Late Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  He slept in the guest room. “Oh, one problem,” she said when she invited him to come. “I’ve only been here a few months and haven’t a spare bed yet. I’ll buy it this week. I’ll need it sometime. For instance, if my son ever decides to visit me.” He knew she was short of money, so he said he’d like to pay for the bed. “It’ll probably cost no more than a motel room would, but so what if it costs more.” She got it at Ikea, set it up. He gave her a check for it when he got there.

  He didn’t sleep well. The bed was uncomfortable. And it was a hot muggy night and she didn’t have air conditioning because she never liked it, nor an extra fan. “Take mine,” she said. “The heat doesn’t particularly bother me.” “Wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He was hoping, as he lay in bed for hours, that she’d knock on his door and say something like “Would you like to sleep in my room with me? With the fan and cross-ventilation, it’s much cooler.”

  They had cold cereal and yogurt and coffee for breakfast. He said he wouldn’t mind a slice of toast and butter if she has, and she said she was all out of bread. “I should have planned it better. But the nearest natural food market is ten miles from here and I only do one shop a week.” Then they walked for more than an hour along an old restored canal. “I do the same route daily,” she said, “even when it rains. It’s so tranquil. I get my most inspired thoughts here. Poems; even stories, I’ve begun writing. And ways to bring in enough money so I can quit my awful job.” His older daughter called him on his cell phone after they got back and asked how he was. He said in front of Vera “I’m having a great time. I’m so glad I came.”

  He said to her in her building’s parking area before he left “It’s already past one. I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.” She said “Why would you think that? From now on I’m going to make it my duty to see that you start thinking much better of yourself.” They kissed goodbye—a friendly kiss, lasted no more than a second—and during the drive home he thought he hasn’t been this happy for a long time. Things are looking good. Just that she allowed him that quick kiss on the lips.

  He called her that night. Thought for about an hour whether he should do this and then thought why not? He wants to know. She said “What a surprise to hear from you so soon.” “Wrong of me?” and she said “No, I like talking to you. We’ve a lot to say.” “Listen,” he said, “I want to be frank and direct with you. What else can I be at this stage in my life? Do you think something new and promising has started between us?” “It’s a very distinct possibility.” “You know what I mean, of course,” and she said “You don’t have to spell it out for me.” “Oh, that makes me feel good to hear you say that. So let’s do it again, but soon, and how about this time you visit me? I’ll show you around. No canals. But there’s a beautiful reservoir just a half hour from me, and lots of other attractive places. And Baltimore’s a fairly interesting city, if we want to do a little exploring there.” “All that might be nice,” she said. “Let me see which of the next few weekends I’ll be entirely free. I’ll get back to you.”

  He called her three days later and she said “Was I supposed to call you? I forget. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s not such a good idea I come down. I doubt my old buggy could make it both ways, the train will be too costly, and I’ve a ton of work that’s piled up at my job and it seems it’s going to be like that for weeks.” “The work you might be able to do here. I’ll leave you alone. And I’ll pay for the train fare. I’ve two spare bedrooms, but I’ll put you up at a bed and breakfast if you prefer.” She said “That might be better—the B and B or an inn. It’s sweet of you to offer all this. Let me see. I’ll get back to you.”

  He called her a few days later. “Tell me. Am I bothering you by being so persevering?” he said. “No, I can understand why you called, and I apologize for not calling you. I thought about it—knew what I wanted to say—but kept putting it off. I’ve decided we shouldn’t meet again except as platonic friends.” “Wow, there’s a word I haven’t heard in a while.” “People don’t use it anymore?” “I’m sure they do,” he said. “And a platonic friendship is what I want with you too.” “No you don’t,” she said. “Be honest. You want romance, love, sex, marriage, constant companionship and the like. And you should have all that, after what you’ve gone through, just not with me. I don’t think it’s the right thing for us and I don’t see that it’ll ever be.”

