, a novella I loved except for the last part in prison. Like Camus, Bellow, skillful and smart as he is, can get too cerebral and philosophical for fiction, not a complaint other readers might have of them, like your mother, for instance. But a lot of readers,’ you said, ‘love that stuff and want to get intellectually charged up by the ideas and intelligent exchanges, in addition to liking the story and style. I think Bellow started out as an anthropologist, might even have gone on digs. But what I started out saying about the Ansonia—’ and I cut you off and said ‘Please be brief,’ and you said ‘I’ll save it for later, if you like, or skip it altogether,’ and I said ‘No, finish.’ You said ‘He has his main character — Willie — looking at it from the Beacon Hotel diametrically across Broadway, though the Beacon has a different name, but I don’t think the Ansonia does. And I read that from where he claims to see the Ansonia’s ornate towers and turrets on the roof, you can’t. Minor point, right? so why did I bring it up? Incidentally, I used to deliver food orders to the Ansonia’s guests, also the Beacon’s but not as much, when I was a kid and worked for the C & L, a combination deli, bakery, restaurant, bar and catering service a block north of the Ansonia, same side of Broadway. It’s where Fairway is now. Do you remember C & L?’ and I said ‘No; to me Fairway has always been there, and every year getting larger.’ ‘Have you ever been inside the Ansonia?’ you said, and I said ‘Yes. What I remember particularly is the beautiful marble spiral stairway — huge, and I think one at each end, and both went up to the top floor. I used to take piano lessons there. The building got terribly rundown, though, or was the last time I was in it. So, see you Wednesday, Martin,’ and you said ‘I talked too much, didn’t I? Didn’t know when to stop, something I don’t normally do. I’m sorry,’ and I said ‘Don’t be. It’s only that I’ve got a ton of work to do. Goodbye,’ and you said ‘Bye’ or ‘Goodbye,’ and I hung up.” “That was it? Actually, a lot for a first phone conversation — any kind of conversation between two people — with many diverse subjects and not much idle chatter, I don’t think. Except for my big blabbermouth, and thanks for filling in most of what we said. I’d say we hit it off. What about you?” “I don’t remember thinking that. It was just a conversation, longer than most of mine on the phone and among the longest we ever had — you were usually fairly brief on the phone with me, businesslike sometimes, except when you were away for a few days and you became lovey-dovey — and often terse and occasionally abrupt. Anyway, one I wanted to end long before it did, because of all the things I still had to do that night.” “So what happened and what did we talk about when we met at the drugstore?” “Please, sweetheart, give it a rest. I no longer like this routine or format or whatever you care to call it — it really has no name.” “Headtalk.” “Martin headtalk. But it’s feeling forced and it’s also become tiring for me. No more. Good day or goodnight, but I’m going.” This was fun, he thinks. And comforting, interesting, other things. Best thing that’s happened to him since she died. He means it’s the one good thing that’s happened to him since then. Did it really happen, though? He thinks it did and then he thinks it couldn’t have; it’s crazy. Crazy, how? He doesn’t know? If he told someone he thinks it really might have happened, that he spoke with Gwen in his head, that they had a long conversation, a very long one, they might say he’s crazy, see a doctor, but don’t get worried, it’s part of his grief; why do you think they call it pathological? If he told them how responsible he feels about her death, they might also say it’s part of his grief. How? That he’s trying to concoct a way to get over his guilt. He doesn’t get that. Unresolved psychological issues, they might say, if he wants it explained medically. But it sounded like her: what she said and the way she said it, and also the way she acted to him was like Gwen would, and she didn’t seem to be angry at him anymore. He’d like to believe it was real and he could talk to her almost anytime he wanted to. Try it. “Gwen,” he says in his head, “was I really speaking to you before?” Listens. She doesn’t answer. “To put it another way,” he says in his head, “were we really speaking to each other and your part in it wasn’t made up by me? After all, we lived a long time together and were very close — I think you’d agree with me on that. At least close most of the time, although I don’t want to be putting words in your mouth that way too — so I’d know beforehand what you’d say a lot of times and how you’d say it. Just as you, if