30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  On the way home she points to two men walking past holding hands, and he says, “Same march and mood, maybe: backup support. But don’t point, please; they might see and say something,” and she says, “I don’t think they’d care; they had eyes only for each other.… Look at her,” she says on the next block, about a young woman on Rollerblades with a biking outfit and helmet on, or maybe it’s a special Rollerblades outfit or they’re so close to being the same or are the same that it’s sold in sports shops as a Rollerblades-biking outfit, but so tight he can make out the genital pubic hair pushed down. She glides by them so fast that he’s sure she didn’t see his mother pointing or hear what she said, and he says, “Did you mean—though again, don’t talk about it so loud—her outfit or just that she was on Rollerblades or roller-blading on the sidewalk so fast when she should have been on the street?” and she says, “Don’t pretend to be dim, for what do you think?” A little boy in Pampers walking in front of his parents: “Cute as he is,” she says, “you’d think the least they could do in a so-called civilized city is put shorts over his diapers. But I’m from the old school. Scolds like me won’t be around long to annoy people with their outdated sensibilities and rules and complaints,” and he says, “No, no, just about everything you said so far about what you saw has some validity to it. But there’s little we can do about it, and you certainly don’t want to make a scene in the street. As for the kid in Pampers, or even if they were real diapers—I’d actually prefer it if they were; better for everything, the environment and the cotton industry and the kid—well, as for that, it didn’t bother me, I don’t know why. Maybe I’d feel different if it had stuff running out of it,” and she says, “That’s partly my point. With a pair of shorts or pants over the diapers, you’re covered for that and don’t have to subject passersby to even thinking it could happen,” and he says, “Okay, I see, and a point worth taking,” and she says, “You’re only trying to make me feel good now, and it won’t work.”

  They get to her building, he helps her out of the chair, carries it down the areaway steps while she holds on to the railing at the top, then helps her downstairs and wheels her inside. She says she wants to nap and he gets her on the bed, says, “Want the blinds closed?” and she says, “If you could,” and he closes them and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch, though I’ll call to find out how you feel first.” She smiles, shuts her eyes, looks peaceful as if she’s already asleep, face without the strain it had from almost the first minute on the street.

