” “And it made you more attracted to her,” “No, I was just attracted to her, Jewish or not — the smile, the face and hair, from across the room without her even saying or even looking at me, and her body,” “A full body, what I’ve been talking about, one you can grab and that fills out a dress,” “Some women I knew had full bodies,” “You’ve had them all, I know — big, skinny, one with all legs, another with all neck, you said like a swan’s, I said like a beer bottle — long hair another one had down to the floor and what a mess, one with hair like a marine recruit,” “That’s because it was burned in a fire and had to be cut short,” “Blacks, whites, mostly WASP but a few Chinese thrown in,” “She was Philippine,” “Short and squat, like a baseball catcher, not to mention that greasy thick hair, though if I had my choice I’d take them over the blacks — you made me sick with what you did, but you at least showed the common sense for once not to bring the black to our house,” “I didn’t want to humiliate her,” “And us?” “I didn’t want to tamper with your sensibilities either, though I doubt Mom would have minded — the woman was a very well respected modern dancer, had advanced degrees in other fields and came from a fine professional home,” “So why didn’t you marry her if she was that good?” “She was too rigid sometimes, maybe we were both too self-conscious about our being together and the remarks and stares we got, I found her dull a lot and didn’t love her though she said she did me, so that was why we broke up — I don’t know for sure but I’m glad we did because of what I eventually got,” “A sick woman,” “When I married her she wasn’t, but you’d leave her because she got a disease? — that’s not what Mom did with you,” “We were already thirty-five years married — with yours I would have found out better before I married that she was sick,” “There weren’t any signs,” “Did you look hard enough, did you notice? — you just saw the great body and face and pretty blond hair and wanted to stick what you thought was your big prick in and she’d be impressed, and then you got hooked like all schnooks do with simply having a chunk of pussy always around for them and said ‘May I?’ or ‘Would she?’ and of course she does for by then she’s over thirty and maybe knows she’s got a little illness and getting worse and will probably need lots of taking care of later and her folks can’t live forever and besides all that you finally landed a decent job and dressing better and so forth,” “I was dressing just as badly, maybe better footwear because I discovered sneakers made my feet ache when I walked in them a lot and also now underpants and socks — I could afford them,” “Anyone could afford them, you were just too much of a slob to wear them — pissing the last few drops into your trousers, you didn’t notice but I did, the stains — anyway, I’m saying she was no dope, she knew that no matter how sick she was to become you were the kind of guy — you probably even bragged about it — to stick with her for life, which is all to the good but bad for you,” “How so if I’m helping her? and let me tell you that sometimes I’m not such a nice guy about it too,” “Maybe because you sensed something wasn’t to Hoyle, because to throw away the rest of your life on someone who might have fooled you into thinking she was well when you met her or popped the question?” “That’s not it at all, but you left out dentistry — just want to remind you,” “What about it — I loved the field, yanking out stubborn teeth, fixing the ones that stayed, measuring and then finishing off the plates to perfection and people walking around with them in and complimenting me on how good they fit, besides all the money and the kibitzers who were always dropping in,” “I’m referring to my not going into it,” “You’re proud of it, so you bring it up, but you broke my heart when you stopped taking the sciences in college — you had the personality like me for dentistry — outgoing, unassuming, a boy from the boys — you could have shared my office half time and done what you wanted the other half — write, painted, taken the piano — or we could have had two offices between us and once I retired and you bought me out you would have owned them both — one in the Chrysler building which I always wanted — imagine, that tall a place and so important in architecture, which you must have liked, and up till the last time I checked not a single dentist in it,” “I was terrible in the sciences,” “You could have ignored that you knew I wanted it so much and tried harder and passed and then forgotten them when you got into dental school because you don’t need them there, once in it’s all practical stuff — in fact you can still go back to college, get all the predental subjects out of the way in a year and then go to dental school, people have done it this late in their lives — that famous peaceful man who studied medicine in his forties, then went to Africa with his degree and I think his organ but unlike that guy, since he only wanted to be away from the world, you could make lots of money, take that tiny house of yours and triple it in size, or buy a new one, a ranch house so your wife doesn’t have to walk up the steps and fall down them like in the one now, or a city and country one both, two cars instead of one, garages in the house for when it snows and to keep them from