Late Stories (19 page)

Haven't a Clue

“I
don't think I can make it through another day,” I say. “What are you talking about?” she says. “You have to. For one good reason, think of the kids.” “But it's the same old thing. Day after day. Hour after hour. I go to bed so early. Why? Because by that time I have nothing to do. I've done everything. So I read in bed awhile, which means maybe fifteen minutes, if I'm lucky, and fall asleep and wake up too early. One, three, five. The o'clocks. More like eleven, one, three, five. Two-hour intervals, usually. My damn prostate. If it isn't that, it's my lower back. Mostly the right side. It keeps me up. Can't find a comfortable position to sleep in. Maybe I need a new mattress, but I'm too lazy to go out and buy one. Listen, I'm feeling old. My gripes are just about every old guy's gripes.” “Do the best you can. I wish I could help you.” “Your being here would help. But I wonder how much so. Oh, a lot. What am I talking about? But also my work. That's another thing. I'm getting less inclined . . . how can I put it? I always like what I'm working on—oh, most of the time, and very much so. Otherwise, I wouldn't do it, right?—or I'd do much less of it. I think that's so. It's the work I don't like. By that I mean, the same thing every day. Sitting down and typing, typing, and more typing. Make a mistake, start at the top of the page again. I don't like finishing a piece—oh, finishing it is fine, but the anxiety of now not having something to work on and take up my time, and just having to photocopy each piece after it's done. To get in my car and drive several miles to the nearest photocopy place to copy it. Seems ridiculous, the effort for
so small a thing, no matter how long it is, and it takes so much time.” “Learn how to work on a computer. Get a copier to go with it, so also learn how to use the copier. Finish a piece, copy it out; you wouldn't have to leave the house. Though every now and then, since it runs out fast, you would have to go to a store and buy copier ink, unless you bought it in bulk twelve to twenty cartridges at a time, and then you'd probably only have to go once a year. And in time—face it; it's coming—there won't be any copy places left to copy your pages. All that kind of work for people like you will be done on copiers at home.” “Then I'm finished. That's all there is to it. Done for good. Or I'd find a way. I should look at it hopefully. I'd have to find a way, if I want to continue to copy my pieces, which by then—what are we giving it here? Three years? Five?—I'm not so sure I'd want to do. But eating is another example of why I don't think I can make it through another day. I don't like to eat anymore.” “That could be good. Keeps your weight down.” “But I eat because I know I have to if I want to stay alive. But I eat too much, more than likely a lot of that's out of nervousness of some sort, and with no pleasure.” “So you've said, and it's probably true. Find a way to work it out. It doesn't seem like the biggest of problems. So far, none of what you've said does.” “You're right. But exercising too. I exercise too much. I want to have the body of a much younger man, and when I say ‘much younger,' I mean by thirty to forty years. I can't have it but I work at it.” “Do you know why, other than just wanting to look good, or at least not like your more typical old man?” “I don't. I'm going crazy; maybe that's it. And I know all this exercising with weights and such is what's causing my almost constant lower back pain. I go to the Y and work out for more than an hour every day of the week.” “Do it less.” “I can't. If I miss a day—that day I'm missing, I feel lousy. Guilty. Fat. Weak. Soft. Bloated. Old. So I have to go.” “Do what you want, then. I can't help you
there, either.” “You can help me in everything by coming back.” “You know that's silly talk.” “I know. I can say it, though, can't I? What's the harm? Just so you know how I feel.” “I know how you feel.” “How do you feel?” “Do you mind if I remain silent?” “No, of course not. I expect it. I'm lucky enough now to get any kind of response from you.” “You're not getting it from me. You know that, don't you?” “I know, I know. Don't remind me. It'll only make me feel even worse. But drinking too.” “What about it?” “I drink too much. Every night. Two big shots of this or that over ice, usually one and sometimes two more. Often with a twist of lemon or squeeze of lime in them, at least the first. Then, all while reading the paper, two juice glasses of wine, red or white, doesn't matter what kind. If I don't start off with the shots, I start with a juice glass or two of dry marsala or dry sherry, and then go to the two to three juice glasses of wine. It's also what's probably causing my peeing every other hour once I get to bed, not just my enlarged prostate, or the combination of the two. But the drinking helps me get to bed and helps me be sleepy, and for the next two to three hours, probably helps keep me asleep. Then I'm up every other hour, stay up for an hour, sleep, stay up for an hour, can't sleep, sleep, and so on. I mixed that up a bit, but you get the point. Every night. Right till the morning, and usually before dawn. And the morning, what do I do?” “What?” “I get out of bed too early. Sometimes before five. When it's still dark out. Sometimes before four. And I exercise with weights. And I stretch and do other exercises. I run in place in the same spot or sort of run in place around the house. Sometimes I get back in bed after it, sweaty. That's how hard I work out that early in the morning. You've seen me. You must have. Does it help get me back to sleep? Maybe, though probably not. Eventually I might fall back to sleep. It's always the same thing. All my problems. It's from getting old, being old, being alone like I am. Isolated. Having nothing
