Late Stories (13 page)

What to do with his writings, though? And his typewriters, two spare ones on a shelf in the guest closet, and the remaindered copies of his books in cartons in the basement, and all his writing supplies? Between them, they'll keep a few copies of each of his remaindered books and give away the rest. Maybe his former department will want some to give to its students, or the Baltimore County library system might be able to use them. They won't know what to do with his old manuscripts of published works they'll find in the file cabinet under his work table and the newer unpublished manuscripts and photocopies of them on the bookcase in his bedroom, and will have to ask his writer friends and former colleagues. Maybe the school library's special collections department will take both the old and new manuscripts along with whatever notebooks and letters and such they find of his and a copy of each of his books. As for his writing supplies—one of them will keep the unopened ream of paper for her copier. The other stuff—typewriter ribbons, correction film, binder clips, lots of cheap pens and two staplers and a box of staples and so on—they'll probably stash in the bags for Goodwill and Purple Heart, hoping some of it can be used. The typewriters, if no writer they speak to wants them or knows anyone who does and none of their friends want them either, they'll give away to one of those organizations. And all those photographs. Boxes of photographs, albums of photographs, drawers of photographs. He kept them without ever taking them out and looking at them, except for the memorial album his daughters made of their mother, but they'll know what to do with them.

On his writing table is the typewriter he worked on the last few years. Never broke down. “Never gave me trouble,” he used to say. “I have spares that I'll probably never use.” To its immediate right on the table is the first draft of the story he was working on. To its immediate left is the pile of scrap paper he took from to work on
the same page of the story over and over again till he was satisfied with it and was ready to switch to the clean final-copy paper. And to the immediate right of the first draft of the story is the stack of clean paper. Behind the typewriter is the part of the story he completed—fourteen pages held together by a binder clip. All the stacks will be neat. He made them that way yesterday after he finished writing for the day and fitted the dust cover over the typewriter. It was getting dark out and the two lamps on either side of the typewriter, each with warnings on the inside of the shade not to use more than a 60-watt bulb, don't give enough light to write when it gets that dark. Besides, he was tired after writing for a total of about eight hours that day. The story in progress, the completed part and the first draft, will also probably go to the special collections department if it'll take it with his other manuscripts. The dictionary and thesaurus he kept on the table to the left of the scrap paper pile are in too bad a shape—lots of dog-eared pages, especially at the front of the books, and covers separating from the spines—to give to Goodwill or some other place or keep themselves. So they might put the books in their own shopping bag, because they'll be so heavy—maybe even double up the bag before they put the books in—and put it out with the rest of the recycled paper or throw out with the trash.

What they call the guest bathroom—the one off the hallway between their bedrooms and his—will be in the condition the cleaning woman left it the last time she worked for him, except for the kitty litter box, which might need changing. The cleaning woman, which was okay with him, never took care of that. Though the cat, even when it was raining or snowing, usually found a dry place outside to dig a hole and piss and crap, so they might not have to deal with it. The towels on the towel racks in the bathroom and the bathmat folded over the bathtub rim haven't been used since he
washed them after his daughters' last visit, so they won't have to be changed either.

His wife's old study will also be neat and clean, other than for a demitasse saucer on the computer table that he used as a coaster for whatever he was drinking while answering e-mails or just seeing if he got any. If the saucer seems clean they'll probably put it in the kitchen cupboard on top of the other demitasse saucer and small plates without even rinsing it.

There are no other rooms in the house. The basement, but nothing down there but the furnace, water heater, well tank, dehumidifier, which he got when they bought the house and turned on when the weather started to get muggy and left on till around the middle of October, and a floor lamp and empty dresser. Also a few children's records and an old phonograph, that has no needle in it, on top of the dresser, and cartons of remaindered books—not only his but ones his wife translated, and for two of them, wrote introductions to—stacked one on top of another with the titles of the books written on the sides of the cartons facing out, and many stretched and rolled-up paintings his daughters did in high school and college. Up until about ten years ago they also used the basement as a playroom and later as a place to hold sleepovers.

