continue talking and laughing and drinking and refilling their glasses from bottles of champagne they’re all holding — Piper something again. God, this is really going to set me back, he thinks. But again, where’s Gwen? She was here; suddenly she’s gone. She’s the one he misses most. He’d feel a lot more comfortable if she were here. Not necessarily on the bed — he actually wouldn’t like that, in front of all these people, and he’s not talking about consummating the marriage — but in the room. He’d love to see her drinking champagne and laughing and toasting — no, she’s not a toaster — and talking to people and having a good time. …He goes into a hospital room. The bed’s empty and the mattress is rolled up. He asks a nurse holding a pile of linens “Where’s my wife?” “Who’s she?” “Gwendolyn Samuels, though she also goes by her maiden name, Gwen.” “What room she in?” “This one.” “Sorry,” she says, “but we recently renovated and just now opened this room and it’s never been used in its present life. Its first patient’s on her way up and I have to prepare the bed before she gets here.” “That must be my wife, then.” Two aides down the hallway are wheeling a gurney toward the room. A patient’s on it. He sees the feet first, sticking out from the sheet; the socks, with moons in various phases and stars on them, aren’t Gwen’s. He looks at the face of the patient as the gurney’s pulled past him into the room. Isn’t Gwen. “Where’s my wife, then?” he asks one of the aides. “Excuse me, sir. You’re not permitted in this room if you’re not in some way related to the patient.” “I am, I’m her husband — not this woman’s but Gwendolyn Samuels’, who’s also known as Gwen. Can you tell me how and where to find her? I keep getting lost looking for her. And I feel lost without her and especially not knowing where she is.” …They’re at the dining room table, about to eat dinner, when Gwen says “I know you went to a lot of trouble making this food but I don’t feel well. I feel cold. Please take my temperature.” “You’re all right,” he says. “You’re all right, but let me check.” He feels her forehead; it’s cold. He holds both her hands and they’re cold. He says “Excuse me, I have to do this, it has nothing to do with sex,” and puts his hand down her blouse and presses it flat on her chest. It’s cold. She says “What are you finding? And he says “Let me feel your thighs. They’re always a good test if you have temperature or your body’s cold.” He pulls up her dress and feels her thighs. They’re cold. “You’re a little colder than usual. But just a little.” “Please take my temperature.” “I’m sure it’ll be for nothing, but okay. Anything for you.” He gets a thermometer out of the breakfront behind him, puts it in her mouth and holds it there. “Don’t move,” he says. “The reading will be inaccurate if you do, and probably to your disfavor.” The thermometer’s a digital and rings. He takes it out of her mouth and reads it. It says 90.6. “What is it,” she says, “below normal?” “Just a bit. Ninety-six-point-one. That’s not so bad. Enough to make your body feel a little cold and you to think something’s wrong, but not low enough to call a doctor or rush you to the hospital, right?” “A doctor once told me,” she says, “that normal is ninety-six-point-eight to ninety-eight-point-six. Funny how those numbers almost mirror each other. Anyway, as you said, no cause for alarm, thank goodness. Let’s eat. Let’s even open a good bottle of wine. I feel I’ve recovered from a very serious illness, for some reason.” “Red or white? Oh, let’s go with red. I’ve more of those.” I should rush her to the hospital, he thinks. But it’s been a long day and I’m already sleepy from the two martinis I’ve had and there’s always a long wait in Emergency before they take you and it’s an awful place to be, with people sometimes with gunshot and knife wounds and bleeding and groaning and vomiting, and she’ll be all right. I’ll put a sweater on her and wrap her in a blanket while she sits at the table, and she’ll be fine. …They’re sitting downstairs at a concert. It looks like Carnegie Hall but it could also be the Meyerhoff in Baltimore, he thinks. One moment it looks like one, and then like the other. And they’ve great seats, he thinks, right in the middle of the orchestra. He paid for balcony seats but they somehow ended up down here. He whispers into her ear “We really lucked out with this one.” She whispers back “I know. I hate to see this tune end.” “It’s no tune. It’s the