A Widow's Story (19 page)

Chapter 41
“Won’t Be Seeing You for a While”

March 9
,
2008
. Since taking him to the hospital I have not dreamt of Ray. Since his death, I have not dreamt of Ray. But now, tonight, I dream of Ray.

I can’t see him clearly, we’re too close together. He’s sitting up in a bed—I think—though wearing his familiar blue sweater. His face is close to mine, we are touching. I am leaning over him, and against him. He is showing me two framed pictures—or diagrams—and these, too, I can’t see clearly. So many times—countless times!—in our life together Ray would show me material relating to the press, cover designs, photographs, pages of sample fonts—Ray would ask my opinion, we would confer—but now, since I can’t see clearly what he’s holding, I am not able to say anything; I am both eager and uneasy, for something is expected of me, I think—but what?

Ray’s voice is low, matter-of-fact: “I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while.”

And then the dream ends—I’m awake—I’m stunned, and I’m awake—it’s as if Ray had been in this room with me, a moment ago—and now . . .

“Oh God!”

Such a sense of loss comes over me, I can hardly bear it. I seem to be lying partly beneath my mother’s quilt, and I am partly dressed. Always, now, I wear socks to bed—warm wool socks—my toes are icy-cold, even with these socks; I wear a warm blue flannel bathrobe over my nightgown; still, I am often shivering, and try to sleep curled up, embracing my own (thin) sides, tightly. Sometimes the bedside lamp is on through the night, and the TV might be on, muted; if there’s a cat sleeping with me near the foot of the bed it will be Reynard, who comes into the bedroom and leaps onto the bed as if surreptitiously in the night, only of his own volition and never—never!—if I call him; he may nudge against my foot or leg with his side but will not acknowledge me if I speak to him, or rub his head.

Tonight—it’s almost 5
A.M.
—the TV is not turned on, there is no companion-cat, I am alone in bed. Some of Ray’s papers are scattered about me—though not the novel manuscript, which I’ve set aside for the time being. On the bedside table are student manuscripts I’d read, edited, and annotated some hours ago. There’s a sound of wind in the trees outside—at a distance, a screech owl—what sounds like a screech owl—for the muffled shriek could be the sound of an owl’s prey also.

One of us would say
Listen! Do you hear the screech owl?

Now, I don’t want to hear the screech owl. Whatever those blood-chilling shrieks are, I don’t want to hear.

What I want is to return to the dream. That is all that I want. Such yearning, it’s like thirst, the most terrible thirst, this yearning to return to the dream of Ray that has been the happiest event of my life, for weeks.

Chapter 42
“Can’t Find You Where Are You”

We were in a foreign city. We were separated from each other. There was a hotel—a large hotel—we had a room in this hotel—but I couldn’t seem to find it. I was walking on a street,
alone—I was so anxious
,
I wouldn’t be able to find you—it seemed impossible in the dream that I could ever find you—and there was no way for us to speak with each other . . .

This recurring dream began a few years after we were married. How many variants of this dream I’ve had over the decades, I could not guess—hundreds?—thousands?

Ray laughed when I told him this dream. Ray took dreams very lightly, or gave that impression.

In the morning in the kitchen was the time when I would tell Ray of my recurring dream of loss—my loss of
him.
Each time I told the dream it was a slightly different dream but each time I told the dream it was obvious that it was the identical dream.

That dream again! You know I would never leave you.

Well
,
I know
,
but . . .

I would never dream about you that way.

In a tone of mild reproach Ray spoke as if this were the issue—some failure of trust of him, on my part—and not rather, what seems obvious, my terror at losing him.

Now since Ray has died, my sole recurring dream seems to have ceased.

In fact
,
the Widow’s recurring dream of decades will have ceased permanently. Which seems to refute the theory that the unconscious has but a primitive sense of time and capriciously confuses past
,
present
,
future as if all were one.