  Lines

  NO LINE COMES. He sits for a long time, waiting and sometimes working, but no line comes. He walks around the house, people in it see him and say, “What are you doing?” and he says, “Shh, I’m thinking,” and thinks, Let a line come while I’m walking, but none does. Outside, in: none. Opens the refrigerator and takes a slice of cheese out of the wrapping the pound of Swiss came in and shoves it into his mouth and thinks, Okay, you’ve been satisfied, your hunger at least, so let a line come. Goes upstairs, sits down at his card table again, and says, “Line, come … now. Okay, then line … come … now.” Says, “No line wanna come? Okay, later.” Goes back to the refrigerator and stuffs two more slices of Swiss into his mouth, thinks, Now I’m more than satisfied, I’m sated, so let a line come. One comes best when I’m hungry, but that didn’t work, nor when I was just satisfied, so let it come when I’m full, overfull, have had too much cheese and really, considering … considering what? I was going to say, “considering the breakfast I had,” but I didn’t have any: just black coffee and half a toasted bagel with nothing on it, so just too much cheese. Sits at the kitchen table and waits; none comes. Takes out his pad and pen and tries working: nothing. Let line come, he thinks. Line, you come! Says, “Let the line in. Let the great or any kind of line come in and be in and be anything it wants to be, but just to be, that’s all, and I’ll take it from there. Line, where are you, where art thou, wherever you are or art, yoo-hoo, let me see you, so come. Calling all lines. This is Gould to line: come in, please; over. Now line, come now. This sec. This is the sec for all good lines or just any kind of line to come. Or come in the next few sees or so, I won’t mind. Hey, I can be a patient man regarding lines, just test me. Or come in the next thirty sees, but sooner if you can, though later if you want—don’t want you to think I’m pushing you—but please, not too much later. My heart, my heart—only kidding. Or really come when you want, but come now. I mean really come when you want but, if you can, come now or soon. A minute, two, line to start a whole thing with—there, cat’s out of the bag, now if only a line was—but come. Okay, I’ll just wait,” and thinks, Okay, wait, go upstairs and sit at your desk and wait, and goes upstairs, sits at the card table, and shuts his eyes. Shutting my eyes might help it come, he thinks, and keeps his eyes shut when they want to open. Thinks, What do I see? Maybe what I see will be the line to start the whole thing off with. “Cat out of the bag” one? No. I see my daughters. Then just one: “Hi,” the youngest says. Is that the line? Opens his eyes and writes Hi, and it isn’t. Just one word, is it even a line? Well, by his standards it is, and even if it isn’t he’d take it if it were the one. Try two. He writes Hi, Daddy, and it isn’t. Try more: and he writes: “Hi, Daddy,” one of his daughters says, and he looks up; it’s the younger, she’s at the door holding some manuscript pages and says, “Could you type these for me?” and he says, “What is it, sweetie, because I’m busy,” and she says, “Chapter five of my novel Amily,” and he says, “Emily?” and she says, “No, Amily, for ‘I am,’ get it? ‘Am’ for me and ‘ily’ for an end to a name like Emily but not that. Someone told me ‘Amily’ also sounds like the French word for friend, and the Amily in my novel is my friend, or has become one since I started writing about her, and she’s a very friendly girl and I hope will become the friend of the people who read her,” and he says, “You mean, your readers,” and she says, “The readers of Amily, the book, my novel. You know who she is. You typed all my Amily chapters,” and he says, “But she wasn’t named Amily before, was she?” and she says, “First she was Amelia. And once she was Emily, and in another chapter she was Emma, or in two of them. But they all sounded so ordinary for a main character’s name, and there were already too many Emmas and Emilys and one Amelia in books and stories I read. So I thought, Why not Amelia with an E for the first letter? But that didn’t look right as a name—it seemed too fake or false—so I ended up with Amily, which has parts of all those names and also the French word ‘friend’ and the English word ‘am,’ for ‘I am,’ though the novel isn’t about me, it’s made up. All of that I thought of after I finally took Amily, which I got by thinking and thinking of a good name. I sat hard in my room, or rather I thought hard while I sat in my room,” and he says, “At your desk?” and she says, “Yes, and the name just came, and when it did I knew it was the right one from now on.” “I like it,” he says, “a name I’ve never heard of but really should have. Because you’d think, after thousands of years of different first names, parents would have made it up by now or formed it from some other name or thing—’friendship,’ as you said, but in French, or some word in English. Amity’s the only one I can think of now that has a-m-i in it, which must come from the French, which probably comes from the Latin—amicus, is it?” and she says, “I wouldn’t know, what does it mean?” and he says, “Well, amity means friendship, and amicus, if I’m right, probably means the same thing or something close to it—friend, friendliness, fried foods? But you’re allowed to do that with names, make them up when you write novels and stories, don’t ask me how I know.” “But you will type it?”—waving the pages—and he says yes and she puts them on the table he’s sitting at and he says, “Though not right this moment, you understand,” and she says, “I’ve time. I won’t be starting the next chapter till tomorrow,” and leaves and he writes, The line, the line, did it come, is “Hi, Daddy,” for instance, the line? It isn’t. Does any of that stuff with his daughter have the line in it? It doesn’t.
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  It really happened, in somewhat the same way, this morning. All right, a lot different. She threw open the door, scaring him, said, “Hi, Daddy,” he said, “I’m working,” she said, “Should I go away?” and he said, “You can say what you came to say,” and she asked him to type chapter five of her novel Amily. He hasn’t yet and told her he couldn’t right away. “First things first,” he said, “and excuse me but my things before yours before a certain time of the day, say—at least today—around one or two? After that, if I haven’t just started working frantically on something of my own or am in the middle of it and zinging to a finish, I’ll type it gladly. And if I do what I have to before one or two, I’ll type your work even earlier than I thought.” “Okay,” she said, and started to leave, and he said, “One more thing, sweetie. Try knocking lightly on my door next time, don’t just barge in. I don’t want to say you’ll help give me a heart attack—that’ll just scare you—but it does startle me sometimes. Remember that, and now please shut the door,” and she did. She’ll knock hard or burst through the door around one or two, if he’s still here, and ask if he’s typed her chapter, and he’ll say no, if he hasn’t, but will type it by the end of the day, he promises, or certainly before she starts chapter six tomorrow, and please no more knocking on his door so hard or bursting into the room.

