His Wife Leaves Him

by Stephen Dixon

  He gets out of bed, goes to the bathroom, pees, washes his hands. Feels his face. Should he shave now so he doesn’t have to do it later? He thinks. No, too early. And he has to get out of that habit of getting so far ahead of himself: preparing tomorrow’s salad today, and so on. He’d like to go to the kitchen for a glass of water from the sink’s filter tap. His mouth’s dry and he also hasn’t drunk much water today. He’d read somewhere, but read elsewhere a while later where this notion was debunked—actually, both in the Times’ Tuesday health section—that the average mature adult male should drink no less than eight glasses of water a day, but neither said what size glasses. He doesn’t want to run into the kids, though. One of them might hear him going through the house and come out of her room and say “Anything wrong, Daddy?” or say through her door “That you, Daddy? Everything all right?” He turns on the bathroom light and washes with soap the sort of scummy bathroom glass and rinses it till it’s clear. Plastic juice glass he took two of from Gwen’s hospital room her last time there. Thought they’d be useful in a bathroom, so has one on the glass and toothbrush holder in the other bathroom too. Less chance than real glass of breaking on the floor or when it falls into the sink and a glass splinter, after he thought he picked or swept up all the pieces, later cutting his finger or foot. And the glass’s height, when he thought of taking the first one, seemed perfect to fit under the medicine cabinet door when he opened it, and he was right—made it by an inch. He drinks a full glass of water, then another not as full to make up a little of what he didn’t drink today, and goes back to bed, lies on his back, head centered again on two pillows, pulls the covers up to his neck and thinks: So what happened next? He bumped into her on the street the day after their phone conversation and she said “Hi, how are you, what a wonderful surprise. If you’ve time, think we can move up our coffee date now?” They met at the drugstore as planned. He remember anything they said when they met there? He pictures them talking. Mouths moving but no words he can make out. Sitting at the soda fountain counter. She’s smiling, he’s smiling. What a beautiful smile she has, he thinks he thought. Must have. She had, always had—photos of her around the house show this, every single one of them—a beautiful smile. Something to do with her lively eyes and shape of her face and high cheek bones and length of her mouth. As they talked, he might have thought Did she think he has a nice smile? People have said he does and his mother used to say he has a beautiful smile. Well, his mother. And he should have mentioned the certain way she opened her mouth when she smiled, which he can’t right now put into words, and her bright white evenly aligned straight teeth, which also might have contributed to it, but with a bit of her upper gum exposed, something she tried to hide. “Smile” ends, he thinks, if he rearranged the letters, with a lie, not that that has anything to do with what he’s thinking here. Just popped in. Has anyone ever thought it? He waited for her in front of the drugstore. Day was unusually mild for that time of the year. Temperature in the high forties, maybe mid-fifties. Pretty good for the first week of December. And because he was able to read comfortably outside, probably no wind. Walking weather, he thinks he thought. Also: he’ll suggest it if she doesn’t bring it up. He was a little nervous, wanted it to go well. From this date to the next one and so on. Just act natural, he might have thought. Don’t act false, vain, boastful, pedantic, anything like that. Good conversation will come. She was definitely pretty, he thinks he thought, definitely pretty. He looked at her enough at the party to know. He isn’t so bad-looking either, he might have thought, and up till about five or ten years ago he was considered good-looking, though that doesn’t help him now. And he still has a good deal of his hair—around half of it, while his father was bald at thirty—and it hasn’t started turning gray. And he’s fairly tall for his age group and lean and well-built, just as she is—not so much tall; five-feet-four or -five; of average height—so they start out with that: one really good-looking woman and a not-bad-looking guy. There are of course other things and that’s part of what this meeting’s about: to find out. He knows she’s intelligent and witty and clever, from what she said in their phone conversation. What did she say? Things, things; he forgets what in particular but knows he was impressed. And he hates the word chemistry when it’s related to two people pairing, but he’s got to say it: they’ll see if there’s any between them. There was for him, talking with her on the phone and some of what went on by the elevator and on the street—she certainly gave off something he was attracted to and liked—so what he’ll really see is if it’s still there. He got to the drugstore about five minutes to three and she got there about twenty minutes later. The wait was easy. He enjoyed the anxiety. Feelings he hadn’t felt for a long time. Well, he had some of the same ones while he was thinking of calling her, but now she was on her way and would soon be here. His stomach; things rushing around or rolling over but doing something in his head. His chest, even. This could be it, he thinks he thought or something like it; this could be it. Pretty, bright, speaks well, teaches at Columbia, and so forth. Loves literature. Camus. And that she agreed to meet him. Must mean she isn’t hitched. He was curious what she’d be wearing and if she’d be carrying a book and, if so, what it’d be. Probably something to do with her teaching, which she should be finishing soon. Maybe the last class of the semester is this week and then there’s study period and exams if she gives them and term papers to read. And even if she’d be wearing a cap or hat and if her hair would be pinned up as it was at the party or in something like a ponytail or brushed straight back. Did she wear makeup? From what he recalls, not even lipstick or eye liner, which he likes: that she didn’t. No embellishments. Natural face. Didn’t know why he thought all this, but he thinks he did. He was very curious about her, that’s all. At home before, he thought she might get to the drugstore earlier than she’d said and he didn’t want her waiting for him, he can’t remember why. Oh, yeah. Didn’t want her getting impatient for him to come, which might put her in a bad mood, though she didn’t seem that way. He thought she’d think: “He’s not late; I’m early.” He brought along the Gulag Two book he’d been reading, in case there’d be a long wait. And thought, standing in front of the drugstore, he thinks, why not let her see him reading a serious book when she came? Will she think it an affect? Easy appeal to a literary woman? No, because moment he sees her he’ll snap the book shut, remembering the page he was on if he doesn’t close it on his improvised bookmark. People have given him store-bought bookmarks—his mother especially—but he always loses them: they seem to drop out of the book, even ones that fasten on to the page. Anyways, scrap-paper ones he can write things on, such as a word from the book he’s reading he wants to look up or something to do with the fiction he’s currently writing or an idea for a new one. He could have brought a much smaller book, one that could fit into his jacket or back pants pocket. But he only reads one book at a time—taking a slim paperback to the party was different—and doesn’t mind carrying a heavy one. He pictures himself reading, holding the book open with two hands, every now and then looking around for her. On the sidewalk both ways. Crossing Broadway. On the island in the middle of Broadway, waiting for the light to change or for there to be no cars coming so she can get across. Surely she remembered, he might have thought; she seemed like the last person to stand someone up. Now he was getting worried. She didn’t think it worth it? But she’d have to know he’d call later, and then what would she say? He looked at his watch. Must have looked several times. What is he, nuts? It’s not even ten after three. It’s not even three-fifteen. She’s two minutes late, if you could call it that and if his watch is accurate. She’ll be here and if she isn’t, she’ll have a plausible excuse on the phone. “So what other day do you think we can make it?” he’d say. He pictures himself turning a page in the book and his eyes going to the top of the next one. “Hi,” she said, or “Hello,” startling him, smiling. He said “Hi” or “Hello” or something and no doubt smiled back and snapped the book s
hut without looking at the page number or moving the paper bookmark from wherever it was in the book to the new page he was on. She said something like “That must be quite engrossing, for you to get so lost in it.” “Why,” he might have said, “did you have to say ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ a few times before I looked up?” “Just once, but I did have to shake your shoulder to get your attention. Only kidding, Martin, although I didn’t exactly sneak up on you.” That he definitely remembers her saying. “What is it?—your hand’s covering the title,” and he held the book up. She’s been wanting to read it, she said, “but starting—which one’s this?