His Wife Leaves Him

his—not to dress stylishly or ostentatiously or expensively, and nothing she wore seemed that way, or to wear something or have on some adornment that calls attention to herself and you think she only put it on because it does. Again, is he making himself clear? he thought. He knows what he wants to say but is having trouble saying it clearly in his head and he for sure would have even a worse problem if he had to say it out loud. It’s late, or it’s not so late, so maybe it’s just been a long day, but it’s something, so don’t worry about it. But he doesn’t want — a thought he knows he’s already had tonight — to call her and have his words dribble out uncohesively. Incoherently. Unintelligibly. Un- or incomprehensibly. He’s not joking with himself: suddenly he doesn’t know. And right now if he had to decide on only one to use, because two or more if he said them to someone might seem like showing off, he couldn’t. Couldn’t decide. But to illustrate something he touched on before — clothes: Eleanor wore what to him were ridiculous hats and wool caps made in Guatemala and Morocco and Peru and enormous metal necklaces, maybe from the same places — she had family money and was a world traveler — that clinked when she bent over or walked. And Diana, who grew up “dirt poor,” she said, “and made it all the way through grad school, unlike some of your previous girlfriends, entirely on my own,” had a new hair style or cut every other month, it seemed, some of them he thought unflattering and made her intelligent face look a little silly. “What do you think?” she’d say. “You haven’t said anything.” “About what?” and she’d say “My hair; you noticed. So, out with it. Is it the disaster your face says?” and he’d have to hedge or lie. “I don’t know what was wrong with the last one, and all these different stylings must come at considerable expense, but this one’s nice too.” Gwen had beautiful straight hair, worn simply. “Worn” the right word? Oh, there was another Dickens scholar. How could he have forgotten her? Also had her long blond hair up when he first saw her and he also wondering how far down her back it’d fall. Or he thinks he wondered that about Gwen at the party. Sharon’s almost reached her waist. He likes long hair on women. All the things they can do with it. Loves it when he’s on his back in bed and the woman’s on top and leaning over him and her hair would cover his shoulders and head — this only happened with Sharon and Gwen — blocking out the light. And if not Dickens, then at least Victorian literature, and a Ph.D. also, so her studies, and possibly her teaching, had to include Dickens. California, Bay area, thirteen years ago. Got along with her just fine for about a year — in fact, as smooth a relationship as he ever had till then…never a disagreement between them till she broke up with him. Then he went berserk, smashed a glass on the floor, pounded the wall with his fists, called her a whore and a liar and a bitch who’s just been leading him on or stringing him along but doing crap like that to him since they met, and even threatened to hit her. Saw her three to four times a week — usually she drove to his place because her husband, who she said had no trouble with her romance with him—“He’s had his own sweeties, one he really flipped over, and he above all hates hypocrites”—worked at home. Then she wanted to have a child, and to be sure, for genetic reasons, who the father is—“It’s very important medically, you know, and if he ever separated from me, for financial support”—and because she wanted to conceive soon as she could and then lead a normal family life—“I know I must sound like an utter bourgeois on this, but when it comes to my own child, out comes the hidden traditionalist in me”—she couldn’t see him again except if he wanted to meet from time to time for coffee and just to talk and to see how big her up-till-now tiny belly can be. Before he went crazy that day, he said calmly “Divorce him and marry me and have a child. I’ll never cheat on you, I’ve been wanting to get married for years and start a family, and you love me more than you do him.” She said “No, I don’t. What made you think that? You’re a sweetheart, but you come in second. And for my marriage to end, my husband would have to divorce me. But he likes the way things are and doesn’t mind adding marital fidelity and a baby or two to them. Besides, he’s a successful writer, so has the means, while you’ll be struggling for years.” Met her at a health-food co-op in Berkeley. Diana he was fixed up with by a friend in New York. Eleanor he also met at a party in SoHo, but so far east it might be called something else. Sharon was behind him on the checkout line with three items in her hands: an unsliced loaf of millet bread, a can of inorganic garbanzo beans and a square chunk of tofu in a little plastic bag tied with a tab and almost filled to the top with water, like the kind one carries home a goldfish in from a pet store. Remembered how the bag always stunk from fish feces when he opened it. How’d he get the fish into the bowl without the feces? It was so long ago. When he was a kid. He gave them names. One was “Goldie.” The fish kept quickly dying, never lasted more than a few days, so he must have done it several times before giving up on owning a fish. Probably emptied the bag out into a container of water first and then picked the fish up with his hand or a net and put it into the bowl. “If that’s all you have,” he said, “—even if you have more”—he was immediately attracted to her as he was to Gwen—“go in front of me. I’ve got a lot more than you.” She said “No, thank you. I’m in no hurry. And what I have is hardly weighing me down.” “Put everything on the counter then,” and she said “The water could spill and I didn’t bag the bread.” “Of course,” he said. “I should have realized that. I don’t know what’s making me so dense, but you’re right,” and he couldn’t think of anything else to say and she looked away from him, so he turned to the front. Outside the store, he tied and retied his shoes, waiting for her. When she came out, same three items in her hands, he stood up and patted his pants pockets as if he were searching for his wallet or keys or just wanted