30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  “The kids,” he says, waking up, and she says, “Time to get them? Won’t they be surprised, or who knows. I’ll go with you,” and he says, “Bus is supposed to arrive at four but usually gets there around three-forty-five and I don’t want them waiting in the sun, so I’ll have to ask you to hurry,” and they dress quickly, get in the van, no wheelchair or walker or motor cart in back—“I think it’s safe to, I don’t feel any imminent relapse”—they drive to town, bus is pulling in when they get there, she runs to the bus as the girls are getting off, and they say, “Mommy … hi,” and she hugs them and says, “Both of you have a good time today?” and Fanny says, “We went on a field trip to Fort Knox. The counselors tried to scare us but they couldn’t,” and she says, “Scare you how?” and Fanny says, “The fort has all these secret tunnels and passageways from olden days, and Chauncy—he’s the theater counselor—leaped out on us one time, but we were expecting it,” and she says, “Josie, you have fun too?” and Josephine says, “It was all right. Fanny didn’t like me being with her; she said she had her own friends to go around the fort with and I should get mine—Mommy, you’re walking, you’re standing, you ran to us! Fanny, Daddy!” and she says, “Ah, you noticed,” and Fanny says, “Yes, I did too. What happened, a new pill? Is it only for today and maybe tonight—another experiment—or in the morning?” and she says, “Nothing like that. Your daddy waved his hand over my head like a wand and said some magic or religious or miracle-making words. We didn’t think anything would happen. We both thought he was joking, or he did—I thought he was playing a mean trick on me, fooling around about an illness which all the doctors thought I’d never recover from…. I never wanted to tell you that. I always wanted to give you the hope I’d be normal again, but they all said I wouldn’t unless some new drug worked, when bingo! no drug. It hit, it worked, I started walking, first one step, two, and on and on, doing all the things I once used to; just walking beside your father rather than have him push me in the chair. Sitting in it or riding the cart alongside any of you I was so much shorter that I felt like your kid sister,” and Josephine says, “I never saw you walk before without help,” and he says, “You sure you want to discuss this in the hot sun?” and she says, “Sure we do, because it’s so unusual, my standing and talking to my girls anyplace, hot or not,” and he says, “I meant especially you, Sally, for you know how the heat can affect your disease,” and she says, “It’s not doing anything to me now but making me feel good, so who cares if we get sweaty and a little burned,” and Fanny says to Josephine, “You have too seen Mommy walk without help before, you just don’t remember it. When you were one; that’s when her condition first started,” and Josephine says, “So I’m right, it doesn’t count if I was too young to remember it, isn’t that true, Mommy?” and she says, “I forgot one thing. I should call my doctor in New York and then my parents. Or my parents first; they’ll be delirious,” and she calls from a pay phone. Then they drive to their favorite town on the peninsula to browse around and go to an expensive restaurant for dinner, champagne, soda for the kids, “Cola, even,” he says; “it’s a special day and we’re celebrating.” Home, she shows the girls how she can climb up and down the stairs, plays a board game on the floor with them, wants to give them a bath, and Fanny says she’s too old to take one with her sister or be given one by her mother. “But it’s something I haven’t done for so long, so let me this one time,” she says. Bathes them, gets them to bed, reads a book of northern myths from where he left off last night, comes downstairs and washes up and gets in bed with him and says, “I don’t feel at all stiff or in pain and no spasticity or anything like that. Just falling asleep with my feet not twisted or freezing and nothing hurting is the most wonderful thing on earth,” and he says, “I only hope tomorrow and every day after it’ll stay like this, though why shouldn’t it?—and oh, what’d the doctor say? I forgot to ask you,” and she says, “That he never, through drugs or anything else, read or heard of or saw a remission as quick and total as mine, but that with my kind of disease he’d made a vow never to rule out anything,” and he says, “So, a hundred thousand to one, we’ll say, or a million to one, maybe, but it can happen. A complete reversal in a single minute, and my waving and incantatory words and everything—if it wasn’t a miracle from God, that is—might have set something off. Oh, I don’t know, the psychological affecting the physical somehow. Or maybe it was about to happen anyway from one or many of the things you’ve done the last few years to try to make it happen or at least start it to, and it was just a coincidence it did when I did all those presto-healo things. Or, as I said, it was ready and waiting for that one psychological thrust to lift off—no?” and she says, “You got me, and Dr. Baritz says he doesn’t know either. But I’m exhausted from all my activities and the excitement of today, so good night, sweetheart,” and kisses him and turns over on her side with her back to him; he snuggles into her, holds her breasts with one hand as he almost always does when they fall asleep, with or without making love, hears her murmuring, and says, “You praying?” and she says, “What do you think? I’m not a praying person but I’m going to open myself to anything and give it all I have so that this good thing continues,” and he says, “I’ll pray too,” and to himself in the dark he says, “Dear God, I haven’t prayed to You for years, maybe forty years, even longer, except once when one of the kids was very sick, and I truthfully then felt it was the medicines that brought her around, but please let Sally stay this way, without her illness, thank You, thank You, thank You,” and feels himself falling asleep.

