Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

I turn around. “Opening the window so high really was a foolish thing to do, wasn’t it?” I say to one of the women who complained.

“It’s over.”

“Actually, though, contrary to what a lot of people might think, an open window, even if the air is cold, is a much better way of preventing colds and other virus-caused illnesses in a crowded room than a closed window. The viruses thrive in the warmth and some other reasons I read in the Times Science Section one of these previous Tuesdays. Keeps the viruses circulating, the cold air does, and breezier the better, and also more engaged in staying warm and alive than attaching themselves to us.”

“If that is the case,” a man says, “then I’d think a shivering tired virus would want to hide inside someone’s warm suit or up a sultry orifice than just faint to the floor with a death of a cold and nobody inclined to help it.”

“That could be true. It was the lead article and long and I tend not to finish them in that section. And I do apologize for making you so cold,” and I look around for Diana. She’s across the room, stacking used plates and laughing to herself. “Diana.”

“Was it wise opening the window that far?”

“Sorry. Got carried away though have since made my apologies to the respective parts, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You want to know more about Helene.”

“I’ve known you for nearly five months. I speak to you on the phone about fifteen minutes every other week. We’ve had four to five cheap Chinese and Greek restaurant dinners since we’ve been back and ate at the same table upstate every evening for a month and we’ve almost always talked about a lot more than what’s new, who’s who, movies are phoo and whew, and the rising price of cottage cheese and beef, so how come you never told me about Helene?”

“I never told her about you either and I’ve known her for years and speak to her about twice the times and double the durations as I do you, even if I at the last moment at the door lost my head and said I’d introduce you. You’re not suited for one another, that’s what I thought. Or I didn’t think it though do now. But I’m busy. There’s ice to untray, trayed food to unrefrigerate, glasses and plates to wash or throw away and replace, more bells to answer, opened windows to tell people to shut, and everyone wants to talk. If you do while you’re helping me, be my guest.”

We go into the kitchen. “Besides,” she says as she takes food platters out of the refrigerator and removes the plastic wrap and I empty a bag of ice into a bowl, “though I’ve kept it a stately secret from everyone we both know, I was vaguely interested in you myself. Why give away a relatively good thing, or till someone comparable but more attracted to me comes along? I was never that generous even as a girl. And that ungenerous spirit goes back to my months as a fetus, if you can believe me and I can believe my mother, when I more than most overgrown embryos wouldn’t let her eat, sleep and make love and as a result was more than any one thing instrumental in wrecking their marriage. And because I lived with her and hardly saw my father, I created my own abject dependence on male acceptance and affection and till recently loathed my mother, who I thought was the one responsible for driving my father away from me at such an early, impressionable age. Overfill the bowl with ice so I won’t if you’re not around have to send someone else to refill it so fast. But now that I see you’re not interested in me and probably never were except for perhaps the first few minutes after we met, nothing I can do about it. Besides, I’m inchoatively drunk, so don’t believe most of what I say other than overfilling the bowl and later if you see it empty or low, getting more ice. I mean a bit tipsy, not inchoatively, and liable to say ridiculous tipsy thinks like ‘inchoatively’ and ‘tipsy thinks’ and that I was interested in you once, all of wish would be a thundering lie. You’re okay and amusing to be around but to me not that attractive. I just never thought of Helene and you as a twosome. Not even as two people to talk together for any extensive length of time.”

“We didn’t.”

“There. So forget her. If you can’t talk from the beginning, you’re through from the start — that’s my motto or somewhat. I also know she prefers men a lot more established, stable and scholarly than you.”

“More stable and established? I almost never leave my apartment or for that matter my desk seat. And there must be a couple of people who’d consider me scholarly. Geez, I speak the Emperor’s Japanese without ever having been to the Ryukyu Islands or Japan. Who in this room even knows of the Ryukyus or at least its most recent cession and if they do then the exact date when, or can read, speak, write and translate almost flawless Japanese without in fact ever having seen the Pacific?”

“There’s a Japanese weaver here and his potter wife who are visiting the city for a year. They can do all those except say they’ve never seen the Pacific and translate Japanese into near perfect English and the reverse, though he does have a profitable sideline translating Japanese plays and verse into Korean and Chinese.”

“Oh yeah? Where? I should speak to him. What’s his name?”

“Don’t and let’s not mention his name or allude too loudly to him till they leave. He doesn’t like your translations and introductions. He specifically requested I not think it appropriate for you to meet. It’s his opinion, and one he says shared widely in the Japanese literary world, denoting a fame I never knew you had, that you’ve done more harm than anyone in any English-speaking country to stop English-speaking people from appreciating modern Japanese poetry.”

“Oh, I see him, unless you have other Japanese friends here. I should corner him and do what I can to change his mind. But nuts to him, not that I won’t defend my right to object to his beliefs. First tell me about Helene.”

“What’s to tell?”

“Is she married, and if so, living with her husband? And if not, how long’s it been since the trial separation or divorce? And if so, living with any male now in a faithful relationship? And if not, so serious with any male now that there’d be no chance of a nonmarital separation or divorce?”

“She was, once, maritally tried and divorced, and currently unattached but not loose and teaching American literature in a college upstate. She also has a book coming out not from a university press but a real live and hearty trade publisher that actually gave more than a five-hundred-dollar advance on the short stories of twentieth-century American writers. She believes, something I scolded her for because of the counter reaction it might start against my literature professor friends, in brief plain-speaking critiques and short un-gossipy biographical sketches with plenty of humor and active verbs and few adjectives or big words or discursive turgid sentences. It’s her objective — I think because she was brought up hardworking and poor where every morsel, minute and cent meant something — to say in ten thousand words per author what most scholars manage to do in a hundred thousand or two, which could put a few of them out of business or force them to reduce their paragraphs, sabbaticals and requests for grants. She’s also very sweet, decent, modest, sensitive, even-tempered and with the most thought-out high virtues and lived-out public and private morality of anyone I know, besides being one of my best friends. Is any of this coming through to you?”

“All. It’s everything I like. If she asks, you’ll slip in a good word for me, and if she doesn’t, you’ll volunteer?”

“The truth is you’re not good enough for her. For me, yes. I prefer single-hood and no kids and my minor escapades that don’t interfere with the well-paying fulltime work and month-long vacations I love, so I’ll accept much less. But she needs and can maintain while carrying on her other major pursuits an equally right-minded child-wanting youngish dean of a highly regarded semiexperimental college who also teaches a freshman writing course twice a week and is adored by all his students, envied by most of the faculty, sought out by the most prestigious eleemosynary institutions and do-gooding organizations for his intellect, integrity and class and who also sails, skis and runs besides owning a woodsy home with fireplaces in every kitchen and den and a green thumb, bluish blood, purple passion, red background, pink glow and lots of lustrous hair-locks and stylish tidy clothes. Something of that agglutination, but you just won’t do, which she’ll let you know soon enough if you’re still so foolish to pursue her, since she’s also intently though unbrutally frank. Please put the bowl on the bar before the cubes dissolve and try to stay up till midnight when the party starts to end and a group of us is going to eat Chinese, compliments of a Soviet-supported Russian poet on tour whom I think I just heard resonate through the door.”