Chapter 43
“I Am Sorry to Inform You”

Thank you for your submission. I am sorry to inform you that, due to the unexpected death of editor Raymond Smith,
Ontario Review
will cease publication after its May 2008 issue.

Several hundred of these little blue slips I had printed up, a few days after Ray’s death.

It’s a measure of my fractured concentration at the time—my reputation for prolificacy notwithstanding—that numerous drafts were required to compose this melancholy rejection slip.

Originally, I’d written
unexpected death
but then, rereading what I’d written, I thought that it sounded too—melodramatic, or self-pitying. Or subjective.

For, for whom was the death of Raymond Smith
unexpected
; and why should total strangers care? Why should total strangers be informed?

Unexpected
was therefore removed, but later, how many hours and drafts later I would be embarrassed to say,
unexpected
was re-inserted.

Sorry to inform you of the unexpected death of Raymond Smith.

Like a mildly deranged large flying insect trapped in a small space these words careened and blundered about inside my skull for an inordinate amount of time.

For I knew—common sense dictated—that I had no choice, I would have to discontinue
Ontario Review
which Ray and I had edited together since 1974. This was heartrending but I saw no alternative—90 percent of the editorial work on the magazine and 100 percent of the publishing/financial work had been my husband’s province.

We’d begun the biannual
Ontario Review
:
A North American Journal of the Arts
while we were living in Windsor, Ontario, and teaching together in the English department at the University of Windsor. I’d had the idea that since “small magazines” had been so integral a part of my writing career, I should help finance one of our own; also, both Ray and I were interested in promoting the work of excellent writers whom we knew in both Canada and the United States. Our intention was to publish Canadian and American writers and to make no distinction between the two, which was the special agenda of
Ontario Review.

Our first issue, Fall 1974, was greeted with much interest in literary Canada—not because it was an extraordinary gathering of first-rate North American talent (which we believed it was) but because there were, at the time, many more writers and poets than there were reputable outlets for their work in Canada. We were fortunate to publish an interview with Philip Roth—which I’d “conducted”—as well as fiction by Bill Henderson, soon to become the founder of the legendary
Pushcart Prize
:
Best of the Small Presses
, and Lynne Sharon Schwartz before she’d published her first book of fiction. Like most beginning editors we’d called upon our friends to write for us and our “briefly noted” reviews—of new books by Paul Theroux, Alice Munro, and Beth Harvor—at the time virtually unknown—were signed “JCO.”

Starting a literary magazine is an adventure not for the fainthearted or the easily discouraged. Neither Ray nor I knew what to expect. Ray’s first experience with a printer was a near disaster—the printer had never printed anything more ambitious than a menu for a local Chinese restaurant—the page proofs were riddled with errors that required hours of Ray’s time and patience to correct; and, when the copies were finally printed, for some reason we never understood, a number were smeared with bloody fingerprints.

I wish that I could recall Ray’s exact words, when he eagerly opened the box from the printer, and saw the mysterious stains on the covers. I want to think that he’d said something appropriately witty but probably what emerged from his throat more resembled a sob.

And very likely I said uselessly
Oh honey! How on earth did this happen!

Carefully we examined each of the copies to weed out the soiled ones—another effort that required hours. Exactly how many copies of this premiere issue Ray had had printed up, I can’t remember: maybe 1,000?

(If 1,000, most of these were never sold. No doubt, we gave them away. And we paid our contributors partly with three-year subscriptions. It would be years before
OR
had a circulation of 1,000.)

Our second issue went far more smoothly than the first. Through a bit of good luck—I’d written to Saul Bellow whom I scarcely knew, requesting something from him—we had a “self-interview” by Bellow, at about the time of
Humboldt’s Gift.
(When Bellow’s literary agent discovered that Saul had sent us this little gem, the agent tried to take it back; but too late, we told her—we’d already gone to press.) We published work by the Canadian writer Marian Engel, and poetry by Wendell Berry, David Ignatow, César Vallejo (in translation), and Theodore Weiss (destined to become our close friend after we moved to Princeton in 1978).

