His Wife Leaves Him Read online

  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. “Excus
e 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 Ninth, the last, a complete symphony if there ever was one, and then some, with five movements, eighty-six minutes, an orchestra of a hundred, a chorus of a thousand, an audience of millions, and it isn’t finished yet. So sit tight. You got your wish. There’s more than twenty minutes to go. We’ve time, plenty of time, to enjoy it.” “That’s good,” she whispers. “And you know so much about music.” “Just this one. It’s all from the program notes.” “Shh,” someone says behind him. “I was whispering,” he says to the woman. “Shh, shh,” she says, finger over her lips. “But it’s all right,” he whispers; “she’s my wife. And I told you, I was just—” “Daddy…Daddy, you up?” Rosalind says through the bedroom door, or maybe she’s in the room. He keeps his eyes shut, pretends to be asleep. Doesn’t want to talk to anyone now, even them. And if it’s time to go out for dinner, he doesn’t want to. It’s not just their friends; he’s tired and not hungry. “He’s sleeping,” Rosalind says, “so let’s not wake him. I’ll leave a note we went without him because we wanted him to rest.” “Should I turn on Mom’s light?” Maureen says. “It’s so dark.” “No, I’m sure he’ll sleep till morning. He could use it. C’mon, let’s go, before it gets too late for them.” The door closes. “We should bring some food back for him,” Maureen says. “I was thinking that too. What are his favorite dishes?” No food, he thinks. Don’t waste your money. Ah, but they’ll eat it for lunch tomorrow. But what was he doing? He should have answered them. If he didn’t want to go, he should have said so. Now it’s too late. They’re probably out of the house, or about to be, and he doesn’t want to stop them—they don’t have much time—and also doesn’t want them thinking he was faking sleep. He also could have asked them to make sure his phone ringer’s off. And told them to use the credit card they share, because he wants to pay for everything while they’re here, even for their friends. The cat’s meowing from somewhere in the house. The sounds are too far away to know if he wants to be fed or let out. He hopes they fed him. A recent incident with Gwen comes back to him. For no reason that he can see: just popped in. They were lying in bed. It was around 6 a.m. He’d just put her on her back, pulled the covers over her, got in bed. There was a little daylight in the room. He usually kissed her lips or forehead after he got back in bed. He put his face over hers and saw she looked distressed. He said “What’s wrong?” and she said she’s having trouble breathing. He got scared—her internist had told him to look out for any sudden changes in her—and touched her body in various places to see if she was cold. She wasn’t—she felt normal—but he got an erection when he touched her thigh. He took her hand and squeezed it around his penis and kept it there—her bad hand, because that was the side he was lying next to—and she said “What are you doing?” and he said “You’re not interested?” and she said “I told you, I’m having trouble breathing, so I don’t want you on me.” “I don’t have to get on you,” and she said “Please, not now, nor”—he especially remembers the “nor”—“do I know when. I’m very uncomfortable.” “Of course; I’m sorry. Anything I can do for you?” and she took her hand out from under his and off his penis and said “No, it’s happened before; I just never said anything. If it’s like the last times, it’ll go away.” “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” and she said “Same for me to you.” He kissed her forehead, probably pulled the covers up over her ears, and went back to sleep. …“Martin, Martin, come here, I need to speak to you.” It’s Gwen. He gets out of bed and leaves the house. He’s wearing only a pajama top and slippers. He doesn’t own slippers or pajamas, he thinks, so they must be hers. Strange how they fit him perfectly; he’s so much bigger than she and his feet five sizes larger and much wider. It’s dark out. No moon or stars. He goes into the woods where he thinks her voice came from. Hears an owl in one of the trees. Maybe it was the owl who made sounds like Gwen calling him, and she’s still in bed. He didn’t feel around in bed for her and the room was so dark he couldn’t see. She’s lying on the ground, in a dress, shirt and jacket, but nothing on her feet. She’ll get cold, he thinks, and cut her feet up bad. “The kids,” she says. “What?” “They’re in grave danger. Help them.” “What danger? They’re fine. I just saw them, or spoke to them on the phone, at least, just about an hour ago, and they were chipper and healthy. It’s you who don’t look well, from what I can see of you. You don’t sound well, either. Your voice is so weak.” He gets on one knee and lifts her head off the ground. Drool’s running out of her mouth and he wipes it with his sleeve. “Your hair’s dirty. You usually have such beautiful, youthful hair. Are you hurt? Did you fall?” She just stares at him. Then her eyes close. “Okay, I will,” he says. “I’ll help them. First this, though.” and kisses her lips. They’re cold. But he keeps his lips on hers and after a few seconds they feel warm. Her eyes open and look around before settling on him. She’s okay, he thinks. “Can you talk?” She nods. “You scared me for a moment,” he says. “Because why did you think the kids were in danger?” “They took them from me. Everything was nice and I was protecting them and they suddenly disappeared.” “Who? When? How? Where? Oh, Jesus, this is like a play by Shakespeare, where the lead character’s a journalist, or at least a Shakespearean
play, but one I can’t fathom or hear.” …He tries the kitchen door. It’s locked. He inserts his house key into the lock. The doorknob turns but the door won’t open. He rings the doorbell. Rings it several times before Gwen comes out of the study and walks to the door. “Oh, you’re walking without a cane,” he says. “I’m so glad.” “What do you want?” she says through the glass in the door. He can’t hear her and thinks maybe she’s just moving her lips to the words. He says “I want to get in.” “I told you, we’re through, finished, done with…it’s over, so get lost.” “‘Get lost’? Is that what I heard, reading your lips? I’m surprised at you. You never spoke to me so crudely before.” She goes back into her study and shuts the door. He rings the doorbell. Then pounds on the door with his fist till he puts a dent in it. He keeps pounding on the dent but can’t make it any larger. He thought if he could get a hole large enough in the door, he’d stick his hand through and find the new key on the hook by the door, where he’s sure she put it. He’d break the glass in the door to get the key, but he thinks she was barefoot or just in socks and he doesn’t want her coming out and cutting her feet. He yells “You’re wrong. Let me in. It’s not fair.” He grabs the doorknob and shakes it as hard as he can, thinking it’ll fall off and he’ll then be able to push the door open. When he does, he’s really going to have a talking with her, he thinks. Nothing abusive; he just wants to work things out with her so he can live in the house again and eventually as man and wife. He misses her, he thinks. “I miss you,” he yells. …They’re in bed. There’s a little daylight in the room, so it must be around six a.m. He feels around his night table for his watch but it’s not there. It probably fell to the floor, he thinks. He leans over the bed and feels around the floor, but can’t find the watch. Oh, what’s the difference what time it is, he thinks; it’s too early to get up, and he lies back on the bed. She’s on her side, her back to him. He must have recently turned her over to that side because he knows he put her on her other side, facing him, when he got her set for sleep. She’s so quiet, he wonders if she’s breathing. No, of course she’s breathing, he thinks, but what he means is he wonders if she’s having any trouble breathing. Just before he turned off his night table light and fell asleep, she complained about feeling a bit ill and cold. He pulls her nightshirt up and puts his ear to her back and hears her heartbeat. He counts to the beat “One-two, one-two, button your shoe, button your shoe,” which is a normal heartbeat, he thinks, so she must be feeling better. Good, that’s all that matters. He pulls her shirt up higher and strokes her shoulder. Her skin is so smooth: another sign of health. He once said to her “Your skin’s so smooth”—he forgets what part of her body he felt then; he thinks, her backside—and she said “Just like everybody’s, where you’re feeling.” “No, take my word,” he said, “yours is especially smooth, and all over, not just here.” “You’re only saying that because you want something from me, like my body.” “Not really,” he said, “although if you gave me it, I wouldn’t mind.” He wonders why he’s thinking of this incident now. Anyway, he started to make love to her and he forgets if she said to stop. He gets an erection. Now he knows why he started thinking of the incident. He massages her exposed shoulder with one hand. She doesn’t say to stop. That’s a good sign too, for making love, he thinks, if she’s awake. If she wasn’t interested in his touching her and she was awake, she’d say so to stop him before he gets too aroused. She’d say “Please take your hand away”—always “please”—“it’s keeping me from sleep.” Or she’d say “I’m not feeling well, so please don’t try and make love with me.” He’s nude; he always goes to bed nude. She always sleeps in a nightshirt and pad. He presses his penis into the crack in her pad between her buttocks; she doesn’t say anything. Either she’s asleep or it’s another good sign, he thinks. He strokes her legs and buttocks and puts his other hand down her shirt and feels her breast. She doesn’t say anything. All to the good, he thinks, all to the good. He unbuttons the pad straps in back, pulls that part away, feels for her cunt, holds it open with his fingers and puts his penis in. He can usually stay inside her for a minute, maybe two at the most, before it shrivels a little and slips out. He should have gone to the bathroom first, he thinks, got lubricant there and put it on him and jerked himself awhile and then got back in bed and, after wiping some more lubricant in her, stuck his penis in. This time he squeezes his penis at the end of the shaft to keep it hard, but by doing that he can’t move back and forth in her. Then she starts moving back and forth. She has to be awake, he thinks, or else started dreaming of having sex when he put his penis in. It feels so good, what she’s doing, he thinks. He thinks he’s going to come in her for the first time in a couple of years or more. Is she asleep? Don’t ask her. If he speaks, or even grunts, she might wake up, if she’s asleep, and get angry at him for having sex with her while she’s sleeping and tell him to stop. She continues to move back and forth, just a little each way but enough to keep him excited. He continues to squeeze his penis and feels he’s about to come. He hopes he does before she wakes up or tells him to stop or says she’s too weak or sleepy to move back and forth anymore or before his dream ends, because he suddenly thinks he’s dreaming all this. …He has to take the train to get back home. It’s late; past midnight, he thinks, and he also thinks he’s had this dream, in various ways, before. It’s always late at night; the subway station’s never recognizable; he always gets on the wrong train or finds himself waiting on the wrong platform and when the train comes he sees it’s not his. Or else he doesn’t have a subway token and the token booth has a line of about twenty people on it, or he can’t find the token in his pocket and the right train is pulling in but he won’t be able to go through the turnstile to get on it in time. But maybe the platform this time is the right one, he thinks. He asks a man standing next to him “Does the BGE stop here?” “No,” the man says, “just the opposite.” “Where does the train on this platform go, because maybe I can take it and make a connection to the BGE at some station later on?” “It goes to the outer boroughs,” the man says, “—landfills, sod farms, cemeteries, places like those. Any of them where you want to go?” “No, I want to get to the city and I need the BGE.” “For that one you have to go to the upper platform upstairs and wait for it there.” “This always happens to me,” he says. “And if I miss my train, and it’s due around now,” looking at a clock, “that’s the last one till morning. Why do I always take the last train home? Why don’t I give myself more wiggle room? Then, if I get on the wrong platform and miss my train, I can go to the right platform and catch the next one.” A train pulls in, doors open and the man gets on. The doors start closing and he holds one of them open and says to the man “You sure this isn’t the BGE? I didn’t notice any letters at the front of it when it came in, but it looks just like the BGE, and I’ve been fooled before. I once let a train leave that was the right one and the last one that night.” “Please let the door close,” the man says, and a woman sitting next to him says “Yeah, let it shut—you’re holding us up.” He lets go of the door and the train goes. Above him is a sign with an arrow on it and the words “To upper platform, BGE, SUP, EBD.” He hears a train coming in upstairs and runs in the direction the arrow points to. This can’t be the way, he thinks. When I came downstairs I came from an altogether different direction. I’m just going to get myself more lost. He sees someone with a railroadman’s cap on and goes up to him. “Sir, excuse me, I need help.” …He goes into his mother’s apartment. Place smells wonderful; she must be baking something. He hears his brother Carl talking loudly from inside the apartment but can’t make out what he’s saying, except for “Yes, get the rope; yes, get the boat; yes, get the tree.” Great, he thinks. Carl must have just got back from a trip he started out on long ago. He hasn’t seen him for years and it’s so nice to hear his voice again. He hurries into the kitchen. Carl’s on the phone there, looks up at him and nods but doesn’t smile; his face actually doesn’t seem happy to see him. Is he angry
