Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

I wait for the light. Other night I dreamed. Car beeps, big-dog barks from far off, someone scraping a metal garbage can along the sidewalk, waterlogged car transmission squeaks. Of my mother and jarring that dream, as I start to cross the street.

“Watch it,” a man says, Walkman wires in his ears, running against traffic and nearly clipping me.

“You should’ve,” I yell and he gives me the finger as he runs. “At least get a bell. And if you do, ding the damn thing, you dumb id—,” because he still has his finger in the air, but forget it. In one and out if he can even hear me and why start trouble? He could come back, but being a runner I doubt it, as others have when I went on too long. Light’s green. What was it I dreamed? Seemed important, one with both my folks. Jolted me out of sleep and kept me sitting up and thinking about it till I thought it had seeped in deep enough for me to go back to sleep and bring it back easily when I woke for the day. Often told myself to keep a pen and pad — Anyway, the dream. She’d locked herself in the bathroom. “My hair is white,” she said through the door, “overnight,” when in real life it’s steel gray. And something about her bones pushing through her face. “My weight’s down to seventy-eight”—her age? “My back’s so bent I can never again stand straight. I just saw my image in the light.” Apartment was dark. Crack under the door showed the bathroom was black. “Don’t stare at me,” she screamed from behind the closed door. Maybe she was talking to herself. “I’m ancienter and mangier than our goldanged race,” though at the time I felt she was talking to me. I said something like “Get yourself something to read, Ma, that’s all you need. I’ll find a good book if you open the door.” Good book could be the Bible but what would that or the rest of what I said mean? We were never a religious family. Ceremonial dinners once or twice a year and inexact observances of the high holy days. They let me fast for a day and skip school those holidays because the other Jewish kids did. But it wasn’t till my sister got very sick that she put a cloth napkin on her head once a week and lit memorial candles and mumbled a prayer. Bible at funeral? I tried the doorknob but it was locked. “Don’t! I’ll open it at my own speed.” Knob turned from the inside and door creaked open an inch. Creaking part from old ghost movies I saw as a boy and radio mystery shows. Suspense Presents — one of those. “Not yet,” I said. “Wait till I get you that book.” Said that because I was afraid to see her so old, decrepit and sick. In another room my father rose from a coffin on his hospital bed and stretched. He was naked and scrawny, his room dark and stuffy, only a little light from somewhere on him and his hair hung as it never did over his shoulders from only a few places in his head. He released the railing, climbed out of bed and lumbered to me dragging strung bones and a long iron chain. “Drag something imaginative,” I said. “And put something on, for crying out loud,” and covered my eyes and opened them on him wearing a loincloth opened at his genitals and dragging the bones and chain. In real life he died in his sleep in a hospital gown in a hospital bed in the apartment my mother lives in now. In the dream his testicles were twice their normal size and low-slung and swung as he walked and his penis peed like a horse’s. “Come quick,” my mother said when I came into their apartment as I did almost every morning to see them and give him his shot and help her in any way I could, “I can’t get from dad a single heartbeat or breath.” Bathroom door was wide open and there was daylight on her from a bathroom window she doesn’t have. Rattling and clanking from the bones and chain got louder. My mother looked as she’d said she would and said to me “Where’s your book? Don’t lose your eyes. If anyone should be reading,” pointing to my father coming into the room completely naked but done peeing, “It’s him. Sol, you need a cover. I love you. Sol, you need to be fed and dressed. Your son will assist you, but come to me first, you big clown,” and she went to him with her arms out. He spun around once, looked lost, dropped the bones and chain, defecated as he stepped toward her but the excrement which had smeared his thighs and was heaped on the floor, disappeared, fell to one knee and she took him into her arms. His eyes stayed shut through all this. I sniffed hard and wondered how come no shit smell. He was wearing an old bathrobe that I now own. It was open below the waist and his testicles rested on the floor. Scrotum, my thought then, looking like a sleeping white Chinese-porcelain cat squeezed up for warmth. She smiled when she first hugged him, was crying, lips on his brow. His hair was now thick, bouncy and brown. That’s all I recall. It could have ended then. Awoke in a sweat, sat up fast. If my mother ever got, how should I put it, incapacitatingly sick or was declared terminal, if declared’s the term medical people use, and asked me to take care of her or her doctor did and it was possible for me to, I think I’d do it till I couldn’t anymore at her apartment or mine, with a visiting nurse or without, depending what the governments could afford, because what else could I do? I’d work at home while I nursed. Live partly off her Social Security if I couldn’t earn enough on my own. That wouldn’t be wrong, since I’ve nothing but a few hundred saved. Maybe for the first time look for book reviews to do if it took that to manage it without dipping into her funds, but ones that pay reasonably well. So it’s all resolved? “Mothers grow old and sick, fathers die, I don’t like it one bit,” Hasenai says in a poem I chose, “but I’ll try.” I know what he means? Thought so then. If I’m still uncertain tomorrow I’ll write Hasenai for advice, since I always make sure to get the author’s meant intention if it’s anything but pure sound, which in his case I’ve tried but can’t duplicate.