  He was once engaged to her. Almost fifty years ago. He was 24 and she was 23. She broke it off a month or two before the wedding. The ceremony was going to be at his mother’s apartment and the reception, for the twenty or so guests, in a closed-off section of the Great Shanghai, a restaurant on a Hundred-third Street and Broadway. “I’m not ready,” she said. “It’s too soon after my first unfortunate marriage.” Two years before that, when they’d been seeing each other almost every day for three months, she suddenly disappeared on him—couldn’t be reached by phone and her parents and a couple of her friends didn’t know where she was, when he called them, and she gave no indication she was home when he rang her downstairs buzzer in her apartment building and then her doorbell several days in a row. She’d started up with a much older guy she’d briefly dated and had been in love with the year before. They got married and she had the marriage annulled in less than a year. He got a job as a reporter in Washington soon after the breakup with her. Two years later he moved back to New York as a news editor. He called up friends of hers, a married couple he’d gotten to know while he was seeing her, asked the wife how they were but was really more interested in finding out what Vera was doing. She told him about the annulment and invited him over for dinner and said would he mind if she asked Vera to come too. “I’m sure she has no interest in seeing me,” he said. “Not true,” she said. “She’s spoken about you highly several times.” “Well, if she’s there, she’s there.” She came. They had lunch the next day and were sleeping together in a week. They got engaged in a few months and a few months after that she broke it off. Three years later, he was coming back from Paris, where he’d gone to write and learn French and possibly get a news job or something in writing or editing. He got a letter from her while he was there and after that they wrote each other about once a month. She knew he was coming back but didn’t know how or when. She called his mother, who’d previously given her his Paris address but wouldn’t tell her the name of the ship or when it’d dock in New York. “She’s trouble,” she told him. “You’re too blind to see that. She’ll just make you sad again. I never should have told her where you were in Paris or that you were even in Paris. Bucharest, I should have told her.” “Come on, I’m twenty-eight,” he said. “Much better now in dealing with things like that. If it doesn’t go well, and with our history, no reason why it should, tant pis, as the French say. Not to worry.” He called her. They went out to dinner and slept together that night. Next morning, while they were having coffee in her kitchen and he was about to ask if they could spend the day together or get together again that night, she said “I have to confess something to you. It is nice seeing you again. But last night, and this morning when you pushed me into it again when I definitely didn’t want to, I did what I promised myself I wouldn’t. I’m not saying the first time wasn’t fun. But I’ve done enough harm to you. It’s not going to work out the way you want it to and by now you should be able to see that as well as I. You don’t want to get hurt again and I don’t want to hurt you and then feel guilty about it again.” “You’re right, I don’t,” he said. “And you can sure do it to me—oh, boy, can you. And I’m not going to make a big scene over it. You’re safe from that, anyway. I’ll just leave.”

  Fourteen years later he met Abby and they got married in three years. About twenty-seven years after that he visited Vera and the next day invited her to visit him. She’s called him several times since—around once every four months, he’ll say. And when he learned how to receive and send e-mails on Abby’s computer, she’s emailed him a few t
imes too. Always wanting to know how he is and what he’s been doing. He always says on the phone “I’m fine, keeping busy, writing something new. How are you?”