…volume two—with the first volume. I’ve also been told if you read that one you don’t have to read the others. That they become somewhat redundant, and volume three, even boring.” “So far,” he said, “Two’s better than One—the personal stories more riveting and emotional. Reads more like fiction, in other words.” “Still,” she said, “I’ll start with volume one and see if I want to read further.” But because of the humanities courses she teaches, she said, she has little time for outside reading other than for books about what she’s teaching. “Somehow I feel we’ve talked about this,” and he said “I’m sorry; if we did, I forget,” and she said “I could be wrong.” He thinks that this differs from what he previously thought about taking the Solzhenitsyn to the Ansonia drugstore, but he forgets what that was. “One interesting thing,” he remembers saying, “is that this is the first book I’ve read—actually, Gulag One—that I got a short story out of. For a while its working title was ‘Gulag Four,’ but then I didn’t think I should keep it—I wanted the story to stand on its own.” “May I ask a naïve question? ‘Naïve’ because one’s probably not supposed to ask a writer this. But what’s it about? Something to do with that period in Soviet history? From what you’ve said about your work—I think it was you—it doesn’t seem you write historical fiction.” By now they were probably in the drugstore. He pictures himself holding open the door for her and following her inside. “Is this okay with you,” he remembers her saying, “sitting at the counter? If you want to sit at a table, we could always go elsewhere.” “No, we’re already here. And no other customers, so it’s quiet and we can talk.” At some point—outside or in; most likely in—he started telling her what his story was about. “A man, through some see-through ruse he should have seen through, is snared off a city street by two elderly women and held captive in an apartment—handcuffed, most of the time shackled and locked in a windowless cell of a room—for reasons never clear to him or adequately explained and which keep changing. I know. Sounds more Kafkaesque than Solzhenitsynian. But it becomes more Gulagy when his imprisonment, always just as they say they’re about to release him, gets extended a few months or a year for made-up-at-the-moment reasons—he forgot to flush the toilet, for instance, or couldn’t stop sneezing after they ordered him to. Anyway, that’s something of what it’s about, and they do eventually let him go.” “Why did they keep him?” and he said “Same as why they abducted him: no reason. Just to play with him. Something like that, though nothing sexual.” “What happens to the two women?” and he said “Nothing. They’re sweet old ladies who couldn’t possibly have done the harm to him he said. All the criminal evidence against them is gone and his cell’s been turned into a library and now has windows and brilliant sunlight.” “And you finished it?” and he said “Why? You don’t think it’s a good idea for a short story?” “I’d have to read it to determine that,” and he said “It’s out now and I’m keeping my fingers crossed—I could use a good sale.” She asked where he sent it to and he told her and she said “You aim high. They must be tough to break in to,” and he said “I’ve had two in the first one since ’73 and about fifty rejections from the second since ’64. Maybe stupid of me to keep sending to it, I guess, and maybe to the first one too, since they have a new editor there who doesn’t seem to like my work. Calls it idiosyncratic. But long as I have a box of nine-by-twelve envelopes and stamps and a postage scale, why not? There are so few serious places that pay well, and you never know.” “What if they both take it?” and he said “Chances of that happening on the same day—just the chance of either of them taking…well, I hate to sound shrewd and unscrupulous, but I’m a good liar when it comes to something like that, so it’s a chance I’ll take. Did I just say the wrong thing?” “You tell me. You know your business, but there is the moral question to consider. I was thinking of the editor’s wasted reading efforts for the magazine you’d withdraw the story from if the other one took it. That is, if you didn’t tell them you were multiply submitting it,” and he said “I didn’t.” “I know I would never do it with an academic journal. I could lose my job and jeopardize any future teaching position I’d apply for and be forever blackballed by a journal that’s probably pretty important in my field. You choose one to send to and stick with it till a yes or no decision’s made.” “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve thought of it before but it never hit me as hard as when you just said it. And I’m not kidding you on this—I must sound like I am, my choice of words and the rest of it, but I’m not—or saying it to get in good with you. I won’t do it again, I think, or certainly not with a magazine that’s previously published me and that I don’t ever expect to place a story in again.” When she didn’t smile and in fact bit her bottom lip a little but didn’t say anything to what he said: “No, you’re really right; it’s wrong. I won’t do it from now on, period.” “That’s up to you.” But she still didn’t smile. He said “Please say you believe me and that you’re not entirely dissatisfied with me.” “Why would it matter?” and he said “It does. I don’t want you to think I’m what I’m not.” “All right, I’m not dissatisfied, as you said.” “And you believe me?” and she said “I won’t go that far,” and smiled. He thinks this is how some of the conversation went that day. They talked about the woman who gave the party they met at. “She was the one who originally steered me to Camus.” “And you can say if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be talking to you.” Some of the books assigned to her humanities courses. “To me they’re all still great to read, even the third or fourth time around in the space of two years. Of the six or so books she mentioned, he’d read two. “I won’t lie to you that I read the others and then get them from the library and quickly read them so I won’t get caught lying the next time we talk about them, if there is a next time and we do. I’m actually a bad liar in everything but my dealings with editors, and now that’s stopped. Though don’t tell me the other books your classes were assigned. I’m already chagrined, knowing you now know how unread I am. I mean, I’m always reading, and always have a book with me, and always serious literature, or what I think as such, but not the ancient classics.” “Of the ones you haven’t read, read The Divine Comedy first,” she said. “Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you what to read. Read what you like, but if you do read it, get what a couple of Dante scholars have told me is the best translation for each of them, and unlike what I said about the Gulag trio, try to read all three.” He said “I loved the first two lines of the opening tercet of the first terza rima of The Inferno, if I got all that right. But then I could never get past—and I tried—the first ten pages, maybe the first five. One of the lesser translations, maybe? In other words, not my fault? I have read Metamorphosis, but the other one, several times.” “They’re spelled differently,” she said, “but that’s okay,” and he said “Are they? Which one did I get right? Anyway, Homer, of course, both books twice and in the original Portuguese.” “Boy, you sure keep them coming,” and he said “You don’t like it? I could always put in the plug,” and she said “As I think I told you, I like jokes and punning and laughing and the like, and I know that’s not the only side to you. Incidentally, my Divine Comedy pitch? Three in a row, or even in one season, no matter how good the translations, could be a bit much. They might be better read broken up, or the first two and then a break. It’s not like Proust’s Remembrances,” and he said “Oh, God, I’m going to get in more
trouble with you, but there’s another one I couldn’t stick with. At least they don’t have to be translated,” and she said “Do you reach French?” and he said “Not well,” and she said “Then I’ll have to think about your remark,” and he thinks he said “Don’t. It didn’t come out at all the way I wanted it to, and if you think about it I’ll just appear silly to you.” She said “Don’t worry. I’m so bad at being funny and making people laugh, I don’t even try,” and he said “I can’t believe that,” and she said “That’s nice of you to say, but it’s true.” She was smiling and seemed pleased about something and looked over her teacup at him as she drank and he thinks it was around then he thought they might be hitting it off and that he no longer feels he’s in over his head with her. Gwen later said—weeks, months; “It’s even in my journal,” which he’s been unable to find; looked everywhere; not with the others, which he hasn’t read any of but probably will one day; asked his daughters and her two best friends if they knew where her ’78 and ’79 journals might be, the years he was most interested in because he still hadn’t moved in with her and he wanted to know what she thought of him and their sex and being together and stuff like that early on but kept it a secret in her journals; he even suspected, after her first stroke, she gave them to one of the friends to hold so he wouldn’t read them because there were some things about him he wouldn’t like—that she started thinking of him then in a possible-mate-sort-of-way, and more than anything at the time because of his sense of humor, honesty, way his mind works and that he makes her laugh. He knows he likes her, he thought at the drugstore—a lot—and that she’s everything he thought she’d be, and pretty too and a nice body. Don’t, don’t, don’t, whatever you do, he thinks he told himself, seated on the stool next to her, listening to her talk or watching her sip her tea, fuck it up. He can do that and has with other women he was interested in, but he doesn’t think any of them came near to matching her. Maybe already too many jokes, though don’t get falsely serious. If this is working, do what you’ve been doing; otherwise, you’ll come out a fake. She asked if he does any kind of work now but his writing. “What I’m saying,” she said, “and maybe this is too personal a question—” and he said “It isn’t,” and she said “How do you know what I was going to ask?” and he said “It just seemed what was coming next. I’m still living off an old small book advance and the hope of a new one. Didn’t I speak about this in our phone call?” and she said “If you did, I’m sorry but that was a while ago and it isn’t that I wasn’t listening.” “Also the occasional sale of a short story to a literary magazine, which doesn’t amount to much but helps. My rent is fairly cheap and I’m on a tight budget, which doesn’t mean I can’t spring for your tea and our English muffin. Oh, yeah. I cashed in a few months ago a two-thousand-dollar insurance policy my mother took out on me when I was ten. I could never get her to explain why she did. I wasn’t prematurely old or diagnosed with a fatal illness and I didn’t become the family breadwinner till I was twelve. I remember salespeople of various kinds coming to the apartment and setting their sample cases and paperwork on the dining table—Fuller Brush man, Electrolux lady, someone for cosmetics, etcetera—so the insurance agent, who came regularly, must have