at me for some reason? he thinks. What’d I do? Why, after so many years, isn’t he glad to see me too? “I told you, didn’t I?” Carl says on the phone. “So why do you pretend I didn’t and force me to tell you again? ‘Boat, ship, tree. Rope, ship, tree.’” His mother’s pulling out of the oven a large baking sheet of mandelbrot. She smiles at him and says “You’ll stay awhile and have some of these with fresh coffee I’ll make. They’re best when still warm but not hot, although, if I can say so…no, I won’t say it.” “No, do.” “I don’t want to sound boastful, but they’re always very good. At least your father and I think so.” “So do I and everyone else.” His father and Gwen are sitting at the kitchen table across from each other, both in bathrobes; placemats and silverware and folded napkins in front of them but no plates or food or beverages. They look very old, or sick and old, he thinks, Gwen as much as his father, who must be fifty years older than she. He starts calculating: 1895; 1947; so more than fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Their faces are beet red and scarred and have the texture of cracked untreated leather, he thinks, as if they’d been burned and were still healing. They stare at him as if they want to say something but can’t. “Gwen?” he says. “Dad? It’s so good to see you, and Mom and Carl too, though he seems angry at me for some reason. Do you know why?” Carl puts his hand over the receiver and says “Will you be quiet for a second? This is an important call. A lot’s riding on it for all of us, and I can’t hear my own voice,” and shakes his head at him. “You see?” he whispers to his father and Gwen. “For the life of me, what’d I do to deserve such treatment? Maybe one of you can answer it. For Carl and I were always very close, despite our age difference, or close once I reached twenty and he thirty, and it’s now as if he wants to punish me.” …He’s lying in a bathtub filled with water, smoking a cigar and listening to a late Beethoven string quartet on the radio—he’s not sure which one but thinks it could be the thirtieth. He’s had surgery for a new face, hair transplants to give him a full head of dark hair, cut off ties with everyone he knew in the past, has a new name and IDs and works at a menial job in a small town where no one has any social contact with him or knows who he was. The police and FBI are looking for him. They think he did something he didn’t. He’ll only turn himself in when things are safe and normal for him again. If he’s caught now he thinks he’ll be quickly tried and sentenced to life imprisonment with no time off for good behavior or chance for parole. The doorbell rings. He’s expecting no one—he never expects anyone—so let it ring till doomsday, for all he cares. Now there’s knocking on the door. Probably someone who came to the wrong apartment and is looking for someone else. Well, knock, knock till your knuckles fall off, he thinks, but I’m too comfortable here to leave. Knocking becomes louder and more insistent and his real name’s shouted out. “Martin Samuels; Martin Samuels; for crying out loud, open up!” Must be the police, he thinks. Face it, you’re caught, and he gets out of the tub and walks naked and wet to the door. I should put on something, he thinks. And dry the floor before I open the door. At least get a bathrobe to hold up in front of yourself. It could be extremely embarrassing appearing this way. But really, what’s the difference? If it’s a woman cop, she’s seen everything. A man, he’s seen everything too. But don’t open up for nothing. He looks through the door’s peephole; maybe the person on the other side’s gone or naked too. What would he do then? If it’s a man, he wouldn’t open up. A woman, if she’s not old or very unattractive or tough-looking, he might. He doesn’t see anyone through the peephole, so he covers his genitals with one hand and opens the door. It wasn’t locked, he thinks. Someone could have walked in and killed him in that tub. He looks down the hall. The elevator door’s closing. “Did you come for me?” he yells. “Is there something you wanted to leave me?” The door of another apartment opens. He backs into his apartment and tries to lock the door. It won’t lock. Damnit, he thinks, why is every freaking thing not working? Now I’ll have to get an all-night locksmith or stay by the door till morning. He looks for a phonebook. …Someone seems to be calling out to him. “Yes,” he says, “that one of you kids?” “Both,” Maureen says. “We didn’t want to wake you, but you were talking in your sleep, and from what you were saying we thought you’d want to wake up.” “Where are you? I can’t see you.” “By your bed; on Mommy’s side. Want us to turn on a light?” “No, it’ll hurt my eyes and I want to nap some more.” “Maybe you should get up, Daddy,” Rosalind says. “If you nap too long, you’ll never get a good night’s sleep.” “Not yet, thanks. But what was I saying in my sleep?” “The exact words were ‘Your mother is a ghost.’ That’s why we at first thought you were talking to us. But you kept repeating it—the last time almost shouted it.” “Sorry if I frightened you. But you sure it wasn’t ‘brother’ and not ‘mother’ I was saying? Uncle Carl’s the one who’s been haunting my dreams lately, especially today.” “No, ‘mother.’ It could be you dreamed of your brother but it came out as ‘mother’ when you talked in your sleep.” “By the way, Daddy,” Maureen says, “we brought some goodies for you from Cafe Zen, things you like. It’s still warm, the stuff that’s supposed to be, so we’ll leave it out for you. We’re going out again. There’s a good group playing only one night here and we don’t want to miss them, but wanted to get the food to you first. Will that be all right?” “Sure. Have fun. You get your friends off on the train okay?” “They came down by car.” “Car. Good. I’ll get the food later. No appetite now. In fact, put all of it in the fridge. I’ll have it tomorrow. Or you can, or when you come home tonight.” “See you in the morning, Dad,” Rosalind says. “I’d kiss your forehead goodnight but I don’t think I’d find it in the dark. Sleep well. Love you.” “You too,” he says; “you both.” They leave the room. “Turn the lights on outside, okay?” he yells. Carport and kitchen door.” “Will do,” one of them says. He can smell the Chinese food from here. Makes him hungry and he’d like to have some of it, right from the containers, but doesn’t feel he has the energy to get up for anything but the cat saying he wants to poop outside. Minute later the kitchen door’s slammed shut. Hopes they remembered to lock it. Should he turn on his light and read a little to get back to sleep? Wants to start from the beginning the reminiscences of Dostoevsky’s widow, book on his night table the last two months and before that for fourteen years in the bookcase in Gwen’s study and before that on one of their bookshelves in their first house. Seemed easy reading and interesting, when he skimmed it a few weeks ago. Really has no mind or inclination or desire—that’s the word: desire—to read anything else. Shuts his eyes. Cat’s asking for something from another room but it’s too late. …He’s giving what he’s calling his last public reading in half an hour and looks for the book he’s going to read from. It’s not where it was, on his night table. “Gwen, where’s my new novel? I can’t find it and it’s the only copy I have.” She turns over in bed, grabs a book off her night table and says “Where it always was, right in front of your face,” and hands it to him. “Were you reading it?” and she says “Why, in God’s name, would I do that? It’s yours.” “Wait a minute,” he says, looking at the book, “the title’s L’Escaliers de la Mort. What is this, the French translation of my book? I don’t remember getting it or even any French publisher saying they were going to publish it.” He looks for the author’s name on the cover and inside and on the back, but there is none. “Who wrote this? It couldn’t be by a phantom. Anyway, this all you could find?” “All. My nightstand’s now bare.” “But it isn’t my novel and I don’t understand French that well and it’d be absurde for me to read it to an English-speaking audience composed mostly of college kids. You trying to get back at me for something?” and she says “I’m not.” “Then ‘even with me for something,’ but if I don’t turn up my book, I’m stuck.” Next moment he’s leading an entourage to a reading he’s giving at Radio City Music Hall. The guard at the door to the auditorium says to them “Sorry, no room inside. House is packed and there isn’t even space for stand
ing.” “But I’m one of the readers,” he says, “the last.” “You got your ticket?” He gives the man two tickets, says “Sorry” to the people who came with him, none of whom he recognizes, and takes Gwen’s hand and opens the door. The man jumps in front of them and says “I can only let one of you in.” “We go in together,” he says, “or not at all. Think what kind of reading it’d be without the last reader. It could go on forever or till the lights went.” “You got a point,” the man says, and steps out of their way and they go in. The theater’s dark. A movie’s playing. Every seat seems taken and people are standing and sitting in the aisles all the way to the back. A few people look at them when they come in but everyone else is staring at the screen. The movie sound is bad and the print is grainy and out of focus. He looks at Gwen. She shrugs and says “It’s ominous, I know.” Next moment he’s in a taxi with Gwen, heading to a reading he’s giving. “You have the stuff I’m going to read tonight?” he says to her. “No, don’t you?” “But I gave it to you at home; several manuscripts in an interoffice envelope,” and she says “The heck you did. You’re just trying to blame me again for something you forgot to do. Grow up, already, will you?” “Okay,” he says, “I’ll try. Watch.” He raps on the glass partition separating them from the driver and says through the grille “Sir, even if I know we’re short of time, would you please drive back to the house you picked us up at? The clothes I put on for the event we’re going to are all wrong and I have to change.” “Can do,” the driver says, but he doesn’t turn around at the next intersection. “Sir,” he says, “you missed the turn. Will you please make it at the next cross street?” “Will do,” the driver says, but passes the next cross street and continues straight ahead. “I’m sorry, I can’t be mature about this,” he says to Gwen, and slams the partition with his hand and shouts at the driver “Damn you, when I say turn, I mean turn, turn, turn.” …Gwen says in bed “Martin, help me; I can’t see. My eyes. There’s nothing there. Everything’s black.” “That’s because it’s night,” he says, “there are no stars or moon out, the curtains are closed and your eyes are probably shut. Are they?” “Yes.” “Then open them.” “You’re right,” she says; “now I can see. Thank you. Although the room’s still very dark.” “I told you; it’s late, or early. Want me to switch on your light?” “Just tell me the time so I can be sure what you say is so.” “You have to begin to trust me,” he says, “but okay.” He fingers around for his watch on his night table, presses the button on it to light the watch face, sees it’s quarter past four; four-seventeen, to be exact. “It’s three-thirty,” he says. “That’s in the evening, or morning. You’ll be all right. Go back to sleep.” She doesn’t say anything. “You already asleep?” Nothing. “You must be.” He moves closer to her, one each of their knees and shoulders touch. “Want me to get your breast out? Nothing sexual in that suggestion, I want you to know. Just, usually when you’re lying on your side in bed, you lie partly on your breast and ask me to pull it out. It’s not something I mind doing. In fact, of all the things you ask me to do for you at night, this is the one I like doing most. Does that sound infantile? I hope not.” She doesn’t say anything. “Last time. Gwen?” Nothing. “Good, I’m glad, you’re sleeping peacefully. But I want to help you with your breast so you’re not bothered by it later on. I’m sure it can be uncomfortable.” He reaches over her, grabs her right breast, pulls it out from underneath her and continues to hold it. Then he rubs the nipple. “Don’t,” she says. “I want to sleep.” …He wakes up. He tries to remember a dream he just had, which seemed important. Gwen was driving a car, a convertible, but with the top up. It was snowing and a thin layer of it covered the ground. It almost looked like it was painted on, he thinks. He doesn’t ever remember snow in one of his dreams. He doesn’t recall it ever raining in a dream either, but he’s sure it has. It was a light snow, the flakes quite large and falling slowly. What else? She was steering the wheel with her left hand, waving to him with her right. Then, as she drove past, she blew a kiss to him. He was standing at the corner of a city sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. There were no other cars or pedestrians. When she got to the next street, she made a U-turn and pulled up beside him, the engine still running. Her window slid down and she started speaking to him. He thinks she first said “Hi, how are you?” and then something like “I’m about to say the most important thing I’ve ever said to you and I don’t want you to forget it.” Then she said it, but he can’t remember what it was. Maybe if he shut his eyes and thought even harder, he’ll remember. He does that but nothing comes. Damn, he thinks; probably the best thing in all his dreams so far and he loses it. Holds out his arm and presses the button on his watch. Little past two, he sees. But why’s he even wearing the watch? He’s not leaving his room tonight except, maybe, to get a glass of water in the kitchen from the filtered-water tap. Takes his watch off and places it face-up on his night table. And his clothes. He’ll sleep better without them, and even better if he gets under the covers. Sits up, undresses, throws the clothes onto a nearby chair, gets under the covers on his side of the bed, shuts his eyes and tries to remember what she said. …He’s getting out of a cab in front of his mother’s building. He’s with his sister and sees Gwen standing in the street, her hands holding a book a few inches from her face and reading. “Look, there’s Gwen,” he says to his sister. “I don’t see her,” his sister says. “You never met her, so you wouldn’t recognize her, but the person there reading in the street.” “Where? I still don’t see her.” “There, there,” he says, pointing. “She’s so close we almost could touch her.” Gwen doesn’t look up; just keeps reading. “Oh, Gwen, what am I going to do without you?” he says. A car comes down the street, almost hits her, but she doesn’t move or look away from her book. “What’re you reading that’s so engrossing?” he says. “Because that’s just what you need, a book so good that it takes your life from you. But really, is this any time and place to be a bookworm? Put it down, look around, next car might clip ya.” She continues to read. “Gwendolyn, my precious doll, listen to me for once. You’re not a pigeon, though even they occasionally get run over. So you gotta move. For the last time, you have to. Come just a few feet closer to me and I promise you’ll be safe.” She stays where she is, reading. “You were never pigheaded,” he says, “so I don’t understand what you’re doing. Anyway, all I can say is that’s one thing you never were.” …He’s waiting for a bus at a bus shelter. One comes and he steps into the street but doesn’t signal it and it goes past. Three more come, one after the other, all of them his bus, but he lets these pass too. A fifth bus comes and he sees Gwen seated at a window on his side of the street and looking straight ahead. He yells “Jesus, Gwen, wait, stop!” and runs after it.” …He pushes Gwen outside in her wheelchair. It’s cold, he thinks Below freezing, and looks like it might snow. He’s in a winter jacket, muffler and watchcap, but she’s only wearing indoor clothes and slippers without socks. Her eyes are closed and she’s slumped to one side. “Gwen, you awake?” he says. “No? Okay.” She’ll freeze to death out here the way she’s dressed, he thinks, and locks the wheels of her chair and goes inside. He lights the burner under the tea kettle and looks outside. She still seems to be sleeping. She’ll come in when she wants to, he thinks, and gets the can of coffee out of the freezer. …Gwen’s lying in an aluminum rowboat that he’s pulling with one hand through a party. She’s on her back, her head on a seat cushion. “I hate dragging you around like this,” he says, “but I have to find that woman,” and she says “That’s all right; I’ve time.” He’s looking for a tall thin beautiful blond woman. He met her once, he forgets where, and they seemed to have hit it off and she said to look for her at this party. He pulls the boat through another room, this one even more crowded than the last. People are gabbing, drinking, several of them smoking cigarettes. “Don’t they know those things are bad for you,” he says, “and the sidestream smoke bad for anybody you’re near?” “Live and let live,” Gwen says, sm
