His Wife Leaves Him

” She goes back into her study and shuts the door. He rings the doorbell. Then pounds on the door with his fist till he puts a dent in it. He keeps pounding on the dent but can’t make it any larger. He thought if he could get a hole large enough in the door, he’d stick his hand through and find the new key on the hook by the door, where he’s sure she put it. He’d break the glass in the door to get the key, but he thinks she was barefoot or just in socks and he doesn’t want her coming out and cutting her feet. He yells “You’re wrong. Let me in. It’s not fair.” He grabs the doorknob and shakes it as hard as he can, thinking it’ll fall off and he’ll then be able to push the door open. When he does, he’s really going to have a talking with her, he thinks. Nothing abusive; he just wants to work things out with her so he can live in the house again and eventually as man and wife. He misses her, he thinks. “I miss you,” he yells. …They’re in bed. There’s a little daylight in the room, so it must be around six a.m. He feels around his night table for his watch but it’s not there. It probably fell to the floor, he thinks. He leans over the bed and feels around the floor, but can’t find the watch. Oh, what’s the difference what time it is, he thinks; it’s too early to get up, and he lies back on the bed. She’s on her side, her back to him. He must have recently turned her over to that side because he knows he put her on her other side, facing him, when he got her set for sleep. She’s so quiet, he wonders if she’s breathing. No, of course she’s breathing, he thinks, but what he means is he wonders if she’s having any trouble breathing. Just before he turned off his night table light and fell asleep, she complained about feeling a bit ill and cold. He pulls her nightshirt up and puts his ear to her back and hears her heartbeat. He counts to the beat “One-two, one-two, button your shoe, button your shoe,” which is a normal heartbeat, he thinks, so she must be feeling better. Good, that’s all that matters. He pulls her shirt up higher and strokes her shoulder. Her skin is so smooth: another sign of health. He once said to her “Your skin’s so smooth”—he forgets what part of her body he felt then; he thinks, her backside — and she said “Just like everybody’s, where you’re feeling.” “No, take my word,” he said, “yours is especially smooth, and all over, not just here.” “You’re only saying that because you want something from me, like my body.” “Not really,” he said, “although if you gave me it, I wouldn’t mind.” He wonders why he’s thinking of this incident now. Anyway, he started to make love to her and he forgets if she said to stop. He gets an erection. Now he knows why he started thinking of the incident. He massages her exposed shoulder with one hand. She doesn’t say to stop. That’s a good sign too, for making love, he thinks, if she’s awake. If she wasn’t interested in his touching her and she was awake, she’d say so to stop him before he gets too aroused. She’d say “Please take your hand away”—always “please”—“it’s keeping me from sleep.” Or she’d say “I’m not feeling well, so please don’t try and make love with me.” He’s nude; he always goes to bed nude. She always sleeps in a nightshirt and pad. He presses his penis into the crack in her pad between her buttocks; she doesn’t say anything. Either she’s asleep or it’s another good sign, he thinks. He strokes her legs and buttocks and puts his other hand down her shirt and feels her breast. She doesn’t say anything. All to the good, he thinks, all to the good. He unbuttons the pad straps in back, pulls that part away, feels for her cunt, holds it open with his fingers and puts his penis in. He can usually stay inside her for a minute, maybe two at the most, before it shrivels a little and slips out. He should have gone to the bathroom first, he thinks, got lubricant there and put it on him and jerked himself awhile and then got back in bed and, after wiping some more lubricant in her, stuck his penis in. This time he squeezes his penis at the end of the shaft to keep it hard, but by doing that he can’t move back and forth in her. Then she starts moving back and forth. She has to be awake, he thinks, or else started dreaming of having sex when he put his penis in. It feels so good, what she’s doing, he thinks. He thinks he’s going to come in her for the first time in a couple of years or more. Is she asleep? Don’t ask her. If he speaks, or even grunts, she might wake up, if she’s asleep, and get angry at him for having sex with her while she’s sleeping and tell him to stop. She continues to move back and forth, just a little each way but enough to keep him excited. He continues to squeeze his penis and feels he’s about to come. He hopes he does before she wakes up or tells him to stop or says she’s too weak or sleepy to move back and forth anymore or before his dream ends, because he suddenly thinks he’s dreaming all this. …He has to take the train to get back home. It’s late; past midnight, he thinks, and he also thinks he’s had this dream, in various ways, before. It’s always late at night; the subway station’s never recognizable; he always gets on the wrong train or