30 Pieces of a Novel

Home > Other > 30 Pieces of a Novel > Page 42
30 Pieces of a Novel Page 42

by Stephen Dixon


  What now? Two days and nothing. Looks up, cups his hands in prayer, and says, “A line, Sir, or a line, Madam or Miss, gibt mir ein line, please. All I need is one, I swear, and away I go and am forever grateful and maybe even a believer. And I’ll be especially fast. Not that time means anything special to You. But my older daughter might want to use the typewriter for another letter—she’s an avid correspondent—and she was so careful with it yesterday that I want to give it to her today without a second thought if she asks and even suggest to her she use it if she doesn’t bring it up herself.” Types: No second thoughts? No. Types: Use it if you want, honey, you were great with it the last time? Nah. Without a fuss he wants to give the machine to her? He wants to give the typewriter to his daughter without a second thought but can’t? He suddenly started to become a believer over the most simple experience? Closes his eyes. Maybe now, he thinks, it’s quiet, and they often come when you least expect them. Maybe now is the time for all good lines to come to the aid of their linemakers, he thinks of using. Did that. Says, “Line, goddamn you, appear!” His wife comes; his eyes are still closed. She says, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.” “Disturbing me? No chance. But how’d you get here? The stairs are so steep. Anyway, this is great. Where are the kids? Out with friends for the afternoon, I bet.” “Oh, sure; don’t you wish. Anyway, I was wondering—” and he says, “But really, how’d you get up here? then wonder,” and she says, “Walked.” “Walked?” “Crawled and walked.” “Crawled?” “Stop mimicking everything I say.” “Stop repeating everything you say?” “Listen, don’t be annoying; I made it somehow and am now here.” “Finally,” he says, “progress. Oh, what am I doing? Here, come kiss me. Or I’ll come to you, since you’re probably too tired after all that crawling and walking to come any farther to me. What is your name?” he says, getting up and walking over and standing beside her. “And you’re standing! How were you able to do that?” “I stood.” “And you don’t have to tell me your name. I know it. Your name is line. Mein line hast komm. My line has come. You know German; I don’t. My wonderful kind line has finally come. But I’ll go to her. Oops, I forget, I’m already standing beside her. I went, after it came up to me, and am now beside my line.” Smooths back her hair. “And a beauty of a line it is, too. Line, how are you, how you doing, line? I am going to line you because you came all the way up to me and stood and kept standing despite what I know are tremendous difficulties.” “What’s come over you, Gould? You sound positively bonkers.” “Positively. Right. And why? Because I’ve been longing for my line for a long time. Because my line finally came. Because—” “Because you’re saying what you’re saying. Listen, all I came up here for and was wondering about is when are we going swimming?” “You want to go swimming? You mean in the Y pool?” “No, in the lake.” “How can you? You haven’t been in it for years.” “Well, I want to go now. I came up here, I’m standing, I want to swim in the lake. So I’m asking you when we can. Now? Soon? I’d take the car myself but it’s been so long since I’ve driven that I’ve forgotten how.” “Okay, soon,” he says, and kisses her. First he embraces her. Before that he feels her. “Yes, it’s you, all of you,” he said while he was feeling her. “Your thighs, buttocks, back. Your shoulders, head, neck. I’m telling you, it’s you, really you. Your waist, pubic area, breasts. And your name’s Sally and I’ve been silly.” Opens his eyes. Did a line come? Thinks. Surely out of so much, there had to be one. In spite of what he said about a line coming up, no. “Silly Sally? Sally Silly?” Those aren’t lines. Or they’re lines, but they’re not … anyway, it’s not working. Maybe his mom.