being swiped off the street, drive to your office and garage your car there too, and your girls could have their own ponies, not just dolls of ones, and go to the best of private schools, and you want to go on vacation you get another dentist to cover your practice, like you do for him, and off you go for a month with your wife and a special nurse for her if you want and a nanny to stay with the kids at home, and round-the-clock nurses all the time for her at home if it ever gets that bad, for who else is going to do it and now you haven’t the means,” “Me, I will, I teach college so I’ve time, also because I don’t want nurses around and no nannies for the kids, I want us to bring them up ourselves, I don’t even like a housekeeper in the house for more than a few hours a week — just to clean up in a way I can’t, spots or clumps of dust I never see — I like my quietness, nobody around but the family or at least for extended stays, and if we have to move to a ranch house, which is what, the one-floor family house? then we’ll do it since I make enough to live OK, but I don’t want my girls spoiled with too many things they don’t need, trunks stuffed with dolls, closets with party dresses and dressers with sweaters and hose, certainly not private schools at so early an age unless there are killers or idiot teachers in the public ones they’re assigned to, and nothing to do with ponies or any of the horsey-set pets, just what I need are pony turds all over my yard and the cult of the equine inside, and as a teacher I get longer vacations than a month, we like going to Maine all summer to a simple rented cottage overlooking the ocean and doing our nonschool work there,” “You can buy that ocean cottage and a piece of the ocean, then add a couple of out-of-the-house studios with bathrooms and little kitchens in them so you both can work to your hearts’ content, but probably not in Maine since you want it to be a spot you can go weekends to summers when you have to be at the office and for skiing and short drives up all year,” “If I make enough doing what I’m doing maybe I will buy a cottage on a Maine beach, two bedrooms, where we can each work in one, maybe a little room for a guest, but nothing big where we have to do a lot of furnishing and cleaning up, but look, you got to believe I once really wanted to become a dentist, not to make a great living, or so I sold myself the idea then, but to go to very poor areas here and abroad and work on rotting teeth, but after a few predent courses I knew it wasn’t for me — truthfully, you loved working on mouths, which I admired you for a lot — I love people to have healthy and pain- and stink-free teeth — while I couldn’t even cut up an earthworm in bio — I had to have this bright premed seated at the same lab table do it for me on the q.t. and I still only got a D,” “You can get used to everything, I found — I nearly fainted when they made me dissect a cadaver’s head in my first year at dental school, but I wanted to become a dentist so much that I didn’t let it stop me, and you don’t have to be the kind of dentist I was — you like kids so much you can specialize in their teeth and hand out stickers and cheap toy trinkets after, or only work on gums, implants, adult braces — those guys make more than anyone alive except one kind or another drug or Wall Street thief,” “Fine for you, which I also admired, pushing through with what you couldn’t stomach, but I’ve no interest in making a bundle and since teaching only takes about thirty hours a week max I have some time to do what I really like to too,” “And where’s it all get you? — you have to check your checkbook every time you fill your tank with gas,” “Not anymore, but what else you want to say to me while we’re at it?” “What else could there be? — we just about covered it all,” “Alex, what’s got to be your thirty-year gripe against me but never expressed,” “You’re the one with the full head of guilt so you get rid of it — me, I don’t let it bother me day to day,” “But we’re on the line, talking instead of yelling about things for once, so let’s use the opportunity,” “Forget it, arguments when you’re desperate never get you anywhere, also because I don’t want you paying too big a bill for this call,” “What’s the difference, it’s my money, and what the hell’s it for?” “The difference is you don’t want to piss it all away on AT&T,” “That’s you again — chip chip chip, cutting back on the X rays when you took care of my teeth, so later with other dentists costing me three root canals,” “I was no good with my kids’ teeth — it took me a while to realize that — I didn’t want to hurt them so knew I wasn’t going to drill too deep,” “Then what about winding through streets you didn’t know rather than directly over the bridge to save on the toll, probably costing you another gallon of gas besides?” “That was before the higher prices — seventeen, eighteen cents a gallon so who cared? and you saw streets you never saw before and who says we always got to go the way they tell us or because it’s straight and new? and I’m not talking here about anything but the actual gas, streets, bridges and such so don’t make another meaning of it,” “But if it’s an important phone talk — like if you’re ruining your kids’ teeth with your sensitivity or wasting your passengers’ time with your meandering route — I’m saying