Long Made Short

by Stephen Dixon

  “Gordon,” his wife yells downstairs from the bedroom, he thinks, and he says “Yeah?” and she says “If you’d like to pay me a visit, this might be a good time,” and he says “Why not,” looks at the clock, has about an hour before he has to pick up the kids, “I’ll be up soon,” and she says “If it’s any problem—I don’t want to push you—don’t bother; I’ve plenty of work to do too,” and he says “No, just that I’m this moment involved in something; give me a few minutes,” and she says “I’ll be here.”

  Thinks of Vera. He once said something, he forgets what, something about she was skinny, and she grabbed him in a headlock, threw him to the ground—how old could he have been: eight, nine?—sat on top of his chest and slapped his face and said “Don’t ever call me that again.” His cheek stung, he thought maybe he could buck her off him; if he hadn’t doubled over laughing like a jerk right after he’d said it, she never could have got his arms around his head and thrown him. How come none of his friends or hers don’t jump in and stop her or tell her to get off? She held her hand out flat and said “You want it again? So say you won’t say what I said for you not to,” and he said “I’m sorry, I don’t fight with girls so I’m not fighting back,” and she said “You’re not fighting back because you know I’d lick you to kingdom come,” and he thought “lick,” he’d heard how some of the older boys used it, he ought to too with her but that might make her madder and she had him on his back, where, if he couldn’t buck her off, she could really hurt him bad before he got up, slapping again, pulling his hair and kicking him in the nuts when he was starting to get up. She was taller and older, but he hadn’t thought she was as strong as she showed. He said “I just don’t fight with girls, and you’re not a better fighter than me, but let me up, I think you already tore my pants, and my mom’s going to kill me,” for now one of his knees hurt as if it had got scraped through the pants. “If anyone tore your clothes, you did it to yourself for what you said to me, you anus,” and she got off him. He stood up, looked at his friends, one staring seriously at him, other two laughing, probably at what she just called him, he said “She thinks she’s so tough with”—he was going to say “her big filthy trap”—“but she isn’t,” and walked away, didn’t look at his pants till he was in his building’s vestibule, thought why’d she call him an anus? He thinks he knows what it is but what’s it got to do with everything else that happened and all she did? His pants were ripped in a way where he knew his mother couldn’t just sew them, they’d have to be taken to the tailor to weave and that cost a fortune. He washed his knee, put some hydrogen peroxide and a Band-Aid on the cut, changed into another pair of pants, and brought the ripped ones to his mother and said he tore them and put his finger in the hole. She said “How?” and he said he was playing statues on a stoop, “I know it was a stupid thing to do and I won’t do it again, but I fell off it to the sidewalk when I had one foot up and the person who was ‘it’ told us to freeze.” Sometime later Vera was wearing a skirt and socks and a friend of his said someone had told him she had no underpants on and was completely naked underneath and that she also had hair there, “a little of it, like a Hitler mustache, but some.” “How’s he know?” and his friend said “Because he was behind her in their building when she was walking up a steep flight of stairs today and she bent over for something, maybe just to show him, and he saw it. Let’s pretend we’re fighting, you get me on the ground or me you, we’ll roll her way and under her skirt and see,” and he said “Suppose she sees us and minds?” and his friend said “She won’t know, we’ll be fighting and rolling and not paying any attention to her, our eyes looking like we hate each other till we get underneath her skirt.” They did that. “You little pimp.” “You little dick,” the words were all rehearsed, grabbed each other, fell to the ground, started rolling her way. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said, they continued rolling, she jumped aside, they changed directions and rolled together where she now was. She said “You’re both asking for it if you don’t stop.” They couldn’t because they were rolling too hard now, and she kicked him in the head and his friend in the back but probably had aimed at his head. He didn’t know what kind of shoe she had on, but it made a gash in his head. He was bleeding all over the place, someone offered him a dirty hanky to stop it, somebody else some bunched-up tissues, he held the tissues to the cut and went home and into the bathroom and put a towel to it. His mother came in and said “Oh my God,” and he said “Don’t worry, Mom, I was running down the block and tripped and hit my head against a streetlight but I’ll be all right, it’s already starting to stop.” She called his uncle, who was a doctor in Washington Heights, and his uncle said it didn’t sound bad enough to drive down for—he wasn’t unconscious, not even dizzy, and the blood didn’t seem to be gushing—just press some sterile gauze to it till the bleeding stops, then ice and later antiseptic on it and if it seems more than a superficial cut and doesn’t stop bleeding in about fifteen minutes, he’ll drive down and sew it up. It didn’t stop for half an hour, but he didn’t want any needles and thread in his head so told his mother not to call his uncle back. About a year later Vera’s dad got a good job in an Ohio factory, and they moved out there.

