His Wife Leaves Him

that I do it regularly, calling up women, I want you to know, or calling up anyone. Phones were just never my best form of medium. I’m much better talking directly, with no, whatever you want to call it, interconnecting medium. There’s that word medium again,” he’d probably say if he said all that, “confirming to you, I’m afraid, my difficulty in talking on the phone. I wasn’t always like that, I want you to know. As a teenager I was a regular chatterbox on the phone with my friends and girls my age, infuriating my father, I can tell you, as he was pretty tight with money. Or maybe he was just being realistic, since you paid, I think, a dime a minute for a local call then, after the forty or fifty free minutes a month the phone company gave you.” But he wouldn’t even say that. Going into personal family history and his youth too soon, and most of the other stuff he’d sound silly saying and he’d get flustered trying to get out of it. Best: keep it simple and relatively quick. You’re relaxed, you’re ready, you dial and if she doesn’t pick up, you call again an hour or two later, still relaxed and ready, and if she doesn’t pick up then or the next time you call that night, you call the next day, and so on. But she has to pick up some time, unless she’s away, and even if she is, she’ll come back, and when she does pick up, you say “Hi, how are you?”—if she has been away, that’ll be his excuse for not having called sooner: he tried, her phone didn’t answer, he suspected she was away and decided to give it a few days—“it’s Martin Samuels, fellow you met at Pati Brooks’ party the other night, or should I say, in the hallway outside it, by the elevator.” Or better: “Hello,” or “Good evening”—no, too formal; just “Hello, it’s Martin…Martin Samuels, guy you met the other night in the hallway outside Pati’s party, both of us waiting for the elevator that didn’t seem to want to come. Did we ever figure out what the delay was all about? Anyway, how have you been?” and maybe, with her help, since he’s never been much good at initiating things to talk about on the phone, especially with someone he barely knows, the conversation will take off from there or just proceed naturally if maybe a bit awkwardly, but get better as it goes along. She might say something like “I’ve been doing okay, thanks, and you?” but the point is to get her to talk a little about herself and what she’s been doing so then he could respond to it. A new movie or museum show she might have seen that he’d seen also and they could talk about it, or if he hadn’t seen it — more chance of that with a movie, since he never goes to them alone — he could say “I’ve heard about it” or “read a review. Is it worth seeing?” Or he could try to come up with something else to get her to say what she’s been doing lately, he thought. Teaching. “How’s it going? I’ve never taught anything but junior high school for the Board of Ed for six years. Mostly per diem work, which wasn’t too awful because you just come and go in different schools and rarely see the same surly and sleepy and sometimes sweet faces for more than two days in a row. But for a year and a half I was a permanent sub, teaching language arts to eighth graders, the worst and most dangerous job I ever had, and believe me, I know: I once drove a cab here when drivers were being robbed and bumped off regularly.” If he did say that — maybe he wouldn’t say the cab part — he’d just be trying to bring her in and keep the conversation going — she’d probably say something like “What made it so bad?” “Knots in my stomach going home every day, and weekends ruined thinking about going in to teach Monday. And twice, a knife, pulled on me in class, and I had to physically disarm the kids, leading to the mother of one boy complaining to the principal that I ripped the kid’s sweater when I threw him to the floor and I’d have to pay for it. And one time I was going down the subway entrance after school and my least favorite student called me to look up and dropped a brick on my head. You probably saw the ugly scar my hair doesn’t cover up anymore because of my receding hairline.” He’d mention his growing baldness? Even in jest, why allude to it, possibly giving her more reason for turning him down? She already must think he’s a lot older than her. He’d more likely just say “which left a long scar on my forehead you might have noticed. Not so bad. My head’s full of them, most of them much smaller and on the sides where they don’t show, from when I was a very active but clumsy boy. I had that student suspended”—if she asked what happened to the kid, and if she didn’t, he’d just tell her—“and feared for the wholeness of my head for the rest of the school year, especially when he was let back in school after two weeks though not in my class.” She might ask why did he continue teaching if it was so bad? and he’d say “Money. At the time it was the best I could do and the long summer break gave me time to write. Not that I ever stopped while I was teaching, but did much less of it. But enough about me and my occupational hazards and adversities.” That’d be a good line if he got the chance to use it and it didn’t feel forced. “Tell me about your teaching. I want to know what it’d be like standing in front of a class without losing my voice every day shouting the umpteenth time for quiet, or not having to turn around every five seconds when I’m writing