Late Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  He dreams of her that night. Dreams twice of her but only remembers the second. He’s cutting across one of the quads of the school he taught at and hears someone behind him say “Hi.” He doesn’t turn around because he thinks the “hi” was for someone else and he’s late at meeting up with her. The person’s still behind him and says “Hi.” He turns around. It’s Ruth, smiling at him and carrying a large canvas boat bag filled with books. “That was me, before, saying hi,” she says. “How come you didn’t stop?” “I thought it was someone else,” he says, and puts his arm around her and pulls her into him and kisses her on the mouth. “Oops, sorry,” he says. “I thought you were someone else,” and takes his arm away and with his other hand takes the canvas bag from her and holds it. She says “That’s all right what you did with your arm there. Put it back,” and he puts his arm around her again and they walk that way. “The bag’s lighter than I thought it would be.” “That’s because there’s nothing in the books,” she says.

  He checks his computer’s inbox about ten times that day, hoping there’d be something from her. Four days after he gets her last email, he emails her. “Hi. See? I’ve adopted the prevalent, or what should we call it—or I call it—accepted email greeting? If I knew how to italicize on this machine, I would’ve italicized ‘I.’ But I’m saying no more ‘dear’ heading and the addressee’s name. Nor will I, from now on, sign off with ‘best’ or ‘very best’ or ‘sincerely’ or such. Just my first initial or name. Don’t want to appear too passé, know what I mean? So tell me, any further thoughts of a movie you’d like to go to, if that’s still on? If you get a chance, let me know. If you’re too tied up to go to a movie or even get back to me, it’s perfectly understandable. I’m the one with all the free time and two daughters out on their own. Very best, Oops, sorry. It’ll take a bit of getting used to. Phil.” She emails him back the next day. “Hi! Apologies for not getting back to you sooner. As you surmised, I’m tied up in knots and nots. What does she mean by that? She doesn’t know. So excuse me for trying to be literary. I invariably fail there. I’m much better at plain speaking and also sticking to the same pronoun. I thought of three movies—it’s a specially fruitful period for movies in Baltimore. But I have the kids all week—Claude is out of town at a linguistics conference—so I want to but no can do. Best. Very best. Sincerely. Simply showing my solidarity sibilantly, and another literary failure. xx, Ruth.” He checks the computer several times a day the next week to see if there’s a message from her. Then he calls, ten days after her last email and she says “Oh, gosh. I was supposed to call you, yes?” “No. You told me to call or write you after about a week.” “Good,” she says. “I’d hate for you to think I didn’t mean it when we talked about going to a movie. But I’ve been so occupied with schoolwork and mom work and housework and even the girls’ homework. Middle school math, for me, is tough.” “Not to worry, really,” he says. “As I said, I’m the one—” “Hey! I just thought of something. I’m giving a reading from my new novel a week after next. The first public airing of it, and if you’d like to, please come. It’s in a new mortar and pretzel bookstore, which has a wine license, so you can drink while you listen. I’d be curious what you think of the part I’ll be reading, and you won’t have to listen to me long. There are three other readers.” “I’m coming. Only my car breaking down could stop me.” She gives the name of the bookstore. “If you Google it, you’ll get the announcement of the reading on its events calendar and better directions to the store than I could ever give. I always get people lost. And Whitney and Harold are having a small drink party before the reading. I know they’d love for you to come to it.” “Not the party,” he says. “I don’t want to get looped and then drive. I’ll have a glass of wine at the store. And the one party I’ve been to at their house, when Abby was alive, took us half an hour to find it. It was evening and they lived in what looked like woods.” “Then give yourself plenty of time getting there and only drink Perrier.” “You’re so nice,” he says, “encouraging me to step out and socialize more—I know what your angle is. And I will, but one event at a time. Something tells me that’s what I should do. So I’ll see you at the reading, if you’re too busy before then to meet me for coffee or lunch.” “Till the day of the reading, I am,” she says. “A ton of half-theses to read and then discuss with the writers. You know how it is. You did the same with me. And though you told me mine, and later my full thesis, were the easiest to read because of all the brief dialog and half my stories were short-shorts, I know it took a lot of your time. I’m sorry we can’t meet sooner. I had a good time that lunch.” “I loved our lunch,” he says. “Loved it. But there’ll be another. “Of course there will,” she says.

