“Excuse me?”
It was the third day of her new life. This life was diminished as in the aftermath of brain surgery executed with a meat cleaver yet she meant to do all that was required of her and to do it alone, and capably, and without complaint.
She was in Trenton, New Jersey. Whatever this terrible place was — the rear entrance of a massive granite building, a parking lot partly under construction and edged with a mean, despoiled crust of ice like Styrofoam — and the winter morning very cold, wet and windy with the smell of the oily Delaware River a half-mile away — she was struck by the fact that it appeared to be an actual place and not one of those ominous but imprecise nightmare-places of the troubled sleep of her new life.
In a brave voice she said, a little louder: “Excuse me? — I’m sorry to trouble you but is this the rear entrance to Probate Court?”
The girl peered at Adrienne suspiciously. She had a blunt bold fist of a face. Her eyes were tarry-black, insolent. She was about eighteen years old and she was wearing an absurd faux-fox-fur jacket. In her arms she held a raggedy bundle — a very small baby — she’d been rocking, and cooing to, with a distracted air. For a full minute or more she’d been openly observing Adrienne shakily approach the rear of the courthouse along a makeshift walk of planks and treacherous icy pavement as if fascinated by the older woman’s over-precise cautious-careful steps — Does she think that I am drunk? Drugged? Is she concerned that I will slip and fall? Is she waiting for me to slip and fall? — but now that Adrienne stood before her, in need of assistance, the girl blinked as if she hadn’t seen Adrienne until this moment, and had no idea what her question meant.
“‘Probate court’ — it’s a division of the county court — I think. Do you know if I can use this entrance? — or do I have to walk all the way around to the front?” Adrienne’s numb mouth spoke calmly. In the widow’s voice one can detect not only the dazedness of the brain-injured but a profound disbelief that one is still alive, allowed to exist. Her eyes that resembled blood-specked fish eggs scooped from a fish’s gravid belly were sparkly-bright and alert fixed on the girl’s face.
A powerful sleeping pill called Doleur, she’d taken sometime after 2:30 A.M. the previous night. In anticipation of all that she’d be required to do today, and now she was dazed, groggy; her head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton batting, in her ears was a high-pitched ringing that was easy to confuse with sirens wailing on Trenton streets. She was thinking of how in her previous life — only just visible to her now on the far side of an abyss, and retreating — that life that had been hers until three days before when her husband of thirty-two years had died unexpectedly — she’d been a diligent and responsible person. She remembered that person. She must be that person. In preparation for this journey to the Mercer County Courthouse she’d lain in bed that morning rigid and unmoving rehearsing the journey with the manic thoroughness of a deranged actress in an unfathomable and catastrophic play.
She hadn’t anticipated getting lost, however. In a maze of one-way streets, detour signs and signs warning NO TURNS. Much of the corroded inner city of Trenton appeared to be under construction as in the aftermath of a geological cataclysm. There were barricaded streets, deafening jackhammers. Because of excavation in the courthouse parking lot, the grinding of earthmoving machines, and more barricades, Adrienne had had to park a considerable distance from the courthouse; she’d had a terrible time finding the courthouse itself which was farther east on State Street than she would have imagined, in a run-down neighborhood of empty storefronts, bail bondsmen’s offices and pawnshops. This, the county courthouse!
“‘Probrate court’” — the girl in the faux-fur jacket spoke in a drawling skeptical voice — “that’s like to do with ‘probration’?”
“‘Probate.’” Adrienne spoke cautiously not wanting to offend the girl by seeming to correct her pronunciation. “It has to do with wills. Not probation but civil court. It’s a kind of court within the court, I think. The county court, I mean…”
In her anxiety she was giving too much information. This too was a symptom of her new life — an over-eagerness to explain to strangers, to apologize. I know I have no right to be here — to exist. I know that I am of no more worth than a piece of trash. Forgive me!
The girl continued to stare at her, skeptically. Or maybe — Adrienne wanted to think this — the girl’s expression meant only that she was interested, curious. Her nose was flattened as if someone had jammed the palm of his hand against it and her small mouth was an animated crimson wound. She was both sleazy and glamorous in her fox-colored fur jacket opened to display a fleshy turnip-shaped body in a sequined purple sweater, lime-green stretch pants and faux-leather boots with miniature tassels. Her skin resembled sandpaper, blotched and blemished despite a heavy coating of makeup. Her brass-colored hair had been corn-rowed and sprang out asymmetrically about her head like frantic thoughts. “‘Wills’ — like, when somebody’s dead? Died? And you find out what they left you?” The girl gazed at Adrienne with repelled respect.
“Well, yes. Something like that.”
Find out what they left you. This chilling phrase flashed in the air like a knife blade.
The girl gave the baby-bundle in her arms a fierce little shake, furrowing her forehead in thought. She was the kind of harassed young mother whose cooing is indistinguishable from chiding and whose smiles could turn savage in an instant. “Ma’am, I guess it’d be inside — what d’you callit court. If I was you I’d take this-way-in and see if they let you through. Assholes got all kinds of ‘restrictions’ and ‘penalties’ but it’s real far to the front and the damn sidewalk is all broke. I came that way.” Abruptly now there was a bond between them, of grievance. The girl was eager to complain to Adrienne about the “shitty treatment” she’d gotten at the courthouse when she’d brought her grandma to Family Services the previous month, how “nasty mean” they’d been treated and how, this morning, she had business of her own in the courthouse: “See, I’m what’s called — sup-pena’d. Y’know what that is?” Adrienne said yes, she thought she knew.
As the girl spoke vehemently, Adrienne happened to notice something astonishing and disturbing: about twelve feet behind the girl was a stroller pushed almost out of sight between the blank granite wall of the courthouse and a parked van marked MERCER CO. DETENTION and in this stroller was what appeared to be another child, no more than two years old.
“Oh! Is that your child?”
“Huh? Where?”
“In that stroller, there. Isn’t that a — child?”
“‘Child’ — what’s that? Might be just some rags-like, or some bags or somethin’, stuck there.”
But this was a joke — was it? The girl laughed a little wildly.
“Ma’am, you are right. Sure is a ‘child.’ You want her?”
Seeing the startled look in Adrienne’s face, the girl brayed with laughter. Her notched-looking teeth were bared in a wide smile. Adrienne tried to fall in with the joke, which didn’t seem to her funny. She said, “She’s very” — desperately trying to think of an appropriate and plausible word — “sweet-looking, pretty….”
“Ma’am, thanks! You sure you don’t want her?”
“Well, I — ”
“Just kiddin, ma’am. That’s my sweet li’l Lilith, she’d been a preemie would you b’lieve? — now she’s real healthy. And you’re right, she’s pretty. She is.”
Two small children! The harried young mother had brought two small children with her to the courthouse on this miserable winter morning. The wind was bitter cold and smelled of creosote, across the ravaged parking lot sporadic hissing outbursts of rain mixed with sleet raced like machine-gun fire. Adrienne had the vague impression — the vague, uneasy impression — she didn’t want to stare openly — that there was something just subtly wrong with the toddler in the stroller, something stunted, deformed. The small face that should have been pretty was in fact too narrow, or asymmetrical; the eyes were lopsided, unfocused. As Adrienne stared the little girl began to whimper faintly and to make a halfhearted effort to fret against the restraint of a blanket wrapped tightly about her torso pinning her arms inside.
Yet the thought came to Adrienne, in rebuke No matter how miserable she is, yet she has them.
How miserable that girl’s soul, yet she is not alone.
Adrienne and her husband Tracy had had no children. Why this was, Adrienne hadn’t quite known. No decision had been made except elliptically, by omission.
Or maybe one of them had made a decision, and had neglected to inform the other.
In an aggrieved voice the girl was saying, “‘Probration’ — that’s just inside here. I know ‘County Probation’ — that’s the first floor. Half my family goes there — I ain’t, yet.” She laughed, as if this were a witticism. Adrienne didn’t quite get the joke, if it was a joke. “Ma’am, see, they got all these ‘departments’ — ‘county services’ — in this place. Some days, there’s so many people going through security you have to stand outdoors — in the cold — nobody gives a damn how the public is inconven’ced. My poor grandma and me, when we came back in January, there was just one fuckin elevator workin — three fuckin elevators were broke! — so we stand there waitin like a hour for the elevator ’cause my grandma couldn’t walk the stairs all the way to Family Court on the sixth floor. I never saw any ‘probrate court’ but there’s ‘parole’ — there’s ‘county pros’cutor’ — on the third floor — I’m s’posed to check in there. ‘Pros’cution witnesses’ — they’re waiting for me, I guess. They got my name. I was served a sup-pena. There’s some of them — ‘pros’cution lawyers’ — who know me by name and by my face. So if I go inside, and if they see me — I’m fucked. Except” — the girl paused, with a look of crude cunning, leaning close to Adrienne to speak in confidence — “I got to get a crucial message to somebody, that’s on the second floor — that’s ‘criminal court’ — if they brought him over from men’s detention like they were s’post to, 8 A.M. this morning. His name is Edro — Edro Hodge. You’d be seeing his picture in the papers, if you live around here — there’s been some things about him, independent of him and his family — that’s to say, me. Some things about ‘material witnesses’ — what the fuck that is. These shitheads that like disappeared. So who’d they blame? — Edro. Could be when you see him, he’s cuffed and his ankles shackled. Like some crazed bull they got him, to keep him ‘secured.’ Edro has got tats on his left cheek and back of his neck and up and down his arms and his hair is tied back in a rat-tail unless the lawyer made him cut it for the judge. They treat you like shit once they get you. This ain’t Family Court! He’d be in one of those freaky orange coveralls that says Mercer County Men’s Detention. The hope is to mock and ridicule a man, to break him. But Edro ain’t gonna be broke that easy.” The girl smiled, baring tea-colored notched teeth, then her smile grew wistful, and then stricken. “Oh Jesus! — I got to get a message to Edro — it’s urgent, ma’am. Please ma’am — you look like a kind lady — say you will help us?”
“‘Help you’ — how?”
Adrienne felt a sense of dread as the girl clutched at a sleeve of her black cashmere coat. It might have been a TV scene — a movie scene — the girl’s heavily made-up face thrust at Adrienne’s face. A sweetish-stale odor wafted from her — a smell of desperation, urgency — cigarettes, chewing gum, hair oil, soiled baby diapers. Her eyes widened: “I don’t better go anywhere near him or on any floor they’d see me — ’cause I am a ‘prosecution witness’ — it’s warned of me, I could be arrested like Edro. Obsuction of justis — givin a false statement to police. Interferin with — whatever shit it is, they call it. Bastards get you to say what they want you to say — you don’t hardly know what shit you are saying but it’s taped. Then you’re fucked if you try to take it back.” Adrienne stared in astonishment as the girl flung open the faux-fur jacket and tugged at the waist of her purple sweater lifting it to reveal the flaccid flesh of her midriff that was covered in bruises the hue of rotted bananas; now Adrienne saw that the girl’s forehead was bruised as well, what she’d believed to be skin eruptions were in fact welts. Obviously, “Edro” had beat the hell out of her, she was lucky to be standing. In an anguished rush of words she said, “Yes ma’am, I turned Edro in — I mean, I caused Edro to be turned in — I freaked and ran into the street near-about naked and some damn neighbor called 911 — ‘domestic violence’ — ‘aggravated assault’ is what they’d arrested Edro for the other time — that time, I wasn’t to blame — it’s just some bullshit ’cause they want Edro for the ‘material witness’ shit — what happened to them, who knows? This time, see, we’d both been drinking — I was scared — I never make a sound judgment when I am scared — the cops asked me who’d been beating on me so I told them — my nose was near-about broke and all this blood on my front — and my front-clothes torn — I told them it was Edro hurting Lilith and the baby I was scared of but he’d never hurt them — they are his own blood he knows for a fact, he has vowed he would never hurt them. In my right mind I realized this. But that wasn’t right away. Ma’am, see, I have got to get this message to Edro before they take him in to the judge. His damn fuck lawyer told him to plead ‘guilty.’ They always tell you plead ‘guilty’ — makes it easy for them. They are such shitheads — ‘Office of the Public Defender.’ You wear out your ass waiting for them in those chairs, nobody gives a fuck how long you wait. Also this is the ‘second offense’ — ‘domestic violence’ — other things Edro did, the cops hold against him — they have a grudge against the Hodge family Edro says and give them a fucking hard time all they can. One thing he has got to know — Leisha is not going to swear any statement against him. If you could tell him this, ma’am — or pass him some note, I could write for you…”
Through the girl’s torrent of words a crude melancholy narrative emerged like a wounded animal, limping — Adrienne saw clearly. She felt a stab of sympathy for the poor battered girl but her better judgment urged her caution. Take care! Don’t be foolish, Adrienne! Don’t get involved.
Adrienne shivered. Her husband’s voice, close in her ear.
Tracy was not one to get involved. Tracy was one for caution.
“I wish that I could help you,” Adrienne said, “but I–I’m already late for — ”
“You got some paper, ma’am? Somethin to write with? All you’d need to hand him is some little thing — it could just say like Leisha has retracted — or, just L. has retracted. He’d know right-away what that meant.”
“I–I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have time to — ”
“Ma’am, fuck that! Ma’am, sure you do.”
So forcibly Leisha spoke, so glittery her tarry-black eyes, Adrienne found herself meekly providing the girl with a page torn from an address book, and a pen. Leisha scribbled a message onto the scrap of paper while Adrienne glanced anxiously about.
The rear entrance to the courthouse was about twenty feet away. A steady stream of people were entering, mostly individuals. Some were uniformed law enforcement officers. No one took note of Adrienne and the girl in the faux-fur coat.
“You can’t miss Edro Hodge, ma’am — left side of his face has this like Apache tattoo, and his hair in a rat-tail. And Edro has got these eyes, ma’am — you will know him when you see him when it’s like he sees you down to the roots of your shoes.”
Roots of your shoes. These eyes. Adrienne wanted to laugh, this was so absurd. This was so ridiculous, reckless. Leisha pressed the folded note into Adrienne’s fingers and Adrienne was about to take it then drew back as if she’d touched a snake. No no don’t get involved. Not ever. Quickly she backed away from the staring girl saying she was sorry, very sorry, she couldn’t help her — “I’m late for Probate Court! Please understand.”
Adrienne turned, fled. Adrienne walked quickly in her soft-leather boots, desperate not to slip on the icy pavement. At the courthouse entrance a uniformed police officer gestured to Adrienne, to step ahead of him. Maybe he was thinking she hadn’t enough strength to push the revolving door. Was she so ghastly-pale, did she carry herself so precariously? The girl was shouting after her, pleading — “Ma’am wait — ma’am damn you — ma’am!”
“Ma’am? Step along, please.”
Blindly Adrienne made her halting way through the security checkpoint. What a clamorous place this was, and unheated — overhead a high gray-tinctured ceiling, underfoot an aged and very dirty marble floor. Most of the others shuffling in the line were dark-skinned. Most wore work clothes, or were carelessly or poorly dressed, with sullen or expressionless faces. Adrienne stepped aside to allow a stout middle-aged black woman with an elderly mother to precede her but a security guard intervened speaking sharply: “Ma’am — put your things down here. Step along, ma’am.”
Trying not to think Because I am white. I am the minority here.
It was so: the only other Caucasian in view was a sheriff’s deputy stationed in the inner lobby.
She was not a racist. Yet her hammering heart rebuked her — Now you are helpless, they have you.
Her husband had been an academic, a historian. His field of specialization had been twentieth-century European history, after World War I. Like a time traveler he’d moved deftly from the present into the past — from the past into the present — though he had lived with horrors, he’d seemed to Adrienne curiously untouched by his discoveries, intellectually engaged rather more than emotionally engaged. A historian is a kind of scientist, he’d believed. A historian collects and analyzes data, he must take care not to impose his personal beliefs, his theories of history, upon this data. Adrienne had once entered Tracy’s study when he was assembling a book-length manuscript to send to his editor at Harvard University Press — chapters and loose pages were scattered across his desk and table and she’d had a fleeting glimpse of photographs he’d hidden from her — scenes of Nazi death-camps? Holocaust survivors? — she’d asked what these were and Tracy had said, “You don’t want to know, Adrienne.”
Adrienne had protested, but not strongly. Essentially he’d been right — she had not wanted to know.
How concerned for her Tracy would be, if he could see her here, alone. For why on earth was she here.
Never had they spoken of death-duties. The subject had never arisen — for why should it have arisen? Tracy had not expected to die, not for a long time. He’d been a “fit” man — he exercised, he ate and drank sparingly, he was steeped in the sort of health-knowledge common to people of his education and class. Knowing is a form of immortality. Ignorance is the only weakness, and that can be prevented.
So it had seemed to them. Now Adrienne had lost faith, she’d been staggered, stunned. Her husband’s knowledge had not saved him. No more than a house of ordinary dimensions could withstand a hurricane or an earthquake.
“Ma’am — remove your coat, please. And your boots. Step along.”
Adrienne did as she was told. She placed her things in trays on the conveyer belt to pass through the X-ray machine, as at an airport. Yet there was a harshness here, an air of suspicion on the part of the security staff, she had not experienced while traveling on either domestic or foreign flights. She was told to open her handbag for inspection, in addition to placing it in the tray; as she struggled to open her husband’s heavy leather briefcase, which contained several folders of legal documents, some of these documents fell to the floor. Awkwardly Adrienne stooped, her face warm with embarrassment, and reached for the papers. “Ma’am? You needin some help?” A male guard with skin the color of burnt cork stooped to help her retrieve the papers which had scattered on the damp, dirty floor amid the feet of strangers. How had this happened — these were precious documents! One was a notarized IRS form for the previous year, another was the death certificate issued for Tracy Emmet Myer on stiff gray-green paper resembling the paper used for U.S. currency and stamped with the New Jersey State seal. Somehow, there was Adrienne’s husband’s wallet being handed to her — and his wristwatch — which Adrienne had removed from the hospital room after his death and must have placed inside the briefcase without remembering she’d done so. The wallet was unnervingly light, flat — all the bills, credit cards and other items must have been taken from it — and the wristwatch had a broken face as if it had been stepped on. “This yours, too?” — the guard held out to Adrienne a scrap of paper upon which she saw scribbled handwriting — barely legible except for the oversized schoolgirl signature LEISHA.
Leisha! The aggressive girl in the faux-fur jacket and corn-rowed hair had somehow succeeded in thrusting the note to her lover into Adrienne’s briefcase — how was this possible? Adrienne remembered clearly having refused it, and walking quickly away.
Numbly she took the note from the guard, and the other items, and returned them to the briefcase. Her face throbbed with heat, she was aware of strangers staring at her. How quickly it had happened, Adrienne Myer had become that person, very often a woman, an older woman, who in public places draws the pitying or annoyed stares of others because she has dropped something, or has forgotten something, or has lost something, or has come to the wrong address and is holding up the line… She was fumbling now to put on her boots, and her coat. And where was her glove, had she dropped a glove…The deputy overseeing the checkpoint, a lieutenant, with a dim roughened skin that wasn’t nearly so Caucasian as Adrienne had imagined from a short distance, had come over to see what was wrong. Politely he said, “Ma’am? Where you headed — sur’gate?” When Adrienne stared blankly at him he said: “Office of the Sur’gate? Probate Court?” Bemusedly his eyes moved over her: the black cashmere coat that fell to midcalf, expensive but hastily misbuttoned, the expensive leather boots defaced by salt as by graffiti. “Probate is fifth floor, ma’am. Elevators through that doorway.”
Is it so obvious, Adrienne wondered. Where I am headed, and why.
She thanked the officer. She moved on. She was carrying her handbag and briefcase against her chest, like a refugee; trying not to think that she might have left something behind on the foyer floor — a crucial document — now scuffed and tattered underfoot — someone in the security line or one of the courthouse staff might have pilfered from her. She was not a racist, she was not a white racist yet she had to acknowledge that the color of her skin singled her out as one of the oppressors of the dark-skinned peoples of the world, that was a fact of history, and of fate; nowhere more evident than here in Trenton, the decaying and depopulated capital city of the State of New Jersey. The widow is one who comes swiftly to the knowledge Whatever harm comes to you, you deserve. For you are still alive.
Not when he’d died — she had been too shocked, too stunned to comprehend that he had died, at that moment — but earlier — on the third or fourth day of his hospitalization — when she’d hurried to her husband’s room on the fifth floor of the hospital — “Telemetry” — and had seen an empty bed, a stripped mattress, no human figure in the bed, no surrounding machines — the thought struck her like a knife-blow He has died, they have taken him away — in that instant the floor had swung up toward her face, the floor had somehow come loose and swung up as she’d lost her footing, her balance, blood rushed out of her brain leaving her faint, helpless, utterly weak, broken and weeping — a nurse’s aide had prevented her from falling — “Mrs. Myer! Your husband has been moved just down the hall” — in an instant her life had ended, yet in the next instant her life had been restored to her; all that would happen to her from now on, she understood, would be random, wayward and capricious.
Now it has begun, now there is nothing to stop it.
The elevators were very slow-moving, crowded. Here too Adrienne was made to feel self-conscious, uneasy. After waiting for several minutes she decided to take the stairs. But what a surprise — these were not ordinary functional stairs but an old-fashioned staircase of carved mahogany, broad and sweeping, baronial; clearly the staircase belonged to an older part of the courthouse. Climbing the curving stairs, gripping the railing, Adrienne found herself staring into a shaft, like a deep pit; the courthouse appeared to be hollow at its core, as if receding in time. Adrienne paused to catch her breath, leaning against the railing, gazing down into the pit-like shaft. She thought This is a temptation for those who are not strong. Or for those who are strong. To end it now.
How close she was, to losing her balance, falling…She’d begun to perspire with anxiety, inside her warm clothing.
Since the first day of her husband’s hospitalization — now just nine days ago — she’d been subject to such flurries of anxiety, dread. She had brought her husband to the ER for he was suffering from an erratic heartbeat and a pronounced shortness of breath; his face was flushed, mottled; his eyes were unnaturally dilated. In the ER he’d been “stabilized” — he’d been kept overnight for cardiac tests — moved from the ER not into the general hospital population but to the seventh floor — “Telemetry” — which Adrienne had not wanted to see was adjacent to “Intensive Care” from that point onward her life became a sequence of linked yet seemingly disjointed episodes accelerated as in a slapstick silent film in which she might have been observed with pitying eyes, like a rat in a maze, compelled to repeat the same futile actions compulsively, unvaryingly, driving her car to the hospital and parking her car, hurriedly entering the hospital and crossing the wide lobby whose floor smelled of fresh disinfectant and taking one of the elevators to Telemetry, fifth floor, exiting the elevator and hurrying along the corridor to her husband’s room — steeling herself for what she might see, or not see, as she approached the doorway — as she approached the bed, and the white-clad figure reclining, or sitting up, in the bed —
On the curving baronial stairs Adrienne became light-headed. A woman with toffee-colored skin clutched at her arm, deftly. “Ma’am? You havin some kind of faint?” Adrienne murmured no, no she was fine, though her lips had gone numb, blood had rushed out of her face. The woman gripped her arm and helped her on the stairs. She knows where I am headed Adrienne thought.
On the next floor, Adrienne had to make her way through a long line of individuals filing into a vast assembly room. Here were far more light-skinned men and women than she’d seen in any other part of the courthouse, most of them well dressed and all of them wearing jurors’ badges; how plausible it would appear to a neutral observer, that Adrienne Myer had been summoned to the Mercer County Courthouse this morning for jury duty; she felt a stab of envy for these individuals, a powerful wish to be one of them, that her reason for being here was so impersonal, so banal and so easily resolved.
On the next floor — was this the third, or the fourth? — Adrienne found herself in another crowded corridor — here was the Office of the Public Defender. On a long wooden bench against a wall festooned with warnings — NO SMOKING — NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE COURTROOM — DO NOT BRING CONTRABAND INTO THE COURTHOUSE — were seated a number of mostly young men, under the eye of several Mercer County sheriff’s deputies; all but two of the young men were dark-skinned, and all were wearing lurid-orange jumpsuits marked MERCER CO. MENS DETENTION. All were shackled at the wrists and ankles, like beasts.
Adrienne tried not to stare seeing one of the white men close by, slouching on the bench; he had a sharp hawkish face disfigured by an aggressively ugly tattoo jagged like lightning bolts; his rat-colored hair was pulled back into a tail — a rat-tail? Was this — what was the name — Ezra, Edro? — Edro Hodge? — the person whom Leisha had been desperate to contact? Hodge’s eyes were heavy-lidded, drooping; he gave an impression of being oblivious of his surroundings, if not contemptuous. Adrienne slipped past not wanting to attract his attention.
One floor up — two floors? — at last, Probate Court: the Office of the Surrogate.
“Ma’am — here.”
Before Adrienne was allowed into the waiting room of the Office of the Surrogate she was required to show a photo I.D — fumbling for her wallet which contained her driver’s license, but where was her wallet? — had someone taken her wallet, in the confusion downstairs? — in a panic locating her U.S. passport in the briefcase at which a woman deputy stared suspiciously — “This you, ma’am? Don’t look much like you.”
The photo was several years old, Adrienne said. Though having to acknowledge that the woman in the photo, lightly smiling, with a smooth, unlined forehead and hopeful eyes, bore little resemblance to the woman she was now.
“This is my name, though — ‘Adrienne Myer.’ My husband’s name is — was — Myer.”
How unconvincing this sounded! The very syllables — Adrienne Myer — had become nonsensical, mocking.
For if once she’d been married to a man named Myer, the man named Myer no longer existed; where did that leave Adrienne Myer?
Nonetheless, Adrienne was allowed to take a seat. The air in the waiting room was steam-heated, stale. Here was a vast space larger even than the jurors’ assembly room on the lower floor — a high-ceilinged room in sepia tones like an old daguerreotype, with high narrow windows that seemed to look out over nothing — unless the glass had become scummy and opaque with grime. Adrienne was nervously conscious of rows — rows! — of uncomfortable vinyl chairs crowded with people — their expressions ranged from melancholy to exhausted, anxious to resigned. At the rear of the waiting room the farther wall appeared to have dissolved into sepia shadow — the waiting room stretched on forever. Blindly Adrienne was seated clutching at her things — handbag, briefcase — she’d removed her black cashmere coat in this stifling heat — a glove had fallen to the floor, she retrieved with some effort — she’d been gripping her things so tightly, the bones of her hands ached. She was thinking All these people have died! So many of us.
But this was wrong of course. Everyone in the waiting room was alive. She was alive.
“I am — alive.”
Alive. It was such a curious boastful word! It was such a tentative word, simply to utter it was to invite derision.
She was thinking how, on what was to be the very last day of her husband’s life, with no knowledge of what was imminent she and her husband had made plans for his discharge from the hospital in two days. They’d read the New York Times together. Tracy had insisted on Adrienne bringing him his laptop and so he’d worked — he was determined to examine the copyedited manuscript of a lengthy article he’d written for the Journal of 20th-Century European History — though complaining of his eyes “tearing up” and his vision being “blurred.” He’d eaten the lukewarm lunch, or part of it — until he’d begun to feel nauseated and asked Adrienne to take it away. They’d quarreled — almost — over whether Adrienne should call Tracy’s parents, to deflect their coming to visit him — an arduous trip for them, from northern Minnesota — since he was being discharged so soon, and was “recovered, or nearly” — Adrienne had thought that Tracy should see his parents, who were concerned about him; Tracy had thought otherwise, now that he was “feeling fine.” The hospital allowed visitors until 9 P.M. but Adrienne left at 7 P.M. since Tracy had become tired suddenly and wanted to sleep — Adrienne was exhausted also — maintaining her cheery hospital manner was a strain, like carrying heavy unwieldy bundles from place to place and nowhere to set them down, until at last you drop them — let them fall — she’d managed to drive home and was in bed by 9:20 P.M. and at 12:50 A.M. she’d been wakened as in a cartoon of crude nightmare cruelty by a ringing phone and in her dazed sleep she’d thought That is not for me. That is not for me even as, groping for the phone, she’d known that of course the ringing phone was for her, she’d known that the ringing phone had to be for her and she’d known, or guessed, what the call was.
Mrs. Myer? Your husband is in critical condition, please come to the hospital immediately.
“Mrs. Myer? Come with me, please.”
Time had passed: an hour? Two hours? Adrienne was being led briskly along a corridor to the Office of the Surrogate. The name on the door was D. CAPGRASS. Her heart beat quickly. She’d stood so swiftly, blood had rushed from her head. Don’t let me faint. Not here, not now. Not this weakness, now. It had become confused in the widow’s mind — such fantasies are exacerbated in steam-heated waiting rooms, in hard-backed vinyl chairs — that her obligation in Surrogate Court was an obligation to her deceased husband, and not to herself; it was her husband’s estate that was to be deliberated, the estate of which she, the surviving spouse, was the executrix. If this can be completed. Then…Adrienne’s thoughts trailed off, she had no idea what came beyond Then.
Crematorium is not the polite term. Funeral home is the preferred term.
There she’d made arrangements, paid with their joint credit card.
Tracy Emmet Myer was a co-owner of this card. Tracy Emmet Myer was paying for his own cremation.
Ashes to ashes, dusk to dusk. The nonsense jingle ran through the widow’s brain brazen and jeering as the cries of a jaybird in the trees close outside her bedroom windows, that woke her so rudely from her sedative sleep.
“Mrs. Myer. Please will you sign these consent forms” — a middle-aged bald-headed man with eyeglasses that fitted his face crookedly and stitch-like creases in his forehead was addressing her with somber formality. Without hesitating — eagerly — Adrienne signed several documents — “waivers” — without taking time to read them. How she hoped to placate this frowning gentleman — an officer of the Mercer County Surrogate’s court. “And now, you will please provide these required documents, which I hope you’ve remembered to bring” — frowning as the widow foolishly fumbled removing folders from a briefcase — the deceased husband’s birth certificate, and her own birth certificate; their marriage certificate…
Quickly Adrienne handed over the marriage certificate. She could not bear to see what was printed on it and, long ago, gaily and giddily signed by her husband and her.
“And your husband’s death certificate, Mrs. Myer?”
Your husband’s death certificate. What an eccentric form of speech — Your husband’s. As if the deceased husband yet owned “his” death certificate.
Your husband’s body. Your husband’s remains.
Adrienne fumbled to hand over the odd-sized document. Though it had been newly issued and was scarcely twenty-four hours old yet it was creased and mud-smeared as if someone had stepped on it. Adrienne murmured an apology but Capgrass silenced her with an impatient wave of his fingers.
“This will do, Mrs. Myer. Thank you.”
With a pencil-thin flashlight the Probate Court official examined the death certificate — was this infrared light? — and the ornamental gilt State of New Jersey seal. The document must have been satisfactory since he stamped it with the smaller gilt seal of the Surrogate’s Office which bore, for some reason, quaintly and curiously, the just-perceptibly raised figure of a horse’s head, or a chess knight in profile.
“Oh — why is that? This seal — why does it have a horse’s head on it?” Adrienne laughed nervously.
“It is the Court’s seal, Mrs. Myer.” Capgrass paused, as if the widow’s question was embarrassing, a violation of protocol. “May I see —? Have you brought —?”
“Of course! Of course.”
As the primary beneficiary and executrix of her late husband’s estate Adrienne was required to provide photo I.D.s of herself and her husband — she’d brought drivers’ licenses, passports — as well as IRS tax returns for the previous year — documents attesting to the fact that she and the deceased Tracy Emmet Myer had lived in the same residence in Summit Hill, New Jersey.
To all these items the frowning Capgrass subjected the same assiduous examination, with the pencil-thin light.
“Now, Mrs. Myer: may I see your husband’s Last Will and Testament.”
This was the single document that most unnerved Adrienne. She’d had difficulty locating it in her husband’s surprisingly disorganized filing cabinet and she’d been unable to force herself to read more than a small portion of the opening passage — I, Tracy E. Myer, a domiciliary of New Jersey, declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, and I revoke all my prior Wills and Codicils…
Nervously she said, “I hope this is complete, Mr. Capgrass. It’s all that I could find. I’m not sure what ‘codicil’ means. I’m afraid that…”
“Hand it here, please.”
Leafing through the document of about twenty pages Capgrass paused midway.
The expression on his face! Adrienne stared uneasily.
“Mrs. Myer, this is — this is not — this is irregular.”
A crude blush rose into the middle-aged official’s face. His eyeglasses glittered in alarm. Rudely he pushed the document toward Adrienne — at first she couldn’t comprehend what he wanted her to see, what she was looking at — then she realized it was a page, or several pages, of poorly developed photographs of stunted, broken, naked figures — death camp survivors? — manikins, or dolls?
“I don’t understand. What is — ”
Numbly Adrienne took up the offensive pages, to stare at them. How could this be? What were these ugly obscene images doing in her husband’s will? She was sure she’d looked through the will, or at any rate leafed through it — if barely recognizing what she saw, for she’d been upset at the time, very tired, and the densely printed legal passages had seemed impregnable, taunting. Now she saw that she was staring not at printed passages but at photographs — blurred, not-quite-in-focus photographs as of objects seen underwater — bizarre disfigured manikins, or adult dolls, some of them missing arms, legs — bruised, blood-splattered — several of them hairless, bald — all of them naked — and all of them female.
Adrienne felt a stab of horror, shame. How could this be! How could Tracy Myer who’d been so courteous, so kindly, such a good decent gentlemanly man who’d taken care with every aspect of his work have been, at the same time, so careless, reckless — hiding such obscenities in his study, in his legal files where they would be discovered after his death?
