14 Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  One afternoon while I was fishing on the lake I heard a woman screaming for help from about forty feet away. I paddled over to her, handed her my oar and told her to hold on to it till I was able to lift her safely into the canoe. She had gotten a leg cramp while swimming she said as she rested in the boat—thought she was going to drown for sure, and then she fell asleep from exhaustion. I shook her, as I wanted to know which side of the lake she wanted to be paddled to, then gave up and brought the canoe back to my dock. I carried her to the grass and placed a blanket over her. She woke, smiled, and said I had very pretty teeth and eyes and that she greatly admired my mustache, and asked if I could hold her awhile as she was very cold. I held her, she felt cold though firm and nice, she kissed my cheek, joked about how this Latter-day Saint had finally found her latter-day savior, said that she does meet people in the strangest of places, oh yessirree, and held me tight till she fell asleep in my arms.

  When she awoke she said she didn’t want to return to her boyfriend and friends across the lake. “I decided I want to be with you: cooking, cleaning, rolling up your sleeping bag and scaling and boning the fish you catch, I’II try not to be in the way—I promise,” and I said I was feeling very strongly about her too. I liked her directness, small cute body and adorable young face and ridiculous unconventional chatter and ways, and after we cooked dinner I told Shannah about Beverly and the exact reason I was camping alone. Shannah said that Beverly had obviously been too rigid and uncompromising a woman for me and so I was far better off without her. She said she would live with me and have my children without marriage if I wanted—that I could have as many women as I liked during our relationship and she would never complain. I told her I wasn’t quite ready to get involved again, though we could write one another and if we both still felt the same way in two months then we could meet in Washington or Richmond and really get acquainted. Shannah agreed, said she now saw there wasn’t any good reason for rushing into a new love affair herself, and I called a taxi from the camp grocery store and we shook hands and said goodbye. I went for a swim, and when I returned to the site I found Shannah sleeping on top of my sleeping bag, a note pinned to the blanket over her saying she had already been separated from me too long and besides her boyfriend was a bore. I snuggled next to her, she laughed, roughed up my hair, said let’s both get into the bag and make like a couple of crazy Humminggay heroes, and we got inside the bag and after a bit of uncomfortable squirming found a relaxed enough position for making love.

  Shannah moved into my apartment with just a valiseful of her poetry and clothes. I started teaching that Monday, happier than I had been since the night I proposed to Beverly. A couple of days into the term I saw a very beautiful young woman in the teacher’s lunchroom whom I almost instantly desired as much as any woman I had known. There was something about her look—this bored placid look compared to the easy-to-please expression of Shannah’s and the often frightened bewildered face of Beverly’s, and I was also attracted by her hair, which was long, silky and blond compared to Shannah’s thick bright red locks which hung to her shoulders and Beverly’s shiny black pageboy. Her body was shapelier than Shannah’s and longer than Beverly’s, though all three women were equally attractive in different ways by any standard other than perhaps some strait-laced ones, and had strong legs, delicate-to­sensual features, tiny waists, graceful necks, high chunky buttocks and slender hands.

  This woman looked at me, emitted an expression that wholly disapproved of my staring, and went back to sipping her ice-cream soda, which stimulated me even more. I sat at her table and asked what grade she taught. Seventh, she said, and I told her I taught the same group of monsters and that most days last year they had sent me home sick and tight in the head and belly and very often close to tears. She said she thought that might happen to her also, though truthfully she had only just begun to teach, and loudly drained the soda from the bottom of the glass till a strawberry from the ice cream got caught in the straw. She said her name was Libby and I said “Well, Libby, I don’t know how you’re going to respond to what I’m about to tell you though I suspect all your composure and reasonably good feelings to me will dissolve the moment I say what I feel most compelled to say, but I’m absolutely stuck on you—hooked is more the word I mean, and have been from the second I saw you sitting here sucking up this soda, and that I’ve never had such an immediate feeling for a woman and I ain’t just putting you on.” She said that what I was saying was both juvenile and absurd, and excused herself and left the room.