  Shuts his eyes: nothing. Opens them, flutters the lids, shuts them, and his mom comes. Dressed for travel, short-winded and frazzled, sweating, setting down a valise. “How I carried that, I don’t know.” How’d I ever carry that, I don’t know as a line? No. Gets up, dabs her forehead with a hanky, sits her in his chair, and kisses her cheek. “You leave me in the hot city. I’m not blaming you, I suppose nothing else could’ve been done, but I can die there from the heat.” “Mom, I feel lousy about it as it is, don’t make me feel worse. Can I get you a cold drink?” “And die from loneliness mostly, forget the heat. Just me and the girl who looks after me. She’s very nice but not company enough.” “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you how much, and wish I could make life comfortable and enjoyable for you always.” “As I said, it’s no one’s fault. But not to see you and your three girls for two months is something like death to me.” “We only left New York two weeks ago and I call you every day. And I’ve been reading the Times daily weather forecasts, though since the paper’s mailed here it always arrives the next day, and they haven’t said the city’s been that hot. In fact the weather the past week, according to these reports, and in the whole Northeast—” “Hot, I’m telling you, sticky and hot. If you’re out and in the sun for five minutes once it gets to be noon, you feel yourself boiling in your skin. I’d take one shower after the next if I was allowed to, but the girl only lets me have one a day.” “Anyway, you look great and you got to Maine on your own. I can’t imagine how.” “I took the plane. Got a limo to LaGuardia and a cab from your airport to here. I forgot how long a trip it is. Though I can understand why you take your vacation so far out of the way. Less chance for people to invite themselves for a night or weekend or just drop in.” “Believe me, that’s just a small part of it, and you and Sally’s folks are the exceptions.” “It was always what I looked forward to most all year, since you started coming here. One and sometimes two weeks, if I was a really good girl, in the country with just you and the birds and insects—they didn’t bother me—and of course your precious family.” “I didn’t think you were well enough to make the trip this year, just as you weren’t last summer. You have to know how that hurts me, leaving you in the city with no chance of relief. But now you’re here.” “Now I’m not, my darling,” and she disappears. Opens his eyes. Anything? He feels so sad; can he use that? Doesn’t see how, but has to be something there. Isn’t. “Signed, Desperate,” he says, his finger writing it out in the air. Thinks, Three days can get to be something like an incurable disease. Think. Nobody left, maybe the cat.

  Shuts his eyes. The cat comes in. “No one will let me outside. I’ve scratched the doors and screens and walked from front door to patio door and back and then kept making my little wanna-go-out meows while pressed up against the door, and still no one can tell what I want. Or else they’re just too lazy to move a few feet to let me out.” “Why didn’t you say so?” he says, and goes downstairs. “Line,” he shouts, “you coming?” The cat bounds down the stairs. He opens the door and lets him out. “Thanks,” Line says. “Finally someone figured things out, but I had to talk in his language for him to,” and runs into the woods. “Don’t get lost,” he yells. “I don’t want to spend a few hours tramping through the woods shouting and looking for you. Line, I’m saying to stay close to home and I also want you to come back when I call.” The cat jumps out of the woods and stares at him. “No, I’m not calling you back now. I was just saying not to get lost, and I also want you to watch out for those killer coyotes. You hear them howling, run right home. Howling in the woods, I mean, but not from very far away.” “What do you think, I’m stupid?” and runs back into the woods. Opens his eyes, quickly closes them. “In fact the moment you hear any coyote-howling, from no matter how far away, come home. Whatever you do, don’t try and fight them.” The cat doesn’t reappear. Opens his eyes. Any of that good for a line? Tried—and the real cat’s name is Flash—but nothing there or that he can now discern. Anything else he can use for one? Can’t think of any, and his time’s up. Or thirty minutes is. Actually, just twenty, but he knows when to call it a day, or at least an early afternoon. So, later maybe, when he’s out walking or driving or swimming in the lake or even sitting back here, the line will come.

  “Fanny, you still there?” he yells from the chair. “What?” she yells upstairs. “I can’t hear you.” He goes to
the top of the stairs and says, “You can use the typewriter now, sweetheart. I’m done a little early,” and she says, “Why would I want to?” “You said you wanted to write a letter,” and she says, “What are you talking about? I don’t want to write a letter, not now anyway.” “I meant you wanted to type one, and she says, Type one? Why would I want to on an old typewriter that isn’t even electric when I can write one by hand in a comfortable chair somewhere?” “Okay, you don’t want to type a letter. And I suppose Josephine doesn’t want me to type out the new chapter of her novel,” and she says, “How would I know? Ask her yourself.” “Can you call her to the stairs for me, please?” and she yells, “Josie, come here, Daddy wants you,” and Josephine comes, and he says, “Did you want me to type the fifth chapter of your novel Amily?” “Yeah, I asked you before; did you do it already?” and he says, “No, but it shouldn’t take me long. You want to get it?” and she runs upstairs to her room and brings it out and gives it to him. “Your mother, I know, wasn’t also up here, right?” and she says, “Upstairs? That’s a mean joke, Daddy.” “I didn’t mean it as one, I’m sorry,” and she goes downstairs shaking her head, and he sits at his table, puts her chapter to the left of the typewriter, the side he always reads from when he types, and starts typing it: “It started on a cold, winter day.” Does she need the comma after “cold”? He doesn’t think so but types it the way she wrote it, except for the more conspicuous spelling mistakes.

