30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  The name of the woman who didn’t reciprocate Roland’s feelings for her is Naomi. He finds this out from a tenant on the ninth floor. “Learned anything new about our poor Roland?” she asks in front of the building, when they’re both going in. “Because I heard you were good friends,” and he says, “We knew each other, not well, paths crossed, that sort of thing, and no, nothing about him for a while other than what everybody else knows; the same things get repeated endlessly,” and she says, “What I heard the other day, and no one else seems to know it except the person who told me, so it must be new, was that the great love of his short life—you remember, there was something about this mysterious no-name woman in his suicide note to 7-J—and one of the main reasons he killed himself was Naomi somebody—last name starts with an S—that gorgeous tall dancer on the third floor … or she used to be there; someone said she moved a few days after to somewhere else around here, just too upset. But you couldn’t have missed her if you ever saw her, she was so striking. Actually, she probably escaped a lot of people’s notice because of her odd working hours and that she walked up rather than wait for the elevator that never comes. She could do that, only on the third floor. In fact, with her physical condition and youth she could probably run up fourteen flights twice a day without a sweat.” He says, “I’m trying to place her … the third floor?” and she says, “Don’t tell me. Long black shiny straight hair combed down to her waist when it wasn’t in a bun or braid, and maybe six feet, and legs about half that length? An absolute standout by anybody’s standards, and gifted too—in the corps de ballet of the New York City Center ballet company, if that’s what it’s called, and with a promising career going—this I knew before the recent chatter about her part in Roland’s death. Once—someone here said he saw her in it and she was terrific—a solo role or maybe only part of a pas de deux or trois: a Todd Bolender ballet, this person said, a protégé of Balanchine? He I know of, but this Todd choreographer I don’t, do you?” and Gould says, “Yeah, I’ve seen something he did with an American western or Shaker theme, I think. He’s very modern, very good, lots of crazy hand and leg and neck movements.” Gould had seen Naomi a few times. Her looks were ordinary—not gorgeous for sure, as this woman said; he even thought her a little homely—and she seemed private, always alone, gangly in a way and guarded and usually in a hurry to get into the building and up the stairs or to Broadway, and with that toes-bent-in walk he’s always associated with dance students rather than professionals, so he figured she was a dancer but only studying it, but a dancer also because of her hair and cheekbones and big forehead that was always showing and her posture and makeup and dance shoulder bag she carried. But she didn’t seem someone Roland would go nuts over—take his life, he means, or even fall in love with. Roland seemed to have his choice of women he went after, and most were a lot better-looking than her and some were true beauties and with more voluptuous—so to Gould more attractive—bodies, since she was small-chested and slim and much too bony, though of course she probably had the perfect body for dance and must have had beautiful legs—from what he saw of them below a skirt and could make out through her slacks, they were. “So what do you think?” the woman says, and he looks at her and she says, “Where’ve you been? I’m saying you think this Naomi Sugarman, I now remember the S was for, is the mysterious Miss No-name of Roland’s suicide note?” and he says, “I wouldn’t know. Based on your description of her, I never saw them together or her alone on my floor, though an image does come up that she lived in the building … I seem to see her”—closing his eyes—“going in or out. What’s the difference anyway?” and she says, “Oh, good time to tell me, after I spent the last few minutes telling you everything. I think you know more than you’re saying—what is it?” and he says, “Nothing, honestly. He came, he went—I’m talking about to and from the building and our few words to each other over more than a year, though we had gone to college together but I knew him there mostly from reputation and sight. He was a ladies’ man and considered one of the academic comers. But if you want to know, from what I could make of him he wasn’t a guy I ever especially admired for his character. He could be caustic and contemptuous, and his was a screw-you-I’m-for-me attitude—’you got a girl I’ve eyes for, I want her; you’re enjoying a book I didn’t like, pardon me while I dump on it’—though otherwise he was fine and admirable and with enviable brains. And outside of that one time, which was perfectly excusable—I’m not complaining, I’m saying, and I also probably never should have said the lousy things I just did about him, but you asked for honesty so that’s what I decided to give—he never caused any commotion or scene on our floor.” “Maybe that should have been in the New York Times obit of him if there had been one—you know, the ones with photos, not just put in by the close survivors,” and he said, “I no doubt said it wrong, excuse me. He’s gone and they’re right, what they say (or those Latin maxims do) about the dead—to forgive the deceased and no bad words about him and so on, if the guy didn’t do something really despicable like rape his little sister or murder someone other than himself.”