Closets? Nothing much in them except for the one in his bedroom. By now his daughters' closets are almost empty. And the hallway closet has his two reserve typewriters and a couple of his coats and, hanging from hangers, about five of his wife's shawls friends of hers had given her once she was only able to get around outside in a wheelchair. Also a walker he was discharged from the hospital with after he got sick with a bowel obstruction two years ago and had to be operated on and a shower chair his daughters bought him after he got home. He'd been meaning to bring both to the basement and leave them there for possible future use or give to a loan closet.

They'll know where to go to start dealing with his personal matters. Everything they'll need for this is in a file folder under the computer table next to his wife's sewing machine, which they'll also probably give away. The folder has specific instructions what to do if he dies or is mentally or physically unable to handle his finances anymore or the business of the house and car and taxes and so on, and all the documents that go with them. Stapled to the folder's flap is a sheet of typing paper—he's told them this and pointed it out a number of times—saying something like, but definitely using this greeting: “My darlings. Instructions what to do in event of my death or permanent inability to conduct my own affairs are in the first sleeve of this file folder—sleeve A, and right at the front of it, first thing you'll come upon.” The instructions, which are three typewritten pages, start off with the names and phone numbers of his lawyer, financial advisor and tax accountant. Each should be told of his death or incapacity as soon as possible, the instructions say, so everything he owns and things like the federal and state estimated taxes they'll have to pay and their mother's testamentary disclaimer trust can be temporarily or permanently transferred to their names. Included in the instructions are the account numbers of his portfolio with his financial advisor, the number of his TIAA-CREF account and the phone number for it, the phone numbers of all the places he pays his bills by automatic bank withdrawals—utilities, phone, secondary health insurance, E-ZPass, AAA and so forth, his Social Security number and the Social Security Administration phone number to call if he dies so it'll stop depositing a monthly check in his bank account. Everything like that. His credit card and checking account numbers and phone numbers there. Even the phone number of the funeral home that cremated their mother and should cremate him. “What to do with the ashes?” he wrote. “Your call. But I'd advise leaving them at the funeral home.” Each document
and contract in this folder, the instructions say, will be in the appropriate alphabetical sleeve. House deed and home insurance in the “H” sleeve, for instance. Title to the car and auto insurance in the “A” for automobile, sleeve. “You'll figure it out,” the instructions say. Contract for the roof put on about ten years ago—“It's a 20-year guarantee”—in the “R” sleeve, new windows put in just a year ago, in the “W” sleeve, and so on. “Don't think of all this as being morbid,” he wrote in the instructions. “I don't want you to go through the hassle and stress I did after your grandfather died. He left no instructions what to do with his estate and where his investments were and who was the insurer for his co-op and where the keys were to his safe deposit box at his bank, and dozens of small and big things like that. You know the story. He said all the important papers and contracts and monthly statements and names and phone numbers of the financial people to get in contact with and such after he died were in the top drawer of his dresser. But there was nothing there but boxes of cuff links and tie pins and watches and about 20 white handkerchiefs and the same amount of black socks, and a thorough search of his apartment also turned up nothing. He was a great person,” he wrote in the instructions, “and I loved him more than I did my own father, but it took me a year and a half to sort everything out. Your dear mother, his only heir, was unable to help other than for going to the bank with me about once every two weeks to get her signature notarized on one document after another.” He also wrote where to find the key to his safe deposit box at his bank, which has a lot of valuable gold coins in it—“Krugerrands, they're called, which your grandfather gave your mother a few of almost every year.” Also, that behind the Beckett section in the bookcase in the living room are two small jewelry boxes with their mother's very valuable pearl necklace, which her mentor at Columbia willed to her, and the not-so-valuable, other than its sentimental
value, amber bead necklace he gave her as an engagement gift. “In those boxes are also some pins and earrings and earstuds of your mother's, and our gold wedding bands and the much wider gold wedding bands of her parents, all of which—certainly the four wedding bands—ought to be worth something at Smyth Jewelers on York Road, which is where I'd go to sell them,” he wrote. “But you two should keep the necklaces and wear them, as your mother did, on special occasions. Or anytime you want, really, and hand them down to your children, if you have any, when they grow up and if they're girls, or your daughters-in-law, if you only have boys, and they marry. The Krugerrands will only get increasingly valuable every year, maybe so much so that you'll be able to send your kids through college for a couple of years after you've cashed in the coins. But do what you want with everything. Don't keep anything just for my sake.” At the end of the instructions he mentioned the automatic generator outside and the well in the basement and what companies to call to get both serviced twice a year. “It's important to do that if you want to keep them running smoothly. If you sell the house right away, tell the new owners this.”