  He wakes a little before six the next morning, an hour and a half before he’s to wake the girls and two hours before Sally usually gets up, does his exercises, sets the table, makes the kids’ lunches for camp, gets her breakfast in a pan and makes miso soup for her as he does every morning, goes out for a run, showers, reads, has another coffee, wakes the girls—“Sleep well?” he says, and they both say yes—at around eight he hears her stirring, looks in, says, “How ya doing?” and she says, “Fine,” and he brings her a coffee with warm milk, as he also does every morning unless she’s already out of bed and heading for the bathroom or kitchen; a little later he hears her shriek, and he runs in and sees she’s spilled the coffee on the bed, and he says, “What happened, you hurt?” and she says, “Shit, I felt so good getting up that for a moment I thought I was free of this stinking disease, and look at the goddamn mess I made,” and he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll do a wash and hang everything up and the sun’s already so strong it should all be dry by ten,” and she says, “You don’t have to, I can do it in the machines myself,” and he says, “It’s okay, you got plenty of other things to take care of; just move your butt so I can get the sheets off,” and she says, “You don’t have to get angry about it. It wasn’t my fault. My hand started shaking and I couldn’t hold the mug anymore,” and he says, “Who’s blaming you? Just lift yourself a little, that’s all I’m asking. I don’t want it to soak through to the mattress, if it hasn’t already done it,” and she pushes herself up just enough for him to pull the sheets and mattress cover out from under her; he gets the linen off the bed and sticks it in the washer and starts the machine, goes back to the dining room, girls are reading, their breakfasts eaten, and he says, “Anybody want some toast?” and they shake their heads, and a little later he says, “Okay, everybody, we’re going: lunches packed, bathing suits and towels and sunscreen in your bags?” and Fanny says, “Oh, gosh, I forgot my Thermos of water. They never give us enough out there,” and he says, “Get one for Josephine too, if that’s the case,” and she says, “She can do it herself, and I have to get ice out of the tray to put in it,” and he says, “Listen, she’s your sister and younger, and I’m asking you to help me—with so many things to do, I need your help,” and she does it, and he says, “Now let’s go if you want to catch the bus,” and the girls grab their bags and start for the door; he says, “Say goodbye to Mommy, we still have a few seconds,” and Fanny yells,
“Goodbye, Mommy!” and Josephine yells, “See you later, Mommy, have a good day!” and he says, “Come on, go in and give her a kiss—she wants to see your faces, not just hear your voices,” and they drop their bags and run into the bedroom and probably kiss her and then come out, grab their bags, and he says, “Your caps, everyone has to wear a cap to protect herself from the sun,” and they put on their caps and get in the car; he drives to the pickup spot and stays there with them till they’re on the bus, on his way home he listens to French language tapes, his big learning project this summer; when he gets back to the house she’s pushing her walker to the bathroom, and he says, “Wait a second, the wash is almost finished, I can hear the last of the last spin cycle,” and just then the machine clicks off and he goes into the bathroom, sticks the sheets, pillowcases, and mattress cover into the laundry basket, and goes outside and hangs them on the line.

  The Bellydancer

  HE’S ON A ship four days out of Bremerhaven on its way to Quebec. He’d been in Europe for seven months—was supposed to have returned to New York in late August and it was now November—had delayed college a semester, and didn’t know if he’d ever go back to school. Had worked in Köln for three months, learned to speak German, had known lots of women, taken to wearing turtleneck jerseys and a beret after he saw a book cover with Thomas Mann in them, was a predentistry student, got interested in literature and painting and religious history on the trip, and carried two to three books with him everywhere, always one in German or French, though he wasn’t good in reading either and now wanted to be a novelist or playwright.

  Meets an Austrian woman on the ship who’s fifteen years older than he. She saw him on the deck, softly reading Heine to himself, and said she finds it strange seeing a grown man doing that with this poet, as he, Schiller, and Goethe were the three she was forced to read that way in early school. Tall, long black hair, very blue eyes, very white skin, full figure, small waist (or seemed so because of her tight wide belt), embroidered headband, huge hoop earrings, clanky silver bracelets on both arms, peasant skirt that swept the floor, lots of dark lipstick. Her husband’s an army officer in Montreal and she was returning from Vienna where she’d visited her family. “I’m not Austrian anymore but full Canadian, with all your North American rights, though always, I insist, Viennese, so please don’t call me anything different.” He commented on her bracelets and she said she was once a bellydancer, still belly dances at very expensive restaurants and weddings in Canada if her family’s short of money that month: “For something like this I am still great in demand.” They drank a little in the saloon that night; when he tried touching her fingers, she said, “Don’t get so close; people will begin thinking and some can know my husband or his general.” Later she took him to the ship’s stern to show him silver dollars in the water. He knew what they were, a college girl had shown him on the ship going over, but pretended he was seeing them for the first time so he could be alone with her there. “Fantastic, never saw anything like it, I can see why they’re called that.” She let him kiss her lightly, said, “That was friendly and sweet, you’re a nice boy,” then grabbed his face and kissed him hard and made growling sounds and pulled his hair back till he screamed, and she said, “Excuse me, I can get that way, my own very human failing of which I apologize.” When he tried to go further, hand on her breast through her sweater, she said, “Behave yourself like that nice boy I said; with someone your age I always must instruct,” and he asked what she meant and she said, “What I said; don’t be childlike too in not understanding when you’re nearly a man. Tonight let us just shake hands, and perhaps that’s for all nights and no more little kisses, but that’s what we have to do to stay away from trouble.”