I jot down in my notebook: “Last stanza for clarity’s sake ‘Old Folks Leaving Home.’ Include in collect whatever you do even if it takes phone calls & transpacif cabes to make it precise, & maybe even make concluding poem, since that’s how deep you feel about it & good you think it is at least now. Listen. Ambulanc passing op way other emerg vehics passed half hr ago. Just looked but am now back to jot down this nite of Di’s part, meeting Helene, snow-rain-umbrel blown out of my hand, woman walking like a sleeping bag, no perf word-words for it so far color Helenes hair, Hel looking at me at her across room and then thumping her umb open on Di’s steps, short order dwarf no sport intended intentionally reading unrecognizing me on the sub & tho ironic what he read I forget what, dresser-cat feeding on a sock, do it forget dinner with mom tomor 5 & bring elect blank & if poss bot of one of the best foreign vodks, broke-soaked poor guys in Wash Par & tif over unclean fingers was it in class music bar & berber-basque boy or so with wrong roses & now on my way to my apar (cant see exact what streets Im between because my pocketed scarred specs but somewhere in the teens) & falling on my face before & not jus the snowrain (t for the) & jus fort Jun sound of it now my lack also befor of something/another grace (no that didnt work), tho now thinking so jettisonly-clear, wha? & someone on t cot inside & someone in white seated beside & whirling red atop making wet images etc on t st & siren whining moo-mah moo-mop prob like do it say it yl regret it t incoming inpatients heart & for a sec jus now making me recolect t halfdoz emerg times rushed pop to hosp. & my decis about work & nurs mom if disabled or selfunable becaus of her ilness old or new &/or age (o for or) & realization (cdnt think shorter word on t spu o how to contract rlztion) about pure sound when I duplicate in Juns o realy any japanes poets case almos impos to translat, tho aboutface thos at(e)s. So now — tho how you rlly feeling now pal? Huh? Come on, once in yr life, heres yr chanc, rly tel. Whys it impor & whats this one biz for Ive sporadly told? Never on memo. Thats ridic. Then nevr to friends. I hav, much of it. Then nev to me. Tha cd be tru I think but who ar u? Thn to complet this diar of yr nite & one so memorabl. T diar? T nit? Wha maks it so & who writs thos? U shld so whn u get back home — wel u kno, look bk whn u gt bk yl think bk ‘Oh so thas wha happed & I rly felt tha partic nit so memobl becau so many eventfl events & all t dif things I fel, I remem now.’ No, for deeper reas. Wha? Reasons, deepr, on paper, so mayb som of t sam of wha u said, but whas rly trubling me & mayb somethings i dint kno o wdnt excep thru my probe now wer there, y not? & mayb nows t tim to do it for now Im thinking of it so mayb now I shd, rt? So cmon thn, out wit em, no mor excuses, digresons, questons o jokes — how u feel, whas deep insid, not jus yr mom & work but yr soco lif too, want to mak lov? Me, wit u? U kno wha I mean & I said no mo digres, ques o joes. Sur think, u bet, tho hope nobo ever sees this notebo, not tha I cnt rip it up, rt? tho I want mo than mak lov, now thas t tru. Yes? Yes, tis so. So? So yes, ok, no mo digres, caus here comes, penpal gt yr undrlining pen set: so lonly, longing, yernng, me, hart smartg, partly frm litl work recgniton & almo no doe, but deepst down mos trublng me is Im alo, wan to b wit He or somone lik her — o, o — wit a fe bod in bed tonit & me screeng in betwee, liqidy syrpy ros petl lips — who 1st wro somthg lik it? — strapy wrapy legs, arms al aroun, ruty souns aboun, to hold, to clutch, to click, 2 nuz, 2 dic, 2 lov, tug & kis, 2 cover b covrd, 2 b flatend by her flat 2 big brests (2 for to forget), 2 jus agreeably b wit for a nit, 2 go 2 sleep wit for l nit, 2 wak up wit nxt momg as I wnt 2 slee wit, as befor wnt 2 sle wit is wha I ment wit, meang talkg lovg befor wnt 2 sle wit, holdg/jokg wit, serious/unseros wit, 2 jus b simply o simly b wit a responsv xcitg mind as wel as bod is wha I mos want 2 b wit tonit & if pos 4 a long lng tim, tho Im sur I hvnt made myslf clear here, but anythg els wit? Tot wit perhaps in tim, but mayb I mentond tha, tho not here. Marag wit perhps, tho tha too tho nt hre. But anythg els wit? No nt rt now tho wha I jus wro wasnt awful enuf? Nt ‘awfl’ tho if awfl thn aft meang banal, sily, imatur, nt so muc thos but u kno, tho wha? O u kno or (no mo o for or now but jus fo oh) can fil in tomor or whaevr tim if I kee this tha lng, so now en clos ths joebo & cap pen wich, caus I dint refil befo I lef hom cd b runng dry, I mt latr nee fo mo impo thngs, meang relatd 2 trnsltd, 2 writ (& mt fo mite). But enuf, genug & yah. Hu? Wel, tel me whoevr sd I mus ma sens 2 myslf — who? Nu? O Go, stop go, tho whas tha supo 2 mea tha OG, sto go? Ju 2 sto wrtg rt no, go ho, lo at ths tomo, thn ter it ou of t memobo and up. I mea ‘& up.’”