Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

  “Mom?”

  “The operator. There’s a tencent overtime charge on your last phone call.”

  “You never came in and told us.”

  “If one of us didn’t, that’s an error on our part, but I have registered here an overtime charge of ten cents.”

  “I only have a quarter.”

  “We’ll reimburse you by mail.”

  “It’ll cost you a twenty-cent stamp, so really wouldn’t be worth it, and I am expecting a call. I in fact probably owe you twenty to thirty-cents overtime for the time I talked.” I put in the quarter. “Thank you, ma’am,” and she says “Have a nice day,” and I hang up. Phone rings several seconds later.

  “Hello?”

  “Where were you? I asked you not to let anyone use the phone. I also got worried thinking something was wrong—a fight in the booth and the phone turned upside down. Crazy, huh?”

  “It was the operator. A bargain: only wanted a dime. But what else is new with you? How’s Goldie?”

  “Actually, I am suddenly feeling tired, Daniel, so just tell me how your life is going in other ways, if you don’t want to save it till tomorrow, and then I’ll have to say goodnight.”

  “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

  “You meet anyone at the party you were at?”

  “There were plenty of interesting people there.”

  “You know what I mean. Because you should. I don’t want you to be alone all your life. I hope you’re at least still looking.”

  “I haven’t been alone. I’ve known many women.”

  “A year here, six months there. You’re alone now. And that last one, May. She was very nice, and sweet to me as they come, but for too long I knew she wasn’t your type and you weren’t hers and that it was a lost cause from the start.”

  “Funny, but I didn’t think so. And it is strange you ask about tonight, since I did meet someone.”

  “Bring her along tomorrow.”

  “I only met her briefly.”

  “We can postpone dinner a day or two. You get her number?”

  “I’ll be calling her. Anyway, it’s too early to talk about and surely too early to invite her for dinner with you.”

  “Why? If a woman likes you, nothing’s too early. You once called me a lighthouse, so listen to the light. If you call her early tomorrow, say you’re going to your mother’s for the first time in months and would she like to come along. That way she won’t from the start think you’re a momma’s boy, which you’re not. And when she does see us together she’ll like the idea of someone being so joking and outspoken with his mother, and if she’s from out of town the idea of going to a good family dinner way out here might appeal to her too. A lot of people have heard of this neighborhood and think it’s special.”

  “She’s from the city. Anyway, I want to see you alone so we can talk.”

  “What will we say that we haven’t tonight?”

  “My work. What you’ve been doing. Politics. Plenty.”

  “How is your work going?”

  “Fine. But tomorrow. Anything else I can bring? In fact I know exactly what. An electric blanket.”

  “You have one?”

  “Two. Could you use the extra?”

  “They’re supposed to keep you warm for relatively little electricity, so if it’s not your only working one.”

  “I don’t have one good or bad but I’ll get you one tomorrow. I knew you’d say no if I said I’d buy it.”

  “I don’t need one.”

  “I’m bringing it, but ripping up the label and receipt before I get there.”

  “Then you should have kept me fooled. The whole thing was too calculating for you.”

  “Come on, will you, that’s what I am.”

  “No you’re not. Think more highly of yourself. When it comes to qualities—But before we hang up, what’s this new woman’s name?”

  “Helene, but for who-knows-what reasons she might not want to see me or be able to for weeks or months. It’s happened. So enough about her unless something materializes, since I don’t want to be explaining for the next year about what ever happened to this woman.”

  “She’ll want to see you. If she gave you her number, she will, and I bet in a hurry, and she’ll take to you too. Everyone does.”

  “You’re my mother, so you’re saying this. And the truth is I think I sometimes need that kind of talk, much as I go out of my way to say I don’t. But don’t get your hopes up there’ll be any new woman in my life. What I’m saying is that if I was really feeling bad about myself now, which I’m not, then I’d say that if there’s any way to ruin it with any new woman I meet, you can be sure I’ll do it instinctively or find out how.”

  “Then I shouldn’t get out my chiffon gown yet, that it? As you wish. Goodnight, dear.”

