Late Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  They won’t find any dishes or utensils or pots or pans or anything like that in the kitchen sink or dish rack. He washed the little there was last night and put them away. The paper bag of paper, plastic, metal and glass for the single-stream recycling pickup this Friday will be next to the trash can in the kitchen. On top of the dryer will be the book he was reading last night in the living room easy chair and which he put there by the door so he wouldn’t forget to take it with him to the Y the next day. They’ll find in the refrigerator an aluminum pie pan, covered with aluminum foil, the dinner he would have had tonight. He’d cooked two chicken breasts and some root vegetables together in the oven last night. Then, standing beside the stove and without cutting up the chicken breasts but waiting till they were no longer hot, he ate with his fingers about half of what was in the pan. The dinner was so good, and he was also a bit tired of cooking something different almost every night, that instead of freezing what was left in the pan, he’d have the same dinner tonight. They’ll recover the pan with the same foil they found on it and throw all of it out too.

  Dining room will be tidy, everything—chairs under the table, place mat, napkin, eating utensils—in its place. He rearranged the fruit in the fruit bowl the day before so it’d look neat and nice. Living room will also be tidy, except for an empty juice glass on the end table next to the easy chair, which he drank two glasses of red wine out of while he was reading the previous night. The empty wine bottle will be on top of the recycling bag. They’ll think it was so unlike him to leave a dirty glass on a table overnight, and he must have forgot to bring it into the kitchen to wash it. They’ll figure out, if not this week then the next, which day the garbage gets picked up and which day all the recyclable stuff, and also to put the trash cans and things on the street early that morning or the night before. They’ll bring the juice glass to the kitchen and probably have to soak it awhile in soapy water to get the dried residue off the bottom of it. There’s no scrub brush in the house to get in that glass, and a sponge with detergent on it never got rid of all the residue.

  Their beds haven’t been touched, other than for the cat taking morning and afternoon naps on them, since the cleaning woman cleaned their rooms and straightened their covers and pillows the last time she was here.

  They’ll have some work to do in his bedroom. He made his bed after he got up. They’ll strip it and wash the linens with the two towels and washcloth from his bathroom, and in another wash the patchwork quilt Abby and he had a woman in Maine make for them about thirty years ago. They’ll throw out his personal items in the medicine cabinet above the sink: comb, hairbrush, toothbrush, nailbrush, shaving soap, and maybe his shaving brush and razor and package of razor blades. Or maybe they’ll include the shaving brush with the other things of his—clothes, shoes, slippers, his one tie, and so on … coats, sport jacket, belts, his one dress shirt, which he ordered from L.L. Bean several years ago and never took out of the plastic bag it came in—they’ll give to organizations like Goodwill and Purple Heart. What also might go will be what remains of their mother’s skirts and shirts in his bedroom closet and which they told him a number of times they didn’t want. They never took any of her clothes other than two mufflers, and those only when it was very cold outside and they needed something warm around their necks, and some head scarves he never saw them wear and two knitted wool caps she brought back from the Soviet Union before he met her. For the last three years he’s been gradually giving her clothes to the same organizations. There are two empty drawers in their dresser that were once filled with her belongings. His old terrycloth bathrobe, hanging on a hook on his bathroom door, is too ragged to give away, so they’ll dump it. They’ll also probably throw out the shopping bags of tax receipts of the three previous years that are in his bedroom closet and seemed to spill over to the floor every time the cat got in there. They’ll probably keep, once they see what year it’s for, or at least till they speak to his tax accountant, the bag of receipts for this year. They’ll also give to Goodwill or Purple Heart the two ten-pound weights on his night table that he exercised with most mornings, and the two fifteen-pound weights they’re resting on, which he stopped exercising with a year ago when he bought the ten-pound weights.

  What to do with his writings, though? And his typewriters, two spare ones on a shelf in the guest closet, and the remaindered copies of his books in cartons in the basement, and all his writing supplies? Between them, they’ll keep a few copies of each of his remaindered books and give away the rest. Maybe his former department will want some to give to its students, or the Baltimore County library system might be able to use them. They won’t know what to do with his old manuscripts of published works they’ll find in the file cabinet under his work table and the newer unpublished manuscripts and photocopies of them on the bookcase in his bedroom, and will have to ask his writer friends and former colleagues. Maybe the school library’s special collections department will take both the old and new manuscripts along with whatever notebooks and letters and such they find of his and a copy of each of his books. As for his writing supplies—one of them will keep the unopened ream of paper for her copier. The other stuff—typewriter ribbons, correction film, binder clips, lots of cheap pens and two staplers and a box of staples and so on—they’ll probably stash in the bags for Goodwill and Purple Heart, hoping some of it can be used. The typewriters, if no writer they speak to wants them or knows anyone who does and none of their friends want them either, they’ll give away to one of those organizations. And all those photographs. Boxes of photographs, albums of photographs, drawers of photographs. He kept them without ever taking them out and looking at them, except for the memorial album his daughters made of their mother, but they’ll know what to do with them.