talked her into this unusual policy for such a healthy kid. Thirty years later I benefitted from it. But if nothing comes my way in a month or two, I’ll have to go job hunting. This time for something more lucrative than bookstore salesman, which I did last year for six months till the store closed. Big Apple Books, on Columbus between 73rd and 74th?” and she shook her head. “I thought maybe you might have gone there and it was my day off. Good literary bookshop. Just the owner and I, but she refused to sell bestsellers. Or something less mind-numbing than bartending, which I did the two years before last, and also less dangerous because of all the cigarette smoke blowing my way. You don’t smoke, do you?” and she said no. “Neither do I and never have. You might think this is narrow-minded, and that I’m also limiting myself because of it, but I couldn’t go out with a woman if I knew she smoked, even if she didn’t smoke around me,” and she said “I can understand. I don’t like it either, but it’s never stopped me from going out with a man or even getting serious with one. Cigars might, but I never dated a cigar smoker. My former husband took up the habit after we were married. He liked one about once a week, always in the evening when he was watching a sports event on TV, but you put up with such things in a marriage and he kept the door closed.” “So you were married. How long?” and she said “Two years, though technically three, when we were both going for our Ph.D.s.” “I never was. My guess, because of my age, you might have thought I had been,” and she said “No, I didn’t think of it.” “Got close, in my early twenties. But the woman—she hated the word fiancée—even younger than I and already divorced, did the smart thing and disengaged us.” “Any reason you want to give?” and he said “You?” and she said “Not really.” “We were too compatible and having too much fun. I’m not kidding. It still mystifies me. We went to bed happy and had just got up and she said ‘You’re not going to like this, Martin…’ She even denied we’d ever been engaged, though the wedding was tentatively scheduled to take place at her folks’ house a short time before she called it and us off. I didn’t argue with her—I was too angry and sad—and only have seen her once since, other than for the times I moved my things out of her apartment. That was at the Natural History Museum here, when she was with her two young sons and I was on my way to having a drink with a friend under the giant stuffed whale. We said hello and she introduced her kids to me and that was that. No, I saw her twice. The first time when I came back from Europe in ’64. No, I actually saw her a number of times. But regarding a job, maybe you can advise me. Eventually, I’d like to teach fiction writing. Four books, we’ll say, seventy to eighty published stories—maybe even a hundred. I’ve lost count…but that ought to qualify me for at least an adjunct position in some college in the area or a continuing ed program.” She said “One would think so, and I wish I could help. I took creative writing courses in college, but I don’t know how my instructors got their jobs. I guess you just apply. You do know that adjunct work at any level—even if you’ve been doing it at the same school for ten years and they’ve given you the grandiose title of Visiting Associate Professor—pays piss-poorly, as they say,” and he might have said—he knows he concealed his surprise at her saying “piss-poorly”; she might not like him calling attention to it as if he thought she was above or beyond the expression or it didn’t seem quite natural her using it and it in fact sounded a bit artificial—“It’s a start, though. Which may, after only a year, give me the teaching credentials, plus my published work, and there’d likely be more by then, and availability and just that I’ve been writing without let-up for twenty years, for a contracted position someplace, or whatever it’s called,” and she said “Tenure track?” and he said “Yes, but there’s another word I’m thinking of for an academic hiring agreement that isn’t tenure track but could lead to it after a couple of years if they really like you and want to keep you on, but I’ll take tenure if it’s only that.” She said “Non-adjunct positions are hard to get around here. Too many respected professional writers live in the city and academics with multiple degrees who can’t get permanent English department appointments but can teach creative writing. But as you said, you never know. Though to be honest—and I’m not trying to discourage you—your age for an assistant professorship, which is what you’d ultimately want to go for, doesn’t help you.” “Too young?” and she said “That’s right. If you had only started later,” and he said “I tried, but the latest I could get my first book published was when I was forty. Hey, that was good.” Did he mention that when they got to the counter but before they sat down she said “This okay for you?” Yes, he did. Meaning, sitting on stools at a counter rather than chairs at a table, which might make talk easier and not be so hard on their behinds? That too, sort of. And he wasn’t just being accommodating. This he
knows he didn’t mention before. It was because they’d be sitting closer on stools and sharing the same small counter space between them and possibly even bumping knees. The last he just thought of now. He pictures them both smiling and maybe laughing at his “Hey, that was good” line. And continuing to talk and sip tea and drink coffee and share an English muffin and maybe be serious, though he thinks the talk about teaching writing and tenure was as serious as they got. No, there were other things. And the words he was looking for, he just now remembers, were “two-” or “three-year permanent appointments,” something, he would have told her if he’d said them then, he’d of course take too because the salary for that position, he’s heard, is just a little below an assistant professor’s and the workload isn’t more and you get the same university benefits, but he can’t think what else they might have said. Books, probably. They were always talking about books, right from the beginning. Maybe even at the elevator when they first met. He thinks he went over this, but isn’t sure. He was carrying one that night and he doesn’t think it was hidden in a pocket and she must have seen it and could have asked about it. Books he read, she read, them both. But he doesn’t think they ever read the same book at the same time, even for a while after one of her first two strokes, when she was reading—hearing?—reading—no, she used to say “listening to” books on tape. He knows some of that is familiar. Probably some more about her teaching and what she’s planning to do once her two-year teaching fellowship ends. He knows he asked her where she just came from to get to the drugstore, since it’s not in her neighborhood, “but I should mind my own business.” She said “That’s all right and this used to be my neighborhood. My parents still live on West 78th, but I didn’t come from their place. The Esplanade Apartments on West End,” and he said “For a therapy appointment? I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have blurted that out,” and she said “I don’t mind,” and yes, her therapist is there. How’d he know? He said “A couple of people I know go to therapists there, or did—maybe one of them to yours, but I don’t know the therapists’ names.” “Mine’s Lonya Silberblatt. She’s also become a dear older friend and is an accomplished self-taught painter of Jewish themes, biblical to modern. I have a terrific one of hers of shtetl life. Do you know how to spell shtetl? It’s a word that’s always been a problem for me,” and he said “Shtetl? Cousin of shtick; that’s how I always get it,” and he spelled them both. “I’m Jewish, you might have surmised,” he thinks he said then—it was a good place for it—or maybe he said it on their next date, over beer at the bar they met at or the restaurant they finally settled on, but he knows he brought it up in one of their first two meetings. “Yes, I thought so,” she said, if it was then the subject came up. “Not so much because of your looks or accent—definitely not your looks and if your speech has any identifiable characteristic, it’s just a trace of New York. It’s that you know how to spell shtetl and shtick, and your name.” “Martin Samuels?” he said in an exaggerated Jewish accent. “So you think that’s Jewisch?” And then dropping the accent: “My guess is you’re Jewish too. But what I should have said, rather than what I did, was ‘And what religion are you?’ Or ‘religious persuasion’ might be better, or better yet ‘What religious belief or faith were you raised in or inculcated with and may have since rejected?’ If even any of those are right. Also, definitely not your looks or the way you speak. There’s no trace of Judaism or New York in your speech or any region, here or abroad, typifying you other than as a person with a very nice voice and very good diction. Also, only a little because of your name, but your surname only, since Gwendolyn’s not your typical Jewish name. You are, though, aren’t you?” and she said “Why, is that a problem?” and he said “Quite the contrary. Both of us being Jewish?