  I returned to class and was feeling dejected when a student entered the room with a note from Mrs. Redbee. Who, I asked, and he said “The pretty teacher from upstairs with the long blond hair and you know,” and he gestured with his hands and chest to describe Libby’s fairly large breasts. I tore open the envelope, and the note from Libby said she was very sorry she had been so abrupt before, she had never known how to react to honesty directed straight at her, if that’s what it was, but for one thing she was married, for another she had two children of her own, for a third she thought she felt the same way about me, had, in a sense, from the moment she saw me sitting there nibbling away on my runny egg-salad sandwich, and that really turned her life into an unwanted dilemma, because when she left for work today she was feeling intensely in love with her husband, so what should we do? And what about me—the same truth now: was I married, engaged, did I have any kids?

  I sent back a note with one of my students saying I wasn’t engaged or married but living with a woman who up till the time I last remembered leaving her warm and wet in our morning bed—and I had recalled that delicious image during every class period break till lunch—I loved more than any one person on earth. She sent back a note saying we both apparently faced the same problem with probably the same brutal consequences if we followed our impulses and so it seemed best we should forget whatever romantic feelings we might have for one another as life was too troublesome an affair to contend with as it was. My return note said I thought she was right, indubitably inexorably immemorially right, and that accompanying this note was a photostat copy of my lesson plans for the year, as I figured she might use them since she was an inexperienced new teacher teaching the same grade and subject I taught She sent back a two-by-three-foot manila envelope, and inside was a note the size of a fortune cookie message that said “Stick all classified material in this envelope and burn.” I laughed so hard I cracked the class up. After I restored order and provided the class with more dictionary words to look up and define at their desks than they could do in five periods, I sent two students to Libby’s room with a large carton filled with three more cartons of progressively smaller size, and inside the smallest carton a note that said “Missiles deactivated; explosives under control.”

  We met after dismissal at the teachers’ time clock. Libby said she was glad the fire was out though after giving it some thought she really didn’t think we were all that combustible, and then looked for our timecards in the card rack and punched out for both of us. We parted at the bus stop, agreeing that as long as we were teaching in what the city considered a problem school, we should remain, for the mutual protection of ourselves and discipline of our classrooms, helpful colleagues to one another.

  That evening I spoke to Shannah about Libby. I only mentioned over dinner that I had met this fairly attractive female teacher today who had just started in the profession and had a lot to learn, but Shannah quickly flew into me as to what I really wanted to say. “Nothing more to it than that,” I said, “except for the fact that maybe we were unusually pleasant and considerate to one another for teachers,” but Shannah said “Come on, Cy, out with it, where’s the old honesty, I already told you I wouldn’t mind your sleeping with three brand new teachers as long as I’m the only one who has your love.” I told her there had been nothing more between Libby and me except for a momentary infatuation, but Shannah screamed back “You’re in love with her, you bastard, I can see it all over your ugly
dishonest face,” and when I said that perhaps I was in love with Libby, she said “Then don’t think I’m going to stay here while you’re sulking and pining away for some bitch you’d rather be with, no boy, not me,” and she went to the bedroom to pack her poetry and clothes. She returned to the table while I was finishing my dinner and said “I’ll stay, you know, if you guarantee me your total committed love,” and when I said I couldn’t give that when it was requested of me, she borrowed a hundred dollars for a hotel room and left the apartment. Then Libby called, said she had accidentally blabbed out to her husband about this fairly attractive male teacher she met, and, after he had pumped it out of her, about that fleeting five-minute nice-feeling time she had had with me. Her husband became so enraged, as she had unwittingly said all this in front of her children, that he demanded she move her flighty carcass out of the house that instant, and did I know of any place she could stay?

