His Wife Leaves Him

He reaches over to the night table for his watch and presses the button on it to light its face. But he’s holding the back side of it up and turns it over and presses the button again. Five after seven. Thought so — seven-ten, quarter after — because of the light outside. It was like that early yesterday morning when he looked at his watch. Doesn’t want to try sleeping some more and is bored with just lying in bed. Read? No. Time to get up, he supposes. Later he’ll take a long nap when the kids are out. Reaches over to the other night table on what used to be his side of the bed and turns the radio on to the Baltimore classical music station. The dial’s always set to it; he hasn’t moved it since Gwen died. At night, if they were preparing for bed, or he was going to bed before her, he’d turn on the radio to the music. He’d listen to it no matter what it was. Low, though, if it was something he didn’t like. If she didn’t like what was playing she’d say something like “Do we have to listen to that?” or “Oh, no, not another Strauss waltz” or “Sousa march.” In the morning, if they were getting up at the same time — if she was still sleeping or even just resting in bed, he wouldn’t turn the radio on — she’d ask him to switch to the public radio station for the news. She didn’t read newspapers anymore. Maybe the Book Review in the Sunday Times, but that’s about it. “I’m tired of turning the pages and seeing the same stories or daily continuations of them, but mostly ads.” For the last three years she got all her news from the radio and her computer and what he’d tell her he read in the paper that day and she might find interesting. “You’re not missing much,” he told her a number of times. A Beethoven piano sonata was on. The volume’s low because he doesn’t want to wake the kids. He sits on the edge of the bed and listens to it for about two minutes while he does some stretching exercises. It’s a late sonata, but not one of the last three. Those he’s heard so many times on records and CDs and the radio, he knows them almost by heart. Or at least knows when it’s not one of them. Maybe the “Hammerklavier,” the 26th or 29th, or whatever number it is. Why’s he so sure it’s opus 106, when he couldn’t give one of the other opuses? The “Appassionata”? Knows it’s not “Les Adieux.” Liked that one a lot once but hasn’t for years and doubts he ever will again. Too schmaltzy. No, definitely the “Appassionata.” He’d say to her now, even though he knows she didn’t, “You played this once, the ‘Appassionata,’ didn’t you?” And she’d say something like, which she said for another piece he once asked her about, “Never. Much too hard. The only Beethoven I learned to play, or let’s say, practiced, was several of the Bagatelles. Those were what my piano teacher thought I was ready for after Brahms’s Intermezzo, not that they were simple. But I never gave enough time to them, so played them quite badly.” “I’d still like to hear you play them,” he’d say, “and also the Intermezzo again. I loved it. More than anything you played. Would you do that for me one day?” and he could see her saying something like “The piano isn’t what it was. I have to get it tuned and one of the keys replaced. And I haven’t practiced those for years. I’d embarrass myself, even if the piano was in good shape. But maybe.” He turns the radio off, Not because the kids might hear. Well, that too. Beautiful as the piece is, or gets to be, he doesn’t want to listen to any music; wouldn’t care what was on, and doesn’t know when he will. He does some stretching exercises on the bed. Oh, what the hell am I exercising for? he thinks. If I hurt, I hurt, and I’ll take a couple of aspirins to relieve it. Meaning? He stretches so he won’t hurt later, after he exercises, but it’s boring and isn’t what he wants to do now. Who knows about later. He’s been going, before Gwen died, to the Y just about every other day for an hour for years, but isn’t sure if he’ll ever go back. Just doesn’t see himself there anymore. And some people he knows there will ask, and he’ll tell them and break down, and he doesn’t want that. He gets off the bed, pees, makes the bed — that, he’s always done, even before he met Gwen; can’t stand an unmade bed — brushes his teeth, flosses out a few irritating pieces, sits on the toilet. While he’s sitting, kicks one leg up twenty times — counts as he does — then the other leg twenty times, then each leg twenty times again. Why? To do something while he’s sitting here and also maybe it’ll get something started. Then he rubs his scalp briskly for about a minute, digs in deeply at the end as he rubs, scratches the back of his head so hard he draws blood. Well, so what? Finds the rubbing and scratching, which he does every morning on the toilet, but not scratching as hard as he did today, make him more wide awake faster. That what he wants? Sure; why not? Sits some more. Nothing comes or even seems to be there, but he thought, as he does every morning, he’d try. Likes to shit first thing in the morning, but should give up trying so hard to. Should try not to obsess over it and to just let it come naturally. Doesn’t, then there’s the next day, and not that day, the day after. But don’t force it. It’ll come. If it doesn’t by the end of the third day, take some milk of magnesia or mineral oil — there’s still some of Gwen’s in the refrigerator. Or mix together water and orange or grapefruit juice — she preferred cranberry — with the psyllium husk fiber she used to use once or twice a day. There’s almost a whole container of it in one of the kitchen cupboards. He was planning to throw it out, but now he won’t. Her medications, she said, made her constipated, and constipation gave her a bellyache. “I don’t like talking about it,” she once said — oh, not so long ago. Months. “Why not?” he said. “It happens to everybody, or every adult, and you and I have been through everything. I’ll do what I can to help you with it, though I don’t know what that could be. Shaking up the fiber drink for you till it’s absolutely smooth. Anything you ask me to do to make things easier and more comfortable for you.” “I still don’t like talking about it,” she said. “While I’m still able to, I’d like to deal with it myself quietly.” “My baby,” he said, “I love you, shit and all,” and she said “Please don’t talk like that, and it’s not because it’s not a joking matter. It makes me feel worse. And I’m not your baby,” and he said “I meant ‘my darling, my sweetheart.’” “Did I ever tell you about one incident with my father?” he said to her that time or another, but when they were on the same subject. “When I was living up the block from my folks? I used to make sure every night, around eleven or twelve, that he was all right in his hospital bed in their