His Wife Leaves Him

it could always lead to something deeper — and you never know. You can look at what you’re giving off in a different way than you did before. You’re actually still not a bad-looking guy and she never has to see that you’re missing most of your back teeth, and you’re built well, tall, not much blubber. Okay, you have lost a fair amount of hair and nothing you can do about that, certainly not comb it over. But you’ve got brains and a sense of humor and you are a serious writer and published — there are plenty of serious writers your age who can’t even say that, or not published in so many places — and it’s happened with a couple of women as beautiful, or almost as beautiful as she. Give it time. Whatever you do — all this, of course, predicated on her agreeing to that first meeting — don’t push it faster than it should go. You think you know what you’re saying there. If all works out, it could end the way it did with the two other beauties, but better, and one of them — the other said she’d never marry you, when you raised the possibility; being married once was enough, she said, just as her one kid was all the children she wanted: that living together till either one of you lost interest in the other was as far as it could ever go — you were even engaged to, only time you were engaged, and came weeks or months away from marrying her, when she broke it off. Why? Some bullshit excuse that was nowhere near the truth. Their different religions and also that she didn’t want to get tied down so young. She was how old? Twenty-five or twenty-four. Twenty-four, spring of ’61, and you were a few months older. Maybe in the future, she said. Truth is, she didn’t love you that much, nothing like the way you did her, and she didn’t want to come out with it because she didn’t want to hurt you. And when you grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth and screamed for her to give you the real reason she was breaking it off and admit she was getting rid of you for good, she told you to get your things together — she hadn’t planned to ask you this soon, she said — and leave her apartment because she was afraid you were next going to hit her. ‘I could, I could,’ you said. But enough; no more talking to yourself out loud or at least not to go on so long with such chatter. Bad sign. Of what? Of the obvious.” Anyway, it’s not like he has a problem. He’s not crazy, in other words. Talking to himself out loud isn’t something he does regularly or has ever done, far as he can remember, at such length before. He was just horsing around, so what’s the harm? — nobody was here to listen. And the butterflies — butterflies and horse, he thought; anything to make of that? — are gone. Went when he decided not to call her just yet and maybe not even till tomorrow. So maybe that’s why he talked out loud to himself so long. To get his mind off the call he knows he’s going to make. Something like that. He remembers slamming the receiver down fast after one or two rings the two times he dialed her entire number. So there’d be no chance she’d answer the phone and hear him putting the receiver down without saying anything. He thought she’d be alarmed or concerned in some way if she heard the slams. But he thinks he got the receiver down before she’d be able to pick up the phone. He just didn’t want to get caught. Caught how? She wouldn’t have known it was he slamming the receiver down. She might have guessed, though, maybe not the first time but the second — a wild guess, maybe something to do with the nervous and erratic way he thinks he acted with her by the elevator and then in it and later on the street and also that someone ringing and quickly hanging up twice in so short a time in one night, and the chances are pretty poor it could be two different callers, would seem less like an accident than only once would be — that it was he and wonder, if she was right, and it increasingly looks like she is, she might think, why he didn’t stay on the phone. Butterflies in his stomach at speaking to her? she might think. She’s so beautiful and desirable that it’s probably happened, and she’s aware of it, with other guys when they first called her for a date, he bets. If she asks, when he does finally call her, did he call her twice before or twice in a row last night and hang up after the first rings — it was just so unusual, she could say, and she thought, for some reason, it might have been him — he could say it wasn’t, this is the first time he called, or he did call those times she said and he hopes he didn’t upset her, and then give an excuse. Suddenly had to go to the bathroom and she might say “Twice?” and he could say “Yes, unbelievable as it might sound — and I don’t have a health problem with it, by the way — twice.” “Why didn’t you call back after?” she might say, and he wouldn’t know what to say to that, or not right away, so some other excuse. He’s good at excuses, or usually. He’s a good liar, is what he means. Probably has something to do with being a writer, or what helped him or steered him into being one. “I suddenly — just after your phone started ringing — got an idea for a story,” he could say. “I’m a writer, you see — I don’t know if I told you that night we met — fiction, only — so an idea for a story involving several phone conversations, though not one with you, and wanted to write it down