—but you are, right?” and she said yes. “I’d think that makes it easier talking about some things, like being Jewish. And no doubt more things to reference and connect with. Just as a Roman Catholic is probably better able to connect with another Roman Catholic—fish on Fridays, confessional stalls, ears tugged by angry nuns, and so on; blood and wafers, the pope. Does that make any sense, and I’m talking about two Roman Catholics who have both either stayed in the church or left, or do you think I’m being slightly ridiculous? Don’t answer. I’m Jewish and I don’t want to hear—no, that’s enough.” “What does being Jewish have to do with it?” and he said “Nothing; that’s why I cut myself off.” “Listen, Martin, I think we have to change the tone and direction of this conversation a little if we’re to come to some understanding of one another,” and he said “Uh-oh. I don’t know if I’m going to like this,” and she said “Please let me finish,” and he said “Of course.” He remembers having that sinking stomach feeling again—he was expecting the worst; she was about to kiss him off; something—and pictures them sitting on the stools and looking at each other but not smiling. “Long as we’re on the subject of Jewishness,” she said, “I want to explain something to you, but seriously, no jokes,” and he said “Got you.” So what she was about to say wasn’t going to be as bad as he’d thought, he must have thought. And they did get serious, he thinks, more than he first remembered, at the drugstore or possibly one of the two places they went on their second date. Knows it wasn’t in her apartment, which they went to for what she called a nightcap—“Like to come up for a nightcap?” she said in front of her building, after he walked her there from the restaurant. Nor the third time they got together, when he phoned her from the street around ten or eleven at night, after not calling for about a week, and asked if she wanted to meet at that bar again for a beer and she said “Now?” and he said “Too late?” and she said something like “If you don’t think it’ll take you too long, why don’t you just come here?” She said that time “Though I’m by no means a religious or observant Jew—at most, I’ll buy a box of egg matzos for Passover, though I’ll continue to eat bread and rice over the holiday—my Jewish identity is very strong and important to me because of my family history. In fact, the reason I’ve never been seriously involved with Gentile men since high school, or really only one and not for long, is because I never felt they could understand my experience of growing up as the daughter of Holocaust survivors.” “They lost a lot?” and she said “Everyone but my mother’s father.” “I’m sorry,” he said, “so sorry. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them and no doubt still is,” “Also, because I know how much it’d hurt them, I could never have married a Gentile, although if I had it couldn’t have been as disastrous as the one I had to a Jewish man, but that’s not my point. But have I made myself clear? I worry sometimes that I don’t,” and he said “Very much so. And I appreciate why you brought it up now,” though at the time he wasn’t sure why she did. He must not have caught everything she said, he thought. Her voice was soft and low, and it could have been that because of the seriousness of what she was saying, he didn’t want to cut in and ask her to speak up. He knows he liked that she was telling him something so important and personal to her. She said “Last thing I wanted to do, with my Jewish identity talk, is put a damper on our little meeting” or “first real date. But when the matter of our religion came up and our feelings about it, I thought it too opportune a time for it not to come out. Now as for my name, Gwendolyn…it starts with the same initial as my paternal grandmother’s, Guta—you know the Ashkenazic tradition regarding given names. But my parents thought—I was born almost two years to the day the war ended in Europe and conceived a month or two before they got here; not quite on the boat but almost—that they were protecting me in the future in case there was an American pogrom or even another Holocaust by giving me a Christian name.” The serious Jewish stuff couldn’t have been said at the drugstore or their walk after—too early—and certainly not the second time he was in her apartment. The first time there, maybe. More likely it took place on their first real date, as she always referred to it, and at the restaurant, which he thinks he remembers as being quiet because it was nearly empty, and not, because that�
��s the way it always was when he was in it, the crowded noisy bar. She said “What about your family…when did they first get here?” and he said “All my grandparents came over in the major Jewish wave about fifty-five years before your parents did, if my calculations are correct. Settled on the Lower East Side like most of the others…worked there, kept kosher, had my parents, never learned much English, at least my father’s folks, because they didn’t have to—the perfect world: everybody spoke Yiddish. Not much really to tell. Nothing like what your parents went through, and all were buried before I was born.” And she said “Oh, that must have been a very interesting time then and as hard for them as it was for my parents and grandfather, starting out new here,” and he said “No, you’re right. As for my origins? Conceived in an apartment in Flatbush, where my parents first lived, delivered in New York. Also an only child, although there was one before and after me, so that’s how it turned out. But can I say something about my going out and so on with Gentile women?” and she said “That’s an odd question and one never directed at me, but go ahead. Although I want you to know that some of my best women friends are Gentile,” and he said “Did you just make that up?” and she nodded and smiled proudly and he said “Very funny,” and she said “It wasn’t that much, but thanks. To be fair, dozens must have coined it before me, but I never heard it and felt I had to say it. Again, too good an opportunity to pass up.” “No, but I bet you were the first to say it, and I’ll probably use the line several times in the future and then, after the laugh, give you credit for it. So, are you ready? A confession to parallel yours. Just about every woman I’ve gone with for any length of time since my last years in college has been Gentile, don’t ask me why,” and she said “Surely you know,” and he said “I’m telling you, I don’t. it wasn’t that I had anything against women who were Jewish because they were so smart and tolerant and warm and kind, or that I was predisposed to women who weren’t Jewish because they gave me a hard time and were uber-critical of me and after a while wanted to sleep with other guys. No, that didn’t work. Gentile women just happened to be the ones I met, when I wasn’t seeing anyone, and got involved with. Lived with three—only women I ever lived with—almost married one, wanted to marry a fourth but she was in too ugly and hopeless a marriage to want to give it up. Talk about disasters? Every last one of these relationships…involvements…love affairs…call them what you want: disasters, became one for me, and with a couple of them, though I should have known better, two and three times. She phones me; she drops by my apartment unexpectedly: she’s waiting for me after work in my office building lobby: she sticks a note under my door, and I get sucked into it again. One was estranged—am I going on too much about this?” and she said “Finish.” “Estranged from her mother, sister, brother, even her twelve-year-old daughter, not to say her ex-husband, all of whom I met and they seemed to be nice-and reasonable-enough people and her daughter a dear, so what act of idiocy made me think she wouldn’t ultimately estrange herself from me? Did all of these not work out because I was Jewish, unreligious and nonobservant as I’ve been since my bar mitzvah? Maybe, or had to be, or more than a little. That’s why I said before, which you might have taken umbrage with or simply didn’t like, that I was glad you were Jewish. Fact is, for want of a better word this moment—maybe because I am so thrilled—I’m thrilled. I’m sitting and talking with a Jewish woman and having one heck of a good time and hope she is too. So that’s what I wanted to say. ‘Parallel,’ I don’t know, but nothing much, right?” and she said “I won’t comment.” “You can if you want.” And she said “I don’t want. Except to say that this is all quite interesting. I’ve never before been complimented just for being Jewish, and it’s true, I don’t think I like it.” He said “While I was saying it I knew I was being excessive and I apologize for making you feel uncomfortable and hope it doesn’t make you want to run out of here without me.” And she said “Little chance of that. I don’t go in for dramatics. But I am glad you’re not religious. Though being a wee bit observant, like sitting down for the Passover Seder the first night and going through the ceremony quickly is all right, but I have a real hard time with yeshiva boys.” He said “I was bar mitzvahed in an Orthodox synagogue—W.S.I.S., on West 76th, just a block from where we lived—and tutored for it by rabbinical students who wore tsitsis and peyes. Does that count against me?” and she said “Peyes, I know, but tsitsis?” and he told her. “I also come from a family where my father, on both nights, used to do the entire ceremony a lot less than quickly, but I used to love the four small glasses they allowed me of sweet wine.” “I thought it was only three,” she said, and he said “Not if you complete that part of the ceremony that’s supposed to take place after the dinner. Anyway, I thought I’d get it all out in the open now,” and she said “I think you’re safe.” How did they end up with an English muffin? The coffee and tea is easy. The counterman came over—they’d just sat down; he’d taken off his jacket and scarf and put them on the stool next to him; she kept her coat on, maybe because she was cold, he thought; as for remembering he had a scarf: he always wore one from around November first on—and asked what they would have, they said one coffee and one tea, and the man said “Anything to go with it?” It seemed from his expression and way he said it that if they were going to take up two stools for themselves and one for his clothes, even though there were no other customers at the counter, they should have more than a coffee and tea, and he said to her “Like to have a sandwich or bowl or cup of soup if they have them, or a pastry?” and she said “I’m not hungry, thanks,” and he said “How about an English muffin?” and she seemed to pick up by the way he glanced at the counterman and then right back at her that they should have more than what they ordered, and she said “That’d be okay, if you’ll split it with me,” and he said “You like it toasted well done or just regular?” and she said “Since you’ll be eating most of it, you choose,” and he said to the man “Also one fairly well toasted English muffin, please. Butter on the side and…jam or jelly do you like?” he asked her and the man said “We only have jelly, those little packets,” and he said “Honey would be good too,” and she said to the man “I’ll take the jelly, thanks.” They ate and drank. She finished her half of the muffin and said “That was good, toasted that way.” He had a second coffee, asked her if she wanted some more tea and she said “One cup’s enough for me if it’s not herbal. I should have asked.” “You can have an herbal tea if you want,” he said, and she said “No, I’m fine.” He later regretted the