finds himself waiting on the wrong platform and when the train comes he sees it’s not his. Or else he doesn’t have a subway token and the token booth has a line of about twenty people on it, or he can’t find the token in his pocket and the right train is pulling in but he won’t be able to go through the turnstile to get on it in time. But maybe the platform this time is the right one, he thinks. He asks a man standing next to him “Does the BGE stop here?” “No,” the man says, “just the opposite.” “Where does the train on this platform go, because maybe I can take it and make a connection to the BGE at some station later on?” “It goes to the outer boroughs,” the man says, “—landfills, sod farms, cemeteries, places like those. Any of them where you want to go?” “No, I want to get to the city and I need the BGE.” “For that one you have to go to the upper platform upstairs and wait for it there.” “This always happens to me,” he says. “And if I miss my train, and it’s due around now,” looking at a clock, “that’s the last one till morning. Why do I always take the last train home? Why don’t I give myself more wiggle room? Then, if I get on the wrong platform and miss my train, I can go to the right platform and catch the next one.” A train pulls in, doors open and the man gets on. The doors start closing and he holds one of them open and says to the man “You sure this isn’t the BGE? I didn’t notice any letters at the front of it when it came in, but it looks just like the BGE, and I’ve been fooled before. I once let a train leave that was the right one and the last one that night.” “Please let the door close,” the man says, and a woman sitting next to him says “Yeah, let it shut — you’re holding us up.” He lets go of the door and the train goes. Above him is a sign with an arrow on it and the words “To upper platform, BGE, SUP, EBD.” He hears a train coming in upstairs and runs in the direction the arrow points to. This can’t be the way, he thinks. When I came downstairs I came from an altogether different direction. I’m just going to get myself more lost. He sees someone with a railroadman’s cap on and goes up to him. “Sir, excuse me, I need help.” …He goes into his mother’s apartment. Place smells wonderful; she must be baking something. He hears his brother Carl talking loudly from inside the apartment but can’t make out what he’s saying, except for “Yes, get the rope; yes, get the boat; yes, get the tree.” Great, he thinks. Carl must have just got back from a trip he started out on long ago. He hasn’t seen him for years and it’s so nice to hear his voice again. He hurries into the kitchen. Carl’s on the phone there, looks up at him and nods but doesn’t smile; his face actually doesn’t seem happy to see him. Is he angry at me for some reason? he thinks. What’d I do? Why, after so many years, isn’t he glad to see me too? “I told you, didn’t I?” Carl says on the phone. “So why do you pretend I didn’t and force me to tell you again? ‘Boat, ship, tree. Rope, ship, tree.’” His mother’s pulling out of the oven a large baking sheet of mandelbrot. She smiles at him and says “You’ll stay awhile and have some of these with fresh coffee I’ll make. They’re best when still warm but not hot, although, if I can say so…no, I won’t say it.” “No, do.” “I don’t want to sound boastful, but they’re always very good. At least your father and I think so.” “So do I and everyone else.” His father and Gwen are sitting at the kitchen table across from each other, both in bathrobes; placemats and silverware and folded napkins in front of them but no plates or food or beverages. They look very old, or sick and old, he thinks, Gwen as much as his father, who must be fifty years older than she. He starts calculating: 1895; 1947; so more than fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Their faces are beet red and scarred and have the texture of cracked untreated leather, he thinks, as if they’d been burned and were still healing. They stare at him as if they want to say something but can’t. “Gwen?” he says. “Dad? It’s so good to see you, and Mom and Carl too, though he seems angry at me for some reason. Do you know why?” Carl puts his hand over the receiver and says “Will you be quiet for a second? This is an important call. A lot’s riding on it for all of us, and I can’t hear my own voice,” and shakes his head at him. “You see?” he whispers to his father and Gwen. “For the life of me, what’d I do to deserve such treatment? Maybe one of you can answer it. For Carl and I were always very close, despite our age difference, or close once I reached twenty and he thirty, and it’s now as if he wants to punish me.” …He’s lying in a bathtub filled with water, smoking a cigar and listening to a late Beethoven string quartet on the radio — he’s not sure which one but thinks it could be the thirtieth. He’s had surgery for a new face, hair transplants to give him a full head of dark hair, cut off ties with everyone he knew in the past, has a new name and IDs and works at a menial job in a small town where no one has any social contact with him or knows who he was. The police and FBI are looking for him. They think he did something he didn’t. He’ll only turn himself