30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  “Henrietta, Henrietta!” a man yells from the path and waves to her. “Gosh, where the heck were you?” she says. “I was getting set to leave.” The man sits beside her, fanning himself with his hand. He puts her sunglasses on, looks at her as if to say, How do I look?, takes them off, grabs her Frisbee, and throws it up a few feet and catches it. “Where’s Jackson?” she says, and he says, “I decided to leave him home. I wanted to really get a workout this time. Whenever he’s with us he ruins it by leaping at the Frisbee and, if he gets it, hogging it, and you know he’s only going to tear it to pieces one day.” “I love it when he goes after it.” “Well, then get a dog.”

  He goes back to the bench. “I’m feeling tired,” his mother says, “think we should go home?” “Anything you want.” “I don’t want to spoil it if you’re enjoying yourself here, but let’s leave. I hate falling asleep in public, with my mouth open and people staring inside.” “Don’t worry, nobody’s doing that. Looking and staring’s just one of the things—two of the things?—people do in the park, but I don’t think they do it too deeply and I’ve a feeling they forget what they see in seconds, because it’s always on to the next.” “What?” “It’s always on to the next thing they look and stare at not too deeply. Do you understand?” “I didn’t hear it.” “I’ll tell you at home.” He unlocks the wheelchair, looks over, and sees the woman and man talking animatedly, the man slapping his knee and finding something very funny. As he’s wheeling his mother, she says, “Those trees over there—” He leans over her and says, “Mom, why do you keep insisting the trees are painted black when I’ve told you a dozen times already—” “That isn’t what I was about to say.” “I’m sorry, what was it then?” and she says, “When do you go back?” “First week in September.” “September? That’s right around the corner. Before you know it, it’s over.” “Mom, it’s mid-June, two days or a day or three—whenever the first day is—before summer even begins. We have to go through more than two months till September. Till that time I have another two weeks here and then go to Maine. Then we come back to New York and see you for another five days or so, and then I head south back to my job.” “It’s not September? I can’t believe it. Why do I always think it is?”—shaking her head. “I got to get my head examined, but I know you’ll tell me I don’t have to.” A minute later, while he’s pushing her, she says, “Those trees over there. It’s so mysterious.” “Why? Because you think they’re painted black and you don’t know why?” “They’re not? I didn’t see how they could be, because what would be the reason? But that’s how they all look to me, as if someone came with a brush. It’s terrible getting so old and losing everything at once.” “But you haven’t, which is what I told you before. Listen”—bending over her from behind—“I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?” “Yes, but you’re not saying anything yet.” “I’m saying, which, as I said, I’ve said before, that regarding your health you at least haven’t got some horrible and painful and disabling illness, disease, or affliction. One not just where your walking’s affected, like now, but where you can’t walk at all. You were never really sick in your whole life, which is something for someone in her early nineties who smoked a lot and probably drank too much too. You’re going to be in reasonably good health till you’re past a hundred, I’m sure. Good genes, it must be, though they seem to have skipped over your siblings and folks. And just luck and I don’t know what else contributing to it. A certain vanity, a feeling of things due you, and so on: positive outlook, though you don’t have too much of that now, but you’ll bounce back. And just that: when things went truly bad for you, you didn’t dwell on them too long but quickly worked them out and bounced back. Though I can understand—I don’t want you to think I’m not sympathetic—what you mean about the little infirmities and things—your hearing, that you don’t have the energy you once had, and of course your eyes—that can make you feel much worse.” “Is that what you were saying before? I don’t believe it,” and she turns around and looks at him and laughs. “So you think what I said’s funny and maybe even everything I say is funny too? Well, that’s good and no doubt healthy for you too. And for the most part I agree with you,” and he laughs too.

  He’s pushing his mother to the park entrance when he thinks of the young woman again. Jesus, what a body! He imagines lying beside her in bed, all their clothes off, and reaching out to touch her, but shakes the thought away. But she had to be somewhat interested in him to look over so often, isn’t he right? No, and for all the reasons he gave. Or she was a little interested, and just maybe, but after a while, no matter how many times she looked over, he should have stopped sneaking looks at her. Oh, well, gone now, and next time he takes his mother to the same spot—it’s her favorite because it’s so shaded, where they sit, and quieter and cooler than just about any other place in the park nearby, while still being safe and having a steady flow of people walking past to distract her—and if the woman’s there he’ll make a point of not looking at her once he first sees her. He’ll in fact sit on one of the opposing benches with his back to her and his mother facing her this time in her wheelchair.