Yet thinking But they are not real, at least! Not real girls, or women. Real amputees.
“You may take these back, Mrs. Myer. Please.”
“‘Take them back’? They don’t belong to me, or to my husband — I’m sure. I’ve never seen these before…”
Capgrass removed his crooked plastic glasses and polished the lenses vigorously with a strip of chamois. His eyes, exposed, were small, rust-colored and primly disapproving; the crude hot blush had expanded to cover most of his face, and the gleaming-bald dome of his head. Clumsily Adrienne took up the offensive sheets of paper, which were in fact not photographs but Xerox photocopies of photographs, several to a page: not wanting to see she saw nonetheless that the figures were both painfully lifelike and perversely artificial; she had the idea that they were artworks of another era, perhaps “Germanic” maybe it was possible to interpret the reproductions as a historian’s assiduous and uncensored research, and not pornography. Adrienne tried to explain that her husband Tracy Myer — Professor Tracy Myer, who’d taught at Princeton for nearly thirty years — had been a distinguished historian, his field of specialization was post—World War I twentieth-century European history and this included the notorious — decadent — Weimar era. Though deeply embarrassed Adrienne managed to sound convincing: “By accident my husband must have filed these — documents — in the wrong folder. They seem to be ‘art’ of some kind — posed manikins or dolls — maybe Surrealist. Or — Dada. Tracy was always fascinated by art — by what art ‘reveals’ of the culture that gives rise to it, as well as of the artist. They are not…” Adrienne couldn’t bring herself to utter the ugly word pornography.
Capgrass interrupted Adrienne to inform her disdainfully that there appeared to be “irregularities” in her husband’s will; he’d had time only to peruse the document in a cursory fashion but had noticed that the first codicil hadn’t been properly notarized — the notary public had used a seal with what appeared to be several broken letters which undermined the validity of the transaction, should litigants want to take issue.
Litigants! Adrienne’s heart beat in alarm.
“Though it’s unambiguous that you’ve been designated your husband’s primary beneficiary, as well as the executrix of his estate, it would appear, from a strictly legal standpoint, that the document is of questionable authenticity. I’m sure that ‘Tracy Emmet Myer’ was indeed your husband, and that he has indeed died — but, unfortunately, if there is a pre-existing will, either in your possession or elsewhere, it might take precedent over the one we have here.”
“But I — don’t understand…‘Pre-existing’ — there is none…”
“How many times such a claim has been made, and a pre-existing document turns up, that is fully legal. Mrs. Myer, please understand that we can’t proceed to ‘probate’ your husband’s will in its present state. There are no legal grounds for the assumption that you are, in fact, the executrix of Tracy Myer’s estate.”
“But — I am his wife. You’ve seen my I.D., and the marriage certificate — ”
“And if there are claims against the estate — these must be processed.”
“‘Claims against the estate’…”
Adrienne spoke faintly. What a nightmare this was!
She remembered how several years before — following the unexpected death of one of Tracy’s brothers — he’d made arrangements for both their wills to be drawn up. This was a task — a necessity — Tracy had postponed as Adrienne had postponed even considering it and at the signing in the attorney’s office she’d so dreaded reading through the dense legal language that she’d signed both wills without reading them assured by the attorney that everything was in order.
It was the future Adrienne had dreaded when one or another of the wills would be consulted. Now, the widow was living in that future, and it was more terrible than she’d anticipated.
“Letters will have to be sent by you, Mrs. Myer, by certified mail, to all of your husband’s relatives and business partners, if he had these, as well as to anyone else who might have a legitimate claim upon the estate.” Capgrass spoke in a flat perfunctory voice in which there lurked a frisson of something insolent, disruptive. “This is standard procedure in probate, and it is very important.”
“But — why would anyone make a ‘claim’ against the estate? Why would this happen?”
“Mrs. Myer, this is probate. The court must determine if your husband’s estate is ‘free and clear’ before allowing the estate to be divided among beneficiaries and administered by any executor or executrix.”
“But — how would I know how to begin?” Adrienne’s voice rose in alarm. “My husband took care of all of our finances — our taxes — insurance — anything ‘legal.’ He has — had — relatives living in many parts of the country — he didn’t have business partners, but — he’d invested in his older brother’s roofing business, to help him financially…” Adrienne recalled hearing about this, years ago, though Tracy hadn’t discussed it with her at any length. And hadn’t the brother’s business gone bankrupt just the same? A part of Adrienne’s mind began to shut down.
Suttee. She’d wakened that morning thinking of suttee.
The ancient Hindu custom of burning the widow, alive, on her husband’s funeral pyre. A cruel and barbaric custom said to be practiced still in the more remote parts of India and Adrienne thought There is a cruel logic to this.
“Your husband was married previously —?”
“‘Married previously’? Why do you say that? He was not.”
“Our records show — ”
Capgrass was typing into a computer, hunched forward like a broken-backed vulture peering at the screen. A small thin smile played about his lips. “It seems here — our records show — unless there are two distinct ‘Tracy Emmet Myers’…Your husband was required by law to inform you of any prior marriages as he was required to inform the individual who performed the wedding ceremony and if he failed to comply with this law, Mrs. Myer, there may be some question about whether your marriage to him was fully legal. You may want to retain an attorney as soon as possible to press your claim.”
Press your claim. Adrienne sat stunned.
“But — I know my husband. I knew him. It is just not possible…”
Capgrass continued to type into the computer. In a matter-of-fact voice reading off data to the widow who could not hear what he was saying through a roaring in her ears. This is wrong. This is not right. You don’t know him. None of you knew him.
Yet, had Adrienne known Tracy? Had she known the man, except as her husband? In the hospital an altered personality had emerged from time to time, unexpectedly. Adrienne couldn’t forget a curious remark Tracy had made that was wholly unlike the man she knew: one evening he’d muttered in a wistful voice as a cheery Jamaican attendant left his room chattering like a tropical bird — a fleshy girl bearing away soiled linen, the remains of a meal — “If only we could be so simple! It’s as if they don’t realize they are to die.”
Adrienne had objected: “Tracy, you can’t judge them by their outward manner. They are spiritual people just like us.”
Adrienne’s reply had been inadequate, also. Not what she’d meant to say. Not what she meant.
It wasn’t like her to say them, they in this way. As it wasn’t like Tracy to speak in such a way. And what had Adrienne meant by spiritual people just like us. This was condescending, crude.
Was this how racists talked? How racists thought?
The widow’s mistake had been, her husband had been her life. She was a tree whose roots had become entwined with the roots of an adjacent tree, a seemingly taller and stronger tree, and these roots had become entwined inextricably. To free the living tree from the dead tree would require an act of violence that would damage the living tree. It would require an act of imagination. Easier to imagine suttee. Easier to imagine swallowing handfuls of barbiturates, old painkiller medications in the medicine cabinet. I can’t do this. I can’t be expected to do this. I am not strong enough
What was mysterious to her was, before Tracy’s death she had not ever understood that really she might lose him. That really in every sense of the word he might depart from her, die.
That there would be a time, a perfectly ordinary morning like this morning in the Mercer County Courthouse, Office of the Surrogate, when the man who’d been Tracy Emmet Myer no longer existed and could not be found anywhere in the world.
The very routine of the hospital, to which she’d become almost immediately adjusted, had contributed to this delusion. How capably she’d performed the tasks required of her, bringing Tracy his mail, his work, his professional journals, his laptop — proof that nothing fundamental had changed in their shared life. And the cardiologist was optimistic, the EKGs were showing stabilization, improvement. Yet one evening Adrienne had naively approached an older nurse at a computer station in the corridor not far from her husband’s room — the woman middle-aged, kindly and intelligent — her name was Shauna O’Neill — you had to love Shauna O’Neill! — she’d seemed to like Tracy very much — you had the feeling with Shauna O’Neill that you were a special patient, of special worth — for hadn’t Shauna always remembered to call Tracy Professor Myer which had seemed to comfort him — and flattered him — but seeing Mrs. Myer about to peer over her shoulder at the computer screen Shauna O’Neill had said sharply, “Mrs. Myer, excuse me I don’t think this is a good idea” — even as Adrienne blundered near to see on the screen beneath her husband’s name the stark terrible words congestive heart failure. In that instant Adrienne panicked. She began to choke, to cry. For hadn’t they been told that her husband was improving, that he would be discharged soon? Adrienne stumbled back to her husband’s room. Tracy had been dozing watching TV news and now he wakened. “Addie? What’s wrong, why are you so upset?” Adrienne had never cried so helplessly, like a terrified child. If one of the broken mutilated dolls in the lurid photographs could have cried, the doll would have cried in this way. This was the single great sorrow of which Adrienne Myer was capable — at the time of her husband’s death, and in the hours following, she would not cry like this. She would not have the strength or the capacity to cry like this. Raw emotion swept through her leaving her stunned, hollow. At the time she’d kissed her husband desperately, his cool smooth cheek which the Jamaican attendant had recently shaved; she’d gripped his fingers which were cool also, as if blood had ceased to flow in the veins there. She stammered, “I’m c-crying only because — I love you so much. Only because I love you so much, Tracy. No other reason.”
She’d frightened Tracy, crying like this. She’d offended him, violated hospital protocol.
She wondered if he’d forgiven her? If he could forgive her?
She had abandoned him, finally. For that, how could he forgive her?
And yet: she was thinking possibly there was a misunderstanding. A mistake. Possibly she’d been summoned to Probate Court by mistake. As the computer data regarding her husband was mistaken, so the “fact” of his death was mistaken, or premature. Her husband hadn’t died after all — maybe. Her husband hadn’t died yet.
“Ma’am! You will come with me, please now.”
The interview with Capgrass seemed to have ended with shocking abruptness. Adrienne had been trying to explain the circumstances of her husband’s hospitalization and the promises the hospital staff had made or had seemed to be making, she’d begun to speak excitably, but, she was sure, not incoherently, and out of nowhere a security guard — a dark-skinned woman with hair pressed back so tightly from her face, her head appeared to have shrunken — was tugging at her arm, to urge her from the room. Adrienne was gripping her handbag, in both arms she clutched at documents. She was distraught, disheveled. A pulse beat in her head like a giant worm, writhing. Had Capgrass pressed a secret button, to summon one of the sheriff’s deputies? Had the widow said something reckless she hadn’t meant to say? She hadn’t been threatening — had she? The dark-skinned female deputy was escorting Adrienne from the court official’s office — Adrienne was perspiring inside her expensive clothes — Oh! she’d forgotten something — she’d left something behind, with Capgrass — but what it was, she couldn’t remember. “Ma’am come with me. This way ma’am.” The deputy spoke forcibly, ushering Adrienne into the hall. Adrienne had had more to tell Capgrass — more to explain — trying now to explain to the deputy that she had to leave the courthouse immediately — her husband was in the Summit Hill Hospital, fifteen miles away. “I have to leave now. I have to see him. His name is Tracy. He can’t be left with strangers. He’s waiting for me…he will be anxious, if I’m not there.” Adrienne was thinking how, in the past day or so, for no reason, unfairly, for he’d been sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking and not always knowing where he was, Tracy had squinted at her and said in a hurt accusing voice, “Adrienne? Where the hell have you been? I don’t see much of you these days.”
Long she would recall the hurt, and the injustice.
Don’t see much of you these days.
When he’d loved her, he’d called her Addie. The full, formal name Adrienne meant something else.
Or maybe — this was another, quite distinct possibility — he’d said, after he’d died, and Adrienne arranged to have his body delivered to a local crematorium, in a voice beyond accusation or even sadness the man who’d been her husband for thirty-two years said Well! We won’t be seeing each other for a while.
“This way, ma’am. You are not authorized to leave Probate Court just yet.”
The deputy handed Adrienne a tissue with which to wipe her inflamed eyes, blow her nose — as she led her back into the waiting room — how vast this room was, Adrienne could only now appreciate — how many were waiting here! — as far as the eye could measure, individuals who’d died, or were waiting to die, or had managed to avoid death temporarily, yes this was Probate Court and all who were here had not died but had survived.
This was their punishment, that they had survived, and that they were in Probate.
“Ma’am, slip on one of these.”
Without Adrienne’s awareness and certainly without Adrienne’s consent, the deputy had escorted her through the waiting room and into a corridor, she’d brought Adrienne into a windowless room, and shut the door firmly. What was this? Where was this? Adrienne’s tear-blinded eyes could barely make out rows of cubicles — cubicles separated from one another by plywood partitions — the air in this place was close, stale, smelling of the anguish and anxiety of strangers’ bodies.
How the gigantic pulse in Adrienne’s head throbbed! She’d become confused. It had begun to seem probable to her that her husband was still alive — not yet dead — and that Adrienne had come to the hospital herself, to the first-floor radiation unit where women went for mammograms.
She had postponed her yearly mammogram, out of cowardice. Yet somehow she must have made the appointment, for here she was.
“Ma’am? You will please slip on one of these.”
A second woman, in a bailiff’s uniform — this was made of a drab, dun-colored fabric, while the sheriff’s deputies’ uniforms were a more attractive gray-blue — had appeared, and was handing Adrienne a paper smock — a paper smock! — which Adrienne had no choice but to accept. If she wanted to be released from this hellish place.
The bailiff instructed Adrienne to step inside one of the cubicles and remove all her clothing — outerwear, underwear — her boots and her stockings and her jewelry — to place her possessions on the bench inside the cubicle — to put on the smock, and a pair of paper slippers — and to come back out when she was ready. Inside the cubicle, Adrienne began to undress like one in a trance. How grateful she was, there was no mirror in the cubicle — she was spared seeing the widow’s wan, frightened face.
I love you so much. There is no other reason.
Her husband had told her this, too. He’d loved her so much. Many times he’d told her and yet she could not now recall a single, singular time.
Adrienne was removing her clothing, another time she would have to remove her boots, and this time her stockings. And her beige lace brassiere that fitted her loosely now and her tattered white nylon panties which in fact she’d slept in the previous night beneath a flannel nightgown in terror of being summoned to the hospital another time wakened from her deep stuporous sleep to drive hurriedly to the hospital to be ushered into her husband’s hospital room approximately five minutes after a young Asian doctor she’d never seen before had declared him dead — Mrs. Myer there was nothing to be done your husband’s blood pressure plummeted and his heartbeat raced.
She had loved him, her husband. The man who’d been her husband. But her love had not been enough to save him. Her love had not been enough to save either of them. All that had ended.
Trembling she removed her rings. She was wearing no other jewelry just rings. Hard to remove, these rings. The engagement ring — a beautiful diamond surrounded by a cluster of smaller diamonds — and the engraved white-gold wedding band — though her fingers seemed to have become thinner yet it was hard for her, it made her wince, it made her cry, like a small child or a small hurt bird crying, to remove these rings and to place them carefully beneath her clothing neatly folded on the wooden bench for safekeeping.
Her black cashmere coat, her handbag, briefcase — these she placed carefully on the bench. Thinking Everything will be safe here. This is Probate Court.
She put on the ridiculous paper smock, that barely came to her hips. How embarrassing! And the paper slippers! These looked as if they’d been used before, and were scuffed and creased.
The bailiff tugged at the curtain — “Ma’am? Step out here, please.”
Adrienne obeyed. No choice except to obey. She hadn’t been able to tie the smock behind and the little paper sashes hung loose and ticklish against her bare back.
“Ma’am. You will please remove your garment.”
“Remove it? I just put it on.”
The bailiff was heavyset, humorless, with a coarse sooty-white skin and no eyebrows. Her dun-colored uniform included a heavy leather holster and — was it a handgun? — a pistol? — and on her left breast, a brass badge like a glaring eye.
Awkwardly Adrienne tried to shield her breasts with her arms. The bailiff pulled her arms aside.
“Ma’am! You will submit to the examination. You will cooperate.”
“‘Examination’ — but — ”
“Did you sign a waiver in the Sur’gat office, ma’am? What’s that waiver say?”
“I–I don’t know. I wasn’t aware — ”
“You signed a waiver, ma’am. You came to Probate of your own volition. You have entered the Courthouse — you are in the territory of the State.”
The territory of the State! The bailiff spoke as if reciting words many times uttered, worn smooth and implacable as stones. Adrienne’s mouth was dry with apprehension.
Was it a good sign, or not such a good sign, that there was no one else in the examination room, only just Adrienne? The air was steam-heated, humid and oppressive. A fine film of perspiration already gleamed on the sooty-skinned woman’s face. With a flourish she pulled on latex gloves saying, “Ma’am, stand very still. Very still, and you will not be hurt.”
With her deft latex fingers the bailiff palpitated Adrienne’s armpits — was she looking for lumps, swollen lymph glands? Before Adrienne could steel herself she began to palpitate Adrienne’s breasts — the pressure was sudden, vise-like and unbearable,
“Ma’am, you may breathe.”
Adrienne had been holding her breath, in a trance of terror. Such intimacy, and such pain.
“Ma’am. Raise your arms, please.”
Frowning, the bailiff cupped Adrienne’s breasts in both hands — her hands were large as a man’s, and strong — and exerted pressure upward, as if shaping resistant clay. Adrienne cried aloud, tears started from her eyes.
Her breasts were waxy-white, and had shrunken in the past week. The nipples were berry-sized, small and hard, sensitive as exposed nerve endings.
Her stomach too seemed to have shrunk, yet the skin was flaccid, like an ill-fitting body stocking. There were thin white striations in her belly and thighs like stitches in the flesh that had worked loose.
He’d adored her body, at one time. Her forgotten body.
“Ma’am. You will be seated, please.”
Adrienne was panting. Her breasts throbbed with pain and her mouth had gone dry as ashes.
“Ma’am. I said seated.”
In lieu of an examination table, Adrienne was made to sit on a wooden bench and spread her legs.
“I — can’t. I can’t do this…”
“Ma’am! You will cooperate or you will be in contempt of court.”
With a grunt the bailiff stooped to push Adrienne’s thighs farther apart, and to poke, and then insert her latex forefinger into the tight, dry, shrunken space between Adrienne’s legs. It was one of those moments in a lifetime when one thinks This is not possible and then, a moment later This is what is possible. Adrienne flinched with pain and bit her lip to keep from crying out.
The bailiff was panting as if she’d run up a flight of stairs. Was the woman taking a swab, of the interior of Adrienne’s body? Or was she — a bizarre possibility — checking to see if Adrienne had smuggled anything into the courthouse, in such a lurid way? (On the walls of the courthouse corridors were signs warning against contraband.) For next the bailiff inserted her latex finger so deeply into the tight shrunken ring of flesh, of Adrienne’s anus, Adrienne was unable to keep from screaming.
“Ma’am! You have not been hurt.”
The bailiff spoke in exasperation, as if her professional integrity had been challenged. Yet at last, the examination seemed to be concluded. The bailiff removed her latex gloves and dropped them into a trash basket. Adrienne had a glimpse — no more than a fleeting glimpse — of something rust-colored on the latex forefinger.
“Ma’am, you are free now to clothe yourself. And then you will wait here for the officer to assess your case.”
“‘Assess my case’ — what do you mean?”
“I am not authorized to release you, ma’am. You will be released by the Surrogate.”
“But — how can I be ‘released’ — am I in custody? Am I arrested?”
“Ma’am, you are in the custody of the Probate Court. You are not arrested.” The bailiff scowled as if Adrienne had tried to be amusing and had failed, lamely.
“But when will this be? When can I go home?”
“Ma’am, I have no way of knowing. Ma’am you will wait here.”
Adrienne re-entered the cubicle, to put back on her clothes. Her hands were trembling badly. The pain between her legs had begun to throb like fire. A trickle of liquid high on the inside of her thigh, trickling down — blood? She wiped it away quickly not daring to look.
Her clothes — where were her clothes? — on the floor was her black cashmere coat — on the bench, her dark silk shirt and beige sweater she’d worn over it, no longer folded neatly as she’d left them but looking as if they’d been examined and flung down. There, on the floor, partway beneath the partition to an adjacent cubicle, her trousers — fine light cashmere wool, so charcoal-gray as to appear black. But her underwear was gone — no brassiere, no panties — and her rings — where were her rings?
On the floor also, as if they’d been examined, pilfered and kicked aside, were Adrienne’s handbag and her husband’s briefcase. Papers spilled out of the briefcase, Adrienne shoved inside without taking time to sort them. She couldn’t recall if her husband’s will had been returned to her or if Capgrass had confiscated it…
Hurriedly and haphazardly she dressed. She couldn’t button the shirt evenly; the zipper of her trousers caught partway, scraping the flesh of her belly; both her dark stockings were tangled beneath the bench, stiff with dirt, but her boots — the expensive black leather boots! — were missing.
In her desperate state Adrienne was grateful for the paper slippers.
How strange it felt, to be naked inside her clothes. How strange her body had become to her, slick with perspiration, exhausted yet aroused like a hunted animal. She thought He is dead. He is not only dead he is gone. I am alone here.
In that instant Adrienne felt a thrill of something like elation, triumph. Though she was distraught, and humiliated — though the lower part of her body throbbed with pain — yet she felt this thrill of triumph. She thought Already I am someone he could not have imagined.
To escape the Probate Court, and to return home — this would be bliss to her, the most intense relief, happiness.
Nothing more than that! — only just to escape, and to return to the empty house, that had been chill and appalling as a sepulcher to her only hours ago.
When Adrienne stepped out of the cubicle, she saw that the examination room was empty. The sooty-skinned bailiff had left. Anxiously Adrienne tried the door — the door that led back to the corridor outside the waiting room — but it was locked.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”
Adrienne rapped on the door hesitantly. She didn’t want to incur the wrath of the sooty-skinned bailiff. She stood, then sat — then stood again — ten minutes, fifteen. Her skin had begun to itch, where the bailiff had touched her. And the soft flesh of her breasts, and the soft flesh between her legs, throbbing with pain.
She happened to notice at the farther end of the room a second, smaller door. It was the kind of door that is permanently shut. Even as Adrienne went to try it, thinking Of course this is locked. I am locked in the doorknob turned, and the door opened.
Quickly Adrienne stepped outside. She was in a corridor — a familiar-looking corridor — she’d come this way when she’d arrived at the Office of the Surrogate, it seemed like hours ago.
In her overwarm coat and the absurd paper slippers, Adrienne made her stealthy way to the staircase.
No looking back! No glancing to the side! Could the widow leave Probate Court so easily? Was no one going to see her, apprehend her? Her heart was beating deliriously. Her body throbbed with the strange wild exhilaration of the hunted animal.
Descending now the broad baronial staircase. Gripping the railing, steeling herself as in the presence of danger.
“I am exiting the Courthouse. I have been in Probate Court, and now I am released” — Adrienne rehearsed her little speech, should one of the uniformed officers stop her.
And now again on the lower floor was the Office of the Public Defender — it seemed that there were fewer young captives in orange jumpsuits seated here at this time — but still there remained the young man with the savage tattooed face and rat-tail at the nape of his dingy neck — Edro Hodge? Adrienne hesitated only a moment before deciding to approach the man — his bleary bloodshot eyes swerved to her face, startled — Adrienne whispered hoarsely, “If you are ‘Edro’ — ‘Leisha’ has said she retracts her statement. She says — ‘Don’t plead guilty.’”
The young man with the tattooed face stared at Adrienne. Beside him was an older man, in a dark suit, a court-appointed attorney Adrienne supposed, and this man stared at Adrienne, too.
“Don’t! Don’t ‘plead guilty.’”
Before either man could speak to her, Adrienne turned and hurried back to the staircase.
Outside, it appeared to be late afternoon. Hours had passed, the overcast sky had darkened. A chill icy rain continued to fall and the fraught air smelled of the river. Adrienne was disoriented, she hadn’t thought so much time had passed in the courthouse though she was exhausted, wrung dry. Calmly she thought They can find me, they will know where I live. But not just now.
In her paper slippers she would have to walk in slushy ice, mud. The near-empty parking lot was the size of a city block, its outer perimeter lost in shadow. Adrienne looked around for the snub-faced girl in the faux-fox-fur jacket but of course no one was there, where the girl had been standing with the baby in her arms.
Yet, Adrienne heard a cry. A child’s cry, faint and plaintive — and to her astonishment she saw, near-hidden between the granite wall of the old courthouse and the parked police vehicle, the toddler in the stroller.
“Lilith?”
Adrienne hurried to the child, who was whimpering, feebly kicking her thin, wasted-looking legs. The little girl had managed to work her arms free of the tight-wrapped blanket and flailed them now in the frantic way of a bird with broken wings.
“Oh — God! This is terrible! What has happened to you! Has your mother left you here? — abandoned you?”
Adrienne could not believe this — yet it seemed to be so. Had the child been left for her?
What to do! What was Adrienne to do! She could not bring herself to re-enter the courthouse — which in any case seemed to be shutting down for the evening. Already the higher floors had dimmed their lights, each floor in succession was growing dimmer, like a rotted wedding cake, candles going out.
Adrienne’s mind worked rapidly. If the girl who called herself Leisha had abandoned her two-year-old daughter in such a way, clearly she was an unfit mother; the child would be taken from her by county welfare authorities, and put into a foster home. In the city of Trenton, what a fate!
“You poor baby! Poor dear — darling — Lilith…”
Adrienne picked the child up in her arms. She wasn’t accustomed to a child’s weight, made heavier by the child’s kicking and thrashing. It did seem to comfort the distraught little girl that Adrienne knew her name, and was smiling at her.
“Don’t cry! No need to cry, now.”
The little girl’s eyes were cobalt-blue, very dark; her face was narrow, a sort of feral face, with a look of being hurt, wounded; there was something just discernibly deformed about her. She’d wetted herself, a strong odor of ammonia lifted from her soiled clothing. Yet Adrienne hugged her, Adrienne kissed the chilled little face, murmuring words of comfort. Adrienne thought This is our only purpose on earth: to give comfort to others.
The thought was immensely satisfying to Adrienne. She felt her heart swell with warmth, well-being.
In the crude paper slippers, that were already soaked through, and tattered, Adrienne carried the little girl to her car, which was on the far side of the lot. Her stocking feet were freezing but her face was feverish. Happily she whispered to the little girl — she would take care of her, she promised not to turn her over to police, or to welfare — “You can come home with me, Lilith! You will be safe with me. No one will know.”
The panicked child bit Adrienne’s hand — fortunately her teeth were tiny milk teeth, not strong enough or sharp enough to break Adrienne’s skin. Adrienne was shocked but managed to laugh. “Lilith! I’m not your mommy. You have no reason to be frightened of me.”
At her car, which was a new-model Acura her husband had bought less than six months before, Adrienne saw that something unfortunate had happened. A heavy ridge of earth — chunks of broken concrete, ice, and soil — had been plowed against her front wheels, no doubt by one of the earthmoving machines that had been grunting and grinding in the parking lot when she’d arrived. What bad luck, and at such a time! Adrienne had to set the fretting child inside her car, in the passenger’s seat, and for several desperate minutes kick, claw, and swipe at the dirt, to free the wheels — “God help me. Oh God — help me.” Her hands were filthy, the front of her coat, her legs — she was laughing, and she was crying — it might have been God who gave her the idea to drag a plank over to her car, and insert it behind the left front wheel, on a patch of ice, to provide traction.
“This will do it, Lilith! Let’s try.”
Under a New Jersey statute one was obliged to carry a small child in a child-seat in the rear of a vehicle, not in the passenger’s seat, but Adrienne had no choice except to buckle Lilith in the front seat beside her, as best she could in the oversized belt. “Please don’t cry! You’re safe with me — I promise.” By this time all floors of the courthouse had gone dark.
By a miracle the motor flared into life. Calmly and deliberately despite her desperation to escape Adrienne maneuvered the Acura out of the lot. No police vehicles on the street! No one was following her! The nighttime city appeared to be less frantic than the daytime city and in a maze of one-way and dead-end streets Adrienne worked her way gradually back to Route 1 which would bear her north and out of accursed Trenton.
“We’re safe, Lilith! Almost safe. Please don’t cry, darling.”
Darling. The word was immensely soothing, familiar somehow. It was not a word available to everyone.
On northbound Route 1 sleet rained from the sky. Tiny bits of ice hammered against the hood and roof of the white Acura. Adrienne’s headlights were on bright but she had difficulty seeing the highway. Blindly she drove, happily — she was thinking of how when they were safely home she would give the child a much-needed bath — a hot soaking sudsy bath — she would shampoo the child’s fine, fair hair, and comb it free of snarls — she would dry the child in her largest bath towel, in her arms — she would feed the starving child, and herself. She could prepare a thick delicious tomato soup — scrambled eggs — oatmeal? Oatmeal with raisins and honey. Or she would save the oatmeal with raisins for morning. She would spoon food into the child’s mouth and put the child to bed in the rarely used bed in her guest room. She would sing the child to sleep if the child continued to fret. She would sit by the child’s bedside through the night, to protect her. For there was the child’s cruel mother, and there was the child’s cruel father, from whom the child must be protected. And in the morning all that was confusing would become clear, she knew. She had faith.