  The Vestry

  He was going to leave the house. Planning to, he means, around 7:40, to go to the church across the street to see a play being performed there. He felt he had to get out of the house, and it might be interesting. The whole experience of seeing the play, he means. He didn’t know about the play, though. It was by a writer who held no interest for him. Hack works, he thought of them, even if one won a Pulitzer years ago and another won some other prestigious award. He hasn’t read anything about the writer for years and assumes he’s dead. But he had to get out, is what he’s saying. He almost never does, except for the usual things: the Y, markets, post office, an occasional coffee. He had thought he’d go to a few concerts at the symphony hall downtown, but without ordering the tickets first as he used to do when his wife was alive. Just park the car in the hall’s garage, go up to the ticket window and get whatever’s available. Apparently, the hall is never filled. They used to go to about six concerts a year and two to three operas at another concert hall. They also, for the last ten years of her life, got season tickets, which means about six plays, to the best theater group in the city. He meant to go to those too, at least once or twice, meaning one or two plays, though preferably more if the lineup of plays was good, and at least one opera. Sometimes he even got dressed for one or the other of them—for movies too—meaning he took off his sweatpants or shorts and long-or short-sleeve polo shirt. He has no dress shirts and wouldn’t wear one to one of those events if he did. But a few minutes before he was to leave the house and drive to the theater or symphony hall or place where the opera was to be performed, he said to himself, and sometimes, maybe the first part of this, out loud to himself, Does he really want to go? He does. He wants to get out, to do something different and perhaps be entertained or moved or whatever would happen. But he doesn’t like driving at night, and if it’s an afternoon performance or showing, especially around this time of year, then chance driving back at night. He also doesn’t much like sitting in a concert hall or theater or opera house, he’ll call it, for two hours and usually more. A movie theater he doesn’t mind, and also movies are almost always much shorter. He also doesn’t like going alone, and he doesn’t know anyone to go with, not that he’d ask anyone if he did know someone who’d want to go. That wasn’t always what he was like. So he went back into the house, if he was outside and got that close to getting in his car and driving to one of these places, and went back to his bedroom and changed into the clothes he took off to put on the dressier ones. Sometimes he never even got that far. He’d go into the bedroom to change his clothes, as preparation for going to one of these events, and think Why bother? He knows he’s not going anywhere, so he should stop fooling himself and wasting his time getting dressed when he’s just going to get back into his old clothes again. One time, he now remembers—it was to a concert that was playing one of his favorite pieces, Mahler’s Third Symphony—he was in the car, had started out maybe a half hour earlier than usual because he thought for this concert—Das Lied von der Erde was also on the program—the hall will be filled—and said to himself, Where does he think he’s going? He knows he’d rather stay home and have a drink or two and some snacks and read and listen to music on the radio or CDs than drive to the hall and go through the hassle of parking the car and standing on what he’s almost sure will be a long ticket line and maybe not even be able to get a ticket, and so on. And it’s getting dark, so it’ll be dark when he drives back and he’ll probably be tired then, since it’ll be an hour or more after he usually goes to bed. And he’s seen this symphony performed twice already, both times with his wife. Once here in the same hall about ten years ago and the other time almost thirty years ago at Carnegie Hall, maybe a few months after they first met. So he turned around and drove home. That was as close as he got, far as he can remember, to go to one of these things since his wife died. Or really, since she got sick—very sick; had to have a trach put in and other serious procedures done to her, and they didn’t want to risk going to anything like a concert or movie again. “You go,” she once said. It was about an hour before the concert was to begin. “Two late Mozart piano concertos and the Jupiter Symphony? You love them. I’ll be all right by myself here.” “You kidding?” he said. “No way.”

