Late Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  He goes inside. A man’s selling tickets at a card table in the lobby, or whatever it’s called in a church. Not the “nave,” though that came to mind. It has a name. “Vestibule” will do. Or just “the entrance.” But what’s he going on about? Three people are on line for tickets, and he gets behind them. Other people, maybe ten, stand around or are seated in chairs against the walls, probably waiting for somebody or just to go into the theater. So, already a fairly good crowd. His turn comes. A sign on the table says “Cash or check only.” “One, please,” he says. He gets a twenty out of his wallet. The man gives him a ticket—“No. 116,” it says on it; that can’t be the number sold just for tonight—and a five-dollar bill in change. “Now where do I go?” “Oh? Your first time with us?” the man says. “Wonderful. It’ll be a surprise. Walk straight through the lobby, then left down the stairs to the vestry, where the play is being performed. Take any seat you want. The play started promptly last night, so I see no foreseeable reason it shouldn’t start on time tonight. Enjoy.” “Thank you.”

  He goes straight, left, down the stairs. Coat hooks line one wall of what seems to be the anteroom to a much larger room with rows of unfolded metal chairs in it, which must be the vestry. Several coats are on the hooks. He stuffs his cap into a side pocket of his jacket and hangs the jacket up on one of the hooks. A young girl hands him a program when he goes into the vestry. “Enjoy the performance,” she says. “Thank you.” Though maybe the vestry is both this room and the anteroom he hung his coat in. He’ll want to look up “vestry” when he gets home. Will he remember? Should he jot it down on his bookmark or the program? He forgot his memobook but has a pen in his jacket. Not worth the trouble. And he’ll remember. About fifteen people are already seated, most near the front. Nobody in the first row, though. Probably too close to the stage, which is only a foot or so off the floor. He takes a middle aisle seat, about halfway from the stage, no one in the seat in front of him. There are about ten rows. He counts them. Twelve. Ten seats to a row, five on each side of the middle aisle, so a total seating capacity of more than a hundred. So maybe a hundred-sixteen was the number of tickets sold, up till then, for tonight. But can’t be. Play’s going to start soon and more people would be here. Maybe it’s the total of last night’s sales and tonight’s, or else they’re not selling the tickets in numerical order. It also could be a lot of people bought tickets in advance for tomorrow’s and next week’s performances. He looks at the program. Two acts, it says, with a fifteen-minute intermission, five to six scenes in each act. “Morning.” “One hour later.” “Three hours later.” “The next morning,” and so on. In the second act: first scene is two weeks later, morning. The program has several local businesses advertised in it. Realtors, the market and liquor store he usually shops at, the flower shop he used to go to a few times a year when his wife was alive. Her birthday, their anniversary, a number of times when she was very angry at him. Flowers or a new African violet plant always seemed to make her feel better to him. An ad for the church’s pastoral counseling. There’s no stage curtain. Actors, he just now notices, are lying on cots and supposed to be sleeping or resting. Mosquito netting covers three of the four occupied cots. One cot is empty and has a rolled-up bare mattress on it. More people take seats in the audience. Still nobody in the row in front of his. He doesn’t recognize anyone. Must be past eight now. He saw no reason to bring his watch. He opens his book and starts reading. A couple come into his row from the other end and the woman sits next to him and the man on the other side of her. Minute later the woman whispers something to the man and they each move one seat over. Could it have been something about him? There was nobody in front of them. She probably just felt more comfortable not sitting next to anyone. He puts the book down on the seat she left. More people come in. About fifty seats are taken. Music comes on. “Waltzing Matilda.” It must be around ten after eight. The lights dim in the audience and brighten on stage. The door to the room is closed. The music fades out. A woman dressed like an army nurse might be dressed sixty years ago walks on stage. She raises the bamboo blinds of the one window in back, which looks onto what seems like a jungle, and then pulls the mosquito netting away from one of the cots and ties a cord around the middle of it. The men in the cots start stirring: scratching their faces, yawning, stretching their arms out. “Rise and shine, mighty warriors,” she says, pulling the netting away from another cot, “rise and shine. It’s a special day.” The program says the play takes place in a military hospital in Burma for British, Canadian and American soldiers in World War II.