Must’ve been a time of contagion somehow he’d picked up like hepatitis C this morbid fear of dying young and his “organs” being “harvested” rib cage opened up, pried open with giant jaws you’d hear the cracking of the bones deftly with surgical instruments the organs spooned out blood vessels, nerves “snipped” and “tied” your organs packed in dry ice, in waterproof containers to be carried by messenger to the “donor recipient” this sick-slipping-helpless sensation in his gut like skidding his car, his parents’ new Audi they’d trusted him with, on black ice approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge deep in the gut, a knowledge of the futility of all human wishes, volition This is it, you are fucked Only twenty-three years old not old no reason to worry about the future, his mom can worry for him moms are experts at worrying, moms are most useful at worrying yet moms should be shielded from knowing too much about their sons moms should be protected otherwise you feel guilt sick-guilt, like sick-worry about dying young he wasn’t worried really, it’s just his mind maybe there’s a tapeworm burrowed into his brain it’s not normal to be aware of your “organs” wakened in the night when he finally gets to sleep by the rude thump! thump! of his heart dazed thinking someone was in bed with him? was it B., she’d just slipped from bed to use the bathroom and would be back stumbling in the dark, giggling and collapsing on top of him the narrow sunk-mattress bed with smelly sheets of his college dorm room in Mackie Hall but no, can’t be, Jason has graduated, all that’s gone once his brain is fully awake he has no trouble comprehending he’s in his own bed, in his own home he’s safe here Only twenty-three yet he has become obsessed knows people his age who’ve already died that is, already he knows people his age who’ve died “head-on collision” “by his own hand” (gun) “mountain-hiking fall” (Ecuador) “drug overdose” it is morbid to dwell on such things but really he’s kind of anxious so much time to think naturally, you become anxious maybe there is a tapeworm in his brain (can’t suggest this to Mom, Mom would freak) at the same time he’s capable of discussing the issue openly and easily with people, with friends, as he’d done in his ethics class, saying what you’d expect an intelligent person to say Sure I’d want to donate my organs my eyes to some other person in need Greater love than this hath no man, than that he lay down his life for his friends he believes this, kind of he is a Christian, kind of being an “organ donor” doesn’t mean that you die for that purpose but that after you die your “organs” are “harvested” this is a crucial distinction this makes him anxious you start off in a car, never return alive and your organs shunted off to be planted in strangers, your eyes inserted in the eye sockets of a stranger, no wonder he can’t sleep she’d twined her thin arms around his neck, mashed her hot yearning face in his neck half the time he hadn’t known what the hell was she serious? was she joking? it was some other guy she loved, not him? or was it him? he doesn’t sleep with any of them now it’s been seven, eight months living in his mom’s family house in Rye, New York avoid people easier to avoid in August, they’ll be on Nantucket yet he’s eager to contact his friends each morning waking frantic to make contact with as many of his friends as he can as if in the night might’ve lost someone has been lost to someone checks his e-mail immediately before even rinsing his putrid mouth, washing his face that’s a clay mask dried and shrunken his cell phone he’s frantic to call his friends mostly guys from his eating club, and a scattering of girls not so much to talk with them, within a few seconds of starting a conversation he’s ready to break it off, just to see are they there are they still there as he is still here It makes him laugh to think how there’s a final message that will be enshrined, sort of Jason’s last e-mail! next thing I hear he’s dead his friends calling one another, excited flurry of e-mails and attachments, text-messages his friends thrilled, breathless he will be pried out of the wreckage by the “Jaws of Life” he will feel his chest being pried open the rib cage must be cracked like breaking apart a roasted chicken the first organ to be “harvested” is the heart only a few hours after brain death this organ begins to deteriorate dry ice, an airtight container sometimes by messenger carried on airplanes eyes without lids, very carefully wrapped in sleep mode, unseeing optic nerves and blood vessels snipped, tied this is microsurgery he’s laughing this is truly so weird nobody seems to acknowledge how weird how alone he is, in this knowledge can’t say to Mom you are so fucking afraid of dying, it might be better to die and get it over with senior year he’d had lots of friends B. was not Jason’s closest friend B. belonged to Jason’s eating club, they’d taken a popular bio-ethics course together he’d hooked up with B. a few times during their senior year haphazard and casual by mutual consent (he was certain!)
casual after graduation drifted apart B. went to Bangkok to teach in the university’s extension program there B.A., Ivy League university, tuition somewhere beyond $40,000 a year, you’re qualified to teach English “as a foreign language” recently B. has emailed Jason out of nowhere out of cyberspace must’ve gotten his address from a mutual friend Hi Jason thinking of you & missing you it’s challenging here but kind of lonely turns out Bangkok is the Sex Capital of the world & a buyer’s market (Germans, American, Japanese males the primary buyers) & at one hundred fifteen pounds I am thirty pounds too heavy & at age twenty-three way too old. Sucks, huh? Surprised by B.’s tone, disturbed and not knowing what B. wants, he’d replied a few times briefly he’d replied wary of too much confiding, that can happen too quickly in e-mail anyway not much news at Jason’s end, job interviews in the city fizzled out summer internship in Hartford a fucking disappointment, not what he’d been promised he’d quit and returned home at Princeton he’d taken economics courses, did O.K. until the math got too complicated courses in environmental studies, ecology played some tennis, soccer like a dream now, it has faded so swiftly the guy he’d been, Jason T., faded so swiftly his friends, too, seem to have changed scattered across the country Mike who’d died (it’s said) in a suspicious hiking-trail accident in Ecuador at 12,000 feet B. who’s in Bangkok, Thailand feels sorry for B., but God damn wishes she’d cease writing to him sends him all kinds of weird attachments maybe meant to be jokes he’s deleting most of these without reading them it’s like B. is stalking him Christ he’s lonely, too he has his own sick thoughts quick death, that’s the best death, skidding on black ice approaching the mammoth bridge in November sleet S K I D D I N G as if floating, airborne delicious weightlessness This is it, man you are fucked he’d been smiling in fact he’d been paralyzed panicked black ice is invisible in headlights hadn’t died, though only just the passenger’s side of the elegant silver Audi smashed mild bruising from the damned air bag none of this he’d
share with B. never share anything with anybody you get naked with any guy knows that like a dream now, the girls Jason had slept with hopes they remember him better than he remembers them smashed out of his mind, some nights it’s O.K., you won’t remember in bio-ethics they’d discussed cloning/euthanasia/“selective breeding”/“selective abortion”/“organ donors”/“harvesting organs” in certain countries lacking human rights laws like China, organs can be ordered by the wealthy and specimens selected from the prison population and their organs “harvested” logical development of science their professor said what science can do, science will eventually do always, science will do moral reasons will be found for what brings profit to the market “greatest good for the greatest number” there is no code of ethics intrinsic in humankind there is only codified law without law, no civilization without civilization, no ethics thinking of this he’s feeling his heart prepare to thump! sweat breaking out in his underarms, crotch his mom has warned him not to “stress” himself he’s got plenty of time to reapply to law schools that sick-slipping-sensation in the gut at the prospect of returning to school any kind of school a (secret) sensation he can’t tell his mom anxious that Jason will “stress” himself as his father did minor heart attacks then cardiac arrest, aged forty-nine Jason can’t envision himself beyond forty even beyond thirty, he feels very tired the crucial question is who’d want to live that long yet, once you get started, you don’t seem to want to stop freaks him out totally, the prospect of somebody else looking through his eyes for wouldn’t Jason be there, too? somehow, still? in his eyes? wakened in the morning checks his e-mail anxious to see if he has new messages always he hopes for new messages yet anxious to see if B. has written B.’s tone has become openly mocking, cruel B. had not been like this at Princeton Hello Jason it seems that you must be very busy, don’t have time to write to me, what’s it require, 20 seconds of your precious time about 20 seconds is as long as youre good for you self-important white-boy prick shocked, Jason deletes this message stung, ashamed furious nothing you can do for a disturbed bitter person on the far side of the earth looks up Thailand on a world atlas surprised how close it is to Vietnam, Cambodia not far from the Philippines a Filipina woman named Maria had worked for Jason’s family when Jason had been a boy very quiet, reserved Maria who’d been like one of the family Jason’s mom had adored she’d been, he’d been seeing in New York for a while, that seems to be over Jason’s mom understands Jason’s anxiety, she thinks Jason’s mom is sympathetic can’t explain to his mom he can’t be involved, getting naked is repulsive to him no he is not “doing” drugs maybe some weekends in New York but now, no God damn B. continues to send him her vicious messages should delete without reading yet can’t seem to resist in revulsed fascination suicidal hints, Jason isn’t going to fall for when i am not who will you be? where i am going will you follow? what’s this supposed to mean, some kind of crap Zen wisdom he isn’t going to print it out, maybe it’s evidence that B. is cracking up, needs psychiatric help fuck he isn’t going to get involved in their bio-ethics class when suicide was discussed B. was vehement saying suicide is wrong their professor (a world-famous philosopher, a really cool guy they all admired) pointed out that “wrong” is a subjective moral claim and whose claim? by whose authority? in the discussion, Jason said he thought that suicide was O.K. in certain circumstances he was a Christian, kind of not a Muslim! you were pegged as a Christian his mom’s family was Roman Catholic, but not his mom not him in bio-ethics you could see that most of the students were really getting off on it suicide’s a
favorite topic an alternative to graduation (joke) morbid/compulsive thinking of such things when you’re twenty now twenty-three makes him feel dazed and light-headed, the prospect of living to forty which you sort of have to do (don’t you?) if you get married, have kids never make forty-nine hopes his mom is gone by that time, a mother should not outlive her son secretly Jason has felt it’s good, Dad being gone he hadn’t been living with Jason’s mom at that time, temporary separation (Mom said) so when Dad died it was in another city out of state kind of like Dad to get the last word, bad sport playing tennis when his teenaged son was starting to beat him make the old guy run around the court lunging and panting and cursing under his breath, Jason had laughed seeing his father’s flushed-red face thinking Go for it, Dad! Cardiac arrest this morning there’s a new message from B. God damn that bitch, ruining Jason’s peace of mind deletes the message without reading seven e-mails in a row from B. he has deleted without reading since last Friday so pissed maybe this a mistake but Jason decides to reply one final time Sorry I don’t have time for games, I don’t like games, I have my own life, get a life of your own on TV that night there’s an interview with Jason’s grandfather Jason has switched on the TV in his room bored and restless surfing channels and there on public TV (which Jason never watches) his grandfather being interviewed by Charlie Rose it has been a while since Grandpa has been on TV, Jason realizes Mom’s elderly father the only individual among Jason’s relatives to have achieved what you’d call prominence some notoriety, but “renown” Grandpa had been a fierce critic of liberal political and social agendas in the 1960s and 1970s nobody at Princeton in Jason’s circle had heard of him well maybe the name something to do with politics? books? Jason himself hasn’t read more than a few pages of his grandpa’s numerous books in a close-up the elegant white-haired old gentleman is peering into the camera that look of disdain handsome ruin of a face a mask of fine wrinkles but the pale blue eyes still alert, combative Jason’s famous grandpa enunciating his words with such care, the most slow-witted in the TV audience can’t mishear I am eighty-two years old I am not in especially poor health I don’t see much reason to continue to live it’s a debased era but no more debased than previous eras I have lived through but I would not commit suicide I am a Roman Catholic and the sacraments are sacred to me so calmly speaking, Jason isn’t certain he’s heard what he has heard his “famous” grandpa on national TV saying such things! Jason listens to the remainder of the interview in a daze as soon as the TV program is over, Jason’s mom enters his room tears glittering in her eyes, she’s upset asking if Jason has happened to see his grandfather interviewed on Charlie Rose just now Jason is embarrassed saying he saw just the end of the interview his mom asks what did he hear he shrugs saying Grandpa was being funny as usual, I guess funny! his mom says uncertainly oh yes I suppose so my father is known for his dry sense of humor Jason says, wishing she’d leave, sure Mom that’s about all that anybody knows about Grandpa isn’t it? next morning Jason does an unexpected thing, calls his grandpa hasn’t been on easy terms with the old man for years but Jason says to him why’d you say what you did last night on Charlie Rose, Grandpa! you kind of hurt our feelings, Grandpa especially Mom the old man is quiet for a moment as if he’s surprised by this then laughs saying Jason you must know that I was just joking my God everybody in the family has been calling me chiding me just joking for God’s sake wouldn’t have thought my own family lacked a sense of humor Jason isn’t going to let the old man off so easily he’s remembering fishing for bluefish off Grandpa’s boat, in Nantucket Sound he’s remembering Grandpa hugging him, when his dad died saying God damn Grandpa you expect grandparents to say things like Life is precious, and this is the happiest time of your life while you’re young you don’t expect your grandparents to say life is shit Grandpa is protesting now remorseful-sounding dear Jason, dear boy it’s my pride, I abhor clichés Jason says you had a happy life, Grandpa you have money, you’re a famous man all my friends have heard of you, ask about you Grandpa is quiet again for a moment then says Jason you are correct my life has been pretty damned good and I like being famous it’s like seeing yourself in a room of mirrors if you’re good-looking especially still if I had to live my life over again, I’d swallow poison Grandpa bursts into laughter terrifying old-man laughter Jason is stunned gripping the phone receiver stammering Grandpa what? Grandpa you’re joking are you? Grandpa why? Grandpa manages to control his laughter saying why son, you tell me
“God damn.”
It was more a sob than a curse. Somewhere overhead, deranged bells were ringing. She’d pushed open the heavy door of the county courthouse and descended into a dimly-lit and soupy-aired ground-floor corridor like a tunnel only to discover that the office of the county clerk of records was locked and on the door a snotty notice WILL RETURN AT 1 P.M.
Noon! She’d arrived at noon.
In exasperation she rattled the doorknob. She wasn’t one to resist a gesture only because it is futile.
She had come to receive from the Chautauqua County Office of Records, for a fee of five dollars, a facsimile of a death certificate. She had no personal wish for this document, the very thought of which made her wince, and her eyes shift in the rapid-eye-movement of the deepest phase of sleep, but lawyers were insisting she must have it and so she’d driven three hours, forty minutes halfway across the massive state of New York and now she was herself in a state somewhere between manic and wounded. She was wearing stylish, very dark sunglasses that made her resemble a sleek-sexy insect not entirely steady in the upright position, in high-heeled summer sandals. She was wearing a white cord skirt that showed much of her sleek-sexy thighs and a flame-red top showing, at the midriff, a sliver of creamy skin. Her legs (calves, thighs) were sturdy and supple and her upper arms had a meaty firmness, yet. Beneath her likeness she could see the caption Would you guess thirty-eight?
Though since the death, the awful death, eleven days before, that had come at the worst possible time in her life, she’d been in a foul, mean mood. “Fuck.”
She’d drifted to the end of the corridor past more locked doors. Frosted glass windows the color of dingy teeth. It had been eight years, seven months since she’d been in this northwest corner of the state. More years than that, since she’d been in this very building with her husband, before he’d been her husband, acquiring a marriage license. She’d been too young to be incensed at the absurdity of such a law, such logic, that legal documents are required for being born, being married, dying.
Mount Olive, New York. A small town south of Lake Erie. When she’d lived here, here had been everywhere. Now she lived elsewhere, here was nowhere.
Noisy and panting, there came another customer to the county clerk’s office. Yvonne smiled meanly to see this guy — youngish, big, blundering, in white T-shirt and khaki shorts, bald-blond-fuzz head and what looked like mallet hands — squinting at the notice on the door and tugging, hard, at the doorknob. She heard him curse under his breath, “Shit.”
It was Woody Clark. That big beautiful boy Woody who’d broken her heart.
“Woody?”
“Yvonne?”
They greeted and grabbed at each other. They laughed like demented kids. It was lightning flashing! It was pure chance, therefore innocent. Yvonne would recall afterward almost in disbelief how immediate, how without hesitation they’d been, each of them. Each of them equally. Their dazed delight in each other, that had been wholly unplanned.
“Jesus, look at you! Gorgeous.”
Woody was staring. His scrutiny of her was beyond rude: her breasts, her rear, her legs (calves, thighs), even the creamy slice of midriff he couldn’t resist pinching between his big forefinger and thumb.
Yvonne teetered on her high-heeled sandals, with happiness. She couldn’t keep her hands off Woody, either: his brawny forearm dense with sand-colored hairs, his big rounded jaw where she’d smeared scarlet grease from her mouth.
“And you. You haven’t changed, either.”
Woody laughed, this was so hugely untrue. He’d gained weight, he’d lost hair. There was some sort of W-pattern on his sunburnt forehead where wanly curly sand-colored hair was receding. Woody had been vain of his good looks, not that he’d have ever admitted it, and was rubbing his head now with both hands, frantic-funny: “I’m looking like an American dad, which is what I basically am.”
This remark, seemingly playful, uttered with bared teeth and a goofy grimacing grin, was possibly a warning, Woody would use his kids as human shields in this encounter, or, maybe, it was an unconscious un-premeditated gesture. Yvonne decided not to care. Woody Clark was so luscious! She was so starved! “Woody, my God. I’m crazy for you. I mean, I love you. Just the look of you.” She was laughing at the sick scared look in the guy’s face, remembering how everything had showed in Woody’s face, every quick thought, every fleeting emotion, Woody Clark was direct and guileless as a dog wagging, or not wagging, its tail, or so she’d wished to think. She’d removed her dark glasses — or maybe Woody had removed them — and she was swiping at her eyes quick and deft, just the edges of her fingers, so that her mascara wouldn’t run. Oh, she shouldn’t be saying these things to Woody Clark! Her words had come out unbidden, like bats. She had a quick flash of an antiquarian drawing of, what was it, Pandora’s box, ugly winged things flying out past horror-stricken Pandora.
Or maybe it was Medusa’s head she saw: horror-stricken Medusa with a head of writhing snakes.
“Oh, hey. Yvonne.”
Woody was blushing. His entire face went sunburnt. He was glancing around, guilty-like. But no one was likely to be observing them. His reaction was reflexive: he was recalling their seemingly accidental meetings at their kids’ soccer games, at the hardware store and the drugstore and Grand Union and Barre Mills, the library, Starbucks, The Ice House Grill on Main Street — they’d grab at hands and arms, brush lips against cheeks, no mouth kisses only just smiles like released springs, the two of them fine physical specimens of a clearly superior species, gleaming and glistening, you might say preening with happiness, on public display and yet, maybe, innocent — it was only when they were alone in their secret places, not by chance but by design, that there might be cause for Woody’s guilty look.
“I’m serious, Woody. I miss you.”
Woody laughed, uneasy. Because maybe she wasn’t serious. (Was she?) It had been a contention between them, like a badminton birdie they’d batted back and forth, that Yvonne said the most extravagant things and didn’t, couldn’t, mean them; while Boy Scout Woody said only truthful things or at any rate practical/sensible things, and meant them.
Woody was hugging her now, nearly cracking her vertebrae. He was all sudden vehemence hugging to hurt. “Put your mouth where your money is, baby.” Woody’s dumb jokes, that was what she’d been missing. Nobody she knew now, not one person in her life, made such dumb-ass jokes and expected you to laugh. Her arms came around Woody with iron-maiden swiftness. She wanted Woody to know, to feel, how strong she was, obviously she worked out at a health club, maybe had a personal trainer, lifted (ten-pound) weights, jogged, fast-walked, panted and puffed on the elliptical stairs. She was gratified to feel love handles at Woody’s waist, loose beneath the untucked-in T-shirt and flabbier than she remembered.
She liked it that Woody was feeling, at her waist and back, not an ounce of flab. Her ribs were right there to be grasped, strummed.
“Baby, you’ve lost weight. What’re they doing to you over there in what’s-it?”
As if Woody didn’t know the name of where Neil had been transferred. Where he’d moved his family eight years before.
“You’re just right, Woody.”
“I mean, you’re beautiful. Only just a little thin.”
Woody was actually grasping her waist in both hands as if measuring. She saw the worried-dad look in his face and felt a wave of emotion for him that left her weak. She had to remember that Woody Clark had been too much for her. She’d had to give him up. She’d moved away from Mount Olive and had not thought of Woody since and now, somehow here he was. Hair mostly gone but the baldie-fuzz head seemed to soften his features. Woody still looked young, he was three years younger than Yvonne and she hadn’t ever felt comfortable with that for always, in the matter of men, certainly in the matter of her husband Neil, she’d been the young one. And Woody’s eyes: ridiculous watercolor-blue, Paul Newman—blue, you never saw in actual life, or almost never. These eyes shone with ardor, unabashed.
“Your face, Yvonne. What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking? You.”
“Me? How?” Woody was happy, giving off heat as if he’d been running, panting and stumbling to get to her.
“How, you know, you’d get excited. I mean, you know, turned on. Like a match tossed into gasoline.” Yvonne made an explosive gesture with hands, mouth.
“Yeah, well. I was a kid then, practically. Now, maybe not.”
“Don’t be faux-modest, Woody. It isn’t you.” She was calculating whether she dared mash the heel of her hand against his groin in the khaki shorts. How Woody would react. He could be unpredictable. Just when you were loving him like one of those big clumsy sheepdogs that want only to lick your face and thump their tails, he’d turn on you and say with wounded dignity Don’t ever patronize me.
“Now what’re you thinking? Your face is fantastically transparent, Yvonne.”
“If it’s transparent, you tell me what I’m thinking.”
Woody flashed his left incisor, a snaggle tooth that looked as if it belonged in someone else’s jaw. The laugh-lines around his mouth sharpened like sudden blades. “Is old Woody good for a quick screw? For old times’ sake? Or is it, maybe, too much of a hassle? What’ll he expect from me, afterward? The poor slob.”
Yvonne blushed. She was laughing, but her face flooded with blood. “Woody, come on. The last thing I’d ever think of you, for Christ’s sake, ‘poor slob.’ You know better.”
“Hey, I am. A slob. I’m fat.” Woody clutched at his waist, the fleshy knobs. He was ignoring his stomach, that pushed against the T-shirt in a way Yvonne hadn’t seen before, in him. But then, there was his baby-dome of a head. This was new, too.
Woody was saying, “You, you’re in your own class. There’s only one of you, baby. And maybe I’m wrong, you’re not too thin. I guess it’s healthy, you read about low-calorie diets, the leanest laboratory rats live longer. I mean, ’way underweight rats, anorexic rats, not that the poor bastards have any choice about being starved, but — ” Woody could digress for long interludes. He had a mind like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up miscellaneous information, often “scientific,” that was forever on tap. Instead of a post-coital smoke, with Woody Clark you got a post-coital lecture. Yvonne had found this charming and exasperating in about equal measure. Once, she’d relied on Woody to fill her in on news — what to think, be incensed by. Movies, music, even who to vote for. Later, she’d stopped listening. She’d stopped even watching his mouth move. But now she was watching, and she was listening. And she felt a sick, sinking sensation. We could. We could, again.
“ — after this, we could have lunch? There’s this terrific new restaurant on the river, I doubt you know. A decent wine list, improbable as it sounds.”
Quickly Yvonne said, “I can’t, Woody. I have to get back.”
“Fuck you do. You don’t.”
“Woody, I do.” She’d come close to calling him honey. And her tone, too, was familiar as if they’d had this conversation before, more than once. Yvonne was practically in tears, she was so sincere. Her daughter Jill would be waiting for her back home and already she’d lost time, having failed to factor in a one-hour wait for the damned clerk’s office to open. “I’m a chauffeur for Jill right now. She’s had a ‘crisis’ and I need to be reliable for her since of course Neil is otherwise engaged.”
“God! Jill must be how old?” Woody had heard Jill and not Neil.
“Fourteen. But a young fourteen.”
Woody shuddered. He had two sons, Yvonne calculated they were still in middle school. Jill, fourteen going on twelve, was over her head in ninth grade.
Woody asked about Jill, as he always had. He’d been sweet that way, and seemingly sincere. Yvonne, asking about Woody’s boys, had not always been sincere for she’d been jealous of anyone, even Woody’s children, making emotional demands on him. Only rarely had Yvonne asked after Woody’s wife and yet more rarely, out of tact Yvonne had thought, had Woody asked after Neil.
Now Woody was asking, as if he’d only just thought of it, why Yvonne was in Mount Olive waiting for the county clerk, and Yvonne hesitated, and said evasively that she had to pick up a death certificate. And Woody’s blue eyes widened. “You do? Jesus, so do I.”
“You?”
They stared at each other. This was too strange! There had to be something ominous about it, such a coincidence.
Woody was frowning and shaking his head muttering he didn’t want to “go into it,” the circumstances of his death certificate. Yvonne felt a clutch of fear, also distaste. Woody (who could read minds, when it suited him) would know that she didn’t want to know who in his life had died, and that annoyed her. Always he’d known more about her than she felt comfortable with his knowing while at the same time, for this was Woody Clark, he’d behaved as if he was the naive one of the two of them, innocent because three years younger.
“Oh, Woody. Is it — family?” She paused, biting her lower lip. “Not your — father?” In a moment of panic she couldn’t remember whether Woody’s father had died years ago, and she’d heard the news second-or third-hand, or whether — well, she couldn’t remember. In the eight years, seven months since she’d lived in the large white Colonial on Washburn Street her thoughts of Woody Clark had become comfortingly tattered and smudged as a poster on a billboard. Maybe you could see a face on that billboard, and maybe the face was smiling, but you couldn’t recognize the face.
“No.” Woody was frowning, not very attractive now.
Yvonne drew back. She could see herself in the very short very white cord skirt and high-heeled sandals stepping backward in her own imprudent footsteps. In damp sand. Don’t go farther, you’ll regret it.
She said, awkwardly, for her tongue seemed to twist when she lied, “I’m here to pick up a document for tax purposes. My mother’s mother who was, maybe you remember, her stepmom? Not a blood relative of hers, or mine. Oh, she was a nice woman, she was a sweet old lady, but — ” Yvonne spoke quickly and carelessly to indicate that her reason for being in Mount Olive on such a mission was not important. It was sad, someone had died, an elderly woman not a blood relative had died, but it wasn’t interesting. Woody’s death certificate was much more interesting, obviously. But they wouldn’t go there.
“ — Caroline? Is it —?”
The words leapt out. Again it was winged things out of Pandora’s box. Yvonne wanted to clamp her hands over her mouth like a comic-strip character but Woody wasn’t in a mood to be entertained.
Staring at his feet, enormous silver-gray Nikes with bands of rotting black reflector tape, Woody said nothing. Veins and tendons in his muscled neck visibly pulsed.
Suddenly Yvonne was remembering, she’d been hearing about Woody’s wife. They’d been separated, and they’d reconciled. And maybe they’d been separated again. And there was some medical problem. Probably breast cancer, for that was the cancer everyone had, everyone female who had cancer, as prostate cancer was male, and for this reason Yvonne who had long resented, been jealous of, hated, disdained and envied Woody Clark’s wife couldn’t be certain now if she’d heard such grim news about the woman because if she had she’d have blanked it out, blocked it like the kind of caller ID Neil had bought for their phones, where you’re spared even knowing who is trying to call you.
Yvonne swallowed hard. She was frightened suddenly. If Caroline had actually died, was that, somehow, though years later, her fault? Would Woody, unfairly, or fairly, blame her? Or, blaming himself, in his clumsy-blundering-belated way, inadvertently stumble, like a drunk careening across a dance floor, and bring her down with him? Where a minute before he’d been grinning like a high school athlete who’s scored the winning point now Woody was glowering. His mouth was down-turned at both corners. Yvonne thought in dismay Why’d I go there? She could have bitten her lower lip until it bled.
Instead, she took Woody’s hands in hers. He wasn’t responding, so she squeezed harder. “I’m sorry, Woody. I won’t pursue it. I know, well — how you take things. How hard.”
Woody mumbled something that sounded like sure. It was adolescent-boy sarcasm, clumsily disguised hurt.
Yvonne slid her arms around his muscled neck and pressed her face against his muscled-fatty chest. His heart beat beneath her cheek like a fist. She drew a deep, deep breath. If Woody’s arms closed around her, or even if they didn’t, she was feeling good now, she was feeling somehow justified. She had been the one to blurt out to Woody Clark that she missed him, she loved him, and she was sincere, she’d opened herself to him, to be wounded, as he wasn’t opening himself to her. So, she was the naive one, in her heart she was the younger of the two of them. The strange thing was, she hadn’t actually thought much about Woody Clark in years. Not that she’d repudiated him but that, the way she shoved older clothes back into the corners of her walk-in closets, to make way for newer clothes, not a cyclical but a chronological progression, and the older clothes faded from memory as from sight, so she’d ceased thinking urgent thoughts about Woody. There’d been an actor on Seinfeld who resembled Woody to a degree. And sometimes in public she’d find herself watching a tall burly crew cut guy, ex-athlete beginning to go to fat, one of the baby-face bandits as she and her women friends called them: guys that, well into their forties and fifties, and, who knows, into their sixties and beyond, could get away with every kind of bullshit because they had baby faces and you had to love them.
Yvonne said, in a suddenly husky, choked voice, “I think of you all the time, Woody. I just want to tell you.” If the lie came so easily, maybe it wasn’t a lie? “And I don’t mean sexual, Woody. Not just that.”
Pinched-glowering, yet Woody managed to laugh.
“‘Not just that’? I doubt it, honey. There isn’t all that much outside sex. I mean, to take seriously.”
“Well, maybe. But it’s more than that, for me.” Yvonne spoke vehemently. She gave his chest a thump with her fist, as if to push him away. “I miss you, I mean as an individual. As a unique person. You’re the only man practically to make me laugh.” Yvonne was so serious now, she had to speak lightly. Her eyes were welling with ridiculous tears.
“You miss my dick. Good old good old. Reliable.” Woody made a snorting noise. “Or anyway, mostly.”
“Stop talking like an asshole, Woody, when you’re not. It’s like calling yourself a slob when you’re not. What you have is style, a natural kind of style. If you wear slovenly old clothes, rotting old shoes, if your jaws are covered in stubble, it doesn’t matter because you’re you. While other men, no matter what they wear, what car they drive, how their hair is styled, it’s irrelevant. You must know that, God damn. I hate it when you put yourself down.”
Suddenly she was hurt, sulky. He hadn’t moved a step backward when she’d thumped his chest. Now she pushed at his stomach that was perceptibly harder than she’d expected: he must be doing some kind of stomach exercises, from a prone position. His upper arms were thick as hams. And his neck! — she couldn’t have closed her two hands around it, even if she’d wanted to strangle him. The primitive part of her female brain was impressed but the rest was pissed by the dumb-dead weight, the obdurate bulk of the guy. And him protesting, “‘Put myself down’? Like, you’re saying it’s some kind of suicide? When I’m trying to be up front, honest? To you it’s ‘talking like an asshole’? That’s what it is, to you?”
Woody was pretending to be hurt. Woody was wanting Yvonne to remember how, when she’d lost it and screamed at him, really screamed at him those several times, like a crazed woman, stammering and choking and spitting out the most vicious words, he’d never lost control and insulted her. The most agitated he’d been, he’d stammered red-faced, “You — you better stop! You better not say anything more!” He’d let her burn herself out, like a flash fire. Somehow, even at such times, as if knowing he’d provoked her, Woody had been on her side.
That was the remarkable thing about Woody Clark, Yvonne was remembering now. Essentially, unlike anybody else she knew, Woody had been on her side.
She was saying, “It’s just, I do miss you. I wouldn’t be crazy, the way I was. I wouldn’t be, you know, jealous.” Here was a sudden swerve into the subjunctive. Wouldn’t. Would. No wonder Woody Clark was suddenly very still. A damp stain like wings, if you could have wings on your chest, had materialized on the front of Woody’s T-shirt, Yvonne was tracing with her fingers.
“It wasn’t good, Vonnie. You know that. Not just for you, it made you into somebody you basically aren’t, but for me, too. I hated what I, well — was responsible for.”
Vonnie! She wasn’t hearing what Woody was saying but she heard Vonnie which meant their old intimacy. When they were naked together, vulnerable. Vonnie meant a time when they would never, never hurt each other.
“I know! But I could change. I mean, I have changed. I’m older — I’m not so emotional. I wouldn’t be so frantic about you, Woody. So — watchful.” Christ she was hearing herself sound like a defense attorney pleading a cause in which he wants you to believe he believes.
“But — see, honey — we don’t love each other, now. We don’t actually know each other, do we? We’re different people. I know I am.” Woody was pleading, too. Not exactly pushing Yvonne back but holding her at bay, palms of his meaty hands against her shoulders while she was clutching at his forearms.
“I could love you, Woody. I never stopped, it just went underground. You know that, come on.”
“Fuck this, Vonnie. This is bullshit.”
“I’m serious! You know I am.”
She’d begun to cry. The tears were spontaneous, hot as acid. Did this mean they were sincere? The way she was feeling, a sensation like a rag being twisted inside her chest, and something inky running down her face, she felt sincere, like the outermost layer of her skin was being peeled off, but Woody was being weird and not-himself repeating it hadn’t been good, it hadn’t been any kind of life for either of them, and there was Yvonne’s husband Neil, and her daughter, and Yvonne interrupted saying he wasn’t listening! wasn’t hearing her! — “I’ve just been explaining, Woody, I would not be so crazy now. I’ve been telling you and you don’t hear.” Her voice was lifting dangerously. But why did Woody provoke her! “I think I panicked, then. I had to get out. I was going to pieces, and Neil was close to finding out, and you know Neil, I mean you knew Neil, he isn’t like us, he isn’t the kind to forgive. So he was ready to leave Mount Olive, things were falling into place for him, a transfer, a new job, he’s fine, we’re like people digging in different parts of a garden, we’re in the garden together but, you know, not together. Not like you and me. I mean, maybe Neil did know something, the way Caroline knew something, without exactly knowing what it was” — speaking quickly now not wanting to see in Woody’s face how he was feeling about this, that possibly Caroline had known more than she, Yvonne, had wished to believe she’d known — “but it was me, my fault, I understood even then but I couldn’t seem to stop it, I had a hard time not being with you all the time, Woody. I never saw you sleep, for Christ’s sake.” There came the note of reproach, the old indignation, something prim and punitive like a glass struck at a banquet, the heart sinks to hear a glass struck at a banquet meaning toasts, speeches, soul-killing and tedious, and so practically in mid-syllable Yvonne quick-changed her tone, before (she hoped!) Woody could register it, like recognizing an old melody in some scrambled jazz improvisation. She said, lowering her voice, “There were things I stopped, after you, sweetie. I mean, forever. Smoking dope, and drinking vodka, and masturbating. After you.”
Woody blinked and stared. Woody decided to laugh, this was meant to be funny was it? “You’re kidding, right? You aren’t serious.”
“I am! I am serious.”
For it was true. Dope, vodka, masturbating. All that was tied up with Woody Clark for no one else in Mount Olive had smoked dope with her except Woody, no one else in Mount Olive had offered her dope except Woody, and the vodka had been some kind of flashy fad, Dostoyevskian-dangerous to one like Yvonne with dipsomaniac genes and in fact she’d had a little problem with that, with the drinking, after moving across the state from Mount Olive, but she didn’t intend to tell Woody Clark that. And the masturbating: not exactly something she was proud of but why not tell Woody, spill her guts to Woody as she hadn’t been able to spill her guts to any therapist, ever. The masturbation was something she’d done compulsively, fierce and insatiable and (maybe) slightly deranged, after afternoons with Woody when she’d had to fantasize the man back with her and so vividly she could not cease thinking of him, seeing him, smelling his sweet-funky sexy-sweaty odor, feeling him inside her, and out; and to call such frantic sexual need pleasure, pleasurable let alone self-pleasuring was some kind of crude joke. Seeming to see from a distance of about ten feet a woman screaming and tearing at a pillow cover with her teeth, moaning, sobbing as if her heart was being broken, her desperate fingers inadequate trying to contain the muscular convulsions between her chafed legs, and there was a mad wish to pry up inside herself with, what? — a knife-blade, a pair of scissors. Those months she’d been in a fever, this had been sickness, and trying then to sleepwalk through her life as a man’s wife and a (needy) girl’s mother with dilated eyes, swollen mouth and thoroughly fucked-up head — she had no idea how she’d managed, it was a wonder to her like sending a man to Mars, or wherever. No possible way you could comprehend it except to assume it had happened, somehow.
Flush-faced Woody was saying, “Ohhhh fuck. Just fuck, Yvonne.
Why’d you tell me this shit?” and Yvonne was saying, wiping at her eyes, speaking eagerly now, “Because, well — I thought we told each other everything.” And Woody was saying, “Everything? We told each other nothing” and Yvonne was saying, “We did? I mean — we didn’t? I mean, I did — ” and Woody was saying, in the voice of an aggrieved twelve-year-old, “Here I thought we were so terrific together. We were fantastic, I thought. You were so classy-cool and ice-blond not what anybody’d think from seeing you which was a terrific turn-on, for me I mean, you were always, like, ‘I’ll try anything,’ like I was some kind of native safari guide, leading the white lady into the jungle. And now you’re telling me, you’re actually telling me that all that time you — ” Woody shook his head as if to dislodge something inside it. He could not bring himself to enunciate just what it was, Yvonne had been doing.
She protested, “But that’s why, Woody. I was crazy for you. I couldn’t get enough of the actual you. It’s the way women are, I think. I mean, when it’s like a sickness. When love is, well — like a sickness. The fantasy.”
“What fantasy? I was there, wasn’t I real? I thought I was plenty real.”
How to make Woody, or any man, know, the more real he is in actual life, the more real in fantasy? Yvonne began to stammer, “But you, you must have fantasies, too? Don’t men? I mean, sometimes? Come on, Woody, you must have masturbated, too — ”
Woody said, appalled, “No! Why’d I do that! I wasn’t thirteen for Christ’s sake. This is really sick, Yvonne. This is so you. Telling me now, eight years later like a delayed kick in the groin.”
Yvonne laughed. Woody was so hot-eyed and excited, the blond fuzz covering his flushed scalp looked radioactive. You’d have thought she had insulted his lineage, his dignity. “Oh, Woody. Come on. I’m only just telling you how it was with me, it’s a compliment to you. How many female residents of Mount Olive, all ages, are fantasizing about Woody Clark any given time of the day, or night? Live with it.”
