What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  “No,” she yells from her room.

  I go upstairs. “Just another twenty minutes or so.”

  “You didn’t miss the bus. You let it go by.”

  “Okay. I let it go by so I could see you once more.”

  “Fine. Now that you’ve seen me, get out.”

  “Give me a chance to get a good look.”

  “Don’t be stupid again.”

  “And don’t be so insulting,” I say.

  “You’re forcing me to say these things and be this way. I’m getting angry. Frustrated.”

  “What does that mean?”

  That means don’t get me even angrier and more frustrated by acting even more intentionally stupid. That means leave this house. That means start now. That means go. Get lost. What do I have to do, call the police?”

  “Last time I thought you were a little sorry I left and glad I honestly missed that bus.”

  “Last time I might have been but I’ve thought it over and now I’m not. I don’t want you around anymore. Never again. Plain and simple—scram, stupid.”

  I grab a plant off the washstand and throw it at her.

  She ducks and it hits her chin. She screams. Blood comes out. She’s on the bed holding her face and screaming. I get down on the floor on my knees and say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She pushes me away and runs to the bathroom. I run after her. She has a towel to her face and I say “I should’ve done that. Got you that towel. I shouldn’t have thrown that plant. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  She goes downstairs with the towel wrapped around her face and goes outside and gets in her car and drives away.

  “Where you going?” I yell.

  Probably to the hospital. The police she could have called. Or maybe to the police because she thought I’d stop her call. But probably to the hospital or some friend. I got to get out of here. First time I ever hit someone like that as an adult. That finished us, of course. Hitting someone? Worst thing I’ve done in my life. They hate it. Women do. Especially Mona. Said once when I raised my hand to her “Touch me like that and it’ll be the last time I so much as say boo to you. I hate men who knock women around. Hate anyone who abuses with his hands.”

  “I got excited,” I write on the blackboard in the kitchen, “Of course: much worse than that. I’m sorry. I love you both. See ya.”

  I head down the hill with my bags. No, it’s after six-thirty, the bus is back on Sunset Drive. I go up the hill and wait, put on a different shirt and throw the bloody one into the woods. The bus comes. I should have cleaned up her room. Repotted the plant, scrubbed the bathroom sink and floor. I signal the bus and get on it. Andy Maxwell’s there.

  “How’s it going?” he says.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Sit next to me,” he says when I sit two rows behind.

  “Andy, I’m really feeling lousy right now. Mona and I broke up. Worse. I hit her in the face with a flower pot. She probably went to the hospital for stitches. It’s possible I broke her jaw. Not only did I do that to the person I love most, but the police might be after me now for it.”

  “You never should have got so excited.”

  “I know. That’s what I just wrote her. But what I really can’t take now is anything like advice after the fact and so on. Commiseration. I’m miserable. I feel as lost as I ever have in my life. Worse.”

  He sits next to me.

  “Please?”

  “Look, whatever you did to Mona, bad as it is, she might have deserved it. She’s a bitch. You’re much better off split up. You’ll feel lousy for a while, but know that she has very few friends here and more than a few who’d like to have thrown a pot at her, though not in her face. She’s a complete fake. Thinks she’s the hottest goods imaginable and lies blue streaks day and night. She’ll do anything to get ahead, and that means buddy-screw her best friends and use them as fools. She’s also a snob. Loves anybody who’s anybody or rich, no matter how rotten that person might be. You did a bad thing in hitting her, granted. But I can well understand how she could push someone to do it. She’s just not nice but pretends to be with that big smile and cheerful disposition and charm of hers, and that kind of twofacedness throws people into a rage.”

  “No, no, she’s not like anything you say.”

  “You don’t see it. Or you don’t want to admit it. You’re too nice a guy yourself and can’t see’ anything but good in people and cringe at saying anything bad. I’m not saying these things to make you feel better. I’m also not one to repeat gossip, but only what I see myself firsthand. In time you’ll know I’m right.”

