Time to Go

by Stephen Dixon

  “I won’t.”

  He leaves. I rub it off. I don’t want to. It was wet. Now I’m sorry I did. But it felt uncomfortable wet. The wet’s on the back of my hand now. Maybe I should put it back on my cheek. But I don’t want my cheek wet again. I know it’ll dry in a little while on my hand but I don’t want it there either. I wipe my hand on the covers. Now my hand’s dry but I bet it smells from spit. I smell it. Spit. That smell. I’d like to wash my hand now but I’m not supposed to get out of bed. I look for the wet stain on the covers where I rubbed my hand. None there. Maybe I should rub the covers where I rubbed my hand on it against my cheek. That’s silly. Why would I want to do that? No reason. Just thought of it. I pick up the car and hold it a ways in front of my face. I slowly bring it closer to my face till its front is right up against my nose. Now it looks very real. I can see through the car’s windows to the other side of the room. No people in the car but so what? They’re lying on the floor and I can’t see them. Then how’d the car drive up to my nose? It stopped. Then they ducked down. No, nobody’s inside. If the car doors opened I’d make little people out of clay and put them in all the seats. If the trunk opened I’d make little square suitcases or try to and put them in too.

  Later I hear my father say “He must be asleep. I better take the car out of his hand or he’ll hurt himself when he rolls over.”

  “Put it on the night table,” my mother says. “He might look for it when he awakes.”

  I must have been asleep and now pretend to be asleep. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’m tired. And I like to hear what people say about me when they don’t know I’m listening. My mother puts her hand on my forehead. She’s feeling for temperature. I know it’s my mother’s hand because it’s so smooth. I’ve seen her at nights creaming her hands. I hate the sound of the cream squishing in her hands. My father feels my cheek. His hand is rougher but still smooth. Almost as smooth as my mother’s. All that washing up in his office before and after each patient. He has a special pink liquid soap. He lets me use it whenever I’m there even when my hands aren’t dirty. My hands can just reach under the faucet but I can’t, as he does, step on the water pedal and keep my hands under the faucet at the same time. His hand smells different than my mother’s too. From soap. Hers from that cream. “He feels warm,” my father says.

  “A little temperature. I should take it now but I don’t want to wake him.”

  He puts his hand up my pajama top and feels my back. “He’s warm. Maybe we should take it, just to see what it is.”

  “I’m sure he’s no more than a hundred.”

  “Still, let’s take it. A hundred’s bad enough, and if it is that, shouldn’t we give him an aspirin?”

  “What are you talking? A hundred at night is just about normal for a child his age, and giving him an aspirin will definitely wake him.”

  “Still, if it’s more than a hundred, which it feels like, I’d chance waking him. I’ll give it if you don’t want to.”

  “Turn him over, but gently, gently.”

  I’m turned over on my stomach. I hate having my temperature taken this way. Maybe if they knew I was awake they’d take it orally, but my mother thinks the rectal thermometer is more accurate by a degree. I’d like to say I’m awake now but I don’t know how. They’ll think I’ve been lying. They’ll think I was lying all the other times I pretended to be asleep when they spoke to me or pretended not to be listening when they talked about personal things. I can pretend to be asleep or concentrating but just can’t pretend to come out of sleep. It’d mean rubbing my eyes, yawning, maybe shaking my head and mumbling something, but which of those comes first and what’s the order of the rest? The covers are pulled down to my feet.

  “What are you doing?” Robert says.

  “Shh,” my mother says. “Taking Will’s temperature. Get out of the room, Robert.”

  “Can’t I watch?”

  “Do what your mother says,” my father says.

  “How my ever going to be a doctor if I can’t watch?”

  “Okay, watch,” my father says, “—but from the door.”

  My pants bottoms are pulled down. The thermometer’s put in.

  It’s warm when I was ready for it to be cold. I’m always afraid it will break inside me. But it’ll only take two minutes or so, faster than it would in my mouth, which is at least one good thing.

  “I can’t see,” Robert says.

  “By the way,” my father says, “I forgot to tell you—Lucille called today.” Lucille’s my aunt. “She’s having her problems with Arnie again. I didn’t know what to advise her.”

  “Leaving him, what else?” my mother says.