  “Wait. Oh jeez. I sound like a moron sometimes, don’t I?”

  “No. Who said so?”

  “Then I didn’t make you feel awful just then?”

  “No, and you didn’t plan to, did you? So stop worrying. But I am very tired, so I hope to see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling.”

  “Thanks for what?” but she’s hung up.

  Walking up Sixth I think I shouldn’t have said a lot of the things I said to her about myself and also should have told her of something I read in the paper this week about how anyone seventy-five or seventy and older shouldn’t have his room thermostat set lower than seventy or seventy-five degrees. Which? She’s over and her apartment temperature’s much lower, but over seventy on the thermostat for anyone under or over any age other than for someone, let’s say, seventy to seventy-five days or ill in a number of different ways sounds too high. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but the reasons the article writer gave for the warning were something about the gradual deterioration and collapse—but I’d only be making up most of that about the effects on the various body organs and tracts. But something like “Contrary to current scientific and popular layman belief and recent federal guidelines for residential and office buildings’ air conditioning and heat, any temperature lower over a prolonged period…acute hypothermia…very elderly and infirmed…”

  I haven’t another coin. Easily enough achieved, considering the mission, but what would she say? “Please—the government—let me sleep.” No, that’s what she’d think. She’d say “What is it, darling, something you forgot to say that couldn’t wait?” I’d say “Damn, woke you up again,” and she’d say “Anyone else I might mind, but I’m sure coming from you it’s for a good reason,” since she knows I want nothing more for her than to be healthy and safe. Content too, of course, but there’s just so much an only alone son with a weighty workload and in another borough and with a welter of excuses and all those outside willful and fortuitous abuses can do. Damn landlords sometimes. Damn city. Damn geographical location, figmental extrapolation. Damn countries and oil and gas companies and international bickering and national trickstering and so on. Too tangled for me to understand. My damn density and dumb damnedness sometimes too, and all right for me to dig-in during this kind of crisis, but my mother? I don’t want her going to—

  Car shrieks, startling me. Pedestrian almost hit. Leg inches away from the bumper, exhibiting her fist. Standing in front of the cab at the corner, fist shaking, pigtails waving, boot raised to boot the bumper, stumps the ground. “You shit.” Cabby waits, seems to me resignedly. No fare in the cab, for her to finish and go away. Sits back, pushes his hat back, scratches his back, ah that felt good, tugs on his nose and looks behind him, can’t back up and then go around her because a truck’s there. “You goon,” she says. Records on his clipboard. Let me see: Fiftieth to Broome and West Broadway, next pickup on Prince to Greenwich and Sixth—Truck honks, he points in front and honks back. You back up, then I can back up, because she won’t back up, and we can both go. “You dope. Yes, dopo, moronico, maniaco, cause you won’t be happy till you run over some poor dildo which you’ve no doubt done a hundred and 0 times bef