  As he’s leaving the park he imagines the woman rushing up to him. First he hears from behind, “Mister, say, mister!” and turns around and sees her coming. He stops and points to himself, and she says, “Yeah, you, could you hold it there a second?” “Yes?” he says when she reaches him. He doesn’t know what to expect, though it doesn’t look good; she seems solemn, a bit angry, and she says, “I want to ask you something. Before, when I was sitting on the grass back there, didn’t you have anything more interesting to look at than me? Because if you want to know, and I don’t care if you don’t, since I’m going to tell you anyway, your constant looks at me made me nervous and uneasy and, frankly, just plain pissed off. I mean, where do you come off doing that crap?” “What do you mean?” he says, and his mother turns around and says, “What is it, Gould? Do you know this young lady?” “No, and I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about, either.” “You damn well know what I’m talking about, so don’t try to worm your way out of it with that bullshit. It took all the courage I had in me to chase after you, for even my friend I was sitting with told me to forget it. But I had to tell you what I thought. And now I’m not going to be put off or made to feel confused or crazy or anything like that by your saying you know nothing about it and some other lame excuses you might be thinking up. I also don’t care if this woman’s your mother or the person you look after or whatever she might be to you. If she is someone like that, it’s about time she saw what you’re up to when you’re supposed to be taking care of her, if she already doesn’t know.” “What is she saying?” his mother says. “I didn’t quite get it.” “She’s saying nothing, believe me,” he says, and the woman says, “I’m saying something to you, all right, and that’s that from now on go ogle-eye the trees or rocks or people passing by or anything like that, but leave women like myself alone. We’re tired of having your eyes poring over us without stop and intentionally, really, trying to make us uneasy, when all we want to do here is relax and get away from that stuff like anybody else. So, I said what I had to and have always wanted to tell guys like you. Maybe, but I doubt it, it’ll keep you from repeating your behavior with other women in the future. If it doesn’t, you can be sure some other woman my age will say the same thing to you I did till you finally let the message sink in.” “Excuse me,” he says, “I can see how upsetting the whole thing is to you, and I understand why also, but you got the wrong guy, believe me, the wrong guy.” “Yeah, sure, you bet.” She starts walking back, every few seconds turning around and looking sharply at him, and then he faces forward and resumes pushing the wheelchair. “I still don’t know what that was all about,” his mother says, “but she seemed annoyed at you for something. Was she?” “It was a big mixup. She had to have me totally confused with another man. Or else she caught me looking at her when I was sitting on the bench before. You know, I was looki
ng around as people tend to do when they’re sitting in a place awhile and the conversation, for instance, suddenly stops or the person you’re with drops off into a nap. And my eyes in their wandering happened to land on her for a few seconds and maybe stayed a few seconds more because she was fairly goodlooking, and she got it in her head I’d been gawking at her since I sat down. So like a lot of women today, and some not as young, she used it as an excuse to nail a man for looking lecherously at a woman, when it was nothing like that with me, nothing, but what could I do? When someone screams at you loud enough, you just shut up and hope they go away soon.” “For some reason I still don’t get what you’re saying now. Come in front and tell it to my face,” and he says, “It’s not worth stopping the chair and coming around and saying it to you or even repeating it from behind, so let’s forget it,” and pushes her out of the park.

  He wheels her along Central Park West on the park side for two blocks. “I think we should cross here,” she says, when they reach the side street before hers. “The next block doesn’t have a curb cut on this side to get the chair down.” He says, “I can get it down without the curb cut, but okay, why not make it easier on myself and less bumpy for you?” He waits for the light to change, starts pushing her across the street. “Look both ways,” she says. “Even though there’s a crosswalk, the cars making a left out of that side street never seem to stop for pedestrians. I can’t see them well, so if one is coming I’m dependent on you to get me safely across.”