second coffee. When they were getting ready to leave he knew he’d have to pee soon because of the coffee and asked the counterman if there was a men’s room here. The man said “Only for store personnel, but you can use the one off the Ansonia lobby,” and directed him to the door at the back of the drugstore to get there. He knows he asked her sometime in the store “Are you cold?” and she said “Not at all; why?” and he said “I really meant, would you be cold if you didn’t have your coat on?” and she said “When I’m in a place like this and there’s no coat hook or rack, I usually like to leave it on. It’s big and bulky and if I fold it up and put it on a stool as you did with yours, it would only fall off.” He thinks he forgot to mention that when he first got to the drugstore and saw she wasn’t waiting outside—he thought she might have got there early—he went inside to see if she was there. There was no one at the counter but the man behind it, reading a tabloid, probably the Post, since it was the afternoon. Only one customer in the store, in the greeting-card section, reading a card she was holding. On his way out to wait for her on the sidewalk, he said to the counterman—the counter went right up to the door—“Looking for someone. She’s not here yet. I was actually supposed to meet her outside if it wasn’t too cold. We’ll be back,” and the man said “That’s all right,” or something like that. Eight to ten stools, he thinks, and he also thinks the leather of the one he sat on, or fake leather, had a slit in it. “Maybe it is too hot with a coat on,” she said, a
nd took it off, folded it in two and got up, put it on her stool and sat on it. “No, this is uncomfortable,” she said about a minute later, and put the coat back on. “I’ll hold it for you, if you want,” he said, and she said “Thanks, but this way is better, and I don’t want to go through getting off the stool and taking it off again.” During that time—when she was taking her coat off, folding it up and getting it on the stool and putting it back on her—he had several chances to look at her chest without her seeing him. It seems full, he thought. Not the most important thing, but he was curious. When they met for a beer on their next date and while she was hanging up her coat on the hook near their table before she sat down opposite him, he looked at her chest again and also caught a glimpse of it later: when she closed her eyes and sipped her beer and smiled. Her chest didn’t seem as full as it did in the drugstore, maybe because she was wearing a dark-green loose-fitting Shetland sweater in the bar, while only a long-sleeved T-shirt, he’ll call it, or maybe “polo shirt” because of the three buttons at the top, in the drugstore. When she turned to the right for something on the counter in the drugstore, he also got a good look at her nose. It wasn’t large, so why’d he think it was? Even if it was, what of it? That alone would keep him from being interested in her? She’s very pretty, he thought in the drugstore. Beautiful, he could say, and such a spiritual and intelligent face. Beautiful neck too; graceful. And that lovely soft voice. He could listen to it and listen to it and listen to it. He’d love to hear that voice in the dark in bed. A beautiful smile. Not one fake or unflattering expression. Beautiful lips and cheeks and teeth. And her hair: shiny and tidy and clean-looking, and sort of a reddish blond. He’d never seen eyes like hers. What color are they? he thought in the drugstore. Not entirely green, for they have yellow and blue in them, but a healthy yellow, if that makes any sense, and he thinks he saw gray. He thought of asking her in the drugstore what color would she say her eyes were, but too soon to ask and it might not be a question she’d like. He did ask her at the bar or more likely in the restaurant they went to after or even more likely on the sofa in her apartment after one of their first kisses and her face was still close to his but far enough away for him to stare at her eyes and the room was well lit. She said “First of all, please stop staring at me,” and he did. “As to an answer, I’m going to be irritatingly capricious and vague. They’re multi-changeable-colored. I’ve rarely seen this, but people tell me. They change with whatever light they’re in. Daylight, sunlight, full-moon light, artificial light, fireplace light, flashlight, but they never turn red, except when I break a blood vessel there, and but they don’t glow in the dark. As you can see, I don’t like talking about them.” “I’m sorry,” and she said “Don’t be; I didn’t mean it as a rebuke. I just don’t like talking about myself, if you understand me,” and he said “Oh, I do. As for me, my eyes are an ordinary brown, no flecks of anything in them, not even hazel. You know, I’m not sure what color hazel actually is. Light brown?” and she said “That or yellowish brown, like the nut.” “So it is like me. Only kidding. Anything for a laugh at my own expense, though honestly, I don’t dislike myself.” At the drugstore her hair was done up, if that’s the expression, in a ponytail. At the bar it was parted in the middle and hung over the sides of her face and dropped a little on her shoulders. At the restaurant—she must have changed it in the ladies’ room there or the one in the bar—it hung freely down her back. At the party her hair was bunched or knotted up in back but above her neck. He seems to remember a long white stick like an ivory chopstick through the bunched-or knotted-up clump, but maybe not. Probably, which she usually used when she had her hair like that, just a clip. At the drugstore she wore dark kneesocks that were pulled up under her skirt to her thighs. At the bar she wore pants. At the party she wore a skirt that came halfway down her calves and in her apartment the second time she wore the same pants, so he never got to look at any part of her legs uncovered, even when she crossed them for a short time on the stool, till they were in bed. They’d been necking in the living room awhile, went to the bedroom, sat on the bed and he said, holding her hands, “Funny question, but do you want to be undressed or should we both take off our own clothes? And she said “Undressed.” He took off her slippers and socks and then her blouse and bra. They kissed during all this, little ones, big ones, and after he had her bra off he kissed her breasts and then started unfastening or unbuttoning or unzipping or whatever he did to start taking off her pants. “I’ll do the rest,” she said, and went into the bathroom, which was in the little hall between the bedroom and living room. He thinks he was in bed but without the covers over him when she got back, and she took off her bathrobe and that was the first time he saw her legs. Or he waited for her with all his clothes on except his shoes and socks, which he stuffed into his shoes, till she came back, and then put his shoes under the bed, went into the bathroom, took off the rest of his clothes, washed up and came out nude carrying his folded-up clothes and put them somewhere in the bedroom. The lamps on both sides of the bed were on. She was in bed under the covers, no top on, he could see, so he supposed no bottom on either or just underpants. She pulled the covers back to invite him in and that was when he first saw her legs. They were chunky and sturdy and strapping and strong, and the thighs looked soft. He loved legs like this, he might have thought. He sat beside her on the bed, leaned over her and closed his eyes and kissed the top of her thighs and then the inside of one, and she said “Not yet,” and held her arms out for him. He lay beside her and she pulled the covers up over them. It was late, probably past twelve, and there was little heat on in the apartment and the room was cold. Anyway, one of those, he thinks the second, when he first saw her legs. Till they made love again when they awoke the next morning, he still hadn’t seen her backside. They’d slept on their backs or with her pressed into him from behind. He’d felt it in the dark, though, his hand twisted around her or squeezed underneath her, and from those feels he knew it was full. Also, from what he’d earlier made out from quick looks at it under her coat and skirt and pants and bathrobe, he knew it had some shape to it, wasn’t flat or small, which he was glad of. He liked a backside that bulged and he could clutch. She also seemed to be as gentle as any woman he’d gone with, he thought at one of those places: drugstore, bar, restaurant, first two times in her apartment, even while walking with her outside on those dates. A few years ago—before her first stroke—he said to her—she was at the dining-room table correcting papers while eating a lunch she’d made, he’d come into the room from their bedroom where he was working then—“Look what I found I wrote about you on the inside of my thesaurus book cover,” and he read to her—he’s memorized it since, he’s read it so many times, coming upon it accidentally or opening the book on purpose: “‘May 6th, 1999. I didn’t choose you for your beauty and sexuality, but more for your intelligence, kindness and gentility.’” The rest of the conversation went something like this: “Did you mean to say ‘gentleness’ instead of ‘gentility’?” and he said “I wrote it as ‘gentility,’ but I meant both.” “Very nice,” she said, “but how do you know it’s about me? Does it say so?” “No, but who else could it be? Nineteen ninety-nine. Twenty years after we met, and she said “You could have been thinking of one of your old flames. You’ve told me they were all intelligent and sexy and pretty and a couple of them were quite beautiful and sweet.” And he said “Sweet, I don’t know. They were intelligent, in varying degrees, but none as intelligent and learned as you. And sexy, some more than others, but again, nothing compared to you, and I’m not just saying that. But they were all, for the most part, or turned out to be, awful, or just to me. You’re the only one who’s unfailingly been gentle and kind, and for all our years together, I want to tell you, so for sure since May, 1999. I know you can’t say the same about me of the men you’ve known, in gentleness, intelligence, refinement, maybe sexiness, and the rest of it, but that’s okay so long as I take the lead in artistry. We’ll pass the last off as a
