Late Stories (6 page)

I was going to stop someplace for coffee. But I got an idea for a short story and went back to my apartment to write it. The story had nothing to do with the studio and wasn't about my half-hour meeting with Cochran. It was mainly about how I met my wife more than ten years ago. It was in the lobby of an art movie house in New York. New Year's Day, early afternoon. Probably means she's single, I had thought, and unattached. We were waiting in line to get inside. She was in front of me, reading a book in French. She had a nice face and she looked intelligent and I liked that she was reading
a thick book in French while waiting to see what's supposed to be a fairly artful complex movie. I thought of what to say and then said “
Excusez-moi, mademoiselle
—okay, I'll stop the pretending. My French is abominable. So excuse me again, I don't mean to disturb you from your reading, but what's the title of that book in English? It looks familiar.” She gave me the title in English. “Sure, now I know it,” I said, “and you're American. An interesting writer. He's from Scotland but has lived in France since the end of the Second World War, and is almost as well known for his short stories as he is his novels. And for many years now he only writes in French and translates all his works into English. Big in Europe but not so much in America or even Scotland.” “That's right,” she said. “You may go to the head of the class now.” “I'm sorry. I guess I did sound a little pedantic, especially for someone who hasn't read more than five pages of one of his books.” “No, no,” she said. “You know a lot more about him than most people do, which is a shame. He deserves a much wider audience here.” “May I ask if you're reading it for scholarly reasons or for pleasure, or maybe both.” “Both,” she said. “So you're going for a doctorate in French literature and Maitland Cochran's one of the writers, or maybe the main one, you're reading for your dissertation?” and she said “No, just for a course. Although for my dissertation I may end up writing about some aspect of his work. His poetry, even. More room there. And it's every bit as good as his fiction, and none of it's been published here or anyplace but France. I've time to decide yet.” “From everything I've heard from people who have read his fiction, and also from those couple of peeks of mine into a book or two of his myself—in English of course. I'd never think of reading him in French, though I do have some reading understanding of the language—I felt he can be a very difficult writer and a little too cerebral for me. Intentionally difficult, I'm saying, and too abstruse. Anything to that?” “To some
people, perhaps,” she said, “but not to me. I find him very funny, in both languages, a great stylist, and once you get a few pages in to any of his books, easy to read and like nobody else and definitely worthwhile.” “Well,” I said, “the one you're reading was once recommended to me in English long ago. Do you think it's a good one to start off with?” “
Oui
,” she said, and laughed.

Crazy

I
have a dream. In it I'm pushing my wife in a wheelchair on a narrow street in New York. Chinatown, during the lunch hour. Four- to five-story buildings, lots of small restaurants, sidewalks very crowded and people walking fast. “Excuse me, excuse me,” I say to people in front of us. “Better watch out. I don't want to run in to you.” I've no idea where I'm going. I'm just pushing. My wife sits silently, looking straight ahead.

Then the scene changes to a street on the East Side of New York. In the forties; near the East River. Not a street but an avenue: First or Second or Third. The sidewalks are wide and again very crowded. Lunch hour. People walking very fast. Despite the tall office buildings on both sides of the avenue, plenty of sun. “We're in the Gravlax District,” I say to my wife. “Can you hear me above all this noise? The Gravlax District. I only used to come here to go to a steakhouse or an art movie theater.” I stop pushing and look around. “So many people,” I say, with my back to her. “We never get crowded streets like this where we live. Nor the car traffic. It's exciting, don't you think?” When I turn back to her, she and the chair are gone. I took my hands off the chair's handles, something I almost never do when I'm outside with her and we're moving, or even when we've stopped but people are moving around us. Where could she have gone to? She wouldn't have just left without saying something to me. She must have been in a hurry, probably to pee. And stood up, told me where she was going and what for—most likely to a restaurant to use its restroom—but I didn't hear her because
of the street noise, and then pushed the wheelchair there, or else wheeled the chair there while she sat in it.

I'm on a corner and see a restaurant a few doors down the sidestreet. I run to it and say to a man behind the lunch counter “Did a woman in a wheelchair come in here in the last minute or so?”

“In a wheelchair?” he says. “Couldn't have. We've three steps leading up to our door.”

