His Wife Leaves Him

by Stephen Dixon

  Didn’t he go through this one before? They were driving back from Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Seems familiar. She was at the wheel and he was in the passenger seat. That part’s different. Usually he drives. But he had a large vodka martini in the lobby during intermission, so she insisted she drive. “But I said I’m okay,” and she said “Listen to me, Martin,” and he said “Whenever you call me by my name, when it’s not something like ‘Martin, phone call for you,’ I know I’m not going to change your mind. Okay, and I do this most grudgingly,” and he gave her his keys. This took place as they walked to the garage. They didn’t speak again till they pulled onto 83 and she said “So, what did you think?” and he said “Oh, we’re talking? Think about what?” “Did you enjoy yourself tonight? Any particular piece and how it was played? Did you get any good ideas during the concert for the work you’re working on? Did you at least get a good snooze in during part of it or wish you were home reading and drinking or getting ready for bed, but anyplace but in the Meyerhoff? In other words—” and he said “You want the honest truth or just the truth?” “Are you still upset with me for taking away your driving privileges for the evening? All I thought at the time was how dumb it would be to get into an accident or near miss that could have been easily avoided by my driving us home,” and he said “No, you were anxious—probably thought about the kids—so you were right. And the truth? Not about my ability to drink, I mean drive—that was intentional—with one watered-down drink in me, but the concert? The Mahler was bombastic and the Mozart schmaltzy. As for the Elgar. Well, enough with that guy already. He wrote one terrific piece, but I’ve heard it so many times on radio, I’m sick of it.” “So you didn’t like anything of anything? You’ve said you like the slow movements of all the Mahler symphonies and Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos. That’s why I got us tickets for this concert, even though it wasn’t part of our subscription series,” and he said “Oh, what do I know? You play, I just listen,” and she said “You know a lot about classical music, much more than me, and you’ve heard a lot more too. I think your anger’s coming less from my dragging you to a concert you might not have wanted to go to than from my, you thought, indirectly criticizing your drinking. Next time I’ll invite a friend to come with me, instead of having to put up with your puerile crap.” “Wait. ‘Puerile.’ Where’s my dictionary so I can look it up.” “You’re still sounding immature. But I loved the concert. I don’t think I’ve loved one more. The Mahler, almost every part of it, though he’s never been one of my favorites as he has been one of yours. The Elgar, even if I’ve heard it on radio dozens of times, always moves me. And the Mozart, and not just the slow movement, which I thought to be pure heaven. It transported me to a place in my head I’ve never been to before. And you knew I loved the playing of all three compositions—you could tell by my expression during and after each piece and what I told you at intermission about two of them—but you still couldn’t help trying to ruin it for me as fast as you could. You can be a bastard, do you know that?” and started crying. “Are you crying?” and she said “You know I am. Not bawling, just crying. So why ask such a stupid question?” “You’re that angry at me?” and she said “You know I am. Why ask such a stupid second question, as if there was any doubt about it?” “You know,” he said, “we’ve played this scene before. Except I was driving, if I remember—no, I had to be, because I almost always drove when we went someplace together—but it was in the first minivan we had and you were in the seat I’m in now. I was angry at you for something you said—you were probably right, but anyway, I was angry—and you asked me if I was angry and I said ‘What an inane’ or even ‘stupid question; you can see how angry I am.’ And then you said ‘Well, I’m sorry for making you angry and ruining your good time. I apologize.’ and you took my hand off the wheel to kiss it and I pulled it away and said ‘I need two hands to drive.’ Are you still angry at me, Gwen? I’m apologizing,” and she said “Are you still angry at me?” and he said “No,” and she said “Neither am I.” “And actually, I was lying before,” he said. “I did enjoy the concert, especially the Mozart, which I didn’t think schmaltzy at all. Also, most of the Mahler, the adagio particularly. And as far as the Elgar goes, I’ve never heard it played live and it was quite stirring. I’m going to have to read the program notes to learn again what he meant by that title. I did only say I didn’t like them because I wanted to ruin, as you said, your post-concert euphoria for taking away my car keys and implying I can’t hold my liquor, which sometimes I can’t, at least not enough to drive. Truth is, I was a little high at the end of the concert from that one drink, probably because I hadn’t had anything to eat tonight but the sandwich we split in the lobby before the concert began and a single olive. And I don’t want you to go to the next unsubscribed concert with a friend. I want you to go with me, although you can bring along a friend. Next time we’re there—in fact, all the next times—I won’t even drink a beer during intermission. If I do have a martini or beer there, it’ll be with more food in me than half a sandwich and a whole olive and before the first half of the concert begins. Finally, and I’m not making this stuff up, whenever you don’t think I’m fit to drive because of how much I had to drink that night—even just one martini—or how little I had to eat before or while I drank, I’ll go along with it without taking it as some sort of rebuke, for that’s how fair-minded I think you are and how much I respect your judgment. So what do you say? Everything okay with us again?” and she said “Everything’s settled. And you can kiss my hand, Martin, but make it quick because I’m driving,” and she held out her right hand and he kissed it.