  Our living together caused a minor scandal among the faculty and school administration. Eventually the principal told us that because of the large student interest in our affairs and the parental concern about the effect such alleged teachers’ moral laxity might have on the children, one of us would have to leave. Libby settled on my working, since I had gotten her pregnant a few weeks back and she was more than satisfied to stay home reading and enjoying her pregnancy and whatever she could do around the house for me.

  That was a very beautiful time in our lives. We never had a fight, never a serious misunderstanding. Every time we got even slightly ticked off at one another, the less emotionally upset of us would say “Let’s talk the damn thing out,” and we would get whatever was bothering us out into the open before it overwhelmed us inside and made us explode. Then the baby dropped, the labor pains came and went and stayed, and I drove Libby to the hospital and waited in the waiting room while the baby was being delivered. A few hours later a nurse told me my wife had just given birth to a healthy cheerful seven-pound-six-ounce boy baby. I said that was nice, very nice indeed, and my legs tottered and I told her I was about to faint. The arms that guided me to the couch were gentle and strong, the hands that stroked my forehead and nose more knowing and softer than any that had ever touched me. In my semiconsciousness I imagined these same hands skimming over my entire body, giving me more physical pleasure than for the first time I could possibly stand. It was the nurse. She was towering over me, more than six feet of her, and she was saying “It’s all right, Mr. Block, your wife and son are as well as can be.” I held her hands, said they were soft, very comforting, she was a good nurse and she said “Thanks kindly, as I don’t often get roses thrown at me like that.” I told her that Libby and I weren’t married because her divorce hadn’t come through yet, and she said that wasn’t very unusual these days with what she had read and heard about and in fact she had the exact opposite problem as me in that she was very much legally married but her husband didn’t want any children. I said I loved kids and unlike Libby I wanted to have a half dozen more of them and that I thought it was a pity about her husband because I felt she’d make a superlative mother with those comforting hands and empathic disposition and because she was in such a selfless if not self­demeaning profession and also because of her body—I meant because she looked so strong and healthy to me that it seemed she could give birth to many babies and even three or four at a time. She said that come to think of it she was quite strong and healthy and that also being my nurse in a sense she was giving her most thoughtfully considered medical advice that I have a coffee with her downstairs, since we both looked like we could use one.

  After coffee Regina said she lived nearby and her husband was at the first of his two consecutive jobs he held to stay away from her and that my wife wouldn’t be ready to see me for a few hours yet so why didn’t I come to her place for a nourishing breakfast and some small talk. I went gladly as I was very much taken by Regina. She was so powerful yet tender, gaminelike pretty in a big physical way. It was exciting merely to stand beside her and think what I could do with a woman with such an immense perfectly proportioned body and legs that had the length and strength of a champion high jumper.

  Regina served me sausages and eggs, sat beside me on the couch stroking my hands as I stroked her hair and asking if I had any post­faint effects. Then she said she knew she could lose her hospital job for saying this to a man whose woman she had just assisted in the delivery room, but she was a compulsively truthful type so here goes: possibly nothing but she was drawn to me not only intellectually and wanted to make love right now and she was sorry but that was how she felt and if I had any objections to what she just said she would understand perfectly if I left the flat without saying a word, though if I wanted to be carried to bed as she had to do with her near-impotent husband most times then she would try and understand that minor quirk too.

  She was the most imaginative, inexhaustible and relaxed woman I’d ever known in bed and I didn’t want to lose her—that was my first thought after she fell asleep. I felt so secure, healthy and strong with her that I thought my feelings for her went beyond my previously held conceptions about love: she was a total physical experience who could help me attain mystical heights during and right after our lovemaking peaks, though Regina had simply referred to us as two very normal good love-buddies. In the time between our shower and second breakfast we decided we could never leave each other nor have the heart or words to tell Libby, Regina’s husband and the school and hospital administrations about our impossible-to-describe physical-love relationship, so the one alternative was to pack up some clothes, send Libby almost all the money we had with a promise of more to come, and go to another area to live out our lives as lovers and have half-a-dozen children. I wrote Libby a letter saying I hoped she would understand, Regina left a note for her husband saying her leaving was partly a result of his back-to-back jobs and stomach-to-stomach indifference, and we cabbed to the train station and boarded a train that would take us to Canada and our new citizenships.