  The Suicide

  SOMEONE’S BANGING ON Gould’s door. Time, what, who could it be? “Hey, what’s going on?” he yells from his bed. Banging continues, harder thumps, and someone screams, then gags. He jumps out of bed—his shorts, where’d he put them? Fumbles for the light switch on the night table, turns it on, light blinding him, squeezes his eyes shut to adjust, opens them, can see now, and runs to the door. “Yes, who is it?” Nothing, and hasn’t been anything last half minute. “Who’s there? The banging and screaming. Who was it? Anybody still there?” “Help,” a voice says, man’s, weak, “help me, help.” “What’s wrong?” Nothing. “Just a second; I got to get my pants on.” The man bangs on the door. “I said I got to get my pants on; hold your horses.” “Help me, help me.” What am I doing? Gould thinks. Opening the door before I see who’s there? Looks through the peephole. No one. Door’s banged from below the hole. “Listen, I’m sorry, this is New York and not the best of neighborhoods. You’ll have to stand up, show yourself. I got to see who it is first before I open up.” Door’s banged from even lower than before. Guy must be sitting there, lying, crouching, something, maybe ready to pounce on him. And where are my neighbors? Certainly by now, even at 2 A.M., a few of them must be looking through their peepholes. “Who is it out there? Your name? Someone I know from this floor?” “Help, I’m dying.” “Excuse me, but dying how? From what? Literally?” “Please.” Sounded too real. “Just a second, I’m getting my pants on.” Banging, lighter, the guy saying, “Hurry, dying, help me.” Gets his pants on. No undershorts or shirt but doesn’t matter. With his hand on the door lock he thinks, Should I? But has to be someone hurt. Make sure not to lock yourself out—and takes his keys off the hook on the doorjamb and puts them in his pocket—am I ready to look if it’s something real bad? Suppose it’s from a knife, razor, in the face, neck, and the guy looks awful, bleeding everywhere, what do I do? Just shout for your neighbors if they’re not out, that’s all. Unlocks the door and man sort of falls over the threshold on his face. “Jesus, what happened?” Terrible smell, doesn’t know what it is, chemical, not shit or vomit or anything like it. “I said what’s happened to you?”—standing over him—“I can’t help if I don’t know.” “Poison,” the man mumbles into the floor, and Gould says, “What, poison? You took some? Stuff that can kill you?” “I’m dying. Wanted to when I took it. Get me help now.” Still nobody else around. “If anyone’s in their apartment looking,” he shouts, “please help me with this guy. He took poison, says he’s dying.” Gets on one knee, steels himself, and turns him over by his shoulder: Roland, fellow from down the hall and someone he went to college with. Eyes clenched in pain, mouth open, that terrible stink; black inside and his tongue, for a moment making motions to speak, also black, and some foamlike dark stuff coming up and making him choke. Gould quickly puts him on his side and holds him there so he can throw up. “What can I do for you, what can I do?” Gould says, holding his breath. “Help me,” Roland says, opening his eyes to slits. “I don’t want to die.” Couple of doors open; maybe they saw it was Roland and Gould on the floor beside him and thought it safe. Someone yells up the stairway, “Hello, you with the noise up there. This is Aaron Wallenstien from 6-H: what’s happening, need any help?” “Call the police,” Gould yells. “An ambulance, emergency! Guy here—Roland from seven something, end apartment—took poison and he’s in very bad shape.” Woman in a trench coat leaning over Gould at Roland says, “I’ll call them, I’m closer,” and runs into her apartment and slams the door. “Ask him what he took,” a man says from a few feet away; doesn’t recognize him but could be a tenant on the floor. “What’d you take, Roland, my friend?” the man says. “We should know that if we’re to help. Pills?” “Arsenic. In soda.” “A sweet soda?” Gould says. “Baking soda? What kind? Club soda?” and the man says, “Why you asking, what’s the difference what with?” and Roland says, “Coke.” “Then you got to throw it all up, my friend,” the man says, and Roland says, “I did, did, still. Help me. Doctor. Someone for the pain. Hospital on Amsterdam,” and Gould says, “Of course, that’s the one that lady should have called. Ring her bell, Mrs. D,” to a woman he’s spoken to from the eighth floor, “and tell her—that one, that one, 7-K—to get the emergency from St. Luke’s,” and Mrs. D rings the woman’s bell. “And you should drink water and throw up some more”—to Roland—“with salt in it or whatever you’re supposed to take to make you heave. Isn’t that what they say to do, salt?” to the man, and the man says, “Any fluid should do. Stick a finger down his throat would be faster,” and Gould says, “I couldn’t, could you?” “Roland, my friend,” the man says, still from a few feet away, “why would you want to kill yourself with arsenic? Of all poisons, the worst and most painful. Oh, my poor boy, what a mistake.” Lots of other people are at their doors, by the elevator and the stairs, hands over their mouths, in clothes they must have quickly put on, zippers unzipped, buttons