  On the windowsill across from his work table is a three-by-five-inch Plexiglas frame with a photo of Gwen giving Rosalind her first bath. He doesn’t have to get out of bed and turn on the light to see what’s in the photo. He’s looked at it so many times he’s practically memorized it. Sometimes when he’s at the table he’s taken the frame off the sill and stared at the photo for a minute or so. A number of times he’s looked at it through the magnifying glass he also keeps on the sill, to see if there was anything he might have missed in it. There wasn’t, the last two times, though he’s still trying to identify one object on the ledge behind her: an orange blob the size of a baseball. He once showed her the photo and asked if she knew what the blob was and she said that was a long time ago and it doesn’t look like anything she remembers using in the bath or shower. He just thought of something. Maybe it’s a sponge to drip water over Rosalind’s head after Gwen washed it. He also once asked her if she minded his keeping the photo in such a visible place and she said “Why would I? My breasts are discreetly concealed and my genitals and pubic hair are underwater. And who sees it but you and the kids and the cleaning woman every other week, and if a plumber has to go through the room to get to our bathroom, I’d want you to put it facedown. Besides, it’s as much a photo of Rosalind as it is of me, isn’t it?” and he said “No. I mean, it’s a sweet domestic scene of mother and child, but it’s my favorite of you. Although there is one of you I like as much. You’re at an outdoor cafe in Deauville with your boyfriend Hendrick, three years before we met. Your hand’s covering his, he’s got his other arm around your shoulder, you’re both giddy with happiness, so it’s not one I’d want to see every day unless I snipped him out of it, which’d ruin the part with you.” She looks beautiful in the bath photo, but there are others where she’s as if not more beautiful. Maybe he likes it so much because she also looks so happy in it, sitting in the tub and holding a calm-looking Rosalind halfway out of the water. It could also be something to do with her being nude, the only one he has of her that she let him keep. He did once have a full-frontal nude Polaroid of her when she was seven months pregnant with Rosalind, taken behind the cottage in Maine they rented, but she found it about ten years later when she was looking for photos for a family album she was putting together and tore it up. “It wasn’t only my ugly bloated belly and what seemed like pubic hair crawling
up to my navel, but my fat face and thighs and cantaloupian breasts,” and he said “It wasn’t that bad and you looked so shtark and radiant in it. I used to pull out that photo several times a year to look at it and now it can’t be replaced.” Her back’s a few inches from the curved end of the tub. Her long blond hair, brown in the photo because it’s wet, hangs over her left shoulder into the water in a single thick strand she made with her hands. The ledge is at the same level as the top of the tub and has a number of things on it besides what he’s almost sure now is a sponge. Five bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a small bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo, a bar of red soap in a plastic soap container, the bottom part fitted into the top; two hairbrushes, one, he thinks, for taking knots out of wet hair. Two identical tubes of something, one squeezed a lot more than the other. In fact, the second one looks unused and he has no idea what the tubes were for. A baby’s comb, a washrag glove, he’ll call it, that they bought two of—one for each of them—on their first trip to France together in June ’81. In the recessed soap dish in the tile wall above the tub, a bar of Ivory soap, which he always used—it’s still the only soap he uses—when he showered in the tub. The red one was Gwen’s, bought in a health-food store. A bath toy—a book with a plastic cover and pages—floated behind Rosalind in the tub. At the bottom right corner of the photo: part of a folded-up gray towel leaning against the rim of the tub, probably on a clean bathmat. How he came to take the photo. They were in the bathroom. The heat in the apartment had been turned up and the bathroom door closed to make the room even warmer. He was holding Rosalind, who was naked. Gwen took off her bathrobe and hung it on the door hook, felt the water with her hand, got into the tub—he’d filled it to about six inches from the top and dropped the plastic book in—and dunked her head in the water. “To make Baby less afraid of the water,” she said when she came up, and then wrung her hair and shaped it into a strand. “All right; I’m ready for Baby’s first bath and shampoo,” and she held her arms out and he handed her Rosalind. Then he got the idea to take a few photos. “Be right back,” he said, got the camera off the fireplace mantel in the living room, where they always kept it so they’d always know where it was, came back, got the camera set for shooting, held it up to them and said “Okay? A little smile?” She said “I’ve no clothes on; what are you doing?” and he said “Nobody but us will see it and this is a major event in her life.” “Just one, then, but I don’t want the flash going off in her eyes.” She splashed the water with her feet, said “Look, Rosalind, look.” Rosalind looked down at the splashing or maybe at the book floating past because of the splashing, and Gwen said “Take it now,” and he took three quick pictures with the flash but only this one came out.