  Next day he buys an illustrated book each on Indian and Greek mythology for her daughters. One an expensive hardcover because the store didn’t have the cheaper edition. The salesperson said she could order it but he wanted to mail the books today. Kids love their presents gift-wrapped, and the paper he selected at the store was special for kids. His daughters used to read the same books and also the Nordic and Roman ones, by the same author-illustrator, or he’d read the books to them before they went to sleep. He’d sit in the lit hallway between their bedrooms so they’d both be able to hear, or sometimes would take a chair there. Then he’d shut off their lights and kiss them goodnight. He never read some of the more violent myths if he thought they might have bad dreams from them.

  He emails her for her address. “But only if you want to divulge it. I’m serious. You might have reservations about giving it out. This is for some books my daughters loved when they were your daughters’ age, and I think yours would too.” She write back. “Here’s the address of the house I’m renting. Destroy this email after you copy the address down. Just joking. I’ve nothing to be cautious or anxious about. It was Claude who asked for the divorce, and it’s all been sweet, easy and amicable since then. You’re so kind to want to send my darlings something. More later. Ruth.” No x’s, he thinks. Maybe an oversight or she didn’t want him to think they meant something they didn’t. After he mails the books to her daughters—Priority, as he wants them to get there the next day—and is walking back to his car from the post office, he thinks: Did he do the right thing? There’s a strategy to all this. There’s a strategy? Yes. And he doesn’t want her to think he’s trying to worm his way into her life partly through her kids. They have a father, who always seemed like a nice guy. He met him several times, though a while back, at department functions and once for dinner at someone’s house, when Abby was alive. He was quiet and modest and a bit reserved, but from what she told him, is very paternal, and probably still is. “He’s a good father,” she said in his office when she brought her recently born second child for him to see, “just like you.” He wants something to happen with her, that he’s sure of, but he could be killing it by being too obvious. He’s thought this before, but get it ingrained. So that’s the strategy: Don’t scare her away. Do, and she might never come back. In fact, odds are she won’t. But it might be too late. She’ll open the Priority envelope with her kids and say “Oh, what beautiful paper,” and then “What beautiful books,” and think “It was nice of him but it wasn’t necessary and it was maybe a little odd,” and also the gift is too extravagant—with postage, it came to almost fifty dollars—and she knows what he’s getting at, and finally, he’s too old.

  He has another dream of her that night. They’re at her rented house. Seems to be a birthday party going on for one of her girls. Lots of kids the same age; balloons are stuck to the walls. She points to a group of well-dressed people talking in the next room and says “See that man there? Know who he is?” “The one with the gray goatee? Very distinguished. I feel like a tramp in comparison. Your husband, I presume.” “That’s right,” she says. “A sweeter man than he has never lived.” Then he’s sitting at a card table with her older girl. The girl holds up several paper dolls to show him. “Did you make them yourself?” he says.
“No, I cut them out of a paper doll book,” she says, “but did all the coloring of their clothes. Don’t tell anyone. I want everyone to think I did all of it myself.” “I won’t, my little sweetheart.” “Who are you?” she says. “Philip. An old friend of your mother’s.” “And my father?” “I don’t know him as well, but you can say your father too.” Ruth is standing nearby and seems to be mad at him. “I do something wrong?” his expression says. She signals him to follow her. They go into the bedroom of one of her daughters. The little light in it comes from a slight opening of the door. They stand with their backs pressed up against a wall and their heads turned away from each other. Then her face turns slowly around to his, gets very close, their backs still pressed to the wall. He thinks she’s going to kiss him for the first time. Just as her lips almost touch his and he can feel her breath on his face, she turns away and walks out of the room and shuts the door. “Close,” he says to himself, “but not close enough. She knows I’m dying to kiss her. It’ll never happen. Why am I making such a fool of myself?” and he kicks the wall, feels his way to the door and leaves the room.