  So there are a couple of things he doesn’t understand about Roland’s suicide. Oh, no doubt lots of them, but the one that stands above them all is why in hell did he do it? For here’s this guy, who except for his personality, which counts for a lot, okay, even if he couldn’t care less what other people who “didn’t matter” thought of him, though who knows?—but anyway, who had just about everything going for him in life. He didn’t have money, came from a poor background, but so what?—since having it easy and lots of money from the start can often be as much of a hindrance to you as good, and if anyone was going to make it in whatever field he finally decided to get serious about, it was him. He had looks, intelligence, erudition, gift of gab, was clever, et cetera, nicely built, tall, and dressed well even if he didn’t have many clothes at the time. He was very presentable, in other words, and had the brains to back it and could be charming if he wanted to—certainly with the people that mattered to him: professors, women he wanted to sleep with, maybe bosses—Gould doesn’t know who else but he’s sure Roland could be like that to anyone. Why? Because he also was smart enough to know what worked for him. It was probably people like Gould who he knew could do nothing for him, at least for the time being, that he showed his worst side to. So how could he make such a drastic decision, because of some things he read, and one woman he might have found gorgeous and alluring and immensely likable and so forth, and the tragedy of his parents some twenty years ago, and question marks about the future, and carry it out in so horrible and final a way? If he’d jumped off a building thirty stories up or into the Hudson from the George Washington Bridge, Gould would be asking the same thing—Why the hell do it?—but with arsenic he also had to know the pain it’d bring, though he might have thought it’d be quicker than it was. But wouldn’t he have read up on it? And had he tried killing himself before? If he had, that could explain the drasticness of taking arsenic—he wanted it to work this time—but not why he did it. Did he have an illness no one knew of, one that he’d been told would eventually kill him or permanently damage his mind or nervous system or something? Nothing like that came out from what the police found in his room—notebooks, checkbook stubs for medicine or drugs—and not in the suicide note, and he never mentioned it to anybody in the building, so far as anyone knows, and no doctor was located who’d been treating him for anything, and the grandmother the police finally turned up on Long Island and whom 7J and another tenant spoke to knew nothing about anything like that either—no disorders whatsoever; he was in terrific all-around health, she said, although she hadn’t seen him for almost a year. Was it chemical then, an imbalance of some sort, or whatever it’s called, that even Roland didn’t know about or just avoided dealing with and so hadn’t been treated? Again, no one knew of it and Roland never spoke to anyone about having any up-and-down feelings or mood swings or depression of any kind. He was as stable and confident
as they come, was the general summation of him: never an inkling he was feeling blue and only his disillusionment with his academic studies and a couple of his professors and the future possibility of getting a junior-level appointment was the one thing along those lines that he talked even a little about with a few people in the building. Someone even called up Naomi and told her about Roland, and she was shocked as anyone and saddened and that but also said he hadn’t hinted to her anything was wrong with him other than his studies—he didn’t see how he’d be able to write the expected two-hundred-page dissertation, since his topic wasn’t worth more than a hundred-twenty and he doubted he could squeeze out more than that from what his research had given him—and how he felt about her breaking off with him. But even there, this person tells Gould when he bumps into her in the market up the block and says he heard she spoke to the dancer, Roland told her he was dejected but he understood why she thought they’d never be able to make a go of it and he’d soon get over the breakup. Gould says, “What did she say was the reason they split up? And how could it be she didn’t know about the suicide before?” and the woman says, “You think I’d ask either? What’s wrong with you? It’s enough that I called and had to give her the news, and now I’m not sure why I told you even this much. It’s her business, what went on between them. If she’d wanted to say, she would’ve volunteered. The point is she was surprised he alluded to the breakup in his suicide note. Or so prominently, since he seemed reconciled to it the last time they spoke—maybe a few days before he took the arsenic; though they both still lived in the building then, it was over the phone—and even a little relieved to be completely unattached and on the loose again. But I think you’re right about what I understand from others you felt about Roland—he didn’t have the sweetest or most politic disposition in the world—but whatever any of us thought of him in that regard should be dropped because of what he did to himself.”

