Love and Will Read online

  Love and Will

  Stephen Dixon

  Dzanc Books

  1334 Woodbourne Street

  Westland, MI 48186

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 1989 Love and Will by Stephen Dixon

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2012 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  Many of these short stories were published, in somewhat different form, in the following periodicals: Ambit (London), American Review, Boundary 2, Chicago Review, Chouteau Review, Croton Review, Harper’s, The Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Departures in Fiction, North American Review, The Paris Review, Poet & Critic, Quarterly West, Seneca Review, South Carolina Review, Story Quarterly, Telescope, Transatlantic Review, Triquarterly, 2Pius2

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-937854-52-2

  eBook Cover Designed by Steven Seighman

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Contents

  Love and Will

  Dog Days

  Buddy

  Grace Calls

  The Village

  Arrangements

  Guests

  Gifts

  In Time

  Said

  A Sloppy Story

  Magna … Reading

  Last

  Ten Years

  The Cove

  The Painter

  The Postcard

  Windows

  A Friend’s Death

  Takes

  To Anne, Sophia and Antonia

  Love and Will

  Say about an hour ago she said well I don’t want to beat around the bush, Will, I’m deeply in love with this man. She wasn’t being cruel or rude. What was she being? Of course not cruel or rude. It’s starting to snow. When I was in her apartment just before, she said when you were outside did it seem as though it might snow? I said why, does she want to go out? She said she just wants to know, that’s all. I told her I was never in my life able to tell. But truthful is what I suppose she was. I don’t know. But certainly truthful is what she came closest to being to me at the time. I don’t know anything right now except right now I’d like nothing better than to be on top or underneath or at the side or moving at intervals all around her but inside her and with our tongues tied and playful and bodies tight. But there she was. After a while rather tired of me and wanting me to go. Though looking so calm at first. Kissing me when I entered the apartment though now instead of a whole mouth I got the tip of her lips. The peck. And stepping back from me when I put out my arms to hug. And when I finally got her into my hug, placing her arms around me weakly and patting my back as if to console me for my loss. Then holding my hands mother to child. Speaking to me man to man. Looking so sorrowfully at me as if for the pain she was causing me which she couldn’t help me get out of or over or undo. It’s done. She’s in love.

  Listen, she said, trite, ridiculous or whatever this might sound to you, I’m in love with my entire being. So am I, I said. She said she doesn’t believe me. I said did I say it was with you? Anyway what you say doesn’t sound ridiculous or anything else to me because I too strongly believe in love. That’s good, she said. Or believe strongly in love—they both sound right. That’s good, she said. Or I just believe in love, I said, why should I refer to strength? But me she could easily dispose of. The lesser of two loves. Rather the one she said she was growing to love. Or at least could have grown to love. Or whatever it was she said about love. But what she did say was that for a while she felt she might have liked to learn to live with me but could now only afford from a distance to like. The one she loved deeply was the other who she’ll be flying to during her Easter break in two weeks. In London where she said he says he has a large and lovely Victorianlike flat. Saying things to me like that. And that she’s so sorry it had to come to this. Her oneway bliss. Because she was really quite content with me till she met this new man. It was all such a fluke. A girlfriend called her up. She said she knew this English fellow about to leave for England whom she wanted her to meet before he went. He came over for tea for an hour and stayed with her for a week before he took his flight last night. For a few days during this time she kept telling me on the phone she’s sick and very tired and thinks she’s coming down with the flu. Tonight she said she was fairly sick and tired but seems to have escaped the flu.