iling at him and adjusting the cushion so her head’s right in the middle of it. “I’m glad you’re finally happy again,” he says. “I am. This is fun. Though it must be difficult for you, dragging me from room to room in this, without any water under it.” “No, you’re light.” He drags the boat into another room, the most crowded yet. Must be the formal room, he thinks: men dressed in suits and ties and most of them smoking cigars and the few women in it dressed in long black dresses and lots of jewelry. The men seem to be mostly Indians and Pakistanis—anyway, from that part of the world: Southeast Asia, if that’s where those countries are. “She’s not here either,” he says to Gwen. “You can’t see from down there, but take my word.” “So let’s give up on her and get something to eat,” she says. Then he sees a woman across the room waving an empty champagne flute at him. It’s the beautiful tall blond, and she starts over to them. “You see, I’m right, she is here,” he says to Gwen, but she’s no longer in the boat. In her place, where she was lying, is a celery about five feet long, the top leaves resting on the pillow where her head was. “How can that be?” he says to the woman. “Not only is my wife gone, when it would’ve been impossible for her to get out of the boat herself and if anyone helped her I would’ve seen them, but she’s been replaced by a monstrosity. She must’ve thought you and I wanted to be alone together,” and the woman says “Why on earth would she ever think that? And celery’s supposed to be good for the blood. I think we should stick around till she comes back.” “All night? Even if the party ends?” and she says “Longer, if it has to come to that. Don’t be a bad example of your own behavior.” “What do you mean? Seriously, and I’m not trying to sound naïve, what do you?” …Gwen’s on a bed in a hospital room, feeding and excreting and breathing tubes in her. She’s on her back, looks uncomfortable, and he thinks getting food from outside for her will boost her spirits. “I’ll be back soon,” he says. “I’m going to get you a big surprise.” She stares at him and moves her mouth. “Don’t try to speak. It’s no good for you. Don’t even move your eyes. And whatever you do, keep your mitts off the tubes, especially the ventilator one in your mouth.” She nods. “Not even your head,” he says. “Nothing. No movement. Stay absolutely still, you hear? Although don’t indicate you do or don’t. Goodbye, sweetheart,” and he kisses her forehead. She smiles. “What did I just tell you? No expressions, either.” He leaves the room. He’s on the street and heads for the TripleX Theatre a few doors down from the hospital. Three tough-looking policemen are standing in front of the theater, one of them, it seems, telling a joke and the other two laughing. He has to pass them to get to the lobby and thinks they’re going to ask where he’s going, but they ignore him. He goes through the lobby, pushes a curtain aside and enters the theater. It’s faintly lit and there are no people in the audience or exotic dancers on the stage, just a man with a broom sweeping it up. Pity, he thinks. He wouldn’t have minded a little dancing and simulated sex thrown in with the food. Any kind of sex, really, but only women. He goes up to what seems like a refreshment stand at the back of the theater and asks the man behind it “Do you sell Indian food?” “On both counts, you’re right,” the man says. “We sell and it’s Indian.” “My wife likes it and is in the hospital, some say on her death bed, others—well, I won’t say what they say, and I want to give her a lift. What do you have today that’s special?” The man says “I’m not a full-blooded Indian myself but I am for the first time making chicken breasts,” and he says “That sounds good; I’ll have one to go.” “You have to have two if I’m to go through all the trouble of killing a chicken and making it.” “Two, then, which doesn’t seem unreasonable.” “Come with me.” They go to the front of the theater—the sweeper’s gone but there’s an old man in dark sunglasses sitting in the middle of the first row and staring at the empty stage, or maybe his eyes are closed—and climb the steps to the right. The man points to a door partially hidden by a stage curtain and says “You can pick up the food in there.” “Nice to meet you,” and he opens the door and goes inside. It’s the interior of an Indian palace overlooking a great expanse of water. In fact, he thinks, it must be an enormous sea or one of the oceans. There are no boats or anything else on it and no people on the sandy beach. The palace has very gaudy furniture and a marble staircase and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling about thirty feet up with lots of bright candles in them, some of them flickering and about to go out. If one of the chandeliers falls and nobody catches it, he thinks, or even a single candle, this place could be a firetrap. He smells food with Indian spices in it but there’s no booth or window around to get it from. “Is anybody here?” he yells. “Such a vast space and nobody to populate it? How do you do your cleaning, then, because this room is spotless. Anyway, I got to get back to my wife in the hospital up the street, so if you have my takeout ready, let me know. Hello? Hello?” …It’s night and he’s walking on a dark cobblestone street with his sister. Looks like old Europe, he thinks, but how’d they get here? His sister seems to be around thirteen, when he thought she died several days shy of her tenth birthday. Well, it’s obvious she didn’t die, or people can come back. She’s holding his hand and says “Martin, I have to make. Do you know where I can, because I have to go badly.” “There’s a toilet,” he says, pointing to a door in a brick wall with a handicapped sign on it. “I’ll use it after you, even if I’m not handicapped.” She goes in and he waits outside. A man tries the doorknob, it’s locked, and he says to him “My younger sister’s in there. She shouldn’t be long, but there’s a line. She’s number one. I’m number two. And you’re three.” “Fine,” the man says, “anything you say, sir.” Nice guy and polite and very reasonable, he thinks, the way people should always be. His sister comes out, the toilet’s still flushing, and the man darts to the door. “Hey, wait, you agreed to the line. And I have to go as much as anybody.” The man rolls up his sleeves and says “Ya wanna make something out of it? Because you’re lying, buddy; big, big lying. You were three and I was two, so you’re after me.” “What a bunch of junk that is,” he says, “but okay. You’re a lot bigger and younger than I and I’m not anyone to physically fight over anything. Those days, and I don’t only credit the change to my increasing frailty, are long past.” “Fine,” the man says, “anything you say,” and goes into the toilet, which is still flushing. “That, my dear,” he says to his sister, “is a classic example of flagrant untruthfulness and bullying,” and she says “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t around to hear it.” …He’s lying on a bed with a woman he was once engaged to. They’re fully clothed and kissing. Then he says “Whew, need some air,” and separates his face from hers, “You know, unlike me you’re remarkably preserved for someone who’s almost seventy,” and she says “I don’t know if that’s something someone wants to hear, but I’ll be honest with you. I take nothing to make me look this way. It’s all natural, even the adolescent acne and blond hair.” Though her legs are much heavier than they were, he thinks, her thighs especially, and she was a professional ballet dancer. Best not to comment on them. “So,” she says, “if you’re done looking, we ought to get hopping.” She sits up, slips off her jeans and socks and is naked from the waist down. “I can’t,” he says. “My wife. It’s crazy, because since you broke off our engagement forty-five years ago, I’ve dreamt of making love with you numerous times and in a few of those dreams I even got in you but never ejaculated. Came close, but the dreams always ended before. It was so frustrating, because it felt like the real thing we were doing. Sometimes I’d be on top, sometimes the bottom. And now, when it’s possible, top or bottom or even sideways if I wanted to, I’m sure, or like two dogs, it’s impossible for me to.” “Oh, come on,” she says. “Sure you can.” She unzips his fly and sticks her hand in and searches around for his penis. “Don’t,” he says. “I said I can’t, and I can’t.” …He wakes up and thinks Just like always when he’s making love with her in a dream, except this time it was he who stopped it from completing, and it ended long before
where he usually gets. Why couldn’t he have done what she wanted, stuck it in at least, moved around a bit, taken it as far as it would go? Maybe he would have come. She looked just like she did when he last saw her some thirty years ago, and her thighs were slim and strong again once she took off her jeans, and what did she mean about acne? In real life she might have had a few scars, but her face was perfectly smooth in the dream. If she hadn’t broken off the engagement he might still be married to her, if she hasn’t died, and their kids would probably be in their forties. Strange to think. But what a body she had. Best of any woman he knew. Grabs his penis. Surprise, no hard-on, not even the start of one. Jerks it for about a minute, rubs the tip against the top sheet, then pulls the covers off and gets on his back and jerks it some more, but it stays limp. Give it up, he thinks, and sex again with anybody?—forget it—and gets on his side and pulls the covers up over his shoulder and holds his penis and shuts his eyes. …His older daughter yells through the bedroom door “Dad, Mom needs you.” “Where is she?” he says, and she says “On the hospital bed in my old bedroom.” He goes there. She’s not there. He goes through the house looking for her, yells down to the basement “Gwen, you there?” Opens the kitchen door and yells outside “Gwen, Gwen, you out there?” Runs to the mailbox and back, walks around the house, goes into his daughter’s room—she’s lying in bed, listening to music and reading a book—and says “You sure Mommy wanted me?” She says “She said so, but maybe she no longer does.” …Gwen holds up a big square rubber eraser and says “How much do you think I can get for this?” “One dollar, tops,” he says. “Could you sell it for me, then? I haven’t the energy to and we can use the gelt.” “‘Gelt’? You? I never heard you use a Yiddish word in your life. That’s my father’s word and expression—‘We can use the gelt’; ‘Make a lot of gelt’—not yours. And what’re you talking about our needing a dollar? We’ve plenty of money, or enough, if we don’t hang on too long, for the rest of our lives.” “Maybe you have—you’re self-supporting—but not me. Sell it and put the money you get into a triple-A safe account in my name, with the kids as beneficiaries.” …He’s in the driver’s seat of a car, she’s in the passenger seat, but the steering wheel and foot pedals are in front of her and she’s driving. “We must be in jolly England,” he says. “No,” she says, “in jolly U.S.” “I’m saying ‘England’ in the sense that the ignition and controls are on the wrong side of an American car and you’re driving much too fast.” “No, the right side, and I’m in fact not driving fast enough,” and the car speeds up. Then it swerves sharply to the right and almost goes over an embankment and he yells “Gwen, what’re you doing—you want to kill us? You almost drove off the shoulder into a ditch.” The car continues to swerve left and right on the narrow shoulder. He grabs the wheel with his right hand and steers the car back onto the two-lane road, slows it down by stepping on the brake pedal, then feels guilty he yelled at her again. “I’m sorry,” he says. She starts crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I said I’m sorry. Oh, damn, here, take the freaking wheel already,” and she says “I eventually will, but do you have to be so mean about it?” “No, I don’t; I’m sorry,” and she takes the wheel and drives at the posted speed and doesn’t veer off the road. “Good, that’s the way to go. I’m so ashamed, though; really. I could’ve corrected you more gently and less physically. But you’ll forgive me like all the other times, won’t you?” and she says “I don’t see how I can.” …They’re walking beside a stream in the woods, he pushing Gwen in her wheelchair and their older daughter behind them. Gwen says “She’s not holding on to either of us. You won’t let her get too near the water, will you?” and he says “Oh, she’s all right.” “She’s not all right; she’s not even two. She can wander off and fall into the stream and drown in a foot of water.” “Believe me,” he says, “she has the common sense and good judgment of someone two or three times her age. She’ll know not to get too close to the water, and if she does get very close, she’ll know not to fall.” “People fall even when they do know not to,” and he says “Look, how else is she going to become self-sufficient and independent of us but by dealing with things, even potential catastrophes, on her own? But don’t worry; I’m looking out for her.” “Then look out for her now,” she yells. Their daughter’s standing by the edge of the stream, bends over to reach something in the water, and falls in. Gwen screams, tries to get up out of the wheelchair and the chair starts to fall over. He catches the chair just before it hits the ground and gets it upright with her in it and with his other hand grabs his daughter out of the water and sets her on her feet. “Look at that,” he says. “Saved you both and at the same time. What husband-father you know could have done what I did?” Gwen, stroking their daughter’s hair, says “Neither would have happened if you had listened to me. But, oh no; you had to be stubborn and contrary, just like you’ve always been. You’ll never change. You’re like a heroism-obsessed firefighter who starts forest fires so he can save people when he puts them out. You’re too dangerous to live with. Once we get home I’m calling a lawyer to start proceedings for a divorce.” “You can’t do that. It’s the last thing I want. And think of the kids.” “We only have one,” she says, and he says “But we’re going to have two.” …Gwen’s in a hospital bed in his sister’s old bedroom. His mother’s standing beside her, holding her hand through the bed rail while dabbing her forehead and cheeks with a washrag. He’s sitting in an armchair in the room, reading a magazine, when the phone rings on the side table next to him. He answers it. It’s his doctor. “Jake,” the man says, “I’ve very bad news for you. Your report came back from the lab. It’s just what I thought. You have cancer and you have to be operated on right away to eradicate it.” “Thank you,” and he hangs up the phone. His mother’s old and somewhat feeble, he thinks, and he doesn’t see how he can leave Gwen alone with her for so long. He says to them “That was my doctor. He called me Jake, for some reason, but I know he knew he was talking to me. Must’ve been a slip of the tongue. ‘Jake’ means okay, and I’m not. He says I have the most serious cancer a man my age can get and I have to have surgery today or I’ll be dead by next week. I don’t know what to do. Leave or stay. Abandon you both for a while to try to save my own skin or continue to help Mom with Gwen and die in a week. Tell me, what should I do?” Gwen hunches her shoulders and gives a look as if she doesn’t know what he should do. His mother says “Do what’s right for yourself; that’s always the best way. That’s what I’m doing with your lovely bride. If I didn’t look after her day and night I know it’d upset me so much that I’d get mortally sick and be dead very soon.” “Gwen,” he says, “please say something. Don’t leave me guessing what you think.” She hunches her shoulders again and gives a look as if she knows what she wants to say but doesn’t want to say it to him. “Then whisper to Mom what you’re thinking and she can tell me.” She shakes her head. “You’re no help,” he says to her, “you’re no help,” and he starts crying uncontrollably. “Oh, my poor boy,” his mother says, patting his shoulder. There, there, everything will work out. You’ll come to the right decision for yourself without any help from either of us and feel much better in the end.” He shakes his head and wants to say “No, it won’t,” but he’s too choked up to speak. …Someone’s knocking on his bedroom door. “Yes?” he says, but the knocking continues. It’s coming from some other part of the house, he thinks. He gets off the bed and goes into the kitchen. A policeman’s behind the screened storm door, his fist just about to knock again. Big guy, maybe six-four, and muscular, with a fat neck, and looks very serious. He backs up a few feet when he sees Martin and puts his hand on his holster. He’s suspicious of me, he thinks, or maybe I got it wrong. It’s bad news, though, that’s for sure, either for me or about someone I know. Maybe one of my daughters, or both together, died in a car crash or got sick all of a sudden and was rushed to a hospital. No, if it were a death, there’d be two policemen. But that’s only when two soldiers show up at a door