Woody was sulky-mouthed, skeptical. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me, jacking-off was better.” Better than what, Woody left unsaid.
Yvonne said, hurt, “‘Jacking-off’ isn’t what women do. With women it isn’t so crude, it’s more fantasy, romantic. I mean, it isn’t all that physical.” Yvonne paused, not knowing what she meant. For certainly it had been physical. And yes, often it had been better than the seemingly real thing, with the man. She began to laugh, a little short of breath. The courthouse was nominally air-conditioned, but you’d hardly have known it in this submerged corridor that smelled like the interior of an old refrigerator.
Woody said, frowning, “Baby, cut the bullshit. You’re breaking my heart. My balls, you’re breaking. Was it better? ‘Mas-tur-bating’ some secret place where Neil wouldn’t be likely to find you?”
Yvonne laughed. Ohhh no she wouldn’t say one word more on the subject. Almost, she’d think that she and Woody had been smoking dope in the basement of the old courthouse, he’d been passing her one of his “fantastic” joints (he’d acquired, he said, from the same high school dropout kid who supplied the local teenagers) and laughing at the dazed-silly expression on her face, hilarious when she coughed, choked, wheezed and couldn’t seem to keep her mouth closed.
There were footsteps at the farther end of the corridor, on the stairs. Someone else was coming to the county clerk’s office? A man in what appeared to be a rumpled seersucker suit, looking like a courthouse lawyer. Thank God, no one Yvonne recognized. He bypassed the clerk’s door to unlock another door, and disappeared inside.
During this exchange, Woody had been looming over Yvonne. She remembered with a thrill his air of menace, the way sometimes he’d use his big body aggressively, in the guise of seeming-playful so you’d think He’s kidding, but this is the real thing. In their circle, Woody Clark’s reputation was up-from-blue-collar, therefore frank-talking, cut-through-bullshit, straight-Democratic ticket, though in fact (not that Woody would talk about this, much) his father ran a family-owned business, Woody had gone to one of the small, good colleges in New York State (maybe Colgate? Hamilton?), had a business degree from Cornell and was a partner in Mount Olive’s preeminent accounting firm. “Let’s get some fresh air, Yvonne. It’s badly needed.” He’d been herding her in the direction of a rear door marked EXIT.
Unexpected bright air! After the dim-lit corridor, it felt like TV exposure.
The asphalt lot was shimmering with heat. A surprising number of vehicles were parked there. Woody inquired which car was Yvonne’s and she explained she’d parked on the street, her car was a metallic-green Acura; Woody pointed out his massive black Land Rover, parked close by in a way to take up two spaces. Yvonne said, “Why am I not surprised, Woody? The Land Rover was invented for guys like you.”
Woody took this as a compliment. He offered her a cigarette, some low-tar filter brand Yvonne didn’t even recognize, and she declined, though with regret. (Yes she’d stopped smoking. Was trying to. Like the personal trainer, the Atkins diet. Other things that made the navigation of a single day like a voyage in a kayak in white-water rapids.) Woody was talking about cars, or maybe he was talking about the economy, looking over her head now restless-eyed, smoking his cigarette with zest. It was sharp as pain, how badly Yvonne wanted to ask about Caroline, or anyway who’d just recently died in Woody’s family, for surely it had to be family, to upset Woody the way it had seemed to upset him, unless she was misreading him but no: she was sure she’d read Woody just right, a few minutes ago. But she couldn’t ask, and he wasn’t going to volunteer, though Woody was asking, circumspectly, politely, about Neil, Neil’s work, for he’d heard Neil was “doing really well” and, you could see that Woody sincerely meant it, he was “happy” for them both.
He said, sucking in smoke, “Everybody always said, Neil wouldn’t stay in Mount Olive long. That seemed evident.”
Yvonne took this as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. She’d been wiping at her smudged mascara with a tissue, trying not to be too obvious. In the acid-bright air her eyes ached but she didn’t want to retrieve her sunglasses from her handbag, the lenses were so dark-tinted as to seem opaque. She wanted to see Woody Clark clearly, and she wanted him to see her clearly. She heard herself say, in a casual, seemingly retrospective voice, not at all an accusing voice but soft-sounding as she could manage, “I really did want you to know, Woody: I think of you often. You were the love of my life.” She paused. Her mouth twitched. Each was waiting for some further remark, a comic oneliner perhaps. But Yvonne couldn’t think of anything funny enough to risk.
(Oh, they’d joked so much together! Yvonne was remembering that now. Every assignation was a conversation and every conversation was packed with laughs. Her laughter with Woody Clark had been like hyperventilating: once you start, it’s hard to stop.)
Woody said, exhaling smoke like punctuation, “Bullshit! You haven’t thought of me in years. Why’d you think of me?” It was a sincere question, Woody meant it. “You have your family. You have your ‘corporate attorney’ husband and your ‘Tudor mansion’ — yeah, I heard about that — and your ‘social life’ in — wherever.”
“Averill Park.”
“Upscale suburb of Albany? I’ve heard.”
Yvonne smiled. She was embarrassed, just slightly, but she liked it that Woody had heard. Meaning he’d been asking after her, maybe. Or that, hearing of the departed Wertenbakers, Yvonne and Neil, mutual friends naturally passed on the word to Woody Clark as if, in retrospect, their secret liaison hadn’t been so secret after all but a matter of public record like the Police Blotter column in the Mount Olive Weekly.
Yvonne said carelessly, “‘Social life’ is a hobby. It’s for spare time. It isn’t, you know, real.” Though she recalled how Woody had loved parties, Woody Clark glowing and glistening and loud-laughing so people were drawn to him, how people awaited Woody’s arrival, how a light seemed to go out if Woody Clark had to leave early. “Neil and I, when we go out, don’t even talk together, it’s like we just arrive together then drift away. Some parties, they’re just blurs to me. I feel like some kind of amateur porn actress, smiling and smiling, so-happy smiling, Neil Wertenbaker’s wife, and the sad thing is, if Neil and I just met at one of these parties, for instance seated next to each other at dinner, we wouldn’t be drawn together, at all. One time we were, I guess. But that time is past. Now we’re like” — Yvonne was becoming vague now — “opposite ends of a magnet? That repel.”
“‘Diamagnetic.’” Woody sounded interested. For a moment he brooded, as if considering what to reveal of himself, his marriage. “Weird thing, I’m getting that way with my older brother Steve. You know, Steve? In fact, with lots of people. I mean, people I can’t reasonably avoid. You start out attracted, sort of, then somehow the poles get switched and you end up repelled. It actually feels physical.” Woody thumped the edge of his fist against his torso, in the region of his heart. It was a strange, oddly poignant gesture Yvonne could recall afterward with no idea what it meant.
But Yvonne didn’t want Woody to digress. Not now, when time was running out. (She’d been glancing, wincing, at her watch. At noon, when she’d first arrived at the courthouse, she’d had a yawning abyss of time to get through, now precious minutes were rapidly passing, the minute hand was on its upward swath moving inexorably toward 1 P.M.) She said, almost petulantly, as if they’d been arguing, “Social life is like buzzing insects. I can ‘do’ it but so what? The only things that have ever meant anything to me have happened in private. When I’m alone, I’m — well, you know what I’m like.”
“I never did. Frankly.”
“You did, Woody! You saw into my heart.”
Woody laughed. He was feeling good now, in even the shimmering-hot air of the asphalt parking lot. “Fuck I did. Your ‘heart.’ I never saw you without makeup, for Christ’s sake.”
“Come on, you did! Lots of times, you did. It all got rubbed off, believe me. My skin was raw after you. I mean, raw.” She laughed, sounding like hyperventilation. “I’m covered in scar tissue.”
“Oh, man. Are you. That’s what it is, huh?”
Woody took hold of Yvonne’s chin to tilt it upward. She knew that she looked reasonably good, and her scissor-cut ashy-blond hair looked more than reasonably good, so she didn’t flinch, though that was her instinct. She knew that Woody, joker that he was, yet wouldn’t joke about anything so personal/private as cosmetic surgery, which she had not had, yet, or laser wrinkle removal, Botox, collagen injections which she had. Yvonne poked him in his belly, that felt softer now, like foam rubber. She thought that he would kiss her, at least lightly on the lips, but he didn’t. She said, “You just refuse to acknowledge it, don’t you? What we had, for a while, together.”
The for a while was subtle, poetic. Yvonne wondered where it had come from.
Woody was backing off. The cigarette was some sort of protective shield he’d been using, Yvonne saw that now. He said, “Talk of being ‘alone’ — you were never alone, when you were with me. So how’d I know what you were truly like, when you’re ‘alone’?” He laughed, in a whirl of smoke. He was delighted to be tripping her up. Despite the baby face, Woody was a sharp, shrewd guy. In their circle, some of the men had played poker occasionally, including Neil, and Woody Clark was the one to beat. Despite his relative youth, or because of it, he’d been the one to master home computers early on. When your computer crashed, when you couldn’t retrieve a disk, you went to Woody Clark for help. Even Neil Wertenbaker, for all his pride. And more than once.
By the time the county clerk returned, at 1:08 P.M., two other disgruntled citizens were waiting. Yvonne was processed first, then Woody. She waited for him out back, at the Land Rover. She had the death certificate in a manila envelope, in her handbag. She’d only just glanced at it in the clerk’s office, her eyes damp with moisture. Quickly she’d put it away. And now her car keys were in her hand. Her heart kicked with the sudden impulse to escape, before Woody Clark joined her. How surprised he’d be, how he’d been taking her for granted! The surprise on the baby-bandit face, when he saw she’d gone.
If she waited for him, if she lingered, very likely he would invite her to lunch another time, but she’d have to refuse. (Unless she called her housekeeper on her cell phone. Just maybe, Lucia could drive Jill to her tennis lesson, and swing around afterward to pick her up. Though Yvonne hated to ask. Chauffeuring wasn’t Lucia’s usual task. And Jill would be sulky and sarcastic for the remainder of the day.) She was thinking how, if she slipped away, Woody wouldn’t try to contact her. He hadn’t tried to contact her in more than eight years. She hadn’t tried to contact him. (A few postcards, sent from exotic places like Belize, Costa Brava. Nothing too personal, just for fun.) That had meant something final, and sensible. That had meant something profound, hadn’t it?
“Yvonne? Hey.”
Woody came at her, eager and frowning. His big sunburnt face looked as if it must hurt. His impossibly-blue eyes, too, appeared excessively moist. He was clutching a manila envelope identical to the one in Yvonne’s handbag, return address COUNTY OFFICE OF RECORDS, CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY COURTHOUSE, CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK. Except now Woody was looking like a man in a hurry who wouldn’t be inviting Yvonne to lunch after all. More, he was looking like a guilty man who needs to make a quick call on his cell phone even as he drives hurriedly through Main Street traffic.
Of course, Woody would have another woman by now. Women. That was obvious.
He fumbled in his pocket, gave Yvonne his business card. He brushed his lips, that felt parched, against her cheek. Like a man out of breath he said, “O.K. look, what we said — if you want to, you know, pursue it.” This was a new business card of Woodrow Clark, Jr.’s, made of a stiffer material than the old. It would have e-mail, cell phone information on it, as the old card had not.
She didn’t watch Woody maneuver the Land Rover out of the parking lot. She knew he expected it, but no. She was in a hurry, too.
By 1:35 P.M., Yvonne was driving east on the Thruway. She’d slipped Woody’s business card into the envelope with the death certificate, for safekeeping. What was worrying her immediately was, the adrenaline charge she’d felt, first seeing Woody, that had lit her up like a Christmas tree, was rapidly receding now. You could practically see the brave little glitter-lights going out one by one. If she wasn’t careful she’d have one of her blinding migraines on the drive to Albany. This feeling of fatigue, a taste of something sour and brackish like panic. Sometimes all that was required to set off a migraine was a sudden sharp knife-blade of light reflected off the hood, windshield, chrome of another vehicle. A pulse beat in her head, behind her eyes, in warning. Not even the dark glasses could spare her, if a migraine was imminent.
“Yes, maybe.” Her lips moved, in answer to a question. But what was the question?
She stopped the car on the Thruway shoulder, impulsively. Woody’s card — what had she done with Woody’s card? Anxiously she checked the manila envelope containing the death certificate — yes, it was there.
The party was in full swing — like a cruise ship that has left the dock and is plying its way through choppy waves out of the harbor — glittering with lights and giddy with voices, laughter, music. The party was her party — hers and her husband’s — in fact, today was her husband’s birthday — at the farther end of the living room Harris was in a fever-pitch of conversation surrounded by his oldest friends who’d been post-docs with him at MIT in Noam Chomsky’s lab, 1963–64 — he wouldn’t detect her absence she was sure.
Seven-fifty P.M. — near-dusk — a strategic moment for the hostess to slip away between the swell of arrivals, greetings, cocktails and appetizers and the (large, informal) buffet supper that would scatter guests through the downstairs rooms of the sprawling old Tudor house at 49 Foxcroft Circle, University Heights.
How many years the Zalks had hosted this party, or its variants! Leah Zalk took a childlike pleasure seeing her house through the eyes of others — how the rented tables were covered in dusky-pink tablecloths — not the usual utilitarian white — how the forsythia sprigs she’d cut the previous day from shrubs alongside the house were blossoming dazzling-yellow in tall vases against the walls — how beautiful, flickering candlelight in all the rooms — track lighting illuminating a wall of Harris’s remarkable photographs taken on his travels into the wilder parts of the earth — in a farther corner of the living room a guest who was clearly a trained pianist was playing cheery show-tunes, dance tunes of another era — “Begin the Beguine” — “Heart and Soul” — alternating with flamboyant passages of Liszt — the rapid nervous rippling notes of the Transcendental Etudes that Leah had once tried to play as a girl pianist long ago.
A party in full swing. What a relief, to escape.
Between her eyes was a steely-cold throb of pain. Quickly it came and went like flashing neon she had no wish to acknowledge.
Leah made her way through the crowded dining room and into the kitchen where the caterer’s assistants were working — made her way through the back hall to the rear of the house — pushed open a door that opened onto a rarely used back porch — and was astonished — disconcerted — to see someone leaning against the railing, smoking — a guest? — a friend? — this individual would have to be an old friend of the Zalks, who’d had the nerve to make his way into the rear of the house to the back porch — yet Leah didn’t recognize him when he turned with a startled smile, cigarette smoke lifting from his mouth like a curving tusk.
“Mrs. Zalk? Hey — h’lo.”
The young man’s greeting was bright, ebullient, slightly overloud.
Leah smiled a bright-hostess smile: “Hello! Do I know you?”
He was no one she knew — no one she recognized — in his mid-or late twenties — somewhat heavy, fattish-faced — yet boyish — looming above her at six foot three or four — with bleached-looking pale blond hair curling over his shirt collar — moist and slightly protuberant pale-blue eyes behind stylish wire-rimmed glasses — an edgy air of familiarity or intimacy. Was Leah supposed to know this young man? Clearly he knew her.
He bore little resemblance to Harris’s graduate and post-doc students and could hardly have been one of Harris’s colleagues at the Institute — he had a foppish air of entitlement and clearly thought well of himself. He wore an expensive-looking camel’s hair sport jacket and a black silk shirt with a pleated front — open at the throat, with no necktie — his trousers were dark, sharp-pressed — his shoes were black Italian loafers. In his left earlobe a gold stud glittered and on his left wrist — a thick-boned wrist, covered in coarse hairs — a white gold stretch-band watch gleamed. A cavalier slouch of his broad shoulders made him look as if, beneath the sport jacket that fitted him tightly, small wings were folded against his upper back.
A coarse sort of angel, Leah thought, with stubby nicotine-stained fingers and a smile just this side of insolent.
“Certainly you know me, Mrs. Zalk — ‘Leah.’ Though it’s been a while.”
How embarrassing! Leah had no doubt that she knew, or should have known, the young blond man. As she’d pushed out blindly onto the porch she’d been rubbing the bridge of her nose where the alarming pain had sprung — she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her with anything other than a hostess’s calmly smiling face — if Harris knew he’d have been surprised, and concerned for her.
Leah could not have told Harris how early that morning — in the chill dark of 4 A.M. — she’d wakened with a headache — a sensation of dread for this party they’d hosted every spring, at about the time of Harris’s birthday. Somehow over the years the Zalks’ party in May had become a custom, or a tradition in the Institute community: their friends, colleagues, and neighbors had come to expect it. Through the long day Leah had felt stress, mounting anxiety. She was sure that Harris had been inviting guests by phone and e-mail, far-flung colleagues of his, former students of whom there were so many, without remembering to tell her, and that far more than sixty guests would arrive at the house…
“Yes. A while…”
“How long, I wonder? Five, six years…”
“Well. That might be…”
“You’re looking well, Mrs. Zalk!”
Now Leah remembered: this emphatic young man was the son of friends whom she and Harris saw only a few times a year, though the Gottschalks, like the Zalks, lived in the older, west-end neighborhood of University Heights. The young man had an odd first name — and he’d matured alarmingly — Leah was sure that the last time she’d seen him he’d been an adolescent of twelve or thirteen with a pudgy child’s face, a shy manner, hardly Leah’s height. Now he carried his excess weight well, bursting with health and vigor and an air of scarcely suppressed elation like an athlete eager to confront his competition.
He was smiling toothily, the smile of a child of whom much has been made by adoring elders. Leah felt herself resistant to his charms — wary of his attention. In a lowered voice he said, “Remember me? — ‘Woods’? ‘Woods Gottschalk’? Dr. Zalk and my father used to play squash together at the gym.”
Squash! Leah was sure that Harris hadn’t played that ridiculous frantic game in years.
“Of course — ‘Woods.’ Yes — I remember you — of course.”
In fact Leah vaguely recalled that something had happened to the Gottschalks’ only son — he’d been stricken with a terrible debilitating nerve-illness, or a brain tumor — or was she confusing him with the son of other friends in University Heights? What was most disconcerting, Woods had grown so large, and so mature. So swaggering. She was sure she hadn’t seen the Gottschalks enter her house — she wondered if Woods had dared to come alone to the party.
Woods murmured, with an air of deep sympathy: “Yes, it’s been a while, Mrs. Zalk. You can be sure — I’ve been thinking of you.”
The blandly glowing face assumed, for a moment, a studied look of gravity. The eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses moisted over. Woods reached out for Leah — for Leah’s hands — suddenly her hands were being gripped in Woods’s hands — a handshake that quivered with such feeling, the rings on Leah’s left hand were pressed painfully into her flesh. As if a blinding light had been turned rudely onto her face, Leah’s eyes puckered at the corners.
“You’ve been so brave.”
How uneasy “Woods” was making her! — his very name obtrusive, pretentious — staring at her so avidly, hungrily — as if awaiting a response Leah couldn’t provide. Brave? What did this brash young man mean by brave?
Leah didn’t like it that he was smoking. That he hadn’t offered to put out his cigarette. Nor had he made even a courteous gesture of shielding her from the smoke as another person might have done in similar circumstances. She had never smoked — had never been drawn to smoking — though her college friends had all smoked, and of course Harris had smoked, both cigarettes and a pipe, for years.
At last, Harris had given up smoking when he was in his early thirties. Proud of his willpower — for he’d loved his pipe — he’d smoked as many as two packs of cigarettes a day — and had done so since the age of sixteen. Giving up such a considerable habit hadn’t been easy for Harris for he’d been involved in a major federal-grant project in his Institute lab that frequently required as many as one hundred work-hours a week and smoking had helped relieve the stress of those years — but Harris had done it and Leah had been proud of her husband’s willpower.
“It’s wonderful to see you smile, Mrs. Zalk! You are well — are you?”
“Yes. Of course I’m ‘well.’ And you?”
Leah spoke with an edge of impatience. How annoying this young man was!
As Woods talked — chattered — Leah stared at a swath of pale blond hair falling onto Woods’s forehead — yes, his hair did seem to be bleached, the roots were dark, shadowy. Yet his eyebrows appeared to have been bleached, too. A sweetish scent of cologne wafted from his skin. Woods Gottschalk was a stocky perspiring young man yet oddly attractive, self-assured and commanding. His face was an actor’s face, Leah thought — unless she meant the mask-face of a Greek actor of antiquity — as if a face of ordinary dimensions had been stretched upon a large bust of a head. The effect was brightly bland as a coin, or a moon. Lines from Santayana came to Leah — a beautiful poetic text she’d read as a graduate student decades before: Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feelings once faithful, discreet and — .
“As you see I’ve stepped outside — outside ‘time’ — and slipped away from your party, Mrs. Zalk. In one of my incarnations — speaking metaphorically, of course! — I’m an emissary from Uranus — I’m a visitor here. People of your generation — my parents’ generation — and my grandparents’ generation — are so touching to me. I so admire how you carry on — you persevere. Well into the ‘new century,’ you persevere.”
Leah laughed nervously. “I’m not sure what option we have, Woods.”
“Look, I know I’m being rude — circumlocution has never been my strong point. My mother used to warn me — you knew my mother, I think — you were ‘faculty wives’ together — ‘Take care what you say, dear, it can never be unsaid.’” Woods paused. He was breathing deeply, audibly as if he’d been running. “Just, I admire you. I’m just kidding — sort of kidding — about ‘Uranus’ — being an ‘emissary.’ See, I did a research project in an undergraduate course — ‘History of Science’ — a log of the NASA ship Voyager that was launched in 1977 and didn’t ‘visit’ Uranus until 1986 — one of the ‘Ice Giants’ — composed of ice and rocks — the very soul of Uranus is ice and rocks — but such beautiful moon-rings — twenty-seven moons, at a minimum! Uranus ate into my soul, it was a porous time in my life. Now — I am over it, I think! Mrs. Zalk — Leah? — you are looking at me so strangely, as if you don’t know me! Would you care for a — cigarette?”
“Would I care for a — cigarette?” Leah stared at the blandly smiling young man as if he’d invited her to take heroin with him. “No. I would not.”
She was thinking, not only had she not seen the Gottschalks that evening in her house, she hadn’t seen either Caroline or Byron — was it Byron, or Brian? — in a long time. In fact hadn’t she heard that Caroline had been ill the previous spring…
“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Zalk. Really.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“Cigarettes. Smoking. If you smoke, or not. Our fates are genetic — determined at birth.” Woods paused, frowning. “Or do I mean — conception. Determined at conception.”
“Not entirely,” Leah said. “Nothing is determined entirely.”
“Not entirely. But then, Mrs. Zalk, nothing is entire.”
Leah wasn’t sure what they were talking about and she wasn’t sure she liked it. The disingenuous blue eyes gleamed at her behind round glasses. Woods was saying, with a downward glance, both self-deprecatory and self-displaying, “My case — I’m an ‘endomorph.’ I had no choice about it, my fate lay in my genes. My father, and my father’s father — stocky, big, with big wrists, thick stubby arms. Now Dr. Zalk, for instance — ”
“‘Dr. Zalk’? What of him?”
Dr. Zalk was Leah’s husband. It made her uneasy to be speaking of him in such formal terms. Woods, oblivious of his companion, plunged on as if confiding in Leah: “My grandfather, too. You know — ‘Hans Gottschalk.’ He was on that team that won the Nobel Prize — or it was said, he should have been on the team. I mean, he was on the team — molecular biologists — Rockefeller U. — who won the prize, and he should have won a prize, too. Anyway — Hans had ceased smoking by the age of forty but it made no difference. We’d hear all about Grandfather’s ‘willpower’ — as if what was ordinary in another was extraordinary in him, since he was an ‘extraordinary’ man — but already it was too late. Not that he knew — no one could know. Grandfather for all his genius had a genetic predisposition to — whatever invaded his lungs. So with us all — it’s in the stars.”
“Is it!” Leah tasted cold. She had no idea what Woods was talking about except she knew that Harris would be scornful. Stars!
“I think you’re brave, Leah. Giving this party you give every May at about now — opening this house — that shouldn’t become a mausoleum…”
And now — Woods was offering her a drink? — he’d slipped away from her party with not one but two wineglasses and a bottle of red wine? “If not a cigarette — you’re right, Leah, it’s a filthy habit — ‘genetics’ or not — how’s about a drink? This Burgundy is excellent.”
Leah was offended but heard herself laugh. When she told Harris about this encounter, Harris would laugh. It was not to be believed, this young man’s arrogance: “I have an extra glass here, Leah. I had a hunch that someone would come out here to join me — at large parties, that’s usually the case. Like I say, I’m an ‘emissary.’ I’m a ‘Uranian.’ I bring news, bulletins. I’d hoped you would step out here voluntarily, Mrs. Zalk — I mean, as if ‘of your own free will.’ So — let’s drink, shall we? A toast to — ”
Leah had no intention of drinking with Woods Gottschalk. But there was the glass held out to her — one of their very old wedding-present wineglasses — crystal, sparkling-clean — just washed that morning by Leah, by hand. Unable to sleep she’d risen early — anxious that the house wasn’t clean, glasses and china and silverware weren’t clean, though the Filipina cleaning woman had come just the day before.
Woods held his wineglass aloft. Leah lifted hers, reluctantly, as Woods intoned:
“‘The universe culminates in the present moment and will never be more perfect.’ Emerson, I think — or Thoreau. And who was it said — ‘Who has seen the past? The past is a mist, a mirage — no one can breathe in the past.’” Woods paused, drinking. “From the perspective of Uranus — though ‘Uranus’ is just the word, the actual planet is unfathomable — as all planets, all moons and stars and galaxies, are unfathomable — even the present isn’t exactly here. We behave as if it is, but that’s just expediency.”
Leah laughed. What was Woods saying! All that she could remember of Uranus is that it was — is? — unless it had been demoted, like Pluto — one of the remote ice-planets about which no romance had been spun, unlike Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Or was she thinking of — Neptune? She lifted the wineglass, and drank. The wine was tart, darkly delicious. It had to be the last of the Burgundy wines her husband had purchased. Woods was saying, “These people — your friends — Dr. Zalk’s friends — and my parents’ friends — are wonderful people. Many of them — the men, at least — I mean, at the Institute — ‘extraordinary,’ like Hans Gottschalk and Harris Zalk. You’re very lucky to have one another. To ‘define’ one another in your Institute community. And the food, Leah — this isn’t the Institute catering service, is it? — but much, much better. What I’ve sampled is excellent.”
“The food is excellent. Yes.”
“I could be a caterer, I think. The hell with being an ‘emissary.’ If things had gone otherwise.”
Leah was distracted by the deep back half-acre lawn that was more ragged, seedier than she remembered. Along the sagging redwood fence were lilac bushes grown leggy and spindly and clumps of sinewy-looking grasses, tall savage wildflowers with clusters of tough little bloodred berry-blossoms that had to be poisonous. And a sizable part of the enormous old oak tree in the back had fallen as if in a storm. This past winter, there had been such fierce storms! But Leah was sure that Harris had made arrangements for their annual spring cleanup…She felt a stab of hurt, as well as chagrin, that the beautiful old oak had been so badly wounded without her knowing.
“What do you do, Woods, since you’re not a caterer? I mean — what does an ‘emissary’ actually do for a living?”
“Oh, I do what I am doing — and when I’m not, I’m doing something else.”
Woods’s tone was enigmatic, teasing. His eyes, on Leah’s face, flitted about lightly as a bee, with a threat of stinging.
“I don’t understand. What is it you do.”
“Strictly speaking, I’m a ‘dropout.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of time. Make that a capital letter T — ‘Time.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of Time to monitor eternity.” Woods laughed, and drank. “The crucial fact is — I am sober — these past eleven months — eleven months, nine days. I am not a caterer — not an ‘emissary’ — I just ‘bear witness’ — it’s this that propelled me here, to deliver to you.”
Was he drunk? Deranged? High on drugs? (Halfway Leah remembered, she’d heard that the Gottschalks’ brilliant but unstable son had had a chronic drug problem — unless that was the Richters’ son, who’d dropped out of Yale and disappeared somewhere in northern Maine.)
“My news is — the Apocalypse has happened — in an eye-blink, it was accomplished.” Woods spoke excitedly, yet calmly. “Still we persevere as if we were alive, that’s the get of our species.”
“Really? And when was this ‘Apocalypse’?”
“For some, it was just yesterday. For others, tomorrow. There isn’t just a single Apocalypse of course, but many — as many as there are individuals. There is no way to speak of such things adequately. There is simply not the vocabulary. But make no mistake” — Woods shook his head gravely, with a pained little smile — “you will be punished.”
Now it was you. Leah shivered, she’d been thinking that Woods was speaking with cavalier magnanimity of we.
“But why? — ‘punished’?”
“‘Why’?” Woods bared big chunky damp teeth in a semblance of a grin. “Are you kidding, Mrs. Zalk?”
“I–I don’t think so. I’m asking you seriously.”
A rush of feeling came over her. Guilty excitement, apprehension. For Woods was right: why should she escape punishment? A Caucasian woman of a privileged class, the wife of a prominent scientist — long the youngest and one of the more attractive wives in any gathering — a loved woman — a cherished woman — how vain, to imagine that this condition could persevere!
“Global warming is just one of the imminent catastrophes. The seas will rise, the rivers will flood — the seashores will be washed away. Cities like New Orleans will be washed away. History itself will be washed away, into oblivion. It happened to the other planets — the ‘Ice Giants,’ long ago. No one laments the passing of those life-forms — none remain, to lament or to rejoice. In our soupy-warm Earth atmosphere there will arise super-bugs for which ‘medical science’ can devise no vaccines or antibiotics. There will arise genetic mutations, malformations. These are the ‘Devil’s frolicks’ — as it used to be said. Entire species will vanish — not just minuscule subspecies but major, mammalian species like our own. There will be as many catastrophes as there are individuals — for each is an individual ‘fate.’ But you will all be punished — when the knowledge catches up with you.”
“You’ve said that but — why? Why ‘punished’? By whom?”
Leah spoke with an uneasy lightness. This was the way of Harris — Harris and his scientist-friends — when confronted with the quasi-profound proclamations of non-scientists.
The pain between her eyes was throbbing now and her eyes blinked away tears. A kind of scrim separating her from the world — from the otherness of the world — and from invasive personalities like Woods’s — had seemed to be failing her, frayed and tearing. She’d been susceptible to headaches all her life but now pain came more readily, you could say intimately. Harris — who rarely had headaches — tried to be sympathetic with her stooping to brush his lips against her forehead. Poor Leah! Is it all better now?
Yes she told him. Oh yes much better thank you!
Though in fact no. Except in fairy tales no true pain is mitigated by a kiss.
“Because you’d had the knowledge, and hadn’t acted upon it. Your generation — your predecessors — and now mine. Human greed, corruption — indifference. Humankind has always known what the ‘good life’ is — except it’s fucking bor-ing.”
Woods spoke cheerily and as if by rote. There was a curious — chilling — disjunction between the accusation of his words and the playful banter of his voice and again Leah was reminded of an actor’s face — a mask-face — fitted on the young man’s head like something wrapped in place. Defensively she said: “Evolution — that means change — ‘evolving.’ Species have always passed away into extinction, and been replaced by other species. But no species can replace us.”
“Wrong again, Mrs. Zalk! I hope your distinguished-scientist husband didn’t tell you something so foolish. Homo sapiens will certainly be replaced. Nature will not miss us.”
Woods laughed baring his big chunky teeth. Leah stared at him in dislike, repugnance. This arrogant young man had so rattled her, she couldn’t seem to think coherently. Badly she’d been wanting to leave him — to return to the comforting din of the party — by now Harris would have noticed her absence, and would be concerned — but she couldn’t seem to move her legs. In a festive gesture Woods poured more wine into Leah’s glass and into his own but quickly Leah set her glass aside, on the slightly rotted porch railing. Woods lifted his glass in a mock-salute, and drank.
“Yes — we will miss one another, Mrs. Zalk — but nature will not miss us. That’s our tragedy!”
“How old are you, Woods?”
“Forty-three.”
“‘Forty-three’!”
Leah wanted to protest But you were a boy just yesterday — last year. What has happened to you…
Woods’s face was unlined, unblemished, yet the eyes were not a young man’s eyes. Through the wire-rimmed glasses you could see these eyes, with disturbing clarity.
He’s mad Leah thought. Something has destroyed his brain — his soul.
“Well. I–I think I should be getting back to my party — people will be wondering where I am. And you should come, too, Woods — it’s cold out here.”
This was so: the balmy May afternoon had darkened by degrees into a chilly windblown dusk. Dead leaves on the broken oak limbs rattled irritably in the wind as if trying to speak. Quickly Leah retreated before Woods could clasp her hand again in his crushing grip.
She would leave her unsettling companion gazing after her, leaning against the porch railing that sagged beneath his weight. Cigarette in one hand, wineglass in the other, and the purloined bottle of Burgundy near-empty on the porch floor at his feet.
How warm — unpleasantly warm — the interior of the house was, after the fresh air of outdoors.
At the threshold of the crowded living room Leah paused. Her vision was blurred as if she’d just stepped inside out of a bright glaring place and her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darker interior. In a panic Leah looked for Harris, to appeal to him. She looked for Harris, to make things right. He would slip his arm around her, to comfort her. Gravely he would ask her what was wrong, why was she so upset, gently he would laugh at her and assure her that there was nothing to be upset about, what did it matter if a drunken young man had spoken foolishly to her — what did any of that matter when the birthday party Leah had planned for him was a great success, all their parties in this marvelous old house were great successes, and he loved her.
