Late Stories

Alone

He drives back from a lunch at a couple’s house. There were several other guests there. They were all couples. One woman came by herself because her husband, a doctor, had some work to do at a hospital. So he was there alone. His wife is dead. He looked at the couples and thought each person here has someone to go home with or to but him. Isn’t he used to it yet? He isn’t. He doesn’t like going home alone. Being alone at home. Going to these lunches alone. But what’s he going to do? His daughters are in other cities. The food was good at the lunch. There were turkey and ham slices on a plate. Smoked fish on another plate. A potato salad dressed with just vinegar and mustard and olive oil. A beet salad, a snow pea salad, sliced tomatoes, bread. He wanted to have a glass of wine or beer, when others were having it, but he doesn’t drink alcohol in the afternoon. Makes him too tired. He had water. He stayed pretty quiet during the lunch. The conversation was lively but he didn’t participate in it much. Once, he said, “Oh, I have an anecdote regarding that,” and everyone at the long dining table turned to him and he said “It’s about the president of the university I taught at, the fellow who you say now runs a prestigious medical research institute in Minneapolis. We had — my department — a visiting writer reading his fiction. Big crowd. This guy’s very well known. And the president came into the lobby after the reading — his residence was on campus and I suppose he was just taking a walk, saw the building lit up and lots of people leaving it, because he hadn’t gone to the reading, and. . Jesus, what was I getting at? Something he said to me. Then something I said to him. I know it ends with him saying ‘What’s a hunk?’ Damn, I forget. I’m sorry. Carry on, please. I’m not very good at telling stories anymore.” “Sure you are,” the hostess said. “He’s a very funny guy,” her husband said, “or can be,” and everyone laughed. After coffee and fruit, the wife of one of the couples said “We’ll have to excuse ourselves. We have guests coming for dinner and I’ve a lot of preparations to do.” “I have to go too,” he said. “No guests coming, but something at home.” He stood up. The couple stood up. He had nothing to do at home. He shook hands with three of the men, kissed the cheek of the hostess and a woman he’d seen at this house for dinner several times when his wife was alive, and the couple and he left together. He stopped in front of a plant outside and said “I have these around my house; but all around it. They came with the house, but mine are five to seven feet tall. Any idea its name?” and the woman said “Aucuna; that starts with an ‘a’ and ‘u.’” “Boy, I really asked the right people. I should cut mine down to about two feet, the way the Pinskis have it.” “That would be about the right height for them, two to three feet. They’re great plants. Hearty; red berries. And they’re not cheap if you buy them at a garden store. I love them.” “Well, if you want some, I’ve got plenty and you can just dig them up. I’ve pulled a number of them up without any problem when they were taking over the place.” “I’ll do that, “she said. “I’m serious.” “So am I,” she said. “In the spring. We’ll both come over. We have just the right tools and know how to do it. I’ll get your phone number from Ginny and Schmuel.” Then they shook hands goodbye and they got in their car and he got in his car and started to drive home. But now, he thinks, he doesn’t want to get home so quickly. Too soon. He stops at a restaurant on the way, one that sells its own bread, and gets a small loaf of his favorite kind here, sunflower flax, and asks for it to be sliced. “That’s all?” the woman behind the counter says, and he says “That’ll have to do it. I just came from a big lunch.” Then he stops at a bookstore, also along the way home and the best independent one in the city, and for about ten minutes looks for a book to buy for when he finishes the one he’s currently reading, doesn’t see anything that interests him, and then thinks he needs a new American Heritage College Dictionary. His is so old it has a photo of O.J. Simpson in the margin, and its first fifty pages or so are curled up at the ends and folded into one another and he has to flatten them out to read them. Do they have the new edition, the fifth? They have it, one copy, and he takes it off the bookshelf. And he remembers he wants to give the new hardcover editions of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and the one of English Verse to a couple that got married this September — the bride a former undergraduate student of his — and invited him to the wedding in Nyack, but he didn’t go. He didn’t want to be there alone. Go alone, he means, and it would have meant two days away from home. Even if it had been here, he knows he still wouldn’t have gone. He would have felt too out of place. During the reception, because his former student had told him it’d be at a large rented hall and there’d be a band, people would have got up to dance, and things like that. The store doesn’t have either book, so he orders them and they’ll call him when the books come in. He pays for the dictionary, didn’t think it’d be so expensive, and gets back in his car and continues home, but tells himself he doesn’t want to get there yet. Let’s face it, he tells himself, I don’t want to be alone there yet. That crazy? No. He stops at the market a half mile from his house, even though he doesn’t really need anything there, and gets a shopping basket and thinks of things to buy. He can always use more carrots, the way he eats them, and picks up a two-pound bag of the organic kind. And the cat likes sliced turkey from the deli department. He likes to give him a little treat of it every now and then, so he gets a quarter pound of it. It’ll last a week and he’ll have some too. And he thinks he’s out of scallions, so he goes back to the produce section and gets that. Anything else? He should have got some gourmet chicken salad at the deli department, but it’ll look odd, going back for just that and he gets the same server who gave him the sliced turkey. He gets a few cans of cat food, even though he has plenty at home, and a package of rice cakes because he thinks he has only one rice cake left. Is that it? Well, what’s he going to eat tonight? He’s had