I run farther down the street to a park at the end of it. Jacob Riis Park? Does it come this far downtown? Anyway, a park that borders the river. Maybe she thought there'd be a public restroom here, and I look around. No Abby. She'd be easy to see, too, because she'd be in the wheelchair or pushing it. She can't walk on her own. No public building anywhere around, either. Just a playground, surrounded by grass and trees.

I run up the same sidestreet on the other side of the block. I look through the vestibule doors of all the brownstones on that side of the street, just as I did on the other side of the street when I ran down it to the park. In one dingy hallway I see at the end of it what looks like a wheelchair turned over. Oh my God; is it on top of her? I ring all the tenants' bells, am buzzed in. I run down the long hallway. It's a baby carriage turned over, nobody under it.

I run to the avenue where I last saw her, cup my hands around my mouth and shout “Abby, it's Phil; come back to the spot, Abby, it's Phil; come back to the spot.” People stare at me as if I'm crazy. “I'm looking for my wife,” I say. “She was here, in a wheelchair; now she's not.” I shout again “Abby, it's Phil; come back to the spot.” I keep shouting that while also looking in every direction for her. It's better to wait for her here than run around looking for her. If she comes to this spot and I'm not here, she might not know what to do to find me. I don't see her or anyone in a wheelchair. The street's still very noisy and crowded. And now I hear music,
symphonic, coming from someplace, and which is so loud I won't be able to shout above it.

I wake up. The music's from the radio on my night table. I was listening in the dark to the classical music station when I fell asleep. I think about the dream. We were in Chinatown first and then on the East Side in the forties. I have to go there. I have to find her. This is crazy, I know.

I drive to the train station, park the car in its underground garage and buy a roundtrip ticket to New York. When I arrive, I go straight to Chinatown. I don't quite know how to get there, though. It's been five years since I've been in New York, my home city and also Abby's. The borough narrows at the southern end close to where Chinatown is, so just take any subway train south and get off at Worth Street or Canal Street or Chambers, whichever comes first. I get on the subway and get off at Houston Street—I forgot Houston—and think I'm near Chinatown, but it turns out to be a long walk. I'm hungry—I rushed out of the house so fast, I didn't have anything to eat and the train didn't have a food car. I should stop in one of the small restaurants here and sit at the counter and have a bowl of soup and plate of noodles, but I don't want to lose any time in looking for her.

I walk all around Chinatown. I think I cover every single block. This is crazy, I know, but I thought I could find her down here, or at least there was a chance. I don't want her to be lost. She'll get sad, frightened; maybe even terrified. She's become that vulnerable. She used to like going alone to places—even faraway countries—she's never been to before or hasn't been to in a while. But not since she got so sick. She needs me. She once said I keep her alive. Not said it to me but wrote it four or five years ago in one of the notebooks I found of hers. “Phil keeps me alive. What to do?” and she dated it: October 6th; I forget the exact year. I give up looking for her in
Chinatown. Only other place to go is the east forties. Maybe I'll find her there. Since it was the last place I saw her, I should have gone there first.

I take the subway to Times Square, then the one-stop train shuttle there to Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. I go upstairs and walk on 42nd Street to First Avenue. I walk down First Avenue to 34th Street, then walk up Second Avenue to 42nd Street, then walk down Third Avenue to 34th Street. Then I walk along all the sidestreets between First and Third avenues from 34th to 50th Streets. I look in stores. I look in most of the brownstones I pass and also the lobbies of the tall apartment and office buildings and even in a few movie theaters. This is crazy, I know, but for some reason I begin to think I'll find her, that it's more than a slight chance. But no Abby or wheelchair anyplace. And no wheelchairs in the ground-floor hallways of any of the brownstones, though a few baby carriages, none turned over.

I have to go to the bathroom. I go into a coffee shop, order a coffee at the lunch counter and go to the men's room. I drink the coffee, have a buttered English muffin with it and ask the server behind the counter if she's seen a woman in a wheelchair here today, and I describe Abby and the chair and its tote bag hanging on the back. “I was pushing her in the chair, got distracted for a few seconds and let go of it, which I almost never do, and she was either wheeled away by someone or wandered off by herself.”

“If she was in here I would've seen her,” the woman says. “I've been on duty all day, never a work break. The door to this place is hard to open from the outside by someone in a wheelchair, so I always have to come out from behind the counter to help.”

I pay and leave. I go to the corner of 40th Street and First Avenue, which is where she disappeared, and look around some more for her and then cup my hands around my mouth and shout “Abby, it's Phil; come back to the spot. Abby, it's Phil; come back to the spot.”