to do but my writing and reading and exercising. Is this any kind of life?” “I think I know what you're saying.” “You do. I know you do. I wish I could begin seeing someone. A woman I'm attracted to and admire and like a lot. Go places with, dine out, eat in, travel, talk to, phone, be phoned. Talk about some of the same things I used to talk about with you. Books, plays, art, movies, literature, the world. What's in today's newspaper. Have sex. But I meet no one. I'm retired. Most people were friends with us because of you.” “Not true.” “It's true. Few friends I had here on my own have either died or moved away. The only friends I have—the Pinskis, who were friends, equally it seemed, with us both—I see once a month for lunch in a restaurant and maybe three times a year, two of them Jewish holidays, for dinner at their house. The kids, well, they come down maybe once every five weeks or so, and how long will that last? They'll get married. They'll be tied down at their jobs. They'll see me less and less, and you know me, I'll rarely go to New York to see them.” “So change.” “I wish I could. Or maybe I don't. New York and me? We don't go together anymore. It's too fast for me. It makes me confused. Even with one of our daughters sticking close to me the entire trip and guiding me through the city. So what do I do?” “I know.” “Write, read, exercise, eat enough to live, fantasize. Every four to five days, or that's been the norm since I discovered this, I turn on the computer and Google ‘Naked women and Naked Girls' and masturbate to one of its links. ‘Asian Girls, Teen Sex. Amateur Porn. Blondes. Hardcore.' It's all there. And I shouldn't forget my favorite, ‘College Girls,' which the last time I did it to, it had three girls on one guy and a Periodic Table of the Elements poster on the wall above the bed. You've seen me.” “I don't recall.” “My big pleasure of the week. I enjoy doing it, I admit, but sometimes it seems ridiculous. There I am, sitting in the dark—and it's always when it's dark out. So maybe that's also why I do
it—to have something to do to stay up later than I usually do at night—and I think ‘I'm an old guy and I'm masturbating to a computer screen.' But that's how I am. I still have to do it. Are you surprised?” “I don't know what to think.” “Do you think something's wrong with me?” “I have no answers to that. And it's probably healthy for your prostate gland. Isn't that what you once told me?” “My mother told me. When I wasn't seeing anyone for a long time. She said she read it and, delicate as the topic was, thought I should know. Still, doing it, and I mean right while I'm doing it, which sometimes does tend to take away some of the pleasure from it but never ends up stopping me, I feel, in fact, more than ridiculous. I feel stupid and sort of sordid, doing it. To a computer screen. To people moaning and sucking and screwing and climaxing and whatnot. Three girls licking, at one time, one guy's penis. And occasionally smiling at and hamming it up for the camera while they're doing it, while you never see the face of the guy they're licking the entire time. But you've seen me at the computer doing it. Don't deny it.” “Who's denying anything?” “So tell me what you think. I can take it.” “What I think? If it gives you some pleasure every so often? Even a little pleasure? Even a tiny little bit of pleasure and release and is also good for your prostate?” “Come on. Out with it.” “It's not so bad. You almost owe it to yourself. No, I don't know what I'm saying. Especially about your owing it to yourself. If it's what you want to do and think you need to and there's no harm to anyone by it, though maybe there is to those three misguided college girls.” “One even kept her glasses on. That's all she had on. These rectangular dark frames that so many young people seem to favor today. It actually, I'll say, made her look sexier than the other two, though they were all pretty and had good bodies.” “But what were they thinking, letting themselves be exposed like that? Their brothers, cousins, even their fathers and possibly even their grandfathers,
might in all innocence, so to speak, Google that site and see them. Maybe if . . . oh, I don't know. Let me alone. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think you're unhappy, either. I don't want to think you don't feel well. Your mind, your body. Do me a favor?” “Anything. What?” “Stop typing. Stop putting all this down. Not only pull out what you have in the typewriter but tear up what you've written so far since you started this. Get rid of it all. Then cover the typewriter. Put it to sleep for the night, as you used to say. Do something else. None of this is any good for you. I can't see where it helps.” “It helps. But I'll do what you say. Tomorrow I'll look at what I've done, and maybe then I'll tear all of it up. But I warn you. If I can use any of it, I'll use it. If I can use it all, I'll use that too. You never know the next day if anything you did the previous day is good. Meaning, you don't know until you look at it. I'll see if there's anything there. If there is, I'll work on it till I finish it. I'll enjoy working on and finishing it. It'll give me something to do that I like to. I know I'm repeating myself here in a couple of things and also contradicting myself somewhat from what I said before, or think I am, but there it is; that's the way I am too. Okay, I'll stop. It's getting dark out so I'll probably get to sleep tonight an hour or so later than I usually do, which is good. As I said, I go to bed too early. You still there? Well, the next sound you hear will be me tearing the last page I've written out of the typewriter. Not tearing. I don't want to tear it, as I didn't tear the previous typewritten pages out of the typewriter. So I'll pull the page out gently so it doesn't tear. That's more like what I'll be doing. That will be what I'm doing. Listen and you shall hear. Oh, how corny of me. But as you know, that's how I can be too. Not for final drafts, where I reject corniness, but firsts, where I'll try out anything, knowing the corn will go. What else I am or can be, right now I haven't a clue. Or I'm not sure or I don't know. No, it's true, I was right the first time: I haven't a clue. Do
you? I'm listening. My ear's cocked. Okay. Nothing. I listened for about twenty seconds and there was nothing. Silence. Done for the night. I must seem so irritatingly boorish to you. What can I say other than that I know that's how I can be too. What do you say? To what I just said. Nothing? Then let's just go to sleep. First, though, I'll take the paper out of the typewriter very carefully so it doesn't tear. Then I'll collect, in the order they were written, all the previous pages I wrote since I sat down at the typewriter—ten of them, I see—and paper-clip or staple them, with this one, page eleven, the last. Staple them. That way, after I cover the typewriter as you asked me to and get under the covers and turn off the light, I'll go to sleep knowing I won't lose any of the pages, which I've done in the past though after a lot of frantic searching always found them. So I can safely say—more than ‘safely'; I can say unqualifiedly that in all my years of doing this I never lost one. But stapling's the best way to hold these pages together, right? Better than paper-clipping them, I'm saying, if the staple isn't bent and goes in perfectly and the stapler doesn't jam, right? I'm listening. You still there? Something's got your tongue? For the last time, you still there? No? All right. No.”