  She dropped him off at his building. He’s previously thought of this tonight. They’d spent the entire day driving back from Maine. He got his things out of the car and she said “I have to tell you something. You’re not going to like it, or maybe not.” “You want to end our relationship,” and she said “That’s right.” “It was the argument I had with your mother,” and she said “That contributed to it, but it wasn’t only that. It’s just not working out. And I don’t see it working out. No, I definitely don’t.” “Okay,” he said, “I’m not going to argue with you. I think it could work out and I’ll be sad for a few days that I won’t be seeing you anymore, but I’ll be okay. So long, Gwen,” and he picked up his typewriter in its case and a knapsack and a shopping bag with his things and went into his building. She called, he’s almost sure now, around two months later. “Hello,” he said, and she said “Hi.” “Oh, Gwen, what a surprise. How are you?” and she said “I’m doing well; and you?” “Good.” “How’s your teaching going?” and he said “Well, you know, it’s continuing ed, so not real teaching like yours. They’re all adults, most of them around my age or ten to twenty years older, though there is a couple in their mid-twenties. They come in together, leave together, but sit at opposite ends of the room during class. Nice people, all. Intelligent, mostly woman, and a few are pretty good writers but not yet of fiction. I also try to do a short story a week from an anthology of contemporary European writers I had them buy, but I don’t lead the class discussion well and I have little to say about these stories, so I might stop assigning them,” and she said “But it’s a good idea, getting them to analyze and comment on fiction by accomplished writers. And it’s a break from just talking about their own work,” and he said “That was my intention, but it isn’t working. ‘The Adulterous Woman’ was one of the stories we read. That was the only one I had a lot to talk about, no doubt because you and I once discussed it and I remembered what you had to say. But then I started in about how at the end she seems to be fornicating with the firmament and getting a release from it, and they all thought I was nuts. I’m not a literature teacher. I’m a literature reader, and only for my own enjoyment and to pass the time in a quiet, simple way. And after I read something, even if I liked it a lot, I forget it and go on to the next. I’ve even taken to reading criticism, if I can find it, on the stories we read, but it hasn’t helped. I think I’m doing a little better by them with their own writing, though, and I have lively literary conversations over coffee with some of them after class, primarily the ones who don’t have to go back to work. But if teaching’s the career I’m to fall back on for the rest of my writing life, I’m in trouble. But how are your classes going?” “Very well, thank you. Easier than last year, but same heavy load.” “And your parents?” and she said “They’re fine. Thank you for asking.” “Your mother still angry at me?” and she said “She never was. She saw it as a minor spat too and half her fault. And I hope your mother’s doing well,” and he said “She’s fine too, thanks. I’ll tell her you asked.” “Listen, Martin, you must be wondering why I called,” and he said “I thought maybe just to see how I’m doing; catch up on stuff and things like that. It’s been a while. I’ve been curious about you too.” “That’s part of it. I also wanted to know if you’d like to meet for coffee, so we can have a more extensive talk,” and he said “Sounds good to me.” “Then I suppose the next step is to arrange it. What’s a good time and day for you and where would you like to meet? Your neighborhood, mine, somewhere in between?” and he said “Any place convenient for you. I teach at noon Mondays and Wednesdays on 42nd Street off Sixth—they’ve taken over five floors of an office building there—so we should probably avoid those days unless you teach a full load on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.” “This Tuesday would be all right. For coffee? A drink?” and he said “Coffee would be best. If I have a glass of wine or beer, I’ll have two, and I want to keep my head clear.” “You know, another possibility is my apartment. I can make Turkish coffee and also provide cookies from Mondell’s.” “I’d feel funny,” he said, “saying hello to one of the doormen I knew. Better a nice unfrenetic coffeehouse. What about the Hungarian Pastry shop? I love that place,” and she said “So do I. I remember you did most of the galleys for your last book there. Okay. This Tuesday, at three? and he said “Perfect. I’ll be through rereading my students’ manuscripts for Wednesday and also done with my own writing for the day.” “So I’ll see you then,” and he said “Tuesday, three, Hungarian Pastry shop. I look forward to it,” and she said “Thanks. So do I. Bye-bye, Martin,” and he said “Goodbye,” and she hung up. “Oh, God, oh, God,” he said, after he put the receiver down, “this is wonderful.”