  The play’s terrible. Everything about it: acting, writing, characterizations, laugh lines that aren’t funny, romantic and tender scenes and one tragic one—a soldier learns his brother has been killed in battle in Europe—that are cloying, boring, totally unconvincing, something, but they’re awful. Fifteen minutes into the play, he wishes he hadn’t come to it. He’d leave but thinks that would disturb the actors: walking up the aisle, opening the door and trying not to make a sound. If he’s lucky, he thinks, it’ll be a short act.

  The first act lasts for about an hour and a half. Maybe it only felt that long because he was so bored by it and it was a half hour or so less. The audience applauds at the end of it. He doesn’t. The actors leave the stage. Lights come on. Three teenagers immediately start rearranging the furniture on stage—letting down the blinds, removing one cot. He hurries up the aisle, gets his jacket and puts it on in the lobby. He seems to be the first one there. The girl who gave him the program is sitting behind the card table with a woman—they look like mother and daughter—selling candy bars and what seem like homemade brownies and cupcakes with pink and white frosting and fruit juice in paper cups. He was wrong. The money will go to some children’s group of the church, a sign on the table says. “Would you like to buy a refreshment?” the girl says as he’s putting on his cap. “No thanks, sweetheart,” he says. “Maybe some other time,” and he leaves the church. Outside, he thinks she looked disappointed when he said no. And that was so stupid what he said about some other time. He was in too great a rush to get out of there. He should have bought something even if he didn’t eat or drink it. She probably even made the brownies and cupcakes with her mother. Well, others will buy. He can’t always feel bad for everyone. There’ll have to be some sales. Others might even buy just because they don’t want to disappoint the girl by saying no. And it’d be silly and seem peculiar to go back and buy something, though something in him wants to.

  He gets home, changes into his bathrobe, sits in the easy chair in the living room and reads the op-ed articles in the newspaper. He has a drink, then a second. Place is nice and warm. He makes himself a tuna melt with tuna salad he made the day before and sits in the easy chair and eats it. So. Was it worth it going to the play? He feels no pride, or relief, or whatever it is, that he finally got out of the house to go to a performance of some kind. Because what did it prove? He now feels even worse than before he went. Why? He just does. Oh, damn, why does it always have to be this way? He feels even less willing now to go alone to some future concert or movie or a play done by professionals in a real theater in the city. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get in his car to go to one if it means he has to go alone. He didn’t feel good sitting by himself in the vestry, and it wasn’t just the boring play. Though there were, though he only got quick looks before the room went dark, a couple of attractive women there with women friends, it seemed. Who knows? If he had stayed he might have been able to start a conversation with one of them during the intermission in the anteroom or the lobby while he had a refreshment, the fruit juice, probably; he’s not much for candy or cake. But what is he thinking? From what he saw, they were too young for him. Thirty years younger than he at least. That will always be the case, it seems. Ah, don’t be so down on yourself. It doesn’t always have to be the case. He might meet someone somewhere accidentally, or a friend could set up something or introduce him to her, and things could start up between the
m. “This was fun. Like to meet for coffee someday?” That sort of thing. He doesn’t have to think it’s too late for him. Just stay in shape and be ready to say the right thing to get or keep things going. Someone to go to a play with and later talk about it, even the awful plays. Someone who might do the driving-home after, if she’s staying at his place that night, or he at hers. All of that could happen. He has to think it can. Oh, dream on, dream on.