apartment.” “You told me,” she said. “I told you that if I came into his room and he’d had a bowel movement since my mother had put him to bed, and you’d know it before you got there, I’d clean him and it up?” “Yes,” she said. “I suppose most children couldn’t have done it. I doubt I could have.” “That’s okay. But did I tell you it almost always made me gag and want to throw up? But then I told myself ‘You have to get used to it. If you’re going to do it, you can’t be put off by it. It’s just shit. So stick your fingers in it once and that’ll cure you of your squeamishness,’ and I did and it worked. Didn’t gag again, neither coming into the room or taking care of him. Did it like a pro. So don’t be concerned about it with me. I’m used to it. I’ve done it. I can handle it.” And she said “I don’t want to hear anymore. If it happens, do what you have to, or what I can’t do, but please don’t talk about it,” and he said “I just thought you’d feel easier, knowing.” Feels the back of his head. Blood seems to have dried. Should remember to wipe the back of his head with a wet towel in case there’s any blood there. Doesn’t want to scare the kids. And give up. Nothing’s going to come, and he stands up and flushes the toilet. Why did he even flush? For a little pee? They get their water from a well, so he’s always trying to conserve water though they’ve never run dry except when there was an electrical outage. And look at him, still with the “we” and present tense, and he does mean Gwen and he and not his daughters. That’ll change, but he bets not for a year or more. After a number of these outages — most of them short, an hour or two, but one for four days, where he had to get their water from a neighbor — he had a generator installed that automatically turns the electricity on a few seconds after the outage. So what’s he saying? Lost track. That he didn’t want to be without water with her the last two years, that’s why he got the generator. Before, except for that four-day outage — or five, or six; he forgets, but it was unbelievably long and very hard for them — they would use candles and the fireplace and gas stove. It would even be romantic and then joyous or at least cause for cheers when the lights came back on. Because sometimes — and this is the main reason he needed the well working — after almost a week of her being constipated, she would shit several times in an hour, and even after that, most of them normal bowel movements but some so large that they stopped up the toilet when he flushed it and poured over the rim with the water and he then had to use the plunger for he doesn’t know how long to unclog it and wipe up the shit and paper and about an inch of water on the floor and give it and the toilet a good cleaning. “I’m so sorry and ashamed,” she said the first time, and he said “Don’t be. Didn’t I tell you that once? It’s not a job I like, and I for sure know it’s not one you wanted to happen, but what can we do?” The second time, after he flushed the toilet and saw the shit and paper rising to the top, he cried “Oh no-o-o-o,” and then screamed when they spilled over the rim, “I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,” and banged his fists against the wall. She started crying. He thought “Good God, what am I doing? I’m making things worse. She could have another stroke.” He said “Okay, I’m better; I got it all out,” and told her to kick off her slippers—“Let’s try not to track up the rest of the house — and after I finish here I’ll wash them or throw them out.” Later he said he was sorry. “I swear, I swear; deeply sorry. I obviously wasn’t as adjusted to it yet as I thought. But, cleaning it up, I figured out how to avoid the toilet overflowing again when your bowel movements are that large. And I’m not blaming you for them, just saying. First of all, no paper in the toilet. After I wipe you, or you wipe yourself, we’ll put the paper into a plastic shopping bag and get rid of it in the garbage. Then I’ll get half the feces out with a kitty litter scoop into a pail of some kind with a little water in it and flush it down the other toilet. Or even less than half, but get it down to the size of a normal bowel movement, and do that a couple of times. That should do it,” and she said “I hope it works.” “It’ll work. Why shouldn’t it?” and she said “You know, with our luck.” Lets the sink water run hot. Sometimes he gets the hot water in a large plastic container from the kitchen faucet. It comes there faster, so there’s less waste. Then swishes around his wet shaving brush inside the shaving soap dish — the same cat-food tin he’s used for about the last ten years — and lathers his face and neck. New blade? The last few mornings he’s asked himself that and then thought “Tomorrow. I don’t want to bother.” And today he thinks the shave doesn’t have to be that close, for where’s he going? The lather’s disintegrating, so he starts shaving. Shaves every day. Maybe he should change that. Skip a day now and then, or maybe grow a beard. If he did, it’d come in gray. Finishes the neck and starts on the cheeks, always the right one first. Doesn’t think he’d like having a gray beard. It’d just make him look older than he looks already. Mentioned to Gwen about possibly growing one a year ago and she said “How big a beard?” and he said “Full. A goatee or anything like that wouldn’t be for me. Too foppish, and they look pasted on,” and she said “I don’t like kissing a man with a full beard. I don’t even like touching it with my hand.” “I know; it scratches your face. Lots of women say that. And it probably doesn’t feel good when I’m going down on you,” and she said “Maybe. But that was so long ago I don’t even remember if my bearded man did that to me.” “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” and she said “It’s true. It wasn’t necessary.” Does the chin and above the lip and is finished. He always did a quick shave, with very few cuts. Once did have a beard. Twice. Before he met her. Witch hazel? Don’t bother. Once in the summer and his face sweated so much from it, that he shaved it off after a few weeks. Another time, before or after the other one, it itched and he kept scratching it and pulling on the beard, something he doesn’t like to see other men do, and every so often he had to tweeze a hair that had got ingrown and hurt. That beard he kept longer. It was almost the same color and texture of his head hair — the only difference was that it had a little red in it — and he felt it made him look artistic. One person even said he looked like van Gogh, which he liked, and another like a young Pissarro, which he didn’t know what to make of, and the woman he was seeing at the time said it made him look rugged. But then he felt he was hiding behind it — he wasn’t showing hi