  His own brushes with suicide? They were nothing much—shortlived, not very serious, or maybe more romantic than serious and he was pretty young so maybe still immature—but it’s a subject he’s been thinking a lot about lately because of what happened to Roland, and it might help him understand better why Roland went through with it while so many others who think about doing it don’t, or not as thoroughly. The first time was when he was just eighteen. He’d finished a year of college, hadn’t liked what he’d studied, and was now taking two boring courses in summer school. He wanted to be doing anything but working eight hours a day at a tedious job in what seemed like the steamiest part of the city, midtown, and going to school four nights a week and then coming home to study for an hour or more. He also wanted to be living away from his folks and have a girlfriend or someone to date and a close friend or two, which he didn’t then. So a couple of times, maybe more, but while he was on a subway platform—going downtown to work or after work heading uptown to school, probably the latter, as that’d be the worst possible time for him and also the hottest in the subway station: between job and school when he was most tired and perhaps susceptible to thoughts of suicide—he thought about jumping in front of a train speeding into the station. He remembers thinking, Go on, end it now, what the hell’s life going to do for you anyway? In the long run it’s just going to go from bad to worse: studies, more loneliness, crappy jobs, girls who bust your balls, sickness, old age, death—and other things, maybe a little of it like what Roland was thinking at the end. He even got close to the platform’s edge once but backed away behind a pole when the train got to about twenty feet of him and was whistling. He was depressed most of the summer; his parents noticed it and wanted to know what was bothering him and if there was anything they could do to help—“You don’t want to continue summer school, quit it and concentrate on your job,” his father said, “and if that work’s too hard and you’d rather be a waiter in the Catskills or a counselor in camp, there still could be time to get something”—but he always said, “That’s not it. And the courses are important to finish if I’m to take a lighter night-school load next year so I can get a good full-time job. I’m just going through something; it’ll pass,” and it seemed to pass by the start of the fall term, when he got a better-paying day job and night school was easier and the weather was better and he had made a couple of close friends.

  The other time, or only other time he remembers, was over a girl. They’d been sleeping together and he wanted to marry her: she had her own apartment and was studying to be a stage director; he was twenty-two and just out of college and didn’t know if he wanted to go to grad school for something—law, journalism, art history, international relations—or try to get into some profession; and she said yes but not to tell anyone yet, she doesn’t want people getting excited and making plans for a wedding before she’s had time to adjust to it, and then a few weeks later she said marriage was the worst idea imaginable for her, what could she have been thinking of? good thing they kept it to themselves, they’ll of course continue going out with each other, but she’ll se.’ about marriage with him in three to four years, if they last that long and no reason they shouldn’t; it’s not that they don’t love each other as much, is she right? and he said sure, what does she think? there’s no one else in the world but her—though for the time being she still doesn’t want him to move in with her, she has too many things to do first and wants to continue being totally on her own for at least another year, but since he spends almost every night at her place anyway and seems to buy most of the food and wine it’s just a formality that one half of the bedroom closet isn’t designated his and his name isn’t on the mailbox—but grew cool to him almost immediately after that and soon broke off with him, saying something’s happened the last two weeks, she can’t explain it but she doesn’t feel the same to him, it wasn’t anything he did and it isn’t another man, but she thinks it’d be best—no, she’s sure of it—that they stop seeing each other completely; is that going to make him very upset? And he said no, if that’s what she wants, it’s not what he wants at all but he knows from experience not to push somebody when he knows they don’t want it and he thinks he can get used to it, and they didn’t see each other for a month, then got back together; he called—well, he’d been calling every other day or so, just to see how she was, what she was up to, and so on, though really just to hear her voice and with the hope she’d say she wanted to see him—but this time asked her out to dinner, made up an anniversary: “It’s almost fifty weeks to the day we met and to me fifty weeks constitutes a year—I prefer round numbers—so what do you say?” and she said one dinner can’t hurt them unless they get food poisoning, and they saw each other almost every day for a month, then she broke it off again—it got too close, she said, when she thought they could keep it casual—though after this breakup they went out to dinner about once every three weeks and slept together that night—she said this was good for her and the way she wanted it, seeing him just as a friend and in addition getting rid of some of her pent-up sexual tensions and same for him, right?