ore. At least say the fuck you’re sorry.” It’d seem he was in the right, had the light, maybe driving too fast, that I didn’t see, but she was walking against it. Light turns red for him. “Suck,” and smacks his hood and crosses the street. He opens his window, wouldn’t I love to with you honey, hell with her, closes it, truck and cars behind him honk. Raises his arms without turning around: what do you want me to do, be as dumb as that broad and run the light? Lights up a pipe and puffs on it. Match must have stayed lit where he threw it on the floor, for he suddenly ducks below the dashboard. Green, cars honk, trucker just shakes his head not believing this, cabby pops up, oh the light, what do you think but the light? honks, beeps, from farther down the street my dog has fleas, makes a left, truck and cars behind him, where was I? Woman seems stoned. Nursing home. Don’t want my mom in one. Shaking her fist or waving a kerchief at the cab as it passes, for my eyes can’t focalize from so far. Her getting chronically sicker and weaker, one of my worst fears. Like my dad his last two years: incontinent, sometimes defecating in bed, “Looked like afterbirth,” my mother once said, “Bedsores muffins could fit in,” nothing she or the visiting nurses could do about them, her worst fears too. How could we afford it for one thing? Not foremost but one. For another I just don’t want her in one of those homes even if we could afford it or through Medicare or -card, whichever gives the applicable aid, not do I ever want to visit her in one, though if she had to be there I of course would. But what would we do or say? Walk her around the halls, sit in the solarium sun, how’s the food, what’d you do today? Me, what could I be doing here that’s new? Nothing’s new. Please drop me in the nearest grave. “Whatever you do,” she once told me, “don’t stick me in one of those old-age places. I didn’t to your father, and he never even asked me not to. Fact is he told me to do what was easiest for me with him, but what could I do but help while I still had my strength and health, and taking care of him I also have to admit gave me something very useful and engrossing to do and improve on. The second most urgent thing I’m asking you to do if you can’t the first is just before you send me to one, give me all the sleeping pills you can lay your hands on that it’ll take to kill me in one night. You won’t have to be home. Just give me them and say goodnight and I’ll take them alone.” I told her not to think or say such things and she almost screamed at me that she was serious so what was I going to do? I told her I’d have to think it over and she said “Think about it quick—one never knows.” I said “Why, is there something about your health you just found out that I don’t know?” and she said “No, it’s up and down as ever, but let’s be realistic—at my age and condition anything can go to pot overnight,” and a week later phoned and said “You remember what I asked you about promising me something extremely important to do?” and I said “No, wait, what, afraid I forgot, sorry, but how are you?” and she said “You remember—you got a head screwed on you tighter than a vise and certainly for something like that, but maybe we should drop it till you tell me you remember or want me to help retrieve your memory for you—do you?” and I said “Sure, if that’s what you want, but better another day, because right now—well, I had to have a translation in by noon if I wanted to get paid, so I stayed up all night and am now feeling sick from it besides very tired—anyway, how are you?” and she told me how she was and Goldie and Ray and that was the last time she spoke to me about sleeping pills.