  “I hope not. And I don’t want to think about it. Excuse me but I really want to close my eyes and maybe sleep.”

  We get to the city. Andy takes one subway and I take another to my apartment. I drink a bottle of wine while I listen to sad music and read the papers. Then I call Mona.

  Burleigh answers. “Mom’s in bed. She just came back from the hospital and had five stitches put in her chin. Why’d you hit her like that?”

  “I feel awful. It was totally my fault. I love your mother, honestly. Please tell her how terrible I feel and that I’ll pay all the medical bills and anything else she asks.”

  “Want me to tell her now?”

  “Yes.”

  He comes back to the phone. “She says to shove it. She told me to say that. And I’ll tell you how I feel, Bo. You did the worst thing.” He hangs up.

  I call Sarah. “Sarah, I hit Mona with a flower pot before. We’re really split now, for good. I know I sound a bit drunk, but I wanted to know if you’d go over there now and check in on her. Maybe she needs some help.”

  “She has Burleigh, doesn’t she?”

  “Sure. He’s home.”

  “And other friends, perhaps, so she doesn’t need me. To tell you the truth, Mona and I never got along well. It would have been nice, having a friend living so close, but that’s not the way it is. I’m sorry you hit her. That was wrong. But as far as my feeling for her is concerned, she’s a mite too pushy and self-centered and a stinker of the lowest degree.”

  “Really think so?”

  “I’m not the only one. Take care.”

  I call up the Ludwigs, whom I consider our best friends around where Mona lives. Ben says some of the same awful things about her and says his wife Mary feels the same way. “Besides that, she’s going to get in a lot worse trouble than a flower pot in her face. She goes out with the wrong kind of guys. One’s a pusher. She’s brought a couple of them over here between the times you were in the city and when I thought things were dandy between you two. Who knows what she saw in them.”

  They were all very good looking,” Mary says on the extension.

  “Nicely built. Big too. She likes men with lots of wild fluffy black hair. I like them also, but not dopes and pigs like these. Like her, they only seemed interested in a good quick time for themselves at the moment and nothing else. Take it from me, Bo, you’re much better off without her.”

  “Am I?”

  “We both think you were the best chance she had to improve.”

  I call up several other people Mona and I know. They all say I should have shown more restraint. Nobody has a nice word for her, though. I begin to feel sorry for her now in a different way. I picture her all alone. Without good friends. Just Burleigh and she. And all these people saying nasty things about her behind her back and even to her face. I see her lying in bed with a bandage on her jaw, planning things, scheming, worried about what the chin scar will do to her beauty, or maybe just sleeping now or in pain. Maybe she did push me too far. Still, I should have held back. Anyway, I don’t feel as bad about myself now and that I won’t be seeing her anymore. Tomorrow I’ll feel better. Days after that, better yet. I’ll send her flowers. Make my apologies more intelligible in a letter or two and wish her a long happy life, and then forget her for good. I drink more wine and get sleepy. “Mona,” I shout, “I love you, what can I say?” I pass out. All night I
seem to dream of her making love with other men and enjoying it. I wake up around three and for hours just lie there with the lights on. “Tough days ahead,” I say.

  END OF A FRIEND.

  I bump into him. He says “Excuse me.”

  I say The same.”

  He passes. I say “Wait up.”

  He stops, turns to me. “Yes?”

  “You forgot something.”

  He looks around. “I don’t see anything. What?”

  “To say excuse me.”

  “Either you didn’t hear me before or you’re trying to fool me.”

  “No other alternative?”

  “None I can think of now, but what of it?”

  “You’re right. You did say excuse me.”

  “Fine, then. I won’t begin to try to understand you.” He walks away.

  “One more thing.”

  He doesn’t stop. I run after him, tap his shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “Good. For a second I was afraid maybe your hearing wasn’t okay.”

  “My hearing, my vision, and I’ll tell you, my smelling, are all okay.” He starts off again.