  What They’ll Find

  He wakes up, washes, dresses, makes the bed, lets the cat out, and right after he puts his sneakers on for a short run, he gets a sharp pain in his stomach. He lies down on his bed, doesn’t know what’s causing the pain but thinks it’ll go away. It gets worse and won’t stop. He sits on the toilet awhile, thinking maybe it’s that, but nothing comes. Three hours after he first got the pain, and when it’s hurting even worse than before, he decides to drive to Emergency in the hospital about two miles away. He puts on his muffler, coat and cap, gets his wallet out of the sideboard in the dining room and his keys off the hook by the front door, but feels too weak to drive and sits down by the phone in his wife’s old study and dials 911. EMU comes, checks him over, has him walk to the truck outside and lie down on the gurney in back, and takes him to Emergency. He dies two hours later. In his wallet, under a two-by-three-inch piece of transparent plastic—it’s the first thing one sees when the wallet’s opened—is a handwritten note that says “If I should die unexpectedly or be incapacitated, my name is Philip Seidel, SS#099-56-3324. Instructions on other side.” He wrote that and inserted it in his wallet after he got out of the hospital the last time. The instructions say “Call my daughters, first one first,” and gives their names and cell phone numbers. “If neither’s reachable, call Aaron Henry,” and gives his home, office and cell phone numbers. “If he’s unreachable, call Maggie Rothman,” who was his wife’s best friend since they were freshmen in college together and became sort of a surrogate mother to his daughters after his wife died, and gives her phone numbers, though she lives in New York, as do his daughters. Next he gives his own address and home phone number. Underneath this folded-up slip of paper are two sterile adhesive bandages and several passport and school yearbook photos of his wife and daughters, all of them at least ten years old, which is about how long he’s had the wallet, and one of them his wife’s visa photo to the Soviet Union that goes back to three years before he met her.

  His daughters will be called. Or one of them will, and she’ll call the other. Maybe his friend and former colleague will be called by the hospital too, or one of his daughters will call him. His daughters will come to the hospital straight from the train station. They, and possibly his friend—he’s sharp on things; that’s why they’d want him there—will deal with whatever needs to be done after someone dies. Documents. Signing papers. Going through his wallet to find his Medicare and Blue/Cross Blue/Shield cards. Contacting, probably with the help of a social worker at the hospital, a funeral home to pick up the body later that day or sometime the next day to be cremated, something he told his daughters he wanted done with it. His daughters will go home. If his friend came to the hospital, he’ll stick around and drive them, or else they’ll take a cab.

  This is what they’ll find at home. The door will be unlocked. The cat will be outside, sitting on the doormat. They’ll let him in and give him fresh water and food. Both of them will probably pick up and hold the cat till he starts squirming in their arms, which he does with everyone when he’s held more than thirty seconds or so, and he’ll either jump to the floor or they’ll let him down.

  His daughters will turn most of the lights on in the house and probably, for a while, the outside lights too. They’ll probably check the thermostat in the dining room to see if the heat’s on or at a temperature they want. All the rooms will be clean, other than for some tracks the EMU people made on the kitchen floor. It was still a little wet outside that morning. The cleaning woman, who comes every Tuesday for four hours and then makes herself a mug of herbal tea and a sandwich from smoked turkey and a roll he bought at the local market the day before and lettuce from the refrigerator’s vegetable bin, will have been there just two days ago, and he was always cleaning and tidying up after himself in the house. He never liked to see a single thread or a leaf from one of his houseplants on the floor. There’ll be some slices of turkey left in a zipper bag in the deli tray in the refrigerator. He used to give it to the cat, in small pieces, the next two to three days. He once shared what turkey was left with the cat but hadn’t for months. Not since he stopped eating anything with salt in it after his doctor told him his blood pressure was getting dangerously high and he wanted to put him on a medication to lower it. He told both daughters in separate phone conversations that he didn’t want to go on another pill if he could avoid it. His bowels were already too affected by the pills he’s taking. That maybe a salt-free diet and a short jog in the morning and a long walk that ended with a short jog at dusk and more exercise at the Y than he’s been doing will lower his blood pressure to a level where he won’t have to take any new medication. His doctor didn’t think so, he told his daughters, but they’ll see. It can’t hurt or make things worse, he said; just make eating less interesting. He was already taking a pill three times during the day at six-hour intervals for his Parkinson’s and another pill once a day for an enlarged prostate. He would have taken the Parkinson’s pill with his breakfast this morning after his run and the prostate pill a half hour after breakfast. The pills are in pill containers on a shelf above one of the kitchen counters. These pills and the little smoked turkey left—in fact, everything in the deli tray—and some other foods in the refrigerator they think might be too old or past their expiration dates or they just don’t want to take any chance on will be the first things they’ll dump into the trash can in the kitchen. If they get hungry and don’t use his car to drive to a market or a restaurant for dinner, what will they find in the house to eat? When he knew they were coming for a weekend or more, he bought things they liked. Flax seed bread, bagels, almond milk, Honey Nut cereal, Greek yogurt, goat cheese, other foods he didn’t eat. There’s half a loaf of whole wheat bread in the refrigerator that he bought for himself a week ago, but it’s salt-free. They’ll find it tasteless, even toasted and with butter or jam or both. In the freezer are two of the six bagels he bought for them the last time they were here and which they didn’t want to take back with them, so he froze them and they can have them this time. Also different dishes in plastic food containers in the freezer. He liked to cook and would only eat a quarter of what he made and freeze the rest and rarely ate what he froze and most of the time, a month or two after he put them in the freezer, he threw them out. They’ll dump almost everything in the freezer the next few days and all the spices on the spice shelf on the kitchen wall, most of which have been there more than a year. There are cans of different kinds of salt-free beans and diced and crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce in a kitchen cabinet. There are also several pastas and a box of rice noodles in that cabinet. So it’s possible that instead of eating out in a restaurant or going to a market for food they’ll make dinner from some combination of what they find in the kitchen cabinets and a salad from the refrigerator’s vegetable bin and fruit from the fruit bin and the bowl in the center of the dining table—bananas, clementines, a grapefruit, ripe pears—and wine from one of the bottles in the two wine racks under the sideboard.