to make sure they were there. Then he looked at her as if he had only just noticed her and said, “Oh, hi. Just thought I lost something, but as usual I didn’t. Wait a minute. None of my business, but you going to carry that bread home or to somewhere, not in a bag?” She said “I have a bag for it in my bicycle but forgot to bring it in with me,” and she unstrapped one of the saddle bags on a bike in a bike rack in front of the store, got a paper bag out of it and stuck the bread in. “So you slice it each time?” he said. “With a breadknife,” she said. “The loaf always falls apart when I do it that way, even with a breadknife, which is why I get it sliced.” “It stays fresher unsliced,” she said, “and will stay even fresher if you put a few raisins in the bag.” “Raisins?” and she said “Take my word. Try it.” Then she put her three items into the saddle bag, the tofu wedged between the beans and bread and something else holding it straight — a rolled-up hand towel, it looked like — so it wouldn’t move around and burst or spill. “Very ecological,” he said. “I should do more of that. I try, in other ways — biking instead of driving if it isn’t raining hard and the distance isn’t too great and if there isn’t an enormous steep hill along the way, since my bike’s only got one speed, unlike yours — but I never thought to bring my own bags to a store. I’m afraid I’ve only used them for my garbage till now.” “That’s putting them to good use,” she said. “You’re being ecological by not buying garbage bags, which would probably be plastic.” “I suppose. But what if I first used the bag to carry home goods from a store and then used it for my garbage?” “You could do that. Doubly useful. What an odd conversation this is.” “Well, you get into things, you never know where you’re going to go, but we’ll get out. Unfortunately, I’m almost inherently discursive and digressive. My father, by the way — am I holding you up? I shouldn’t say that, because I’m enjoying the conversation,” and she said “I’ve got a few minutes.” “My father was practicing ecology or environmentalism or whatever the right word for it is, long before most people, it seemed. But more out of thriftiness, which I’m sure came from his family being very poor when he was a kid, than saving the planet or preserving it a few years more than the global experts were giving it because of our planetary profligacy, I guess you can call it. As an example, and he’s retired now and disabled and quite sick so he no longer does this, every day for lunch he took a sandwich to his office wrapped in the same wax paper he used for the entire work week. That is, if it didn’t get too messy or tear, and by the way he wrapped the sandwich and refolded the paper after he used it, he made sure it wouldn’t. He probably would have used it the following week too but had no place to keep it over the weekend. My mother I know wouldn’t have allowed him to stash it in the refrigerator someplace because if anyone saw it, it would just seem too cheap, and if he kept it out for two days the paper would stink and parts of it maybe rot by the time he used it again Sunday night. Same routine with the paper lunch bag he carried the sandwich in, if it also didn’t get too greasy or start to come apart. Folded the bag carefully along its natural seams after taking the wrapped sandwich and paper napkin and that day’s whole fruit out of it — apple, orange, tangerine, etcetera. Napkins he used came from the dairy cafeteria he treated himself to lunch to about every third week, maybe also to restock his napkin supply. Would grab a couple of handfuls out of the dispenser and stuff them into his jacket and coat pockets. Where he kept them at home I don’t know, but he took me to lunch there once or twice and I saw him do it and figured out that’s where his never-ending supply of napkins came from.” “Outside of the napkin part, she said, “it seems he knew what he was doing, reusing what other people indiscriminately throw away.” “I guess, but I’m not certain, though I like your idea of looking at it in a good light. When I was growing up, though — even till about five or ten years ago — I saw it the way my mother did: that he was cheap. But to really exhaust the point and also to see this segment of my father’s life, since it is sort of a story, to the end and then I’ll stop, though I’ll stop sooner if you want me to, he made the sandwich right after dinner, or right after he smoked his cigar after dinner — wouldn’t allow anyone to do it for him — usually from a few slices of that meal’s meat leftover. If it didn’t look like there was going to be any meat left over, he saved a slice or two already on his plate and made the sandwich from that. What I’m getting to here is that if he only ate half the sandwich the next day, he brought the other half home with him, or whatever was left of it — even meat and bread scraps — in the same wax paper and bag he took the sandwich to work in and gave it to our dog, no doubt, in his mind, to save on the dog-food expense and, looking at it the way you do, to cut back on waste. He certainly didn’t do it because he liked the dog. He called her ‘public nuisance number one.’ The only thing I can think of now working against taking the sandwich half and scraps home is that it gave the wax paper and lunch bag one less chance of surviving the entire week. After the dog died from something she ate — it wasn’t from the sandwich but something she managed to claw out from behind the stove — I don’t know what my father did if he didn’t eat the second half of the sandwich, and there had to be times he didn’t, since he never brought it home. Okay, that should do it, and did I go on? This is the classic tale of a stranger telling a stranger his family history and life story, but much more than she bargained for or ever wanted to hear.” “No, I didn’t mind,” she said. “I kind of liked it. You’re a funny guy. And I bet everything you said was intended to be funny, so a successful funny guy. So, not only amusing but interesting, your delivery and material, in a sort of time-capsule way. What was your dog’s name?” “Penelope. I named it before I even heard of Homer. I must have got the name from a character in a comic book, which at the time was a