and belts undone, one with a suspender hanging off his shoulder, most in coats and bathrobes, and one pretty young woman in leotards under a man’s boxer shorts. “Listen,” Gould says, letting Roland go when he starts screaming and shaking violently and makes throwing-up sounds but nothing comes out, “doesn’t anyone know what to do to help this guy? He took arsenic. And the woman who phoned. What’d she say?” to Mrs. D, and she says, “She said she knew herself to call St. Luke’s.” “Bread,” someone says. “Get him to swallow bread, doughier the better. Absorbs it and then it regurgitates out.” “Then get some soft bread and salt water,” he says to him. “Others of you. Hurry. Bread and glasses of water mixed with salt. And someone go downstairs and wait out front in case the hospital people and cops go to the wrong building.” Roland’s screaming, stands, bangs his fists against the wall, doubles up clutching his stomach, and yells, “My insides … on fire! Don’t let me. … Get me there yourself.” Woman comes out of her apartment. “They’re on the way. Ambulance from the one right up here, and police. The dispatchers for both said minutes, a few, and that was more than two minutes ago—I had something very important to do.” “Did they say what to do about the poison?” Gould says. “I didn’t ask; you didn’t say to.” “Call the hospital back and say we just found out it was arsenic and what should we do in the meantime?” She runs into her apartment and locks the door. A man’s standing beside Gould with a glass of water. “I mixed in plenty of salt and made it not too cold. I’m sorry but all my bread was grainy or stale.” Gould holds the glass out to Roland. “Drink this. You have to
keep throwing up to get rid of that crap.” “No more,” Roland says, reaching for the glass, then falls back to the wall as if thrown there—people clear away from him—and flops to the floor and holds his stomach and screams. “Please, drink the water,” Gould says, holding it to his mouth. “I don’t want to force it down you.” Roland’s just screaming now, tongue out, eyes bulging, grabbing his stomach, then his throat, gags and coughs and spits but nothing comes up. “That’s why we want you to take the water. So there’ll be something to mix with the poison.” He gets the glass near Roland’s lips but his teeth are chomping at nothing, and Gould thinks he’ll bite the rim off and pulls it away. “What do we do?” he says, looking around. Nobody’s near them. The man who called Roland his friend is by the stairs, one foot starting down. “Come on, you, you got to help me think of something,” Gould says. The man throws up his hands. Then someone yells, “They’re here!” just as the woman comes out of her apartment and says, “Detergent and water, they said. Or bicarbonate and water, or soda water, but really any liquid and lots of it to wash it out of his system,” and two policemen rush out of the elevator and say, “Where is he? Which one is it?” because Roland’s lying on the floor, quiet except for some dry vomiting, and people standing around are blocking the police from seeing him. Several of them point, and the policemen get on the floor next to Roland and one says, “What happened, kid, some bad dope?” and a couple of people say, “Arsenic.” “Holy shit, by accident?” and one says, “On purpose, suicide.” “That’s hospital emergency business; I never had one that took arsenic. You, Mark?” and the other policeman says, “I guess we do like we do with all poison swallowings till Emergency comes—an emetic. God, I never smelled such a smell from anyone; it’s like paint remover. He’s gotta throw up bad,” and Gould says, “He’s been doing it all the time; there’s nothing in him to throw up anymore. I’ve been trying to get this salt water down.” “Good, that’s one of them,” Mark says, and takes the glass and holds it out to Roland and says, “Wake up, kid, drink. It’s good for you; it’ll save your life. Come on, do what I say; this drink’s all you need,” and Roland’s shaking his head with his eyes shut tight, trying to speak, it seems, but no sounds coming out, then grabs his stomach and screams, “Help me, the pain!” “Where is it, can you point to it?” Mark says, and Roland’s just screaming and beating his stomach, and Mark says to Gould, “You on this floor?” and Gould says yes and Mark says, “We can’t do anything but hold him down. Let me use your phone to get the ambulance guys here sooner,” and Gould says, “I don’t have one; she does—several of the others must,” when someone shouts, “The hospital people!” and the elevator door opens and the policemen clear a circle around Roland and the emergency team immediately gets busy on him, giving him something to swallow; when he won’t take it one forces his mouth open by pressing the back of his jaw, keeps it open with a rubber tool while the other pours some stuff into it. Roland vomits real liquid in a few seconds and keeps vomiting till nothing comes up, and then they stick needles into his arms and a tube down his throat and work on him for about fifteen minutes; more emergency people have come with machines they carry and wheel in, and then they strap him to a stretcher and stand him up in it in the elevator and take him downstairs.