  I wait for the light. Other night I dreamed. Car beeps, big-dog barks from far off, someone scraping a metal garbage can along the sidewalk, waterlogged car transmission squeaks. Of my mother and jarring that dream, as I start to cross the street.

  “Watch it,” a man says, Walkman wires in his ears, running against traffic and nearly clipping me.

  “You should’ve,” I yell and he gives me the finger as he runs. “At least get a bell. And if you do, ding the damn thing, you dumb id—,” because he still has his finger in the air, but forget it. In one and out if he can even hear me and why start trouble? He could come back, but being a runner I doubt it, as others have when I went on too long. Light’s green. What was it I dreamed? Seemed important, one with both my folks. Jolted me out of sleep and kept me sitting up and thinking about it till I thought it had seeped in deep enough for me to go back to sleep and bring it back easily when I woke for the day. Often told myself to keep a pen and pad—Anyway, the dream. She’d locked herself in the bathroom. “My hair is white,” she said through the door, “overnight,” when in real life it’s steel gray. And something about her bones pushing through her face. “My weight’s down to seventy-eight”—her age? “My back’s so bent I can never again stand straight. I just saw my image in the light.” Apartment was dark. Crack under the door showed the bathroom was black. “Don’t stare at me,” she screamed from behind the closed door. Maybe she was talking to herself. “I’m ancienter and mangier than our goldanged race,” though at the time I felt she was talking to me. I said something like “Get yourself something to read, Ma, that’s all you need. I’ll find a good book if you open the door.” Good book could be the Bible but what would that or the rest of what I said mean? We were never a religious family. Ceremonial dinners once or twice a year and inexact observances of the high holy days. They let me fast for a day and skip school those holidays because the other Jewish kids did. But it wasn’t till my sister got very sick that she put a cloth napkin on her head once a week and lit memorial candles and mumbled a prayer. Bible at funeral? I tried the doorknob but it was locked. “Don’t! I’ll open it at my own speed.” Knob turned from the inside and door creaked open an inch. Creaking part from old ghost movies I saw as a boy and radio mystery shows. Suspense Presents—one of those. “Not yet,” I said. “Wait till I get you that book.” Said that because I was afraid to see her so old, decrepit and sick. In another room my father rose from a coffin on his hospital bed and stretched. He was naked and scrawny, his room dark and stuffy, only a little light from somewhere on him and his hair hung as it never did over his shoulders from only a few places in his head. He released the railing, climbed out of bed and lumbered to me dragging strung bones and a long iron chain. “Drag something imaginative,” I said. “And put something on, for crying out loud,” and covered my eyes and opened them on him wearing a loincloth opened at his genitals and dragging the bones and chain. In real life he died in his sleep in a hospital gown in a hospital bed in the apartment my mother lives in now. In the dream his testicles were twice their normal size and low-slung and swung as he walked and his penis peed like a horse’s. “Come quick,” my mother said when I came into their apartment as I did almost every morning to see them and give him his shot and help her in any way I could, “I can’t get from dad a single heartbeat or breath.” Bathroom door was wide open and there was daylight on her from a bathroom window she doesn’t have. Rattling and clanking from the bones and chain got louder. My mother looked as she’d said she would and said to me “Where’s your book? Don’t lose your eyes. If anyone should be reading,” pointing to my father coming into the room completely naked but done peeing, “It’s him. Sol, you need a cover. I love you. Sol, you need to be fed and dressed. Your son will assist you, but come to me first, you big clown,” and she went to him with her arms out. He spun around once, looked lost, dropped the bones and chain, defecated as he stepped toward her but the excrement which had smeared his thighs and was heaped on the floor, disappeared, fell to one knee and she took him into her arms. His eyes stayed shut through all this. I sniffed hard and wondered how come no shit smell. He was wearing an old bathrobe that I now own. It was open below the waist and his testicles rested on the floor. Scrotum, my thought then, looking like a sleeping white Chinese-porcelain cat squeezed up for warmth. She smiled when she first hugged him, was crying, lips on his brow. His hair was now thick, bouncy and brown. That’s all I recall. It could have ended then. Awoke in a sweat, sat up fast. If my mother ever got, how should I put it, incapacitatingly sick or was declared terminal, if declared’s the term medical peop
le use, and asked me to take care of her or her doctor did and it was possible for me to, I think I’d do it till I couldn’t anymore at her apartment or mine, with a visiting nurse or without, depending what the governments could afford, because what else could I do? I’d work at home while I nursed. Live partly off her Social Security if I couldn’t earn enough on my own. That wouldn’t be wrong, since I’ve nothing but a few hundred saved. Maybe for the first time look for book reviews to do if it took that to manage it without dipping into her funds, but ones that pay reasonably well. So it’s all resolved? “Mothers grow old and sick, fathers die, I don’t like it one bit,” Hasenai says in a poem I chose, “but I’ll try.” I know what he means? Thought so then. If I’m still uncertain tomorrow I’ll write Hasenai for advice, since I always make sure to get the author’s meant intention if it’s anything but pure sound, which in his case I’ve tried but can’t duplicate.