  “Where will she go? He makes a good living. She has everything she wants. Without him—well he says he won’t provide her with a nickel, and then she and Eugene will have to—”

  “Should we really be talking about it with who’s-it’s around?”

  “I know about it already,” Robert says. “You’ve said it plenty in front of me.”

  “Just don’t talk about it to the others—that’s all I ask. As for Arnie’s big providing,” she must be saying to my father, “tell me if it’s worth it. But she’ll get something. She has to with a child every week. I think we can take it out now. Want to do the honors?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “You can drill teeth all day with all the mess in people’s mouths, but you can’t pull out a thermometer?”

  “Believe me, it’s not that I’m worried they’ll be dreck on it. Only not my own son, and I wouldn’t know how to read it.”

  “Some doctor you are.”

  “I don’t have patients where I take temperature.”

  The thermometer’s taken out. “A hundred—little above. No need to wake him.”

  “I don’t know how much we like sleeping on the floor again.” Robert says.

  “Just a couple more nights,” my mother says. “If it’s more, we’ll find someone to put you up.”

  “Not with Uncle Arnie.”

  My pajama bottoms are pulled up. The covers are brought up to my chin and I’m tucked in on both sides. My mother leans over, kisses the back of my head, whispers “Get well now, just get well.” My father puts his hand on my cheek for a few seconds.

  The light’s turned off. They all leave the room. Door’s closed.

  “Let’s leave it open a little,” my mother says. It’s squeaked open just a little. They go down the hall. “How bad is he?” Robert says.

  I turn over. “Dear God,” I say, “don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die. I’ll do anything you want. Anything. I won’t miss my prayers to you at night again, never. Though you never asked me for them—though no one ever said I had to every night—I do. So say what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I love you more than I love anyone, any person. Any thing. Whatever you are, God, I love you the most. Then my mother and father. Then my brothers. Then my friends. Or maybe my aunts and uncles and cousins and then my friends. And please let me be well by the weekend. Please. But please most of all let my mother and father stay well while I’m alive and then let me grow as old as my father. Then you can let me die. Though don’t let my father and mother die ever. Don’t let either die. And my brothers. If anyone dies out of any of us, let me die first. As for my aunts and uncles and cousins and friends, I don’t think it’s important which of us dies first. Though I don’t want them to. I don’t want anyone I know to die. Thank you. Goodnight, God. I love you, I love you, I love you. Goodnight.”