  Next day, he tells his therapist just about everything that happened with Ruth the past week. Then he reads some of his dreams of her, which he typed up for the session so he could remember them better. She says “What do you think the dreams and the abundance of them mean? To me, right down to the gray goatee, they seem quite clear, except for the paper dolls.” “No, that’s all right,” he says. “Then why did you read them to me?” and he says “I thought you’d be interested in them.” “Would you like me to give my interpretation of what these newest dreams mean? It just came to me what significance the paper dolls might have.” “No, I’m fine,” he says; “really.” “Okay. Let’s go on. Your waking life with Ruth.” “Don’t I wish I had one.” “Yes, yes,” she says. “And this business about making yourself into a fool. You’re not. Never be ashamed of your emotions. But easy does it, I say. Don’t rush into things. You could get hurt. Form a friendship first. It seems that’s what she wants too. Let her get to know and appreciate you even more than it sounds like she does now. You have a great deal to offer. For one thing, and very important, she more than likely looks up to you and your writing and that you’ve stuck it out all these years and written so much and such good work. But don’t scare her off.” “I know,” he says. “Though she’s so lovely and I’m so drawn to her—I mean, I can feel it when I get next to her—that it’s difficult not to pounce on her. Though I know. And by pouncing, I mean affectionately. But hearing you say it is good for me. She’s not giving me any reason to make a move on her, so I won’t. If she never does, I never will. I’ll keep how I feel about her quiet and under control. I don’t want to confuse and scare her, like you say, and send her fleeing.” “Don’t even make a move if you think maybe she’s giving you signs she wants something more from you than simply lunch and your attendance at her reading. No maybes. Let it be absolutely clear she wants to take the relationship to a deeper level. You’re very observant, so you’ll know when it happens.” “I hope so.” “You’ll know. And you’re still a good catch. The two of you have many things in common. You are much older than her and there are your health issues.” “All of what I thought,” he says. “But want to know what I think? That I was misdiagnosed for Parkinson’s. Look at me. It can’t just be the pills, which aren’t that strong to begin with. My hands don’t shake. My balance is good. I can walk as straight as anyone, and now I’m jogging every morning and sometimes I go at a good speed. Also, my vocal cords are back to normal, or the muscles that control them are. And I was so borderline hypertension, that I might not have that too.” “I’m glad, if all that’s so,” she says. “Though don’t take chances, Philip. And I don’t think you’re deluding yourself with Ruth. Look at that famous actor—Jeffrey someone. So famous, I forget his name.” “I don’t know either.” “Married a woman forty years younger than him when he was eighty, I think, and they had twins.” “I don’t want twins,” he says. “Or to be a father again, and I’m sure two kids is enough for her too. But everything you say is something I already thought.” “Then you don’t need me anymore,” she says. “No, I need you. I have to tell someone how I feel about Ruth. It used to be Abby. I’ve told you. In thirty years there was never another woman. Now it’s Ruth. I feel good that I can feel like that again.” “I’m happy for you. You’re a very nice person.” “Thank you,” he says. “One more thing. I had another dream a few days ago that I didn’t even type up for you because I didn’t think I’d tell you it. And if I then thought I’d tell you, it was so vivid and short, I knew I’d remember it. It’s the oddest dream I ever had.” “Then I’d like to hear it.” “It has penises in it. That’d be all right with you?” “Of course,” she says. “Anything.” “Okay. I say to Ruth in the dream, ‘I’m giving myself away.’ Just that opening line is such a giveaway.” “Go on, go on.” “Ruth says to me ‘What do you have to offer?’ I say ‘Two penises. You can have one.’ I pull down my pants. Two semi-erect penises pop out of my boxer shorts. I’m not going too far?” “I told you. No.” “One is pink; the other my normal skin color, kind of beige. I think she’s going to choose the normal-skin-color one. She reaches down, I cringe because I think this is going to hurt, and she painlessly pulls off the pink one. I think ‘Now I’m normal.’ That’s it. Very quick. Whole thing is over in what seemed like half a minute. It’s pretty obvious to me what it means. That I’m revealing my feelings for her too fast and too obviously.” “And the now-you’re-normal part?” “That I now only have one penis,” he says. “If I stayed with two I’d be a freak and she’d never be attracted to me.” “So you’re saying if she’d chosen the normal-colored one to pull off and left the pink one, it would have been the same.” “I guess so,” he says. “What?” “There’s so much to talk about here,” she says. “First of all, why do you think she chose the pink instead of the normal-colored one? And it was a bright painter’s or flower’s pink?” “Very pink,” he says. “Like bubble gum, or what it used to be when I was a kid. But I hadn’t thought of it before. Because it’s a prettier and flashier color than we’ll call beige and she was attracted to it for aesthetic reasons?” “Do you mind if I offer my interpretation as to why she chose it?” she says. “I’ll put it this way. Pink is young, youth, new, fresh, a baby. The reason for her choosing it could be the most important part of your dream. It’s the age difference again. Perhaps the number one stumbling block to a possible serious relationship with Ruth, so you’re worried over it because it isn’t something easy to overcome. Again, it’s wishful thinking. We’ve talked about it. Your kissing and hugging her in your dreams, making love to her, pulling her into your shoulder as you walk, her letting you hold her hand. This is what you want to happen, as they do in your dreams. She acts the way you hope she will. And in this instance: she’s protective, supportive, considerate, accepting. Age turns out not to matter. She chooses the you you are now over the one you can no longer be. The gap between you has been erased with one single gesture. And everything else being relatively equal between you—your interests, intelligence, you say she’s funny, and so forth—it seems you can now get a romance going, which is what you’ve said you’re longing for and want most. It’s a positive dream. No pain; her complete acceptance of what you are. Very positive. It may not work out for you this way in real life, but in your dream world it does. It’s possible I bungled the last part there. It’s all off the top of my head. But did any of the rest of it make any sense to you?” “A lot,” he says. “I don’t know how I missed it.” “It could be other things too,” she says. “There’s hardly ever one single interpretation for any one part of a dream. But this one sticks out.” “No, I like it,” he says. “This one will do. It makes me feel good. At least better than before I told you the dream.” “I’m glad.” “Time’s up, right?” he says. She looks at her watch on the side table next to her. “You still have ten minutes.” “I think I’ll stop now. I got
a lot out of it. I want to mull over what you’ve said and I don’t want to get too many things mixed up in it.” “Then I’ll see you next week.” He stands, takes the check out of his wallet and gives it to her. “Off to the Y?” she says. “Your usual schedule?” “Yes. Mind and body. Taking care of both. Thank you for a good session,” and he goes.