  I jot down in my notebook: “Last stanza for clarity’s sake ‘Old Folks Leaving Home.’ Include in collect whatever you do even if it takes phone calls & transpacif cabes to make it precise, & maybe even make concluding poem, since that’s how deep you feel about it & good you think it is at least now. Listen. Ambulanc passing op way other emerg vehics passed half hr ago. Just looked but am now back to jot down this nite of Di’s part, meeting Helene, snowrain-umbrel blown out of my hand, woman walking like a sleeping bag, no perf word-words for it so far color Helenes hair, Hel looking at me at her across room and then thumping her umb open on Di’s steps, short order dwarf no sport intended intentionally reading unrecognizing me on the sub & tho ironic what he read I forget what, dresser-cat feeding on a sock, do it forget dinner with mom tomor 5 & bring elect blank & if poss bot of one of the best foreign vodks, broke-soaked poor guys in Wash Par & tif over unclean fingers was it in class music bar & berber-basque boy or so with wrong roses & now on my way to my apar (cant see exact what streets Im between because my pocketed scarred specs but somewhere in the teens) & falling on my face before & not jus the snowrain (t for the) & jus fort Jun sound of it now my lack also befor of something/another grace (no that didnt work), tho now thinking so jettisonly-clear, wha? & someone on t cot inside & someone in white seated beside & whirling red atop making wet images etc on t st & siren whining moo-mah moo-mop prob like do it say it yl regret it t incoming inpatients heart & for a sec jus now making me recolect t halfdoz emerg times rushed pop to hosp. & my decis about work & nurs mom if disabled or selfunable becaus of her ilness old or new &/or age (o for or) & realization (cdnt think shorter word on t spu o how to contract rlztion) about pure sound when I duplicate in Juns o realy any japanes poets case almos impos to translat, tho aboutface thos at(e)s. So now—tho how you rlly feeling now pal? Huh? Come on, once in yr life, heres yr chanc, rly tel. Whys it impor & whats this one biz for Ive sporadly told? Never on memo. Thats ridic. Then nevr to friends. I hav, much of it. Then nev to me. Tha cd be tru I think but who ar u? Thn to complet this diar of yr nite & one so memorabl. T diar? T nit? Wha maks it so & who writs thos? U shld so whn u get back home—wel u kno, look bk whn u gt bk yl think bk ‘Oh so thas wha happed & I rly felt tha partic nit so memobl becau so many eventfl events & all t dif things I fel, I remem now.’ No, for deeper reas. Wha? Reasons, deepr, on paper, so mayb som of t sam of wha u said, but whas rly trubling me & mayb somethings i dint kno o wdnt excep thru my probe now wer there, y not? & mayb nows t tim to do it for now Im thinking of it so mayb now I shd, rt? So cmon thn, out wit em, no mor excuses, digresons, questons o jokes—how u feel, whas deep insid, not jus yr mom & work but yr soco lif too, want to mak lov? Me, wit u? U kno wha I mean & I said no mo digres, ques o joes. Sur think, u bet, tho hope nobo ever sees this notebo, not tha I cnt rip it up, rt? tho I want mo than mak lov, now thas t tru. Yes? Yes, tis so. So? So yes, ok, no mo digres, caus here comes, penpal gt yr undrlining pen set: so lonly, longing, yernng, me, hart smartg, partly frm litl work recgniton & almo no doe, but deepst down mos trublng me is Im alo, wan to b wit He or somone lik her—o, o—wit a fe bod in bed tonit & me screeng in betwee, liqidy syrpy ros petl lips—who 1st wro somthg lik it?—strapy wrapy legs, arms al aroun, ruty souns aboun, to hold, to clutch, to click, 2 nuz, 2 dic, 2 lov, tug & kis, 2 cover b covrd, 2 b flatend by her flat 2 big brests (2 for to forget), 2 jus agreeably b wit for a nit, 2 go 2 sleep wit for l nit, 2 wak up wit nxt momg as I wnt 2 slee wit, as befor wnt 2 sle wit is wha I ment wit, meang talkg lovg befor wnt 2 sle wit, holdg/jokg wit, serious/unseros wit, 2 jus b simply o simly b wit a responsv xcitg mind as wel as bod is wha I mos want 2 b wit tonit & if pos 4 a long lng tim, tho Im sur I hvnt made myslf clear here, but anythg els wit? Tot wit perhaps in tim, but mayb I mentond tha, tho not here. Marag wit perhps, tho tha too tho nt hre. But anythg els wit? No nt rt now tho wha I jus wro wasnt awful enuf? Nt ‘awfl’ tho if awfl thn aft meang banal, sily, imatur, nt so muc thos but u kno, tho wha? O u kno or (no mo o for or now but jus fo oh) can fil in tomor or whaevr tim if I kee this tha lng, so now en clos ths joebo & cap pen wich, caus I dint refil befo I lef hom cd b runng dry, I mt latr nee fo mo impo thngs, meang relatd 2 trnsltd, 2 writ (& mt fo mite). But enuf, genug & yah. Hu? Wel, tel me whoevr sd I mus ma sens 2 myslf—who? Nu? O Go, stop go, tho whas tha supo 2 mea tha OG, sto go? Ju 2 sto wrtg rt no, go ho, lo at ths tomo, thn ter it ou of t memobo and up. I mea ‘& up.’”