30 Pieces of a Novel

by Stephen Dixon

  They’ve eaten dinner. (Scratch that.) She asks if she has time for a shower before dinner. She feels so slimy after twelve hours on the road and then running around the house doing things. She tends to sweat a lot, she’s said, and when she told him that, he said, “Nobody would ever know it. My schnoz is still pretty keen and, hackneyed as this remark might be, you always smell sweet to me.” That was about three weeks after they met. It’s still true: she’s never smelled bad or of a deep sweat anywhere on her body except a few times her hair. Water for the pasta’s about to boil and he turns it off, finds the flashlight he brought, and heads to the shore about two hundred feet from the cottage. Hears some funny bird sounds as he walks down the path, and then they stop as he gets near the shore and he hears the flapping of wings or feet or both against the water as the bird or birds take off. Over dinner she’ll tell him those were loons. Sea sounds: soft crashing of tiny breakers and a buoy from somewhere in the bay. So, he thinks, this is it; nice. Gets bitten by insects on the path and beach. (“Mosquitoes” for “insects”: he knows their buzzing and bite.) Walks along the shore to the closest point. (Is there another way—well, there are always other ways—but a better one to say all this so it doesn’t sound so perfunctory and drab? Later.) Lots of moon, also mirrored in its squiggly way in the water. “Loons and moons, that’s about all I found down there bigger than a mosquito,” he would have said to her soon as he got back, if he’d known what those birds were called. Enough light to walk by, so he turns off the flashlight. Then thinks, Don’t go falling over a boulder or into a hole. Just what he needs: to break something first hour he’s there and have to crawl to the cottage, be driven to a hospital, ruin what he hopes will be as near-perfect a night as he’s ever had: sounds, smells, light, breezes, freshly made bed with what she said were the cottage’s very fine old cotton sheets, and of course her. No other houses around, it seems. Lighthouse way out in the water. Stars, more than … but not more than he can ever remember seeing, maybe because the moon’s so full and bright. His mother, he forgot to call her; do it when he gets back, though check the time first. Sits on a rock shaped like a chair with arms. Gets buzzed and bitten but tries to think. Let things run through your head, he thinks. Nothing much does. Shuts his eyes. Woman he was in love with two years ago. Wanted to spend the summer with her; instead she went to Europe alone. They’d planned to go together, even bought the plane tickets. Were going to buy fold-up bikes and ride them through Holland and France, take trains or buses when they wanted a rest. Travel light except for the bikes. One big paperback apiece: War and Peace for him, a new difficult modern novel for her. They’d already bought the books and an anthology of Romantic verse between them. Then she said she needed to be completely free for two months. He knew she’d meet guys. In Turkey she let a man penetrate her behind, a first for her. She said she didn’t like it and would never try it again. “How come you let him?” he said. “Not that I’d ever want to do it. Though if you had asked, and you knew me for six months, I would have done it once.” “He wanted to very much, was very sweet and pretty and claimed to be an expert at it, and I’d always been curious about it.” She fell in love with a Frenchman and they traveled through Greece for two weeks. She didn’t think she’d ever return home; then he told her he was married. “Boy, for a smart city gal, you really fell for a couple of drips.” “Neither were,” she said; “both were extremely sophisticated and intelligent.” She discovered in Europe what she wanted to do the next ten years: films. Write and direct, though of course she’ll have to go to school for it first. “Always so full of new projects and beginnings,” he said. “I guess that’s supposed to be good.” “This is why I didn’t want you in Europe with me. You’re so cynical and critical and don’t like to do anything unusual or new. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to try a plate of sea urchins at a Greek seaside stand without you fretting over the cost and the possibility of dangerous bacteria, killing the experience for me. You knew what you wanted to do with your life when you were two and stuck to it, the same way you stick to me, and it makes me claustrophobic.” (Pare all that down, maybe paraphrase what’s left of it. But the woman he least wanted to spend a summer with.) More bites, making it impossible to sit here, and he breathes in deeply—he loves the ocean at night, he thinks, and at dusk, minus the mosquitoes, though to him, unless the sky’s overcast, it gets too bright and hot during the day and he ends up hating it—and goes back to the house. She’s upstairs, probably getting dressed after the shower, and he yells up—