They'll come into the house, after they leave the hospital, and probably find the kitchen ceiling light on. It was gray and dreary out the morning he got that sharp pain that wouldn't stop and kept getting worse, and he had turned on the light when he first went into the kitchen. Usually he didn't have to.

Therapy

W
hat's he going to tell the therapist? Or “talk about with,” or whatever he's supposed to do with a therapist? He's never been to one and he has his first appointment the day after tomorrow. She asked on the phone why does he think, so late in his life, he needs to start therapy? He said the main reason is a very bad one, one he thinks she won't particularly like: his daughters urged him to go to a therapist, and more to please them than for any other reason, he's going to try it. It'll make them feel better. The younger daughter more than the older one, but both. He wants them to feel they have some control over his life—the betterment of it—and that they suggested a good thing. Other reasons are he's become almost anti-social in his self-imposed isolation and reclusiveness the last few years. And he's never gotten over—he's still grieving and suffering—his wife's death nearly four years ago. And he's getting old—or is old—and all the fears and anxieties that go with that. “Okay,” she said, “that's enough. I can fit you in. Let's start, if the time and day are good for you, this Friday, 10 a.m. Or the following Friday, same time.” “Let's start right away,” he said. “And not to get it over with. But why should I wait any longer? I've decided to go, so let's do it.” “Okay,” she said. “This Friday, 10 a.m. Let me give you directions how to get here. Where do you live?”

Why's he going? he asks himself the next day, Thursday. Day before his first session, or whatever it's called when the therapist and patient meet. He should know. His wife was in therapy before
he knew her. And then continued for about twenty of their thirty years together, the last ten years of it or so on the phone because it got too hard on her to get her up the steps in her wheelchair to the psychiatrist's office. She'd call him every other week at a time they arranged at her last session, he'd call back a short time later, and they'd talk for the next fifty minutes, the door to her study closed. He tried to stay away from the door. Didn't want her to think he was snooping. Her voice was always muffled. And then she'd open the door after she hung up the phone. He never asked her what she talked about with her psychiatrist and, before that in New York, with her therapist there, or not much. Maybe: “So how'd it go?” and she'd know what he was referring to and say “Good” or “Pretty good.” “I'm not asking what you talked about,” he said a couple of times. “Just wanted to know if it went well.” And a few times in those years of phone therapy in Baltimore: “I guess I came up because of our little dispute since you last spoke to him and what I said” or “what I did,” and she'd say “Yes” or “You did, but not for long. I only get to talk to him twice a month, so I have a lot on my mind.” “I'm glad you have someone else to speak to other than me,” he said once, and she said “I've a number of people to speak to, but it's important for me to also speak to a professional, someone I pay.”