  Self Portrait

  I wish I could draw myself. I’m sitting in my Morris chair, in the morning, newspaper on my lap, front page glanced at but none of it read beyond that, hands in front of my face and shaped like what? Right now I can’t think of what. A church. A cathedral. A something. I wish I could draw myself. Legs are crossed. Blue jeans I washed while I showered two days ago, hung up to dry on the shower towel rack and then on the bathroom radiator and which are now, about ten minut
es after I put them on, still stiff. Actually I’m sitting at my typewriter, not in the Morris chair, but on a black bentwood chair with a thin white cushion on the seat. Now back in the Morris chair, morning, my back to the room’s one window, sunny light in this part of the room, newspaper on my lap, coffee mug, don’t forget the coffee-colored coffee mug on the right arm of the chair, up to my lips, a moving drawing, steaming black coffee at my lips if I could catch it, a sip, coffee’s hot, mug back on the chair’s arm, and now on the table I’m typing on, long white parson’s table I think it’s called and which with the bedroom dresser, night table and bed in this so-called furnished apartment, the only furniture here before I came. Mug on my right side, coffee still steaming, on top of a discarded manuscript page turned over and which I use to doodle on and to jot down notes. Bottle of ink beside that, left there after I filled up my fountain pen just before I went for a walk last night. Ink bottle usually on the table’s far right end beside the bottle of typewriter cleaner. Eraser pencil next to the ink bottle, pencil sharpener with its transparent plastic attachment to collect the pencil and eraser shavings, next to that. Eyeglasses, not my bifocals but the ones just to read with, beside that. Bifocals nor their case are in this room I see, so in one of the other three. On the other side of the typewriter my huge opened dictionary, thesaurus, reference manual, ream box of erasable paper now only a quarter-filled, sectioned dental utility tray with paperclips, postage stamps, rubber bands and coins. Architect’s lamp pulled over the typewriter from its holder attached viselike to the edge of the tabletop against the wall. Lamp on because the table faces a wall at the opposite side of the room from the window and sunlight. Table there because it can’t fit against the window which is between two closets or against the other walls in the room because one has a couch against it that can’t fit anywhere else and the other has one of the closets at one end and at the other the door leading to the bedroom. I adjust the lampshade to get more light on the paper in the typewriter and less on the keys as I type because too much light on them hurts my eyes. I wish I could draw myself. In the Morris chair, legs crossed at the knees, light on my back, newspaper on my lap, chair fitted into the three by three foot window space the closets make, sunlight on the chair arms and trouser legs and floor, hands placed on my face just as they were when the thought first came to me that I wish I could draw myself this way. Get in the Morris chair. Take the mug. I do. I sit and sip. Coffee’s only lukewarm. I cross my legs the way they were before. Light, chair, knees, mug, another quick sip and the coffee’s finished. Mug set down in the exact place as before because the gray heat impression it made in the dark wood is still there. But the architect’s lamp wasn’t on when I sat here before. I get up, cross the room, turn the light off and return to the Morris chair and sit the same way. Eyes are shut. Hands in front of my face, not against it, only the forefingers touching the middle of my forehead. Hands shaped like what? That’s what I need to complete this picture of myself deep in thought. And the newspaper, which I take out from underneath me and put on my lap. Morning, around what time? Have to get the light right. Woman in the second floor apartment directly below mine is just now locking her front door to teach at the same school I teach at. She always leaves at the same time on Mondays and Tuesdays: 8 :40 to get to her nine o’clock class. So 8:40 I’ll say, though my watch and clock are in the bedroom—Tuesday, and I now hear her walking downstairs in her clogs. Maybe the location and grade of the sunlight in the room has changed somewhat, but everything else approximately the same as it was fifteen minutes ago when I first had the drawing thought. My face still feeling and probably appearing as puffy from all the wine I drank last night while I read in bed for two hours before falling asleep. Chair springs