  His Mother

  HE GOES TO see her. Lets himself in, says, “Hello, it’s Gould, I’m here.” Woman who takes care of her says, “We’re back here, mister.” Goes to the back of the apartment. His mother’s in bed. Blinds are closed, room’s dark. “How come she’s still in bed?” he says, opening the blinds of one window, and Angela says, “She said she wanted to sleep.” “But it’s past noon, I came to take her out to lunch.” “She said she doesn’t want to go to lunch. I asked her this morning. She said she only wants to sleep.” “Did she have a rough night?” and she says, “No, it was fine. She might be tired from some other nights.” “Mom, Mom”—shaking her shoulder—and she opens her eyes, not the usual smile or glad-to-see-you expression, says, “Oh, hello. What is it? Not today, Gould, I’m too tired.” “But you can’t just sleep all day. You got to get out. You need air, you need food, you need exercise,” and she says, “I can sleep if I’m tired. Right now I’m no good for anything else.” “But we had a date for lunch. I told you yesterday. You like lunch. You’ll have a drink.” “A drink would be nice; would I be allowed to? But another time. I’m too tired for one now, and it’ll only make me sleepier.” “Have you had breakfast?”—raising the blinds of the one he opened—and she says, “The light. Please let me sleep. What am I asking?” “But look at the light; it’s beautiful. And breakfast. Have you had it today?” and she says, “Breakfast? Sure. I think so. Ask the girl,” and closes her eyes. “Has she?” and Angela says, “I made it for her, sat her up in the chair, two hours ago, right after I got her back from the potty. But she said she didn’t feel like eating and then started dozing on me, so I put her back in bed.” “This is no good, really,” and she says, “I know, but if she says she’s so tired? I didn’t think I should force her to eat. That’d be worse. When they’re tired, little here, little there, that’s the best, I found.” “I meant, sleeping all day isn’t good,” and she says, “Oh, that. I know that too but I didn’t see anything else I could do. But she’s not starving, you know. When she doesn’t have breakfast, she has a big lunch.”