  He got a call. Late afternoon, January 10th, 1983, their first wedding anniversary. He was in their New York apartment with Rosalind. They were planning to go out for dinner that night with another couple in their building, who also got married on this day but a few years before them. Gwen’s mother was going to come over at six to babysit. He forgets what restaurant he made a reservation for—he wanted it to be the one Gwen and he had gone to on their first dinner date—but she didn’t think it good enough for a wedding anniversary and said that the other couple wouldn’t think it good enough either. He knows it was in the neig
hborhood so they could rush home in case her mother needed them. It was the first time they were going to leave Rosalind alone with anyone. The first time they actually did leave her was about a half year later with the college-age daughter of a French couple they’d become friends with in Baltimore. The caller identified himself—Tiffany’s, Security, last name was Duff—and asked if he was speaking to Martin Samuels. “Yes, why?” and the man said “And you’re the husband of, her driver’s license says, Gwendolyn Liederman, four-two-five Riverside Drive, New York City?” “That’s correct. What is it? Anything wrong? She okay?” “She’s all right. No injury happened to her. I’ll put her on the phone after I inform you she’s being detained in our security office here till a police van takes her downtown to be booked for the charge of shoplifting. Tiffany’s—” and he said “Are you kidding me?” “Tiffany’s, I’ll have you know, prosecutes all shoplifters no matter how small the intended theft.” “But this is absolutely crazy. You’ve arrested the most honest person alive. Shoplifting? For what?” and the man said “If you mean the item, a handbag, or shoulder bag. A small leather bag hanging on her shoulder by a strap, which we caught her leaving the store with in her possession without having paid for it.” “But you’ve made a mistake. She was probably trying it on, seeing how it looked, decided against it, and absentmindedly left the store with it still on her shoulder. Look, whatever the damn thing’s worth, I’ll pay for it over the phone with my credit card, not because she might want the bag but to get her out of this jam.” “I can’t do that. Maybe you didn’t hear me, sir. Tiffany’s prosecutes all shoplifters, and your wife left the store with a stolen item in her possession,” and he said “And I explained to you. She’d never in a million years take something that wasn’t hers. Come on, let her go. She’s got a four-month-old baby at home. The kid’s got to be fed. That means mother’s milk. And today’s our first wedding anniversary. One year. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s so. We were going to go out to celebrate tonight. Her mother’s on her way over here now to babysit for us.” “Your wife should have thought of all that before. But nothing you say, sir, will change the situation for her. The police van’s already been called.” “Then call it off,” and the man said “I’m sorry, Mr. Samuels. I can’t do that either.” “Please put my wife on,” and the man said “You’ve got one minute,” and to Gwen: “Make it quick, Mrs. Samuels.” Gwen got on. “I’m so sorry, my darling, I must have thought I put that bag back. But I suddenly realized how late it was and that I had to get home to feed Rosalind, so I just ran out of the store. If this takes long, you know where my expressed milk is in the refrigerator. If you run out of that or she’ll only drink a little of it, use the formula, but make sure she’s not flat on her back while she drinks it. How is she?” and he said “Chattery, playful, not interested in being put down for a nap.” “It was such a dumb mistake on my part. I heard you trying to convince Mr. Duff to let me go, but it seems an exercise in futility. Against company policy. That old fall-back-on. Call off dinner with the Skolnicks. Don’t tell them why yet. Just say we think Rosalind’s coming down with something and we’ll do it another time. And call my mother and tell her not to come and to stay by the phone in case I need her. She might have to bail me out with cash. Mr. Duff wants me to end the call. Some paperwork still to do for the paddy wagon. That’s what it is. Imagine, me in one. But we’ll get a lawyer and it’ll all eventually be straightened out.” “I should get the phone number where you are and address and phone number of the police station you’re going to,” and she said “I’ll give you Mr. Duff for that. Am I ready for this? I better be. But don’t worry about me. I’m in relatively good spirits, and Mr. Duff and his associates have been very courteous. He even offered to get me a sandwich and soda from the Tiffany commissary if I got hungry. Bye-bye, sweetheart. Kiss Rosalind for me,” and she gave Duff the phone. She got back around four in the morning. He had dozed off on the couch—Rosalind was in her crib in the bedroom—and jumped up when he heard a key being inserted in the lock and opened the door for her. “Oh, so good to have you home,” and hugged her. “My mother says to say hello,” and he said “Thanks. Are you hungry?” and she said “I’m sleepy.” “So show me your new shoulder bag,” and she said “You don’t mind if I don’t laugh?” and she laughed. “How’s it been with Rosalind?” and he said “Great. We had lots of fun. So tell me, how was it?” and she said “Let me wash