  They have dinner. Bottle of port he opened and poured for her the next night. She puts candles into the bronze candlesticks on the table and lights them. She’d hid the candlesticks when she closed up the cottage last year. “There are antiques thieves,” she told him, when she got the candles and some fine china out. “After the summer people leave, they can clean out a house if everything’s top-notch, or only take the choice items like silver, and antique furniture you didn’t know was antique, and old clocks.” “Who would have thought it, up here. But otherwise, in summers you’re safe? You can leave the doors unlocked and your typewriter out?” She even thinks the caretaker’s in cahoots with them. “They’re rough people, the locals, and very proud and wily. They won’t accept the welfare they’re entitled to, when they’re destitute, but for a few dollars they’ll let thieves from away break into the houses they caretake. They can be pitiless, too. One time there was a bat upstairs.” (Really thinks he needs all this? See where it goes.) “He caught it in a special bat catcher the house has, which is like a butterfly net but stronger, and I said, ‘Let it loose outside.’ He said, ‘Why, what good is it alive?’ I said, ‘It kills mosquitoes’—they do, don’t they?—and he said, ‘Who cares about them?’ and it’s true; you should have seen him. There was one on his cheek and I pointed it out and he said, ‘Everyone’s got to eat,’ and let it bite him. ‘Now it’s dead,’ he said. ‘They can only get you once and then they die, and I saved my strength swatting it.’ Anyway, he put the bat in the net on the floor and stomped on it.” Tomorrow he’ll meet the caretaker. He’ll rap on the door very hard a little after dawn, be holding a bag of Swiss chard for her, and a scythe, and yell, “Hello, I see you got in; anyone home?” A big burly guy with a weak meaty handshake, smelling of soiled clothes and B.O. (If he just plays a small part in this, does he rate a descript?) The only light they eat by is from the candles and fire in the fireplace. Another thing she did: collecting the wood outside for it and getting it lit. They toast to the summer and then kiss. She’s a real beauty, but in the candle and fireplace light she looks ghoulish, just as he must to her since their angles to the lights are about the same, though she probably doesn’t think it about him. The phone rings. It’s her father, wanting to know how the trip went and how his cats survived it and did all the cats like the chicken livers he’d cooked for them? When she gets off the phone he excuses himself a minute and calls his mother. He says to her—

  He still can’t believe his luck. She brought up dessert from a New York patisserie. There’s some brandy from last summer she gets out. She wonders if it’s still good and does he think it could have frozen over the winter and if it did would that spoil it? She takes his hand while he drinks; she doesn’t: brandy and any after-dinner liqueur give her a stomachache in the morning. They continue to hold hands and look at each other while he sips. This is an unbeatable night, he thinks. He can’t think of any other like it in his life. The air, food, fire, quiet, smells, drinks, all-wooden room with the tall cathedral ceiling, he thinks, and of course her and what’s going to be their lovemaking later. This summer’s the beginning of something, he’s almost sure of it. She loves him, he really believes that. She said so but you never know, people say that when they don’t mean it or aren’t sure or just think the other person wants to hear it, which is the same thing as “they don’t mean it,” but mainly to get certain things; with him it was mostly sex. But she doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean. He’s never kno
wn a woman who’s leveled with him more. No, the one from two years ago leveled with him plenty, maybe too much: telling him things he didn’t want to hear. So he means “been on the level with him,” which Sally has from the day they met and never, far as he can tell, was tricky or dishonest to him, which the other one was lots of times. She wants to make this work. She’s thirty-one, been married once, wants to have children and get married again—reverse those. They’re going to get married one day, maybe by the end of next year; he’s almost sure of that too. Something tells him. They’ve spoken about it—he brought it up a month ago—and she said it’s too early to talk about yet but she certainly doesn’t preclude the possibility of it someday. (Preclude was the word she used, but it’s okay here?) By the end of the summer, if it continues to go like this—not that he doesn’t expect some bumps—he’ll bring it up again. That they’ve been practically living together almost a year now. (Would nine and a half months be considered almost a year?) Or maybe he won’t bring it up till the year they’ve been together is up. Then he can say, “Listen, we’ve been together for