The Liar

T
his was a while ago. Their daughters were five and eight. He told her he'd like to have another child. How does she feel about it? That when they were first married they talked about having three kids. She said she'd like to, the girls have been great and she'd love to please him with a new baby, but she wouldn't have the strength to take care of it. And with all the medications she's taking, and there's no way she could get off them, she probably couldn't breast-feed the baby either. “You don't have to,” he said. “And for the rest of it, leave it to me. My teaching schedule's flexible. Both kids are now in school. I'll do most of the work from day one, even the cooking.” “No, and for all we know, just getting pregnant could make my condition worse. I don't want to chance it. It's progressing fast enough on its own. Two children are enough, and I hope you'll come to think so too. You've been wonderful about taking on more than your share of the work with them. I couldn't ask you to do more.” “I really want a third one,” he said, “but we'll do what's good for you. So okay, whatever you say.”

He already knew what he'd do if she said she didn't want another child. By this time, because she was having trouble using her hands, he was putting in the diaphragm for her. Most of the times when she was ovulating and they were going to make love, she told him to be extra careful in inserting the diaphragm, and he said he would or “I know,” but intentionally put it in loose. “It doesn't quite feel secure,” she sometimes said. “Are you sure it's in right?” “It's in perfectly, just the way you taught me,” he always said, or something
like it, “but I'll double-check if you want me to,” and put his hand in her vagina, knew the diaphragm wasn't in straight, took his hand out and said “As I said, a perfect fit. Now what do you say?” and she nodded and he got on the bed next to her and they made love. He came and hoped some of his semen got through the opening and made it to the egg. Hoped the egg was receptive to one of the sperm.