to tell someone their son or another close relative died in the war. “Yes, officer,” he says, opening the door, “what can I do for you?” Is this fourteen-oh-seven Hazelton?” “No, thank goodness. I mean, that what you’ve come for isn’t related to me. I was thinking the worst for my family again. House you want’s farther up this driveway.” “Are you sure you’re not fourteen-oh-seven? We got a call from a lady at that address that her husband’s being very rough with her, might even have threatened her life, but before we could get her name, the phone was slammed down and nobody would pick up when we called.” “I didn’t know she had a husband. Anyway, people often come to our house when they want hers. Pizza deliverymen and UPS drivers and the like. Maybe because we have no name or house number on our mailbox and they think the first house they come to on this driveway is hers. But I swear to you, nothing but harmony between me and my wife.” “May I talk to her?” and he says “She’s out. You can look around the house, though,” and the policeman says “No, that’s all right,” and gets back in his car and drives up the hill. He goes back inside the house. “Gwen, you’ll never believe what just happened,” he says, walking into her study, where she’s working at her computer. “A cop was at the door and said you called them to complain I was roughing you up and possibly threatening your life. He asked to see you but I told him you weren’t here. Good thing he didn’t take me up on my invitation to inspect the house. I could’ve been charged with giving false information, maybe handcuffed and thrown into the back of his car. But he must’ve believed me when I said there was nothing but good feelings between us and the last thing I’d do is harm you in any way, shape or form. Yes, we’ve had our spats, I said, but worked them out almost right away. Like my parents used to say about their marriage, I told him, we never went to bed angry at each other, which meant we always got a good night’s sleep, unless we were sick with or worried about something. One thing I find puzzling is why he knocked on the door when he could have used the bell. The bell is much more civilized.” She raises her shoulders and turns back to the computer and resumes typing. “So what’re you working on these days?” he says. She continues typing. “All right, I’ll go.” …They’re watching a movie on the DVD player. She’s in a wheelchair and he’s lying on the bed and feeling sleepy. “What film is this?” he says, yawning, and she says “Marie Antoinette.” The old one or the new one?” and she says “neither of those but one of the two or three in-between. 1938.” “That would make me two. Did I order it or did you?” and she says “You never order anything online because you don’t know how to.” “Also,” he says, “because I can hardly stand seeing anything on the TV screen for even a single minute and most movies are pure dreck. Violent, vulgar, stupid, sophomoric—” “All right,” she says, “all right.” “So I figure, why bother renting a movie at a video store or even asking you to order one online that probably neither of us will like. In addition—” and she says “Shh, let me watch. It’s not as if I have to find worthless everything you do or that you can convince me to.” “Me? Your hubby? You got the wrong body, lady. Because why would I—” and she puts her finger over her lips and looks sternly at him and then turns back to the movie. Marie’s berating some foppish-looking man over a necklace he wants to be paid for and she claims she never bought, when the picture disappears and the screen starts flashing horizontal lines and then goes dark and next the room’s lights go on and off a few times and then stay off. He jumps off the bed and looks out the window. The whole neighborhood’s dark. “Oh, my goodness,” she says, “I’m frightened. Hold me,” and he says “Glad to, but stay there—it might take me some time,” and feels his way over to her by touching the dresser and bed and then her chair, and runs his hands up her legs and arms and hugs her around the head. “My sweetheart,” he says, “this is so awful. I’m very frightened too. I don’t want—this outage has convinced me of it—to live anymore.” “Don’t say that,” she says, “because where will that leave me?” Just then the generator starts up and the lights in the room go on and the movie resumes. “Thank God,” she says. “But shut the movie off and send it back. I don’t want to watch any more of it. It’s a familiar story with gorgeous sets but acted quite poorly and it’s all going to end badly for Louie and Marie.” …She’s in bed under the covers, he’s sitting in a chair beside her holding her hand; they’re watching Marie Antoinette on their DVD player. “Do you know if this is the new one or the old?” he says, and she says “I’m too sleepy to care.” “Did I order it or did you?” and she says “All I know is it wouldn’t have been my first choice,” and clasps her hands together on her chest and shuts her eyes. “Don’t fall asleep,” he says. “I don’t want to watch the movie alone. And you speak French, so I need you to translate it for me.” “The movie’s in English, made in America,” and he says “I haven’t understood a word anyone’s said.” “Then turn it off, because I’m not interested,” and he says “Glad to,” and presses the power button on the TV. All the lights in the room go off but the movie stays on. He gets up and looks out the window. “We seem to be the only ones who’ve lost power,” he says. “Martin, Martin, help me. I’m scared, I feel this is the beginning of everything going.” “Glad to,” he says, and lies down beside her and kisses her forehead and eyes and puts his hand under the covers and feels between her legs. “Now everything seems a little better,” she says, “but I won’t be able to sleep with the movie on. It’s going to end brutally, with their heads sliced off or the sounds of them rolling on the ground, which is just as bad. Take me to another room for the night.” He stands up, puts his arms under her back and legs and lifts her and carries her into their older daughter’s room. …“I’m going out for a walk,” he yells from the kitchen, and Gwen says from somewhere in the house “I didn’t hear you; what’s that you said?” “I’ll see you later,” he says, and leaves the house. He walks for a few seconds on the road by his house and then feels a sharp pain in his right temple, thinks Oh, no, it’s happening, what I for a long time dreaded, and collapses to the ground. I’m dead, he thinks. Probably a stroke, or shot an embolism, as my mother used to say. I got off easy, though. Pain for just a second and no lingering death. He’s now sitting on a tree limb about ten feet up, looking at his body on the ground. So this must be what I looked like when I was asleep, he thinks. I always wanted to know. Of course I could’ve had Gwen or one of my old girlfriends take a photo of me while I was asleep, but I never till now thought of doing that. Gwen. What it’s going to do to her. No preparation for my death, which she’ll find out about pretty quickly. Our house is right over there. I can see the roof through the trees. I want to cry about the spot I’ve put her in, but can’t. He feels his eyes. Nothing, he thinks, and I also don’t feel any tears welling up. I guess when you go you stay dry. No pissing, spitting, sweating, tears. A jogger stops about twenty feet away, approaches his body cautiously. “God almighty,” she says. She gets on her knees and puts her ear to his chest and mouth. “Poor guy,” she says. “Not a sound.” She tries dragging him off the road by his arms, probably so no cars will run him over, but it’s obvious he’s too heavy for her. And dead weight, of course, he thinks. A car stops; then several: a line of cars and a school bus. One of his kids on it? What’s he thinking? They’re grown up and out of the house. “Turn that thing around,” someone shouts at the bus driver. “There’s a dead body here.” Their cat crosses the footbridge from their house and licks his hand and then settles down beside him, its head resting on his chest. People get out of their cars, some on cell phones. Then sirens: an emergency medical truck. Four women run out of it with equipment, some they carry, some they roll, and hook up lines and tubes to him. “I know the man,” the jogger says; “I just realized it. He’s sort of an institution around here. Writer of some note and a very popular college teacher too. I read a front page article on him just last week. Because of it, I wanted to stop by his house and meet him and shake his hand for continuing to do what he does, although I never read a word of hi
m, and now it’s too late. This always happens to me. I get a great idea to do something, and by the time I’m prepared to act on it, the possibility of it fizzles. His name’s Kyle Faulkner. He said in the article it’s a difficult name for a writer to have. Readers will always think of the shorter Faulkner, make unfortunate comparisons, though it didn’t seem to hurt him that much. As far as this neighborhood’s concerned, he’s famous.” “His name’s Martin Samuels,” a man says. “Where’d you ever get ‘Faulkner’? And ‘writer of some note’? Maybe ‘one note,’ because his work’s surely not to everyone’s liking. Too granquilogent and pompastic, or whatever the damn words are. I happened to have read a little of his work, or, rather, listened to him read a sample of his newest novel on a podcast connected to that article, so I’m in a position to say.” “I plan to listen to it,” she says, “and I will, but up till now I haven’t found the time.” Then he sees two policemen at his kitchen door, one of them knocking on it. He’s sitting on the patio table there. Normally, it’d topple over if he sat on it, he thinks. The policeman knocks again, but harder. “Ring the bell,” he says to him; “the knocking will only alarm her.” Gwen wheels her wheelchair around from her computer. “Open the door,” she says; “it’s unlocked.” He sees her saying this from the opened kitchen window. The policemen go in and one of them says “I’m afraid we’ve come with extraordinarily bad news for you, Mrs. Samuels. If you are Mrs. Samuels.” “I know what it is,” she says. “I sensed it but didn’t want to believe it, even before I heard the sirens. My husband died of a stroke while jogging, didn’t he?” “Walking,” the policeman says, “though you got half of it right. I don’t know how I know about the walking part, since no one saw him fall, but I do. A jogger did find him.” “Walking,” she says. “So that’s what he was shouting out to me before he left the house. I thought he said ‘I’m going out for a talk,’” and she lowers her head till her chin touches her chest, shuts her eyes and starts crying. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” she says. “You mean after we leave?” a policeman says. “We’d want you to come outside and identify the body first.” “I mean I don’t see how it’ll be possible to live without him. He was my main help. I used to say to him ‘Nobody but us could ever realize what we endure.’” “Now I understand,” the policeman says. “May I?” and he gets behind the wheelchair—the other policeman’s holding open the door—and pushes her outside. He gets off the table and follows them. …He’s walking along a busy city street and talking to himself. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m engaged to a woman who looks somewhat like a man and whom I don’t especially like. She’s really quite unpleasant, not just to me but to everyone, and overly assertive and too domineering, and not at all my physical type. She’s unattractive. Well, people can be unattractive—I’m unattractive, though I didn’t always used to be—so that alone wouldn’t stop me from falling in love with someone. But she does nothing to make herself even a bit more attractive. She wears blood-red nail polish and her hair’s always a mess and her clothes are all wrong for her. And she has too much hair on her face. She should get most of it removed. Gwen used to have a little blonde mustache and a few hairs sprouting out of her chin, and she went to an electrologist to get rid of them about once every six weeks. We used to drive there together and after the treatment, have lunch at the same place every time. Great sandwiches and salads and soups and moderately priced. We never tired of the place. Great coffee and the service was efficient and quick. Even the water: fresh and cold and with no ice in it, which is how we first asked for it and we didn’t have to tell them that a second time, and with a lemon wedge fixed to the rim of the glass. The owners soon knew us by name and greeted us warmly every time we came in and asked about our daughters. Why did we have to break up and divorce? I should’ve fought to keep the marriage going. Not doing that was the worst mistake of my life. I could kill myself for not acting better to her the last two years of our marriage. Idiot! Idiot!” People on the street look at him as he talks to himself. He yells to a bunch of them “Go on, look, what do I care? Things couldn’t be worse for me, so what does it matter what you think? I screwed up my life and am continuing to do so, royally, royally. Ah, the hell with you all.” He continues walking and talking to himself. “I should’ve promised her that I’ll be a much better husband and friend to her. ‘I’ve always been a good father, haven’t I,’ I should’ve said, ‘so what makes you think I can’t be a good husband again to you too? Just give me time, but you have to trust me. It’ll be worth it to you if you do, I swear. I won’t blow up at you again.’ I should’ve said, ‘I promise. I won’t be mean, short and impatient to you, get angry at you over nothing, talk under my breath against you, ever. I’ll be sweet and kind and good-natured and sympathetic and everything like that to you,’ I should’ve said, ‘if only you’ll not divorce me. I’ll be a much more agreeable person all around, you’ll see, and it’ll be real, not put on. I know how despicably I’ve behaved to you in the past,’ I should’ve said, ‘and I plan to change all that and be nothing but good and helpful to you from now on.’ Those are some of the things I should’ve said. What in God’s name stopped me? How did our marriage get so bad that we separated and then divorced and I ended up with this woman I don’t want to marry but have promised to? Where did I even meet her? She just appeared, and next thing I knew I was living with her, and then engaged, with the wedding set for next month.” Just then he sees Gwen driving down the street in a cream-colored sports car. Her wheelchair’s folded up in the back seat, its wheels sticking up and spinning. He goes into the street and waves his arms at her and yells “Gwen, Gwen, stop.” She pulls over to about a foot from the curb—he has to jump back onto the sidewalk or be hit by the car—and says “You. I thought I’d seen the last of you. Why did you flag me down? What are you doing in this city? Are you stalking me? Why did I ever stop for you, the last person on earth I’d want to meet?” “Gwen, you got to listen to me. I’m doing something really stupid. I’m marrying someone who’ll assure my constant unhappiness for the rest of my life. She’s all wrong for me, intellectually, morally, socially, physically. Even her clothes are ugly, her hair’s always unkempt, and she’s a tyrant and she doesn’t like kids. She had to have forced me into getting engaged to her, though I don’t remember that, because I never would have agreed to it voluntarily. Maybe she has something on me that if she reveals it would ruin my life, but I have to get out of it. Only you can help. Please take me back. I want us to remarry. May I get in the car?” “Let me think about it,” she says, smiling. “Does that smile mean yes? About letting me in the car? Remarrying me? Both?” “I’m not sure,” she says. “You’re not sure if that’s what your smile meant?” “I don’t like you jilting another woman for me,” she says. “It’ll be the last time for that, I swear. You’re the only one I want to be with, and I’ll stick by you forever. No matter how sick you might become, I’ll be there for you, regardless of how hard it gets. Please give me one more chance.” “Then, yes,” she says, “get in. She unlocks the door with a button on her side and he reaches for the door handle. Before he can open the door, she guns the motor and drives off. “Wait,” he says, “wait.” He resumes walking and talking to himself. The street, which was almost deserted a few seconds ago, is crowded again. “It was so close. If only I’d got in the car before she drove off. I would’ve sat beside her and said what a great driver she is and how beautiful she looks and what a lovely dress she has on and how happy I am to be sitting next to her and that I’ll never, ever be anything but good, sweet, kind and patient to her again. ‘You’ve seen the last of your Mr. Bad Guy, I swear on a stack of Bibles to you,’ I would’ve said. Then I would’ve asked her to park in an out-of-the-way spot and when she did I would’ve kissed her eyelids and fingertips and felt her thighs and breasts and then kissed her lips and said I loved her—‘I love you’—and have never stopped loving her since I first met her, not even once. ‘I am so happy now,’ I would’ve said, �
�I could cry.’” …She’s lying in bed on her back, doesn’t seem to be breathing. “Gwen? Gwen?” he says. He listens through her dress for a heartbeat, feels her temples and wrists for a pulse. Nothing. But she’s smiling, or looks like she is, but didn’t he read somewhere that it might, soon after someone dies, have something to do with the accumulated gas inside? He pushes up her dress, shirt and bra and puts his ear to her chest. Nothing. He thought maybe all those clothes were concealing her heartbeat. He feels her chest for a heartbeat, then strokes her breasts, then kisses her nipples and thinks Why not; it’s not impossible. Nobody’s around and nobody will be coming around. Just once. If it turns out to be too difficult or disgusting, he’ll stop. He pulls off her panties, raises her legs up into a crab position, gets the lubricant tube out of her night table, squeezes lubricant on his fingers and smears it on her vagina. He unzips his fly. No, he thinks, do it the way you always do it, and keeping your pants and undershorts on will make it more difficult to get inside her. He takes off his shirt and pants and shorts, her knees have folded in so he spreads them apart again, gets on top of her and sticks his penis in. He comes very quickly. About as fast as he ever did, he thinks, or since he was in his twenties. He can’t even remember feeling anything now. Anyway, he wouldn’t have wanted it to go on much longer. He gets off the bed, wipes her vagina with his undershorts, puts her panties back on, pulls down her bra, shirt and dress. She still seems to be smiling. He puts his ear to her nose and mouth. Nothing. Maybe it is gas, he thinks, and puts his ear to her stomach but doesn’t hear anything in there. He puts his clothes back on and dials 911. “Reason for calling?” a woman says. “I’ve just done something terrible,” he says, “maybe worse than that, but definitely something most people would find disgusting. I made love to my wife after she died a natural death, probably from a stroke.” “So you’re reporting a death and the deceased is there with you now?” “Yes.” “Give me her name and address where you are and then I want you to wait there,” and he gives them though doesn’t think the house number’s right. “But you’re certain she’s dead? You a physician?” “No.” “Then I can get someone on the phone to give you instructions how to help her if she’s showing even the slightest signs of life. Just listening and feeling for her breath and pulse doesn’t tell you everything.” “She’s dead, I’m sure.” “An emergency medical team has already been dispatched and should be there in five minutes.” “There’s no rush,” he says, “although it’s true I’d like to get this over with soon as I can,” and he hangs up. The phone rings right after. It’s the same woman, he’s sure, though he has no idea what for. Let it ring, he thinks; I’ve told her everything. …He wakes up. What was that all about? he thinks. Well, it’s been awhile and he’s a bit horny, or thinks he was when he fell asleep. Could he actually do what he did in the dream? Forget it. No, could he? If she were in bed right now and just died or within the last hour or so, maybe less, and nobody was around and there was no possibility of anyone interrupting him, he might. He could. One last time. He thinks so. Probably, yes. And then do everything he did: wipe, re-dress her, etcetera, call 911. …They’re in a cabin in Alaska or somewhere far north. He looks out the window. Snow all around—fifteen-to-twenty-foot drifts in some places and pine trees, or some kind of evergreen, that might be a hundred feet tall—but no other cabins and no roads. The cabin’s next to a body of water that isn’t frozen. Looks like an ocean or huge lake or could even be a very wide river whose opposite bank is too far away to see. Doesn’t understand sea ice and currents and the warming effects of the Gulf Stream, if it is an ocean, and things like that, so won’t try to explain why there isn’t even a little ice on the water. You’d think, though, he thinks…but forget it. He hears a motorboat come close to the cabin, stop for a few seconds, and then putter off. “I think our lunch has come,” he says to Gwen, who’s at the dining table typing out a new poem on a small manual typewriter. “Good,” she says, without looking up; “I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starving. Why do they send it over to us so late? Artists have to eat to create.” “Oh, I’m an artist? You could’ve fooled me. But not eating doesn’t seem to have stopped you. Look at you: scribbling away like there’s no tomorrow, while I have nothing to say.” He goes outside on the deck that surrounds the cabin and walks to the end of their pier. Should’ve put a coat and cap on, he thinks, but for some reason, though the temperature must be ten below zero, he feels warm. Dry cold, it must be, but again, he doesn’t know and he’s never heard of the term “dry cold,” so he shouldn’t try to explain. And while he’s at it, what’s sea ice? Does it have anything to do with permafrost, which is big up here but he also doesn’t know what it is. Gwen would know, he thinks. She knows everything. A wicker basket, which the motorboat operator always puts their mail and lunch pails in, only has a note. “We thought you’d like this puppy,” he reads. “Kind of a cute guy, isn’t he? Hope all’s still well with you both. The staff.” But there’s no puppy. Then he sees, about thirty feet away, an enormous polar bear drinking from the lake or river or whatever it is. That’s what they think’s a puppy? he thinks. Only animal around, so must be it. He goes inside the cabin. Gwen’s sealed up an envelope and is putting stamps on it. Poem she was working on, he thinks, off to a magazine in tomorrow’s mail and he hopes a quick acceptance. She could use it. “So you finished it?” he says, and she says “Two of them, and both quite long. It’s been a very creative day.” “Well, your creativity might have to stop, even though there doesn’t seem any stopping you, because our lunch wasn’t dropped off. But the boat did leave us a puppy and a nice note. I don’t think they meant for us to kill and cook the puppy, though. Things haven’t got that bad.” “A puppy,” she says. “I’ve always wanted one.” “But you got to see it. Not your typical small dog. Color and size of a white polar bear. Maybe all polar bears are white from birth, but I don’t know of any polar bear puppy this big. Eight feet long at least. I think I once knew the name of this breed. You must know it.” She looks out the window and says “Oh, it’s so cute. I want to keep it.” “We can’t,” he says. “It’ll feed itself from what it catches in the water—that won’t be a problem—but it’s too big to bring inside.” “We won’t have to,” she says. “Look at that thick coat. It’ll stay warm outside no matter how cold it gets, and it’ll be great protection against anyone who might want to harm us. One look at this huge puppy dog—and just imagine how big it’ll be when it’s fully grown—and they’ll run away. When we leave here we have to take it with us.” “There’s no room for it in our house. Our neighbors would be frightened of it. It’d have the local dogs barking all day and night, keeping everyone awake. And suppose it gets loose, because what hidden-fence system could keep it contained? Just think what it’d then do to our garbage cans and everyone else’s. The mailman won’t come within fifty feet of our mailbox once he sees the dog. Besides, how would we transport it to our home? It can’t fit in the car. I say no and that’s what it’s going to be, no.” “You’re such a despot. You always have to have your own way. You never think what I might like,” and she goes into the other room in the cabin—their bedroom—and slams the door. “Meanwhile,” he yells, “what are we going to do about lunch? The boat’s gone. There’s no way of communicating with them because this stupid place doesn’t believe artists should have phones in their cabins. We’ll have to wait till dinner for food, and I’m famished myself and could also use a thermos of strong black coffee. Or maybe I missed something in the basket. Do you hear me, Gwen? I think I might’ve missed some food in the basket and am going outside to check.” She doesn’t say anything. “Boy, when you’re mad, you really stay mad. How long you going to hold that grudge?” No answer. “Okay, I get the message,” and he goes outside and looks in the basket. There are two jars of jam and a knife to spread it with, and underneath a cloth napkin, two warm rolls. The puppy, though, he thinks…where’d it go? He looks around sees it standing waist-deep in the water. It leans its head back, hold
s a large thrashing fish above its mouth and then drops it in and swallows it whole. …They’re in their van traveling north. He’s driving, Gwen’s in the seat beside him, and Rosalind’s sitting behind them. “Did you know,” Rosalind says, “—Daddy, are you listening to me?” and he says yes. “Mommy, can you hear me?” and he says “Shh, she’s asleep; don’t wake her.” “Then did you know, Daddy, that the very road we’re on, the Merritt Parkway, was originally built—I believe, more than eighty years ago, and this was a new concept in road-building—so people in the city could take leisurely weekend drives in the country and admire the scenery on the road? In other words—and I learned all this, strangely enough, in a college lit course—the road was not just to be used utilitarianly to get from one place to another in the most direct route possible and in the shortest period of time, but to—” “What’s that?” he says, and she says “I was saying—” and he says “No, that loud cracking sound outside. What is it? Grief, I bet I ran over something that’s going to mess up the car’s undercarriage, or something important’s fallen off the car. I just know the goddamn trip’s now ruined,” and he looks back through the rear window and sees a tree coming down on a car about fifty feet behind him. “Oh, my gosh,” he yells, and Rosalind says “I know; I saw. It missed us by a second and a half.” “Three to five seconds, I’d say, but what luck. ‘Luck’ that it didn’t fall on us and we weren’t killed. The poor people in the car, though.” And he sees in the rearview mirror the tree on top of the car’s squashed roof. “Gwen,” he says, “Gwen,” and shakes her arm. “Wake up, wake up. You’re not going to believe this close call we just had.” “Shouldn’t we stop?’ Rosalind says, and he says “Stop for what? What could we possibly do?” “Help them. I mean, there’s nobody on the road behind us; we could simply turn around.” “You want to actually look in that car?” “What are you guys talking about?” Gwen says, and he says “Look behind you; you can still see it. A tree. We were the last to get through. First I heard the cracking sound of it splitting in two, I assume, and then falling. Or just splitting off from its base; I didn’t hear it fall. No whoosh sound; anything like that. Not even a crash. Maybe all the brush on the tree softened the sound of it hitting the ground. But I knew something was wrong. I thought it was our car, the underside of it, but the tree landed on the one right behind us. Rosalind says we missed getting hit by a second and a half. It was so tall, it fell across the entire road. The cars behind it will be stuck there for two hours at least till the car’s pulled out of the way and tree’s cut up and removed. That’s because—well, you can see for yourself—the barriers in the median strip, so they can’t turn around and go back. It’s just going to fill and fill with cars till the last exit we passed. I can’t believe we were so lucky, not only not getting hit but not getting stuck. I can’t believe it. It’s just so hard to believe.” “I think we should call 911,” Gwen says, and he says “Do we have a cell phone?” “You know we don’t, but we could get off this road and call from the nearest service station.” “By that time—by even now, probably—a few hundred people in cars backed up behind the tree, and others going the opposite way who drove past it, have called from their cell phones. Really, let’s just go on and pretend it never happened. Or not pretend, so much, but not constantly talk about it. I’m upset, and talking about it is upsetting me more.” “Me too, in a way,” Rosalind says. “It’s only now sinking in.” “I suppose it’s a good thing I was asleep,” Gwen says. She puts her hand over his on the steering wheel. “Don’t let it upset you so much that it affects your driving.” “I’ll try not to,” he says, “but I think the damage has been done. I’ll just stay in the right lane for the time being and drive slow.” …He pulls into their driveway. Several cars are parked on it and the kitchen door’s wide open and the storm door’s been taken off and set to the side. Something’s wrong, he thinks. Gwen. But no ambulance or cop car or anything like that, so he’s probably mistaken. Or the kids. Something could have happened to one of them, or even both, in the city they live in together, and the people in the house are consoling Gwen. But the storm door. Another bad sign? Taken off to get a gurney through, so it was Gwen. He gets out of the car and rushes into the house. Their daughters and Gwen’s father and her best friend from New York are in the kitchen along with some older women he doesn’t remember ever seeing. “It’s Gwen,” her friend says, taking his hand and rubbing the knuckles. “Be