  About two hours out of the city Regina asked if I wanted to go with her to the dining car. I told her that just for now I wanted to be alone with my thoughts about Libby and the child, and she said she knew what I meant she was luckier than I in that she was leaving nobody behind. Regina left, I closed my eyes and tried to call up the image of an unpregnant Libby and our newborn child, when a woman asked if the seat was taken. I said the one beside me was but the two across from me weren’t, and the woman sat down, she was of a strange racial mixture that was unidentifiable and fascinating and beautiful, crossed her legs, these extremely graceful and shapely dancer’s legs that I suddenly imagined wrapped around my neck and belly, and looked out the window. I couldn’t stop staring at her and finally said “I’m sorry, I’m staring, I don’t normally stare at women, no that’s not true, I stare a lot, and don’t even listen to me if you feel I’m annoying you, I’ll change seats in fact if you’d prefer that, but listen, I think you’re spectacular, your face fascinates me, your body staggers me, I’ve always wanted to paint and with you I’d do nothing but spend the next ten years painting every part of your face and body, no all of this is such blatantly corny rot and what I’m going to say next might even sound more ludicrous to you, but listen, something’s come over me, overrun and overwhelmed me, how does one go about saying this to a woman: the moment you sat down I knew that I had never felt so excited about someone in my life.”

  She said “Well now, that’s all very interesting and such and especially when this elaborate confession comes from what appears to be a moderately sane, intelligent and handsome man, but I must rely on the phrase that you know nothing about me,” and I said “Feelings, instincts, impulses, they’re always more reliable than knowing and knowledge and they tell me to say that I’ve never said or done anything comparable to what I’m going to say and hopefully do right now but would you, if I pulled the train’s stop cord, jump off and run away with me even if I said I had had similar feelings, instincts and impulses for a w
oman last night only a few minutes after another woman I love very much had given birth to my first child and that the birth-giving woman is still in the hospital and the woman from last night is now in this train’s dining car and about to return and sit close to me, comfy with the thought that she and I will be spending the rest of our lives together in Canada?” “Pull the cord and find out,” she said. I looked down the aisle and saw Regina pushing open the door leading to our car, her other hand holding a tray of food for me. I pulled the cord, the train jolted to a stop, Regina fell down and looked quizzically at me, the woman said “I’d say you proved something or another all right,” and we ran to the other end of the car and jumped off the train.

  We walked across the tracks to a diner and went inside. June said “I feel lovely, I’ve never felt so lovely, I’ve never met a man with such entrancing derring-do and guts, I have to go to the can, I’ll think of you every long second I’m in there, doll.” We kissed, practically knotted our tongues, she rubbed my backside and said “You feel and smell so warm and true, I think I finally got myself a winner,” and danced a whirlabout to the ladies’ room.

  I sat at the counter. The waitress came out of the kitchen and with just her first nearly incomprehensible question as to what I wanted to order, I felt that she was the most natural looking and acting woman I’d ever come across. Her hair was in no particular state of disorder, her skin as clean and creamy as a just-bathed little child’s behind, she wore no makeup, didn’t need any, no underclothes either, and her body looked as if it had completed the last stage of its development just an hour before I entered the place. She seemed completely free, unsophisticated and just naturally wise, something I wanted to become as I was now sick of my promiscuous adventures and degenerate city wit and charm, and when she said “Excuse me there,” and smiled the brightest happiest most unselfconscious smile a person could give out, “but I asked what you want to order,” I said “You, that’s all, nothing else, just you as you are.” She said “Good Jay, I haven’t had one like you in here since about an hour ago when the last batch of foul-smelling horny truckers stopped by.”