Several other times he said when they were about to make love during her most fertile period “What do you say; this time, no diaphragm or messy cream? I'll pull out when I'm about to come. Don't worry. I'll be very careful.” “It won't be as exciting for you, though it could be a bit more so for me. But the good thing is you won't have to deal with the diaphragm and cream. But pull out long before you come. Ten seconds at least. You'll know when that is. Maybe more than ten seconds, if you don't think you can hold it back till then, just to make sure not a drop goes in me.” He ejaculated a little inside her those times—sort of let it dribble out—but made no sounds or gave any physical sign he was coming. Then he said “I'm coming,” or said it a couple of times, and pulled out and pretended to groan a few seconds while he did the rest of it on her stomach, if that was the position they were making love in, or, if he was behind her, in a handkerchief or on the bottom sheet or a towel. “You didn't come in me,” she usually said, “—even a small amount, did you? Because then I want to get up and clean it out fast.” “No, I told you. I planned to go on your belly, and that's where it went.” Or “on the towel” or “in my handkerchief” or “I came on the sheet. Unfortunately, now we'll have to change it.” “It's worth the effort,” she said. “Though next time, if we do it like this again without a diaphragm, spread out a thick towel under us first. Then, after you do what you do on it, just toss it into the washer.”

It must have worked the last time they didn't use a diaphragm.
Because from that time on, or when she first decided she was pregnant, she always insisted she have one in, even during the so-called safe days. Anyway, about a month later, she said “I have some distressing news,” and told him. “You sure?” and she said “I'd say almost positive. Yes, I'm positive.” “Damn, I'm so sorry. I know it's the last thing you wanted to happen. I must've inserted the diaphragm incorrectly for the first time or it slipped while it was in you. Can that happen?” and she said “Not if it's put in right. And I would have felt it. I think I'm still able to feel things like that in there. It's my hands and feet where I've lost most of my feeling.” “Then maybe there's something wrong with it. A tear or puncture, somehow, or just being stretched too far from all its use. Did we ever check it?” and she said “There was nothing wrong with it. Whenever I clean it and put it back in its case, I always inspect it. I'm no lazy fool.” “I know; I'm not saying. And I'm sure you're right about being pregnant. You knew, with Freya and Miriam, a month after they were conceived. Well, you know us. The Fecund Twins. I think with both girls we hit it right the first time we tried. But that was when you wanted it. So what are we going to do? If you are right.” “I'm right. Abort, of course, and sooner the better, after it's been confirmed by the doctor. I already passed the urine test.” “You did? Without me? It was so much fun, watching the doughnut grow. But can't we even discuss it?” and she said “No.” “Come on,” he said. “Surely we can discuss it a little. It might be the perfect time for us to have a third child, and maybe that was the last time you'll be able to conceive. And I swear. I'll take care of the baby twice as much as I did the first two, and I did a lot then, you know it. So I've done it. I'll know what to do. An experienced pop. I'll work my ass off and love every minute doing it. It won't be a chore for you at all. If we have to, we'll get some help for a while, and the kids will pitch in too. And your folks. They'll love our having another child.
My mother too. But your folks more so, their losing their whole families in Europe.” “Please, don't go any further,” she said. “It's a blatantly bogus argument. Sham, insincere, you don't mean a word of it. You just want to change my mind by fucking with it. It's not going to work. So it's final. No more talk. It's making me very angry and driving me crazy, and that isn't good for my condition either.” “Then I apologize and I'll shut up. I'm disappointed, that's obvious, but nothing I can do about it, and I respect what you say.” “Oh, you're too much sometimes,” she said, “but I'm glad I've heard the last of it.” “I'm sorry you feel that way about me, but okay.”