  On his writing table is the typewriter he worked on the last few years. Never broke down. “Never gave me trouble,” he used to say. “I have spares that I’ll probably never use.” To its immediate right on the table is the first draft of the story he was working on. To its immediate left is the pile of scrap paper he took from to work on the same page of the story over and over again till he was satisfied with it and was ready to switch to the clean final-copy paper. And to the immediate right of the first draft of the story is the stack of clean paper. Behind the typewriter is the part of the story he completed—fourteen pages held together by a binder clip. All the stacks will be neat. He made them that way yesterday after he finished writing for the day and fitted the dust cover over the typewriter. It was getting dark out and the two lamps on either side of the typewriter, each with warnings on the inside of the shade not to use more than a 60-watt bulb, don’t give enough light to write when it gets that dark. Besides, he was tired after writing for a total of about eight hours that day. The story in progress, the completed part and the first draft, will also probably go to the special collections department if it’ll take it with his other manuscripts. The dictionary and thesaurus he kept on the table to the left of the scrap paper pile are in too bad a shape—lots of dog-eared pages, especially at the front of the books, and covers separating from the spines—to give to Goodwill or some other place or keep themselves. So they might put the books in their own shopping bag, because they’ll be so heavy—maybe even double up the bag before they put the books in—and put it out with the rest of the recycled paper or throw out with the trash.

  What they call the guest bathroom—the one off the hallway between their bedrooms and his—will be in the condition the cleaning woman left it the last time she worked for him, except for the kitty litter box, which might need changing. The cleaning woman, which was okay with him, never took care of that. Though the cat, even when it was raining or snowing, usually found a dry place outside to dig a hole and piss and crap, so they might not have to deal with it. The towels on the towel racks in the bathroom and the bathmat folded over the bathtub rim haven’t been used since he washed them after his daughters’ last visit, so they won’t have to be changed either.

>   His wife’s old study will also be neat and clean, other than for a demitasse saucer on the computer table that he used as a coaster for whatever he was drinking while answering e-mails or just seeing if he got any. If the saucer seems clean they’ll probably put it in the kitchen cupboard on top of the other demitasse saucer and small plates without even rinsing it.

  There are no other rooms in the house. The basement, but nothing down there but the furnace, water heater, well tank, dehumidifier, which he got when they bought the house and turned on when the weather started to get muggy and left on till around the middle of October, and a floor lamp and empty dresser. Also a few children’s records and an old phonograph, that has no needle in it, on top of the dresser, and cartons of remaindered books—not only his but ones his wife translated, and for two of them, wrote introductions to—stacked one on top of another with the titles of the books written on the sides of the cartons facing out, and many stretched and rolled-up paintings his daughters did in high school and college. Up until about ten years ago they also used the basement as a playroom and later as a place to hold sleepovers.

  Closets? Nothing much in them except for the one in his bedroom. By now his daughters’ closets are almost empty. And the hallway closet has his two reserve typewriters and a couple of his coats and, hanging from hangers, about five of his wife’s shawls friends of hers had given her once she was only able to get around outside in a wheelchair. Also a walker he was discharged from the hospital with after he got sick with a bowel obstruction two years ago and had to be operated on and a shower chair his daughters bought him after he got home. He’d been meaning to bring both to the basement and leave them there for possible future use or give to a loan closet.