  They’ll find in the refrigerator part of what was to be today’s breakfast he prepared the night before. A bowl with soy yogurt and cranberry compote he made a large batch of so he could have it every morning for one to two weeks and a sliced banana. That’ll also be dumped. They’ll also find in the refrigerator a small plastic container of cut-up fresh fruit. Sometimes he prepared three containers of fruit at once, usually the same fruits equally distributed in the containers, lidded them and took them out one at a time with the bowls the next three mornings.

  A salad fork for the fruit and tablespoon for t
he bowl of cereal will be on the one placemat on the table, a folded-up cloth napkin under them. He put the utensils there the previous night before he went to bed, something he did every night if he knew he was going to have breakfast at home the next morning. The napkins and placemat will be a little stained with food, since he also used them for his last two lunches, and they’ll drop them into the washing machine in the kitchen. They won’t find anything in the washing machine when they open it or anything in the dryer next to it. He did a wash two mornings before and folded up everything and put it away. The spoon and fork they’ll put back into the utensil drawer under a kitchen counter.

  The coffeemaker on the short counter between the stove and sink will also have been prepared the night before: water, filter paper and grounds. Alongside the coffeemaker will be the mug he planned to drink the coffee out of and a thermos he was going to pour the rest of the coffee into after he filled up the mug.

  He didn’t pick up his newspaper by the mailbox this morning, so it’ll still be there. They’ll pick it up the next morning with the next day’s newspaper. They knew his morning routine almost by heart now. They’d seen it when they were there and got up early enough and he talked self-mockingly about it on the phone several times. “It’s crazy,” he said, “but since your mother died this is what I do.” If he hadn’t gotten sick he would have made sure the living room door to the porch was locked, gone outside through the kitchen door and locked it, taken a short run with maybe a brief stop or two on the roads’ shoulders when cars were coming his way, got the newspaper at the end of the run, unlocked the kitchen door, hung the keyring on one of the hooks by the door, turned the coffeemaker on, taken the container of fruit and bowl of soy yogurt, compote and banana out of the refrigerator, or done that before he left the house, got the jar of sodium-free granola off a kitchen shelf and spooned some of it into the bowl, set the bowl and container of fruit on the placemat on the dining table, poured out a mug of coffee and put it on a coaster on the table, poured what was left in the coffeemaker into the thermos, shut off the coffeemaker, let the cat in by now if he wanted to come in and given him a fresh bowl of water and a plate with wet food on it, which he would have got out of the refrigerator or opened a new can of cat food from the kitchen cabinet that had all his canned foods, or if there was very little food left in the can from the refrigerator, done both; brought the newspaper to the table if he hadn’t already left it there when he came back into the house after his run, taken his first Parkinson’s pill of the day if he hadn’t already taken it, and sat down at the table and started to eat his breakfast and drink his coffee while he read the newspaper, starting with the capsule weather forecast for the Washington edition at the top right corner of the page.