She had the abortion. They continued to make love three to four times a week and he always put the diaphragm in for her. He put it in loose a few times in the next two years or so, made love to her from behind those times because she once said, when they were planning to have their first child, that that was the best position, if he went in deep and stayed there for a couple of minutes after he came, to get her pregnant. One time she said to him, while they were lying in bed after having made love, “I've been thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong, and don't think that what I'm about to say is in any way critical of you. But that last time I got pregnant and had an abortion, you didn't, when you said you'd be extra careful to pull out in time after you had convinced me not to use a diaphragm, intentionally ejaculate in me to make me pregnant? You could tell me now. Enough time has gone by, so I'm not going to get upset. And you wanted a third child so much, I can almost understand why you would have resorted to such a desperate deception.” “Are you being serious?” he said. “Yes. I'm asking because it's puzzled me since then how I got pregnant, and I thought that was the most likely way. And that after you pulled out, you feigned an orgasm while you were still behind me, when you actually might have got rid of some if not most or even all your seed slowly and imperceptibly
while you were inside me.” “Seed,” he said. “I love that word for it.” “Don't change the direction of the conversation. Did you?” “First of all, as for feigning an orgasm, I never did in my life. If I don't have one, I don't pretend I do. If I have one, then I make sounds, soft to whatever's natural, nothing fake, though the volume, of course, influenced if there's someone else in the house. If one of the kids is home, then absolute silence, I hope from both of us.” “You're not answering my question.” “I'll answer it, or do my best to, by saying I didn't do what you think there's a possibility I did.” “All right. I just wanted to know.” “But do you believe me?” and she said “I believe you, or think I do.” “Believe me,” he said. “I wouldn't lie to you on this. I wouldn't lie anytime to you. Now, if some of my seed happened to leak into you while we were making love without a diaphragm and that made you pregnant, then I didn't know. I always thought I was in control of it then, but there could have been a time or two I wasn't. When you were using a diaphragm I didn't think of it and just went for maximum release in you.” “That answers my question. It must have happened that way. I won't bring it up again.” “But you do believe me.” “More than I did when I first asked the question.” “That's good enough,” he said.

A couple of years later she said her gynecologist said she's stopped ovulating, so it's all right for them to make love from now on without any kind of protection. “What a relief,” he said. “It'll make our lovemaking much freer. Now we can hop straight to it without a lot of fussing around and making sure the thing's in right and washing and drying my hands and giving them some time to get warm again before touching you.” “Was it that bad? We always, you know, could have inserted it hours before,” and he said “I think we thought that would have entailed getting you on and off the bed before I got you on the bed again to make love, so we never did it, or not after the first time.” “Anyway, I'm glad of the way you accepted
the medical report,” she said. “I thought you'd be disappointed, even a bit depressed, that I wasn't able to conceive anymore, which I know for the last few years you secretly wanted.” “Who, me? Not on your life. You didn't want another child, then that was perfectly understandable and fine with me. And the two we have are wonderful. Never a handful, so I thought another wouldn't have been rough on us either. But two's enough, as you've said; really. I'm not making this up. So what do you say? When do you think's the first time we can take advantage of this windfall? Without any appliances or anything to stop the momentum, so to speak. We haven't been able to do that for years.” “Tonight, if you like,” she said. “I'm sure I'll be in the mood.” “How about now? I'm good for it. No, that must seem so stupid for me to say.” “You have to pick up the kids in half an hour,” she said. “Ah, but I suppose we have time if we do it relatively quickly, or you do, and we can now omit the tiresome routine with the diaphragm, which will give us a few more minutes.” He wheels her into the bedroom, helps her undress. “I don't have to take everything off, do I?” and he said “You can leave on the socks. We'll still have time to get everything back on.” He lifted her out of the wheelchair onto the bed. “That was so good,” he said, after. “I don't know if it was because of what we didn't have to do, but really nothing stopping us.” “You did seem to make a little more noise than usual.” “You too,” he said. “I thought you were going to make it this time. I tried my hardest for you to. Your pleasure comes first with me.” “Oh, please.” “No, I mean that.” “Then thank you,” she said. “Though I doubt I'll ever be able to achieve what you do every time. It makes me sad. It's not that it isn't fun without it—don't think that—but it'd be so much better with.” “You'll have it. It's got to happen again. We'll work on it together. And once we've mastered the trick to it, or whatever will do it, there'll be other times too.” “I hope so,” she said. “I'm certainly not blaming you. It's my
wretched condition. Now, help me get dressed. If you're late, give me my bathrobe and I'll pretend to them I'm still in my robe after a shower.”