Wait Till You See Me Dance: Stories by Deb Olin Unferth

Author:Deb Olin Unferth [Unferth, Deb Olin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781555979621
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2017-03-21T05:00:00+00:00

Mr. Simmons Takes a Prisoner

Mr. Simmons was not a family man.

This, although he had a family. A wife, two daughters. A large apartment to put them in. A dog. He felt attached to them (fuzzy-headed, waving from a distance) as he did to certain household kinks: the sticky lock, weak showerhead. Comfortable inconveniences, he might say. He preferred the empty office on Sundays to the fussy kitchen at home. He didn’t heft a pine up the steps at Christmas, perform science experiments with lightbulbs and tinfoil, romp off to the corner store for snacks. No bike rack on the Toyota, no ski trips, no corn in the City of Chicago community garden. He worked late, told the kids to cut the racket at dinner, read political magazines before bed. He sighed heavily, slammed the refrigerator door when the kids asked for cash or keys. But Mr. Simmons wasn’t cruel. He never beat his family or tossed them down the stairs.

The Simmons’ younger daughter entered college and the apartment grew quiet. He kept to his routine. His wife went out and got a teaching certificate, to his surprise, and within a year had a classroom of ten-year-olds. Each morning she left earlier than he, left him to rinse his cereal bowl alone. In her absence he walked through rooms spread out and white, felt the air around him, poked his head in the abandoned bathroom by the kids’ rooms—folded towels, wrapped soap, clean tiles. He thought irritably, Why do we need such a big apartment?

This was the first thing. Then, new emotions. His wife spoke endlessly on the phone to the girls, left Mr. Simmons to wait his turn to talk, helpless, dying as he stood there. Finger-drumming, wild hand signals to no avail. But when she finally handed him the phone, he found he didn’t have much to say.

Or when his elder daughter announced she was moving to San Francisco with her husband, he was stunned.

“You’re leaving with that truck driver?”

“He’s an environmental lawyer.”

“I’ve never seen him fit a tie around that thick neck,” he said.

Minor outbursts like these increased. The family backed off in bewilderment, then ignored him.

The day after his daughter moved, he woke, put his feet in his slippers, and went looking for the dog. A bit old now, the pooch. “Here boy,” he called, patted his leg, whistled. The dog limped over. “Treat? Treat?” he said. In the kitchen, he fed it a puppy biscuit, tossed it the squeaky toy. He waved from the door as he left for work. “Good boy. Sit.”

That night he carried the dog into the bedroom.

“Thought the old mutt may as well stay with us tonight,” he said.

“Won’t your allergies bother you?” his wife asked, looking over her book.

“Allergies?”

“Your allergies, you know,” she said. “Allergies.”

“Oh yes.” He put the dog down and shooed it into the hall.

Should he have an affair? He knew plenty of women. A proper jacket, one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other lifted to summon a taxi, her dress spinning in a slow circle.

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