before I lost it, and hung up. I figured I could always call you back later, but a good story idea, when I lose it I usually lose it for good. I hope you didn’t mind, hearing the ringing cut off. And I was right. Wrote the idea down, then started on the first draft of the story right after — somehow got caught up in it — and I wrote the entire first draft in one sitting and it’s a story I like and that stays with me, so after I finished the work I was working on — a short-short that took much longer that I thought — I started the first draft of the new one and will work on it till it’s done.” “I can understand your hanging up for that,” she could say, “but why did you hang up a second time without waiting for me to answer?” “Did I say I hung up twice?” he could say. “I guess I did. Well, to be honest, and it wasn’t something I thought quite right to talk about in our first phone call, but the first time I hung up — getting the story idea was the second — occurred when I all of a sudden had to go to the bathroom. I have no medical problem with it, you see. I just waited too long.” “What’s the story about,” she could say, “other than involving several phone conversations?” He could say “Oh, I’m very bad at summarizing my plots — they always come out sounding idiotic and trite — but I’ll give it a try. It’s about a writer, pretending to be a customer, who phones several bookstores in town asking if they have his newly published book. Saying things like ‘I think I have his name and the title right — anyway, it’s supposed to be an exceptional novel.’ Or ‘I tried getting it at a bookstore closer to my home but it was all sold out,’ etcetera. None of the seven or eight stores he calls carry his book or had planned to and most of them hadn’t even heard of it. Maybe all of them hadn’t heard but they just didn’t want to admit it. His aim, or course, was to generate interest in the book and increase sales. What he finds out, though, is that his novel, far as interest and sales go, is pretty much a flop, which will hurt if not kill his chances of selling his next novel to the same publisher. Not to go on too long about this, most of the salespeople he speaks to on the phone say they can special-order the book for him and have it in the store, depending on its distributor, in a matter of days. To the first one he says something like — to the others he just says ‘Don’t bother’ or ‘No thanks’—‘Yes,’—and all this will change a little to a lot in the final draft, since I do more than one of them and am always changing the text—‘Yes, please order it for me — I wish the bookstore near me had suggested that — and I’ll drop by in a few days to pick it up,’ which he had no intention to. And this woman, or maybe it was a man — doesn’t matter — asks for his name and phone number so she can call him when the book comes in, and he says ‘Actually, I’m going to try some other stores to see if one of them has it, because I want to start on it right away,’ and so on. You get the idea.” He also thought in his apartment that night when he was debating with himself whether to call her now or put it off another day, maybe he’s blowing this way out of proportion and she’s really not right for him and same for him to her, so why bother? He was also worried — but didn’t he go over this before? He’s almost sure he did but forgets what it was he thought. Anyway: worried he’ll sound like an idiot on the phone with her and he won’t have anything to say, and he can’t just come right out and say “Like to meet for coffee or a beer sometime this week?” without saying much of anything before. And he’ll hem and haw and then probably apologize for hemming and hawing and maybe even admit he’s a bit nervous speaking to her — now all that he’s sure he went over before in his head. And she’ll probably ask why, or she could, or she might not say anything but she’ll certainly think it and already have formed a not very positive opinion of him and maybe think him, which he can be at times, a little goofy and juvenile and even somewhat dumb. By then, she might want to end the conversation, what little there likely is of it, because it was obviously going nowhere and she was getting tired of it and has things to do and it was getting late, and say — just come right out with it, since she has no interest in him so has nothing to lose — Did I really tell him how to get my phone number? she might think during or after the call — that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea their getting together, if that’s what he called for, and she can’t imagine, she could say, any other reason for his call, and it was nice speaking to him but she has to go now and then say goodbye and hang up, maybe not even waiting for him to say goodbye. No, she’d wait. And she wouldn’t be so blunt. Way he reads her he’s sure she’s never rude and is usually very polite and would never slight or say anything that would hurt or anger him in any way, if she could help it, and she would know what would. But isn’t most of how he imagines the phone conversation would be, going too far? First of all, surely he could talk and act on the phone much better than he’s depicted himself here. Secondly…well, he forgets what that was. Anyway, he might be nervous or anxious on the phone with her, or maybe not, but he’d be able to control it where it doesn’t show. Answer this, though: why’d you