His Wife Leaves Him

even try,” and he said “I can’t believe that,” and she said “That’s nice of you to say, but it’s true.” She was smiling and seemed pleased about something and looked over her teacup at him as she drank and he thinks it was around then he thought they might be hitting it off and that he no longer feels he’s in over his head with her. Gwen later said — weeks, months; “It’s even in my journal,” which he’s been unable to find; looked everywhere; not with the others, which he hasn’t read any of but probably will one day; asked his daughters and her two best friends if they knew where her ’78 and ’79 journals might be, the years he was most interested in because he still hadn’t moved in with her and he wanted to know what she thought of him and their sex and being together and stuff like that early on but kept it a secret in her journals; he even suspected, after her first stroke, she gave them to one of the friends to hold so he wouldn’t read them because there were some things about him he wouldn’t like — that she started thinking of him then in a possible-mate-sort-of-way, and more than anything at the time because of his sense of humor, honesty, way his mind works and that he makes her laugh. He knows he likes her, he thought at the drugstore — a lot — and that she’s everything he thought she’d be, and pretty too and a nice body. Don’t, don’t, don’t, whatever you do, he thinks he told himself, seated on the stool next to her, listening to her talk or watching her sip her tea, fuck it up. He can do that and has with other women he was interested in, but he doesn’t think any of them came near to matching her. Maybe already too many jokes, though don’t get falsely serious. If this is working, do what you’ve been doing; otherwise, you’ll come out a fake. She asked if he does any kind of work now but his writing. “What I’m saying,” she said, “and maybe this is too personal a question—” and he said “It isn’t,” and she said “How do you know what I was going to ask?” and he said “It just seemed what was coming next. I’m still living off an old small book advance and the hope of a new one. Didn’t I speak about this in our phone call?” and she said “If you did, I’m sorry but that was a while ago and it isn’t that I wasn’t listening.” “Also the occasional sale of a short story to a literary magazine, which doesn’t amount to much but helps. My rent is fairly cheap and I’m on a tight budget, which doesn’t mean I can’t spring for your tea and our English muffin. Oh, yeah. I cashed in a few months ago a two-thousand-dollar insurance policy my mother took out on me when I was ten. I could never get her to explain why she did. I wasn’t prematurely old or diagnosed with a fatal illness and I didn’t become the family breadwinner till I was twelve. I remember salespeople of various kinds coming to the apartment and setting their sample cases and paperwork on the dining table — Fuller Brush man, Electrolux lady, someone for cosmetics, etcetera — so the insurance agent, who came regularly, must have talked her into this unusual policy for such a healthy kid. Thirty years later I benefitted from it. But if nothing comes my way in a month or two, I’ll have to go job hunting. This time for something more lucrative than bookstore salesman, which I did last year for six months till the store closed. Big Apple Books, on Columbus between 73rd and 74th?” and she shook her head. “I thought maybe you might have gone there and it was my day off. Good literary bookshop. Just the owner and I, but she refused to sell bestsellers. Or something less mind-numbing than bartending, which I did the two years before last, and also less dangerous because of all the cigarette smoke blowing my way. You don’t smoke, do you?” and she said no. “Neither do I and never have. You might think this is narrow-minded, and that I’m also limiting myself because of it, but I couldn’t go out with a woman if I knew she smoked, even if she didn’t smoke around me,” and she said “I can understand. I don’t like it either, but it’s never stopped me from going out with a man or even getting serious with one. Cigars might, but I never dated a cigar smoker. My former husband took up the habit after we were married. He liked one about once a week, always in the evening when he was watching a sports event on TV, but you put up with such things in a marriage and he kept the door closed.” “So you were married. How long?” and she said “Two years, though technically three, when we were both going for our Ph.D.s.” “I never was. My guess, because of my age, you might have thought I had been,” and she said “No, I didn’t think of it.” “Got close, in my early twenties. But the woman — she hated the word fiancée — even younger than I and already divorced, did the smart thing and disengaged us.” “Any reason you want to give?” and he said “You?” and she said “Not really.” “We were too compatible and having too much fun. I’m not kidding. It still mystifies me. We went to bed happy and had just got up and she said ‘You’re not going to like this, Martin…’ She even denied we’d ever been engaged, though the wedding was tentatively scheduled to take place at her folks’ house a short time before she called it and us off. I didn’t argue with her — I was too angry and sad — and only have seen her once since, other than for the times I moved my things out of her apartment. That was at the Natural History Museum here, when she was with her two young sons and I was on my way to having a drink with a friend under the giant stuffed whale. We said hello and she introduced her kids to me and that was that. No, I saw her twice. The first time when I came back from Europe in ’64. No, I actually saw her a number of times. But regarding a job, maybe you can advise me. Eventually, I’d like to teach fiction writing. Four books, we’ll say, seventy to eighty published stories — maybe even a hundred. I’ve lost count…but that ought to qualify me for at least an adjunct position in some college in the area or a continuing ed program.” She said “One would think so, and I wish I could help. I took creative writing courses in college, but I don’t know how my instructors got their jobs. I guess you just apply. You do know that adjunct work at any level — even if you’ve been doing it at the same school for ten years and they’ve given you the grandiose title of Visiting Associate Professor — pays piss-poorly, as they say,” and he might have said — he knows he concealed his surprise at her saying “piss-poorly”; she might not like him calling attention to it as if he thought she was above or beyond the expression or it didn’t seem quite natural her using it and it in fact sounded a bit artificial—“It’s a start, though. Which may, after only a year, give me the teaching credentials, plus my published work, and there’d likely be more by then, and availability and just that I’ve been writing without let-up for twenty years, for a contracted position someplace, or whatever it’s called,” and she said “Tenure track?” and he said “Yes, but there’s another word I’m thinking of for an academic hiring agreement that isn’t tenure track but could lead to it after a couple of years if they really like you and want to keep you on, but I’ll take tenure if it’s only that.” She said “Non-adjunct positions are hard to get around here. Too many respected professional writers live in the city and academics with multiple degrees who can’t get permanent English department appointments but can teach creative writing. But as you said, you never know. Though to be honest — and I’m not trying to discourage you — your age for an assistant professorship, which is what you’d ultimately want to go for, doesn’t help you.” “Too young?” and she said “That’s right. If you had only started later,” and he said “I tried, but the latest I could get my first book published was when I was forty. Hey, that was good.” Did he mention that when they got to the counter but before they sat down she said “This okay for you?” Yes, he did. Meaning, sitting on stools at a counter rather than chairs at a table, which might make talk easier and not be so hard on their behinds? That too, sort of. And he wasn’t just being accommodating. This he knows he didn’t mention before. It was because they’d be sitting closer on stools and sharing the same small counter space between them and possibly even bumping knees. The last he just thought of now. He pictures them both smiling and maybe laughing at his “Hey, that was good” line. And continuing to talk and sip tea and drink coffee and share an English muffin and maybe be serious, though he thinks the talk about teaching writing and tenure was as serious as they got. No, there were other things. And the words he was looking for, he just now remembers, were “two-” or “three-year permanent appointments,” something, he would have told her if he’d said them then, he’d of course take too because the salary for that position, he’s heard, is just a little below an assistant professor’s and the workload isn’t more and you get the same university benefits, but he can’t think what else they might have said. Books, probably. They were always talking about books, right from the beginning. Maybe even at the elevator when they first met. He thinks he went over this, but isn’t sure. He was carrying one that night and he doesn’t think it was hidden in a pocket and she must have seen it and could have asked about it. Books he read, she read, them both. But he doesn’t think they ever read the same book at the same time, even for a while after one of her first two strokes, when she was reading — hearing? —