  But tonight he’s going to a play. It’s being performed by a group calling itself “The Good Shepherd Players,” which could mean it’s affiliated in some way with the church of the same name across the street or just calls itself that because it’s being performed there. It could be, for all he knows, that if this group performs in other places, it calls itself after these other places, but he seriously doubts it. He’s never heard of a theater group or opera company or music ensemble or any kind of performing troupe like that that changes its name to the place it’s performing at, and he doesn’t know how he could have even thought that. This group puts on, for two consecutive weekends—Friday and Saturday nights at eight, Sunday afternoons at three—a play every year, it seems, or has for the past three. Someone once told him it’s a pretty good acting company, a cut above being amateur. Sort of between professional and amateur, so semiprofessional. Maybe it was his wife who told him, having heard it from someone else. He seems to remember that. He knows she never went to one of its plays. He first saw a sign advertising this year’s play in front of the church about a month ago. The sign was professionally done. Tickets were fifteen dollars, it said, ten for children sixteen and under. He wrote the dates and times in his memobook when he saw the sign and transferred them to his weekly planner when he got home. Today’s the first Saturday the play will be performed. He didn’t want to go to the Sunday matinee. It’d break up his day, or just change it too much, though he’d be less tired after than if he went to an evening performance. But he likes to spend Sunday reading the Times and then writing for a few hours and then going to the Y and then after that to either one of the two markets he does most of his shopping at and then to a small restaurant he likes about two miles from his house. He goes there with a book, the only time he does anything like that during the week, and reads for about half an hour while he eats a sandwich or salad and has a medium-sized latte or Americano. So Sundays were out. And Friday he thought would be the first performance in front of a paid audience, so maybe not the best one to go to. Let them get the opening-night jitters and kinks in the production out of the way. The next night would be better. He also thought he might see someone he knows from the neighborhood at the performance. That’d be nice. Someone to talk to, however briefly. If he sees an attractive woman with an empty seat next to her, he might sit in it, first asking if it’s taken. Oh, what’s he talking about? Forget women. Just try to get an aisle seat, if there’s a middle aisle, so he can see the stage better, though of course if nobody tall’s sitting in front of him. He doubts the seats are reserved, if they’re all the same price. And there’ll be refreshments there, he’s almost sure. In fact, he remembers now the sign saying so, the proceeds from it going to some medical research organization. No, a soup kitchen. But the point he’s making is he has to get out. He means, not doing just the same things every day. No, he doesn’t mean that. He means he has to stop giving himself excuses not to go to things. And the play’s right across the street. What could be more convenient? A two-minute walk. Doesn’t have to drive to it. No problem about coming home at night. And it’ll break the ice, sort of. If he goes to this, maybe he’ll go to other things like it. The theater downtown, and its Sunday matinee, if he has to. Opera, if the season isn’t over. He stopped subscribing to the local newspaper months ago, so he doesn’t know what’s going on in town. Concerts at the symphony hall he knows will be going on another four to five months, all the way into May. So it’s settled for tonight. He’s going.

  He looks at the time. A little past six. Plenty of time to change his clothes. He’s t
hrough writing today, been to the Y. Dinner? What he calls dinner, he’ll have when he comes back. He sits in the easy chair in the living room, takes the book off the side table, opens it to the bookmark and finds the place where he left off. Should he have a drink? It’ll relax him for the play. But also might make him tired, which could end up being an excuse not to go to the play. Maybe around seven, seven-fifteen, a short one. Better, nothing to drink till he gets back home. Less he drinks, less chance he’ll have to pee during the play, another reason for getting an aisle seat. So he reads for a while and then goes into the kitchen and prepares a salad for the next two days and puts it in separate bowls and turns the radio on and listens to music while he reads the newspaper spread out on the dryer. At seven, he pours an Irish whiskey on the rocks and sits in the easy chair and reads some more of the book and drinks and around seven-twenty he goes into the bedroom to change his clothes. He intends to get to the church about twenty to eight and buy a ticket and find a seat. He’ll have the same book with him, so he’ll read while he waits for the play to begin and maybe even during the intermission. And plays never start on time. He’ll also look around to see who else is there. He’s curious what sort of people come to something like this. Of course, friends and relatives of the people involved in the play, but others. How they’re dressed and what they’re saying. He hopes, though, there are a number of people going to it. He hates being just one of a few people in the audience. Feels the actors are looking at him, and it makes him want to look away from the stage. He changes his clothes, looks at his watch on the night table—7:35, so time to get moving—and he gets his wallet and keys and puts on his jacket and cap and gets his book and turns on the outside lights, leaves only the kitchen light on in the house, and locks the door and walks across the street to the church. So he’s doing it. No big deal for anyone else, but for him?—something. For a while he didn’t think he’d do it. That he’d give himself an excuse not to. For instance: He’ll go next Friday or Saturday night, when the performances should be even better than tonight’s. And after all, he’ll have nothing to do those nights, just as he has nothing to do tonight but go to the play. Other excuses. He’d think of them. If there’s anything he’s good at, it’s that. He walks through the church parking lot to the church entrance. Well, how about that, he thinks. You made it. Congratulations. You deserve a medal. Now, if only the play will be good and not too long. But the important thing is you’re here.