the conversation were to take place in your head, would know a lot of what I’d say before I said it and also the way I’d say it. That didn’t come out clear. What it comes down to is that if you told me our talk actually did take place, I’d believe you, and not just because I want to so much. Why do I want to? The obvious. So tell me, what do you think about all of what I just said, except for the stuff that wasn’t clear?” and he listens. She doesn’t say anything. And there was nothing in his head while he was speaking in it, when before, when she spoke, and even while he was talking, he saw her face, sometimes just vaguely, and her mouth moving a little same time her words were coming out. Face from when? Recent. Between the time of her last two strokes, he thinks, so one side of her face — her right? her left? He’s trying to remember; how could he forget it when it was such a short time ago? — slightly paralyzed, but not so much to make it difficult for her to speak or be understood. And photos wouldn’t help, since she wouldn’t let herself be photographed after her first stroke. “Don’t,” she said, when he tried to take a picture of her with the kids, “I look ugly.” “No, you don’t,” he said. “You just won’t look in the mirror anymore, so you don’t know what a doll you still are.” The kids would know if he doesn’t remember by the time he asks them. What a question, though. “Which side was your mommy paralyzed on?” Anyway, she looked good in his head. Well, she was always a good-looking woman. Her stroke, except for the first few weeks after, and age — she was almost sixty when she died — didn’t much change that. Beautiful skin. Few lines or wrinkles. Hair brushed back, either in a ponytail or over her shoulders — he couldn’t see behind her — just a faint touch of gray, or the beginning of it: a few strands in the middle in front — high wide forehead exposed, not wearing her glasses. Where are the glasses now? Just one pair, only broke the frames once in the about fifteen years since she started wearing them, though had the lenses changed every other year or less because her eyes were always getting worse, while he broke the frames of his glasses a number of times, usually by sitting on or rolling over them. In their eyeglasses case on the second to top bookshelf in her study, all the way over to the right. Took them off her the night before she died. Put them in their case and left them on her night table. It was days later he put them on the bookshelf. One of the kids had said “What do we do with Mommy’s glasses?” Doesn’t know why to the extreme right. Plenty of room in front of the entire shelf. Why on the second to top shelf? It was on eye level and he’d know where they were when he wanted them. What will he eventually do with them? Keep the case because he was always losing his, but the glasses? Maybe keep them too because in the future — both kids wear glasses — one of them could use the frame. It was pretty expensive, not like his, but then she did in all those years only have two. “Gwen,” he says in his head, “I was just remembering one of the times we got our eyeglasses together. You asked me if I thought your frame cost too much, and you were teaching then and I said ‘It’s your money too.’ And then I think we had lunch out after, which we always did when we had the new lenses put in, but never when we got our eyes examined. Then, because of the drops the ophthalmologist put in our eyes to dilate them and which didn’t wear off for hours, we just wanted to go home. Donna’s. In the same retail complex as the optician’s shop was in. Cross Keys. That’s all. Just a nice memory popping up. Restaurant lunches, which I remember better than the dinners. How come? And please tell me if I am tiring or exasperating you or both beyond the point you can take with my chatter. Or you can, if you don’t want to respond to that verbally, shake or nod your head to it, and whichever it is — the nod or shake, if I see it, and to either tiring or exasperating you or both — I’ll go on or stop.” Listens. Nothing, and no face in his head. “Not clear again?” he says in his head. “I wasn’t? And maybe even a little bit stupid? Well, we both know how I can be both those. I proved it that night, didn’t I? More than stupid. Lot more. Much worse. Despicable, almost unforgivable, it was so bad. I’m so sorry, Gwen, So sorry. But please, one more question, my darling, and you are my darling, you’ll always be my darling, and then I’ll let you go. Maybe till some other time, though I swear not today, or maybe I won’t try this means of talking to you again, seeing how you didn’t like it very much. Or just that it tires you. I only want to do what you want. It’s a very important