more than a year now—granted, only a few days more” (since he’d never say this on the one-year anniversary of the day they met; that’d be too … he can’t find the word for it: hokey, cornball, commonplace? something like that, and planned)—“and we seem to have worked out well as a couple, so what do you say?” “Look, we’re deeply in love with each other—can I say that? I know I am with you, and that’s the straight-on truth, and you seem to have comparable feelings for me; you’ve at least said it—so what do you say?” “We’re in love with each other, that’s obvious, and are obviously compatible in just about every way and seem to want the same things from life, or the ones important, so what would you say to my idea now about our getting married?” But he has to make it go well as he can till then. Doesn’t want her thinking, This is never going to work out. He’s a lively bright guy, for the most part good-natured and often very funny, and there are things between us that are near to being perfect—sex, for instance; our love for music and books, and that we both want to have kids. But he’s too unpredictable and impatient and recurringly hot-tempered and even mean-spirited and vulgar, which is not the kind of man I want to be tied to for the rest of my life, so best to give up on it now before it becomes impossibly complex, and for him destructive, and while I’ve still time to find someone else. Lose her and he’s lost, no two ways about it. Or not as bad as that but close. He’d feel hopeless and bereft, as if he’d blown his last chance at getting married and having kids, and he simply doesn’t want to lose her, period, because never in his life has he been with anyone like her, and so on. He sips, kisses her hand, and says—

  Later he thinks maybe he should take a shower too. The two of them in bed, both clean. Fresh sheets and pillowcases, the new place and a sea breeze. Their bodies smelling of soap, hair from shampoo, if he shampoos too. She always does when she takes a shower, or at least always comes out of the shower with her hair drenched or a towel around it. He wants to go to bed with her now. It’s late, he’s tired, she must be; food’s been put away, dishes have been cleaned—they both brought them in; he washed them the way she told him: in an old metal dishpan because they’ve a well and it’s supposed to be a dry summer and anyway it’s just good sense to conserve—and he doesn’t want to go to bed so late where he’ll be too tired to make love, or fall asleep soon after he hits the bed. Sleep will be nice when it comes but he wants to make love his first night here, sort of as a culmination to—well, it should be obvious by now without his explaining it. He yawns; she yawns too and smiles and motions with her eyebrows and eyes to the upstairs. Fire’s just about out and room’s getting a bit chilly. Should he put a few sticks on? She left a pile of them by the fireplace. Then she might think he wants to stay downstairs a while longer, and she’s already motioned up. She said while they were eating—when he asked, “If we were to head up to bed and the fire was still going, what would we use to douse it, water?”—to just let it burn itself out. “Don’t worry”—when he looked leery—“it’s safe. I’ve done it plenty of times.” He wants it to be like this all summer. Coffee and a newspaper or book early morning, work during the day, maybe some lovemaking and an excursion or swim in the afternoon, a two-or three-mile run somewhere in there, and then, at night, this. Though he knows it can’t stay this way all the time. No matter how much he tells himself to do the opposite, he can screw things up. Say the wrong thing, do it; he’s been known for that. Getting irritable and sometimes acerbic over the simplest mishap or remark she makes. The difference between her and the other women he’s gone with is not so much that she takes it but—what? Isn’t acerbic back. Thinks it’s part of him, not the most likable but a small part, and the good outweighs the bad and so forth, and eventually this tendency to fits of bitterness and sarcasm will go away, though with her congenial apprisals and reminders of it to help it along. (Now there’s a mouthful he’s not known for.) She’s just more accepting of these weaker elements in him (but stow it and, in the final version, leave out). They let the fire burn. (Goes without saying.) She sticks several large towels into a large round wicker basket and arranges the cats on top of them. She says they’ll stay there till morning except to get out to use the litter box or to get some kibbles or water and then they’ll readjust themselves when one of them climbs back in. Quatrefoil, a word he’ll use for the basket arrangement further into the summer when he accidentally comes across an illustration of one in the dictionary next to the word, though he doesn’t tell her that because she seemed, when he defined it, impressed. They turn off the lights downstairs. He locked the