joke, though there’s a little seriousness to it. What’s more, you’re the only women I’ve loved and hankered for and everything else like that since I met you, or a week or two after. And by far and more than that the one I’ve loved the most of all the women I’ve known, and you don’t have to respond to that with some fanciful something about my own desirability and so on,” and she said “Okay, I won’t. What you said, of course, is very nice to hear, and I believe you,” and indicated with her finger and then pointing to her lips that he should come closer because she wanted to kiss him, and he lowered his head to hers and they kissed. Then she said “I made enough chicken salad for both of us, if you want some,” and he said “Yeah, I’d love to sit down with you, if I won’t be disturbing your work.” “Want something else to eat?” he asked at the drugstore, when the counterman took their knife and plate, and she said “Little I ate, I’m full.” “Then like to walk it off a little? It’s not bad out, though I’ll have to find a men’s room first,” and she said “That’d be nice. We could head uptown, and then I’ll catch a bus home along the way.” She took the check, he just now remembers, when the counterman held it out to him. He said “No, please, let me,” and reached for the check in her hand, and she said “I’d like to take care of it. It isn’t often a check for two is so small that I can afford to pick it up.” “Fine, if you let me pay for dinner out sometime, if we ever have one,” and she said “We’ll see.” She paid up, he went to the men’s room, they went outside. She left a generous tip on the counter, he noticed, much more than he would have. Did he mention that the opening in his coffee mug handle was so small that he could barely fit the tip of his forefinger through it? For some reason this intrigued him, or he thought it might make for funny conversation, so he brought it up with her just after the counterman poured him a refill. “Why didn’t they make the opening larger? We can’t blame everything on the Chinese. It was probably made there but the design for it could have been done here. Your finger could fit through it but mine almost got stuck. How would it look, my walking around with a coffee mug I couldn’t get off my finger? Seriously, though, it’d also seem the mug would be easier to spill, with so little handle to hold on to. That could result in the drinker burning himself, especially when you get it hot and black, like I do,” and she said “I haven’t a clue.” Outside, she said “Should we head up Broadway, Riverside Drive or the park? Not West End. It’s the dullest avenue in New York. All bricks and stunted trees and awnings with pigeon droppings on them and sixteen-story apartment buildings on both sides of the street.” He said “Any of the ones you said would do. Though the park might be a bit dangerous this time of the year. Fewer pedestrians, and it’ll be getting dark soon,” and she said “It’s safe till the low nineties, but okay. Riverside Drive, on the park side. It has the prettiest views and I can get a number five bus on it, which stops in front of my building.” “That’s right,” he said, “you live on the Drive. Do you see the river from your apartment, or have I asked that?” and she said “Most of it, like now, when the trees aren’t leafy.” “So you probably see stars and sunsets and barges and all sorts of lights on the river,” and she said “All that plus enormous apartment buildings on the Palisades that make the ones on West End look small, and the sunrise reflections off their windows. What do you see from your place?” and he said “Oh, I have a huge terrace in the rear, so I get to see lots of other terraces and backyards and the backs of buildings, especially the one at the corner of Columbus and 75th—La Rochelle, it’s called, though nobody calls it anything but its number, fifty-seven. Also, some sunsets, though not so far when the sun sinks into New Jersey and drowns, like it probably does from your window. Mine, I just see disappearing behind La Rochelle, and maybe twenty minutes later some nice colors in the sky.” He pictures her looking pleased, talking to him as they walked. He’s never been able to describe that look. Tried, verbally and on paper. But he knew by it when she really liked something. Maybe “pleased” or “satisfied” or “self-satisfied” is all it is. He would love to hold her as they walked, he thought. Hold her hand, he meant. Then to put his arm around her shoulders and draw her to him. Then stop to kiss. Nobody was around. Even if someone was. What would she do if he tried to kiss her? he thought as they walked. Don’t try. Whatever you do, he thought, don’t. But if he did try and she complied? And he’s talking about a deep kiss, or something like it: eyes closed, lips pressed. That would be it. He’d be so happy. “Kiss me,” he says in bed, in the dark, on his back, covers up to his neck, and shuts his eyes and puts his lips out for her. He actually once imagined—it wasn’t too long ago—he felt something wet and soft on his lips when he did it. He knows it’s crazy but at the moment he believed it and has tried the same thing a couple of times since. Anyway, he was really getting to like this gal, he thought as they walked. Or maybe he thought all that when he walked her to her building from the restaurant on their second date. Or maybe he didn’t think it there, either, and is only thinking it now in bed. He doesn’t think so but it’s a possibility. He remembers, he forgets, he thinks something happened that didn’t, he gets things mixed up. It was so long ago. Twenty-oh-six, end of seventy-eight. She mentioned her age—something about how it took her a few years longer to get her Ph.D. than it does most candidates in her field, and gave the reasons for it—marriage, travel, working as a guide in a USIA exhibit in Belgium and France for six months, divorce, getting over it—and he got concerned about their eleven-year age difference, though for eleven days a year, he later learned, it was ten. Again: they talked about the woman who gave the party they met at. He said “It was very nice of her to invite me to such an…well, I was going to say ‘elegant,’ but to some other word gathering,” and she said “It was a pretty distinguished group of people, but why are you so surprised you were invited? I’m sure she liked you, and that you were a writer—she loves writers. And she might even have been a little taken with you—she also likes younger men. What she might not like is that we met after the party, even for coffee. Have you spoken to her since?” and he said no. “I don’t like asking this, but could you tell me if there was anything between you two, just in case I need to know what to be prepared for with her?” and he said “I think I told you. We shared the same bathroom at Yaddo, but at different times, and had some lively breakfast conversation. So lively that people at the silent table whispered to us if we could tone it down. As for Pati being even a little taken with me—you said it, I didn’t—I would have heard from her sooner, wouldn’t you think? Because from what I’ve seen, she doesn’t hold back,” and she said “True.” Talked about a well-known Russian poet, now American, who was there. “He and I were the only men without ties,” he said, “though he did wear a dress shirt and crisply pressed slacks.” “I had a long talk with him,” she said. “He’s a brilliant poet and essayist—he supposedly came close to getting a Nobel soon after he emigrated here—and he gave me his card,” and he said “What’s that mean…he has eyes for you?” and she said “It’s possible.” “Have you heard from him?” and she said “I think he wants me to call him. But he was a bit filled with himself. And he smokes too much and still has a wife in the Soviet Union and, according to Pati, a girlfriend or two here.” “So you spoke to her about him?” and she said “No, she spoke to me about him. You seem to be cross-examining me, Martin,” and he said “Well, I want to know what I’m up against. Poets always get the girls,” and she said “That’s utter nonsense.” “Then the girls always get the poets,” and she said “Nonsense too.” “I’m sorry. Are we still friends?” and she said “We haven’t known each other long enough to be friends.” “Then putative friends,” and she said “You’ll have to translate for me.” “I think I meant it as ‘potential,’ and got the word wrong,” and she said “Don’t let it bother you.” About a well-known literary and cultural critic and his psychoanalyst wife. She’d first met the woman at one of Pati’s parties. “Or possibly it was at some PEN event I was taken to. We’ve had coffee severa
l times. I like her very much. She’s exceptionally intelligent and articulate and knows as much about literature as her husband—more about foreign literature—and has a greater love for it. With him, it’s often his business. No, that’s too harsh. Erase that. Did you get to speak to them?” and he said “Wanted to, but I’m intrinsically shy, so didn’t know how.” “You could have asked Pati,” and he said “I also didn’t want to intrude.” And lots of other writers. “Again, I didn’t speak to many people,” he said. “Mostly just noshed, sipped and watched, though that wasn’t what I wanted. In fact, I talked almost to no one at any length—writer or otherwise. I was also too busy following you around, looking for an opportunity to introduce myself. Boy, were you popular. But there was a young novelist and his young short-story writer wife.” “I know them,” she said. “I was his sister’s counselor at summer sleepaway camp. He and I became friends when we were both in graduate school at Columbia, he in writing. A bright talented couple.” He said he’s never heard of either of them and she said “They’re just starting out. Although each had a story in The New Yorker the past year, his a novel excerpt made to read like a short story,” and he said “I don’t get the magazine. But good for them. That should get them on their way. I’ve been rejected by that magazine so many times, I don’t send to it anymore.” “Never give up. That’s what Aiden, the novelist, told me,” and he said “Nah, I’ve got ten years on them, so I know when I’m licked.” An artist who does covers and other work for The New Yorker. “His stuff, of course, everybody knows from posters and other reproductions made of it,” he said. “He can be a bit slick and self-imitative, but I really have no opinion. Pati, I saw, has an original drawing of his in her bedroom, expensively framed and affectionately inscribed with what I guess is his nickname, Izzie,” and