His Wife Leaves Him

by Stephen Dixon

  They were in a mall in Baltimore. Maureen, a few months old, was in a baby carrier on Gwen’s chest. Gwen said she wanted to look around a little. “In stores that would bore you and make you irritable. Could you look after Rosalind? I know you’d prefer sitting on a bench here and reading, or having a coffee, but the two of them will be too much for me to deal with. Meet you back here in an hour? It’s almost two, so say, three?” He walked around with Rosalind. Went into a store and bought a short-sleeved T-shirt because the two he had were starting to have holes in the collar. Went to a different floor and looked in a bookstore window. “I know what,” he said. “Let’s go to the food court and get something.” He turned around. She wasn’t behind him where she was just before. He looked around. How the hell could she have gotten away so fast? The bookstore. That’s what he should have suggested to her. She loves picture books and they’ve been in it before. He looked around inside. Went to all the stores nearby. Ran in, looked, ran out, quickly said to a salesperson “Have you seen a little girl here alone? She’s three, but tall for her age. Blond. Very pretty.” All the time looking around him for her. “Wearing…wearing what? I don’t know what she’s wearing. Name’s Rosalind.” “So she’s lost?” one saleswoman said. “Want me to call Security?” “Call. Give my description. Tall, blond, three. Very pretty. Name’s Rosalind. Tell them I’m worried.” She called. “Missing child. A girl. Blond. —Very blond?” and he said “Very.” “Three. Tall for her age. Name’s Rosalind. Can you send someone up here? The father—you’re the father?” and he said “Yes.” “Is frightened something’s happened to her.” “I’ll look around in the meantime; leave my things here,” and he put the bag with the shirt in it and a book on a counter and ran out of the store and looked in all the stores he hadn’t been in yet on the floor, running down one side of the mall, then the other. The department stores at each end of the floor. Looked in, but they were much too large. “What am I going to do?” he said. “What am I going to do?” Gwen. Ran to the escalator well and yelled “Gwen, come quick. It’s me, Martin. Second floor. By the escalator. Rosalind’s lost.” Repeated it. Then yelled “Rosalind, it’s Daddy. If you can hear me, come to my voice. Come to Daddy. Go to the escalator so I can see you. Ask people where the escalator is.” People stopped. Some of them asked what it was and if they could help. “Yes,” he said. “Look for my daughter. She’s lost. She’s three. Alone. Tall for her age. Pretty. Very blond. Name’s Rosalind.” “What’s she wearing?” someone said. “That would help.” “I don’t know. That’s right. Red and white striped long-sleeved shirt and blue overalls. Look in all the stores above and below. I’ll go to the food court. Security’s also looking. If you find her, tell Security.” Several of them went in different directions. One said “I can’t help. I have to be home. But don’t worry, it’ll be all right. I’m sure they never lost a child here. Just looks that way to the parents while it’s happening.” “Good. Excuse me.” He was about to get on the up escalator to the food court when he saw Rosalind going down the escalator to the main floor. He didn’t want to yell her name because she might get startled and fall. She was holding the railing with one hand as he and Gwen had instructed her to. She stumbled a little getting off. Then he yelled from the top of the escalator “Rosalind. Rosalind. Stay where you are.” She looked around and then up at him. She didn’t move. He went down the escalator. When he got to her, she smiled and he took her hand, got them out of the way of people, dropped to one knee, held her with his eyes shut and then looked up at her and said “What were you doing? I thought you were lost. Daddy was so worried. I should hit your hand, just slap it lightly, something I’ve never done, so you’d remember never to run away from me like that again, but I won’t. Please, dear, never do it again. Do you hear? Do you understand?” and she started crying. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and he held her closer. Then he saw Gwen coming down the escalator. From halfway up, she said “Was that you shouting out my name?” He nodded and she said “What were you saying? I couldn’t make it out. And why’s Rosalind crying?” Rosalind squirmed out of his hold and ran to her and hugged her waist. He stood up and said “She disappeared for a few minutes and I panicked. I got the whole mall looking for her. It’s all right now. I didn’t hit her. I suppose I looked angry for a few seconds, though I didn’t feel my face forming an expression in that way, so she’s just afraid. I’m still a little unsettled. But how’d it go with you? Get what you want?” and she said “I did. Perfume. Jessica McClintock, my favorite. A terrific sale on it. It’ll last me ten years. And for some reason, with each purchase they give you a small stuffed animal—mine’s a rabbit—which the kids will like.” “Then let’s get out of here. But let me get my package and book first. I left them in a store upstairs.” “Oh, you bought something?” and he said “A T-shirt. Not on sale but reasonably priced. I needed it. I also have to tell Security everything’s okay. Wait here. People might stop and ask you—they were very kind and went out looking for Rosalind—if this is the girl who was lost. If they do, thank them for me.” “I wasn’t lost,” Rosalind said. “Okay, we’ll talk about that later,” and he brushed her hair back with his hand and took the escalator up.