—and he said, “You won’t get me to disagree on that; it’s fine as is, and if it gets better, that’s okay too, though you’re telling me you haven’t slept with anyone else since our last big break?” and she said she can’t say that, and he said, “Well, that’s okay too; I wouldn’t expect you to only hold out for our once-a-monthlies. Do what you want; you’re a free bird,” and she said she doesn’t need him telling her that, and he said, “I know; I’m sorry,” till she said one morning, “Really, this is getting ridiculous and even a little humiliating and pathetic and painful and everything,” and he said, “What is?” and she said, “Don’t play the fool with me. Seeing each other and occasionally sleeping together when I don’t want to, especially the last part. I don’t want to sleep with anyone. Forget what I said about pent-up sexual energy and tension getting released. I have to be on my own completely—do you remember that old tune? I’ve school, I’ve assistant directing work to get after school, I’ve lots of things to do and no time for you
. Besides, we’re not working out. We’ll never work out. We have to cut it off for good because it’s too obvious that continuing as just friends and sporadic bedmates isn’t working, and I don’t need or want it to,” and he said, “Okay, message coming in loud and clear. What’s that you said, darling? No, only kidding. So if that’s what you don’t want or need—all of what you said you didn’t—then it’s over once and for all and for good, forever, okay?” and she said yes and he said, “Fine,” and took home all his things for the third time in a few months, and when he called her after that she said, “I meant it, goodbye,” and then, “Stop calling, will you?” and then she wouldn’t talk to him: she’d hang up after she said hello and heard his voice or would only speak to him a few seconds—“Can’t talk now, busy”—and finally: “Listen, I said it’s over, so it’s over, so why are you still calling? Try to understand that I don’t want to hear from you again and I don’t want to try and make you understand that again. I no longer love you. You didn’t ask, but I said it. I in fact like you less each time you call. And because you have called so much when you knew I didn’t want you to, by now you’ve hit the lowest level yet with me and I have only the most unfortunate feelings for you. Whatever good feelings I once had for you have been entirely erased by your recent actions. It’s futile and hopeless to call me. It’s also downright stupid, do you hear? I’m not going to change my mind about seeing you or being in contact in any way with you, and the more you try to contact me to change my mind, the less chance there’ll be that I’ll ever even want to acknowledge your existence if we happen to bump into each other in a few years. Now, if that isn’t sufficiently unequivocal and unarguable and all those other adjectives that mean indisputable and nonappealable and unconditional, let me just say—” and he said, “No, it is, thank you”—though later thought, Thank you for what?—and hung up, and after the call, when he knew there was no chance at all of changing her feelings toward him and that she would never want to see him again or not for a long time—years, as she implied, and even then she wouldn’t assent to seeing him, they’d have to bump into each other accidentally as she said and at the most it’d be from her a “How do you do, you’re looking well and nice to see you, goodbye”—he thought of jumping off a bridge (interesting, he thought, always jumping off something: the Brooklyn or George Washington because you’re allowed to walk on them); and about a week later, after being miserable it seemed every single waking minute—pulling his hair, tearing at his face, banging his fists on tables and against walls, crying—he went downtown to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (he didn’t know where to get onto the George Washington) just to see what he’d do on it and also to scout it out for a possible jump some other time, though if the impulse to jump suddenly came today or built up while he was walking across he just might do it, he just might, but when he came out of the subway station he thought closest to the bridge—he found out which one by looking at a subway map in the station he started out from but came up one stop short—he went into one of the many Chinese restaurants down there and at the counter had some dumplings and a beer, something he’d never done before alone, having wine or beer with food in a restaurant (at least not in the States, and he doesn’t mean free bar food with your drinks), and ended up ordering what amounted to almost a full meal: rice with it, bowl of sweet-and-sour soup before, and after it an appetizer dish he’d never had and which he ordered because it was cheap and he was still hungry and the counterman seemed to say in his broken English that it was filling—a scallion pancake with some strangetasting thick brown dipping sauce. The whole thing’s awful, he thought, and he’s tremendously depressed and doesn’t know how he can go on living without her but he’s got to do it, that’s all, just day after day not call or write or try to see her or spy on her apartment building from across the street or stare up at her side window from the alley it looks over or anything like that, as he’s been doing and thinking of doing more, and it should work out; in a month or two he should be over it and maybe even before.