front door even though she said, when he asked where’s the key for it, that all the breakins around here are in winter when the homeowners from away are away and the wealthier retirees and transplants are in Arizona or Florida, and the last serious personal-injury crime apparently took place outside of anyone’s living memory, and a few of these locals live past a hundred, and he said, How does she know there hasn’t been a rash of them since last summer? “If it makes you feel less vulnerable, lock up, but we’ll both be more comfortable if you try to get used to the country, and I say that with no smugness.” “And the keys to the back doors?” and she said, “There aren’t any. Those doors the caretaker nails up after we leave.” They go upstairs. On the landing he remembers he didn’t wash up and pee and he gives her his glasses and book and goes downstairs, crosses the back deck to get to the bathroom/shower stall, but stops to pee off the deck into the woods, thinking, while he’s doing it, that this will have to be one of the great evening pleasures in being here, peeing and looking at the sky at the same time and not caring where the pee lands. Then he washes up, killing about ten mosquitoes while he’s in there, and goes upstairs. She’s in bed, only light in the room from a small lamp on her night table. On the other night table are his glasses and book, so they’ll be sleeping on the same sides of the bed as they do in their apartments. He’d prefer her side, nearer the window; he wants to feel the breeze and look out at night, maybe see the moon. The advantage of the side she chose for him is he’s able to hold her breasts with his right hand while they sleep, which might be why she likes him to sleep on that side too. Her breasts are clearly visible, covers up only to her waist. She’s sitting up, no top on (that’s how he should have put it), with probably nothing on under the covers too. He takes off his shirt. She watches and smiles, but he knows—she’s told him—that seeing his bare chest or even his whole body nude doesn’t give her anything near the charge that looking at hers does to him. He’s sure her diaphragm’s in. He breathes in deeply and thinks he can detect the contraceptive cream along with what seems a seaweed smell from outside. She didn’t turn on his night-table light, which may mean she wants to turn off hers and the room to be dark soon as he gets into bed. Her period ended a week ago, he remembers her saying then. Good thing it isn’t the first or second night of it. She’ll rarely make love then, though he’s said he doesn’t mind the blood. Bu
t she finds it messy and sort of unwholesome, she once said, “and it doesn’t exactly act as a lubricant for me either.” He forgot to shower. Should have at least swabbed a damp washcloth on his underarms and wiped his anus with wet toilet paper, but he’ll try to keep them away from her face. He puts his watch, notebook, handkerchief, and pen on his night table and gets on the bed. He pulls the covers down and she’s naked. They almost immediately start kissing. First he strokes her hair back and playfully pinches her chin and she gnashes her teeth as if she’s going to bite his pinching fingers. She doesn’t turn off the light. Could be she wants to see them in their coupling positions. Or, because they’re above the covers, to swat the mosquitoes before they start biting. Her face doesn’t look ghoulish in this light, so his probably doesn’t either. He wouldn’t want either of them to look ghoulish while they were kissing and making love. The light’s almost as faint as one can be in a regular lamp, so he wonders how she’ll be able to read by it and if his is the same and he’ll have to get a stronger bulb. He’d like to tell her now how he feels about things. To come up from the kissing to say what kind of night it is for him. That so far it’s about as good a night as he’s had in his life, and he’s not just saying that, and because she is what she is and he loves her so much and this is just the start of their stay here, he expects plenty more of these nights in the future. (Of course “in the future,” so scratch that.) That the best probably has to encompass the present and potential. Meaning … but what did he have in mind? (And shouldn’t there be something in there about the past, and what about his use of “encompass” over “include”? Never want to sound fake. Anyway, don’t keep that business about the present and potential if he can’t figure it out next time he goes over it.) They’re on their backs, smiling (adoringly? lovingly? nah, just smiling) at each other. He loves it when her mouth’s slightly parted and her teeth show. She grabs hold of his penis, and he runs his hand up her body from her thigh, thinks how smooth her skin is and how fresh her breath was and how soft her hair and lips and probably that she shaved her legs while she was in the shower, and settles his hand on her breast and says—rests his hand on her breast and says—