brave, Martin. Be strong. Courage; ayez courage. She’s already been taken away. You were out so long, we made all the arrangements ourselves. We were waiting here to tell you.” “Daddy,” one of his daughters says behind him. …There seems to be a war going on. Their house and all the surrounding ones have been destroyed by explosives. Gwen’s running down the street with Rosalind in her arms. She seems to be around six months old. But it can’t be her, he thinks, since Gwen and Maureen and he went to her college graduation exercises a few weeks ago. Has to be somebody else’s kid who looks exactly like Rosalind did at that age. But why would Gwen be running down the street with her? She’s also got on Rosalind’s favorite pajamas then—the ones with dancing bears and toads on them—and is waving and smiling at him and she seems to be saying “Daddy, Daddy” to him. “Gwen, wait up,” he yells, running after them. “I apologize for being late. Forgive me, already, will ya? But I’m here now, aren’t I, so tell me why you’re running with this strange kid and what happened.” She turns around, holds the child above her head and says “I’ve no place to go now, no place to go. That’s the situation in a nutshell, I’m afraid, and you’re lost.” Is there a way of getting out of this? he thinks. He’s done it before. Come on, come on: out! …He wakes up. What to make of it? he thinks. The “lost” part he thinks he gets, but the rest is confusing and disturbing. He doesn’t want to think about it or even remember it. Good thing these damn things disappear so fast on their own. He looks at the window. It’s still dark out, probably isn’t even near six yet, he thinks. Go to sleep, even if you’re not tired. In other words, try to, and he shuts his eyes. …He’s outside the house, digging a hole for another rose bush Gwen bought, when there’s an explosion. He looks up and sees their roof collapsing. Oh, shit, no, he thinks, another invasion. “Enough, I want peace, for freaking sakes,” he yells. Then bombs or mortar shells or something like that, he thinks—could even be bazooka rockets, though you never hear about them anymore—explode around the house, a little shrapnel cutting into his arm, but he’s not bleeding. His neighbors’ houses seem untouched, though the explosives are going off around them too and all their tall trees have been destroyed by them. He hears helicopters. What sounds like ten to twenty of them, flying close together? He looks at the sky but just sees a V-shaped formation of geese or ducks flying in his direction. Then he hears them when they’re directly overhead: ducks. Gwen runs out of their house carrying Maureen, who’s just an infant. If he’d known they were inside he would have gone in to get them, he thinks, no matter how dangerous it was. How come he didn’t think they might be in there? Stupid of him, stupid. The kitchen and dining room windows shatter and flames come out. “Help me,” Gwen shouts, running down the street with Maureen in her arms. “Someone, anyone, save me.” He throws down the shovel, kicks the rose bush and says “That’s it for you, buddy,” and runs after her and yells “Gwen, I’m here, I’ll help you, but stop. I’m not as fast as you, even when you’re carrying Maureen, and I can’t run anymore. My knees. But don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll find a way out.” “No,” she says, still running, “there’s no place for me to go.” “There is, I’m sure of it, and this time I’m not going to let you down. And where’s Rosalind? She still inside? Don’t tell me I made another mistake.” She keeps running and then disappears around the curve of the street. “My God, no,” he screams, and runs toward the house, then walks as fast as he can, as both his knees buckle. …He’s in their guest bathroom, scrubbing his nails with a nailbrush. “They’re not clean enough,” he says, “I have to scrub them more.” He puts more
soap on the brush and scrubs his fingers and nails and rinses them under the faucet. “They’re still dirty,” he says. “I’m not cleaning them hard enough, and I’ve only done the right hand, not the left.” He squirts liquid soap on his hands this time and scrubs both sides of them with the brush and then the fingers and nails. “Scrub harder,” he says, “even harder. Your hands are still dirty; your fingers and nails still filthy. Even your wrists could use a bit of cleaning. You can’t touch other people with your hands unless they’re absolutely clean, so if you have to, scrub till they hurt.” He rubs the bar of soap into the bristles of the brush and scrubs his wrists and then the hands and fingers and nails much harder than he did before. He scrubs the right hand so hard that he cuts several of his knuckles. He holds the hand under the faucet to wash the blood away. “Blood, too, is dirty,” he says, “so I have to start over. And now the brush is dirty too, so clean that first.” He cleans the entire brush with the bar of soap, rinses it, then rinses the soap and scrubs all of his hands again. “That should do it, he thinks, “but it hasn’t. The wrists and brush are now clean but I have to scrub every part of my hands some more.” He squirts liquid soap into his palm and runs the brush bristles in it. …Gwen and he are walking past a bookstore. He stops, holds her by her elbow and says “Want to look in the window?” “You know, this is as good a time and place as any to tell you something I’ve been holding back on for too long.” “What’s that?” he says, and she says “Well, to be quick about it, you smell. Not you personally—as a person, I’m saying—but your body.” “Good? Bad? How do I smell?” and she says “Very bad.” “That’s funny,” he says, “because you once—okay, this was quite a number of years ago—said I smelled like toast, which I took to be good. But how can you say I smell very bad? I shampoo what little hair I have, twice a week. I take a shower almost every day—maybe three days out of four, so every day that I need to and some days when I don’t. I change my clothes—socks and undershorts and whatever shirt I might be wearing, usually a T—daily. And I smell my sneakers and moccasins and shoes every day before I put them on to make sure they have no odor. If they do, even the slightest, I put deodorizing powder in.” “I’m telling you, you smell so bad I can’t even stand to be near you,” and she walks away. He watches her cross the street, hail a cab and get in it. He raises an arm, pulls back the short sleeve of his T-shirt and smells his underarm. “What’s she talking about?” he says. “I don’t smell anything.” He looks in the bookstore window. Nothing of mine in there, he thinks. Why don’t they have anything of mine? …He’s driving home and thinks his family’s not going to believe what he went through today. “First, a flat,” he’ll say. “Then, when I’m fixing it, a woman backs up into my rear and busts both my taillights. While I’m waiting to get the tire fixed, I slip on a strip of black ice and cut my hands and scrape my knees. Of course, my pants tore, but that hardly counts, although I felt stupid walking around all day with holes in them. Later, some guy screams the worst obscenities at me because he said I wanted to steal his parking space. I gave up the space to him, though I’d gotten to it first, because I didn’t want him coming back after I parked and breaking off my windshield wipers. So I drove around for half an hour looking for a spot, before I gave up and decided to put the car in a lot. But they were all filled except for one that charged forty dollars, and only in cash, while all the others would’ve been twenty, check, cash or card. Then, around one, I go out for lunch and forget to get my credit card back at the restaurant. When I go back there, they say they don’t have it. I said ‘C’mon, I last used it here,’ but all right, and from their phone I call Chase Visa to cancel the card. Only good thing to come out of the day is that no one had run up a number of illegal charges on the card in the forty or so minutes since I lost it. And because so many of our monthly bills are automatically deducted from that card, I’ll have my work cut out for me once I get the new one. Then, returning to work, I get a stomachache so bad, and probably from that lunch, that I had to sit on a bench outside for around fifteen minutes till I felt good enough to resume walking. Just before I’m leaving school, my department chair calls me into her office and says I’m doing, as she put it, based on the complaints of some of my students, a rather lackluster job teaching this semester, that my student evaluations for the last semester were pretty poor too, and that there’s a good chance my contract won’t be renewed for next year. What I’m getting at—and I left out a few things: losing several stamped envelopes I was about to drop in the mailbox; forgetting to show up for an important faculty committee I’m on; misplacing my school keys, so having to call Security to let me into my office; jamming the photocopy machine and the department’s administrative assistant giving me hell about it—is that it’s been one of the worst days of my life. Nothing tragic or crushing or that I couldn’t deal with; just one thing after the next; one thing after the next. Even when I tried calling home to talk to Mommy about it—I felt I had to speak to someone—the line was constantly busy.” He gets out of the car and goes inside the house. “Hello, I’m home, everybody,” he shouts. Maureen comes into the kitchen. She looks despondent, starts crying. “What’s wrong?” he says. Then Rosalind comes into the kitchen and starts crying. “Both of you? What the heck’s the matter? —Gwen,” he shouts. “What’s happened? The kids can’t speak. —Where’s your mother?” he asks them. “She’s not answering either. She out?” …Gwen and he are at the Baltimore airport, sitting at a table in a snack bar. Behind her, through a floor-to-ceiling window, he sees a huge jet taking off. She’s saying something, and he gestures for her to wait till the plane’s gone: he can’t make out anything she’s saying. Then it’s quiet and she says “I hate to be cut off in midsentence,” and he says “I was only trying to let you know I couldn’t hear you over the noise and that whatever you were saying was being wasted. Now, what were you trying to tell me?” and she says “That you shouldn’t have driven me here. I could have taken a cab. And that after you did drive me here, you shouldn’t have parked. But if you had to park, you shouldn’t have come into the terminal with me. This only prolongs what I know is misery for you.” “Misery? Being with you? Hardly. I’d buy a ticket and get on the same plane with you if you let me. Sit next to you, if the seat was available, just to have six more hours with you. If the seat was taken, I’d ask the person sitting in it to switch seats with me. If the person didn’t want to, I don’t know what I’d do. Do you really have to go?” “Don’t ask silly questions.” “You’d be much happier with us, you know.” “With the kids, yes, I’d be happy;” she says; “very happy. But, in case you forgot, I’m married to someone else now, I love the big lug, and, unfortunately for me and the kids, he got a very good job in California, so I had to move out there with him. Maybe one day we’ll come back. He understands I don’t want to be separated from the kids too long.” “Listen, move back with me now,” he says. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved. Without you, I’m finished for the rest of my life.” “Not so; you’ll find someone.” “No one,” he says; “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work with anyone but you. Nothing even came close.” “Here, I’ve got a couple of minutes left; I’ll find someone for you. —Miss,” she says to a waitress walking by and who looks almost exactly like Gwen did twenty years ago “are you taken?” “If you mean am I busy, no. You’d like me to get you something? Refill on your coffees? Your check?” “I meant, are you attached to anyone in what we’ll call a romantic way?” “Yeah,” the waitress says. “I live with a guy I like and we’ll probably get married in a year.” “You see?” he says to Gwen. “No matter what anyone tries to do for me, it never works, it’ll never work, and I don’t want it to. All I want is to be with you.” “Darn,” she says, looking at her watch. “Time for me to go to the boarding area and fly home.” She stands, grabs her bags, says “Don’t walk me, and this time do what I say. Besides, they won’t let you past Security.” She puts her cheek out, he kisses it and she leaves. “You forgot to pay for your
coffee,” he says. “Only kidding. I’ll take care of it and leave a good tip. Look at that: you leave, I leave.” She doesn’t turn around, keeps walking. “Please look back at me and wave,” he says. She doesn’t, just keeps walking, “All right, keep walking,” he yells. “It’s supposed to be healthy for you, I read. But don’t ever come back, you hear? Don’t even think to. It’s too tough on me. I can’t take it. Don’t even come to the East Coast, because I just might bump into you. Florida, Maine, and every place in between: just stay away. You want to see the kids, I’ll fly them out to you and take care of the costs.” …The doorbell rings. He’s upstairs in his parents’ apartment and his mother says “Martin, could you get it? I’m all tied up.” He goes downstairs and opens the door. Their postman, who says “Man, have you ever become the hot ticket. So much recognition from the outside. Just look at all these letters for you, from everywhere, and a package sent express from France.” “Nothing for the rest of my family?” and the man says “Not today.” He takes the mail into the kitchen and opens the package. It’s a small tin of cookies. No return address on the wrapping or note or card who it came from. His father’s sitting at the kitchen table in the blue-and-white striped terry cloth bathrobe he wore for more than forty years. He’s having breakfast and cleans all the pulp out of half a grapefruit with a tablespoon till the inside of the rind is white and smooth, then holds it over his face and squeezes whatever juice he can get out of it into his mouth. “Save the yellow part of the rind for the garbage,” he says. His father looks at him as if puzzled by the remark. “I was ribbing you. It seemed like you wanted to eat all of it. Don’t; you’ll get sick. Look, cookies someone sent me, I think a secret admirer. Like one?” He gives him one of the five cookies in the tin. His father dunks the cookie into his coffee and nibbles it. “Good, huh? They’re supposed to be the best. From France, from someone I don’t know the name of but who obviously thinks well of me. Unless they’re laced with poison. Just ribbing you again.” His father continues dunking and nibbling. “Mom,” he says, “want a cookie?” She’s pulling a baking sheet of mandelbrot out of the oven. “I’d be delighted,” she says, “if you took one of mine.” “You’d be delighted if I took one of your cookies, or delighted to take one of mine?” “Both; neither. Why do you have to complicate everything? Try not to be so clever. In the long run, it hurts.” “Hurts me? You? Hurts who? And in the short run, does it also hurt, but less so?” and she says “See what I mean?” “You asking if I do or don’t? Okay, I’ll knock it off.” “Besides,” she says, “my mandelbrot’s still so hot it’ll burn your tongue if you try to eat it, and I can’t grab one of your cookies with these oven mitts on.” He puts one of his cookies into her mouth and holds it there till she bites off half. “Good, huh?” and she says “As you can see, I’m swallowing.” “They’re from France, where you expect the best and get it, though nobody makes mandelbrot like you.” He turns to his sister, who must have just sat down at the table across from his father, and says “Have a cookie? They’re from France, sent anonymously by someone who I suspect has a fairly high regard for me.” She’s