  He drove to Brooklyn to a friend of Gwen’s who had a very good crib to give them. “And you can keep it,” she said, when he called for directions to her building. “Or after you’re through with it, give it to someone you like. We’ve definitely maxed out at two, so we won’t be needing it anymore.” Gwen was in her eighth month with Rosalind. He left at six in the morning and hoped to be back by midafternoon, avoiding heavy traffic both ways. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?” he said, just before he left, and she said “I’ll be fine. It’s you. I don’t want you getting tired on the road with so much driving.” “I’ve driven a lot more by myself than eight hours in a day, and without an hour’s break, which I promise I’ll take—even a nap—when I get there, so don’t worry. Go back to sleep.” He was approaching the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey Turnpike when he heard a piece of music on the radio for chorus, soloists and orchestra. He loved it. It was still playing when he parked near the woman’s building, so he sat in the car listening to it till it was over. He wanted to know the name of it and the composer so he could buy the record soon after he got back to Baltimore. It was an oratorio: A Child of Our Time, by Michael Tippett. And “Sir,” so he assumed he was English, and because it’s a modern piece, maybe still living. Never heard of him, and what a coincidence: the title of the piece and all those sweet children’s voices in it, as he drives in to pick up a crib for his own child. He wrote it down—also the conductor and orchestra—in his memobook; had a Danish and coffee with the woman, got the crib into his car’s trunk and a bag of baby and toddler clothes and a long padded bumper to go around inside the crib and drove back. He told Gwen about the music. “One of the most stirring pieces for voice and orchestra I’ve ever heard, and I don’t think I missed much of it, though I won’t be able to tell till I hear it again. It was the highlight of my trip.” “So let’s buy it,” she said. “From everything you said, I want to hear it, and it doesn’t seem like something the Baltimore Symphony will ever play.” “It might be an expensive recording,” and she said “What of it? Once the baby’s born, think of all the money we won’t be spending on restaurants and concerts and so forth by staying home. And just the coincidence, as you said, that it was about a child.” “I’m not sure what it was about,” he said. “Though it was in English, I was able to make out very few words. I do know there were parts in it with children’s voices, and there’s the title. Okay, I’ll get it, or maybe have to order it at the record store.” He bought the record the next day and played it that night. He didn’t like the first side of it. It didn’t seem the same piece, though he recognized some parts and it was the recording he’d heard in the car and their record player had much better sound than the car radio. He thought he must have been in some other state of mind when he first heard it, or it was because of the small enclos
ed space of the car, or something, but he just couldn’t explain it. “So what do you think so far?” he said, when he turned the record over to the second side but didn’t put the needle down on it yet. “Oh, it’s pretty good,” and he said “Once again, you’re just being nice. Don’t worry about my feelings. You didn’t like it, say so.” “It’s true. It wasn’t as stirring and beautiful as you made it out to be. It could be I just don’t like twentieth-century English music.” “Ralph Vaughan Williams? The Lark Ascending? His Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis? You love those.” “I thought, because of the way his first name is pronounced, he was Scottish or Welsh,” and he said “No, English. And Britten’s Simple Symphony and Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge? And some stuff by Frank Bridge too?” “I’m unfamiliar with him. And maybe I’m only talking about twentieth-century English music for voices,” and he said “Britten again. Les Illuminations and his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and something else. Strings. But why am I giving you a hard time and acting like a pedant? I’m sorry. I felt the same way about the piece. A disappointment. It had its moments when the kids sang. I love children’s voices—Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and