Maybe tomorrow the therapist will start it off by asking him a lot of questions about his life, and later in the session why he thinks it's necessary to do what his daughters want him to, especially if he might not have wanted to start therapy. If she does ask that he'll say he doesn't really know, but he assumes it's to make them happy, just as he thinks his seeing a therapist will eventually make him happier than he is now. They'll talk about his wife, of course. She'll ask questions, he'll give answers. But how much can they get in in fifty minutes? Well, certainly they'll get in that. That
he isn't fully recovered—maybe nowhere near so, he'll say—from his wife's death. He means he's still bereaved. Tremendously so. He should have gone to the bereavement counseling the hospice center offered for free for up to a year after his wife died, but he didn't. He was crying enough. He felt he was crying too much. Any thought or mention of her set it off. He still cries sometimes when he thinks of her. He'll probably start crying during the first session because he's thinking and talking about her. Thinks about her many times a day. If he said twenty, thirty, would she believe him? he'd say. Because he's not exaggerating, he might say. And dreams about her almost every night. Even dreams of her half the times when he takes thirty-minute afternoon naps. He started a spiral notebook, which he calls “My Dream Book,” of dreams just about her. It doesn't have any dreams in it that don't have her in them. Started it four days after she died. That was the first time he dreamed of her after she died, and he's filled up three dream books and is near the end of the fourth. He's already bought a new spiral notebook. And he doesn't spend an entire page on a dream. Most times he recounts them in a few lines, and then writes the next dream, with the date he's dreamt it, right under it. Has he gone back to read any of them? he might say. Very little, and always a few hours after he wrote them down, and never goes back to them again. In other words, he has a dream, wakes up—he always seems to wake up after a dream—writes it down, and reads what he wrote when he gets out of bed in the morning. So what's he writing them down for, filling up book after book of them, if he's not using them in some way to benefit him personally—some insight about himself he might get from the dream—or in his writing? Maybe for something later, but what he doesn't know. Sometimes he dreams about her two and three times a night and she was once in four different dreams of his in one night. And they're mostly good dreams. He usually feels good after
he wakes up from a dream she's been in. But sometimes she's angry at him in a dream or she's started an affair with some much younger guy or she wants a divorce or she just wants to separate from him for a while, and she won't listen to him pleading for her to stay, and when he wakes up from one of these dreams he doesn't feel good. Regrets often come back after one of these bad dreams. Why he did this or that to her. He did mostly good things to her—they were never anything but faithful to each other those thirty years, he wants to point out: he certainly was and he can take her word she was too—but so many times he didn't do such good things. When he got angry at her for spilling something, for instance. Or just dropping a fork or spoon she was holding and he had to pick it up. He remembers saying, he doesn't know how many times, “Oh, not again.” And the times he had to clean her up. After she made in her pants, he's saying, or on the floor because he couldn't get her on the toilet fast enough because she didn't tell him in time. And the time he slapped her hand. That was probably the worst thing he ever did to her, physically. She'd knocked over a mug of hot tea on him and it hurt like hell for a few seconds, and he reacted instinctively, he could say, and slapped her, but he only did that once. He's not blaming her. Meaning, for anything she did. Not for her bowel movements on the floor or pissing in her pants and sometimes right after he'd changed her and pissing in the bed lots of times and on the floor. How could he blame her? She was helpless. Or she became such. She had little control over her body functions, is the best way of putting it. He's blaming himself for every single bad thing he did to her. Not only after she became sick but before that when she was healthy. There wasn't any malice in her. She was a person without malice, he's saying. He means that. He's not trying to make her seem better than she was or himself worse than he was. She did nothing to intentionally hurt him. Never. She never
said anything harsh or critical of him that he didn't deserve or that wasn't right. He doesn't like to think of it but occasionally he does and the bad dreams also bring it up. So he'll probably have to talk about it with the therapist. It'll come up. He's almost sure it will. How could it not? And if he cries while he's talking about it, that's probably good. No, it is good. It's good to get those things out.

