His Wife Leaves Him

Times at eight or nine at night (the Sun he reads in the morning) and then who knows what? Eat a carrot and celery stalk and that’s all for dinner except maybe a piece of cheese on toast, masturbate in that chair, but better and less messy in bed. Sit with no undershorts on under his regular shorts or just in a bathrobe, but nobody walking through the room or sitting on the couch near his chair and saying “You okay? Need anything? Do you know what tomorrow’s weather will be like? Have you ever read” such and such book or author? “Is there anything you want to talk about, Daddy, that you may be holding back?” And disturbing his concentration or redirecting his attention or startling him, because he fell asleep in the chair. But why even think about it? He can’t change it. Any mail today? What’s with him? It’s Sunday, and even if there was, and there always is — not one delivery day in their thirteen or so years here (he always had to ask Gwen how long they’ve lived here or what year they moved in) except maybe in the first week or two, has there not been some kind of mail, and today there’d be mail from yesterday and the day before — not interested in it. Since she died, he’s only gone to their mailbox every three to four days, other than to stick something in, for a medical insurance check that might have been delivered and the bills that have to be paid. A large bird, maybe a crow or hawk — no, too graceful and fast for a crow — swoops past the picture window opposite the bed and then back again, if it’s the same bird, and it could even be a bluejay, and disappears. Loves this about the house: the woods around it and the birds and, a few times, one or two deer. “Martin, Martin,” she shouted once from her study, last time either of them saw deer by the house, and by the time he ran there, thinking something was wrong with her, they were gone. “You didn’t see them.” “Yes, I did. Three.” “Baloney. You just wanted to alarm me. Otherwise, you would’ve shouted ‘Martin; deer!’ What a faker.” “No, I’m not. You’re just sorry you missed them.” “Faker, faker.” “I swear.” Did he then kiss her? Might have. Wouldn’t have wanted her to think he was being serious with that faker business in even the slightest way. She was so excited by the deer. Why didn’t he say “Ah, you lucky stiff.” Not “stiff.” “You lucky” what then? “Doll.” Leaning up against the left side of the window is a 9-by-12-inch framed photo of her holding Rosalind in the air when she was…October: June; eight months, both smiling at the camera, Rosalind pulling on Gwen’s hair but apparently not hurting her, or maybe she’s tolerating the pain for the shot. Asked her about it a year or two ago and she said it was too far back to remember — only he pretends to remember exact wordings and actions from years before — and with her mind now in such sad shape, doubly impossible to. “I don’t even remember who took the picture.” “I know but I’m not saying.” He really say that? Something like it, he thinks. “Ask me something from today or even yesterday,” she said, “though even there I’m only good for remembering half the things that happened.” What a beauty she was, he thinks, looking at the photo from the bed, though with his glasses off — where’d he put them? Always has to know. Looks at his night table and sees them — he really can’t see it that well, though knows from before how beautiful she is in it, and such gorgeous hair. He’s looked at it he doesn’t know how many times; can hardly avoid seeing it in this room except when he’s getting ready for bed or is doing his stretching or barbell exercises and pulls the drapes closed, covering the photo, but this is the first time he’s thought of getting rid of it. It’s been in the same spot for years since one of the eyelet screws in back came out and the frame fell off the bedroom wall and the glass broke. Gwen said a few months ago — came out of nowhere, or that’s how he saw it — she had her back to it — that if he likes the photo on the window ledge so much—“I don’t like how I look in it, though I’ll admit I look immeasurably better than I do today, with my sunken cheeks and frozen face.” “Oh, come off it,” he said; “you’re still a knockout,” and she said “Sure, enough to be first runner-up in the Mrs. America Stroke Victim pageant. Anyway, you should get a new frame for it, if for nothing else but to preserve the great shot of Rosalind,” something he thought of doing lots of times but never did. For what would it have taken? One of the four times a year or so he goes to Target to buy toilet paper and paper towels and such in bulk, he could have bought an inexpensive frame. Maybe Rosalind will want to take it. Why wouldn’t she? It’s a terrific photo of Gwen and her. So then why doesn’t he want to keep it? Doesn’t want to be reminded of Gwen ten times a day. So put it in a drawer. It’ll tear. Then on the top shelf of one of the closets. There are things of his he’s put up there that he hasn’t looked at in years and probably will never need, including unfinished and old unpublished manuscripts, so he should get rid of them. Also things Gwen asked him to put up there because she couldn’t reach any of the top shelves, before and after her first stroke — what should he do with those? Just start clearing out the place, get rid of everything he’ll never and he doesn’t think the kids will ever use, without even asking them. And maybe Rosalind doesn’t want to be reminded so much of Gwen either, though for different reasons than his. She’ll break down every time she looks at the photo, or not that much, but enough times to warrant not taking it. He wants to get up to turn the photo around so he doesn’t see it or put it away someplace, but feels too tired to. That pleasant ache in his fingertips that till now only seemed to come when he forced himself to stay awake to type some more. Was the photographer of that photo at the memorial? A good friend of Gwen’s from college, or good friend then, who came down from Princeton to take a few hundred photos for one she’d include in a photography book she was putting together of just literary mothers with their daughters, but he doesn’t think it was ever published. Gwen would have bought a copy, even if she was given one by the publisher or photographer — she bought almost all the books by writers and scholars she knew, even the prolific ones and even when he told her not to because she knew neither of them would ever read it and the scholarly ones didn’t come cheap — and shown it to him. Or maybe she did get it and showed it to him and he forgot. Maybe he’ll give all the photos he has with Gwen in them to the kids and they can do with them what they want. Only one he’ll keep is a small one in a plastic sleeve, or whatever it’s called, in the wallet compartment with his credit and health insurance cards and driver’s license and so on and which he only sees when he takes the bunch of them out when