  He raises the other blinds without opening them first. “Mom, come on, really, we’re going to lunch. We have to,” and she says, “Why?” “Because it’s good for you. You’ll see. Just getting out and seeing daylight and other people and being in a restaurant and eating is good,” and she says, “Not the way I look.” “So you’ll look better. Angela will help you with your hair and a shower if you didn’t have one; now you just look like you’ve been sleeping.” “Some other time, please, darling.” “No, today, and I’m hungry. Come on, Mom,” even though he thinks maybe she is better off in bed; he could be pushing her too hard. Who was it? Sybil, his wife’s friend, who pushed her mother on a vacation—sort of forced her to see more and more Mayan ruins when the woman that day just wanted to sit by the pool or in the motel room and nap and read—and she got a stroke and died, and she was—what?—a young woman, not even sixty. But if she sleeps it means she won’t eat or exercise or get any fresh air, and she’ll be bored—you lose interest in life, you lose your life, or something like that; at least it doesn’t help you at that age, that’s for sure. She should get up and out; he’s almost positive she should. “What should I do?” he says to Angela. “You gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. I think she’s had enough sleep and the air will do her good if it’s not too hot.” “It’s mild; it’s okay. Mom, really, we’ll have a good time. I promise I won’t keep you out too long or push you. We’ll go slow. And just say the word and back we’ll go.” “I’m not really hungry today. If you are, the girl can prepare you something here.” “Before you came she did say she didn’t have an appetite,” Angela says. “You’ll do fine once you’re in a restaurant,” he says to his mother. “First a drink: Jack Daniels on the rocks, little water, twist of lemon; that’s your favorite, isn’t it?” and she smiles and says, “You know what I like. I always thought it was the best. What is it, a bourbon, a rye? I never know what to call it.” “It’s a sour mash, I think, which is close to a bourbon.” “They once sent me glasses,” and he says, “I remember, with the Jack Daniels logo on them.” “They were good glasses, too. It was some campaign and the liquor store man said … where was I at the time?” “You were in a liquor store,” he says, “the one on Columbus, down the block, that isn’t there anymore. I remember the story. Buying a bottle of Jack Daniels—a quart—and the salesman from Jack Daniels was there, and the liquor store man said to him, ‘She’s one of our best customers for your Daniels,’ and the man from Daniels said, ‘Then just fill out this slip, ma’am’—you said he had a Southern accent but I don’t see how that could be so.” “It was so long ago, I forgot the story. They must’ve thought I was a real shikker; why else would you give away something like that? But I never really drank that much, and I certainly don’t now. I just happen to prefer Jack Daniels over all those scotches and bourbons and whatever you called that one. But is that how I got those highball glasses, they were for highballs, though I used them for water when guests were here. They took ice well. Me, I like my Jack Daniels in a shorter squatter glass—” “An old-fashioned glass,” he says, and she says, “Yes, one of those. But that was very nice of them to do. It came from Kentucky, the package, and was insured. The postman brought it to the door and I had to sign for it. Eight of them in a box. I didn’t think I’d ever get them. You never do when you just fill out a slip and don’t pay money. And it was pure luck. I walked into the store at the same time the Jack Daniels salesman from Kentucky was in it, selling to the store, I think he was doing. And his company had this campaign, this promotional campaign he called it, and the store salesman probably put in a good word for me because he knew I only bought Jack Daniels and only from him, and I got on the list. I think I still have those glasses.” “No, they’re all broken by now,” he says. “Too bad. They were good glasses. I didn’t use them for my Jack Daniels drinks but I did for beer and soda, though they aren’t the appropriate glasses for beer. Those are different, and which I once had plenty of but they all must have broken by now too. Mugs, steins … the tall ones shaped like cones. …” “Pilsner glasses, I think you mean. Did I ever tell you of the time I was on a train in Czechoslovakia, Sally and Fanny when she was an infant and I, drinking a Pilsner beer in a Pilsner glass, and when I looked out the window at the station we’d just pulled into …” She starts closing her eyes and he says, “Anyway, good memory, Mom, amazing. You got everything. It’s wonderful the way you were able to bring that scene back. Now Angela and I will get you out of
bed and she’ll give you a shower and help you brush your hair. Then you and I will go to Ruppert’s and get a drink and some lunch, and after that I’ll push you into the park and we’ll sit at our favorite spot, that food kiosk by Sheep Meadow. It’ll be cooler there than anywhere in the park, that I know of—” “I don’t think I’m up to all that. I’ll even skip the drink. I’m too tired to do anything now but sleep.” “You don’t have to do anything. Angela and I will get you up. She’ll give you a shower and help you dress. All you have to do is sit on that stool in the shower. She’ll even dry you if you’re too weak. Then I’ll get you in the wheelchair and to the street and into the restaurant. Or you can walk behind the chair and push it a little for exercise; by that time you might feel able to. You’ll see; you’ll end up appreciating that I practically forced you to go. You need the change of scenery. Everyone does.” “You’re right. It’s so monotonous here, but I doubt I’ll make it to every place you say you want to take me.” “You’ll make it, you’ll make it. Now, upsy-daisy, Mom, ready?” and she shakes her head and looks as if she’s about to cry, and he says, “Come on, what’s wrong? You’re okay, maybe still a little tired and confused from too much sleep, but you’re ready,” and lifts her from the back, sits her up, and swings her around so her feet rest on the floor. “Now we’ve started. We can’t turn around now, can we?” “Okay,” she says. “You’re too convincing. But I don’t want to be out for very long. My body couldn’t take it. I feel too weak.”

 

‹ Prev