gone, but is that important for this drawing? Could be, since I usually sit in the chair a little lopsided to the left because of the boards and magazines I put under the cushion to replace the springs and which seem to slide to the right. Maybe the floor’s warped to the right or the house has settled or was always tilted that way. I think I know what I’m saying. Looking at the room now the floor looks straight. Seat cushion yellow, back cushion red. In other words: one’s light, other’s dark. Time around the time I said. Day the day I said. One of the first Tuesdays in March, though I know the exact date. And early 80s. Very early 80s. Chair, mug, eyes closed, knees crossed, newspaper on my lap, missing springs causing me to sit in a lopsided way, sunlight the way I said or thereabouts, hands in front of my face touching my forehead to complete the drawing. Hair to complete it also: brushed back about twenty minutes ago, though it’s probably a little tousled now, and thin on top and thick and curly on the sides with bushy gray sideburns ending right below the lobes. Last shaved last night more than twelve hours ago, fourteen hours ago, so somewhat in need of a shave. Navy blue cotton chamois shirt bought from a mail order house and washed a couple-dozen times since, so a bit faded. Both breast pocket flaps unbuttoned. Only one shirt button buttoned, third one down from the top. Shirt not tucked into the pants. Black garrison belt which can’t be seen except for the silver-colored buckle, and fastened at the first hole. Not because I’m overweight. I’m actually three to five pounds lighter than some health charts recommend for someone my height and age, but because the belt’s been two sizes too small for me for about ten years. I think, thinking I was thinner than I was, I bought it that way. Blue jeans I’ve said. Old blue jogging sneakers or shoes with orange stripes along both sides, laces doubleknotted because they’re so long, and gray. With my right knee crossed over the left, a small part of the dark sock can probably be seen. So that’s how I’m dressed. Shirt collar up above my neck, I don’t know why. Maybe from last night when it was cold in the apartment and I took it off like that when I went to bed, hung it on the back of a chair and put it on today the same way. Window behind me, venetian blinds raised, cords hanging to the floor, the bottom half of one behind the radiator to my right and the other one behind the chair. Three-story rowhouses across the street, sloping green shingle roofs, red brick facades, perhaps only the top floor of each building visible, plus several leafless trees in front of the buildings and one much taller one behind. Blue sky, no clouds, or a few clouds, since it’s been that kind of day. My skin’s light. A pink white I’d say. Hands though. Hair on the backs of them and below the knuckles, nails clipped, clean and even, most of the cuticles frayed. Hands over my face. Not covering it, and shaped like what? Shaped like a steeple I’d say. Steeple-shaped, that’s what, thumbs almost touching my lips and fingertips touching my forehead and fingers covering my nose. So forget the nose for the drawing. Hands also cover my lips, so forget them too. And my chin and most of my neck, which my wrists cover, wrists covered by my buttoned shirt sleeves, shirt covering all but a small part of the green T-shirt underneath near my belt. My eyes, can they be seen? Eyes and eyebrows both, just barely. My eyes are closed, now they’re open. In the drawing they’ll be closed of course and I’ll be thinking. Scars? None that can be seen except for the one that cuts through the middle of my left eyebrow and several chicken pox scars on my cheeks that I don’t think are large and deep enough for the drawing. Anything else? Nothing I can think of, so that’s basically my drawing. Right now that’s what I look like, so to speak, and this is where I am, thinking I’d like nothing better right now than to be able to draw myself, though not with a mirror. To be an artist or just a drawer sitting across from me and drawing me as just another man. I get up and turn on the architect’s lamp and arrange some papers on my table to get ready for work and then think give yourself a few minutes yet and I get up and sit in the Morris chair and read the front page of the newspaper and get up and heat up the coffee in the coffee pot in the kitchen and drink another mug of coffee in the Morris chair while I finish the newspaper and when I’ve finished the coffee and it’s around 9:40, though I say this without looking at my watch or clock, I get up and sit at the table and get to work.