  She also told me she thinks I’m a bit off. That she didn’t want to say it. That she in fact at first didn’t believe it. She said she thought when I said certain things she didn’t understand that she was being obtuse. Now she’s certain that many things I say are a bit off. I said off? She said off. I said excuse me but off to where? To China? To the provinces? Off to the outer regions of our solar plexus or the inner legions of hell? She said off like that. No not like that. Now I was being belligerent, defensive, reactive, if maybe a little off. What she’s talking about off is when I say things she thinks I think come to me from faraway places or just pop presto magically in my head and which she said I repeat with total confidence without really knowing what I said. Because aren’t people obliged to understand what they’re saying to other people aloud? she said. What they say to themselves or too low for anyone to hear is another story—she supposes anything goes there. I said I suppose so unless what the person’s saying to someone is said more for the poetry of the words—the sounds. She said these off things she thinks I say don’t sound poetical or anything else to her except off. I said I didn’t say they did. And that she’s right. I often say off things simply because I think they might or do sound metaphysically comical or epistemologically profound or just plain bright or yuk yuk funny and she’ll enjoy my company more for my having said them than if I hadn’t or some such stuff. Then you agree? she said. I said cross my hope and heart to die. She said that’s the first time we agreed on anything since that first time we ever agreed on anything which was when we agreed that her sister’s Great Dane puppies we were watching suckling their mama were performing a very sensual act. I told her we didn’t even initially agree on that. That I didn’t think the puppies were doing anything especially sensual in their suckling till later that night when I dreamt of those suckling puppies and in my dream became one of those puppies nuzzling my face between the back legs to get at the two hindmost nipples and that instead of suckling a nipple it was like being with my tongue and lips down in there doing it to a woman which I did to her when we woke. She said she doesn’t remember that. I said I’m sorry but it was only as a result of my dream and between the time of our waking up and making love that I agreed with her that those suckling puppies had performed a sensual act.

  It’s snowing harder. Where oh where in my pocket is my collapsible green felt emergency harsh weather hat? I’m walking to my parents’ apartment of thirty-three years. People scurry past all four ways. Ahead a block away a figure slips and trips before he can get himself upright to flip over again. I pull down my hat tightly so it won’t blow off. If Dana were with me now she might walk right behind me holding my waist and then say she sees she can’t be protected from the snow and cold this way and can we take a cab? If I said let’s walk a little more, as I like a strong wind with lots of curlicuing large flakes, she’d probably say she’ll pay. It’s eleven blocks south along Central Park West from her building and then a right turn down a sidestreet to a brownstone halfway down. I pass the statue I passed with Dana a few weeks ago when I said remember the time I told you I
once saw one of the museum’s custodians polishing the bronze testes of Theodore Roosevelt’s horse? She said then that as she said before she thinks the experience has to be experienced to be appreciated though not visualized. Tonight she said her scalp had mercifully stopped itching during the time David was with her though resumed a few minutes after I came in. I said I suppose that’s reason enough for falling deeply in love with him, seeing how she’s compared her up till then irremediable fungus to thousands of microscopic devils trying to claw their way out of each of her hair follicles and then getting lost in her hair, but why doesn’t she come right out with it and say she thinks I’m the main cause of her itchy scalp? She said she thought she just did. No she only looked at me teasingly as if to say she thought she just did.

  I’m sure my mother’s asleep. She usually reads in her room while sipping from a half glass of sweet wine for a half hour after she puts my father to bed at nine. He’ll be asleep in his hospital bed in the living room, the room closest to the kitchen and bathroom, where during the colder months he spends most of his waking day. He’ll be facing the window. The floor-length curtains inches away from him will be fastened together by safety pins. I’ll turn him over as I do every night I sleep home. About once a month I must rush him in his wheelchair to the bathroom so he can make two. He can’t turn over by himself. We’ve been warned he can get bed sores if he isn’t turned at least once a night and that in the morning his muscles and bones on one side will most likely ache. And he can develop red spots on his ankles from the pressure of one foot lying too long on the other and his having dislodged the pillow placed between his feet. And because he’s a diabetic the red spots can lead to open wounds which can lead to a foot being cut off. Before I turn him over I’ll say urinate first. I’ll place the urinal between his thighs and stick his penis inside if he’s too tired to do so or can’t locate it. I’ll hear the splash against the plastic and then say through now? and he’ll say no or yes. If it’s no I’ll take the urinal away a minute later and empty and wash it out. Then I’ll turn him over and place the pillow between his feet. Two Chux between his penis and thighs in case he has an accident overnight. Cover him up with the top sheet folded a few inches over the blankets and place the urinal beside the Gelusils and bell on the table-tray beside his bed. I’ll say comfortable? and he’ll say yes. I’ll kiss him on the forehead and say goodnight. Maybe touch his cheek or run my hand across his face or pat his shoulder or head and shut out all the lights and say sleep well and he might murmur thanks. I’ll close the louver doors to the kitchen. Get a glass of wine from the refrigerator and read in bed with another glass of wine. Maybe return to the kitchen for a third or fourth or fifth glass of wine before I feel sleepy enough for sleep.