  They’ll know where to go to start dealing with his personal matters. Everything they’ll need for this is in a file folder under the computer table next to his wife’s sewing machine, which they’ll also probably give away. The folder has specific instructions what to do if he dies or is mentally or physically unable to handle his finances anymore or the business of the house and car and taxes and so on, and all the documents that go with them. Stapled to the folder’s flap is a sheet of typing paper—he’s told them this and pointed it out a number of times—saying something like, but definitely using this greeting: “My darlings. Instructions what to do in event of my death or permanent inability to conduct my own affairs are in the first sleeve of this file folder—sleeve A, and right at the front of it, first thing you’ll come upon.” The instructions, which are three typewritten pages, start off with the names and phone numbers of his lawyer, financial advisor and tax accountant. Each should be told of his death or incapacity as soon as possible, the instructions say, so everything he owns and things like the federal and state estimated taxes they’ll have to pay and their mother’s testamentary disclaimer trust can be temporarily or permanently transferred to their names. Included in the instructions are the account numbers of his portfolio with his financial advisor, the number of his TIAA-CREF account and the phone number for it, the phone numbers of all the places he pays his bills by automatic bank withdrawals—utilities, phone, secondary health insurance, E-ZPass, AAA and so forth, his Social Security number and the Social Security Administration phone number to call if he dies so it’ll stop depositing a monthly check in his bank account. Everything like that. His credit card and checking account numbers and phone numbers there. Even the phone number of the funeral home that cremated their mother and should cremate him. “What to do with the ashes?” he wrote. “Your call. But I’d advise leaving them at the funeral home.” Each document and contract in this folder, the instructions say, will be in the appropriate alphabetical sleeve. House deed and home insurance in the “H” sleeve, for instance. Title to the car and auto insurance in the “A” for automobile, sleeve. “You’ll figure it out,” the instructions say. Contract for the roof put on about ten years ago—“It’s a 20-year guarantee”—in the “R” sleeve, new windows put in just a year ago, in the “W” sleeve, and so on. “Don’t think of all this as being morbid,” he wrote in the instructions. “I don’t want you to go through the hassle and stress I did after your grandfather died. He left no instructions what to do with his estate and where his investments were and who was the insurer for his co-op and where the keys were to his safe deposit box at his bank, and dozens of small and big things like that. You know the story. He said all the important papers and contracts and monthly statements and names and phone numbers of the financial people to get in contact with and such after he died were in the top drawer of his dresser. But there was nothing there but boxes of cuff links and tie pins and watches and about 20 white handkerchiefs and the same amount of black socks, and a thorough search of his apartment also turned up nothing. He was a great person,” he wrote in the instructions, “and I loved him more than I did my own father, but it took me a year and a half to sort everything out. Your dear mother, his only heir, was unable to help other than for going to the bank with me about once every two weeks to get her signature notarized on one document after another.” He also wrote where to find the key to his safe deposit box at his bank, which has a lot of valuable gold coins in it—“Krugerrands, they’re called, which your grandfather gave your mother a few of almost every year.” Also, that behind the Beckett section in the bookcase in the living room are two small jewelry boxes with their mother’s very valuable pearl necklace, which her mentor at Columbia willed to her, and the not-so-valuable, other than its sentimental value, amber bead necklace he gave her as an engagement gift. “In those boxes are also some pins and earrings and earstuds of your mother’s, and our gold wedding bands and the much wider gold wedding bands of her parents, all of which—certainly the four wedding bands—ought to be worth something at Smyth Jewelers on York Road, which is where I’d go to sell them,” he wrote. “But you two should keep the necklaces and wear them, as your mother did, on special occasions. Or anytime you want, really, and hand them down to your children, if you have any, when they grow up and if they’re girls, or your daughters-in-law, if you only have boys, and they marry. The Krugerrands will only get increasingly valuable every year, maybe so much so that you’ll be able to send your kids through college for a couple of years after you’ve cashed in the coins. But do what you want with everything. Don’t keep anything just for my sake.” At the end of the instructions he mentioned the automatic generator outside and the well in the basement and what companies to call to get both serviced twice a year. “It’s important to do that if you want to keep them running smoothly. If you sell the house right away, tell the new owners this.”

  They’ll come into the house, after they leave the hospital, and probably find the kitchen ceiling light on. It was gray and dreary out the morning he got that sharp pain that wouldn’t stop and kept getting worse, and he had turned on the light when he first went into the kitchen. Usually he didn’t have to.

  Therapy

  What’s he going to tell the therapist? Or “talk about with,” or whatever he’s supposed to do with a therapist? He’s never been to one and he has his first appointment the day after tomorrow. She asked on the phone why does he think, so late in his life, he needs to start therapy? He said the main reason is a very bad one, one he thinks she won’t particularly like: his daughters urged him to go to a therapist, and more to please them than for any other reason, he’s going to try it. It’ll make them feel better. The younger daughter more than the older one, but both. He wants them to feel they have some control over his life—the betterment of it—and that they suggested a good thing. Other reasons are he’s become almost anti-social in his self-imposed isolation and reclusiveness the last few years. And he’s never gotten over—he’s still grieving and suffering—his wife’s death nearly four years ago. And he’s getting old—or is old—and all the fears and anxieties that go with that. “Okay,” she said, “that’s enough. I can fit you in. Let’s start, if the time and day are good for you, this Friday, 10 a.m. Or the followin
g Friday, same time.” “Let’s start right away,” he said. “And not to get it over with. But why should I wait any longer? I’ve decided to go, so let’s do it.” “Okay,” she said. “This Friday, 10 a.m. Let me give you directions how to get here. Where do you live?”