dunking a tea bag into a mug of steaming water and doesn’t look at him. “Come on, what do I have to do, hand-feed you? I will, because I know that if you don’t eat one you’ll be missing out on something important. Tiny tins like this don’t come to our household every day. Okay, you forced me,” and he holds a cookie up to her lips and then jabs them with it. She keeps her mouth closed, and he says “You’re right; that was a little too aggressive of me,” and puts the cookie in front of her on the table. She nudges it off the table with her index finger. “What’re you doing?” he yells. “There are only two left,” and he tries to catch the cookie with his foot, but it bounces off it and breaks into hundreds of crumbs on the floor. “Must be made of cornbread,” he says. She’s drinking her tea now and still doesn’t look at him. “She must be mad at me over something,” he says to his mother, “though I’ve no idea what.” …He’s walking along Amsterdam Avenue, when he suddenly darts into a funeral home. A man standing by the inner door says “You can’t come in here in shorts. Show respect. If you’re here to attend a funeral, we have a number of gray flannel trousers in different shades and most sizes, if you don’t mind trying them on in the cloakroom. And a yarmulke. You’ll need to wear a yarmulke. That we can also provide,” and takes one out of his jacket pocket and gives it to him, “I’m not here for a funeral,” he says. “I came to pick out a coffin for myself.” “Downstairs,” the man says. “You can take the elevator or walk.” “Just one flight, right? I’ve been here before for my parents and sister. I’ll walk.” Then he’s in the basement and pushes open a door that says “caskets” on it. Two men are applying makeup to the neck and face of a young female corpse. “Pardon me,” he says. “I must’ve read the sign wrong.” “It said ‘staging area,’” one of the men says. “What did you think it meant? You get your kicks looking at dead naked women? Come closer and take a real look. We’ll even part her legs for you so you can peek inside.” He leaves and pushes open a door with no sign on it. “Here’s a very nice one,” a woman in the room says to him, grazing her hand over an opened casket with lots of hardware on it. “Hermetically sealed and exceptionally sturdy. Guaranteed to last a lifetime, we like to joke.” “It looks like it was built for a Mob kingpin,” he says. “Ten G’s, am I close?” and she says “Twenty. It’s a hundred-percent ebony, so like your top grand piano, it’ll never lose its shine.” “Let me see your cheapest coffin. I’m on to your selling stratagem, showing me your most expensive box first, and when I reject that, your next expensive, and so on down the line.” “Follow me,” and they go through several rooms of coffins till they come to the last one, with a single plywood coffin in the middle of it. “This will do the job,” she says. “It won’t last more than a few days, but by then, who cares, unless you have fears of being eaten alive underground. Another joke we occasionally use. Making light of death seems to relax the client. So when is the happy event?” and he says “You know, you’re going to be mad at me for wasting your time, but I’m not quite sure why I’m even here. I’m going to be cremated when I die.” “Good thing not before,” she says. “Anyhow, office for that is on the third floor.” “I’ll take the elevator this time,” he says. “I suddenly feel tired. Excuse me,” and he reaches around her to press the elevator button. …Gwen and he are in a motel room. It’s stuffy, almost airless, he thinks, and he tries opening the one window but it won’t budge. He lets down the venetian blind and snaps it shut. “They don’t even supply the room with a fan,” he says, “and the shower only runs cold. What made us come here?” She’s lying on the bed in only her pajama top, watching one of the movie channels on cable. He sits on the bed beside her and runs his hand along her thigh. “Not now,” she says. “I want to watch this. I’ve seen it before, it’s quite good, but the opening’s terrifying. You won’t want to watch it. You’ll cover your eyes, and the scary sounds from it will make you want me to turn it off. You should go out. Run, swim, work out in the exercise room, or get yourself a coffee. But please don’t disturb me when I’m doing something I like,” and she takes his hand off her thigh, slaps it playfully, and turns back to the TV. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought I was being affectionate.” He grabs his bathing suit, leaves the room and goes down a dark hall, thinking he’s heading for the indoor pool. The door at the end of the hall opens onto a food court of a mall. All the food stands are shuttered except for an old-fashioned soda fountain with about ten padded stools screwed into the floor. A soda jerk’s behind the counter, dressed in a white linen jacket and cap soda jerks used to wear and who looks just like Jeff Chandler. Tall and broad-shouldered like him and same pepper-and-salt hair that starts low on his forehead. Maybe it is Jeff Chandler, he thinks. After his movie career ended, he might not have been able to find any other work but this. But he doesn’t want a soda and the place doesn’t seem to serve coffee or have anything to boil water for tea. He looks around, bec
ause he thought he heard a couple of shutters going up, and then back at the soda fountain. Gwen’s sitting at the counter. “How’d you get here?” he says. “You were just in our room, less than half dressed. And what happened to the movie?” “You were right,” she says. “I was? Well, whatever I was right about, good. Because that doesn’t happen too often. Your saying it and my being right.” “You’re too hard on me. I’ve said it plenty; just you never want to hear it. And how’d I get here so fast? I flew.” “Mind if I join you?” and she says “Need to ask? You’re the one who brings in sixty percent of our household income, and besides, aren’t you my spouse? You get first dibs.” He sits beside her. Man sitting on his right turns his way and blows smoke in his face. “Did you have to?” he says, and the man says “What am I doing? I’m smoking. Since when is that a capital crime?” He says to the man who looks like Jeff Chandler “I’m not going to refer to you as ‘soda jerk.’ I find the term pejorative. I’m going to call you ‘counterman.’ So, Mr. Counterman, isn’t there a city ordinance against smoking in public places that serve food?” “There is, but we don’t observe it. Bad for business; keeps customers away. Look at all those other food joints here that have closed. We’re the last holdout.” He moves to the other side of Gwen and says “The counterman’s the spitting image of Jeff Chandler.” “Who’s that?” she says, and he says “Oh, that’s right; you were too young, maybe not even born. Famous movie actor when I was a kid. Used to play a lot of Indian warrior roles, and he always seemed to get gunned down by the cavalry in the end. He was Jewish, you know. You should move to the other side of me so you don’t get the guy’s sidestream smoke. That can kill you too.” “I’m happy where I am.” “What’ll you have?” the counterman asks her, and she says “A lime rickey in one of those tall, chilled, smoked glasses, and lots of ice.” “And you?” and he says “Plain seltzer, not flavored, and no ice or anything else in it, and in any kind of clean glass.” “Before I bring you two anything, there’s a large tab the lady’s run up. Could you pay that first?” “How could she have run up anything?” he says. “She just got here.” “Thirty-seven dollars and fifty-five cents,” the counterman says menacingly. “Okay, okay. If you are who I think you are, I know what you’ve done and what you’re capable of, so I’m not going to argue with you. And what the hell. Not a lot of money.” He pulls out his wallet and opens it. His credit card’s gone. “Oh, no.” he says. “My worst fear.” …He’s working out on one of the strength machines at the Y, when Gwen comes in. He waves to her. She stops to look at him, doesn’t smile or wave back, gets on an exercise bike and sets a book on a holder in front of her and starts pedaling while reading. What strange behavior for her, he thinks. She looks around at him while pedaling. He smiles and mouths “Hi, what’s doing? And why didn’t you say hello?” She faces forward again, pedals, looks back at him a couple more times, gets off the bike, wipes it down and comes over with the book under her arm and stares hard at his face. “It’s you,” she says. “I told myself when it happened that I’d never forget your face, but here I have. Good thing you kept making yourself obvious to me. Yeah, go on, smile and wave, you filthy bastard, but I’m getting the police. Everybody,” she yells, “don’t let this man leave here. He raped me more than a year ago and was never caught. I’m going to call the police now,” and she leaves the room. She comes right back with a policeman and says “This is the man who jimmied my kitchen window to break into my apartment and forced himself on me in bed.” “That’s ridiculous,” he says. “We live together; she’s my wife,” and she says “Since when?” “I’m afraid I’ll have to take you in, sir,” the policeman says, and motions him off the machine, grabs his arm and starts walking him out of the room. “Gwen,” he says, “do you realize what you’re doing and what’s going to happen to me? Whatever your reason for joking around like this, it’s gone too far.” …He wakes up, shakes Gwen’s shoulder from behind and says “Dostoevsky’s dead.” “Of course he is,” she says. “1861.” “1881. 1861 was when I think Notes from the House of the Dead was published and the American Civil War was in its second year. He wasn’t in it. Never got to America and I don’t think he ever wanted to. Baden-Baden; gambling; that’s what he liked. I’ve been reading his second wife’s reminiscences of their fourteen years together. His first wife died of TB. He also lost two children and a favorite brother. Jesus, what a life. A lot of what she writes about is his gentleness and thoughtfulness and empathy and compassion and his love for her and she for him. She worshiped him. Before I fell asleep I finished the part where Dostoevsky died. So he’s dead. He’s really dead. What an awful thing to consider. I doubt I’ll be able to get back to sleep tonight.” “Do you want to hold me from behind?” “Yes, that might help. Thank you.” …“Rosalind, Daddy, Mommy’s sick again,” Maureen shouts. “Call 911.” …Gwen and he have just made love. He gets off her. She says “I can’t believe it.” “Can’t believe what?” he says. “That this is how we produced our two daughters and now they’re both over twenty-one. A miracle; two miracles. And that we’re still going at it after so long could be considered another miracle. How was our lovemaking, though?” “At the count of three,” he says, “or just now?” “How would I know?” she says. …He’s at a cemetery with his sister and Gwen. Some men are digging at his parents’ gravesite. His father’s coffin is lifted out of the grave by the men and pried open with crowbars and shovels. He looks in the coffin. His father, in a fetal position, looks the same after being buried for more than thirty years. Not even dirt on him, he thinks, and his clothes look as if they were just put on. “Okay,” he says to the gravediggers. “I’ve seen what I came here to see. You can nail it up and let him down again.” His sister says “No, you can’t re-bury him. I swear I see some movement in his chest.” “But look,” he says, “his eyes are shut, his face is perfectly at peace and he hasn’t eaten for close to thirty-five years. How can he be alive?” “If you ask that, why not ask how he could have a heartbeat? Because he has one. Don’t deny it. You can see it as well as I.” He looks closer at his father’s chest. It’s moving up and down, up and down. “That’s not a heart beating,” he says. “That’s his lungs going in and out, in and out. Gwen,” he says, turning around to her, “you know everything about everything. Tell us who’s right.” …He walks into a room, looks around for his wallet, and sees Gwen’s head on a chair. “Oh, no,” he says, and a man behind him says “If you cry, and I’m not saying ‘cry out,’ we’ll cut off your head too.” The man’s dressed in black and has a watchman’s cap pulled down over his face, with slits in it for his eyes. “Though we will spare your mother,” the man says. “Because of her age and infirmities and that no one should think we’re entirely disrespectful.” “But my wife was infirm too. Three strokes in two years. She was on a respirator the last month of her life. How could you do this to her? She was so goddamn sweet and good-natured to everyone. Ah, kill me already, you bastards. What do I care, now that she’s gone?” He pushes the man aside and goes into a bedroom to look for his wallet. An ex-girlfriend’s tied to a chair, her mouth gagged. “She’s next,” the man says. “Then your wife again, then you.” “Why? What is it with you guys that you can’t let them live in peace? What’d either of them ever do that could be considered wrong, except once know me? Oh, Christ, what people never stop doing to each other.” And he drops to his knees and bangs his forehead on the floor and keeps banging it till he passes out. …“This was the most important thing I could tell you,” Gwen says to him. “But you were either too busy with your work or indifferent to my needs to pay attention, or you simply didn’t bother to listen, even if you had to have seen how much it meant to me.” “Not true,” he says. “I just must’ve forgot. Tell me it again. Then repeat it three times, one after the other. That’s how I’ll remember.” “I want to commit suicide.” “I won’t let you. And there’s no way you’d be able to find the strength to do it alone. You need my help and I won’t give it.” “I can starve myself to death,