  Tonight she said that’s your problem when I said I’m sure if I had showed her more affection and attention this past month she never would have become interested in this English guy. She had placed on the table a plate of different French cheeses she had picked up at the same store she bought the closest American bread to a baguette. I said I’ll get a knife. She said break it with your hands. I said it isn’t easy breaking butter with your hands unless the cubes are frozen solid and it also gets very messy smearing it on bread with your fingertips. She said she’ll get it but I said stay. I got up so I could get behind her. Her back was to the kitchen. I leaned over her from behind with the knife in my hand and kissed her lips. She let us linger there but when I tried opening her mouth it wouldn’t budge. Maybe you better go, she said. I spoke about passion. I forget whose. Maybe hers, mine, ours. She said must you yell? I was putting my shoes on at the time. I said when I speak about passion I sometimes have to do it passionately. And passion to me is the essential, Yeats said, I said. I told her that was in a letter he dictated or wrote. I know because I read it yesterday. And I know I read it yesterday, I said, because if I had read it the day before yesterday I wouldn’t have remembered the quote and if I read it today I would have remembered if the letter had been dictated or written. She said someone else once said. I said Shakespeare always said. She said Shakespeare isn’t the one she’s thinking of although one of his characters did say give me that man that is not passion’s slave, which she thinks applies to her here. My shoes, coat and muffler were now on. She said she forgets which play it’s from though it was in one of the textbooks she taught from last term, but let’s call it a night, Will, she said. I said I can’t and I’m not going to transform into the little boy she says I sometimes become when I don’t get what I want. Hamlet, she said. Act scene, seen act, I should have said. But I said my stomach hurts and I’m feeling awful and I don’t want to be alone tonight. She said well what do I expect her to do? I said her sleeping with me now would be a very considerate thing to do. She said not tonight. But you don’t even know, I said. Didn’t one time in bed you didn’t want to do it when I did and I stirred you up into wanting to and later you said you were glad I hadn’t let you fall asleep straight off? She said she’ll call me at the end of the week and we’ll meet. I quickly calculated. Today’s Monday. Four days. Too long. Maybe the end of the week meant Sunday to her. I said we can simply sleep beside one another if she likes, arm around arm, not even that if she doesn’t like. Just in the same bed if she likes. Or if she likes I’ll place a board between us if she has a board or a column of thumbtacks down the middle of the bed if she prefers. I said do you have any tacks? She said no. I said what if I just sleep on the living room couch surrounded by thumbtacks and broken glass and you in your own bed in your room? No that won’t do, I said. What have I come to? I said. What about the time she was so warm to me when I was sick? It started in a movie house. We had to leave before the picture was over but she said she didn’t mind in the least. Not if I was sick. She gave me medicine, a back rub. I had fever and chills. She tucked me in, made me mint tea. Paid for the cab. Untucked me, got in beside me. No clothes on. Oh what a sight. I wore her shirt. She turned down the electric blanket. Warmed me with what she for the first time out of many called her hot box body. And next morning I was well. The infamous ten-and-a-half hour virus had passed. Doctor Dana I said when she gave me tomato juice in bed. Just old Doc Dan to my friends she said when she took the glass. I don’t know if it was when she took the glass. I do know it was tomato. I think she that night stirred me up to doing what I originally didn’t feel like though I’m now not so sure. I think I said you’ll get sick. I think she said don’t fret about me. Did we come? Was it fun? Tonight I said passionately that I won’t speak about passion passionately anymore tonight or even dispassionately or even the word passion or passionate or passionately or passional or even passionless or -ateness or passion fruit or flower or week or -tide or play or Sunday or even pass in or passing or pass sing or passengers sing or passenger pigeons used to sing or any words like that. None. I promise. Heart my cross and die to hope. I’ll be passionless. No words even near to passion. Not even passive, passage, passport, Passaic, passe partout or even passe or partout.