  I run after him, grab his arm. “Now listen you,” he says, pushing my hand away. “I don’t quite like this. Not ‘quite.’ I definitely don’t. I don’t know you, yet you stop me and immediately try to fool me. Then you talk some gibberish about my hearing to me. Maybe you even intentionally bumped into me. Now it’s no doubt something else. Well, I’ve someplace to be now. Important work. People are depending on my being there. So if you don’t mind?”

  “But one more thing. Only what I wanted to say to you before I got distracted and asked about your hearing.”

  “All right. One more thing. What?”

  “Your face.”

  “Yes, my face.”

  “Yes, that you have a face.”

  “You’re right. How completely absentminded of me. I have a face. Thanks for reminding me. Goodbye.”

  He starts off. I grab his arm. He swivels around hard this time and says “Stop me once more and I’m going to do something you won’t like.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re provoking me. Detaining me for some ulterior or insidious reason of your own which I think I’m finally on to and am a little fearful of. Now, may I go? Not that I have to ask you. But rather, I am going, and stop me once more and it’s the police I talk to next, not you.”

  “Go on, go on, I’m not stopping you.”

  “You don’t call grabbing my arm a couple of times and saying nonsensical things to stop me, stopping me?”

  “To be honest, yes, I’d say I stopped you, but not with nonsensical things.”

  “Oh? That I have a face?”

  “My point wasn’t just that you have a face. For we all have faces. All except those poor disfigured people who don’t have faces. Not disfigured. People without faces at all, I mean. But that wasn’t my point. My point was that you have something on your face.”

  “My nose.”

  “Yes, your nose. You see, you knew. I didn’t have to tell you after all.”

  “Don’t I know. And excuse me for being so blunt, sir, but you’re mad.”

  “No I’m not. I thought you were more observant than that. Can you take a little more honesty for one day? I’m feeling unusually content with myself talking with you here, not at all mad. That’s honesty. That’s an honest statement about my life, is what I’m saying, which you might or might not agree.”

  “I mean in the head, which you knew perfectly well. A screw loose. Daft. Disturbed. Your desperate need for attention perhaps. Your…but I’m not going to analyze you. Excuse me for even having said what I did, as your mental and emotional states are none of my business. And now I’m going. Stop me again and I will call the police, and after that, who knows? Maybe the courts will decide you belong in an asylum for a while, which I don’t think you’d like in the least. Now, have I made my point clear?”

  “Good and clear. If that was any indication how you make your points, then you make them very well.”

  I watch him go. I sit on the curb. I watch the cars and trucks go by. The vehicles. Buses, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters. People go by too. Baby carriages. Not along the street but across it and then on the sidewalk across the street. Lots go by. Dogs with their walkers, dogs without. A battery-powered wheelchair. Two girls on roller skates in the street. Only roller skaters I saw today on the street or off. Day goes by. Night comes and stops. I stay on the curb. I look at the lights of passing planes overhead. I look at the water running along the curb under my legs. A twig floats by. Half a walnut shell empty side up. Piece of paper. I pick it up and read it. It’s the label of a pickle jar. Spices, cucumber slices, vinegar, a preservative, and where it’s made and by which company and the kind of pickle it is. I drop it into the water and it floats away. Someone must have opened a fire hydrant nearby.

  A dog off its leash stops and sniffs the parking meter pole I’ve been using as a back rest. I shoo it away. It comes back. I say “Scat.” It sniffs the pole some more and lifts its leg. I say “Get out of here, beat it, scram,” and raise my hand.

  “Touch that dog and you’re in trouble,” a man holding a leash says.

  “He your dog?”

  “Whether he is or isn’t, just say I don’t see anyone beating on dogs.”

  “If he’s your dog, tell me, so I can ask you to call him away.”

  “Why? The pole’s public. On a public sidewalk alongside a public street. So that dog has as much right to the pole as you.”