In 1984, when we’d been in Princeton for several years, and Ray had resigned from teaching in order to be a full-time editor/publisher, we decided to expand our small-press enterprise to include book publishing. (Why? Out of some “reckless commingling of idealism and masochism” was Ray’s droll explanation.) Though neither the magazine nor the press ever made any profit, we were, resolutely, not “non-profit”; our projects were funded privately, by my Princeton University salary and other more random spurts of income.

The 1980s was a time when libraries were still subscribing to literary magazines and buying poetry books, a situation that would change drastically in the late 1990s. In Canadian publishing circles
Ontario Review
soon ascended to the sort of small-press literary eminence belonging, in the States, to
Paris Review
,
Kenyon Review
,
Quarterly Review of Literature
, and Ray Smith was a “major” editor/publisher in these quarters.

Ray’s Jesuit training in adolescence had instilled in him a predilection for what is called
perfectionism
but which might resemble, to a neutral observer,
obsessive-compulsive disorder
. Thus, Ray was the ideal editor—as well as copyeditor and proofreader; though he sent out page proofs to our authors, he never trusted any eye but his own, and so he did everything except “set type”—in those days when type was still “set”—and no doubt he would have done that, if he’d been able. Apart from our domestic life, Ray’s work was his life. Most of all Ray had loved working with writers: there is no relationship quite so intimate and intense, when an editor is truly absorbed in editing, and a writer is willing to be “edited.” Enormous sympathy, tact, diplomacy, shrewdness are required—and a sense of humor. Ray took—this does sound rather masochistic, or at least eccentric—genuine pleasure in reading unsolicited submissions which numbered in the thousands, annually; he passed on to me fiction that was “promising” but needed work, so that, if I wished to, I might work with the writer, making editorial suggestions. He took particular pleasure in working with writers one or the other of us had “discovered”—like Pinckney Benedict, my prize-winning Princeton student whose remarkable senior thesis
Town Smokes
(1987) was one of our first OR Press books, and would be one of the most enduring.

When Ray spoke of Pinckney it was with a special—warm, tender—intonation in his voice.

When Ray spoke of a number of writers and poets with whom he’d worked closely over the years, you could see how much they’d meant to him—even those whom we’d never met.

How touching it is, if heartrending—the dedication to the 2009
Pushcart Prize
:
Best of the Small Presses
, edited by Bill Henderson, reads:

for Raymond Smith (1930–2008)

Now, all this has ended. No one can take Ray’s place. Most of all, continuing to bring out
Ontario Review
without Ray could have no meaning, for me—it would be like celebrating someone’s birthday
in absentia.

The May issue was nearly completed, when Ray had to be hospitalized. Just a few more days’ work—which I hope I can do, with the assistance of our typesetter in Michigan. I have a dread of letting down Ray’s contributors, who are expecting to see their work in his magazine.

I will have to pay them, too—of course. I will have to calculate what they should be paid, write checks and mail them. I will have to package contributors’ copies, and mail them. A kind of wildness sweeps over me, almost a kind of elation.
If I can do this
,
how impressed Ray would be! How he would know
,
I love him.

When I called Gail Godwin, to tell her about Ray, Gail’s response was immediate—“Oh Joyce—you’re going to be so unhappy.”

How true this is! It’s a blunt fact few would wish to acknowledge.

There are friends whom we see often—and there are friends whom we see rarely. My friendship of more than thirty years with Gail Godwin has been mostly epistolary, writerly. We are like cousins, or sisters, of a bygone era—the long-ago era of the Brontë sisters, perhaps. And Gail’s house on a hillside in Woodstock, New York, overlooking, at a distance, the Catskill Mountains, has something of the air of romance and isolation of the fabled Yorkshire moors.

Many times Ray and I had visited Gail and her longtime companion, the distinguished composer Robert Starer, in their Woodstock house. Robert’s unexpected death in the spring of 2001 had the sorrowful feel of the end of an era, though I had not dared to think that my husband would be next.