  Shuts his eyes, thinks, Think again, just a single line to get things going, and pictures—she pops into his mind; he doesn’t draw her up intentionally—his other daughter. “May I use your typewriter?” she says, and he says, “God, you scared the hell out of me,” and she says, “I’m sorry, but you’re so shaky. You drink too much caffeine coffee,” and he says, “It’s not that. Anyone would be jumpy if someone comes up on him from behind, when his eyes are closed and he’s thinking deeply, and suddenly says something. Both of you—your sister … how come Mommy and I failed to make you aware of older people’s delicate nerves and to teach you to tap lightly on the doors of people’s rooms before entering? So do that with the door from now on, or make a lot of noise coming up the stairs, so I’ll know you’re out there and I’ll be prepared if you suddenly open my door—you did that okay, nice and gently—and say something to me. Now, what is it you wanted?” and she says, “You don’t seem in a good mood to do it,” and he says, “What, come on, what?” and she says, “Now you’re even angrier,” and he says, “Will you stop that? I feel all right, not angry, look, my face: no anger; no smile either, but I don’t feel like smiling and neither do you. We can’t just put one on. We’re not that kind of family. Your mother isn’t that way for sure, and I inherited that trait from her,” and she says, “That’s impossible,” and he says, “You’re right, and you know what? That last little run of words of mine made me feel much better, so what is it you came here for, honestly?” and she says, “You made me forget. I know it was for something important.” “My typewriter, right? Don’t ask me how I know. I’m afraid I can’t; I never let anyone use it,” and she says, “I only need it for a little while, and I’m your daughter, not anyone. Besides, even if I had wanted to bring my word processor with us, you wouldn’t have let me. You kept complaining there wasn’t room in the car for anything but the most important things, like your box of wine and typewriter and tons of your papers and yours and Mommy’s books and only our most necessary clothes,” and he says, “Maybe only to my daughters and wife I might loan it for a short time, but it’d have to be very important. What do you want it for?” and she says, “A letter to a friend. She wrote me one on her father’s typewriter, also from the country at their cottage, and I wanted to type mine back to her. It’d only be fair. My cursive is horrible to read, and printing a letter is babyish and would take too long.” “I’m sorry, but this typewriter, since I only brought one of mine up here, is too indispensable to me to risk injuring it with a personal letter you want to write. You kids type on it too hard and keep jamming the keys,” and she says, “I won’t.” “Now, if it was for something to your school or a job application you needed to write or anything like that—” and she says, “You’re so selfish and mean and you won’t even trust me when I promise,” and he says, “You didn’t let me finish,” and she says, “Were you going to say that despite all that, blah blah, you’ll let me borrow it?” and he says, “No, but—” and she leaves and slams the door. “You didn’t have to slam it,” he says. He gets up, throws the door open, and she’s downstairs by now and he yells down them, “You didn’t have to slam the door, Fanny. It didn’t scare me half to death, but it doesn’t reflect well on you, I’ll tell you, not one bit. I don’t like that kind of reaction, that uncontrolled anger. And you have to understand that if my typewriter broke up here it’d take weeks to get repaired. I’d probably have to buy another one during that time, just to have something to work on, because they’re very slow to get typewriter parts where we are—in the whole state of Maine, in fact—and I bet I’d have to drive to Massachusetts to buy a new manual one,” and she says, “Then bring two of them and maybe then you wouldn’t mind me using one, or let me take my word processor next time,” and he says, “Maybe you’re right. Okay, I’ll do that next summer—your word processor. Or I’ll take or UPS up a second manual typewriter. And okay also, you can use this one, but not right now, okay? When I’m done, in a half hour or hour at the most, all right, Fanny?” and she comes to the stairs and says, “Thank you,” and smiles, and he says, “Good, we’re old pals again, and I know you’ll be extra careful with it: just your fingers on the keys, no elbows or toes,” and she says, “Don’t worry, Daddy, I won’t step on it.”

  He opens his eyes. Something close to that happened yesterday when he was also looking for a line, couldn’t come up with one, gave up for the time being, and went downstairs for coffee and to read and maybe a quick swim, and said to her, “It’s all yours,” and she took the typewriter to her room, banged away on it for about an hour, and then put it back on the card table. He went to his study right after, not to try and think up a line—by this time he knew he was through for the day—but to check on the shape of the typewriter, and everything was fine, keys weren’t stuck and cover had been neatly put on, and then went downstairs and thought, No swim, sky’s turned gray, and started to prepare salad for supper. But anything in those scenes he can use today? Doesn’t think so, and if there was he probably would have tried using them yesterday. The stuff after he went downstairs and told her she could use the typewriter now? No. A line, he means, or several of them to start off with? Not that he can think of. Afraid not. Not at this present moment. Sorry.