  “Any sensible person knows people have more rights than dogs. Just the word ‘public,’ for instance, will tell you that. From publicus, pubes, populus, people, people, not that one should expect anyone else to know that.”

  “Okay. Maybe some people have more rights than dogs. But for you, I don’t think so.”

  “Whatever you say. But I don’t want your dog, if he is your dog—just this dog then—stepping a step nearer to me and lifting his leg again, or I’ll summon the police and have it taken away. There’s the street for what a dog has to do, not the sidewalk or against a building wall or fire hydrant or parking meter pole, and certainly not against me.”

  He raises his finger in a curse sign and walks away. The dog follows, does its duty against a parking meter pole a few feet away. Does its other duty on the sidewalk a few feet past that. The man inspects it, hooks the leash on the dog’s collar, and they leave. I continue to sit. Those were the only words I said to anyone or were said to me since I saw that other man on the street and tried to speak to him about his face. Then it begins to rain. Someone dressed for the rain and under an umbrella comes over to me and says “Don’t you think you should come out of the rain?”

  That your umbrella?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I get under it?”

  There’s only room enough for one. You want an umbrella, buy one. If you haven’t the money, work so you can buy one. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable a solution. But if you want a cold and possibly a fatal case of pneumonia, then you’re doing exactly the right thing.”

  Thank you for your advice. I think I’ll just continue to sit.”

  “If that’s what you really want, I’ve no complaints.”

  She goes. I continue to sit in the rain. I begin to catch a cold. Coughs, sneezes, a few feverish chills. The rain turns to sleet and then snow. I continue to sit. I can’t see the sky or the buildings across the street because of the snow and now not even the passing vehicles. The rain soaked me, now the snow covers me. I have no coat or hat on and only half a pair of socks, and the water’s soaked through the holes in my soles and the protective layers of paper inside my shoes to my feet. Several people stop beside me. They’re all dressed for the snow. One of them says “You have to come out of the snow. It’s a blizzard. Twenty inches are expected. It’s going to last till early tomorrow the weather report says. You�
��ll freeze to death out here.”

  “You know or have a better place for me to go? I’ve run out of thinking or looking for them.”

  “Under an awning. If all the awnings around here are down because the owners are afraid they’ll be crushed or blown away, then in a lobby or store. And if not there because they’d rather not have you for whatever their reasons, then in a parked car if you can find one unlocked or in one of those shelters downtown, but someplace warmer and more sheltered than here.”

  Thank you very much but I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

  “If you’re too sick to, I’m sure we can call some service to help.”

  “No, I think it’s better I just sit.”

  Someone must have called the police. By this time I’m very sick. The police put a coat on me, carry me to a drugstore and sit me beside a warm radiator till an ambulance comes. I’m driven to a city hospital, wheeled into the emergency section, put on an examining table. The curtains are pulled around me. My clothes are scissored off. The doctor who takes care of me is the same man I spoke to earlier today about something regarding his face. He checks my eyes and ears and after taking my pulse and listening to my chest, says “Personally, I knew you’d come to no good.”

  I can’t speak. I try to, my mouth opens but I’m physically unable to.

  “I mean, up to no good,” he says. “Not just for everyone else, but to yourself too. Am I right? Don’t bother to answer. You’re obviously too weak. But can you take a little honesty now yourself? I’m afraid, my friend, this is the end.”

  STARTING AGAIN.

  “It’s so difficult.” “What is?” “Just dealing with it.” “Dealing with what?” The rejections day after day, day after day.” “Don’t send your work out then.” Then they’ll just pile up.” “Don’t do them then.” Then I’ll have nothing to do.” “Try to do something else then.” “I can’t. I’ve been doing this so long.” “But if you’ve had no luck?” “I didn’t say I haven’t had any luck.” Then little success? Really, what can I say that I haven’t already said?” “Nothing, please say nothing. I know you’re trying to be helpful but I have to work this out on my own.”