Lots of people look at me. One man stops and says “Anything wrong, Chief?”

“Yes,” I say, “I've lost my wife. She was in a wheelchair.”

“If she got separated from you in a wheelchair and was able to move it by herself, she'll come back.”

“That's why I'm shouting for her,” I say. “The streets are crowded and she's sitting so low in the chair that she won't be able to see me from it. But she'll hear me and come back to the spot I lost her at.” I cup my hands around my mouth again and shout “Abby, Abby, it's Phil. Come back to the spot.”

A policeman comes over and says to me “You can't be shouting out like that, sir. Is it something I can help you out with?”

“My wife, in a wheelchair, was here with me and then vanished.”

“I can take a description of her wife and have a patrol car look for her.”

“No, I say, “it won't work. This is crazy, I know, to do what I'm doing, but I had to see it through. Thank you. I'll go home now. I just have to believe she'll be all right.”

I hail a cab, take it to Penn Station, and get the next train back to my city. I better watch out, I tell myself. I could get arrested. Taken in. Held overnight. Locked up for I don't know how long in a nuthouse. Not something I need.

One Thing to Another

I
've been writing the same story for weeks. I can't seem to get past page four. The woman's name has been Delia, Mona, Sonya, Emma, Patrice. The narrator's name has been Herman, Kenneth, Michael, Jacob, Jake. From now on I'll call her “his wife” and him “he.” The locale is a Baltimore suburb. The time is today. The title has been
Liebesträume
,
Nothing to Read
,
Lists
,
The List
,
A List
,
The Wedding March
,
Wedding March
,
The Church Bench
,
Humming
. I always put the title near the top of the first manuscript page. So I always have to have the title before I start the final draft of the first page of the story, which I've done with this story about a hundred times. I think I know what I want to say in the story and where I want it to go. Maybe they're the same thing. What I'm having trouble with is how to say it and keeping the story from being boring, stodgily written and overexplanatory. In other words, a story I wouldn't want to read. It's been like a wrestling match. The story's fighting me and I'm fighting it. Sometimes I think it's got me in its hold and sometimes I think I've got it in mine. What I want to finally do is pin it to the mat rather than be pinned. I've fought like this with a story before, but never for so long, and I always won. But end of wrestling analogy. I probably used it incorrectly anyway. This is what I've got so far: the start. I want to continue writing it after what I write what I've already written down.

An Episcopal church is directly across the street from his house. (In some versions it's “. . . is right across the street . . .” and in others “. . . is across the street . . .” When I'm retyping a page, even after fifty
times, I'm always changing a word or two or even a line. But I won't stop the story anymore like that till I get to the place where I left off.)

An Episcopal church is right across the street from his house. Every afternoon between five and six he takes a walk in his neighborhood and almost always ends up sitting on a bench in front of the church. There are four benches there, all in various places in front of the church and each facing a different direction. He's sat at least once on all of them and prefers the one that looks out on the street that runs parallel to the church. Not the street his house is on but the one perpendicular to it. He likes that bench best because it gets the most sun in late afternoon and there's more to see from it. He usually takes a book with him on these walks and reads for about a half hour on the bench if the weather permits it. If it's not too hot or cold and it isn't raining or snowing. He always takes his walk, though, no matter what the weather's like. Well, if it's raining hard, he doesn't take a walk. But if it's snowing or just a light rain, he'll walk but he doesn't take a book with him or end up on the bench there. It'd be too wet to sit on. All the benches would. None are protected by trees. If he knows there's not going to be enough light out to read on the bench by the time he gets there or it's already dark by the time he starts out, he also doesn't take a book with him, though he still might sit on the bench for a few minutes. But if he's tired from the walk or his lower back hurts, which happens a lot by the time he finishes his walk, he'll sit longer and just think about things—a dream from the previous night and what it might mean, a short story he's been working on—or let his mind wander. He's even nodded off a few times on the bench, but only when it was dark out.