in when things are safe and normal for him again. If he’s caught now he thinks he’ll be quickly tried and sentenced to life imprisonment with no time off for good behavior or chance for parole. The doorbell rings. He’s expecting no one — he never expects anyone — so let it ring till doomsday, for all he cares. Now there’s knocking on the door. Probably someone who came to the wrong apartment and is looking for someone else. Well, knock, knock till your knuckles fall off, he thinks, but I’m too comfortable here to leave. Knocking becomes louder and more insistent and his real name’s shouted out. “Martin Samuels; Martin Samuels; for crying out loud, open up!” Must be the police, he thinks. Face it, you’re caught, and he gets out of the tub and walks naked and wet to the door. I should put on something, he thinks. And dry the floor before I open the door. At least get a bathrobe to hold up in front of yourself. It could be extremely embarrassing appearing this way. But really, what’s the difference? If it’s a woman cop, she’s seen everything. A man, he’s seen everything too. But don’t open up for nothing. He looks through the door’s peephole; maybe the person on the other side’s gone or naked too. What would he do then? If it’s a man, he wouldn’t open up. A woman, if she’s not old or very unattractive or tough-looking, he might. He doesn’t see anyone through the peephole, so he covers his genitals with one hand and opens the door. It wasn’t locked, he thinks. Someone could have walked in and killed him in that tub. He looks down the hall. The elevator door’s closing. “Did you come for me?” he yells. “Is there something you wanted to leave me?” The door of another apartment opens. He backs into his apartment and tries to lock the door. It won’t lock. Damnit, he thinks, why is every freaking thing not working? Now I’ll have to get an all-night locksmith or stay by the door till morning. He looks for a phonebook. …Someone seems to be calling out to him. “Yes,” he says, “that one of you kids?” “Both,” Maureen says. “We didn’t want to wake you, but you were talking in your sleep, and from what you were saying we thought you’d want to wake up.” “Where are you? I can’t see you.” “By your bed; on Mommy’s side. Want us to turn on a light?” “No, it’ll hurt my eyes and I want to nap some more.” “Maybe you should get up, Daddy,” Rosalind says. “If you nap too long, you’ll never get a good night’s sleep.” “Not yet, thanks. But what was I saying in my sleep?” “The exact words were ‘Your mother is a ghost.’ That’s why we at first thought you were talking to us. But you kept repeating it — the last time almost shouted it.” “Sorry if I frightened you. But you sure it wasn’t ‘brother’ and not ‘mother’ I was saying? Uncle Carl’s the one who’s been haunting my dreams lately, especially today.” “No, ‘mother.’ It could be you dreamed of your brother but it came out as ‘mother’ when you talked in your sleep.” “By the way, Daddy,” Maureen says, “we brought some goodies for you from Cafe Zen, things you like. It’s still warm, the stuff that’s supposed to be, so we’ll leave it out for you. We’re going out again. There’s a good group playing only one night here and we don’t want to miss them, but wanted to get the food to you first. Will that be all right?” “Sure. Have fun. You get your friends off on the train okay?” “They came down by car.” “Car. Good. I’ll get the food later. No appetite now. In fact, put all of it in the fridge. I’ll have it tomorrow. Or you can, or when you come home tonight.” “See you in the morning, Dad,” Rosalind says. “I’d kiss your forehead goodnight but I don’t think I’d find it in the dark. Sleep well. Love you.” “You too,” he says; “you both.” They leave the room. “Turn the lights on outside, okay?” he yells. Carport and kitchen door.” “Will do,” one of them says. He can smell the Chinese food from here. Makes him hungry and he’d like to have some of it, right from the containers, but doesn’t feel he has the energy to get up for anything but the cat saying he wants to poop outside. Minute later the kitchen door’s slammed shut. Hopes they remembered to lock it. Should he turn on his light and read a little to get back to sleep? Wants to start from the beginning the reminiscences of Dostoevsky’s widow, book on his night table the last two months and before that for fourteen years in the bookcase in Gwen’s study and before that on one of their bookshelves in their first house. Seemed easy reading and interesting, when he skimmed it a few weeks ago. Really has no mind or inclination or desire — that’s the word: desire — to read anything else. Shuts his eyes. Cat’s asking for something from another room but it’s too late. …He’s giving what he’s calling his last public reading in half an hour and looks for the book he’s going to read from. It’s not where it was, on his night table. “Gwen, where’s my new novel? I can’t find it and it’s the only copy I have.” She turns over in bed, grabs a book off her night table and says “Where it always was, right in front of your face,” and hands it to him. “Were you reading it?” and she says “Why, in God’s name, would I do that? It’s yours.” “Wait a minute,” he says, looking at the book, “the title’s