” and he says “Then I’ll force-feed liquids and food down your gullet.” “I’ll clench my mouth shut to stop anything from coming in,” and he says “I’ll find some way to pry it apart. You’re staying alive, by hook or crook. It’ll be worth it to you, I promise. If anything, do it for me?” “Please,” she says, “I beg you to help me kill myself, or at least not stop me.” “By hook, by crook, by God, no. I’m keeping you alive and that’s the last we’ll talk of it.” …He goes into work at a convenience store. The owner, who’s Chinese, says “How many hours you planning to put in today?” and he says “As many as you want. I’m here for the duration.” He gets behind the sales counter and rings up a pack of cigarettes. God, I didn’t know they were so expensive, he thinks. And they end up killing you. That’s ridiculous. Two boys run out of the store with sodas and candy bars they didn’t pay for. “Stop, thieves,” he yells. “Be right back,” he says to another customer, who put a carton of milk and bag of doughnuts on the counter, and runs after the boys. He looks both ways on the street, but they’re gone. Kids are so fast, he thinks. I used to be fast too. He goes back to the store and gets behind the counter and opens the bag to count the doughnuts. The owner comes over and says “You intentionally let those young punks get away. Do you realize what this petty thievery’s costing me? Get your things and get the hell out of here.” “But I need the job; something to do.” “Too bad.” He walks out of the store with a Chinese co-worker. “I’m seventy-one,” he says. The co-worker pats his shoulder and says “Boring; boring.” “My wife died this year.” “That, too, is boring.” …Gwen’s sitting up in bed, drinking tea. He says to her “Your principal caregiver called and said she’s been diagnosed with stage-three cancer and can’t come work for you anymore.” “The poor dear; such a fine lady and so good to me. How I’ll miss her. She’s all alone and doesn’t have any money saved. Who’ll take care of her when she starts falling, and now who’ll take care of me?” “I will, although now full-time.” “You? I want to laugh—with all my recent setbacks, I’d like to find something funny—so don’t tempt me.” “But I will take care of you, much more than I have, I promise. Till the rest of our lives together or whoever dies first.” “Go away and let me grieve for her and myself. This has been quite a blow.” “You’ll see,” he says, and takes her empty mug and leaves the room. …He’s around eighteen and lying in the upper bunk of the bunk bed in what they call the boys’ room. Gwen’s sleeping in the lower bunk. He reaches under his pillow for his alarm clock and looks at it. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon. How can that be? he thinks. The window shades are up and there’s bright sunshine in the room and he’s never slept past noon. “Damn,” he says, “I was supposed to get up at eight for an important makeup test in history. Now I’ll flunk the course. If I do, I won’t be able to graduate this term and start college in September. That’ll put me a half year behind—that is, if I pass the history test next fall. If I fail that one too, or even sleep through it again, I’ll be a full year behind and maybe won’t ever get into college because of all the times I failed and missed the test. All because this freaking alarm clock didn’t go off,” and he smashes it against the bunk rail and throws it to the floor. “Shh,” Gwen says. “It’s still early. Let me sleep.” …He and Gwen and a couple of their friends are sitting in a theater watching what he’ll call an acrobatic dance company on stage. The dancers are all young and very trim and wearing tight skimpy bottoms and nothing on top. Looking at the women’s breasts should be somewhat exciting for him, he thinks, but for some reason it isn’t. The entire troupe has turned itself into what looks like a wagon wheel—three of them as the rim and four as spokes. It moves around in circles, bumps into several objects and almost rolls off the stage into the orchestra pit, and then the spokes fall off and the rim breaks apart and the seven of them leap to their feet and hold hands and bow to the audience. There’s lots of applause. “That was amazing,” he says to Gwen. “What people, when they’re working together harmoniously, are able to shape themselves into. They looked and acted just like an out-of-control wagon wheel. I bet, though, they’ve fallen off the stage a few times and had other accidents, especially when they were first trying out that routine, and got plenty of bruises.” She points to the stage and he looks. Another dancer, or acrobat—he really doesn’t know what to call them—steps out of a large black box four of the others carried onto the stage with exaggerated difficulty and set down. He’s much bigger and older and heavier than the others and not even as muscular as any of the women. He kind of looks like me, he thinks. In fact, it is me. “Look, I’m part of the company,” he says to Gwen. “About to dance or do acrobatics and make an utter fool of myself. But don’t look too closely at my belly. I’ve a huge beer gut and it’s much hairier than it normally is. To tell you the truth, I look disgusting and ridiculous, compared to the others, and I can’t imagine what use I’d have for them up there.” She puts her finger over her lips and turns to the stage. The tallest of the other men climbs up the front of him as if climbing a robe ladder and stands on his shoulders. Then another man climbs up him the same way and stands on that man’s shoulder. Then two men grab an arm and leg each of one of the women and faster and faster swing her back and forth a few times and throw her onto the shoulders of the man on top. Then the tallest woman climbs up him and the two men and woman as if she’s climbing a much longer rope ladder and stands on the shoulders of the woman. Then the shortest woman—she can’t be more than five-one, and very slim but solid—climbs up him and the two men and women the same rope-ladder way and stands on the shoulders of the woman on top. Then this tower of performers—maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be, he thinks: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or another famous tower but one he’s unfamiliar with—sways from side to side and nearly falls over but rights itself just a few feet before it would have hit the ground. The tower’s so tall that the head of the woman on top is obscured by the overhead of the proscenium. Then this woman dives into the outstretched arms of the two remaining men standing below. The next woman also dives into their arms, and the two men and women still on top of him jump off at the same time, land on their hands and immediately backflip to their feet. Then all eight performers bow and blow kisses to the audience. There’s even more applause than before. “Now I know what my purpose was on stage,” he says to Gwen, who’s still applauding though everyone else has stopped. “It’s that I’m sturdy enough to support a tower of people on my shoulders and keep it from crashing to the ground. How I did it, I don’t know. But I did a good job, didn’t I? …He opens his eyes. It’s dark out; must be around 3 a.m., he thinks. Turns to Gwen in bed and says “You up? I just want to warn you. There’s an unmistakable smell of death in the room. I recognize it from when my parents died. It has to be the cat. She’s been sick and getting worse the last three days. I should’ve taken her back to the vet when you told me to. Now I’ll be sorry the rest of my life.” He turns on his light, gets out of bed and looks for the cat. She’s not on the floor near the TV where she’s been lying quietly for two days. He looks under the bed; not there either, and the dish of water and plate of kibble he set by her last night don’t seem to have been touched. He puts on his bathrobe because his daughters might be home and goes around the house looking for the cat, saying “Here, little baby; here, little baby. Come to me, come to me,” and finds her at her food bowl in the kitchen. “So, you all right?” he says. She keeps eating. “You’re all right. Good.” …He and his best friend are standing outside his apartment in the East Village. He has a party to go to and wants his friend to come along. “I’m sure the host won’t mind if I bring you.” “No can do,” his friend says. “I have to be on call at the hospital early tomorrow and it’s a twelve-hour shift. But I’ve got me a gut feeling you’re gonna meet your future wife there. Have fun,” and his friend goes down the entrance to the Astor Place subway station. He starts walking downtown to the party. He talks to himself as he walks: “Be honest now, you really don’t want to go to th
e party. Instead of meeting your future wife or even a future bedmate, you’ll stand by yourself all evening, have too much to eat and drink because you’re so uncomfortable, and then tell the host what a great time you had and wonderful people you met, and the conversations—oh, they were the most stimulating and interesting you’ve had in a dog’s age—and leave. Turn around. Go home or stop off at your favorite bar for a couple of ales, and then go home,” and he turns around, turns around again and continues walking to the party. “Nice night,” he says. “Well, at least something’s good. Not warm or cold; just right. Sweater weather.” He likes that: “Sweater weather. Sweat her, wet her.” He goes through Chinatown, then Little Italy, thinks of stopping at an Italian pastry shop for a cannoli or almond macaroon horn, then says “Nah, you came this far, get there, and there’ll be plenty of good food at the party, and why waste your appetite and money? No reason. You’ve a small appetite and little money. So go, go.” His feet feel funny and he’s stumbling. He looks down and sees the street’s made of cobblestones. When did he step off the sidewalk, he thinks, and the street turn from asphalt to this? Can’t remember. And there are no sidewalks anymore, just street right up to the buildings, and so narrow he doubts even a small car could pass through it. He goes under a stone arch that spans the entire street, and is now in this odd landscape of ruins, he’d call it—Italian, maybe old Roman, maybe Pompeiian. It looks like those paintings, or drawings, or whatever they are—prints, lithographs, if there’s a difference between the two—God, there’s so much he doesn’t know about art and ancient Western civilizations, he thinks—by a seventeenth-or eighteenth-or nineteenth-century artist whose name he forgets. It’s one word and starts with a P or T or maybe even a B—Bruneschi? Pinelli? Torichelli?—who did buildings like these: empty; gutted, even; with cracked and broken walls and no entrances or exits, or at least none he could ever find, and with mazes of hallways and dead-end staircases, some winding through roofs and going another story or two up. Unlike in those paintings or whatever they were—etchings, he now thinks—there are people on the street here, and outdoor markets and carts and stalls, most with fruits and vegetables or leather goods like wallets and bookmarks and eyeglass cases on them. Funny, he thinks, but in all the years he’s lived in this city, which is most of his life, and he got around, he’s never been in this neighborhood or even heard of it. Maybe if he knew its name. It’s charming, though. Who needs to go to old parts of European cities if we have this here? All the streetlamps go on at once. It’s gotten dark, while it was light when he said goodbye to his friend and started down here. He keeps walking, past more peddlers hawking their wares in Italian, or it could even be Latin—at his age, and with his education, he thinks, he should know the difference. He stops to look at two identical dilapidated Catholic churches side by side, with no airway in between. Both must still be working churches, he thinks. A bride and her maids of honor are going up the steps of one of them and a priest in a white smock and some kind of gold shawl around his neck is on the top step of the other, blessing an elderly couple, who are having trouble getting into a kneeling position. All the other buildings on both sides of the street seem uninhabited: no lights in any of the windows and nobody going in or out of them. The facades of several of them have been sandblasted or steam-cleaned—he thinks You’re not allowed to sandblast buildings anymore in New York; something to do with releasing asbestos into the air—and have signs on them advertising “luxurious” floor-through apartments for rent and condos for sale. “Fresca piss,” a man sitting behind a cart of iced fish says, and he says “No, thanks; I’ll be out too long.” He goes under another stone arch. The street sign on the corner of the first building to his left says Willis Street. That’s the one the party’s on, he thinks: number 22. He says to a woman “Excuse me, but which is Willis Street: the one we’re on or the side street perpendicular to it?” “Perpendicular?” she says. “Perpendicular? Don’t be perpendiculous. We both know you’re talking the wrong angle and Willis is this street here.” He hears what sounds like wooden wheels going over cobblestones; then sees coming out of the barely lit side street a man pushing a gurney. A woman in a hospital gown and sheet up to her waist is on it, securely strapped in. Must be terribly uncomfortable for her, he thinks, and even painful, especially if she had surgery and was just sewn up. The gurney passes him and he runs after it to tell the man, for his patient’s sake, to go on a less bumpy street. He gets in front of the gurney, blocking it. “What’s the big idea?” the man says. The woman’s eyes are closed. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable. In fact, she appears quite peaceful, seems to be smiling, and looks exactly like Gwen. But it can’t be her, he thinks; he hasn’t met her yet. “I’m sorry,” he says to the man; “I have the wrong party. Now that’s funny, because according to my best friend, who’s also an orderly, I’m on my way to the right party, one where I’m gonna meet my future wife.” “Funny to some, maybe,” the man says, “but to me it’s no joke. Marriage is sacred and shouldn’t be laughed at.” “Hey, you don’t have to tell me,” and he steps aside and the man resumes pushing the gurney in the direction of the churches. They going there to get married? he thinks. Can’t be; she’s destined for me. He looks at the numbers of the buildings he passes on the even-numbered side of Willis Street and stops at 22. It’s a long stoop and he runs up it. “Whew-wee, I took those steps as if I were a kid,” he says. “I really feel healthy and strong, so I must look it too, which’ll be a plus.” The front door’s unlocked and so is the vestibule’s. Very trusting building, he thinks. Good sign; seems the opposite of ominous as far as the party’s concerned. The ground floor’s dingy, with dim lights and torn lobby furniture and an urn of ugly plastic flowers on a side table by the elevator and walls that are stained and need plastering and painting. And the smell: can’t be anything but roach spray. Bad sign, he thinks, for who starts a romance in a slum building? He presses the elevator button. “Oh, crap,” he says, “I forget the last name of the person giving the party and what her apartment number is or even what floor she’s on. It could even be this one.” He holds his breath and listens for party sounds from the three apartments on the floor, but doesn’t hear anything but a steady dripping. There’s a bad leak somewhere, he thinks. A woman enters the building and yells “Hold the elevator. Hold the elevator.” It’s Gwen, he thinks, though he doesn’t know her name yet. She hurries down the hallway and says “Now what gave me the idea it was waiting for me?” and sticks her hand out to press the elevator button. “I’ve already rung for it,” he says. “Been waiting for it I can’t tell you how long. Judging by the condition of the building, it’s probably broken.” “It’ll get here,” she says. “I know this building. The elevator’s old and takes its time but always comes.” “You going to the Willis party?” “Do you mean the Tourelle party? On the top floor? Not that there couldn’t be two going at once. This is a lively building.” “Tourelle, that’s right. Willis is the street we’re on. And it has to be the top floor. Otherwise, I’d walk.” The elevator comes, door opens, and he gestures with his hand for her to go in first. “I don’t know. Am I doing the right thing in riding alone in an elevator with you?” she says. “Because I’m not sure you were invited to the party or that you even belong in this building, although I do know you didn’t follow me in.” “I’m safe, believe me. I met our party host at an artist colony this summer. She was there for photography and I was there for something else. We were next-room neighbors and shared the same bathroom and bar of soap, but at different times. And four to five floors isn’t a long ride on an elevator, no matter how slow it goes, unless it gets stuck.” “Okay, you sold me,” she says, and gets in the elevator, he follows her, and she presses the button for the fifth floor and the elevator starts rising. “Five’s the top floor, right?” he says. “There’s none higher in this building,” she says, “and I know the party’s not on the roof.” “So the elevator doesn’t go to the roof?” and she says “Do you know of any that do? Oh, I suppose there
’s one somewhere, but this isn’t that anomaly.” He wakes up. It’s almost light out. Must be around seven, he thinks. The dripping’s from the sink faucet in the bathroom and he gets up, turns it off, and gets back in bed. He did first meet Gwen at an elevator. But on the sixth floor of a much larger and better-kept building in SoHo, not far from the neighborhood or district or section or whatever’s the right word for it where the last scenes of the dream would have been if it were a real place, but after they’d left the party separately.