So he's finished his walk and is sitting on what he's begun to call, in his daily phone conversations with his daughters, his bench.
“What'd I do today?”—he always speaks to them in the evening, an hour or so after his walk. “I wrote and went to the Y, of course, and took a walk and sat on my bench and read.” It's early April, around six-thirty, a bit chilly. Daylight Saving Time started a week ago. The sun's out but setting. Cherry trees around the church are in full flower—a little early, but what does he know? No cars in the church's small parking lot the bench also faces, and no people around, which is usually what it's like out here at this time. He does hear children's voices from somewhere far off, and a car or pickup truck occasionally passes. But that's about it for distractions and noises. Oh, a jogger and a woman walking two dogs also went by, but that's all, or all he saw. So: a peaceful place to sit and think or read. He did bring a book with him—a short biography of Maxim Gorky, one of about two hundred books his wife had on Russian literature in her study and which are still there. But he isn't interested in reading anymore of it after reading the first thirty pages last night in bed. So why'd he take it on his walk? It was on the dryer by the kitchen door leading to the outside, where he'd left it this morning; he hadn't decided what book he was going to read next, so he just grabbed it before he left the house. He sets it beside him on the bench. When he gets home he'll stick it back in the bookcase he got it out of. So, nothing to read, really, he closes his eyes. See what comes, he thinks. Nothing does. Just letters and numbers bouncing around in his head, then a vertical line moving right to left, right to left, and then flashing, like lightning, but he doesn't know what it is. Maybe lightning. He opens his eyes and looks at the sky, then at the two houses across the street, and finds himself humming something over and over for a couple of minutes. Liszt's “Liebesträum.” Just the beginning of it. He doesn't know the whole piece. Why's he humming it, and now? Well, nothing else to do. No, there's got to be a better reason than that. It doesn't just come out of nowhere.
Sure, it's a beautiful piece of music when played on the piano—not with the mouth sounds he was making—or even the cello, meaning he once heard it played on the cello at a concert, but long ago. Before he met his wife. Did she play it on the piano? Doesn't think so. Or she might have—she knew lots of pieces for piano—but she never played it while he was around. And if she played something—well, he was going to say she practiced it till she could play it without reading the music, and in that time he just about got to know it by heart too. But that doesn't make the sense he wanted it to—to explain why he would have had to have heard her play it, if she did.

Then he remembers. Esther, a concert pianist who was also her piano teacher at the time, played the entire third “Liebesträume,” the one he was humming, in the living room of their New York apartment before their wedding ceremony began. As a warm-up, or to prepare the guests for the ceremony, perhaps. Then she went into her interpretation of Mendelssohn's “Wedding March,” which was the signal for his wife to walk slowly out of their bedroom with her bridesmaid and stand in front of the rabbi with him for the ceremony. He burst out crying right after the rabbi pronounced them married, was told by the rabbi and several guests “Kiss the bride, kiss the bride,” and he wiped his cheeks and eyes with his handkerchief, kissed her and thought this is the happiest moment in his life. And it was and continued to be so for around eight months, till the happiest moment in his life took place in the birthing room of a Baltimore hospital when his wife gave birth to their first child.

This is where I always get stuck. I know where I want to go from here but I just can't seem to get there or even much started. I thought a few times maybe I should chuck the third person and do the whole thing in first and that will help me. And then I always think no, it won't, so don't. Stick with third; it feels right, and that's what you have to rely on. I want him to explain why the moment
their first child born became the happiest in his life and the moment they were declared man and wife dropped down a notch to the second happiest. And then to briefly give the third happiest moment, and maybe why it became that. And then the fourth, and so on, right up to the ninth or tenth, all of the last part taking up no more than three or four pages, and that would be it unless something else came to end it between now and then.

What I had in mind was something like this: The birth of their first child became the happiest moment in his life for a number of reasons, and by “moment” he means moments, hours, even the day. He'd wanted a child for about fifteen years. Impregnated three women in that time but none of them wanted to marry him or have the baby. They all thought he'd make a good father but that he'd never earn enough money to keep a family going, and had abortions. More important was that his wife was going through a difficult delivery in the hospital. It had been more than thirty hours since she went into labor and it had become extremely uncomfortable, exhausting and painful for her. Most important of all, her obstetrician—“Dr. Martha” she wanted to be called—said the baby's breathing was at risk after so long a delivery and the position in the birth canal she was frozen in—her head or maybe it was a shoulder was caught on something there—and she'll give a natural birth one last try with forceps and if that doesn't work, she'll have to do a cesarean. Fortunately, she was an expert with forceps and turned the baby over inside the birth canal and eased her out. So it was the relief after so many hours that the baby had come out alive and healthy and his wife was all right and had been able to avoid surgery and that he finally had a child, that made it the happiest moment in his life, and which it still is after nearly thirty years.