  Feels the scar from the kick, thinks of Horace. Horace was a little kid, about three, standing behind him in the middle of the street when he swung a broomstick at a ball in a stickball game and hit him in the head. Horace went down, he thought he’d killed him, his eyes were closed and he didn’t move except for a little hand-wiggling, some boys ran under Horace’s windows and yelled “Mrs. Rich, Mrs. Rich, Gordon hit Horace’s head with a stick and he’s bleeding badly, he might be dead.” She stuck her head out the window, a car was coming down the street and the boys flagged it down. A man got out and said “I’m a fireman, I know how to take care of things like this.” Other cars were honking behind his. “Lift the kid to the sidewalk so we can pass,” one driver yelled. Mrs. Rich was screaming from her window, then yelled at the fireman “Don’t touch him, nobody move him, back up if you got to go anyplace, I’ll be right down.” She was a big strong woman with a tough mouth, and Gordon thought she’d grab him and swing him around and then slap the hell out of him. She went straight to Horace, listened for his breathing, said to Gordon “Run to your father in the pharmacy and have him give you some boxes of cotton and bandages and also to call Roosevelt for an ambulance, I already did.” The fireman opened Horace’s eyes, looked at them and let them close. “They’re starting to move normally,” he said, “he’ll be okay.” Police and an ambulance were there, and Horace was sobbing by the time Gordon got back with the cotton and bandages, Gordon’s dad called the hospital that night and was told Horace had gone home, he called Mrs. Rich and she said no bones broken, no concussion, just a deep crack in his forehead that took twelve stitches to close. “If you have no objections, Doc, and from someone who’s been a good customer of yours too, I’d like to send you the hospital bill.” He said “If it’s a lot and I’m not covered, maybe we can split it half and half, because though Gordon should have looked around before he got up to swing, your son shouldn’t have been so close to home plate,” then put on Gordon, who apologized as he’d been told to. He saw Mrs. Rich about a week later coming home from shopping, waved in an embarrassed way and wanted to quickly pass her or cross the street but she said she’d like to speak to him. He went over to her, thinking she might drop her bags and maybe smack him. She said “I know how you still feel bad, I would too, since Horace still gets terrific pains in his head and has trouble with his eyes seeing. But I’m not blaming you for what you did; kids aren’t smart your age and accidents happen.” If she had got angry he was ready to say what his father had said to his mom, that what was a three-year-old kid doing in the street without any adult supervision? He felt awful every time after that when he saw Horace with this big bandage and then an ugly scar on his forehead and later on glasses, with the scar getting smaller and smaller it seemed, though he didn’t know and n
ever asked anyone if the accident could have had anything to do with the glasses. Then Mrs. Rich got married and they moved away, and he only thought of Horace maybe every couple of years and usually when he crossed the street near the manhole cover where that home plate was.