How similar our experiences have been, Gail’s and mine! It is uncanny.

Like Ray, Robert had been hospitalized as if “temporarily”—he’d had a heart attack from which he seemed to be recovering; his condition was “stable”; then, early one morning as Gail was preparing to drive to the hospital in Kingston to see him, she received a call from a doctor whom she didn’t know—who happened to be on duty at the time: “I’m afraid Robert didn’t make it.”

Didn’t make it!
But he had been recovering . . . hadn’t he?

So we protest, in disbelief. Clinging to what has seemingly been promised to us, like children.
But
,
but—! But he was recovering! You’d said—he was still alive.

Gail too had driven to the hospital in a trance. Gail too had not believed that her husband wouldn’t be waiting for her in his hospital room. Driving in the early morning along a darkened highway each of us thinking incredulously
Is my husband dying? Is he dying? He can’t be—dying! The doctor has said—he is alive . . .

Long after hope has vanished, these phantom-words remain.

Alive
,
he is still . . . alive. He is recovering.

He will be discharged next Tuesday.

Gail has offered me sympathy, counsel. I am so very broken, I find it difficult to speak. Rarely do I speak to anyone on the telephone any longer but I am able to speak with Gail and to tell Gail that I wish we lived closer together, we might commiserate together, but neither of us is likely to move. Who but Gail Godwin would tell me: “Suffer, Joyce. Ray was worth it.”

This is so. This is true. But the test is: Am I strong enough to suffer? And for how long?

Did you send the rest of the copy to Doug? What about the cover art which I didn’t finish—can you prepare it and send it to him
,
FedEx?

(Doug Hagley is Ray’s excellent typesetter, in Marquette, Michigan.)

I may as well admit it—if Ray could miraculously return from the dead, within a day or two—within a few hours—he would be working again on
Ontario Review.

He was working in his hospital bed, on the very last day of his life. He’d be terribly concerned now, that the publication date of the May issue will be delayed . . .

I am trying. Honey
,
I am trying!

Like a desperate individual in a sailboat, a small sailboat foundering in a raging sea, after the sailor has died, swept overboard and drowned and the left-behind companion must try to keep the sailboat from sinking . . . It’s ridiculous to think of completing the voyage when the most you can hope for is to stay afloat.

And so, I am trying. I will do what Ray would want me to do—if I can.

At the moment, opening mail. The Sisyphus-task of clipping these little blue rejection slips to manuscripts. Sometimes I fall into an open-eyed trance reading lines of a poem, a short story, until my eyes lose focus.

In the hospital, we’d read submissions together, and discussed them. I’d brought two short stories for Ray to read which I was recommending for publication—two stories about which I felt very enthusiastic—but now suddenly, all that has ended. I am distressed to think that possibly the manuscripts have been lost, were never brought back from the hospital.

Terrible to think, things are being lost! I had tried so hard yet Ray’s glasses are gone.

As the days—weeks—months pass, the effort of responding to
OR
submissions will become increasingly vexing. I’d thought that word should have spread in the literary community—through our
Ontario Review
Web site, and obituaries—that Ray Smith has passed away, that the magazine is discontinued—yet, with clockwork predictability, the submissions keep coming. Of course, most of these are multiply submitted, as if by robot-writers who begin their form letters
Dear Editor
and seem to have no idea what
Ontario Review
is. (More than two years later robot-submissions will continue to arrive in the mailbox, some of them addressed to
Raymond Smith
,
Editor
, though this beleaguered “associate editor” has ceased returning them, figuring that by now a statute of limitations has been evoked. Enough!)

Yet, in March 2008, I am diligent—if that’s the word—about opening mail. Occasionally, there are even book-length manuscripts, unsolicited—which I return to the sender with a little blue slip
Thank you for your submission.
Sometimes I add a few words, and sign my initials. Even in my numbed state I feel an impulse to encourage writers, or anyway a wish not to discourage them. Thinking
It would have meant something to me
,
years ago.