  His sister calls that night and says “So, long time no speak. How are you? Anything new in your life?” “Matter of fact, now that you ask, yes,” and he tells her about Ruth. Their bumping into each other at a restaurant after about five years. How happy he was to see her and she seemed happy to see him. Her age, teaching, that she was a former grad student of his fourteen years ago, he thinks it was. Her going through a divorce, has two girls, books he sent them, lunch with her at the same place where they bumped into each other, that she invited him to a reading she’s giving and how excited he is to go. That she’s a terrific writer—really special; maybe the best he’s ever had—and a special person too. “I can’t lie about it or in any way be cagey or blasé about it, but I think I’m hooked. First time since Abby I felt this way. That’s good, right?” “Want my unasked-for opinion? It can never work, little brother. There’s nothing I’d like better to happen to you—nobody deserves it more—but a woman thirty-five years younger than you?” “At most. Maybe it’s thirty, or a year or two more than that.” “I’d cut it off now,” she says. “But I’d love to fall in love with someone again. I almost got dizzy when I was with her. Her presence. Just standing beside her. And you can imagine what it was like for me when we hugged hello and goodbye. It can’t be explained—and don’t be saying I’m too much the romantic—but there it is. Something—well, I already said it in so many words, but something I almost desperately wanted, and it’s finally happened.” “What movie have I seen this in?” “Don’t play with me,” he says. “I’m serious, so you be serious.” “Okay,” she says. “Serious. You’re deluding yourself. Go out with someone much older. Even a woman twenty-five years younger than you is too young. Twenty, but preferably fifteen years younger would be the maximum, I’d think, although twenty might be stretching it too far too. What’s her name?” “Ruth.” “Is she Jewish?” “No. In fact her mother was an Episcopal minister, or whatever they are in the Episcopal church. High up. Her own congregation. Retired now.” “So her mother’s probably around your age. Even younger.” “So what?” “Listen,” she says. “You’re hellbent on hurting yourself and also embarrassing yourself too. But hurt is what you’re going to get. I know you. You want more from this woman than she can ever give you and you’re going to kill whatever friendly thing you have with her. I’m sure she has no romantic illusions or fantasies about you.” “What makes you say that?” “Your age, little brother, your age. The whole idea. Once your star former student, now your potential lovemate? It’s not a bad movie it’s out of but a bad book.” “Is there a difference,” he says, “other than one takes one person to do and the other many?” “I don’t quite get what you’re saying. Anyhow, maybe I’ve said too much. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about and something good can come of it, something I didn’t see.” “You don’t believe that,” he says. “I don’t, but I thought I’d say it anyway.” “Ah, you’re probably right,” he says. “I’m all confused. I don’t know what to do.” “Don’t do anything; that’s my advice. But if you have to—if you just can’t stop yourself—here’s one thing you might try. You say you sent her daughters books?” “Yesterday.” “Good,” she says. “They haven’t got them yet or only got them today. She’ll have to email you or call you, thanking you for the books. That’d be the only polite thing to do. If she calls, you have to speak to her. But if she emails, don’t respond. Then, if she emails you again after the thank-you one and suggests you meet even before the reading of hers you’re going to, then meet. Enjoy your lunch or whatever it is. But don’t get lovey or smoochy or confessional as to how you feel to her.” “I want to get smoochy. There’s nothing I want more.” “Don’t. Keep it light. Just have fun with her as a friend. That’s the only way she’ll continue to be with you. If you blow it once, you’ll lose her for good. That’s guaranteed.” “No, what you say’s too much like strategy, which I’m against.” “Okay,” she says. “That’s all I’m going to say on the matter. I’ve warned you. Now, how are my darling nieces?”