up first. The toilet facilities there were filthy and communal, with no privacy or soap. I had to pee in front of a dozen women. For bowel movements they led you to a tiny W.C., where they left you alone but they had to flush it.” “Probably so you wouldn’t just use it to pee in privacy,” and she said “No, that makes no sense. They’d know that lots of times, when you think you need to defecate, nothing comes out,” and he said “Then I don’t know.” She undressed, put all her clothes into the laundry hamper and went into the bathroom. He followed her. “Please let me pee in peace?” and he left the room and shut the door. She showered, water-picked, no doubt flossed and brushed her teeth, and came out in her bathrobe and said “I should have a large glass of water.” He said “I’ll get it,” and she said “No, I’m fine. They didn’t torture me there. They had a water cooler, but no cups, and I was reluctant to drink from it. Miss Priss. Who knew?” She was the first one picked up by the police wagon and had a nice chat with the officer in back. “He said he was a big reader too, particularly Moby-Dick multiple times and everything about Melville and it. I had to confess I never could get past the part just before they first board the ship. I asked him if the wagon ever got unruly—that I was a little afraid. He said ‘In all my times doing this, never a rumble or even a hint of back talk. Maybe they think I’ve some influence at the station, so they stay on their best behavior. Be very careful, though, once you’re in lock up. Don’t go to sleep or show your wallet.’“ They gradually picked up more people: prostitutes, male and female, a three-card monte dealer and a man who peed in front of a movie theater. “‘I had to go,’ he said. ‘New York ought to have more public toilets, especially in crowded Midtown. What did they expect me to do, buy a movie ticket just to piss?’ A few of them in the back knew each other from previous rides, and this guy was a repeater.” She was fingerprinted, more paperwork, put in a holding cell with the women from her van and others who were already there. “Most of them said to me ‘What are you doing here, honey? You look like you belong in a church or leading a choir.’ One of the prostitutes said she could help me make good money on the street, if I ever wanted to give up teaching or use it as a sideline or cover. That I’ve the right face and body and hair for it. ‘What do you do to get it that color?’ a couple of the women asked. When I told them it was real and that my being arrested was a mistake, you can guess the reaction I got. Lots of eye-rolling and ‘Sure, baby’s.’ I’ve never been in a situation before where absolutely nobody believed me. They did say I did one smart thing for myself and that was to bring a big book with me to read, because it was going to be a long night for me. ‘We’ll be out of here in a few hours,’ one prostitute said. ‘You, because your crime’s not victimless, could see two to three days.’ The woman said she was once a lawyer, and that’s when I didn’t believe her. But I’m very tired. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I have a bunch of quotes and detailed notes written on the title and dedication and copyright pages of the book I never got to read.” When they were turning the couch into a bed, he said “Okay, the truth now—” and she said “I know what you’re about to say, and I swear, it was an accident. I’m surprised at you for having even a shred of doubt.” “I didn’t at first,” he said. “But then I thought, with the bag hanging off your shoulder and you by the door, that you might have done it for the excitement for the first time in your life of getting away with something like that. Then, when you were home, you’d send the store the money and also the sales tax for it, anonymously and in cash, of course, and maybe ten extra bucks just to play it safe.” She said “It was an attractive bag
but too expensive and really too small for what I wanted it for. But I’ve never stolen anything in my life and never will. You know me. If a waitress doesn’t list some item that should have been on my check or a store clerk makes a mistake on the bill in my favor, I always correct them. It was something my parents drilled into me and I’ve always believed. You know, though, it’ll cost us to get the charges dropped, and if they’re not, then expunged. My father already consulted with two lawyer friends, but told them the information was for a tax client of his. As an experience, I’d say it was almost worth what I went through. It was exciting. The paddy wagon and petty criminals I was thrown in with in it and then the holding cell, a world I was aware existed but had never come near to experiencing. Have you ever been in a holding cell?” and he said “If I had, you wouldn’t have heard about it by now? I did once see one when I went to the 20th Precinct on 83rd or 84th Street, years before I met you, to report my license plates had been stolen. There it was, for everyone to see, very small, though, maybe big enough for three men to stand in—nothing the size you say yours was—with one skinny hysterical man inside shouting ‘Let me out,’ and the policeman recording my license plate theft saying ‘Shut up!’” “Well, I met some interesting people, none of them hysterical, some of them quite articulate and bright and all of them very nice. One even brushed my hair.”