she said “That’s what he’s called by his friends—from Isador, his middle name,” and he said “Makes sense, then. I didn’t know his first two names, just their initials.” A Hungarian novelist and freedom rights activist in his own country, who probably will get a Nobel, she said, “for literature or peace.” “Now him I’ve read,” he said, “—all two translations. He’s almost the rarity of rarities today, a great fiction writer, though there’s every now and then something not quite right in his writing or missing. But more times than not he’s powerful and original and hits all the buttons.” “So, other than for your qualifications about him, we finally agree on someone,” and he said “It could be because he’s the only writer mentioned from the party so far whom we’ve both read, other than for our Russian poet and American literary critic, and those guys I’ve only read a little of—I also don’t get The New York Review of Books. Should I be ashamed?” “Far be it from me,” she said, “although it could never hurt to read more of them.” “All in all, it was quite a group,” he said. “I’ve never been to a party with so many well-known people in the arts and related professions in one room. Well, if I’m counting right, four rooms.” He brought up again the rugby shirt he wore to the party. “At least it had long sleeves. My pants were all right: corduroys, not jeans. But just so you know: I would’ve worn a different shirt. Not a dress shirt. I don’t have one, or the one I own is threadbare and I don’t know why I keep it. But a more dressy kind of shirt, one with buttons all the way down the front and one solid color—navy blue—and not stripes. Would have clashed a little with the beige pants, but it still would have been a better choice. I don’t know what I was saving it for. As I think I told you, I thought it was going to be a small informal gathering.” “You did tell me,” she said. “People from Yaddo this summer,” and he said “I don’t know how I got that impression.” He thinks she said “Your shirt was fine, or let’s say I only thought about it once at the party. Or did I? And out of all the men there—all of them in jackets and most in ties—you’re the one I’m walking with now and just had coffee and tea and an English muffin with” or “dinner with and before that a beer”—she actually had a Guinness Stout that came in a bottle and which she drank from a special glass that either collected or dissipated the foam on top. He forgets what the glass, which had the Guinness logo on it, was supposed to do. He pictures her smiling at him as they walked and talked. He liked what she last said, if what she said about the English muffin was the last thing she said, and other things she said about them before. Made him think things were going pretty well between them. That she might be agreeable to seeing him again. For sure he’s going to ask her if she’d like to meet again, he thought, or else say, when they were about to part, “I’ll call.” And maybe she’ll eventually invite him up to her apartment for coffee or tea, or just to see it, or even for dinner. Or say something like “We should go out for dinner sometime,” if this wasn’t their first date and they weren’t walking to her apartment building after having dinner in a restaurant. Did they split the check? He thinks they did. Or he paid and she took care of the tip. He now thinks that’s how it went. And the dinners out after that? —not that they ate out that much early on. They were both short of money for a while and she liked cooking at home and trying out certain French and Italian dishes on him. Their next dinner out he thinks she paid and he took care of the tip. Then he paid and she took care of the tip, and so on. Or maybe he took care of both around two out of every three times. He seems to remember it that way and it sounds more realistic. Till he got the teaching job in Baltimore and from then on he paid the dinner check and tip. Even if it was a very expensive restaurant? He doesn’t think they went to one till they were engaged. In fact, the first time they went to one together was to celebrate their engagement, and he took care of the check and tip. No, the first was when he sold his fourth book. Lunches, he remembers taking care of from the beginning, check and tip, even if he was only having coffee and she was having a complete meal. So what else could they have talked about during their walk from the drugstore? Her family a little, his. The Bronx, where she lived till she was around fourteen. Manhattan, now back on the same block he lived on till he was twenty-two, other than for the first nine months of his life in Brooklyn before his family moved. He once told her “I even know the name and number of the apartment building on Ocean Avenue across from—I have no memory of it, of course—Prospect Park. Two thirty-nine, and it was called Patricia Court, or maybe it was ‘Patrician.’ I thought I knew it. I’ll have to ask my mother and hope she remembers. I know she told me our apartment was on the first floor in back and that there was a long awning in front above the entire entryway, with the building’s name and number on it.” Before her family moved to 78th Street, they lived on Knox Place near Mosholu Parkway, second to last subway stop on the D line, she said. “So many X’s in my life,” she once said and wrote something almost identical to it, but without the part about sex, that he found on a piece of paper sticking out of a book on her night table. What actually happened is that a short time after she told him about the X’s, he got curious about the book because of its title—Forgotten Yiddish—opened it, saw she’d written on the paper being used as a bookmark, he supposed, and read it. “The Bronx, Knox Place, where I lived in it: Ruxton, where we live now; Aix-en-Provence, where I did so much of my doctoral research; my ex, Rex, and lots of sexy sex with you.” He said, “Was ‘Rex’ Richard’s nickname?” and she said “No, Ricky was. But it’s what I called him when he was acting imperiously to me, which he did a lot of the last year of our marriage.” She said, if this was their first date, she thinks she better be getting her bus, as she has a good deal of class work to do at home. They were outside for more than an hour. Walked very slowly as they talked. Got to 86th Street or somewhere around there, sat on a bench facing the river and park for about fifteen minutes. The bench was his idea and he probably asked her if it was too cold for her to sit and she might have said something like “Is it too cold for you? It isn’t for me.” He seems to remember a huge tanker making its way up the river. If he’s right, then they probably talked about it because it was so unusual and the ship was so big. He knows it happened on
ce during one of their walks along the park side of the Drive. The car traffic going north—it was past five o’clock by now—was probably heavy as it always was on weekdays around that time and for the next hour or more—drivers trying to avoid the even heavier traffic going north on the West Side Highway—and they might have talked about that too. How, when they started their walk, there was hardly any traffic going either way, the Drive was relatively quiet and the air fresher, with so little car fumes, and it was still light out. Shortly before they got up from the bench, he thinks they stared in front of themselves awhile and then looked at each other and smiled. That’s what he pictures. He thinks it was around then when she said she better be getting her bus. He waited with her at the bus stop. She said he didn’t have to, she’d be all right, and he said “Are you kidding? I’m not leaving you alone here; I don’t care how long it takes the bus to come.” She said “The schedule”—there was one on the bus stop pole—“says…let’s see…they’re supposed to come every seven minutes at this hour, but you know New York.” He said “We should do this again—meet, one of these next few nights. But maybe for a glass of beer or wine this time, and early around five or six, if you like,” and she said “That’d be fine with me. Why don’t you call me and I’ll see what my calendar’s like. I know this weekend I’m busy. My parents, one night; a friend, the other. And Sunday I prepare for my class on Monday…a lot of reading, which I like to do the previous night.” “Not even for just a wee small drink for half an hour on Sunday? I’ll come up to your neighborhood, make it as convenient as possible for you,” and she said “It wouldn’t be worth the bother to you for just a half-hour, and besides, I have to stay focused.” “How about if I call later tonight to see what you’re doing next week,” and she said “Best, once I get home, I don’t think of anything but my work—there’s that much. Being relatively new at teaching my own course, you can say I like coming to class overprepared.” “But you do want to meet again, though, right? I mean if you don’t, that’s okay too,” and she said “I thought I said so; yes. It was fun, this afternoon,” and he said “I’d like to say ‘likewise,’ but that’d sound corny and it’s not something I’d ever say. Tell me, what am I saying? God, this is going badly, isn’t it? I must seem like a complete schlemiel to you,” and she said “Why do you say that? There’s my bus,” he thinks she said around then, and he thought it had ended badly and now he doesn’t know if she will agree to see him when he calls. He better give it a few days before he does call. Monday, to show he was in no rush. Oh, damn; strategies, he thought. He was feeling so good, so why couldn’t he have shut up at the end when he should have? But maybe it’s not that bad. What’s so wrong in showing you’re interested, so long as you don’t show you’re too interested too early on and maybe scare her off? More strategy, and what he thought after her bus left. He thinks it was the number five. No, he knows. They kept her apartment on Riverside Drive, till three years ago. When they were evicted because New York wasn’t their permanent address and they lived in the apartment for less than six months a year. Some regulation for rent-stabilized apartments, which lots of landlords don’t know about or take advantage of, but theirs did. With them out, he could fix the place up: new kitchen appliances and cabinets and toilet and paint job and sanding the floors and maybe new energy-saving windows—and get four times the rent they were paying and, under the table, because the apartment had such