at the end of the first act of Tosca when the boys choir from the church comes in. But it didn’t seem the same music I heard driving on the Turnpike, which was then blanked out in the Holland Tunnel, and then going across Manhattan to Brooklyn and sitting in the car near Penny’s building till it was over. I was overwhelmed by all of it. Not a bad part. What could it be that changed it for me?” and she said “I can’t help you on that.” “Let’s put it away for now and listen to the rest some other time, or only I’ll listen to it and from the beginning. What’ll really make me screwy is if I find I love it again. And I should probably set up the crib,” and she said “There’s no hurry. The baby’s going to sleep in the pram in our room the first three or four months.” “Then just to do something and get it out of the way. I hate things unassembled and in lots of parts and leaning against the wall or taking up too much room on the floor and the chance of it falling down or our tripping on it,” and she said “Okay. I’ll help.”

  Her miscarriage. Odd that he hadn’t thought about it till now, or had he? Gwen was in for her annual gynecological exam. It was about two years after Maureen was born. The doctor asked for a urine sample. She sat on the toilet there for half an hour, she said, and couldn’t pee a drop, so the nurse practitioner, he thinks she was, catheterized her and botched up the procedure. She poked the fetus with the catheter. Something like that. Or touched something in the vagina with the catheter that started the miscarriage. He knows they’re two distinctive holes, but that’s what he thinks Gwen told him. It was so long ago; he forgets most of it. And Gwen came home and was never clear about what happened, and he knew it upset her so much that she didn’t like talking about it, so he didn’t ask her about it much after that day to get the details straight. He remembers her saying that night “All I can tell you is that the woman did a lousy-ass job—I actually think she wasn’t adequately trained for it and had her eyes closed when she inserted the catheter—and she and the doctor weren’t very apologetic about it either. Afraid of a suit, you think? They knew we didn’t want another child”—“You mean you didn’t want another,” he said—and she said “All right, I didn’t, so they may have thought they’d done us a favor. But they still could have shown some remorse.” She hadn’t known she was pregnant. So it was very early on; maybe the first or second month. “Did you see it?” and she said “It was almost too small to see—certainly too early to tell what sex it was, and technically not even a fetus yet. And after they scooped it all out and I got off the table, I think they flushed it down the toilet. No, I’m sure they have a special disposal bag for that.” He got sad. Some tears too. “Oh, what’s wrong, my darling? I’m being too cold and clinical about it, I know.” “This was probably our last chance to have another child,” he said. “If it hadn’t been aborted and you had come home and said you’d found out you were pregnant, I would have asked you to have the baby.” “I’ve told you,” she said. “I never wanted to get pregnant again. I want to get on with my life other than just being a mother and part-time teacher. And two’s ideal for me and them, and should be for you too, and affordable.” He would have begged her to have the baby and he thinks she would have gone through with it because it meant so much to him. That so? He’s almost sure of it. He’d have three kids now. The third might be in his first year of college. She did say “We have to be more careful with my diaphragm. I take full blame for what happened because I’m the one who put it in. But I have a bit of arthritis in my left hand. Also, in that hand, this bony knob or swelling below the thumb near the wrist that’s painful sometimes and which I’ll get checked out, but in the meantime get a brace for it at night, so I’ll need to teach you how to put the diaphragm in when I don’t feel a hundred percent able to.” “Glad to, but who’s to say I’ll do it correctly? It’d seem it’d take a lot of practice,” and she said “I can feel when it’s in right. It doesn’t slip or hurt. This time I must have just let it go, or your penis knocked it awry.” “It can do that?” and she said “Sure, although I think I would have felt that too, so I don’t know.”