What else? He's cut himself off from most of the people he and his wife were friendly with before. Rarely accepts an invitation for dinner or lunch at a restaurant or someone's home or even just for coffee someplace. Or a movie, on a Sunday afternoon, so it's not just his eyes and the problem of driving at night or that he's afraid of getting stuck in rush-hour traffic. And a couple who were maybe their best friends here has offered numerous times to pick him up for dinner at a restaurant or their house or to go to a movie or play and drive him back. That it's no inconvenience to them, even though he knows most times it's out of their way. But they'd like to do it, they've said, because they'd love to see him more often than they do. Once, he let them drive him to a movie and then wine and tapas after at a place right next to the theater. Did he have a good time? Did it make him feel he should accept more invitations than he does? No. He felt uncomfortable and he was barely intelligible when he had to talk to them, something he can't explain. He gave them excuses the other times. Excuses they and everyone else who invites him out can see through. And some people, after he turned down their lunch or dinner invitations a few times, have called to say they'll be in his neighborhood that day and would like to drop by for a chat, but he always says he's busy with something, so maybe another time. But why? And he knows they just want to see if he's okay. He used to like going to movies and eating out after or having lunch at an informal restaurant with people or having friends over for drinks or coffee or dinner, but all that when his wife
was alive. He used to make the dinners, buy a special dessert he thought everyone would like—a fruit torte, a Black Forest cake—and set the table, serve the food, wash and dry the dishes after dinner. He liked doing that. Having friends over also made his wife happy. Sometimes they had two other couples for dinner, but no more than two—he thought that would be a little hard for him to manage without his wife's help. What about this? Maybe he turns these people down for whatever invitations they make to him because he really wasn't that friendly with them. His wife was—she was so much more sociable than he—even after she got sick, but not the last half year of her life or so. But he likes this couple. Likes talking to them most times. They're smart and interesting and very much involved with life. Books, music, theater, art, politics. Lots of things. Music, maybe the subject he likes talking about most. Both the husband and wife are excellent pianists and she also plays the violin and they sometimes performed duets together for their guests and they like most of the same composers he does but can talk about them and their music much more knowledgably than he, of course. Maybe, because he thinks they liked his wife way more than they liked him, they're just saying they want to see him more often than they do because they feel sorry for him. That's the kind of people they are, and sorry for his loss, he means. Or because they think it's something his wife would have wanted them to do or might even have asked them to near the end of her life. Is that another problem? That he thinks that about himself? That people only invited him to dinner and similar events, as this couple still do, out of some obligation? That they might like his writing—this couple say they like it very much; that they eagerly look forward to each of his books; that his oeuvre, as they called it, take up an entire shelf in one of their bookcases and the ones he didn't give them they bought—but don't really enjoy being with him as much as they say they do, or at least
alone with him now that his wife is dead. That most people were mainly friendly with him because they liked his wife's company and he was along for the ride, if he can put it that way. He and the therapist will talk about it, he's sure. What he just thought about himself and why he's cut himself off from old friends so much, to the point where almost all of them don't call him anymore. Why would they? he could say. Would he keep inviting someone to dinner or lunch or for coffee who kept refusing him? Or he'll talk and she'll listen and, he supposes, say something every now and then. That's why he'll be going to her, isn't it? He'll find out.

Another thing is that he won't go to New York. It's where he and his wife were born and brought up. They lived together there for years. Kept an apartment there for about twenty years after they moved to Baltimore. Got married in the apartment; conceived both of their kids in it. His daughters live in Brooklyn. He could stay with one of them, but that would mean going to Brooklyn and he wants to go there even less than he wants to go to New York. His sister has an apartment on the East Side, with a spare room he can sleep in. He can stay there and it'd give him an opportunity to be with her for a day or two. He used to love New York. Walking its streets, stopping in someplace for coffee. So much to see and do. Museums. Central Park. So many art movie houses, they used to call them, and a terrific variety of good affordable restaurants. Chinese food like he never gets in Baltimore. He certainly isn't going to drive to New York alone and deal with its crazy drivers and cars cutting him off and the parking and so on and possibly getting stuck in gridlock for he doesn't know how long. But he won't even go in by train. For sure, not the bus, which his daughters like to take between New York and Baltimore. He hates long trips by bus. Feels trapped. And there's the good chance he might have to pee a lot and the bus will probably only have one toilet for sixty or
more passengers. He also feels trapped and uncomfortable when he stays just for a night at someone's apartment or house, and that's everywhere, not just New York. He can stay in a hotel in New York, but he doesn't want to do that either. It's not the expense but the possibility of bedbugs, which has become a big problem in New York. Hotels are expensive there but he can afford it for one or two nights. Maybe just one, because he wouldn't want to leave his cat alone longer than that. He knows he can get someone to look in on the cat—a neighbor's kid, who lives right up the same driveway as his—but he doesn't want to take the chance the cat will scoot out the door. The cat might stay out all night. Foxes are around. One caught their previous cat and nearly killed him. Bedbugs, though—that really scares him. That's all he needs is to bring even one back to his home. The therapist might make something out of all or some of that too. He hasn't been to New York in what will soon be two years. Nor has he seen his sister in that time. She's five years older than he and in relatively good health and they get along well together, but she doesn't like to travel out of New York except for a stay in Rome for a month once a year.