an open-faced tuna melt almost every other night that past two weeks, the cheese on top of tomato slices on top of the tuna salad he makes, on top of two slices of toasted bread — the sunflower flax would be perfect for it — which he puts in the oven for about fifteen minutes and then under the broiler for one. Has he tuna at home? He has, more than one can, he’s almost sure. Oh, get out of here, and he starts for the checkout lanes, and then thinks just a couple more items. Maybe he’ll bump into someone he knows — that happens a lot here. A neighbor, or someone from the Y he goes to every day, and they’ll have a quick chat. Or get a coffee from the coffee machine here. Only a dollar and it’s not bad. And the café au lait for two dollars is in fact good. He gets a regular coffee, black, puts a lid on the container and pays up for everything. “Plastic okay?” the checkout person says and he says “Usually I get paper. But I have so few items, plastic’s okay, and I can always use the bag in a wastebasket.” She bags his purchases, says “Have a nice rest of the day,” and he says “Thanks; you too,” and leaves. He drives home, puts away the food he bought — bananas, he thinks; forgot he’s out of bananas. Well, next time. Actually, tomorrow, maybe before breakfast, and he’ll pick up a few other things, because he always slices up a banana into his hot or cold cereal. He drinks the rest of the coffee and checks his cell phone on the sideboard in the dining room. He rarely leaves the house with it and uses it mostly to talk to his kids, who are on the same plan with him. No messages. He brings the dictionary to his bedroom and checks the regular phone there. Same thing. The cat’s sleeping on the bed or resting with his eyes closed. He sits on the bed and pets him. “So how’s it going, my friend? Keeping the joint free of mice and burglars?” The cat stands up, stretches and jumps off the bed. “Want to go out? Fine with me. Do it while it’s still light out.” He walks to the kitchen. The cat follows him. If he wants to go out he usually stays by the kitchen door and sometimes gets up on his back paws and scratches the wall next to the door or the door. He sits by his empty food plate. “Eat the kibble in your bowl. It’s not dinnertime yet. Later I’ll give you some more wet food.” The cat looks at him, stays seated. “All right, all right.” He gets a little of the turkey out of the plastic bag it’s in and drops it on the plate. The cat eats it and goes to the door. “You gonna leave me all by my lonesome? Okay. See ya later,” and opens the door and the cat goes outside. He goes back to the bedroom, sits at his work table and thinks should he continue writing what he started this morning? Still has a couple of hours before it gets dark. Nah. He knows where it’s going. Tomorrow. After breakfast. He takes off his sneakers and lies on the bed. Room’s a little cold. So what? Nah, don’t get cold. He gets the wool throw off the chair near the bed. His mother gave them it when their first child was born. From Ireland, she said. Sent away for it. She also gave them one of a different plaid when their second child was born. His older daughter used this one for a long time. Then left it behind when she moved out of the house and he had it dry-cleaned and now thinks of it as his. He unfolds it and lies on the bed and pulls it over him up till his neck. His feet stick out. So what? They won’t get cold. He has socks on. He cups his hands on his chest and thinks of the dream he woke up from this morning when it was just getting light out. In it, his wife was in a blue dress. Corduroy. Opened at the neck maybe three buttons down and belted at the waist. She had that dress before they first met and wore it a lot when it was cold out and they were going out for dinner or to a concert of play. It was one of the many clothes of hers he gave to Purple Heart and Amvets. The kids had first crack at everything of hers but over more than two years took almost nothing, not even a single piece of jewelry, though they didn’t want him to sell or give anything of that away. Her hair was brushed back and hung over her shoulders. She seemed healthy, spirited, happy, ran back and forth through the house. “Hold up,” he said, when she zipped past him again. “Where you going so fast? You’re like a cat.” He caught up with her in the hallway bathroom. She was looking at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. He got up close behind her and said to her mirror image “You look beautiful again. And when you look so beautiful I don’t want to leave you for a second.” “I have to leave you,” she said to his mirror image, and he said “No, you misunderstood me. I was talking about myself. Oh, what of it? And maybe what I said about your being beautiful was the wrong thing to say.” He put his arms around her from behind. She looked at the mirror image of his hands, then turned around in his arms till she was facing him and they kissed. The dream ended then. Wouldn’t you know it. Well, at least he got to kiss her. He shut his eyes. Maybe I’ll nap awhile, he thinks, and get to dream of her again. The cat’s banging one of the bedroom windows. There are three types of windows in this room: a long one opposite the bed, which he thinks is called a picture window, but he could be wrong; two small windows to the right of the bed, at the most two feet by three and which open and close with a crank; and a regular one, above the chair the throw was on and which the cat’s banging with his paw. “Go away,” he says. “Let me rest. You haven’t been out that long, and it’s nice out and you have your fur coat on.” The cat, standing on an outside ledge about six feet off the ground, keeps banging the window with his paw. He gets up, raises the window and then the screen. The cat comes in and jumps to the floor and runs out of the room. He closes the screen and leaves the window a little open at the bottom. He gets back on the bed under the throw, cups his hands on his chest and shuts his eyes. He’ll try again. It’d be nice to have another dream of her so soon after this morning’s. It’s happened, and maybe a continuation of that one or one where they make love. Those are the best, or equal to any deep-kissing dream with her, even if he’s never come in one. He falls asleep. He doesn’t dream, or doesn’t remember dreaming, after he wakes up.