  End of Magna

  She might think. Well, she might t
hink. Yes? She might think I’m not good enough for her, though not so much in those words. Those were the words my father used. “You’re not good enough for her,” he once said, though all the other times he said “She’s not good enough for you.” When I’d introduce them, my folks, to a new girl I’d been seeing, or would ask her over for dinner, ask them first after they’d asked me several times who’ve I been seeing lately? or “What’ve you been doing with your time lately?” or “Where do you rush off to at nights so quickly after dinner? How come you don’t hang around the house more?” I’d say I’ve been seeing a girl lately and they’d say “If she’s so special why don’t you bring her around for dinner one night?” or I’d say “I’ve been seeing someone lately, someone I really like, would you like to meet her?” and then I’d suggest bringing her over for dinner and if they said yes and they invariably did, I’d ask what night was best, or they’d say “Bring her Friday,” and I’d say to her “My folks invited you for dinner this Friday, I hope you can come,” and she invariably did, would ring the doorbell, I’d answer it even if I wasn’t the closest one to the door at the time, though most of the times I’d pick her up at her home or meet her someplace on the outside and bring her to our home, and sometime the next day, though a couple of times much later that night after I’d taken her back home and my folks or just my father was still up, he’d say “You want my opinion of that girl?” and I’d say “Sure if you want, what?” and he’d say “I don’t think she’s good enough for you,” and I’d say “I knew you’d say that,” But sometimes I’d say “Why do you say that?” because maybe I had some suspicion myself about how good enough she was for me, and he’d say “She isn’t bright enough.” Or “pretty enough.” Or “nice enough…lively enough,” or something enough and sometimes many things not good enough. Though once after I’d brought someone home for dinner and then taken her back to her place, my father said “You’re not good enough for her,” or rather “You know what I think about you and that girl?” and I said “What?” because I knew she’d made a good impression on them, more so perhaps than anyone I’d ever had over for dinner, and he said “I think you’re heading for big trouble with her,” and I said “How?” and he said “Because you’re just not good enough for her and she’s going to know that soon and drop you and you’re going to get very depressed over it, more so than you have with any young lady you’ve been attached to.” I said “No chance of that. She likes me, I like her, I’m good enough for her and she knows it, just as both she and I know she’s good enough for me,” and he said “You want to know why I don’t think you’re good enough for her, as good as you might be for just about every other young woman her age?” and I said “Why?” and he said “Because she’s too rich, too pretty, too smart, too refined, too educated, too imaginative, comes from too good a family, too everything, and no matter how much she might think she likes you now, and it’s clear to your mother and I she likes you a lot, people like her family and friends are going to convince her you’re not good enough for her and that she’s wasting her time when she could have any available guy she wants, and eventually she’s going to think less of you from what people say and drop you though do it with some sadness and sensitivity, and you’re going to get very upset and if you don’t watch it, make the biggest damn fool of yourself you’ve ever been.” I said “Number one I don’t believe it, and two, even if I did a little, which I don’t, I’d chance it because seeing her now is so worth it,” and he said “Don’t come around crying I didn’t warn you,” and a month later she dropped me as he’d said, sadly, sensitively, saying she knew how much this would hurt me but what way was a good way to say what she had to say? and I said “What’s wrong, aren’t I good enough for you?” and she said “It’s not that, it’s just that I don’t want to get so serious with a boy yet,” and I said “Oh bull, you just don’t think I’m good enough for you,” and she said “Okay, maybe in some ways that’s true, but there are also some other things,” but no matter what I said, some of it for me, some against, she’d had it with me and I felt sadder than I had with any girl who’d dropped me before and maybe with any girl or woman since. It took me a month or more, more, a couple of months or more of deep depression, wandering around lost, trying to expose myself to colds, that sort of thing, before I got over her enough to function as a normal human being again. Magna’s like that girl too. She’s too good for me. She’s too beautiful, too intelligent, too perceptive, too creative, too everything. She doesn’t come from wealth or earn much of a salary now, but that isn’t important to her as long as she works at what she enjoys, nor that I don’t earn much either. She’s going to find out soon enough that I’m a little more boring and cynical than she can take. That I’m really not as broadminded and kindhearted as she thought. She’s going to have enough of my silly jokes and ribbing after a while too. She’s going to see lots of things in me she won’t like pretty soon. She’s going to think “I’m seeing this guy too much and that’s not too wise a thing to do because he’s going to want to get married or tie me down some way and though I might like that very much with someone else in the near future, I don’t want that with him.” She’s going to think she can do better. She no doubt has done a lot better. I know she has. She’s talked about some of the men she’s known. Known seriously. Been lovers with. Was in love with when they were in love with her. I have to admit I don’t stack up much in comparison to several of these men. To some I do, to some I don’t, but to a few I really don’t. The latter were all extremely bright, well-liked, handsome, sociable, had jobs or professions where they were already very successful or were soon sure to be, and other good qualities but with none of the negative ones I have, or so it seemed to me by what she said about them. I’ve asked what went wrong with the best of these relationships. Was it sex? Was it family or money? What was it? She said that a couple of these men got scared of a continuing deep relationship and a couple she got scared of. One man was already married and she didn’t want to bust up anybody’s home. Another man wanted her to change her religious faith to his. Another wanted her to change her citizenship to his and move to his country, but she felt that would be a spiritual and creative death. One man died of a heart attack and another in a rock-climbing accident. One wanted to get married but didn’t want to have children. One couldn’t have children but wanted to adopt one or two, while she wanted to give birth to at least one and then maybe she’d adopt a second. I’d love to marry her and have a child, but she’s eventually going to see how wrong I am for her. On some intellectual topics we talk about, for instance, it’s obvious I don’t go far enough for her. She likes to socialize a lot more than I, and her friends are often much smarter than I too. No, it won’t work. I know it. Maybe she knows it by now also but doesn’t want to speak about it yet for any number of reasons. She might be trying to find the best way of telling me without hurting me so much. She’s like that. And I don’t want to get hurt again as I did with that girl twenty years ago and several women since. I can still get hurt that way. Being in love with someone so much, and that person leaves you—there’s no way I can’t get hurt. I’ll miss just about everything about her. Miss talking to her, walking with her, looking at her, making love with her, just being silent and doing nothing with her or nothing but reading beside her. Holding her hand or knee when we’re at a movie or stage show. Her head on my shoulder or chest or my thighs pressed against the back of her thighs when we’re dozing off at night. Going into a store. Sharing some food at a restaurant. Watching her dress. Coming up with the same opinion about someone or something. Differing with her too. Fighting it out and making up. Everything. Miss missing her too, when I was away for a day or so and knew when I got back I’d see her. But for some reason, a very good reason, the reason being it’s inevitable she’s going to leave me pretty soon so better now when I can take it better than later when I’ll be even more used to her and it’ll hurt much worse. So I’ll phone her, right now, and if she’s in, tell her what I’v
e been thinking and that we should call it off now.