Harris didn’t seem to be in the living room talking with his friends — they must have moved into another room. The party seemed to have become noisier. Everyone was shouting. From all directions came a harsh tearing laughter. The pianist who’d been playing Liszt so beautifully had departed, it seemed — now there was a harsher species of music — a tape perhaps — what sounded like electronic music — German industrial rock music? — primitive and percussive, deafening. Who were these people? Was Leah expected to know these people? A few of the faces were familiar — vaguely familiar — others were certainly strangers. Someone had dared to take down Harris’s wonderful photographs from his world travels — in their place were ugly splotched canvases, crookedly hung. The dazzling-yellow sprigs of forsythia had been replaced by vases of artificial flowers with slick red plastic stamens — birds of paradise? The rental tables were larger than Leah had wished and covered with garish red-striped tablecloths — who had ordered these? Without asking her permission the caterers’ assistants had rearranged furniture, Harris’s handsome old Steinway grand piano had been shoved rudely into an alcove of the living room and folding chairs had been set up in place of Leah’s rattan chairs in the sunroom. The buffet service had begun, guests were crowding eagerly forward. In a panic Leah pushed blindly through the line of strangers looking for — someone — whom she was desperate to find — a person, a man, from whom she’d been separated — in the confusion and peril of the moment she could not have named who it was, but she would know him, when she saw him, or he saw her.
The mommy was at the University Medical Center Clinic where she worked — the mommy’s work was anesthesiology which made your tongue twist like a corkscrew — one of those words that make you laugh and cringe — you could hear it, and recognize it, as a dog recognizes his name, but could not ever pronounce it.
Mommy puts people to sleep the daddy said. Mommy is paid very handsomely to put people to sleep and to wake them up again — if Mommy can. The daddy laughed saying such things like riddles — the daddy often laughed saying things like riddles which made Tod uneasy and provoked him to say in a whining voice Why’d you pay to sleep? — why’d anybody pay to sleep? — you can just go to bed to sleep can’t you? Daddy’s being silly — because really you never knew if the daddy was being silly or serious or something in-between and not-knowing was scary.
This day was a special day. At breakfast, Tod knew.
The daddy waited until the mommy left for work then pushed aside the bright yellow Cheerios box and the daddy whistled loudly preparing French toast pouring maple syrup lavishly onto slabs of egg-soggy toast so the toast floated in the syrup and spilled out onto the Formica-top breakfast nook table. Some of the toast burnt in the frying pan and the daddy scraped it out with a sharp knife and the smell of scorch filled the kitchen, the daddy grunted opening a window and fresh air rushed in making Tod sneeze. It was one of those fierce bright mornings the daddy loved little dude so, hugged him so hard Tod shrieked with laughter anxious the daddy would crack his ribs or drop him onto the hardwood floor.
Love you li’l dude! One day, you’ll know how much.
The change in our schedules — this was what the mommy called it speaking in a lowered voice on her cell phone when the daddy wasn’t near — began so soon after Tod’s birthday — which was March 11 — when Tod was four years old — that sometimes it seemed maybe his birthday had something to do with it. Tod knew better but sometimes he felt that the daddy blamed him — for it was just a few days later that the daddy was downsized.
What this meant wasn’t clear for if Tod asked his father what was downsized his father just joked waving his hands in the harassed-daddy way as if brushing away flies Some kind of shrink-wrap it’s the principle of mummization which Tod didn’t understand — for the daddy said such things, to make you realize you didn’t understand — not just to Tod but to everyone including the mommy and Tod’s grandparents — and once — this was in the park, the daddy was talking with a friend — Miniaturized is what it is, each day I shrink a little till my kid and I will be twins and fit in each other’s clothes.
This was scary too but Tod knew, the way the daddy laughed, and the other man laughed with him though not so loudly as the daddy laughed, it was meant to be a joke, and meant to be funny.
Now it was, in the weeks following Tod’s fourth birthday in March, the daddy was home much of the time. This was so strange! — for as long as Tod could remember the daddy had always been away at work all day and returned in time for supper at 7 P.M. or sometimes later after the mommy had put Tod to bed. Now the daddy was always home. The daddy was home in the morning after the mommy left for the medical center. The daddy was the one to make Tod’s breakfast and walk Tod six blocks to nursery school and return at noon to bring Tod back home.
No longer was there any need for the nice Filipina lady to take care of Tod after school. Suddenly it happened that Magdalena was gone for the change in our schedule came abruptly and seemingly irrevocably and within days Tod was forgetting that there’d ever been Magdalena for now there was just the daddy in the house when the mommy wasn’t there. There was just the daddy to rouse Tod from bed, bathe him and hug him hard in the bath towel and feed him. And sometimes it was the daddy who put Tod to bed if the mommy came home late. All this because the daddy had been downsized — which was a word the daddy pronounced like it was something sharp inside his mouth cutting it or a red-hot coal the daddy would have liked to spit out except it was making him laugh, too — or was the daddy trying not to laugh? — you had to look at the daddy closely like somebody on TV to see if he was serious or not-serious but if you looked too close at the daddy the daddy became angry suddenly because the daddy was like Canis familiaris he said he did not like to be stared at at close quarters Got that, little dude?
There was a threat in this — a threat of a sudden backhand slap — not a slap to hurt but a slap to sting — and it was risky, if you smiled when you shouldn’t smile or failed to smile when you should. But Tod was little dude and this was a good sign. Tod liked being little dude. Tod was thrilled being little dude for this suggested that the daddy wasn’t mad at Tod just then.
Li’l dude just you and me. Love ya!
Most times when the daddy took Tod to nursery school in the morning and to the park in the afternoon, the daddy would make sure that Tod wore his Yankees cap and a warm-enough sweater or jacket and the daddy would tie his sneakers the right way — tight! — so the laces wouldn’t come loose and cause Tod to trip over them. If the daddy whistled tying Tod’s shoelaces this was a good sign though if the daddy hadn’t remembered to wash Tod’s face and hands after breakfast this might be a not-good sign like if the daddy’s jaws were covered in scratchy stubble and if the daddy’s breath was sour-smelling from cigarettes the mommy was not supposed to know that the daddy had started smoking again. Nor was it a good sign if when they were walking together the daddy made calls on his cell phone cursing when all he could get was fucking voice mail.
Tod’s nursery school was just a few blocks away from their house and Terwillinger Park just slightly farther so there was no need for the daddy to drive. There was no need for a second car. In the park the daddy smoked his cigarettes — This is our secret, kid — Mommy doesn’t need to know got it? — and read the New York Times — or a paperback book — (the daddy had been reading a heavy book titled The World as Will and Idea for a long time) — or scribbled into a notebook — or stared off frowning into the distance. At such times the daddy’s mouth twitched as if the daddy was talking — arguing — with someone invisible as Tod played by himself or with one or two other young children in a little playground consisting of a single set of swings and monkey-bars and a rusted slide. Sometimes the daddy fell into conversations with people he met in the park — there were young mothers and nannies who brought children to the playground — and women walked dogs in the park — or jogged — or walked alone — and often Tod saw his father talking and laughing with one of these women not knowing if she was someone his father knew or had just met; once, Tod overheard his father tell a flame-haired young woman that he was a married man which was one kind of thing and simultaneously he was the father of a four-year-old which was another kind of thing.
Whatever these words meant, the woman laughed sharply as if something had stung her. Well that’s upfront, at least. I appreciate that.
This was a time when they’d begun going to the park every day. This was a time when the mommy’s work-hours were longer at the medical center. This was a time when there was just one car for the mommy and the daddy which was the Saab, that had become the mommy’s car. Before the downsizing there had been a Toyota station wagon which the daddy had driven but this vehicle seemed to have vanished suddenly, like Magdalena.
Turnpike. Totaled. Towed-away. End of tale! the daddy reported with terse good humor of the kind Tod knew not to question.
“Let’s surprise Mommy at work. D’you think ‘Dr. Falmouth’ would like that?”
This day in Terwillinger Park the daddy snapped shut his cell phone in disgust — shoved it into a pocket of his rumpled khakis that drooped from his waist beltless and a size too large — and spoke in a bright-daddy voice as Tod trotted beside him trying to keep up. Tod was thinking — somber li’l dude as the four-year-old was — that the river was miles away, where Mommy worked at the University Medical Center was miles away and he and the daddy had never walked so far before.
But Tod was little dude and any idea of the daddy’s was an exciting idea. Like a man on TV the daddy was rubbing his hands briskly saying here was their plan to discover whether “Dr. Falmouth” was really where she claimed she was — “We will see with our own eyes like Galileo looking through his telescope.”
Tod laughed — Tod laughed not knowing who “Galileo” was — though something in the daddy’s voice sounding like gravel being shoveled made Tod uneasy — anxious — wasn’t Mommy where Mommy was supposed to be? — where was Mommy? — and the daddy gripped Tod’s skinny little shoulder reprimanding him — “Don’t be so literal. Christ sake! If ‘Dr. Falmouth’ is there she will give us a ride back home. If ‘Dr. Falmouth’ is not there, we will take the fucking bus back home.”
The daddy spoke matter-of-factly. Tod swallowed hard trying to comprehend. It seemed to be that, if Mommy was somewhere they couldn’t find her, they would have a way to get back home as if getting back home was the crucial thing.
“Has your daddy ever misled you, li’l dude? Yet? Have faith!”
The daddy was tugging at Tod’s hand jerking him along like a clumsy little puppy. Sometimes you saw such puppies — or older, stiff-limbed dogs — jerked along on leashes by their impatient masters. Sometimes it happened, the daddy was seized by an idea and had to walk fast. Since the lavish French toast breakfast that morning the daddy had been in an excitable mood. The daddy’s eyes were glistening and red-rimmed and the sharp-looking little quills in the daddy’s jaws glinted like mica. Though often on these walks the daddy wore a fur-lined cap now the daddy was bare-headed and his dust-colored hair disheveled in the wind that was cold and tasted of something wet-rotted like desiccated leaves — the daddy had crookedly buttoned both Tod’s corduroy jacket and his own suede jacket — the daddy was wearing his rumpled khakis and on his feet waterstained running shoes. Tod wasn’t sure if the daddy was talking to him — often in the park the daddy was talking to himself — the daddy was whistling — just pausing to shake a cigarette out of a near-depleted pack when there came hurtling at them — almost you’d think the boy was on a bicycle, he came so fast — a tall skinny spike-haired boy with a chalky-pale face, whiskers like scribbles on his chin — a purple leather jacket unzipped to the waist and on his black T-shirt a glaring-white skull-and-crossbones like a second face. What was strangest about the boy was his lacquered-looking hair in two-inch spikes lifting from his head like snakes — Todd turned to stare after him, as he passed on the woodchip path without a backward glance.
It must have been that the daddy recognized the spike-haired boy — or the spike-haired boy recognized the daddy — some kind of look passed quickly between them — and the daddy stopped dead in his tracks.
The daddy told Tod go play on the swings — there was a playground close by — the daddy had to use the restroom.
The daddy was talking to Tod but not looking at him. There’d come into the daddy’s voice a faraway tone that was excited but calm, almost gentle. Tod saw how the daddy had not turned to look after the spike-haired boy who’d strode away and disappeared.
Close by the woodchip path — on a narrower path forking into a stand of scrubby pines — was a small squat ugly cinder block building with twin doors: MEN, WOMEN. Both doors were covered in graffiti like the squat little building itself. The daddy had taken Tod into this restroom once or twice — Tod recalled a dark dank smell that made his nose crinkle just thinking of it — but now the daddy just pushed Tod in the direction of the playground saying, “Go hang out with those kids, Tod-die — Daddy will be right back.”
Tod-die was a good sign too. Usually.
Tod drifted off alone. It felt strange, to be alone in the park. At first it felt exciting then it felt scary. The daddy had never left him before even for a few minutes. The mommy had never left him in any public place nor did the mommy leave him alone at home, always there had been Magdalena, or another lady to watch him if the daddy was not home. Because it was not a warm day but chilly and gusty for late April there were only a few children in the playground and a few young mothers or nannies. Tod found a swing low enough to sit on with his short stubby legs but it was strange and unnerving to be alone — it was no fun without the mommy or the daddy pushing him, praising him or warning him to hang on tight. No one was aware of him — no one was watching him — no one cared how high he swung, or if he fell and hurt himself — except — maybe! — there was some other child’s mother a few feet away looking at Tod — staring at Tod, frowning — a pinch-faced woman in a down parka with a hood, half her face hidden by curved tinted glasses.
Was this someone who knew him, Tod wondered. Someone who knew his mother, the way she was staring at him, but the woman didn’t smile and call out his name, the woman didn’t smile at all but just stared in a way that would be rude if Tod had been an adult and made him self-conscious and uneasy now and before he knew it, he’d lost his balance and fell from the swing — tried to scramble up immediately, to show he wasn’t hurt.
Tod wasn’t alone in the park or lost — the daddy was close by — he wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t going to cry like some little baby with a runny snot-nose but there was the pinch-faced woman in the glasses right beside him — “Oh! Let me help you, little boy! Did you hurt yourself?” With quick strong hands the woman lifted Tod — steadied Tod — you could tell these were mommy-hands by their quickness and deftness — the woman brushed his hair out of Tod’s eyes peering at him as if there was some secret in his eyes she had a right to know.
The woman was asking Tod if he’d been left alone in the park — if that had been his father she’d seen with him, a few minutes ago — Tod was too shy to look at the woman or to reply to her except in a near-inaudible mumble that gave the woman an excuse to lean closer to him squatting beside him with the disconcerting intimacy with which adult strangers approach children as if in some way children are common property; she’d lifted the tinted glasses to peer yet more directly into his face so that her eyes were revealed stone-colored and serious like Tod’s mother’s eyes — the kind of eyes you couldn’t look away from. In his confusion Tod was moved to ask the woman if she knew his mother — his mother worked at the University Medical Center over by the river and she put people to sleep — did she know his mother? Tod couldn’t think of his mother’s name, the name that the daddy called her sometimes, the name she was called at the medical center — the woman said she was afraid she didn’t know Tod’s mother — “Tell me what is your name, little boy?” — Tod mumbled a reply but the woman couldn’t hear — asked him to repeat what he’d said — Tod was silent feeling resentful, obstinate — if he’d been a little dog, he’d have bitten this pushy woman right on the nose. Again she was asking where Tod’s father had gone — “That man who was walking with you just now on the path — is that man your father?” Tod made a sniggering noise and twisted from the woman’s grip — “He’s Dad-dy — that’s who. Dad-dy. And you’re ugly like some nasty old witch.”
This was surprising! The woman was surprised, and Tod was surprised. Like a feisty little dog Tod pushed free of the woman and ran away — ran as the woman called after him — out of the playground and in the direction of the cinder block restroom — he’d sighted a tall man who resembled his father coming out of the restroom — though as he drew nearer he was embarrassed to see that the man wasn’t his father but a stranger — for a moment he felt panic thinking the daddy had left him — how close he came to breaking down and bawling like a baby — a silly little snot-nose baby like certain of the children at nursery school — but now the daddy did appear — there was the daddy emerging from the restroom blinking in the light frowning and distracted and his suede jacket unbuttoned, he was tucking his shirt into the beltless waist of his khakis as Tod called, “Dad-dy!” and ran at him headlong.
The way the daddy stared at Tod, the child was made to think He doesn’t remember me! He doesn’t know who I am.
That was silly of course. The daddy knew who Tod was!
“Christ sake your nose is running. Here, c’mon — blow.”
Out of a pocket the daddy extracted a fistful of wadded tissue, that looked as if it had been used already. Dutifully Tod blew his nose as bidden.
“This place is depressing. Let’s get the hell out of this place.”
The daddy was edgy, alert. The daddy’s eyes were alert and dilated and darting-about like a wild animal’s eyes. Some change had taken place in the daddy, Tod sensed. Tod was anxious, the pinch-face woman was still watching him, seeing him now with his father, she was the kind to ask a sharp question of Tod’s father, that was none of her business. Badly Tod wanted to turn to stick his tongue out at the woman — nasty ugly witch — but then the daddy would see the woman and Tod didn’t want that. The daddy would discover how Tod had fallen and scraped his hand because the daddy had forgotten Tod’s mittens and Tod didn’t want the daddy to discover that.
“C’mon, li’l dude. Circumstances compel us.”
Often the daddy made such statements, that were utterly mysterious to the child. Like, “D’you recall Ingmar Bergman — that’s ‘Ing-mar Bergman’ — famed Swedish filmmaker, deceased 2007 — Always keep a project between you and your death” — which the daddy had made more than once on these urgent park outings.
So the walk was resumed. The hike of at least two miles through Terwillinger Park to the river, that was farther than the daddy and Tod had ever hiked before. In his edgy-cheery mood the daddy smiled frequently, or maybe it was just the daddy’s mouth that smiled; the daddy’s face must have felt itchy for the daddy was rubbing at it vigorously, eyes, nose, mouth as if wanting to erase his features the way a TV cartoon character might erase his face. The daddy had not asked Tod about the playground but Tod was boasting how he’d gone way high on the swing — higher than the other children — so high, he’d gone over the top — like the child-gymnasts they’d seen on TV, that had won Olympic gold medals. The daddy made no reply to the child’s boastfulness not even to chide him or to laugh at him. The daddy was clearly thinking of other things. In his face a look as if the daddy was listening to something in the distance for always in this park on damp chilly days especially there was a background murmur of something like voices — muffled laughter — traffic on the interstate, or wind high in the trees — gusts of wind like knives cutting into the slate-colored river in which human cries were mixed. Listen closely the wide-eyed daddy once said that is the dark under-side of the world you are hearing, son. Souls in Hades.
After a half-mile or so the woodchip path ended. Now the path was mud-rutted and treacherous. This was a hiking trail but only sporadically marked. Or maybe real hikers knew how to use the trail, as the daddy did not. For several times the daddy lost the trail, Tod had to point out to him the little blue triangles on trees that let you know where the trail was. Tod hoped his father would become discouraged and turn back with one of his harassed-daddy jokes but he said only, “Your mother will be damned impressed by us! Taking the back way like Che in the jungle.”
Tod asked who was Che in the jungle? but the daddy ignored him.
Ever deeper the daddy and Tod hiked into the woods. Though the air was chilly and the trail overgrown with brambles the daddy walked with his suede jacket open and his face was flushed, ruddy. Still the daddy’s eyes were quick-darting like an animal’s and Tod wondered if the daddy was looking for someone, or if someone was looking for the daddy. Since he’d passed Tod and his father on the woodchip path the spike-haired boy had not reappeared so far as Tod knew.
The daddy was saying this was a shortcut. The daddy was saying things wear out, wear down. The daddy was saying that the human will is a pitiful vessel to withstand the tidal waves of the non-human will. Tod had no idea what the daddy meant but he was grateful that the daddy’s tone wasn’t angry or accusing, it was more as if the daddy was reciting facts commonplace and banal and of the sort the daddy might be expected to confer onto the son as in an ancient ritual of enlightenment, erasure. Tod remembered how before his birthday a few weeks ago — before the downsizing and before the change in our schedules — even the daddy had been restless and distracted watching TV news with the remote control in his hand switching among three or four channels — sometimes too the daddy prowled through the house in the night while the mommy slept and Tod slept and Tod was wakened to see the daddy leaning over his bed — at first thinking it was a scary thing in a dream then it was the daddy’s face dark in the shadows — the daddy’s face was soft-crinkling with pain so exquisite it couldn’t have been named and the daddy whispered Love you! Whoever you are, whoever sent you to us.
By us the child knew that the daddy was referring not just to himself but to the mommy as well. But it was rare, the daddy spoke of us.
They were passing overturned trash cans. Sad to see here in the woods trash spilled across the trail. Beer cans, Styrofoam containers. There was a single rotted jogging shoe, that scared Tod making him think there was a human foot inside. There was a smell as of something dead and rotted. The daddy must have smelled this smell for he shuddered and laughed saying, “All shortcuts entail risks. Have faith, son!”
The thought came to Tod like a tiny bird pecking at his skull He will leave you here. He is taking you here to leave you.
In the sky — that they could see, for only part of the sky was visible now — clouds had turned heavy and sullen like a face suffused with blood. Steadily the day was becoming colder — it didn’t seem like April now. Tod was tired trying to keep up with the daddy pulling him along the path but didn’t dare try to pull his hand free. The daddy seemed not to know how hard and how tight he was gripping Tod and in such a way that the child’s arm felt as if it might be pulled out of its socket.
Not-knowing was the scary thing. At four years of age so much is not-knowing like crossing a stream of rushing water on just rocks — this, Tod had seen on TV — a boy only a little older than Tod fleeing a black bear — in Alaska — having to put his trust in these rocks, to save him — a desperate boy — Tod had shut his eyes not wanting to see the boy fall into the stream and the black bear catching and devouring him…Magdalena had quickly switched channels.
“Here! Here we are.”
In triumph the daddy pulled Tod into a clearing — it was a large open space, in the forest — they were entering the open space from the rear — an outdoor amphitheater with a crude stone stage and six rows of stone benches lifting in a semi-circle. The daddy had seemed to know that this was here, he was very pleased to have found it. On the stone benches moss grew in leprous patches and here and there were ugly red graffiti-scrawls like those on the restroom walls. On the stage lay broken tree limbs and other debris. The outdoor theater was in poor repair as if it were centuries old and long abandoned yet still the daddy seemed pleased and excited and in a burst of sudden energy bounded up onto the stage as if his name had been called.
“Hello — hello — hel-lo! Thank you thank you!”
Quivering with gratitude — unless it was in mockery of gratitude — the daddy smiled out at the (invisible) audience lifting his hands as if to quell a wave of deafening applause.
“I hope I have not made you good people wait impatiently.”
More applause! — the daddy lifted his hands as if overcome with emotion. His expression was both apologetic and eager.
“You say you want — who? Li’l dude? My son Tod Falmouth — you’re awaiting him?”
Tod giggled wildly, this was so silly! Empty stone benches in the ruin of an outdoor theater and the daddy’s loud voice echoing. Out of shyness Tod hadn’t followed his father out onto the stage. In public places the son did not entirely trust the daddy for the daddy frequently teased the son, exposed him to the eyes of strangers as the butt of jokes the son did not comprehend. Strange and disconcerting to Tod to hear his name uttered in this way. No one in sight — empty stone benches — yet Tod felt embarrassed, the daddy spoke in that bright loud TV voice.
The daddy turned to Tod now, beckoning.
“Son! Come join Daddy onstage! These good people demand it.”
Tod shook his head no. How silly this was! — yet a sickish sensation stirred in the pit of his belly as if in the ruin of the old theater there was yet an audience, staring at him. They were not so welcoming as the daddy seemed to think. Their blurred eyes sought him out where he was hiding amid rubble at the foot of the stage.
In his sparkly mood the daddy wasn’t at all intimidated by the buzzing audience. As Tod stared in astonishment the daddy began to dance — tap-dance — flailing his arms in a comical fashion. The daddy continued to address the audience in a familiar way as if they were all old friends. The daddy’s silky thinning dust-colored hair was disheveled in the wind and his face was unusually warm, ruddy. The daddy looked so eager, and so happy! — as Tod hadn’t seen his father in a long time.
After a few minutes the tap-dancing ceased. The daddy stopped to catch his breath — a new mood was summoned. Advancing to the very edge of the stage the daddy clasped his hands to his chest and spoke in a grave voice: “‘Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound;…I grow. I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”p>
Tod laughed as if he’d been roughly tickled — bastard was one of the bad words. Yet the daddy pronounced bastard happily, like the words of a song.
Another time the daddy paused to wait out the applause of the audience. Then with a dramatic flourish the daddy rubbed his face as if erasing its features to begin again, with a look now of grief. His voice thickened as if he were about to cry. “‘All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, At one fell swoop?’”p>
Hearing these utterly perplexing words Tod became frightened. He had no idea why his father was speaking of chickens but by the tone of his father’s voice he understood that something very bad had happened to the chickens.
The daddy’s voice trailed off. The daddy seemed less pleased with this recitation. Perhaps the applause was less enthusiastic — the daddy waved it away negligently as if brushing away flies.
Now the daddy repositioned himself on the stage, as if beginning again. He kicked aside several broken tree limbs then thought to pick up one of the smaller branches which he broke in two. Across the daddy’s flushed face came a look of something furtive and eager.
“Tod — come up here. I will need you for this, Tod. Daddy insists.”
Quickly Tod shook his head no. Between his legs he felt a pinching sensation, a sudden need to pee. The daddy onstage regarding him expectantly and the blurred faces of the invisible audience turned to him were making Tod very nervous though he knew that no one was seated on the stone benches — of course. It was what the mommy called All in your head.
“Tod! Don’t you hear me? Come.”
The daddy had been brandishing the stick which now he hid behind his back in a playful manner. Tod had seen that the broken-off end looked sharp as a knife. He felt a thrill of childish fear, the daddy meant to hurt him.
Like a large predator bird the daddy paced about the stage flapping his arms. In his right hand he held the sharp-ended stick. His voice was deep and quavering like a voice out of a well.
“‘And it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell you of”…And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and laid it onto Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son…’” Gripping the sharp-ended stick in both hands and in a crouched-over posture like a wicked old man Tod’s father approached the edge of the stage where Tod was cowering. Tod scrambled away, tripped and fell amid rubble but managed to scramble to his feet like a panicked rat.
At the edge of the stage the daddy squatted glaring at Tod. “What God has decreed isn’t for us to countermand. Daddy is telling you, Tod — come up here.”
Still Tod held back. Still Tod dared to disobey. That look in the daddy’s eyes was scary to him.
For a long moment the daddy glared at Tod. Tod saw the daddy’s mouth working as if something had gotten inside his mouth he had to chew, chew, chew in order to swallow.
At last the daddy straightened out of his strained squatting position. His knees ached, he made a blowing noise with his lips. “Christ! You don’t trust your own father! This is unacceptable.”
Tod jammed his thumb in his mouth. Tod was ready to giggle, if the daddy relented.
Still the daddy said, in disgust: “Tod, for Christ sake this is just a stick. It is not a knife and I am not the Biblical Abraham — far from it. And this crummy setting is just a stage, you must have noticed — a ruin of a stage. None of this is real. Did you think that Daddy was real? — or you? You are just some ejaculate that got lucky.”
Some ejaculate. Tod understood that it was something nasty. The daddy’s face was red-flushed and creased and the daddy’s eyes shone with indignation.
“Which brings us to — ‘destiny.’ Humankind is the only species besotted and beset, beguiled and bespoiled by its own destiny. Long ago — before you were born — your daddy was not your daddy but a student — a graduate student in biology — your daddy immersed himself in studying ‘the teeming life of multitudes’ — in a lab, we were studying a species of cuttlefish — not a fish but ‘most intelligent invertebrate’ — a fist-sized thing the shape of a clam with tentacles — slimy — sharp-eyed — color-blind yet camouflages itself in coral reefs of the most exquisite colors. It was our task to try to comprehend how the cuttlefish can ‘instruct’ its body to change color when its eyes can’t see color. Why we knew, but not how — never any mystery about why in animal/plant camouflaging — but how eluded us. Such design, such complexity in something of such little consequence as a cuttlefish means that for higher primates like Homo sapiens a more meaningful destiny might not be utterly absurd…”
Yet another time the daddy’s voice trailed off. Tod could not fail to note how, as soon as his father ceased speaking, the silence returned.
In the distance were muffled voices, or wind — far distant. Here in the ruin of the outdoor theater there was a sudden terrible silence. As soon as you ceased speaking this terrible silence oozed back.
Then, suddenly, unexpectedly — “Bra-vo! En-core!”
There was someone in the audience after all. Suddenly now a sound of clapping — loud frantic clapping — coming from the rear, right-hand side of the stone benches. About forty feet away on the ground beside one of the benches was what appeared to be a bundle of rags — a bundle of rags that had stirred into life.
“Bravo! Bravo!” — the bundle of rags clapped and whistled.
The daddy was taken utterly by surprise. The daddy blinked and shaded his eyes to stare though there was no sun to obscure his vision. At last with a wry, rueful smile the daddy said, “Well — thank you, sir. We didn’t see you over there. We appreciate your applause.”
The clapping man was old, or old-seeming — of that category of individual the mommy called homeless. If Tod had been alone, he’d have run from such a person. The man had very dirty matted white hair and his jaws sprouted whiskers like a dirty broom. He had wrapped himself in what appeared to be an old blanket or tarpaulin. In his face there was something livid and pitted like the skin of a fricasseed chicken.
The daddy thanked the wild-white-haired man for his applause and “good taste” — the daddy said he’d had an “aborted career in the theater” — his “destiny” had derailed him in other less rewarding directions. The daddy said that he had a “very bad” child in his keeping — and wondered if the white-haired man wanted him? — “His name is Tod. He’s four years old. He’d been a reasonably good baby, a promising toddler, now he’s a very spoiled little boy who believes he can disobey his father with impunity for his father is not of God’s Hebrew chosen.”
Stricken with shame Tod heard these words of his father’s flung out carelessly and with a strange sort of daddy-elation. The white-haired old man laughed heartily. In horror Tod saw the old man wriggle erect, like some sort of nasty big insect out of a cocoon. His eyes shone with merriment in the fricassee-face. In his hand was a grimy paper bag he lifted to his mouth, to take a swig from a bottle inside.
“Yah? Y’say so, mister? Shit how much you askin for him?”
“One hundred dollars and ninety-nine cents.”
“One hunnert! So why’d I want to pay so much for a brat like that, that nobody wants?”
“Sir, this boy may be bad but he’s a bargain. He’s been discounted for the month of April, forty percent off his usual price. Do I have a bid?”
The wild-white-haired old man took another swig from the bottle inside the paper bag. Wiped his whiskery mouth on the edge of a filthy sleeve. “Nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That’s a bargain.”
As Tod listened in disbelief the daddy and the old man shouted back and forth like TV characters. You could almost hear the audience laughing — you could almost see the ugly contorted faces. Tod was crying, he’d become so frightened. He knew — he believed he knew — that his father was only joking yet there was something so terrible — so final-sounding — in the daddy’s words and the wild-white-haired old man’s rejoinders that Tod couldn’t stop his tears. To his distress, his nose was running. He no longer had the big wad of tissue the daddy had given him and so had to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and the daddy looked at him in disgust.
“Christ son it’s a joke, why are you so literal. Like your prig of a mother is so fucking literal. Can’t think outside the fucking box.”
The daddy had the power to make you cry and when you cried the daddy was disgusted and angry with you so that you cried harder which was really upsetting to the daddy.
Even a child of four felt this injustice. As his father and the old white-haired man hurtled jokes at each other like lightning bolts Tod crept away like a wounded dog. As soon as he was out of his father’s sight he began to run along the trail — wasn’t sure in which direction he was going, ahead or back the way they’d come — the trail was overgrown, brambles tore at his clothes and scratched his face — the little blue triangles on trees were nowhere to be seen.
Very bad. Spoiled. Brat!
Was that the daddy calling after him? Tod stopped to listen — the daddy’s voice was so faint, Tod couldn’t tell if the daddy was angry with him or sorry. Tod was frightened of the daddy and did not ever want to see the daddy again! He ran, until his breath was ragged. He ran, until his heart beat like a crazed little toad inside his rib cage. He ran, until he came to another clearing, that looked as if part of a hill had slid down in a heap. Here the earth was pocked with stones — you couldn’t run here, you would turn your ankle and hurt yourself. It was a place of rust-colored rocks and boulders and a deep ravine inside which, some thirty feet below, Tod saw something slithery and gleaming that might have been a shiny snake, or trickling water.
He was so tired! He’d been sobbing and was so tired, he could only just crawl now. Amid the rust-colored boulders was a fallen tree sprawling in all directions and Tod hid behind the trunk, panting and shivering and anxious that the daddy would find him and give him to the wild-white-haired old man.
The daddy was calling faintly and fearfully — “Tod? Christ sake son where are you?”
The daddy could not see Tod, evidently. For a long time it had seemed that both the daddy and the mommy could see Tod even if he was hiding as they could hear his thoughts inside his head but recently Tod had come to believe that this was not so. The way the daddy called “Tod? Tod?” — you could tell that the daddy didn’t know how close Tod was.
In surprise Tod saw a smear of blood on his hand — a smear of blood on his jacket. There must have been blood on his face — he’d struck his nose, falling. He’d slipped on the rocks, and fallen. Sometimes when he stuck a furtive forefinger into his nose his nose began to bleed as if in derision or accusation and so now Tod’s nose began to bleed, he would be terribly shamed if the daddy saw.
“Tod? Where are you? You’ve gotten us both lost.”
Tod peeked through the desiccated old leaves of the fallen tree and saw his father making his way along the trail slowly. And now in the rock-strewn clearing. The daddy was climbing the hill — there was a hill here — slowly and wincing as if his legs hurt. The daddy was yet ruddy-faced like something skinned. Looking for Tod — where he thought Tod might be hiding — the daddy blinked in frustration and helplessness as if peering into a bright blinding sun.
“Tod? We’re lost, son. That’s what you’ve done — you’re to blame — we are fucking lost.”
The daddy’s voice was petulant, furious. The daddy’s voice sounded as if it might break into sobs. Tod believed it must be true — the daddy was lost — the little blue triangles on the trees had vanished utterly.
Such disgust he felt for the daddy! — he rocked back on his heels. He was thinking he would not go back to the daddy — he would not show the daddy where he was — not ever! He would find the river by himself if it took the remainder of the day and all of the next. He would find the river and he would find the medical center, he would find his mother though he wasn’t sure of her name — her doctor-name, that would be in a clip-thing on her white jacket.