question, though, and the one I want to ask, probably the most. That one long conversation I’m almost sure we had in my head? Did it mean — does it, you’re no longer angry at me or fed up with me or you no longer hate me, if that’s what it was and I admit I deserved, and I’m forgiven?” Listens. Nothing. “That didn’t come out well,” he whispers. “I’m saying, my darling Gwen,” he says in his head, “that last thing I said — not the whispering, if you heard it — didn’t come out well. But you have to know how much I want to hear you say that…that I’m forgiven for what I said to you that night — said in the kitchen, but it was probably meant to be heard by you — and if it’s possible, that you still love me. So please say something. I know I’m being pathetic. And the last thing I wanted was for it to come true, what I said in the kitchen. But all this has to show how important it is for me to hear you say both—‘forgiven,’ ‘love’—so I know that last time, when you called me sweetheart, or just said ‘sweetheart,’ the only time you said it in my head, wasn’t a fluke.” Listens. Nothing. Too tired to? That could be it. And she’s already said she’s had enough of it, so why’s he pushing her? “Gwen, is it that you’re too tired to speak?” he says in his head. “And why’d I say ‘Gwen’? Who else could I be talking to? But just say that, a single yes to my too-tired-to question, and we’ll call it a night.” Listens. Nothing. “Oh, Gwen,” he says in his head, “please come back to me, please. If you can’t, and I mean to my head to speak, then you can’t or just might not want to, and it’s wrong and dumb of me to try to pressure you to. So I’ll catch you some other time, I hope, okay?” and he seems to see her laughing in his head — no sound comes out — though the image is unclear. “Good, you’re back,” he says in his head, “And laughing, if what I think I’m seeing, I’m seeing. That could be a good sign, right? — between us, I mean.” Or who knows what her laughing, if she did, and it’s gone now, was about. That he’s such a fool, maybe, and never changes, though he thinks he does. That he’s such a dreamer, thinking he can talk his way out of what he did. “Live with it,” her laughing could have been saying. “As you said yourself: you deserve it.” No, she could never be so mean. But she could be frank to him and was a number of times, not holding anything back, really disturbing and even hurting him sometimes and not caring that she did or ever apologizing for what she said or mollifying him in any way. After listening to it for about a minute, he’d usually say “Okay, I’ve had enough. I don’t know how much you think I can take,” and walk away, sometimes out of the house, while she was still criticizing him. Though he’d later — hours, that night in bed if she let him sleep in it with her, the next day — admire her for having said it, difficult as it was to hear, and tell her so: “Excuse me, I want to say something. What you said to me today (yesterday)? I know I must have said this before, but you were right on everything. I’m terribly sorry for what I said. Please forgive me or if you can, try to start to?” And he remembers her saying once or twice something like “So, I finally got through to you. Not that your saying I was right or how sorry you are is going to make my anger at you fly away. You were awful, as bad as I’ve ever seen you, and for a while I truly disliked you and wondered why I stay married to you, and it’s going to take some time for me to feel good about you again.” “A kiss?” he said one of those times, and she said “We’re a long ways from that yet.” “Then just a little one, on the cheek?” and she said “Even that.” “So serioso,” he said, “which you should be and I respect it, and I wasn’t making a joke,” and she said “I don’t care either way.” But stop thinking about it. Makes him feel even worse than he was. That what he said those times to set her off also made her scream hysterically at him a few times, even when the kids were in the house, and cry after. Long cries, where he’d want to comfort her but knew she’d say “Get away.” The poor sweetheart. What she sometimes had to put up with with him. He had to put up with nothing. She was always great. Suddenly she’s in his head crying and he says out loud “Please, dearest; please don’t. Really, you should get out of there. It’s doing us no good. You too upset and me too sad.” She continues to cry, again without sounds, and then looks as if she’s sobbing. “Oh, no,” he says, “don’t. What did I do?” He blinks hard and keeps blinking to make his mind go blank. When he opens his eyes wide, she’s gone. Thinks: Maybe now’s a good time to get up to pee. And then he also won’t have to do it later when he’s feeling sleepy in bed.