a great view, ten to twenty thousand in key money too. That’s what they’d heard. Gwen was very upset over it. She loved New York and her father still lived there at the time, while his own mother had died six years before and he didn’t much care for the City anymore. Too hectic and noisy and smelly and other things. He doesn’t know when he’ll next get there, even for just a day or two. They could have fought the eviction. She wanted to. The rent was affordable on their two salaries and she’d had the apartment since a few months before they met, and for about five years before that had lived in a smaller apartment in the back of the building with her first husband and then alone. But they were told by people who knew about things like this that they’d lose—the Real Estate Board or Commission or whatever it is almost always sides with the landlord—and they’d have to pay all court costs and about two thousand dollars in lawyer fees, theirs and the landlord’s, if not more. He’s repeating himself; he knows. The bus stopped. When he turned around he saw there was also now an elderly couple waiting for it, the man with a walker—he doesn’t know how he hadn’t heard the walker clanking on the sidewalk as the couple approached the bus stop—and the right front of the bus had to be lowered. He pictures putting out his hand and saying “So I’ll see ya; this was fun,” and she smiling and shaking his hand and saying goodbye and getting on the bus after the couple and standing in the aisle near the front—the bus was packed; he wonders if anyone gave up his seat to the elderly man; he knows he would have, or to the woman if someone had already given up his seat to the man—and taking a book out of her bag and waving it at him while with her other hand holding the pole above her head, as the bus pulled away. He waving back. After that, just about whenever he walked her to the subway or a bus stop, he’d kiss her goodbye and then blow a kiss to her as she went through the turnstile—he usually walked downstairs with her, didn’t just leave her at the top—or her bus pulled away, and she’d always smile at him, as she didn’t that first time on the bus, and often wave. “Unlike you, I’m not naturally demonstrative that way,” she said once when he asked her “How come you never blow a kiss back to me? Not important, so long as you kiss me just before we go our separate ways,” but she told him. And then said “If you really want me to do it every time we separate, I will,” and he said “It’s up to you. I like it but wouldn’t want you to do anything that’s unnatural for you,” and she continued not doing it. This was after they first slept together and maybe a few days after that said they loved each other. No, it took more time. He remembers it as being morning, around seven or eight, her bedroom was very cold, he got another blanket out of the linen closet and spread it out over the bed, got back in bed with her and she opened her eyes, must have just got awake, and said “What’s all the fuss about so early?” and he said “Keeping you warm, my dovey. You know I love you,” and she said “And I love you,” and they kissed. At least he thinks that was the first time they said it. He really now doesn’t know. He’s never been able to get that straight and when he asked her he thinks she said she didn’t know. And he now thinks she must have thought that blowing kisses was silly but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying so. So what did he do after her bus left? Might have watched it disappear up Riverside Drive and, after a while, just its interior lights, and thought something like “She’s on it,” and pictured her standing and reading and grabbing the pole above her or the handle on the seat next to her when the bus was coming to a stop. Or thought again how lovely and smart and perfect for him she is, and what luck he’s getting to know her. Luck that he’d gone to Yaddo when he did and his room and Pati’s were next to each other and they became friends. And again, that business about don’t screw it up. And that things hadn’t gone as badly as he first thought they had. He can be clumsy in what he says sometimes, but she didn’t seem like someone who’d make something of it. She must see by now he’s a little awkward around her but having a good time. The conversation was good and that’s what’d seem important to her, he’d think. Have they started seeing each other? he thinks he thought. Anyway, he could have. In a way, yes, but so small a way that it’s too early to be certain of even that yet. There is going to be another date, that he’s almost sure of. And if there’s one or two after that, he thinks he’s in. Next one could be for dinner or lunch or just drinks somewhere, but not for another coffee and tea unless she says that’s what she’d prefer it to be. Actually, doesn’t matter to him what it is, he might have thought, so long as they meet. He probably walked down Broadway, could have stopped in at Fairway for a few things, maybe also the liquor store on Columb
us near his block for a bottle of vodka or the fancy wine shop on 72nd for a bottle of wine, and went home. It’s possible he wrote some more and read for a while and then made himself a cheese sandwich, which he used to do around seven or eight just about every other night: rye toast or toasted rye bagel, tomato slices, lettuce, Dijon mustard, preferably an imported Swiss or French-like Swiss cheese and, if he wasn’t going to meet anybody that evening, thin slice of what used to be called Bermuda onion. Called his friend Manny later on and said something like “Want to meet for a beer? I want to tell you about this woman I met at a party last week and saw for coffee today and whom I’ll probably see again and I think I could really get to like.” Knows he called Manny that night because Manny reminded him of it several times, even at his wedding. “Who’s the first person you had to speak to about the future bride? Me. I take great pride in that and knew from the start you were lost.” They met at Ruppert’s. Doesn’t know what it’s called today. Something, he thinks, with “American” and “Café” in it, but that name could also have been changed since he last saw it. Or maybe it was still “O’Neal Bros.” when Manny and he met there that night. Knows it still wasn’t Kelly’s Bar & Grill, which it had been for about fifty years when they first started going to it in ’68. They sat or stood at the bar. The television above the bar was on, as it always seemed to be—usually, around this time and month, to a hockey or basketball game. Manny said “So who’s this chickie you’re so knocked over by that you had to drag me out into the cold to talk about her?” and he said “I didn’t say I was knocked over. And come on, it’s not that cold out and your place is the same three blocks from here as mine. Anyway, I’m just beginning to know her—it’s only been a week and one phone call and coffee date—but I think there’s potential there.” “Potential to bed her?” and he said “Potential to have a good relationship.” “What are her looks like?” and he said “She’s good-looking. Very good-looking, I’d say, though you might not think so.” “I don’t know. We agree on some things. But specifics,” which is what Manny liked to say. “Give me specifics,” and he said “Long blond hair, but a real blond, and beautiful smile and skin and, I think, green eyes.” “How can you tell her hair’s not bleached?” and he said “It’s just that when it isn’t, it looks like it isn’t. I’ve lived with a couple of real blonds. And she has a wonderful disposition, which is not looks, but helps. Soft, calm, as is her voice.” “How old is she?” and he told him and Manny said “Lots of years between you two, but that’s all right. She’ll take care of you in your old age.” “She’s also very bright. I know this means a lot to you. Has a Ph.D. from Columbia in French literature—her dissertation was on Camus. You like Camus. You’ve said The Stranger is one of your favorite books.” “It’s the only one I read of his and I don’t know if I’d want to hear an expert on it. Too much like school,” and he said “You’d want to hear her. She’s clear, unpedantic, and that voice. She’s now on a prestigious postdoctoral teaching fellowship and is teaching at Columbia for two years.” “Is she Jewish like you?” and he said “If you mean is she a Jew but doesn’t practice it, yes.” “Does she have a big nose?” and he said “God, you can be such a putz sometimes.” “Then I’m sorry, forget I said it; let’s get down to more important things, her build. Does she have big tits?” and he said “Big, little, medium-sized: what’s the difference?” “You saying you’d take little to Miss Flatchested over big?” and he said “I’m saying it wouldn’t affect how I feel about her, just as the size and shape of her nose wouldn’t.” “So you didn’t even look?” and he said “I looked—I checked them out, as you like to say—and they’re pretty substantial, or seem to be, but so what?” “‘Substantial,’” Manny said; “what a word for it. Well, that’s better than her having nothing up there, isn’t it? But listen. If things ever get hot and romancy between you two, then whatever you do, don’t try to fix me up with one of her friends. I know they’ll all be brainy like her and condescending to me and not interested in any of the things I am.” “Deal,” he said, “but let’s see how far it goes with me first. I’ll be honest with you. I’m really hoping.” “Good, that’s good; congratulations. At our age, what guy in his right mind, especially one who wants kids, as you’ve said you do, wouldn’t want a woman eleven years younger than him as a permanent mate? Now do you take issue with that too?” and he said “No. It wasn’t one of my original reasons for hoping, but there’s something to what you say.” “Should we drink to it?” and he said “Yeah, why not,” and they clinked glasses, drank up, had another beer, talked about other things, he gave Manny his share of the tab and put a tip down on the bar and left and Manny stayed. “You’re taken,” Manny said. “Me, you never know when some honey’s going to come in here and flash on me. Hard to imagine, but it’s happened.” On his way home he might have thought why in hell is he still friends with that guy? Ah, Manny’s seen him through a lot, been a loyal and uncritical friend, and he can be very funny sometimes and cut through most bullshit and he often makes a lot of sense He doesn’t think Gwen would like him, he also might have thought. Too vulgar.