The mommy would smile at him in surprise. The mommy would not ask Where is your father? How on earth did you get here? The mommy would drive them home just the two of them, in the mommy’s car.
At home the house would be empty, awaiting them.
The kitchen where the Formica counters were yet sticky, and the air smelled of egg-batter scorch. This room like the others empty and yet Tod’s mother would not say Oh but where is your father? What have you done with Daddy?
In the quiet of the house they would laugh together. Tod would tell his mother about swinging on the swing — in the park — swinging so high, he’d swung over the top — and she would want to hear, every word. She would feed him, and she would bathe him, and she would read to him out of his favorite storybook until he fell asleep in his bed.
So clearly Tod knew this would happen, it was as if it had already happened. Not once but many times.
Here was danger! — the daddy was approaching Tod’s hiding place behind the fallen tree. The daddy could have no idea where his son was hiding yet blindly tramping along the overgrown trail the daddy was blundering near — Tod could hear him panting, cursing under his breath.
“Christ sake son where are you! Your daddy never meant to scare you! God damn obey me.”
The daddy must have fallen, his khaki pants were muddy and torn at the knees. The daddy’s mouth was the mouth of a panting dog that is furious but baffled where to attack.
With the desperation of a wounded snake Tod crawled behind the fallen tree, to the very tip of the tree where limbs and branches were spread out in all directions and where he couldn’t make his way any farther. The desiccated leaves through which Tod crawled made a harsh rattling noise but the daddy who was only a few yards away seemed not to hear. How labored the daddy’s breathing, and how distraught the daddy was! Nearby was one of the huge rust-colored boulders and beneath the boulder was a hollow place into which Tod could force himself — like a rabbit hole it was, a burrow, a small creature could crawl into, where a larger predator could not follow.
The daddy was pleading, half-sobbing they were lost. For God’s sake where was Tod, where was the son, the daddy had to rescue them from this fucking place before dark.
Tod took a deep breath — crawled beneath the boulder — slipping sideways inside — the hardest part was to force his head inside, and under — into a kind of carved-seeming cavity — here was a smell of the dark, dank earth — a smell of rock — the danger was, the immense boulder might loosen, fall and crush the child but this was a risk worth taking.
Here was a strange thing: the daddy couldn’t know that Tod had crawled beneath the rust-colored boulder yet as if by instinct the daddy was drawn to the boulder — “Tod? Are you under this? Tod for Christ sake — where are you?” The daddy was begging. The daddy was very angry. The daddy made grunting noises sprawling flat on his stomach pressing his length against the boulder, that he might grope beneath it with his right hand. The daddy thrust his arm as far beneath the boulder as he could, spreading his fingers that were scratched now, and bleeding. The daddy’s fingernails were broken and bleeding. The daddy tried to peer beneath the boulder but could see nothing — only just shadowy shapes that appeared to be inanimate. For here was a rock-cemetery, here was the end of all life. The daddy’s breath came quickly and shallowly hurting him like knife-blades in his lungs. If his son was beneath the terrible boulder, if his son was alive yet, and breathing, the daddy could not hear him, in the exigency of his distress. By this time the son had crawled halfway beneath the boulder, that measured approximately nine feet at its widest point. Now the son’s way was blocked, he could crawl no farther. Nor had the son who was only four years old begun to calculate how he would turn his small body to crawl out again.
In his burrow-space, the son was safe. In the cunning of animal panic the son lay very still. Like a dazed creature that has been injured but knows not to move, scarcely to breathe, to preserve its life. As if far distant on the surface of the earth the daddy lay pressed against the boulder, the daddy’s arm extended beneath the boulder to the shoulder-socket. In tight, constricted circles the daddy’s hand moved clumsily. If there was futility in the daddy’s gesture yet there was determination, zeal. There was the wish not to give up — not ever. For as long as his strength remained the daddy would persevere uttering the son’s name until the name lost all meaning. Like words in a foreign language or nonsense-words the syllables Tod, son, li’l dude became shorn of meaning as rock is shorn of meaning, implacable, unnameable. Beneath the great boulder the child lay very still. The child’s small heart still beat, the child’s lungs still pumped, the child would never return to the daddy again, not ever.
Hardly aware of them she began to see them. Or maybe she sensed them without exactly seeing them. At first singular, isolated spiders, solitary in their shimmering webs — in a high corner of the bedroom in which she now spent so much time, in the musty space beneath the kitchen sink, in the glassed-in porch at the rear of the house where tiny desiccated husks of insects were scattered underfoot. It was the onset of winter, this had to be the explanation. Though she didn’t recall an infestation of spiders from other winters, this had to be the explanation.
In a fury of housekeeping she destroyed the webs, killed the spiders and wiped away all evidence. Her hands moved jerkily, there was much emotion in her fingers. Sometimes her fingers clenched like claws, transfixed with rage.
Surviving spouse, she’d become. The one of whom it’s said by observers How well she’s taking it! She’s stronger than she thinks.
Or She’s braver than we expected.
Or Now she knows.
That first week after he’d died. First days after death, cremation, burial. Frequently she was but part-dressed, part-awake and staggering somewhere — desperate to answer a ringing phone for instance — or a doorbell rung by yet another delivery man bearing floral displays, hefty potted plants, “gift” boxes of fruits, gourmet foods as for a lavish if macabre celebration — unless it was a woman friend concerned not to have been able to reach her on the phone — and of course there was the trash to be hauled to the curb if only she knew the dates for trash pickup and mornings she found herself outdoors — one morning in particular the day following probate court and here was cold pelting rain and wind whipping her hair — where was she, and why? — telling herself she had no choice, this was her duty as the sole survivor of the wreckage at 299 Valley Drive — the task was to retrieve mail from the mailbox — days of accumulated — unwanted — mail and thus dazed and staggering in November rain on the cusp of sleet, a trench coat thrown over her sweated-through flannel nightgown and raw-skinned bare feet thrust into inappropriate shoes she was making her unsteady way up the long driveway careening with manic rivulets of rainwater soaking the soles of these shoes. And thinking I will not slip and fall here, alone. I will not fall to one knee. I will not shatter any bones in a sudden faint. For almost at probate court she’d fainted. And twice in the house alone and the horror of her new, posthumous life washed over her like dirty water in her mouth and almost she’d fainted — maybe in fact she had fainted striking her head against the hard unyielding surface of the dining room table. And now blindly she was reaching into the mailbox — not a box precisely but a tubular aluminum vessel impracticably narrow for the quantity of mail she was now receiving as the surviving spouse of a man who’d had numerous friends, business acquaintances, and associates — into which for the past several days the increasingly impatient mailman had thrust, pushed, stuffed mail so that brute strength was required to remove it — and trying to extract a mangled envelope at the rear she thrust her hand into something strangely feathery — gauzy — a spiders’ nest — a cluster of alert, antic brown-speckled spiders — of which one — not-large, the size of a housefly — scurried swiftly up her groping hand, up her arm, and nearly reached her shoulder with seeming demonic intent before it was flung away with a breathless cry — even as the mail Sophie clutched in the crook of her arm slipped and fell to the wet grasses at her feet.
O God help me. This is the rest of my life.
Approximately three weeks after her husband’s death the first of the odd-shaped envelopes arrived.
Amid a welter of belated sympathy cards, ordinary mail, and trash-mail an oblong manila envelope postmarked Sourland, MINN — return address K.
Just that single initial — K.
This was mysterious, ominous. Sophie knew no one who lived in Sourland, Minnesota. She could not imagine who K. was.
She knew that her husband had had friends — professional associates — in Minneapolis. For sometimes he’d flown to Minneapolis, for meetings. But never had he mentioned Sourland.
They’d been married so long — in December, they would have been married twenty-six years — it was reasonable to assume that neither knew anyone of whom the other wasn’t aware, to some degree. If the surviving spouse was unsure of many things she was sure of this.
The clutch of fear, the surviving spouse feels at such moments. The prospect — the impossibility of the prospect — that the deceased had secrets of which the surviving spouse had not a clue.
Though stacks of mail had been left unopened on the dining room table — sympathy cards from friends, heartfelt handwritten letters she couldn’t bring herself to read — quickly Sophie opened the envelope from the mysterious K. postmarked Sourland, MINN. There appeared to be no letter inside, just photographs — wilderness scenes — a steep grassless hill strewn with large boulders, mountains covered in dense pine woods, a broad river bordered by tall deciduous trees and splotches of color like a Matisse painting. There was a steeply-plunging mountain stream, there was a ravine strewn with fallen trees, fallen rocks — an obscure shape in the near distance that might have been a crouching animal, or a person — or oddly shaped exposed tree roots. Was Sophie supposed to recognize these scenes? Was something here familiar? There was no identification on the backs of the photos which seemed to her to have been taken without regard to form, composition, “beauty” — as if for a utilitarian purpose — but what was the purpose? She was annoyed, uneasy. Her heart beat rapidly as if she were in the presence of danger. Why have these been sent to me? Why now? Who would do such a thing?
She saw that the envelope from the mysterious K. had been addressed to Sophie Quinn. Not Mrs. Sophie Quinn, or Mrs. Matthew Quinn. The address was hand-printed, in a black felt-tip pen. She thought He wants to disguise his handwriting. He doesn’t want to be identified.
Badly she wanted to tear up the photographs. This was some sort of prank, a trick, something cruel, sent to her at a vulnerable time in her life.
The husband might have advised Give them to me Sophie. Don’t give this another thought.
The husband might have advised Be very careful now Sophie. You will make mistakes in your posthumous life, I won’t be at hand to correct.
Sophie laid the photographs on the dining room table. Like dealing out cards this was, in a kind of riddle. It seemed to her — unless her heightened nerves were causing her to imagine this — that some of the wilderness scenes overlapped.
A steep rock-strewn mountainside, a basin-like terrain covered in immense boulders of the shape and hue of eggs, harsh bright autumn sunlight so dazzling that the colors it touched were bleached out…Most beautiful was a narrow mountain stream falling almost vertically, amid sharp-looking rocks like teeth.
A strange dreaminess overcame her, like a sedative. She was seeing these stark beautiful scenes through the photographer’s eyes — it had to be K. who held the camera — it was K. who’d sent her the photographs.
Is this where I will be taken? Why?
She realized — her forefinger was stinging. A tiny paper cut near her cuticle leaked blood.
She saw — her fingers were covered in such tiny cuts. The furnace-heated air in the house was so dry, her skin had become sensitive and susceptible to cuts. Opening mail, unwanted packages, “gift” boxes from the well-intentioned who imagined that a widow craves useless items as compensation perhaps for having lost her husband…
In the following days as she passed through the dining room she paused to examine the photographs. Very like a visual riddle they were — pieces of a jigsaw puzzle like the puzzles she’d patiently pieced together as a child — of wilderness scenes, or landscape paintings. Shaking herself awake then as out of a narcotic stupor.
Those days! Grief, very like dirty water splashed into her mouth. Yet she had no choice, she must swallow.
Not wanting to accuse the husband Why did you abandon me! I’d trusted you with my life.
It was a posthumous life, you would have to concede. Though no one wishes to acknowledge the fact. Though there is every reason to wish not to acknowledge the fact. Long stretches of time — vast as the Sahara — she was the surviving spouse and thus never fully awake — and yet she was never fully asleep. Never was she deeply, refreshingly asleep. When it became “day” — after the winter solstice, at ever-earlier hours — she could not bear to remain in bed. And once up, she had to keep in motion. She could walk, walk, walk for as many as forty, fifty — sixty — minutes at a time, in a kind of spell of self-laceration. Fierce with energy she cleaned out closets, cleaned the basement, on her hands and knees cleaned the hardwood floors with paper towels and polish. Never did she find herself in the right room — invariably she’d forgotten something, that was in another room. It was becoming impossible — physically impossible — for her to remain in one place for more than a few seconds. Such rooms she’d shared with her husband in their daily lives — dining room, living room, a glassed-in porch at the rear of the house — she could not now occupy for long.
Ghost-rooms, these were. Except for the bedroom and the kitchen — rooms she couldn’t reasonably avoid — and the room she considered her study, that the husband had not often entered — the rooms of the house were becoming uninhabitable.
The surviving spouse inhabits a space not much larger than a grave.
Hard not to think, the husband had abandoned her to this space. Hadn’t he promised when they’d first fallen in love I will protect you forever dear Sophie! — in an extravagance of speech meant to be playful and amusing and yet at the same time serious, sincere. And so — he’d abandoned her.
This season of grief, when her mind wasn’t right.
At about the time when she’d become accustomed to — inured to — the photographs on the dining room table — it might have been several weeks, or months — the second envelope from K. arrived.
How curious the envelope! The paper was thick and grainy, oatmeal-colored, as you’d imagine papyrus. The hand-printed letters in black felt-tip pen were stark and impersonal as before.
Sophie’s heart leapt. At once she snatched the envelope out of the jammed mailbox.
No danger of spiders in the mailbox now — she’d destroyed the feathery nest and all its inhabitants. In any case it was winter, and too cold for spiders to survive outdoors.
In the interval Sophie had looked up Sourland, Minnesota, in a book of maps: it was a small town, probably no more than a village, about one hundred miles north and west of Grand Rapids in what appeared to be a wilderness area of lakes, rivers, and dense forests. In addition to Sourland there was Sourland Falls, and there was Sourland Junction, and there was the vast Sourland Mountain State Preserve which consisted of more than four million acres. All these places were in Sourland County east of romantically named Lake of the Woods County and west of the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Koochiching County.
And this time too the manila envelope contained no letter, just photographs — a sparsely wooded mountainside, the interior of a pine forest permeated by shafts of sunshine, a lake of dark-glistening water surrounded by trees as the water of a deep well is surrounded by rock. In the background of another photo you could just make out a structure of some kind — a small house, or a cabin. Sophie thought Is this where he lives?
She knew, this had to be. K. was teasing her, like one dealing out cards in a specific order, to tell the story he wants told.
In the final photo, you could see that this structure was a cabin, of coarse-hewn logs. The roof was steep, covered in weathered tar paper; there was a stovepipe chimney; there were strips of unsightly plastic, to keep out the cold. In this photo there was snow on the ground, snow crusted against the cabin as if it had been blown there with tremendous force. Close by the cabin was a small clearing, stacks of firewood, an ax embedded in a tree stump.
In a rutted and mud-puddled driveway was a steel-colored vehicle with monster-tires, for the most rugged terrain. And beside this vehicle stood a bewhiskered man in a parka and khaki shorts, the hood of the parka drawn over his head; his legs were dark-tanned, ropey with muscle. Though his face was partly obscured by dark-tinted glasses, the parka hood and the bristling beard, you could see that the man’s features were severe, unsmiling though he had lifted his right hand as if in greeting.
Sophie took the photo to a window, to examine. She couldn’t make out the man’s face, that seemed to melt away in a patch of shadow.
Nor could she determine if the man was lifting his hand in a gesture of welcome, or of warning.
Hello. Go away. Come closer. Did I invite you?
So this was K. Sophie was certain she’d never seen him before.
Yet he’d addressed the envelope boldly to Sophie Quinn. If he’d known her husband, and through her husband had known of her, it was strange that he didn’t include a letter or a note in reference to Matt. For he must have known that Matt had died.
Your loss. Sorry for your loss. My condolences Sophie!
There was little that anyone could say, to assuage the fact of death. Sophie understood that people must speak to her, address her, in the rawness of her grief, who could not quite grasp what she was feeling. For she, too, had many times spoken to others distraught by grief — not able to know what it was they felt. Now, she knew. At any rate, she knew better than she’d known.
But K. wasn’t offering condolences, or solace. Sophie didn’t think so.
She remembered how, when she’d first met him, Matthew Quinn had been something of an outdoorsman. Not a hunter — no one in Matt’s family had ever hunted — but a serious hiker and camper, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison. He’d never taken Sophie with him — by the time they met Matt was nearly thirty and impatient to finish his Ph.D. in American constitutional law, and leave school. He’d been impatient to begin what he called adult life.
He’d made up his mind to marry Sophie, he told her afterward, at their first meeting. Sophie had asked was this love at first sight and Matt said Something better, and more durable.
In Madison, Sophie had heard tales from Matt and his friends of their wilderness adventures, their camping trips to northern Wisconsin and on Drummond Island and in the Canadian wilds south of Elliot Lake, Ontario. Matt had belonged to the university sailing club, that sailed on Lake Mendota in the most turbulent winds. But these outdoor activities had begun to lose their appeal to Matt, at about the time Sophie entered his life.
She’d been twenty-two. Matt had been nearly thirty. In all ways he’d been older than Sophie: intellectually, politically, sexually.
Matt’s friends were older, as well — Ph.D. candidates in such fields as history, politics, Russian studies. Most of them were political activists engaged in protesting the Vietnam War. For this was the late 1960s when the war had finally spread its poison everywhere. To be young was to be aroused, outraged. The university at Madison, Wisconsin, was a center of socialist dissent and political activism; there were highly vocal chapters here of SDS, Weathermen, and other left-wing organizations agitating for the overthrow of the hopelessly corrupt U.S. government. Matt had close friends in these organizations but whether he himself belonged, Sophie wasn’t certain.
Not that Matt had secrets from her, exactly. But he was taciturn, reserved. To question him too directly was to risk offending him as Sophie had instinctively known, upon meeting him.
She had not been very political. Of course she’d protested the Vietnam War in large campus marches with hundreds — thousands? — of others. She’d been disgusted by the official American politics of the time, like everyone else she knew. But the radical-left counterculture — was alien to her, temperamentally. She’d come to Madison to study nineteenth-century American literature, from Wells College in upstate New York; her father was a public school administrator, and her background was Protestant/secular. She’d been intimidated by other, older students in the graduate school as she’d been intimidated by the sprawling size and tempo of the university itself.
Just once, Matt had taken her along on a march to the state capitol building in downtown Madison, a risky venture since the leaders of the march had no permit and the National Guard shootings at Kent State had occurred the previous week. In the wake of young protestors’ deaths in Ohio emblazoned in headlines across the country and in that single, iconic photograph they’d marched — two or three hundred protestors of varying ages — as uniformed Madison police officers and Wisconsin National Guard soldiers lined State Street brandishing billy clubs and Mace, their faces obscured by tinted visors. Matt had instructed Sophie that if the police charged, to try to get behind him; if they began shooting, to get beneath him. He would shield her, he said. He’d spoken earnestly, sincerely. He’d been excited and frightened and exhilarated. Sophie had no doubt that they were in imminent danger, and that Matt would protect her from all harm. A strange reckless elation flooded her veins, a conviction of immortality she would never again feel in her life.
It happened that the protestors were greeted with sympathy by a sizable number of Wisconsin legislators — the demonstrators were made to feel placated and respected and the dangerous situation was defused. They didn’t die! They didn’t even get struck by billy clubs, their heads and faces bloodied. This was the first time — as it would be the last time — that Sophie would find herself in such a situation, in a crowded, public place without any knowledge of what might happen to her within the next half-hour.
Sophie checked the envelope from K. a second time — a folded sheet of yellow lined paper slipped out.
Sophie — Come see me here. We need to meet.Now you are prepared.KOLK
Next thing Sophie knew, she was lying on the floor.
It had seemed that the floor — hardwood, and very hard — swung up to strike her, on the side of the head. Like a billy club the floor struck her, with vehemence, malice. She’d had no time to put out her hand, to mitigate the force of the blow. How many minutes she lay there, part-conscious, she had no idea. Perhaps no time had passed. Perhaps a very long time had passed. By the time her strength returned, she’d forgotten where she was. She could not have said what day this was. Or where Matt was, that he hadn’t heard her fall, and call out for him.
Hairs on the back of her neck stirred in fear. Something seemed to be crawling over her skin. Feathery-light these tiny things were, and very quick. She brushed at them, blindly. Her skin was clammy-cold, covered in sweat that had partly dried. And so some time must have passed, the panic-sweat had partly dried. No! no! — she brushed at the crawling things. She was on her elbows now, lifting her head. Her dazed eyes saw that the hand-printed letter signed KOLK had fallen to the floor beside her.
Matt? Where are you…
Waking in the dark, frightened and disoriented.
How many times, like one afflicted with a fairy-tale curse. Waking in the dark — calling for her husband — the absent husband — the no longer existing husband.
Sophie would confide in no one.
Nor would Sophie confide in anyone how on that November day when Matt had been hospitalized he’d wakened early to prepare IRS forms to send to their accountant in Hackensack.
He’d known that he was ill, and would need to be hospitalized. He had not known when he’d be back home, to complete the forms.
Sophie had wakened at their usual time — 7 A.M. — and still dark — knowing that something was wrong. His side of the bed was empty. Carefully the bedclothes had been turned back, Matt had slipped away without her knowledge.
He had not confided in her. Of course Matt would say, in his maddening way of brushing aside her concern, her anxiety — Look. I didn’t want to upset you.
And so barefoot and curious but not yet alarmed Sophie sought out her husband downstairs — she guessed he’d be in his study, working at his desk — as she approached the room on the first floor of the darkened house there was Matt just emerging in T-shirt and shorts which was his nighttime attire — his expression was strangely intense, a small fixed smile, a smile of a kind Sophie had not seen before — in his hands that were trembling — Sophie saw this, took note of this, with a part of her brain that had become immediately alert, aroused, yet inarticulate — was a large FedEx envelope. (So Sophie told herself This is all it is! Something for the IRS.)
Thinking how like her husband to be so zealous, to behave so responsibly. Determined to send their joint financial papers off well before the deadline to their accountant in Hackensack who would include them with other documents and send everything on to the U.S. Treasury. Sophie I will protect you! I promise. It was an ordinary morning Sophie wished to think and yet with that preternaturally alert and aroused part of her brain she saw unmistakably that her husband was looking exhausted, his face was ashen, his lips so pale as to appear blue and his movements tentative like those of a man uncertain whether he can trust the floor beneath his feet. And that strange rasping sound — a sound Sophie would long recall, as the surviving spouse — of his labored breathing.
Yet calmly he spoke her name: “Sophie.”
And calmly he told her, in Matt’s way of giving precise instructions that Sophie must not misunderstand or misconstrue, no matter how emotional she was to become: “Call FedEx to have a driver pick this up. I’m sorry, I need you to drive me to the hospital.”
Or had Matt said, “I’m sorry I need you to drive me to the hospital.”
Each way Sophie would hear. Like one entranced she would hear, and rehear. The surviving spouse would exhaust herself with just these two possibilities.
I’m sorry, I need you to drive me to the hospital.
I’m sorry I need you to drive me to the hospital.
No ambiguity about the word hospital!
Immediately Sophie knew, this had to be serious. Her husband wasn’t a man who went willingly to the doctor. Through his adult life he’d been indifferent, even careless of his health, as if there were something unmanly in taking caution. And now, that bravado had vanished.
Sophie asked him what was wrong. He said, “I think — my heart.”
I think — my heart. This too Sophie would hear, and rehear. A curious phraseology. My heart, I think would have been a more natural way of speaking but there was nothing natural about her husband’s behavior on that morning.
There would be other mornings in Matthew Quinn’s life. Several more mornings in Matthew Quinn’s life. But this was the final morning, of the life Sophie would share with him.
His heart! The previous summer Matt had had a bout of fibrillation — was that what the condition was called, fibrillation? — after protracted physical exertion in the New Jersey heat. Stubbornly he’d been mending their eroded flagstone terrace at the rear of the house and this time too he’d come to Sophie — rapped on the kitchen window to get her attention and said apologetically that his heart was behaving “weirdly” and he couldn’t seem to “catch his breath” and would she drive him to their doctor? — which of course Sophie did, calling the doctor’s office on her cell phone from the car; and from his doctor’s office she’d driven him to the ER of the hospital which was less than a mile away and he’d been given an intravenous drug and sedated and in the morning successfully treated for his rapid and erratic heartbeat and by midday he’d been discharged, Sophie had driven him back home. And so now Sophie had every reason to think that the same thing would happen again. Telling herself It’s a routine procedure. We have gone through this before.
Hurriedly she’d dressed. That last morning of their lives together in haste assembling a traveling bag for Matt — underwear, toiletries — a clean shirt, socks — for possibly he’d be in the hospital overnight as he’d been the previous time. Sophie was chattering brightly, nervously. Sophie could not have said what she was telling Matt nor did Matt appear to be listening to her. He was fumbling to put on his trench coat — quickly Sophie came to help him. Strange to her, and disconcerting, that her husband was breathing as if he’d run up a flight of stairs.
Matt was fifty-six. Not a tall man but giving that impression. He’d become soft-bodied in the torso and midriff, he was overweight by perhaps fifteen pounds, the young lean husband she’d married in Madison, Wisconsin, had vanished. His dark hair had become sand-colored and was thinning at the crown of his head. His somewhat small gray-brown eyes were creased at the corners with a fierce inward concentration.
Sophie saw that Matt had washed his face and damp-combed his hair but hadn’t shaved. Metallic stubble shadowed his soft-jowled lower face like an encroaching shadow. She felt a stab of love for him — a stab of terror — for in love there is terror, at such times. She knew that if she went to kiss him he’d have stiffened, this wasn’t a gesture he would have welcomed right now. He wouldn’t have pushed her away but in his distracted state he’d have stiffened, drawn back. On his ghastly pale-blue lips a small fixed smile.
Worse yet: he’d have relented and kissed her to humor her. His lips would be icy, against her skin.
This had not happened. Yet Sophie felt the impress of the icy lips against her overheated cheek.
Still the wave of love for him flowed into her, like an electric current. She could not bear it, how she loved this man: the connection between them, that was in danger of breaking. Suddenly it was a possibility, the connection might be broken. Such desperate love Sophie felt for her doomed husband yearning and insubstantial as a tiny flame buffeted by wind. Such desperate love, she had to hide her face from him, that he wouldn’t see, and chide her.
She slid her arm through his — he didn’t resist, but leaned against her — surprising to Sophie, they were almost of a height as if the man who’d once been inches taller than she had become diminished overnight, aged.
She led him through the darkened downstairs of the house and to the door that led into the garage. Telling herself Exactly as it was last time. So it will be this time.
In the car driving to the hospital she spoke calmly asking Matt how he felt, if his condition was the same or if he felt worse. She asked him please to fasten his seat belt but he seemed scarcely to hear. In subsequent days, weeks, months the surviving spouse would see herself behind the wheel of the car which was not her accustomed place when she was with her husband for always her husband drove their car, not Sophie; she saw herself beside her stricken and distracted husband in their gleaming-white vehicle propelled forward by momentum as irresistible as the lunar tide or the sway of galaxies with not the slightest comprehension of where they were going or that their desperate journey was in one direction only, and could never be reversed. As time cannot be reversed. She would see herself as the bearer of Matthew Quinn to his grave. She would see herself as the person who betrayed him for never would he return again to their house. Never would he return to the life he’d so loved, in that house.
If she’d known: that Matt had slipped out of bed in the middle of the night. That he’d spent hours on the tax forms, instead of waking her and asking her to take him to the hospital.
Had he known how serious the fibrillation was? Or had it steadily worsened, while he’d worked on the tax forms?
She couldn’t bear to think He risked his life for something so trivial! For our financial well-being. For me.
Now he was gone from the house. The husband was gone, the husband would not return. Yet a dozen times a day she heard his voice — not as it had been on the morning of his departure but as it had been, before — nor did she hear his labored arrhythmic breath that had so terrified her — though the house was empty, deserted.
Except for the surviving spouse, the house was deserted.
The husband had vanished utterly in the way of the incinerated. Made not into soft powdery ashes but into coarse-grained ashes and bone-chunks “buried” in an aluminum container in a cemetery several miles from their house where for years they’d walked — for they were frequent walkers, hikers, bicyclists — they’d loved the outdoors in its more benign weathers — admiring the older, eighteenth-century gravestones and giant aged oak trees buttressed by iron rods like the fanciful drawings of invading Martians on the paperback cover of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. How innocent they’d been in those days! You could say how blind, how stupid. How utterly oblivious. Walking in the cemetery with no regard for what lay moldering beneath their feet.
Now, they’d been punished for their blindness. The deceased husband, the surviving spouse.
In a haze of anesthetized grief she’d purchased a plot in the quaint “historic” cemetery. At the open grassy area at the rear, where new graves were dug. Fresh graves, unrelenting. Matt’s “remains” were set beneath a small rectangular grave marker the crematorium provided. Set in frozen grass in what was called a double plot for which she barely recalled writing a check. In a kindly avuncular voice the funeral director had urged You might as well secure a double plot, Mrs. Quinn This is a practical step.
The widow wished above all to be practical. You don’t want to embarrass, upset, or annoy others. You don’t want to become a spectacle of pathos, pity. The widow resolved that grief itself might become practical, routine. Though at the present time her grief was slovenly and smelly as something leaking through a cracked cellar wall.
Also her grief was demented. For often in the night she heard her husband. He’d risen from their bed in the dark, he’d slipped from the room. Possibly he was using his bathroom in the hall just outside their bedroom. Every sound of that bathroom was known to her, they’d lived together in this house for so long. In her bed on her side of the bed her heart began to pound in apprehension waiting for him to return to bed with a murmured apology Hey! Sorry if I woke you.
Maybe, he’d have called her Sophie. Dear Sophie!
Maybe, he’d have brushed her cheek with his lips. His stubbled cheek against her skin. Or maybe — this was more frequent — he’d have settled back heavily into bed wordless, into his side of the bed sinking into sleep like one sinking into a pool of dark water that receives him silently and without agitation on its surface.
Often in the night she smelled him: the sweat-soaked T-shirt, shorts he’d worn on that last night.
Soon then Kolk entered her dreams. Like the rapid percussive dripping of thawing icicles against the roof of the house. As she was vulnerable to these nighttime sounds so she was vulnerable to Kolk by night.
In her dreams he was a shadowy figure lacking a face. The figure in the photograph, hand uplifted.
A greeting, or a warning.
She had believed that the man was dead. The actual man, Kolk.
In their few encounters in Madison, Wisconsin, many years before they’d spoken little to each other. Kolk — was his first name Jeremiah? — had been one of Matt’s political-minded friends but not one of his closest friends and Sophie had never felt comfortable in his presence. There was something monkish and intolerant in Kolk’s manner. His soot-colored eyes behind glinting wire-rimmed glasses had seemed to crawl on her with an ascetic disdain. Who are you? Why should I care for you?
He’d never cared enough to learn her name, Sophie was sure.
It was said of Kolk that he was a farm-boy fellowship student from Wisconsin’s northern peninsula who’d enrolled in the university’s Ph.D. program to study something otherworldly and impractical like classics but had soon ceased attending classes to devote time to political matters exclusively. It was said that Kolk had an older brother who’d been a “war hero” killed in World War II. Among others in Matt’s circle who spoke readily and assertively Kolk spoke quietly and succinctly and never of himself. He had a way of blushing fiercely when he was made self-conscious or angry and often in Sophie’s memory Kolk was angry, incensed.
He’d quarreled with most of his friends. He’d insulted Matt Quinn who’d been his close friend.
He’d called Matt fink, scab. These ugly words uttered in Kolk’s raw accusing voice had been shocking to Sophie’s ears. Matt had been very angry but had said We have a difference of opinion and Kolk said sneering I think you’re a fink and you think you aren’t a fink. That’s our difference of opinion.
Sophie recalled this exchange. And Sophie recalled a single incident involving her and Kolk, long-forgotten by her as one might forget a bad dream, or a mouthful of something with a very bad taste.
Or maybe it was excitement Sophie felt. And the dread, that accompanies such excitement.
Matt hadn’t known. Sophie was reasonably sure that none of their friends had known. For Kolk wouldn’t have spoken of it.
They’d been on a stairway landing — the two of them alone together — the first time they’d been alone together for possibly Sophie had followed Kolk out onto the stairs for some reason long forgotten but recalled as urgent, crucial. And Sophie had reached out to touch Kolk’s arm — Kolk’s arm in a sleeve of his denim jacket — for Kolk was upset, to the point of tears — his face flushed and contorted in the effort not to succumb to tears — and so Sophie who wasn’t yet Matt Quinn’s young wife but the girl who lived in a graduate women’s residence but spent most of her time with Matt Quinn in his apartment on Henry Street reached out impulsively to touch Jeremiah Kolk — meaning to comfort him, that was all — and quickly Kolk pushed Sophie away, threw off her hand and turned and rapidly descended the stairs without a backward glance and that was the last time she’d seen him.
So long ago. Who would remember. No one!
Sophie had been conscious of having made a mistake, a blunder — following after Matt’s friend, who was no longer Matt’s friend. Why she’d behaved so recklessly, out of character — why she’d risked being rebuffed or insulted by Kolk — she could not have said.
Of course, it was Matthew Quinn she’d loved. It was Matt she’d always loved. For the other, she’d felt no more than a fleeting/disquieting attraction.
Not sexual. Or maybe sexual.
Who would remember…
After they were married and moved away from Madison, Wisconsin, and were living in New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 1970s — Matt was enrolled in the Yale Law School, Sophie was working on a master’s degree in art history — rumors came to them that Jeremiah Kolk had been badly injured in an accidental detonation of a “nail bomb” in a Milwaukee warehouse.
Or had Kolk been killed. He and two others had managed to escape the devastated warehouse but Kolk died of his injuries, in hiding in northern Wisconsin.
No arrests were ever made. Kolk’s name was never publicly linked to the explosion.