  “Hello down there,” his wife says, “are you coming up or should I forget it?” and he says “No, I’m coming,” and gets out of the chair, something in him says wait, sit, just another minute, for Lillian, thinks, blue hair, black eyes, he means long black hair and very bright blue eyes, sweet face, lanky frame, ears seemed to be pinned back and were pointy, almost no nose, sits, looks at the clock, has time, studying to be a dancer and, with her hair, clothes and walk, already looked like one. When he was around twelve he wrote her a note and slipped it to her in an envelope, which said he wanted to go out with her, maybe to a Saturday or Sunday afternoon movie or something if she didn’t have dance lessons then and she wrote him a note back, a girl friend of hers handed it to him in gym, that said “I’m too young and you are too and I have a lot of school to go to, let’s only be friends like we’ve been, but thank you, kind sir,” when what he really wanted to do was kiss her in the movie house as they’d done once somewhere else, maybe a date or two later hold her hand and, if he was lucky sometime after that, feel her a little bit on top through her blouse, though she only seemed to have started getting breasts, maybe much later get her to touch his dick through his pants and then outside them someplace and maybe where he could get her to hold it and later shake it till it sprayed and where he could also get to feel her bush if she had one and finger her, for that was what boys his age or a little older said they were starting to do with girls or trying to. Some months before at a birthday party, he kissed her. A couple of the other boys did too, and kissed some of the other girls, though he only got to kiss one, but he didn’t know if they’d done it as hard to her and got as hard a kiss back. They were playing a type of musical chairs in which the one running around when the music was going had to sit on the lap of the person he was standing beside the second the music stopped and kiss her on the lips or, if it was a boy whose lap he sat on, shake his hand, and same thing for the girl running around but instead of shaking hands she hugged the other girl. The music stopped when he was a person away from her, but he made believe by sneaking up a few inches past the boy that he’d stopped in front of her, and he sat on her lap and she said “No fair,” and everyone else it seemed said “Go ahead,” and she said “Okay, but it has to be quick,” and they kissed. Her mouth was slightly open when they did, his closed. He’d never kissed an open mouth and started to open his because he thought she wanted him to but she pulled away and said “That’s enough, I’ve done it even if you cheated,” and pushed him off. After that, just about whenever he saw her in school he imagined kissing her with their mouths open and feeling her up and unhooking her bra and shoving his hand down her panties and going to this special spot in Central Park behind some bushes and rocks near the bridle path where he knew some really older boys went with their girls and getting her on her back, it’d have to be warm out and not right after a rain, and sticking his prick in her, maybe with only pushing their clothes up and down but not taking anything off except the shoes, and then burying the scumbag or just tossing it under the bushes, where he and his friends had found a few used ones but mostly just the rings of them. When he came back from camp that summer he learned she’d moved to some other part of the city and wouldn’t be going back to the same school for eighth grade. He wrote her a letter in care of the school, to be forwarded, held on to it for weeks before he dumped it; he just didn’t think she’d be interested and he didn’t want to get a letter back saying she wasn’t or get no letter back and then one day bump into her or that friend of hers in school who he sometimes bumps into and be embarrassed he sent it. In it he said “If you think we’re any older now, I mean from when I asked you this once, and you have some extra free time from your dance lessons and schoolwork, I’d still like going to an afternoon movie or anything you’d like with you. I hope to hear from you soon, and I hope you like your new school and life. Yours sincerely,” and his first name, with his full name printed underneath, and phone number and address.

  He goes upstairs. His wife’s typing at her desk and he says “I’m ready but maybe I took too long and you’re no longer interested,” and she says “Why do you say that?” and he says “Oh, nothing; you know me by now; I can never accept good things gracefully,” and she says “That’s better,” and gets up, he takes off his clothes, she leaves on her panties and bra and they sit on the bed. She likes him to undress her, he thinks, at least the last part, even her watch, which he takes off her wrist and then puts his arms around her, kisses her while unhitching her, and she shakes the straps off and lets the bra drop to the floor, he feels her breasts, she makes some sounds, they lie back and he puts his hand down her panties—now it’s “put,” now it’s “slide,” then it was “shove,” which was probably accurate for the way he did it then or rather would have liked to and then started to a couple of years later—pushes her panties off with her help and thinks of Lillian while their eyes are closed and they’re kissing and playing with each other. He didn’t mean for her to come back again, “again” meaning now, and quickly opens and shuts and opens and shuts his eyes, a trick he uses to get rid of images he doesn’t want, but she’s still there, walking away from him down a busy street, turning around to wave at a passing car, hugging a stack of books to her chest as she leaves school, lying back with her clothes on and holding her arms up to him. Let her stay till she goes away, it won’t hurt things and might even help if he can get her clothes off and see what’s underneath. Then she becomes skinny Mark, body and face, in his old woolen clothes and long wavy hair when the rest of them at that age—eleven, twelve, late spring when he first met him—were wearing shorts and had something bordering on the crew cut, and he blinks repeatedly till Mark disappears. He came over from Europe after the war, lived with his sister and aunt in a Columbus Avenue tenement across from their side street; the rest of his family died in the camps. He thinks he remembers him saying he and his sister survived by his nanny passing them off as Poles. He learned English fast, soon got great grades, skipped out of Gordon’s class but they still stayed friends, got into a special academic high school and moved away, but that was later on. Gordon couldn’t teach him baseball or football or anything like that; his game was soccer and he did fantastic tricks with a basketball with his feet, chest, knees, head, back of his neck. He showed up on the block a year after he left, looking for Gordon; they talked, nothing was foreign about him anymore, not even his speech, and that was the last time he saw him. Did he take down Mark’s phone number and address? Doesn’t think so. Did he expect old friends to always contact him? Doesn’t remember if he had that attitude then. Now, since he likes working at home and doesn’t much like going out for very long or having people over, he hardly sees anyone but his children and wife. “Mark my words about Mark,” one of their teachers said several times, “he’ll be a great mathematician or physicist or something like that in the sciences, which might not seem like much to those of you who don’t even know what a physicist is. But mark my words, twenty years from now you’ll see his face and what he’s doing in the newspapers and you’ll recognize his name.” He wonders what Mark became or just what became of him, has stopped kissing and feeling.