Padgett Powell
Aliens of Affection: Stories
To Anne, Sophia and Antonia
Love and Will
Say about an hour ago she said well I don’t want to beat around the bush, Will, I’m deeply in love with this man. She wasn’t being cruel or rude. What was she being? Of course not cruel or rude. It’s starting to snow. When I was in her apartment just before, she said when you were outside did it seem as though it might snow? I said why, does she want to go out? She said she just wants to know, that’s all. I told her I was never in my life able to tell. But truthful is what I suppose she was. I don’t know. But certainly truthful is what she came closest to being to me at the time. I don’t know anything right now except right now I’d like nothing better than to be on top or underneath or at the side or moving at intervals all around her but inside her and with our tongues tied and playful and bodies tight. But there she was. After a while rather tired of me and wanting me to go. Though looking so calm at first. Kissing me when I entered the apartment though now instead of a whole mouth I got the tip of her lips. The peck. And stepping back from me when I put out my arms to hug. And when I finally got her into my hug, placing her arms around me weakly and patting my back as if to console me for my loss. Then holding my hands mother to child. Speaking to me man to man. Looking so sorrowfully at me as if for the pain she was causing me which she couldn’t help me get out of or over or undo. It’s done. She’s in love.
Listen, she said, trite, ridiculous or whatever this might sound to you, I’m in love with my entire being. So am I, I said. She said she doesn’t believe me. I said did I say it was with you? Anyway what you say doesn’t sound ridiculous or anything else to me because I too strongly believe in love. That’s good, she said. Or believe strongly in love — they both sound right. That’s good, she said. Or I just believe in love, I said, why should I refer to strength? But me she could easily dispose of. The lesser of two loves. Rather the one she said she was growing to love. Or at least could have grown to love. Or whatever it was she said about love. But what she did say was that for a while she felt she might have liked to learn to live with me but could now only afford from a distance to like. The one she loved deeply was the other who she’ll be flying to during her Easter break in two weeks. In London where she said he says he has a large and lovely Victorianlike flat. Saying things to me like that. And that she’s so sorry it had to come to this. Her oneway bliss. Because she was really quite content with me till she met this new man. It was all such a fluke. A girlfriend called her up. She said she knew this English fellow about to leave for England whom she wanted her to meet before he went. He came over for tea for an hour and stayed with her for a week before he took his flight last night. For a few days during this time she kept telling me on the phone she’s sick and very tired and thinks she’s coming down with the flu. Tonight she said she was fairly sick and tired but seems to have escaped the flu.
She also told me she thinks I’m a bit off. That she didn’t want to say it. That she in fact at first didn’t believe it. She said she thought when I said certain things she didn’t understand that she was being obtuse. Now she’s certain that many things I say are a bit off. I said off? She said off. I said excuse me but off to where? To China? To the provinces? Off to the outer regions of our solar plexus or the inner legions of hell? She said off like that. No not like that. Now I was being belligerent, defensive, reactive, if maybe a little off. What she’s talking about off is when I say things she thinks I think come to me from faraway places or just pop presto magically in my head and which she said I repeat with total confidence without really knowing what I said. Because aren’t people obliged to understand what they’re saying to other people aloud? she said. What they say to themselves or too low for anyone to hear is another story — she supposes anything goes there. I said I suppose so unless what the person’s saying to someone is said more for the poetry of the words — the sounds. She said these off things she thinks I say don’t sound poetical or anything else to her except off. I said I didn’t say they did. And that she’s right. I often say off things simply because I think they might or do sound metaphysically comical or epistemologically profound or just plain bright or yuk yuk funny and she’ll enjoy my company more for my having said them than if I hadn’t or some such stuff. Then you agree? she said. I said cross my hope and heart to die. She said that’s the first time we agreed on anything since that first time we ever agreed on anything which was when we agreed that her sister’s Great Dane puppies we were watching suckling their mama were performing a very sensual act. I told her we didn’t even initially agree on that. That I didn’t think the puppies were doing anything especially sensual in their suckling till later that night when I dreamt of those suckling puppies and in my dream became one of those puppies nuzzling my face between the back legs to get at the two hindmost nipples and that instead of suckling a nipple it was like being with my tongue and lips down in there doing it to a woman which I did to her when we woke. She said she doesn’t remember that. I said I’m sorry but it was only as a result of my dream and between the time of our waking up and making love that I agreed with her that those suckling puppies had performed a sensual act.
It’s snowing harder. Where oh where in my pocket is my collapsible green felt emergency harsh weather hat? I’m walking to my parents’ apartment of thirty-three years. People scurry past all four ways. Ahead a block away a figure slips and trips before he can get himself upright to flip over again. I pull down my hat tightly so it won’t blow off. If Dana were with me now she might walk right behind me holding my waist and then say she sees she can’t be protected from the snow and cold this way and can we take a cab? If I said let’s walk a little more, as I like a strong wind with lots of curlicuing large flakes, she’d probably say she’ll pay. It’s eleven blocks south along Central Park West from her building and then a right turn down a sidestreet to a brownstone halfway down. I pass the statue I passed with Dana a few weeks ago when I said remember the time I told you I once saw one of the museum’s custodians polishing the bronze testes of Theodore Roosevelt’s horse? She said then that as she said before she thinks the experience has to be experienced to be appreciated though not visualized. Tonight she said her scalp had mercifully stopped itching during the time David was with her though resumed a few minutes after I came in. I said I suppose that’s reason enough for falling deeply in love with him, seeing how she’s compared her up till then irremediable fungus to thousands of microscopic devils trying to claw their way out of each of her hair follicles and then getting lost in her hair, but why doesn’t she come right out with it and say she thinks I’m the main cause of her itchy scalp? She said she thought she just did. No she only looked at me teasingly as if to say she thought she just did.
I’m sure my mother’s asleep. She usually reads in her room while sipping from a half glass of sweet wine for a half hour after she puts my father to bed at nine. He’ll be asleep in his hospital bed in the living room, the room closest to the kitchen and bathroom, where during the colder months he spends most of his waking day. He’ll be facing the window. The floor-length curtains inches away from him will be fastened together by safety pins. I’ll turn him over as I do every night I sleep home. About once a month I must rush him in his wheelchair to the bathroom so he can make two. He can’t tum over by himself. We’ve been warned he can get bed sores if he isn’t turned at least once a night and that in the morning his muscles and bones on one side will most likely ache. And he can develop red spots on his ankles from the pressure of one foot lying too long on the other and his having dislodged the pillow placed between his feet. And because he’s a diabetic the red spots can lead to open wounds which can lead to a foot being cut off. Before I turn him over I’ll say urinate first. I’ll place the urinal between his thighs and stick his penis inside if he’s too tired to do so or can’t locate it. I’ll hear the splash against the plastic and then say through now? and he’ll say no or yes. If it’s no I’ll take the urinal away a minute later and empty and wash it out. Then I’ll turn him over and place the pillow between his feet. Two Chux between his penis and thighs in case he has an accident overnight. Cover him up with the top sheet folded a few inches over the blankets and place the urinal beside the Gelusils and bell on the table-tray beside his bed. I’ll say comfortable? and he’ll say yes. I’ll kiss him on the forehead and say goodnight. Maybe touch his cheek or run my hand across his face or pat his shoulder or head and shut out all the lights and say sleep well and he might murmur thanks. I’ll close the louver doors to the kitchen. Get a glass of wine from the refrigerator and read in bed with another glass of wine. Maybe return to the kitchen for a third or fourth or fifth glass of wine before I feel sleepy enough for sleep.