when something might just possibly come out of it to clear things up once and for all or smooth them out?” “Who could know what you’re talking about from that? and I can’t help it but we’re running up a phone bill that’s beginning to make me sick,” “Look, give me your number if you can and I’ll call right back — trick I should have thought of before to make you feel easier with how much this is costing me and which I picked up from you whenever you were going overtime on a pay phone — that and banging the side of the box same time you dropped the nickel into the slot which somehow recorded it as a quarter,” “I didn’t do those only to save — I got a kick putting one over on the system, something you should try more of to make yourself not so rigid, but OK, I can see you’ll never let up, and somebody declared it truth day today and your pockets are burning and got to be put out, so Alex and that last call of his from England, right? and what you said in it, especially after I pleaded with you beforehand, knowing your fast mouth and mind of your own, to keep your trap shut,” “I thought he’d want to be here if Vera died and not days after she was buried,” “But she didn’t die, which I knew she wouldn’t — she’d taken a turn for the worse, something she’d done before after one or two of her operations and lived, so I told you if he called, which we expected since he knew she was going in and he was that kind of brother, and asked how she was to say ‘Not bad, in fact pretty good,’ for I knew he’d fly straight home if he knew the real shape she was in, but what does the big brain say? — he says ‘Dad’s not giving you the complete lowdown, the operation was a flop and it’s possible she might die,’ and I yell on the extension ‘Don’t listen to that jerk — he’s just jealous you’re away playing and he’s working — she’s fine, a little set back but she’ll be OK, stay where you are, you paid through the nose for your trip so have fun while you can, get your traveling bug out of your system and then come back and be serious again with your life, just keep us posted with your address if we think, which I don’t expect us to, you should come back suddenly and we need to telegram,’ but he says you wouldn’t lie to him on this, he thanks us both, me for trying to spare him so he could continue traveling and you for telling him the score and he’s taking the next flight home, and then something must have lit up in you — misgivings or some serious thinking over that you were changing matters when they shouldn’t for otherwise you never would have given in, but you compromised with me for once by telling him he doesn’t have to run home so fast, that he could enjoy himself some more by taking a ship back, which were cheaper than planes then — maybe even a freighter which you said could be an interesting finishing experience for him, and I remember him saying ‘You mean it about Vera?’ and you saying ‘Indubitably for sure,’ which was a code saying between you two when you both totally went along with something, and that you had perhaps overdone her sickness to him somewhat and that he has that much more time — oh, I could have slugged you because if I was him you certainly weren’t convincing me — but he fell for it — for a very bright guy he had a sudden dumb moment — and did what you suggested, found a cheap freighter in a couple of days and sent us a telegram that he was on his way and when in Boston it would get there, and then two weeks went by, we got worried, three—,” “I don’t know if you know or if this is the appropriate time to bring it up but I saw him just before — I forgot to mention it — Vera too, not together, one after the—,” “Good, I’d like to see them too, but think of all those years your mother and I went through when you didn’t see him — nobody did and all because you wouldn’t listen to me — you thought you knew better — you wanted him back because you were gloomy over some floozy who dumped you that week he called so you wanted your best pal to talk about it with plus to take over some of the hospital-sitting chores you did in Vera’s room then too,” “Maybe that was part of it — a small part, the girl, who if I recall was nice, and my wanting his company — but I really did think Vera was that sick and would die,” “Why, where was the evidence?” “Something about the way the doctor spoke and looked at me earlier that day told me she was even worse off than he said,” “Come on, he was just another arrogant Mt. Sinai doctor — they all look as if they’re about to spit on you,” “No, it was something else,” “What, his eyes? you didn’t like his tie? the way his Adam’s apple jumped up and down when he said ‘no, yes, goddamnit’? because I was there too — right outside her room, right? and outside through the little window down the hall it was just getting dark — you asked if you should contact your brother overseas to get him home and he said he didn’t think her condition was as grave as that right now,” “If he used the word grave, maybe that was it,” “He used the word serious, bad, urgent,” “I still felt he was holding back — this business that a positive attitude on our part — and of course it’s better if we actually believe what we convey and can get the patient to laugh about his condition — will make her feel good and possibly give her that little extra she needs to pull through,” “So it’s what di