All that was known with certainty was that Jeremiah Kolk had never returned to study classics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, after he’d dropped out in 1969. Long before the bombing incident he’d broken off relations with his family. He’d broken off relations with his friends in Madison. He’d disappeared.
Years later when they were living in New Jersey, one morning at breakfast Sophie saw Matt staring at a photograph in the New York Times and when Sophie came to peer at it over his shoulder saying, with a faint intake of breath, “Oh that looks like — who was it? — ‘Kolk’ — ‘Jeremiah Kolk’ — ” Matt said absently, without looking up at her, “Who?”
The photograph hadn’t been of Kolk of course but of a stranger years younger than the living Kolk would have been, in 1989.
SOPHIE —
PLEASE will you come to me Sophie this is the most alone of my life.
KOLK
P.O. Box 71
Sourland Falls
MINN
Her April plans! Now the surviving spouse was sleepless for very different reasons.
Thinking It will be spring there, or almost. The worst of the ice will have thawed.
These were reasonable thoughts. There was the wish to believe that these were reasonable thoughts.
From Newark Airport she would fly to Minneapolis and from Minneapolis she would take a small commuter plane to Grand Rapids and there Kolk would meet her and drive her to his place — not home but place was the word Kolk used — in the foothills of the Sourland Mountains. By his reckoning Kolk’s place was one hundred eighty miles north and west of the small Grand Rapids airport.
By his reckoning it would take no more than three hours to drive this distance. If weather conditions were good.
Sophie asked if weather conditions there were frequently not-good in that part of Minnesota.
Kolk said guardedly that there was a “range” of weather. His jeep had four-wheel drive. There wouldn’t be a problem.
Several letters had been exchanged. Sophie had covered pages in handwriting, baring her heart to Jeremiah Kolk as she’d never done to another person. For never had she written to her husband, always they’d been together. The person I am is being born only now, in these words to you, Jeremiah.
Kolk had been more circumspect. Kolk’s hand-printed letters were brief, taciturn yet not unfriendly. He wanted Sophie to know, he said, that he lived a subsistence life, in American terms. He would not present himself as anything he was not only what he’d become — A pilgrim in perpetual quest.
In practical terms, Kolk worked for the Sourland Mountain State Preserve. He’d lived on a nine-acre property adjacent to the Preserve for the past seven years.
Speaking with Kolk over the phone was another matter. Sophie heard herself laughing nervously. For Kolk’s voice didn’t sound at all familiar — it was raw, guttural, oddly accented as if from disuse. Yet he’d said to her — he had tried to speak enthusiastically — “Sophie? That sounds like you.”
Sophie laughed nervously.
“Well. That sounds like you.”
After years of estrangement, when each had ceased to exist for the other, what comfort there was in the most banal speech.
They fell silent. They began to speak at the same time. Sophie shut her eyes as she’d done as a young girl jumping — not diving, she’d never had the courage to dive — from a high board, into a pool of dark-glistening lake water. Thinking If this is happening, this is what is meant to be. I will be whoever it is, to whom it happens.
Kolk had invited Sophie to visit him and to stay for a week at least and quickly Sophie said three days might be more practical. Kolk was silent for a long moment and Sophie worried that she’d offended him but then Kolk laughed as if Sophie had said something clever and riddlesome — “Three days is a start. Bring hiking clothes. If you like it here, you will want to stay longer.”
Sophie’s eyes were still shut. Sophie drew a deep breath.
“Well. Maybe.”
They would fall in love, Sophie reasoned. She would never leave Sourland.
She wanted to ask Kolk if he lived alone. (She assumed that he lived alone.) She wanted to ask if he’d been married. (She assumed that he’d never been married.) She wanted to ask how far his place was from the nearest neighbor. And what he meant by saying he was a pilgrim in perpetual quest.
Instead — boldly — impulsively as she’d reached out to touch Kolk years ago when they’d both been young — Sophie asked Kolk what she might bring him.
Quickly Kolk’s voice became wary, defensive.
“‘Bring me’ —? What do you mean?”
She’d blundered. She’d said the wrong thing. With a stab of dismay she saw Kolk — the figure that was Kolk — at the other end of the line in remote northern Minnesota — a man with a shadowy half-hidden face and soot-colored eyes behind dark glasses watching her as if she were the enemy.
“I meant — only — if you needed anything, Jeremiah. I could bring it.”
Jeremiah. Sophie had never called Kolk by this name, in Madison. The very sound — multi-syllabic, Biblical and archaic — was clumsy in her mouth like a pebble on the tongue. But Kolk laughed again — after a moment — as if Sophie had said something witty.
“Bring yourself, Sophie. That’s all I want.”
Sophie’s eyes flooded with tears. To this remark she could think of no adequate reply.
Of course she would tell no one — not her closest friends, nor those relatives who called her frequently because they were worried about her — of her plans to fly a thousand miles to visit a man she had not seen in a quarter-century. A man whom she’d never known. A political-radical outlaw believed to be dead, who had died twenty years before in the clandestine preparation of a bomb intended to kill innocent people.
In the cemetery amid the damp grasses she stood before the small rectangular grave marker, she had not visited in months.
MATTHEW GIDEON QUINN
On this misty-cool and sunless April morning she was the only visitor in the cemetery.
The air was so stark! So sharp! Her eyes stung with tears like tiny icicles. She felt a flutter of panic, at all that she’d lost that was reduced to ashes, buried in the frozen ground at her feet.
Waiting for a revelation. Waiting for a voice. Of release, or condemnation.
I will protect you forever dear Sophie!
Was this Matt’s voice? Had she heard correctly? Had he ever made such an extravagant promise to her, he could never have kept?
Sophie was feeling light-headed, feverish. She hadn’t slept well the previous night. Her brain was livid with plans, what she would pack to take with her, what she would say to Jeremiah Kolk when they were alone together. Early the next morning she was flying out from Newark, west to Sourland, Minnesota.
“Matt? I will be back, I promise. I won’t be gone long.”
Plaintively adding, “I need to do this. Kolk needs me.”
How silent the cemetery was! Sophie felt the rebuke of the dead, their resentment of the living.
Sophie are you so desperate? Maybe you should kill yourself, instead.
And then, in the small grim airport at Grand Rapids, she didn’t see Kolk.
In a shifting crowd of people, most of them men, not one seemed to bear much resemblance to Jeremiah Kolk.
The flight from Minneapolis to Grand Rapids had been turbulent and noisy. For the past forty minutes which were the most protracted forty minutes of Sophie’s life the small commuter plane had shuddered and lurched as if propelled through churning water and as the plane descended at last to land Sophie felt her heart beating hard, in primitive terror. Of course, this was a mistake. Anyone could have told her, this was a mistake. Grief had made her a desperate woman.
Yet chiding herself with a sort of dazed elation No turning back! You have brought yourself to this place, where a man wants you.
The commuter plane disembarked not at a gate but on the tarmac in a lightly falling snow. One by one passengers made their perilous way down steep metal steps, that had been wheeled to the plane. There was an elderly woman with a cane, who had to be assisted. There was a heavyset Indian-looking man with a splotched face, whose wheezing breath was frightening to Sophie, who had to be assisted. Sophie had the idea — it was a comforting idea — or should have been a comforting idea — that her friend must be just inside the terminal watching — watching for her — and so she made her way down the metal steps calmly if in a haze of anticipation, a small mysterious smile on her lips.
No turning back!
And then inside the terminal — her deranged girl’s heart was beating very hard now — she didn’t see him. At the lone baggage carousel she didn’t see him. No one? No Kolk? After their letter-exchanges, their telephone conversations? Sophie stared, at a loss. Several men who might have been Kolk — of Kolk’s age, or approximately — passed her by without a glance. A rat-faced youngish man with ragged whiskers and hair tied back in a ponytail passed so closely by Sophie that she could smell his body, without glancing at her.
Sophie thought My punishment has begun. This, I have brought on myself.
Kolk had provided her with a single telephone number, in case of emergency — not his home or cell phone number but that of the auto repair in Sourland Junction. Useless to her, now!
And then, she saw a man approaching her. He was walking with a curious limp. Sophie stared, and began to feel faint.
This man was middle-aged, bulky-bodied. For one who limped with a shuffling-sliding motion of his left foot he moved quite readily. He would have been a tall man of over six feet but his back appeared to be bent like a coat hanger wantonly twisted. His face glared like something hard-polished with a rag. His head looked as if it had been shaved with an ax blade. There were the schoolboy wire-rimmed glasses but the lenses were dark-tinted, hiding the eyes. From the lower part of his face metallic-gray whiskers sprang bristling yet as he drew closer Sophie could see that the left side of his face was badly scarred, disfigured — a part of the lower jaw was missing, a double row of teeth exposed as in a ghastly fixed smile. The right side of his face was relatively untouched, unlined. As he made his shuffling-sliding way forward people glanced at him — turned to stare after him — but he ignored them. Perhaps in fact he didn’t see them. Having sighted Sophie standing very still staring at him as he approached he smiled exposing stubby teeth that glistened, of the color of old piano keys.
“Sophie. You came.”
It was a blunt statement of triumph, elation. It was a statement of masculine appropriation.
Sophie stammered hello. There was a deafening roar in her ears. She thought — they were in a public place, he could not harm her if she ran away. If she ran into the women’s room, and did not reappear. He would have to let her go.
Seeing the look in Sophie’s face, Kolk smiled harder. “Am I the person you expected to see, Sophie? No? Or maybe — yes? If you are ‘Sophie.’”
Sophie had no idea what this meant. She was staring at Kolk’s eyes — the dark-tinted lenses of his glasses, that hid his eyes — to avoid looking at his mutilated jaw. Weakly she said:
“Are you — ‘Jeremiah’? Is that what people call you — ‘Jeremiah’?”
“No. ‘Kolk.’”
It was a blunt ugly name. It had not seemed to suit Jeremiah Kolk as a young man in Madison, Wisconsin, but it had come to suit him now in this middle-aged ravaged state.
As Sophie hesitated, not knowing what to say, Kolk took her hand in greeting, squeezed her fingers hard as if claiming her. Now, could she run away? Could she hide from him? She was smiling confusedly, trying not to wince in pain. Though his spine seemed to be twisted, yet Kolk was taller than Sophie by several inches and loomed over her. He wore fingerless gloves, his exposed fingers were nicked with small cuts, scars and burns, Sophie was remembering how years ago she’d dared to touch Kolk’s arm and he’d thrown off her hand. Rudely he’d turned from her as if her touch had repelled him but now Sophie wondered if this strange awkward disfigured man expected her to embrace him in the way of people greeting one another in airports — to throw her arms around him, and brush her lips against the side of his face.
But which side of Kolk’s face — the shiny-scarred melted-away side, or the more normal side — would Sophie kiss? She guessed that Kolk would be keenly aware of such a choice.
Kolk asked if Sophie had anything more than the single suitcase at which she was clutching and Sophie said no she had not. Kolk frowned.
“Let’s go, then. It’s good to get back before dark.”
Something had disappointed him. The single suitcase, maybe.
This lightweight suitcase, Kolk insisted on taking from Sophie. It was on rollers, but Kolk carried it.
The roaring in Sophie’s ears had only slightly abated. Was she going with this man, then? This disfigured man? At a first glance you might imagine that he was wearing animal hides. And on his feet, hobnailed boots. Before Sophie could pull away Kolk took her arm, and linked her arm through his. He said nothing as they walked through the terminal together. Sophie had no choice but to accompany him. She dared not pull away from him, such a gesture would offend him terribly.
How likely it seemed to her, the disfigured must be vainer than the rest of us.
Awkward to walk with Kolk who limped so markedly. And how self-conscious Sophie was made to feel, walking with a man at whom people — wide-eyed children, rude adults — stared openly.
“S’reebi! Quiet. Sit.”
In the rear of Kolk’s vehicle was a lunging barking dog — a bulldog mix — with splotched steel-colored fur, a milky right eye, quivering jowls and small flattened torn ears. Sophie felt her blood freeze, she feared and disliked such dogs.
Kolk struck the lunging dog on its skull, so sharply you could hear the impact.
“I said sit.”
Sophie said, “He’s — handsome.” With forced warmth Sophie addressed the frantic barking dog, that was throwing itself against the back of the seat. His slobber shook in frothy droplets from his mouth — surreptitiously she wiped it from her face with a tissue.
Kolk laughed. It wasn’t clear why Kolk laughed.
Kolk said not to worry, S’reebi would not dare attack her.
In swirling snow the drive from Grand Rapids north and west into the foothills of the Sourland Mountains took longer than Kolk had anticipated. Though it was early April yet the air was blustery and wintry, and tasted of metal. During the more than three-hour drive Kolk said little as if he were chagrined or resentful or possibly he’d forgotten his guest in the passenger’s seat beside him. Sophie could have wept. How miserable she was shivering in her attractive and inappropriate clothing — cream-colored cashmere coat, light woolen slacks, leather shoe-boots that came only to her ankles. It was clear that Kolk was accustomed to being alone in the jeep — driving long distances with a sort of stoic fortitude — punching in radio stations that came to life, prevailed for a while then faded into static — in the interstices of which Sophie chattered nervously, to fill the silence. The female instinct: to fill up silence. The (female) fear of (masculine) silence. Sophie heard her anxious voice like the palpitations of a butterfly’s wings, throwing itself against a screen.
Kolk said: “You don’t need to talk.”
In profile, seen from the right, Kolk did not appear obviously disfigured. His face was strong-boned, his skin ruddy, weathered. The untrimmed whiskers looked charged with static electricity like those of a mad sea captain in a nineteenth-century engraving. His eyebrows, in profile, stood straight out, gunmetal-gray. His shaved head was stubbled with steel-colored quills. The scalp was discolored, blemished and bumpy as a lunar terrain. In the fingerless gloves his hands were twice the size of Sophie’s, the hands of a manual laborer, or a strangler. The shortcut nails were edged with the kind of grime that could never be removed.
There was little of the young Jeremiah Kolk remaining. This was a fact, Sophie had to concede. Yet the old intimacy between them persisted, unmistakably. Though we are changed we are not different people. He knows this!
Sophie saw that in the rear of the jeep there were miscellaneous articles of clothing — a lightweight jacket, a mangled-looking sweater, a single hiking boot, dirt-stiffened gray wool socks. There were advertising flyers, newspapers that had never been unfurled, unopened envelopes as if Kolk had grabbed his mail out of his P.O. and dumped it into the jeep without taking time to sort it. The frothy-mouthed bulldog lay atop the jacket panting as if he’d been running and had just collapsed in a partial doze. Sensing Sophie looking at him he began to pant more loudly and his pink-rimmed eyes opened wider, glistening.
No! — no! Sophie looked quickly away before the dog began barking.
They’d made their way through the despoiled suburban landscape outside Grand Rapids — minimalls and shopping centers, motels, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, discount outlets. Beyond were desolate winter fields not yet stirred into life. Still the snow continued in lightly swirling white flakes like mica-chips, much of it melting on the pavement.
Kolk gave Sophie a sidelong glance. The exposed teeth were hidden from her, she could see only the unmutilated side of the man’s face, his mouth barely visible amid the bristling beard. The dark-tinted glasses were all but opaque.
If you will be kind to me. Please promise me!
If you will not hurt me. I am the person who has come to you, whom you have summoned.
“How did you learn about — my husband’s death?”
Sophie spoke hesitantly. In her letters to Kolk she had never asked him this crucial question nor had he volunteered to answer it.
Kolk’s reply was an enigmatic shrug of his shoulders. He was staring straight ahead, at the highway.
Sophie persisted: “Did you keep in contact with Matt, over the years? Or with mutual friends? Was that how you knew?”
“I kept contact, yes. With some part of the past.”
Sophie wondered what this meant. Some part of the past?
“But you never called Matt. When we were all still in Madison, you might have called him. Matt had been your friend, he’d been badly hurt when you…”
Was this true? In some way, Sophie thought it had to be.
Kolk hadn’t called Matt, and Matt hadn’t called Kolk. Matt had said stiffly He’s not my friend. We’re out of each other’s life.
All that Sophie could remember with any degree of clarity was following Kolk out of an apartment — not the one in which she and Matt were living at the time, but someone else’s apartment — and into a drafty stairwell. There’d been a smell of cooking odors — curry? A man’s stripped-down bicycle on a stairway landing, leaning against a wall? The circumstances of that incident had almost entirely faded from her mind. Yet vividly she recalled the need to touch Kolk, and the way he’d thrown off her hand.
She wondered if that memory had lodged deeply in Kolk, as it had in her.
Or is it a false memory. Like so many posthumous memories.
A willed hallucination whetted by loneliness and desperation as parched grass whets the wildfire that ravages and destroys it.
By degrees the despoiled landscape had dropped away. In the drafty rattling jeep they were traveling on a less populated state highway. Passing farmland, or what had been farmland — abandoned and boarded-up houses and outbuildings of a bygone era — amid vast swatches of acreage belonging to corporate farms. But all the land lay fallow in the late-winter chill as if in a suspended animation.
Ever more they were ascending into the foothills of the Sourland Mountains. Ever more, the highway was becoming less traveled and houses were farther apart and set back farther from the road. There was no radio reception here — Kolk had given up his radio music in a blaze of static. In the distance was a dramatic landscape of steep hills, small mountains covered in pine woods, a pearlescent-marbled sky through which shafts of sunshine pierced like flames.
Leaving Koochiching County. Entering Sourland County.
Here were signs for small quaintly named settlements: Mizpah — Shooks — Boy River — Elk Hunt — Grygle — Bowstring — Black Duck — Squaw Lake — Leech Lake. Then came Sourland Junction, and Sourland Falls.
Soon then they were passing the vast tract of the Sourland Mountain State Preserve on their right. Kolk asked Sophie if she could guess how large the Preserve was and Sophie said she had no idea — five thousand acres?
More like four million, Kolk said.
Four million! Sophie’s voice registered astonishment.
Kolk must have smiled, his visitor spoke so naively.
Sophie thought He could not imagine that I would know. His idea of me is that I could not possibly know.
At last in the waning light of early evening Kolk turned off a gravel road onto a narrow lane leading into the wooded interior and bounded by hostile signs — NO TREPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY — NO TRESPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY — which Sophie supposed to be signs posted by Kolk himself. In the backseat the bulldog began to whimper excitedly as if in anticipation of home. Sophie’s teeth rattled in her jaws, the lane was so bumpy. Kolk took them hurtling deeper into the woods — they were descending a steep hill, toward a creek at a perpendicular angle before them — a narrow creek rushing with water — it was the aftermath of the winter thaw, the creek was unusually high — Sophie steeled herself waiting for a bridge to materialize — waiting for the jeep to clatter over a crude plank bridge — but there was no bridge — to Sophie’s astonishment Kolk aimed his vehicle into the rushing water at a speed of twenty miles an hour — water lifted in flaring wings beside the jeep even as the jeep catapulted up the farther bank.
He’d shifted gears, the four-wheel drive held firm. Sophie gave a little cry of surprise — it had happened too quickly for her to be frightened.
Sophie asked why wasn’t there a bridge across the creek. Kolk said what was the need of a bridge — most of the summer the creek was dry, in the winter it was frozen over.
“The trick is to take it fast, when the water’s high. Slow, you get your feet wet.”
It was clear that Kolk took pride in his wilderness place. Sophie saw how beyond the clearing in which Kolk parked the jeep were mountains, a view of a valley, miles of pine forest she would have found beautiful but for her fatigue from hours of travel.
There was the log cabin, Sophie recognized from the photographs. A crude plank addition had been built onto it, unpainted, with a single small window. Close by was a storage shed, a chicken coop/rabbit hutch, what appeared to be a kennel, stacks of traps or cages. At the edge of the clearing were old, abandoned vehicles — a car stripped of everything but its chassis, a rusted pickup truck, a tractor missing its tires. A layer of gritty snow lay over everything, the air here was very cold piercing Sophie’s lungs as she opened the jeep door. Her attention was drawn to one of the cages stacked against the storage shed, some twenty feet away. She had a vague vertiginous sense that something — some small creature — had been trapped in this cage and made to starve to death and become mummified.
A thrill of dismay coursed through her Why have I come here, am I mad!
Quickly before Kolk could come around to her side of the jeep to help her down, as he’d helped her up into the cab, Sophie climbed down from the jeep. The cab was so high, she nearly turned her ankle.
The bulldog leapt out, panting and barking. Kolk was telling her something — about the cabin, or the Preserve — Sophie wasn’t able to concentrate — Kolk hauled out Sophie’s suitcase, beneath his arm. She was feeling dazed, light-headed. She was feeling unreal and could not have explained to her companion that she had not felt anything other than unreal since the morning she’d driven her husband to the hospital which had been the final morning of their life together.
Kolk broke off what he was saying. Sophie was staring at the mummified thing in the trap — she’d imagined that it had moved, quivered — not a creature but a dirt-stiffened rag. That was all.
The bulldog followed at their heels, quivering with excitement. A small barrel of a creature with brindle markings like splattered paint drops, a single sighted eye, the other milky and glaring. How like a pig the dog was, with its flattened snout, wriggling hairless bottom and piglet tail.
“S’reebi, get the hell away. Sit.”
Sophie laughed uneasily, the dog had a way of nipping surreptitiously at her ankles and feet. A trail of slobber shone on her leather shoe-boots. She perceived that the dog was her enemy, he would wait until Kolk was away, or inattentive, to seriously attack her.
Sophie asked what was the dog’s name? — she couldn’t quite make out what Kolk called him.
“‘S’reebi’ — ‘Cerberus.’”
Cerberus! — the three-headed dog of Hades.
Sophie remembered, Jeremiah Kolk had once studied classics,
Kolk took Sophie’s arm, to lead her in the direction of the cabin. Again this sudden intimacy between them, as in the airport when he’d taken her arm without a word and linked it through his own in a husbandly/proprietary manner.
The touch of his hand — his hands — was like static electricity, coursing through Sophie’s body.
Sophie heard herself stammer how beautiful it was in this place — “But so remote.”
She couldn’t bear to look at the man — the melted-away jaw, the exposed stubby teeth.
Flatly Kolk said: “No. A place isn’t ‘remote’ except in relationship to another place, or places. The longer you remain here, you will see it is just here. There is nothing ‘remote’ about it.”
Kolk led Sophie into the chilly cabin, carrying her suitcase. The thought came to her — a ridiculous thought — utterly unwarranted — that if she’d balked at the threshold of the cabin like a panicked animal resisting confinement, the man would have forced her into the cabin.
Here, a prevailing odor struck her — grease, scorch — cooking smells — the sweetish-yeasty smell of unlaundered clothes, bedsheets. The interior of the log cabin was a single large room with a low ceiling and few windows, like a cave; there was both a stone fireplace and an antiquated wood-burning stove; scattered on the floor by the fireplace were piles of crudely hewn logs with dried cobwebby bark still attached. A breeding place for spiders Sophie thought, appalled.
Yet the interior of Kolk’s cabin was attractive, in its way. Cozy, comfortable. A kind of nest. The bare-plank floor was uneven, and haphazardly covered with small woven grime-saturated rugs — one felt hidden here, protected. In a corner was a brass bed with a sunken mattress — Kolk’s bachelor bed? — heaped with blankets and bedclothes; in a narrow alcove, a small kitchen with open shelves to the ceiling, a two-burner stove and a dwarf-refrigerator.
She would be preparing meals in that kitchen — would she? Sophie smiled to think so.
Kolk’s furniture was mostly of brown leather — a massive sofa, matching chairs — furniture of the kind one might expect to see in an old-fashioned gentlemen’s club — once of excellent quality but now so badly worn its color had nearly vanished. There was a tarnished brass floor lamp with a parchment-colored lampshade, there were mismatched tables. These were items Kolk had purchased in a used-furniture store, Sophie supposed. Or rescued from a dump. Prominent on the wall beside the fireplace were unframed photographs of Kolk’s — wilderness scenes of the kind he’d sent her. Sophie saw how haphazardly they’d been mounted — tacked in place, or taped, as if the photographer had no wish to take time, to display his work as art.
She would do that, if things worked out between them.
Most of the wall-space was taken up with bookshelves. These were makeshift shelves of bricks and planks. So many books! — Kolk saw Sophie peering at one of the shelves — a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Other shelves were waterstained Modern Library classics — Plato, Euripides, Homer, Catullus, Augustine’s City of God, Marx’s Das Kapital, Darwin’s Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. There was an entire shelf of Latin titles. Seeing Sophie peer at these books Kolk said he’d bought the discards from the Latin Academy, a private school in St. Paul where he’d taught briefly — “and not very happily” — in the 1980s.
All these books, Kolk said. And more, in the next room. And journals in boxes, he’d never unpacked. All for ninety dollars.
In fact there was an addition to the cabin, at the rear — a “guest room” as Kolk called it — which, he said, he tried to keep in better condition than the room in which he and S’reebi lived. It was into this addition that Kolk led Sophie, switching on a light.
This was a small room, quite narrow, with a single small square window looking out into the woods. Beside the bed — a girl’s bed, less than adult-sized, built low to the floor — there was a space heater, which Kolk switched on. The bed was covered with an attractive blue-striped goose-down comforter — Sophie believed it was goose-down, testing it with her fingers — she wondered if Kolk had made this purchase especially for her, at a secondhand store? The comforter did not appear to be very soiled, nor did it appear to be worn. Even secondhand goose-down comforters were not cheap, Sophie knew. She felt a touch of vertigo, like sickness.
He will come here. He will make love to me here.
On the plank floor in this room was a handwoven Indian carpet of red, beige, and black patterns like lightning bolts. Here too the floor was tilted, just slightly, as in a fun house. There was a bureau of old cedar wood, badly scarred but with a subtle, beautiful smell — Kolk pulled one of the drawers open an inch, as if to encourage his reluctant visitor to unpack.
The crude plank wall was insulated in panels. On one of the panels was a row of pegs for clothes to be hung on. Sophie saw that a woman’s robe, of some dark-green satin material, with a peacock-tail appliqué on the back, was hanging here.
He wants me to know. There have been others. His life is an entirety, I will never realize.
“Here. This is new, this summer.”
It was a tiny bathroom — a lavatory — in an alcove behind the cedar bureau. It was hardly the size of a telephone booth. Sophie wondered how she was to bathe, if there was a shower elsewhere in the cabin. She could not bring herself to ask. Enough that there was a tiny sink in the room, and faucets; a toilet. On a towel rack, towels! Sophie heard herself thanking Kolk — how grateful she was sounding!
The towels appeared to be clean, she saw. There were only two of them and they were not very thick but for this, she was grateful.
In the corner of her eye she’d seen — something moving — quivering — the impress of a body on the blue-striped comforter — a female body — slender, girl-sized.
Sophie Quinn was herself a slender woman. Since her husband’s death she’d lost fifteen pounds. She felt her bones thinning like the bones of a sparrow.
Kolk said why didn’t she sleep, for a while. Kolk said she was looking tired.
“I’ll make supper. I’ll wake you for supper.”
Sophie was having a difficult time remembering — for the moment — where she was, and why she was in this place. Kolk? Jeremiah Kolk? Her frantic smiling eyes were fastened to the man’s upper face, she dared not look elsewhere.
Her companion too was tired from the drive — a six-hour round-trip in the jeep. But he was a stoic, he would not complain. With half his bewhiskered face he smiled at her — that was what it was meant to be, a smile — Sophie believed. Sophie wondered if one of the man’s legs was shorter than the other, a portion of muscle and cartilage blown away in the detonation. She thought He will sleep with me. He knows I can’t refuse him.
She wondered how it would be — to hold a man so mutilated, disfigured. There would be much more scar tissue than you could see, hidden beneath his clothes. Waves and rivulets of scar tissue, terrible to the touch.
Kolk left the room limping, without a backward glance.
Quickly Sophie shut the door. It had no lock! At least, not from the inside.
How exhausted she was, as Kolk had perceived. The touch of vertigo that had seemed to her sexual was sheer exhaustion, on the cusp of nausea.
Beyond the door she could hear Kolk talking to the bulldog, in a cheery-chiding manner. Having a guest in this remote place — a female guest — seemed to please and excite Kolk even as it provoked him to feeling, like his guest, edgy and apprehensive. Sophie listened closely but could hear no distinct words through the door. She wondered how soon — if ever — Kolk would speak to her in the intimate way in which he spoke to the barrel-shaped little bulldog.
As if nothing were yet at stake, all had been decided between them.
You summoned me. I came to you. It has been decided!
Hesitantly Sophie pulled back the blue-striped comforter. She saw with a stab of dismay that the comforter was more badly worn than she’d believed, though it had been — hadn’t it? — recently laundered; Kolk had washed it by hand — had he? — and hung it up to dry outdoors, which would have required days.
Beneath the comforter, bedsheets worn almost transparent from laundering. The sagging mattress beneath, and no mattress cover. Sophie snatched up the single pillow on the bed to fluff it out — tiny bits of down exploded into the air. Out of the bedclothes wafted a musty odor, that pinched her nostrils. She thought She has died here. My predecessor. Allowed to starve to death, to die and become mummified.
Sophie saw that the single window in the room was too small for an adult to push her way out — no more than two square feet.
So tired! She had no choice but to stretch out warily on the bed. No choice but to sink into the bed. This musty-yeasty-smelling bed. In her clothes and socks — she’d removed only the shoe-boots. It was terrible to be sleeping fully dressed but she could not risk undressing nor had she the strength to remove her clothing. She had not the strength to open her suitcase and hang up her things — she’d forgotten the suitcase entirely. The satin robe on the peg was hers to wear, she supposed. Though she would have to be naked beneath it, she supposed. She’d begun to pant, her eyeballs felt seared as if she’d been staring into the sun. She could never sleep in this terrible place! A grave-smell, wetted ashes, grit. If you breathed in too deeply you breathed in microscopic bits of skin, cell-particles. You breathed in the death of another. Her skin crawled with this knowledge. Hairs at the tender nape of her neck stirred. She felt an almost sexual yearning — the dark pit was opening beneath her, the tar pit, beneath the low-slung bed. In her haste to sleep she’d neglected to switch off the light, from a bedside lamp with a milk-glass base, an attractive little girl’s-room sort of lamp which Kolk had switched on: the bulb couldn’t have been more than sixty watts, not enough to keep Sophie from sinking into the tar pit which was the identical tar-pit that was beneath her bed back home…Gratefully she shut her eyes. Something black washed over her brain. Almost immediately she began to sleep. She was sobbing in her sleep, in relief. Her limbs twitched, she was gripping herself in a tight embrace, arms crossed over her chest and fingers at her rib cage. O hold me! help me! I am so alone and I don’t want to die please help me! She saw the man approach her — the man with the melted-away face, the exposed and grinning teeth — whose name she could not recall, at the moment. It was a name she knew, but she could not speak it. He had removed his tinted glasses, his soot-colored eyes were glassy, dilated. His soot-colored eyes moved over her caressingly. She saw the mouth inside the bristling beard. It was a scarred mouth and a mutilated mouth but it was a mouth she wanted to kiss, to comfort. Yet she could not move, exhaustion so gripped her in all the cells of her being.
“Sophie?”
There came a man’s voice, at a little distance. Someone was speaking her name through a shut door.
Now he opened the door, just slightly. Not wanting to upset or offend her he spoke through the crack, that mutilated mouth she couldn’t see from where she lay.
“Sophie? Can you wake up? It’s almost nine.”
In a daze Sophie opened her eyes. The lashes were crusted together with dried mucus. Her mouth was parched, aflame. In her stuporous sleep she’d been breathing through an opened mouth, for hours. How long? Nine o’clock? The wicked little two-foot-square window framed a tarry-black night.
Asprawl she lay in tangled bedclothes smelling of her body. At first she couldn’t recognize her surroundings, this cave-like interior she was certain she’d never seen before. The ceiling overhead was low like heavy clouds pressing near to the earth. Tendrils of cobweb trailed from the ceiling. Something wispy crawled across her forehead — Sophie brushed it away with panicked fingers.
“Sophie — hey? You must be starving. We should eat soon. I’ve made us something to eat. D’you need anything?”
Quickly Sophie said No! No she didn’t need anything. She was awake, she would join him in five minutes.
Her joints ached. Her neck ached. Her upper lip itched, badly. Beneath the rumpled linen shirt and sweater, a flaming sort of rash across her belly.
In a rush it returned to her — memory of where she was, and with whom. Who had summoned her.
The heavy down comforter had slid partway onto the floor. Sophie’s shoe-boots were tangled in it — she fumbled to put them on. She dreaded walking on this floor, without shoes.
In the tiny lavatory that smelled of drains and disinfectant she peered at her reflection in a mirror so cheap it appeared to have warped. Its lead backing had begun to poke through, like leprosy. She saw that her eyes were bloodshot and swollen and her mouth — her upper lip — was terribly swollen, enflamed.
Something had bitten her, in that bed.
“My God! A spider bite…”
She shuddered, in revulsion. She ran cold water into the sink, and wetted her swollen lip. How it throbbed, and burned! In the mirror she saw with dismay her dazed and sallow face, the bloodshot eyes with deep shadows beneath, the shiny-swollen upper lip.
The man would not find her attractive, sexually. Yet that morning early when she’d set out on her journey — her pilgrimage? — she’d been an attractive dark-haired woman with a ready if unfocused smile of whom it was said by those who wished her well How rested you’re beginning to look, Sophie! How young.
How rested was a sort of code, Sophie supposed. Such words were only pronounced to widows, convalescents, survivors of terrible disasters. How rested and not rather how devastated.
How rested and not rather how dead.