something on the blackboard, to prevent another head-cracking object thrown at me.” Then he could ask, if she didn’t bring it up, what are some of the books she uses in class and then talk with her about one of them he might have read — chances are always fairly good for that — or say he hasn’t read them all or maybe any of them, but one particularly he’s wanted to read, or if he’s read it, reread. “What’s a good translation of it,” he could say, “or maybe there’s only one? Wouldn’t I love to read even a semi-serious novel in the original foreign language. I’ve tried, in German and French, but couldn’t get halfway through them without going to the bilingual dictionaries a million times, even with Simenon and Remarque.” So, plenty of things to talk about. Her thesis and dissertation — what were they on? She could then say that would take too long to explain on the phone, and he could say “Then let’s meet. I’d like to hear about your work and what you’ve written, and if you’ve done book reviews or published some of your scholarly work, maybe I could locate them. I’m always interested in the art work and critical writings and such that people I’ve just met do.” He can be such a bullshit artist, he’s thought lots of times. Maybe less so now but plenty then. But whenever he is he tries to do it in a way where he doesn’t seem like one. Here, he’d just be trying to get over the early humps of his first call to her. Maybe, he thought, he should just say to her, without anything else about her teaching and writing and nothing about his, “I’m curious who some of the writers are that you teach, or did I say that the other night in front of Pati’s building? Even if I did — it sounds like something I’d ask because I’m always looking for something new to read — we talked for so short a time, we couldn’t have gone into it very much,” and then see where the conversation goes from there. If he does refer to his teaching and writing — even if he told himself not to, he could find himself doing it — should he slip in how, in his one free period a day in those schools, he used to, with a fountain pen, edit and then rewrite repeatedly, and never without making a change or two every time he rewrote the page, a couple of pages of a short story he was working on at the time, while the rest of the teachers in the teachers’ lounge were grading papers, writing lesson plans, napping, eating, smoking, talking, reading a newspaper, playing cards. It’d be a good anecdote, he thought, and again, without pushing it and if he could fit it into the conversation smoothly, give her an idea how committed he is to his writing. That he never leaves it home. In other words, if she asks what he means by that or he feels he needs to explain it or elaborate, that he always takes it with him, physically or in his head, so long as he has a copy of the original manuscript on his work table in his apartment in case the part he takes to school gets damaged to the point where he can’t read it or lost. And when she does answer the phone and they talk and the conversation goes well or lags a little but sort of reaches a certain time limit for a first call and he says something like “With all your teaching and other activities, you must be quite busy and I’ve taken up a lot of your time, so I should come right out with it and ask if you’d like to meet for coffee or something one of these days — tomorrow or the next day or whenever you’re free,” what could be the worst thing that could happen? She says no. But no with an explanation that does something to his stomach. She’s seeing somebody. Not only is she seeing somebody but it’s somebody she feels quite strongly about. She’s sorry she led him on. She probably wouldn’t say that. At the time when she gave him her phone number—“You mean, how to get it,” he’d say if she said that, and maybe say it a bit angrily, and she might say something like “Whatever way you got it — I wasn’t completely aware how deep my feelings were for this man.” She probably wouldn’t say anything like that either. She’d probably think she doesn’t need to explain. After all, they barely know each other, they only talked briefly, this is their first and probably their last phone call, so who is he to her? She’s not even sure about his name. Is it Martin Samuels? Samuel Martin? Oh, she’d know his name all right, he thought, but as a joke to herself it could be what she’d think. Lots of people, when they first meet him and some awhile after, have called him Samuel or Sam. Instead, she might say, if that she is seeing somebody what’s stopping her from meeting him for coffee and possibly also that she doesn’t want to lead him on, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” If he said “Is it because you’re seeing somebody that’s stopping you from meeting me for coffee and also perhaps you might think you’d be leading me on?” she’d probably just say she’d prefer not going into it. Or just — after he asks her if she’d like to meet him for coffee one of these days or even a drink — she’s sorry, she doesn’t think so and she’d rather not go into why, but it was nice meeting him even so briefly, maybe she’ll see him again at one of Pati’s parties, and this time at the party and not after they leave it. “She gives so many of them,” she could say, “and always one on her birthday, or has since I’ve known her, but where we have to promise not to bring a present.” “Yeah,” he’d