His third happiest moment was when their second child was born. He's not sure why it's not his second happiest moment, but
it isn't. It's just a feeling he has. There wasn't any anxiety or relief involved in the birth because there wasn't any difficulty in the delivery. She felt something at home, calmly said to him “I think it's started,” they drove calmly to the hospital, thinking they had plenty of time, and she had the baby in less than a total of two hours from the time she felt it starting till the head and shoulders emerged. “That's about as quick a delivery as you can get,” Dr. Martha said, “unless there's no labor and the sac's already broken without anyone noticing and the mother gives birth while she's cooking dinner at home or being driven to the hospital.”

His fourth happiest moment came during the first day of their two-day honeymoon at an inn in Connecticut, when the pregnancy kit they brought with them tested positive. She screamed and shrieked and then said “Sorry, this is so unlike me, and what will the other guests think? But aren't you as happy?” “Sure, what do you think?” and they hugged and kissed and danced around their room and then went downstairs and at the bar there shared a split of champagne. “My last drink till the little sweetie comes,” she said, and he said “Why? You can have a little for a couple of months.” “After two miscarriages with my first husband? No. I'm going to be extra overcautious. In the future you can drink my glass if anyone pours me one.”

His fifth happiest moment was in January, 1965, when
The Atlantic Monthly
took a short story of his, almost twenty years to the month before their second child was born. He was on a writing fellowship in California, had just come back from a month's stay with his family in New York. Lots of mail was waiting for him. He'd only had two stories published before then, or one published and the other accepted, both with little magazines. Rejection, rejection, rejection, he saw, by the bulge in each of the nine-by-twelve-inch manila envelopes he'd sent with the stories. He opened the regular letter
envelope from
The Atlantic Monthly
, assuming they didn't bother to send back his story with their rejection slip in the stamped return envelope as the others had. In it was the acceptance letter from an editor, with an apology for keeping the story so long. He shouted “Oh my gosh; I can't believe it. They took my story,” and he knocked on the door of the political science graduate student who lived in the room next to his. “I'm sorry; did I wake you? But I got to tell you this.
The Atlantic Monthly
took a story of mine and is giving me six-hundred bucks for it. We have to go out and celebrate, on me.”

The sixth happiest moment was nine years later. He was walking upstairs to his New York apartment with a woman he'd recently met. By that time—fifteen years after he'd started writing—he had eight stories published, about a hundred-fifty written, no book yet. “Another rejection from
Harper's
,” he said. She was in front of him and said “I'm not a writer, but I guess that's what you have to expect.” “Let's see what they have to say. It's always good for a laugh.” He opened the envelope he'd sent with the story. “What's this?” he said. He pulled out the galleys to his story and a letter from the editor he'd sent it to and a check for a thousand dollars. The editor wrote “I realize this must be unusual for you, receiving the galleys to your story along with the acceptance letter. But we want to get your story in print as soon as possible and there's space for it in the issue after next. We tried calling you, but you're either unlisted or one of the few writers in New York who doesn't have a phone.” That was true. He didn't. Too costly. And the sudden phone rings in his small studio apartment, when he was deep into his writing, always startled him, so he had the phone removed. “This is crazy,” he said. “
Harper's
took instead of rejected. And for more money than I've ever made from my writing,” and he waved the check. They were on the top-floor landing now and she said “Let me shake your hand, mister,” and tweaked his nose.

The seventh happiest moment? Probably in 1961, when a woman, who had dumped him two years before and then three months after they'd started seeing each other again, said she'd come to a decision regarding his marriage proposal. They were in the laundry room of his parents' apartment building. Had gone down there to get their laundry out of one of the washing machines and into a dryer. “So?” he said, and she said “Okay, I'll marry you.” “You will?” “That is, if you still want to go through with it.” “Do I? Look at me. I'm deliriously ecstatic. Ecstatically delirious. I don't know what I am except giddy with happiness. I love you,” and he kissed her and they got their laundry into a dryer and took the elevator back to his parents' floor and told them and his sister and brother they had just gotten engaged. She broke it off half a year later, a few weeks before they were to be married in her parents' summer home on Fire Island. A big old house, right on the ocean. Her father was a playwright, her mother an actress, as was his fiancée.