he’s looking for one. Gwen once said, after he laid all the cards and IDs out on a table to go through them for the one he wanted, “You have a stacked deck. I’ll raise you mine.” He laughed but wasn’t then and isn’t now sure what she meant, unless — just thought of this — he heard “mine” when she said “nine.” In other words…in other words, what? Nothing. She was simply commenting that they looked like a deck of playing cards, and because they did, she used card game and betting terms—“stacked,” “raise you,” and, for no special reason he can see, the number nine. Or maybe he’s missing something and the number is significant and he should think about it more. Some other time. Photograph of her in his wallet was taken by another photographer friend of hers at an art gallery opening they were at a few weeks after they started seriously going together. In other words, not long after they first made love. Here’s something odd. She claimed he didn’t tell her he loved her till about a year after they met, although, she said, she knew he did by the way he looked at and acted toward her and made love. He said once “You’ve said that before and it can’t be true — it’s absolutely not like me to hold back like that,” and she said “Believe me, my dearie, it’s not something I’d make up, and it always stuck with me.” And she? Said she loved him about a month after they met. A weekend morning, bright out, she just woke up, it seemed, he’d been reading awhile in bed beside her — her apartment was on the seventh floor, faced the Hudson, and didn’t have curtains or shades. When she was sick — the flu, a virus — and wanted the bedroom dark so she could rest or sleep, she had him stretch a blanket across both windows and fasten the ends to the old curtain-rod brackets up there. But that time, she just looked at him, head still on the pillow, smiled, said it, and started crying a little. Must have seemed a bit strange to her that he didn’t, instead of saying “What’re you crying for? It’s all right. I’m glad about it,” say flat out he loved her too, since by then, she later told him, she knew he did. She said that what he used to say that first year — in bed, on the phone, at a restaurant once, etcetera — whenever she told him she loved him, and she didn’t say it more than a few times, were things like “Same here” or “Me too” or “I feel the same about you,” but never “I love you” or “And I love you” or “I love you too.” Her eyes, in the wallet photograph, are looking off to the right, as if someone or a particular art work had caught her attention. She has on a white turtleneck, an opened suede jacket or coat (to fit the photo into the plastic sleeve he cut off the lower part just above her breasts), a shoulder bag strap’s over her left shoulder, and her long hair’s rolled up and knotted or tied or whatever it is in back but where it stays above her neck, and is still very blond. “A beautiful Jewish natural blond,” he said to her around this time; “what more could I ever want? And, oh boy, would my father have been happy. ‘Finally,’ he would have said — and not because you’re a real blond; in fact, that might’ve made him suspicious—‘finally, one of my boys does the right thing.’” Photograph’s been in the same plastic sleeve in a series of wallets for the past twenty-five years. Before that it was in a billfold she gave him as a Christmas gift the year after they met and which he never used — wanted to; because she gave it to him, but had no pocket to put it in his clothes except a sport jacket he wore once or twice a year — and kept in a dresser drawer for about two years before giving it to Goodwill in New York when he took his teaching job in Baltimore. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I thought you’d like to move up to a billfold. I promise, that’s the last time I’ll try to change you.” He’s feeling even tireder now, so maybe a good time for a nap. Also feels cold. One of his daughters turns on the central air conditioning or fan because of all the people in the house? Doesn’t hear any air blowing through the room’s register, but that goes on and off, depending on what temperature was set. Tries to just lie there without a blanket, but now he’s feeling chilled. Doesn’t want to get under the covers. That’d be too much like sleep, and he’d never wake up. Gets up, turns the frame around on the window ledge — now she’ll be looking at what she wants to, he thinks, but oh, so hard on himself, so hard, but he deserves it — and gets a cotton blanket off a chair — same one he used to put over her when she napped in bed or in the wheelchair — and gets back on the bed and covers himself with it. Puts the satin border or hem or edge — he always had trouble with the right words for certain things and would go to her for them — to his nose. Doesn’t smell of her and he didn’t think it would. But she was practically odorless, even when she hadn’t had a shower, which means he hadn’t given her one, in days, and also her hair, without a shampoo for a week, never seemed to smell, and her mouth, if she didn’t brush her teeth that day, and if she ate a food that usually gave one bad breath, then he did too, so he didn’t smell it. Cunt, too — he doesn’t remember ever detecting an odor there, but that she probably took care of before they made love. But she couldn’t have all the time. They’d be waking up, or he’d nudge her in her sleep or fondle her till she awoke, or he’d interrupt her working in her study and say “I don’t mean to bother you, but like to take a break?” or “like a change of scenery?” and often they’d go straight to the bed without stopping in the bathroom. Gets a hard-on. Well, what’s he expect? Their sex was always good before she had her first stroke, and after that he just took it when he could. Only time she had some aroma about her was when she had him spray her one perfume on her left wrist, she’d always stick out the left wrist, which she’d then rub on her neck or somewhere. Then she’d ask him, or she’d ask him before the perfume, for one of her necklaces and for him to put it on her, and they’d go. Last times for that were about a year ago, when they went to a concert or play or opening party for his department or dinner at some couple’s house. It was always a couple’s. But maybe he’s wrong about the blanket. Smells it. This time, takes a deep whiff. Smells like a cotton blanket that hasn’t been washed in a while. Tomorrow, if he remembers — anyway, one of these days soon — he’ll stick it in the washer, and after he dries it, put it away for Purple Heart. And the perfume. Spray bottle’s not even half finished and she’s been using it for about ten years. Cost a lot — she had him buy it for her birthday — and he knows it’s still good. That will also go in one of the boxes for Purple Heart along with her socks and bras and scarves that are in the same drawer with the necklaces and perfume. First he’ll ask the kids if they want any of it — the nec