say, “she already told me to set aside that date. An easy one to remember: Lincoln’s birthday,” and she might say “Darwin’s too — Pati told me that.” “Same here,” he’d say. “That’s the only reason I know and I’ll probably always remember it.” “Well,” she’d probably then say, “goodbye,” and hang up. Anyway, bad as he’d feel if she turned him down for coffee, or a drink at the West End, let’s say, which is just up the street from where she lives, on Broadway, he can only find out what her answer will be by calling her. But if she told him how to get her number, which is the same thing, really, as giving it, then it had to mean she intended to meet him, other fellow or not, at least for coffee, and to continue what he thought, and she might have too, was a fairly good conversation for a first one, at the elevator, in it and on the street. They did talk in the elevator, didn’t they? he thinks. More than just that business about pushing the floor button, or was that just in one of his dreams tonight? But the butterflies in his stomach, and they’re flying around now like fighter planes, he remembers thinking and writing down someplace and coming upon sometime later and thinking “What was in my head at the time to want to write down such crap?” are telling him something. What? Something. But what? That he really doesn’t want to blow this. He knows, he knows. So attractive and elegant and dignified, he meant to say, and seemingly good-natured and probably high-minded and obviously smart. He knows: whatever you do, don’t blow it. For how many future chances will he get to meet a woman like this? And he wants the whole works with one: sex, love, marriage, children, and the chances of getting all that, let’s face it, are fading. He’s losing his looks and hair and back teeth and is only minimally successful in his writing after almost twenty years at it, and the prospects, though he is being published by small places and in one recent big place though at the bottom of its list, seem slim of ever living anything but skimpily off it. And he has very little money saved and only a small amount of royalties owed him and no job possibilities to speak of and it doesn’t look good he’ll ever have them: applied the last five years to he doesn’t know how many English and writing departments, college and a few New York City private high schools to teach writing and, if he has to, a little contemporary fiction with it, and not one of them bit. Not one even asked him to be interviewed for the opening or wanted him, when he suggested it, to send his one and then two and then three published books. And a couple of them said, so many more must have thought, they’d never consider anyone who didn’t have an advanced degree in literature or creative writing no matter how great a teacher and writer he may be, “and I’m not saying you are,” one of them added, “though in all probability you could be. I’m unfamiliar with your books and have no idea what you’re like in the classroom and was simply being hypothetical,” and he doesn’t know what other kind of work he can now do. Certainly not bartending or waiting on tables again or subbing in public junior high schools. So what would he be bringing to a relationship at forty-two? Though she might have found him halfway interesting and even physically appealing to a degree and maybe intelligent or whatever positive things she might have found him when they first met, on the phone with her, since he’ll feel some pressure to perform and because of that will have a hard time trying to act naturally, she could easily think him dull or too self-absorbed, or self-conscious, or something, but fake. And just being nervous about calling her up and speaking to her and afraid of blowing it, he might say the wrong thing or a series of them and turn her off. Something dumb or trite or silly or truly stupid and then try to apologize or alibi his way out of it and get himself in even deeper. And would she agree to meet what she was beginning to believe was a silly or stupid man even once? Would he with a silly or stupid woman even once? he thought. He might. No, he wouldn’t. He’d think nothing good could come of it. Going to bed with the woman that first date? After all, if she’s silly or stupid or let’s just say not very clever, she’d probably be more persuadable, so there’d be a better chance. That used to be enough, but not anymore. He feels too lousy about it after. That he’s being totally dishonest, done something wrong, hurt the woman, convinced or tricked her into doing something she didn’t want to or intuitively knew not to and now thinks less of herself, and so on. And she’s a woman, this Gwendolyn is, who could probably get just about any available man she wanted, so he’s saying if he acts like a sap on the phone, why would she want to meet up with him? Though maybe she’s not as intolerant of people as he is, or so quick to pass judgment, is more like it, besides sensing his nervousness and making certain adjustments for that. After talking with people for a minute or so or a little longer, he often thinks he knows what they’re like — silly, stupid, vapid, nothing to say, no original thoughts, uninterested in anything serious he is — and he sticks with that opinion. She, on the other hand, might think — she somehow seemed like this — that everyone’s good for at least one conversation over coffee or a beer — well, maybe with her not the beer; but