  By now I was at the door. At the door I said I’ll stay a while longer if she still wants to talk. I’d like to talk. Stay then, she said, but please not for long. So I again thought there was still some hope. What I wanted most was to get us both into bed. But that I already said. But that I still want to do. Just to get this horrid night through. Because tomorrow, she said, I think tomorrow we both have to go to work. But how am I going to get through work? Should I call in sick and lose a per diem day’s pay? She gets paid when she phones in ill. She teaches at college, I’m at junior high. She works one third of my hours and gets twice as much pay. Her work’s more than not intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying while I come home physically exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained every workday. But she takes the subway to work while I walk the three blocks to school and run home for lunch. I shut the door. Close call I think I thought then. And sit at her table without ever again removing my muffler, coat or gloves. In the movies we used to hold hands. Tonight I said
I bet in a month this piggy finger of hers will have rings. In the street it was arms around waists and also hands. And one night at Ray’s place she fell asleep with her head in my lap. I petted and played with it as I would with a cat. Lights were out, logs were on. Later she said she didn’t much care for my friend and his girl but liked their fire. She also had this bad habit of bugging taxi men. You’re taking us too far out of our way she used to say. Shhh, I told her, better gypped than dead. She said in the cab I looked quite strong but wasn’t that brave. But then another time she spoke about my courage but said I lacked common sense. And then a third time she feared how physically weak I sometimes appeared and that—

  “Beep beep yourself. I said beep beep it up your nose. I said the pedestrian’s got the right of way. Especially in a snow and sleet storm and even if the red light’s against him which it wasn’t. Oh don’t give me that hand over the ear you can’t hear. Go on, go on, before you miss your precious light. Then open your window a tinkle if you want to understand.” There they go. Waving goodbye to me as if departing for across the States. Bye-bye now mama and papa and all the relatives, afraid for a little chill. Your door’s open I should have yelled. Your back lights aren’t working, muffler’s hanging, fender’s dragging, tire’s flat or very short of air. I’m sure they thought he’s a crack. Nut job to say the least. Looks so dopey in his nitwit Pinocchio hat. La la—listen to your tape deck and stereo set. Turn up the heater some more you Cadillac people, cushy as you are in your own mushy homes. But what do I know what kind of people they are? Besides it was a Buick. Be by me now, sweet, and I wouldn’t rage at all. Die my heart and cross to hope. I’d laugh. Ya ya. Out loud. Ha ha. We’d nip from my mouthwash flask of gay sherry.

  Four days ago Thursday I like an idiot called. How’s your flu faring along? Health and energy sufficiently restored to have dinner tomorrow night, tonight? Clown, fool, greenhorn, tool. French or fish at Oscar’s Salt of the Sea I was about to say. She said this iniquitous illness and inexplicable exhaustion and she’ll call me in a few days. I came over anyway. Rang her bell. First a how do you do to her doorman who doubles at suddenly starting and short-stopping her elevator up. Five, but he says he knows. Flowers under my arm. Brush breath sweet, dentin and cementum dehypersensitized. I wanted a yes or no or whether in her indispositions she was giving me the ole heave ho. I also had the collected shorter works of Wordsworth she once wanted to reread. David? No, Will. Just a minute and in a minute she opened the door. Clothed only in a body hose from the belly-button down. Didn’t think you’d come. Putting a top on she said she doesn’t want David finding her naked with another man. David’s the English fellow she’s been wanting to tell me about who’s staying with her this week. She asked what I’m doing and I said looking for his luggage to throw into the backyard. I threw her the flowers instead. For David, I said. She laughed. I started for the door. But why’d she laugh? Wordsworth I must have let just slide down my leg to the floor. The meaning of my flowers-for-David remark was unknown to me then but could now be made to seem clear. Garlands for the victor? To the swines goes the spoiled. Pearls before oxen. Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. I don’t know. Truer sayings have been said but none as known—no. Say it with flowers. All work and no play makes Will a dull boy. She wants to explain things about David and herself but I’m already two flights down the service stairs. Don’t ever try to contact me again is what I yelled.