think she might not be right for you despite your wanting to call her so much? The possibility of your not being right for her you’ve already gone into, you think. Physically; intellectually, perhaps, and maybe even the age gap. Forget the “physically.” You can see her — again, just something about her you quickly picked up — dating and even sleeping with, if she thought highly of the guy enough, homely, intelligent and artistic men. Scholars and talented poets. Architects who read, and the like. But the first question you asked? And there’s those times when you’re feeling worst about yourself and don’t think you’re right for any woman, but that always passes. Who doesn’t have serious self-doubts? But answer the one about her not being right for you. I don’t know. Yes, you do. I just can’t this moment come up with an answer for it. Yes, you can; don’t worm your way out of it. Her looks. Was she really all that good-looking? Oh, come on. First you think she’s gorgeous and then you don’t think she’s that good looking? I didn’t say she wasn’t. I was just wondering if I saw right. I did have a little more than a little to drink that night. Also, my eyes are bad and my glasses are old and I need a new eye exam and lenses, so I could have mis-seen what I saw, for want of a better expression or word. “Mis-seen” isn’t either, right? Stop it. She was pretty, very pretty, maybe beautiful, maybe even drop-dead gorgeous, besides being exceptionally pleasant, gentle and bright. Pleasant and gentle, yes, but that could just be good manners. But how can you tell about her being so bright, for you know I wouldn’t want to go out, over a period of time, if it ever came to that, and same with sleeping with, with someone who wasn’t, not necessarily “exceptionally,” but very bright? The way she spoke, her look. The words she used, and other things: her voice. Maybe she’s too smart for me, then. Did she seem that way? No. She just seemed smart, learned, quick, articulate, and probably very bright, and interested, from what I could make out — I forget what it was, but it was something — in some, maybe many — no, we didn’t talk long enough for me to say “many”—of the same things as me. Literature. She teaches it, must have spent years at a very high level studying and writing about it. She has a Ph.D., said so at the elevator. But you know these academics. No, what? I never really got along with them, and for some reason the women more than the men. There was Eleanor, years ago. No Ph.D., just a master’s in English literature, not that I’m knocking it with that “just.” I barely made it out of college and never wanted to go further. Actually, not so. In ’58, couple of months after I graduated college and exactly ten years before I met Eleanor and twenty before today — those ten-year intervals could be significant, although in ’48 I was in seventh grade — I started an M.A. in American lit at Hunter and lasted all of three weeks. Walked out of a class in bibliography — one of my two courses — other was in pre- or post-colonial or — Columbian literature — remember, this was twenty years ago — still open to me because I registered so late. Left in the middle of the class, in fact, with the professor saying to me as I gathered up my books and stuff and headed for the door, “Yes?” and I saying “I’m sorry, this is just not for me. I was either naive or stupid enough to think that going for a master’s in literature, we’d just read and talk about what we read, and after class, sometimes with the teacher, go out for coffee or beer and talk some more about our books and all sorts of things.” No, I didn’t say that, but wanted to. Also, what a pedant I thought he was and that I can’t, because of the technical language of his trade, understand half of what he says. What he actually said to me was “Mr. Samuels, is it? Class hasn’t been dismissed,” but I just left the room without saying a word. But Eleanor — second woman I went with, although she was the first, whose thesis was on some aspect of Dickens’ work. Windows, I think, and doors. “Oubliette.” I never heard the word before and don’t think I’ve seen it since. Good in bed, though she needed a lot of pot to get that way, but unattractively coarse and stingingly frank and aggressively self-serving and insufferably smug. Enough adverbs for you? I usually don’t use them other than for “obviously” and if “probably” and “possibly” are adverbs. Boy, what she would have done with that. “Hey, buddy, let’s get to it,” she once said. “You only helped me get one orgasm, while I helped you get three.” I didn’t have three but couldn’t convince her, so had to perform when I was spent. I told her this can lead to a heart attack and she said “Rubbish, you’re too young.” The second and third orgasms she referred to were continuations, separated by silence for a few seconds and then accompanied by the familiar noise, of the only one I had. But an example of her smugness? “Oh, you didn’t know Dickens died before he was sixty? You must not have been paying attention in your high school English class.” He did die that early? It’d seem with all those lengthy novels and book-length travel journals, he had to have lived well into his seventies and never put his pen down till he dropped. No, under sixty, but not by much. Funny, she mentioned high school, because that was the only time I liked Dickens. The abridged