  He often walked the forty blocks from his apartment building to hers. He doesn’t think she ever walked from her building to his. The ten or so times she was in his apartment, and two or three times she stayed the night in the almost two years they saw each other before he got the job in Baltimore, she came by taxi or subway or bus. Or walked up from West End Avenue and 74th Street after her therapy session, or she was with him after they went to a restaurant or movie or dinner party that was a lot closer to his apartment than hers, so they ended up there. Usually, though, if she was in his neighborhood with him at night, she said she’d like to go home to take care of her cats, or some other reason—she didn’t have her diaphragm or medication with her; she wanted to get an early start in the morning; she still had some work to do that night—and he almost always went with her. Times he didn’t, he put her in a cab. To get to her building, he walked down 75th Street from his building to Columbus Avenue or Amsterdam Avenue or Broadway. Sometimes he went north on Columbus to 96th Street—farther than that, the neighborhood could get a little dangerous—and then go to Broadway and head north to her building from there. More times, he took Amsterdam to 96th Street, and a couple of times to a Hundred-third—Amsterdam seemed safer than Columbus around there—and then go to Broadway and walk to a Hundred-fourteenth and then down to Riverside Drive and her building. Most times—nine out of ten, he’d say—he walked north from Broadway and 75th Street all the way to a Hundred-fourteenth, and almost always on the west side of the street because it was more interesting—more pedestrians, it seemed, and restaurants, markets, bookstores, coffee shops, sidewalk vendors—than the east side of the street, at least once he got past 79th. Also, on Broadway, he liked that he occasionally bumped into people he knew, something he doesn’t ever remember doing on Columbus or Amsterdam. For some reason this seemed to happen a lot more above 96th Street than below. Did he know more people up there? Doesn’t think so. Although from about a Hundred-sixth Street on he would see people from her apartment building she’d introduced him to or he’d met at gatherings she was invited to there or just recognized from the elevator or lobby or standing in front of the building or had started up conversations with in the elevator or lobby, or at the annual pre-Christmas party and used-book sale on the ground floor and once at a party in the lobby for a much-loved doorman who was retiring after working there for thirty years. He also has to consider that her building was much closer to Broadway than his. He never walked to her building from Central Park West or West End Avenue. They’d be dull walks, and going up to Central Park West would be taking him a little out of the way. He doesn’t know why he never walked to her building even part of the way on Riverside Drive. He now sees it could have been an interesting walk, with the view of this park and river from various spots, and if
the sun was setting, beautiful. He did, a couple of times, walk inside Riverside Park from 79th Street and Riverside Drive to a Hundred-tenth. And he once jogged from his building to Riverside Park and then all the way in it to a Hundred-tenth and Riverside Drive, walking the last two blocks to her building so he wouldn’t come into the lobby panting and sweating. He walked a few times to her building when it was snowing, even heavily, because he always dressed for it—warm coat, wool cap, boots, gloves—and he had a complete change of clothing at her place, which she didn’t have at his, if any of his got wet. He never, though, walked there when it was raining hard. Then, with an umbrella and raincoat, he’d take the subway or bus. If the weather was sticky and hot, he’d still walk to her building, but more slowly, and about half the times stopped around 86th or 90th Street and Broadway and took the bus the rest of the way. He also never—or maybe he did this once and found out it was a mistake—walked to her place with a heavy package or two or a briefcase loaded down with books. Sometimes he stopped for coffee on these walks. Or he’d pick up food for them for dinner that night, Chinese or Indian takeout or from the market right up the block from her building, or bread or pastries or both from one of the bakeries or gourmet food stores on Broadway. Then he would reach her building, say hello to the doorman, take the elevator up and ring her bell, even after he had a key to her apartment for more than a year, just to have her open the door and smile at him, and often she’d already be smiling, and say something like “Hiya, lovie” or “I’m so happy to see you” and he’d say something like “I’m so happy to see you too,” and they’d kiss, a lot of those times even before one of them shut the door.