Hurriedly Sophie combed her hair, that was snarled at the nape of her neck. She fumbled to put on makeup squinting into the leprous mirror. Her fingers were oddly clumsy, she dropped the tube of lipstick not once but twice onto the grimy linoleum floor.
Blood rushed into her face as she stooped to retrieve the lipstick. Groping in the cobwebby corner of the tiny lavatory. So it has come to this, Sophie! Such desperation.
No time to unpack her suitcase. Kolk was waiting for her. She could hear the panting little pig-dog snuffling and clawing at the base of the door she had no choice but to force open.
“S’reebi! Come over here, damn you sit.”
Kolk growled at the dog, that reluctantly obeyed him. How like a TV sitcom this was — was it? Sophie’s mouth smiled, hopeful.
Kolk had lighted a fire in the fireplace. He’d laid cutlery, plates, swaths of paper towels on a crude wood-plank table in front of the fireplace. Not a TV sitcom but a romantic scene, this was. In the Sourland Mountain Preserve, in snowy April.
Sophie would have thought that the prospect of eating would nauseate her. In fact, the aroma of something meaty and gamey stewing on the stove made her mouth water.
Kolk said, with forced exuberance: “Soph-ie! How d’you feel?”
“I–I — I feel — wonderful.”
Was this so? Light-headed with hunger Sophie leaned against the table smiling. Wonderful! Wonderful. Wonderful.
Her joints still ached, she felt as if she’d been hiking for hours in her sleep. But she would betray no weakness to the man. Glancing about for something useful to do, some task to which she might be put — setting the table. And there were stubby candles she located on a shelf, to set on the table and light with trembling fingers.
How romantic, candlelight! Sophie was thinking how, at home, a thousand miles away, she and Matt had eaten their evening meals by candlelight.
Maybe at this very moment — was this possible? — the Quinns were sitting down to dinner, in that house in Summit, New Jersey. There was Sophie, and there was her husband Matthew Quinn. Could this be?
“What happened to your face?”
Kolk was staring at Sophie. He’d removed his dark glasses.
“A spider bit me — I think.”
“A spider? Where?”
Where do you think? Where have I been?
“While I was sleeping, I think.”
Kolk came closer, peering at Sophie’s face. He was embarrassed, chagrined. His eyes were dark, puckered at the corners, deep-set and bruised-looking. It was something of a shock to Sophie, to see Kolk’s eyes, without his glasses. The man’s eyes fixed on her face. “Christ! I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, no — it’s nothing. Really it’s nothing.”
Sophie laughed, certainly it was nothing. She touched her lip that had swollen to twice its size. Beneath her clothes other bites itched violently, she dared not scratch for fear Kolk would be embarrassed further.
Muttering to himself Kolk stomped into the other room, Sophie saw him on hands and knees peering beneath the bed, cursing and grunting. With a rolled-up newspaper he swatted at something beneath the bed.
When he returned Kolk was flush-faced, frowning. He said that Sophie could sleep in his bed that night — he would sleep in the “guest room.”
Now it was supper! A romantic supper by firelight.
Kolk brought the stew-pan to the table. Self-consciously he ladled the rich dark liquid into bowls. There was also multigrain bread, he’d baked the previous day. And dark red wine, Kolk served in jam-glasses. Sophie thought I won’t drink, that would be dangerous.
The stew contained chunks of fibrous root vegetables, onions and pieces of a chewy meat, a dank-flavored meat Sophie couldn’t identify. Hesitantly she asked Kolk if it was — venison? — and Kolk said no, it was not venison; she asked if it was — rabbit? — and Kolk said no, it was not rabbit.
Other possibilities Sophie could think of — raccoon? — groundhog? — she did not want to ask about.
Still, she was hungry. Her hand trembled, holding a spoon — Kolk reached out to steady it.
Kolk said they could go hiking in the morning. Or snowshoeing, if the snow didn’t melt.
“Snowshoeing! In April.”
“This is northern Minnesota. We’re in the mountains.”
Sophie laughed a little too loudly. Sophie saw that her jam-glass was in her hand, she’d been drinking after all. Thinking of her husband in his grave, reduced to ashes. She had done that — she’d signed the document, for the cremation. And yet, she’d gone unpunished. No one seemed to realize.
On the drive from the airport Sophie had asked Kolk about his life since Madison, since he’d dropped out of school, and Kolk had answered in monosyllables, briefly. Discreetly she’d made no reference to the alleged bomb accident. She’d made no reference to Kolk’s anti-war activism, that had frequently crossed the line into civil disobedience. Now, Kolk began to speak. He told her about his father — who’d “disowned” him. He told her about his older brother — who’d been shot to pieces in Vietnam. He told her how he’d incurred the wrath of Sourland residents when he’d volunteered to speak at local high schools, explaining the “imperialist designs” fueling the Gulf War. He’d been arrested, “roughed up” by Grand Rapids cops, for picketing the army enlistment office there.
“And then —?”
“‘And then — ’ what?”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing happened then. As much as I’d expected.”
Sophie had finished the wine in her glass. Sophie felt her swollen lip throb with heat. Inside her clothes, the spider’s-bite rash pulsed and flamed.
He will touch me now. Now, it will happen.
Beneath the table the fat panting dog, that had been clambering about their feet through the meal, gave a sigh like a grunt and fell asleep.
Kolk poured the remainder of the wine into their glasses. He’d eaten twice as much as Sophie had eaten, and drunk even more. His skin exuded a ruddy heat, like the heat of Sophie’s swollen lip. She found that she’d been looking at the disfigured flesh of his jaw, the exposed teeth, without feeling repelled. Suddenly she wanted very badly to touch Kolk’s jaw — the soft melted-away scar tissue.
Kolk stiffened as if sensing Sophie’s thoughts.
The yearning between them. Like molten wax, dripping and shapeless.
Gently Sophie said, “Your — injury. It was an accident —?”
Kolk shrugged. Kolk’s face was flushed still, stiff.
Sophie said, uncertainly: “We’d heard about it — an accident. An explosion. We’d heard that you had been — killed.”
Kolk laughed. Possibly, Sophie had taken him by surprise.
“It was good, ‘believed dead.’ Nobody follows you there.”
Kolk lurched from the table to fetch a bottle of whiskey — Canadian Club. Without asking Sophie if she wanted any he poured the amber liquid into their emptied wineglasses. Not what Sophie’s fastidious husband would have done, this was an act of barbarism. Sophie laughed, and tasted the liquid. So strong! Sophie was not a drinker of whiskey, Scotch or gin; she was not a drinker at all; a single, small glass of wine was her limit.
In the shifting firelight Kolk’s ravaged face looked like the face of a devil reflecting flames. Sophie thought This is what the surviving spouse deserves. A demon missing half his face.
She wondered what it would be like to be kissed by a demon missing half his face. The teeth! — if only the teeth would not touch her.
Kolk drank, and Sophie drank. Kolk began to speak in a confiding manner. Sophie was curious, and moved. Sophie was eager to hear of Kolk’s life, that had been hidden from her. With an air of aggrieved irony Kolk spoke of the “accident” — the “explosion” — except there are “no accidents” in the universe. He spoke of the “logic” of history. Or was it the “illogic” of history — what has happened once, cannot happen again in quite that way. Yet, it cannot happen again in any way that is very different. Kolk spoke of the “great vision” of the 1960s and of the “betrayal of the vision” — the “revolution” — by its most fervent believers. He spoke of having sacrificed a “personal life” for — what? — so many years after the wreckage, it wasn’t clear what.
Sophie said, “But I had a personal life. And that, too, is gone.”
Kolk was leaning on his elbows, on the table. His forearms were dense with muscle, covered in wiry black hairs like an animal’s pelt. Yet his beard was a bristly steel-color, and the short tough quills on his scalp had no color at all. The young Jeremiah was trapped inside the older man, only his eyes were untouched, baffled and wary.
Kolk was confiding in Sophie, he’d never been arrested. He’d left the state of Wisconsin within hours of the explosion and he’d never returned. He’d broken off contact with his friends — not “friends” but “comrades” — yet not “comrades” either — really. For years he’d moved about the country working with his hands. Learning skills with his hands: carpentry, plastering, roofing. He drove trucks, he learned to operate bulldozers. He used chain saws. He’d lived in Alaska, and in Alberta; he’d worked in New Orleans, and Galveston; he’d never returned to his family’s farm but he’d returned to the Midwest, to northern Minnesota, which was very like his home, yet isolated. And no one knew where he was. Only Sophie knew where he was, and who he was. In the Sourland Preserve he helped maintain the trails, kept roads open in winter. He was a forest ranger on the lookout for fires, in times of drought. He helped search for lost hikers. He brought back the injured, he knew CPR. He could go days — weeks — at a stretch in this place of utter solitude without encountering anyone or speaking with anyone. More than once he’d found bodies on the trails, in high ground where hikers weren’t likely to go in the winter. After the start of the spring thaw, he found them. Men — all had been young men, in their twenties or thirties — who’d gone out deliberately into the wilderness, into the snow, to lose themselves, to lie down and sleep in the numbing cold. He’d found them, lying motionless on the ground, so utterly still, peaceful as statuary, their faces strangely beautiful — for no decomposition had yet set in.
Sophie shuddered. “But — that’s terrible. Finding someone like that — must be very upsetting.”
Kolk shrugged. “Why? Whatever was rotten in them is gone — ‘cauterized.’ That’s the point of killing yourself.”
Sophie was thinking: Matt had liked — loved — hiking in the wilderness, before she’d known him. Then abruptly he’d ceased. That part of his life had ended. Rarely would he talk about it, he hadn’t been one to reminisce. The walks they’d taken together — the “hikes” — hadn’t been very arduous, challenging. After law school, Matt had gone into corporate law. He’d been a brilliant and ambitious student at Yale and he’d gone into a corporate law firm immediately after law school, in Summit, New Jersey. Initially he’d been successful — always he’d been moderately successful — always competent, reliable. Always he’d been well paid. But he’d been disappointed with the nature of his work and with his associates — never would he have called them “friends,” still less “comrades” — and by degrees he’d lost all passion for his work. Servicing the rich, aiding the rich in their obsession to increase their wealth while giving away as little as possible to others. Sophie had no wish to confide in Kolk that her husband had never been happy in his work — possibly, in his life. By his late thirties he was becoming a middle-aged man, his body had gone slack, fleshy. He’d lost his youth though he had always loved Sophie — it was his wish, that they not have children. They’d lived a life of bourgeois comfort of the sort Kolk would find contemptible, Sophie thought.
Strangely Kolk was looking at her now. Almost, a kind of merriment shone in his soot-colored eyes. In a voice that might have been teasing, or accusing, he said: “You’re a widow, are you! So, you must have money.”
Or maybe he’d said — “You’re a widow. So, you must be lonely.”
Money, lonely. It was logic, these fitted together.
Sophie said yes, Matt had left her money — and their house of course — but she worked, also — she’d worked for years at a university press that specialized in academic/scientific books — though she was now on a leave of absence.
Warmed by whiskey, Sophie told Kolk that she’d just finished copyediting a manuscript for the press by an anthropologist/linguist on the subject of twins. Most fascinating was a decades-long study of twins through their lives, twins who’d cultivated “private languages,” twin-survivors after the death of a twin, iconic and symbolic meanings of twins, that varied greatly from culture to culture. Kolk listened in silence, drinking. Sophie heard herself say that grief too was a “private language” — when your twin has left you.
Has anyone written about the “private language” of grief, Sophie wondered.
It was then that Kolk said in a halting voice that he’d lost his father — that is, his father had lost him. His father had disowned him, after Madison. More recently, his father had died — not that it mattered to Kolk, belatedly.
He’d lost his brother, that had been more painful. He’d been nineteen at the time. But a consolation to think that if his Vietnam War-hero-brother had lived, his brother, too, would have disowned him.
“Why?” Sophie asked..
“Because he was a war hero. I was the enemy.”
“I mean — why is it a ‘consolation’? I don’t understand.”
“Because he’d have ‘lost’ me — eventually. When, doesn’t matter.”
Kolk fell silent then, for some minutes. Beneath the table the bulldog snored wetly. The candles were burning down, luminous wax dripped onto the table like lava. Sophie saw that Kolk’s mouth moved as if he were arguing with someone. At last he said: “Friends I had here in Sourland, or thought I had — by degrees I lost them, too.”
“And why?” Sophie asked. Her veins coursed with something warm, reckless. “Why did you ‘lose’ them?”
Kolk shrugged. Who knew!
Sophie thought You need a woman in your life. To give your life direction, meaning.
You need a woman in your life to give you — your life.
In his slow halting voice Kolk was saying that he’d been waiting for — wanting — someone here in Sourland with him. He’d had some involvements with women, that had not worked out. This past winter especially — he’d been the most alone he had ever been, in his life. And when he’d thought of someone he wanted — when he lay awake plagued by such thoughts — it was she — Sophie — who came to him.
Sophie, whose face he saw.
But which face? Sophie wondered. Kolk had not seen her face in twenty-five years.
“You look the same. You haven’t changed. You…”
Sophie stared at Kolk’s fingers, gripping the jam-glass. She could not bring herself to look up at him, at his eyes. Was he drunk? Did it require drunkenness, for Kolk to speak in such a way? Was what he said true? — how could it be true? Sophie could think of no reply that would not be facile, coy, clumsy — her heart had begun to beat absurdly, rapidly.
Wanted. Was it good to be wanted by a man, or not so good?
Kolk confessed, he hadn’t been sure if he remembered her name. But he’d remembered Matt Quinn’s name.
Kolk was easing closer to Sophie. Hairs on the nape of her neck — hairs on her arms, beneath her linen shirt and sweater — began to stir, in apprehension. Unless it was sexual anticipation, excitement. For it had to be a good thing, to be wanted. Kolk said that when he’d “lost his way” — his “faith” — he’d “wanted to die” — he’d “come close to dying.” He’d hiked out into the wilderness — in Alaska, in Alberta, here in Minnesota — thinking how sweet, how beautiful just to lie down in the snow and sleep, shut his eyes. It would not be a painful death once you got over the initial shock and pain of the cold.
Sophie shuddered. Another time she wanted to touch Kolk, to comfort him.
“And what about you, Sophie? D’you ever think about such things, too?”
“No.”
“Yes. I think you do. I have a feeling, you do.”
The sudden interrogation made Sophie uneasy. Her swollen lip was throbbing, she saw how the man stared at it, as if fascinated. Elsewhere on her body the lurid little bites itched, throbbed with heat.
To be wanted was the reward, as it would be the punishment. To be wanted was not to stumble out into the snow and die, just yet.
Sophie conceded, yes she might have had such thoughts. But she hadn’t meant them.
Kolk said yes. All thoughts we have, we mean. No escaping this fact.
Fact? Fact? Sophie’s head spun, she had no idea what they were talking about.
In a lowered voice like one suggesting an obscene or unthinkable act, that dared not be articulated openly, Kolk said they could do it now — together. This night, in Sourland…
Kolk splashed more whiskey into their glasses. Crude jam-glasses these were, clumsy in the hand. Their commingled breaths smelled of whiskey. A twin-language, Sophie thought. No language more intimate than twin-language.
That was why she was here: her twin had summoned her.
This night. Together. Love me!
Then, Kolk surprised her. Saying — this was in a murmur, a mumble: “See, I saved his life. That was why.”
His life? Whose?
Sophie smiled quizzically. Was she expected to know this? What exactly was she expected to know?
In an aggrieved voice Kolk was saying that that was why he’d hated him — why Matt Quinn had hated him. Why he’d turned against him. His brother.
His brother?
He, Kolk, had known Matt Quinn long before Sophie had. Their connection was deeper, more permanent. On the canoe trip to Elliot Lake when Matt had almost drowned. Afterward, they’d never talked about it.
In a wistful voice Sophie said, “You loved him! — did you.”
Kolk spoke haltingly, not entirely coherently. He said that the canoe had overturned in white-water rapids, on a river south of Elliot Lake. It was their second day of canoeing. There were two canoes, his and Matt’s was in the lead. In the rock-strewn stream the canoe had plunged downward much faster than they’d expected, and had overturned — both men were thrown into the water — Matt struck his head on a rock — his clothes were soaked at once — except that Kolk had been able to grab hold of Matt, he’d have been swept downstream and drowned.
So fast it happened, like all accidents. A matter of seconds and the rest of your life might be required to figure it out.
Matt had thanked Kolk for saving his life. He’d been deeply moved, he’d been badly frightened, some sense of himself had passed from him in the white-water rapids in the Ontario wilderness, and was gone. Never would Matt Quinn regain whatever it was he’d lost.
“We never talked about it afterward,” Kolk said.
Sophie said, “Why did you cut yourself off from us! You could have seen us, all those years.” Quickly Sophie spoke, a little drunkenly. Saying that Matt would have wanted to see him — he’d have forgiven him, for their political quarrel. For whatever it was, he’d called Matt. An ugly word — fink. Sophie had never heard that word uttered, before or since. Whatever those old quarrels had been — “escalated resistance” — the Viet Cong, Cambodia, Kissinger, war criminals….
She was wounded, hurt. She was very angry. Fumbling for the jam-glass. She was very drunk now. If she were to stand up — the room would tilt, lurch, spin, collapse. This was funny to anticipate — she had to be cautious, not to succumb. For she was angry, and not wanting to laugh. And when the man moved closer, she bit at her lip — her freaky swollen lip — and did not move away. Seeing her hand reach out to Kolk — to Kolk’s stiff-raised shoulder — to Kolk’s face — daring to touch the melted-away flesh at Kolk’s jawline, that was like hardened wax, serrated scar tissue.
She felt a sick-swooning sensation, vertigo. Badly she wanted to kiss the man’s mouth, that was mutilated. Kolk grabbed her hand, twisting the fingers to make Sophie wince.
Was he angry? Repelled by her? He touched her swollen lip, that seemed to fascinate him. Another time he murmured Sorry! Leaning close to Sophie and suddenly he was looming over her, upon her, seizing her face in his hands, kissing her. Sophie’s instinct was to shrink away but Kolk held her tight, unmoving. There came then a strange sort of kissing, mauling — the way a large cat would kiss — a panther, mountain lion — the man’s mouth was wet, hungry, groping — the man smelled of whiskey, and of his body — a sweaty-yeasty smell — a smell of unwashed clothes, bed linens, flesh — Kolk might have tried to bathe or in some way cleanse himself but dirt was embedded in his skin, beneath his fingernails. The most thorough soaking could not cleanse this man. Kolk had become a mountain-man, in a few years Kolk would be a crazed old mountain-man, beyond reclamation. No woman could live with such a man, it was folly for Sophie to have thought she might live with such a man. Wildly she began to laugh, she could not breathe for his tongue in her mouth, his hot panther-mouth pressed against hers and sucking all the oxygen from her. With the years Kolk’s whiskers would sprout more wildly from his jaws, like jimsonweed. His soot-colored eyes would grow crooked and glaring in his bald hard head like rock. His stubby-yellow teeth would grow into tusks. Winters Kolk would hibernate, in bedclothes stiffened with dirt. He and Cerberus the guard-dog of Hades, pig-pitbull with a milky eye, a freak like his master in a stuporous winter sleep, in their own filth wallowing, no woman would consent to such a life — had Sophie come here to Sourland, to this life, of her own volition?
Yet Sophie was kissing the man — out of schoolgirl politeness, good manners — out of schoolgirl terror — Sophie dared not resist, as the man hungrily kissed her — he was a predator, ravenous for prey — he kissed and bit at her lips — he sucked into his mouth the swollen lip — this lip that beat and throbbed with venomous heat was delicious to him — and there was the taste of the man, in Sophie’s mouth — a whiskey-taste, an acrid-taste, a taste as of ashes — the man’s gigantic tongue protruding into her mouth — snaky, damp, not warm but oddly cool. He will strangle me. Choke me like this. For she could not breathe, she could not move her head away from the man’s mouth, the man’s tongue. She could not free her head from the grip of the man’s fingers. She did not want to offend the man. She knew, a woman dares not offend a man, at such a time. In the throes of desire. In the throes of a ravenous appetite. A woman who has touched a man as Sophie had touched this man, dares not then retract the touch. She did not dare to enflame him. She did not dare to provoke him. She did not dare to insult him. She did not wish him to cease liking her. She did not wish him to cease wanting her. It was essential for her survival in Sourland, as in all of the world, that the man not cease wanting her. Sophie knew this — she had been a wife, and she was now a widow — and so she knew this — with a part of her mind, calmly — yet she was losing control, her limbs seemed to be going numb — along the pathways of her nerves, eerie rippling flames. The spider bite throbbed in her lip. In other parts of her body spider bites throbbed. Like any besotted lover Kolk was saying her name — a name — Soph-ie — Soph-ie — she felt a thrill of triumph, at last the man knew her name. She had made him know her name, finally. She felt a thrill of triumph, the man was wanting her. Now wanting began, it could not be made to stop.
Soph-ie! Won’t hurt you Soph-ie — Kolk was urging her to come with him — pulling at her, impatiently — his strong-muscled arms lifted her to her feet — he was half-carrying her somewhere — not to the brass bed in a corner of the warm firelit room but into the other, smaller room — back to the room with the girl-sized bed, the blue-striped comforter in a tangle on the floor. Now Sophie was resisting, or trying to resist — the man was pulling at her clothes — Sophie had the option to help the man undress her, or risk the man tearing her clothes — he was laughing in delight, or moaning — he was very excited — Sophie did not want to impede his excitement — Sophie did not want to antagonize him — he was breathing heavily, arduously — still he was kissing her, hunched over her — this was a kind of kissing — the bulldog had been wakened rudely and was rushing about barking, clicking his toenails against the plank floor — Kolk cursed the dog, and kicked the dog out of his way — as one might kick a child’s toy dog out of the way, as if the fat little dog weighed no more than a child’s toy dog Kolk kicked S’reebi aside — pushed Sophie onto the bed and with his foot shut the door behind them, as the dog yipped and whined like one bereft.
Kolk was telling Sophie that he loved her — he loved her and he wanted her — he loved her, that she had come to him — in Sourland, where he’d dreamt of her — for so long he’d dreamt of her in Sourland — mistaking the woman’s agitation for passion, for a sexual need ravenous as his own — was this it? — was this what was happening? — for it was true, Sophie clutched at the man — as a drunken dancer clutches at her partner, so Sophie clutched at the man, to keep from falling — each was only part-dressed now — the man’s shirt was open, the man’s trousers were open — he’d pulled the cashmere sweater over her head — the linen shirt he’d unbuttoned hurriedly, tearing off a button — on the bed amid the rumpled bedclothes the lovers were lying asprawl — like lovers drowning together they were clutching at each other’s bodies — Kolk pushed Sophie’s legs apart — Kolk pushed Sophie’s thighs apart with his knees — he’d pulled down her fine-woolen trousers, he’d torn at her white silk panties — his fingers were inside her suddenly — Sophie screamed, Sophie gripped his shoulders with her fingernails Oh oh oh! the man’s fist was rubbing against her, hard between her legs, her crinkly pubic hair, her tender vagina — with his knuckles the man was rubbing against her — in a rhythmic beat the man was rubbing against her — he was breathing hotly, crudely into her face — in terror of drowning Sophie clutched at him, his back, his shoulders, his muscled upper arms — in terror she was kissing him, trying to kiss him — this was a way of placating the man, kissing the man — hoping to control the man or at least to accommodate him, she feared the man’s roughness, she feared the man’s superior strength, she feared the man’s impatience and his abruptness and his waywardness which was the waywardness of a runaway vehicle on a steep grade and she feared the pain he could inflict if he wished to inflict pain — she felt a quivering sort of sensation, a sudden desire for him — a desire delicate as the fluttering of a candle flame — if the man was rough with her in an instant all sensation would vanish, her sense of herself that was her bodily self would vanish, a net of sheer sensation, the slightest mis-touch tore the net, she would feel nothing except discomfort, pain. His knee between her legs, the man was moaning, angry-sounding the man was moaning for possibly he believed that Sophie liked this, a woman would like this, the woman’s response was passionate and not fearful, the woman’s response was ardent and not panicked, it was sexual yearning that made her cry, pant, half-sob, now the man was mashing his hot scarred face against her thigh, the soft skin of her thighs, and between her legs where she was open to him, split open like a nut — she gave a cry, a sharp startled cry, the man had touched the very quick of her, with his mouth, his tongue — as if he’d reached inside her — as if in his fingers he held her quivering heart.
Trying to speak but she could not speak. Her throat was shut up tight, her eyeballs turned in their sockets. Trying to protest No! Trying to tell him No she did not want this not like this, she was frightened of him, she was terrified of such sensation, now truly she was resisting him, trying to push him off. The whiskers like steel wool scratched her skin. The rough serrated skin like an animal’s hide was wearing her skin raw. She had never kissed a man with such a beard before, the sensation was so very strange. She had never kissed a man with a mutilated face, a ruin of a mouth, the sensation was so very strange. The man lay with his full weight on her, as a wrestler might lie on his opponent, naked, sweating, determined to triumph. Like some bare smooth-skinned creature she squirmed and thrashed beneath him, she could not breathe, another time he was smothering her, his hungry-sucking mouth on hers was suffocating her, his penis was immense and terrible as a club, she could not believe the size and hardness of this club sprouting from the man, such a thing thrust against her blindly, stupidly, a blind brute thing, that had no idea where to enter her, by sheer force pushing inside her as she gasped for breath her eyes flung open Oh! oh oh in the girl-sized bed that creaked and jangled beneath their struggling bodies she was being pounded — hammered — beaten into submission — beaten into unconsciousness — she was clutching at the man’s heaving sweat-slick shoulders, her nails tore and broke on the man’s back, she felt scar tissue like Braille beneath her fingertips as between her legs she was torn open, eviscerated as darkness rushed at her, into her, in the bliss of utter extinction.
Waking then, later. How many hours later. In the tangled and smelly bedsheets. And the man was gone from her. Rising painfully — she was naked, barefoot — her hair in her face and her eyelashes stuck together — she began to pull on her clothing — what she could find of her clothing — the fine-woolen trousers, the linen shirt, the sweater — quickly and clumsily she dressed — she stumbled to the door, that was shut — she turned the knob, and the door opened — she had not expected the door to open.
In the other room the man turned to her, startled — in waning firelight his face was a demon’s face, she could not bear to see it.
Sophie told him she wanted to leave. She was desperate to leave this place. She would leave now, he must drive her back to Grand Rapids now, she’d been very sick, her head pounded. She’d been very drunk. She was certain, she was not drunk now. Except she’d been sleeping with her mouth agape, the interior of her mouth was parched as sand.
Kolk came to Sophie, to touch her — to calm her. Sophie threw off his hand, like a snake. Sophie could not have said what was wrong, why she was so furious with the man. She began to scream — Take me away from here. I hate it here take me away from here. The man seized her arms, her elbows. The man was speaking harshly to her. The man was shouting at her. Sophie kicked at him, or tried to. Sophie wrenched her arms free and beat at him with her fists — his head, shoulders. He cursed her, and pushed her back into the room. He pushed her back onto the bed. In the doorway, the little pig-dog was barking hysterically. Flames rippled in Sophie’s brain, blue-rippling flames of madness. With furious strength she struggled with the man, like a panicked cat, trying to claw him, trying to bite but the man was too quick for her. He left her — he shut the door — she heard the door being locked from the outside and knew that it had happened now.
All that she had dreaded in Sourland, had happened.
What happened next, Sophie would not fully recall.
She’d been furious with her captor — she’d been hysterical — she shook and turned the doorknob, to no effect — she pounded her fists against the door, to no effect — the door was solid planks, it would not yield. In the other room the fierce little dog continued to bark, there was a hysterical elation in the dog’s barking. The man stood close outside the door and spoke to Sophie — he was telling her to be still, to be quiet, to lie down and try to sleep, he would not hurt her, he would not touch her, but she could not leave.
In a voice of forced calm the man spoke to Sophie but she knew, the man was furious, shaken. His manhood had been insulted, he would never forgive her. He would keep her captive forever, he would murder her. He was not to be trusted. The mock-calm of his speech, the “logic” of his manner — he was not to be trusted. Between her legs Sophie was raw, luminous with pain. Something liquid-hot ran down the insides of her thighs, revolting to her. She smelled of her body, and of the man’s body. She could not bear it, she’d been violated by him. She would never forgive him. The man was saying she couldn’t leave by herself — it was the middle of the night — and he wasn’t about to drive her. He had driven more than six hours that day, he was not going to drive her anywhere now. In the morning, maybe — if she still wanted to leave. In the morning — maybe — he would drive her to the airport at Grand Rapids.
This, he told her: but she paid no heed to him. She did not trust him, she detested him. Her body crawled with the memory of having been touched by him, there was no part of her that had not been violated by him. She was screaming until her throat was raw, she was pounding at the door with both her fists. Everywhere, her body was covered in bruises. Her fists throbbed with pain, her knuckles were skinned, bruised. She could not bear it, the man had locked the door and would not open it. The man had locked her in the room, and would not release her. She was his captive now, he had triumphed over her and would not release her until she was broken by him, annihilated. In a faint she stumbled back to the bed. All her senses were alert, spinning. Her brain was so alert, so alive the nerve-endings pained her. She was so distraught she’d begun to hyperventilate, she could not breathe normally. She crawled onto the bed, she burrowed beneath the blue-striped comforter that was a soft-down comforter, and kept her warm.
She woke later, it was very quiet. The air in the cave-like room was close and stale and chilly but beneath the comforter, she’d been warm. She stood now, shakily. She was not so furious now. The hysteria had subsided. Her quick sharp vaulting breath had subsided. She breathed more normally, her thoughts came more normally. The door — she tried the door — was still locked. She was at the man’s mercy — was she? He would wait for her to beg him — would he? Through the single window she saw a bright moon. Half the moon’s face had been battered, there were bruises, creases. Yet the moon was cunning, glaring light into the clearing. Snow had ceased falling hours ago, now the sky was clear. The air was very cold, a scrim of snow remained on the ground, un-melted. She tasted vomit at the back of her mouth — she’d been very drunk — but no longer. With frantic fingers she managed to loosen the window — it was opened by a crank. Her heart beat quickly, in astonishment. It was not possible, what she was doing! — while the man slept in the other room drunk and oblivious.
She managed to open the window, that was no more than two-foot-square. She pushed her coat through it — she pushed her gloves, her scarf. Her shoe-boots, that fell with a thud. She pulled a chair to the window and climbed onto it trembling with excitement, she forced herself through the window as a cat would force itself through a small space, squirming, writhing. She forced herself through the window like one giving birth, the creature to which she was giving birth was herself.
The night air was very cold. She was panting, her breath steamed. Where she would go, how she would find her way to a road, or to another house — she had no idea. She could not think coherently, the circuits of her brain were jammed. Enough for her to escape. Enough for her to escape the spiders’ nest. The man’s crude groping hands, the thing he had jammed up inside her. The man’s hungry mouth, so like her own — she had escaped it. She was sick with disgust, to recall what she’d escaped. On the snowy ground she groped for her coat, she shoved her arms into the sleeves. She had lost the gloves — she couldn’t find the gloves. She would tie the wool scarf around her head, her face. She would protect her face, that smarted from the man’s hateful beard, against the cold. Her swollen lip was not so swollen now yet ached, throbbed. The man had gnawed at her mouth like a ravenous animal. She set off behind the cabin, in the direction of a trail she’d seen the previous day. How long ago that had been — a lifetime ago!
She was too clever to follow the driveway out to the road for the man would simply follow her in the jeep, he would bring her back and lock her in the cabin. And so she set out into the Preserve, ascending the hill behind the cabin. When she looked back she saw that the cabin was darkened, or semi-darkened. Smoke drifted upward in languid white streams like dreaming thoughts. The man was asleep — was he? She had escaped him — had she? What a fool he was, to imagine he could keep her captive — she laughed to think of how surprised he would be, in the morning. She did not want to think that the man would track her in the morning, like an animal. He would set the ugly little dog after her. He could follow her footprints in the snow, the dog would follow her scent. She did not want to think this, she was desperate not to think this. Though knowing better she began to run. The trail was slippery from fresh snow, the exposed rock-strata were slippery, a fall in the woods could be fatal to her, she dared not risk it. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to walk at a normal pace, she was desperate to escape the man. By moonlight she could see the ground, not clearly but as in a dream, just enough to make out her footing. She saw a faint trail, rotted leaves covered with snow. With childish gloating as she thought He won’t find me. By the time he looks for me I will be a hundred miles away.
How surprised she was then — within a few minutes the man was calling after her — Soph-ie! Soph-ie! She was shocked, and she was frightened. Truly she had thought she could escape the man, in the wilderness. Though she had no idea where she was going she understood that she was going away from him. Yet he’d wakened, and discovered her missing — that must have happened. And now he was outside, and following her. She began to run, desperate and panting. It was hopeless to run from the man yet she could not help herself. She had no wish except to escape the man. To punish the man by escaping from him, even if she injured herself. Thinking If I am lost, I will die. I will die in these millions of acres of wilderness. That will be his revenge.
Behind her then she heard his voice sharp in the cold air, like knife-blades. “Soph-ie! Soph-ie!” He was in pursuit of her, and he was walking — hiking — fast. He knew the trail, he had hiked this trail hundreds of times. She was in terror that he would set the dog after her — but she didn’t hear the dog. Behind a tree, she hid. She hid, and tried to rest. She’d been ascending the trail — this was a mountainside trail, strewn with boulders — an ancient volcanic upheaval, the Sourlands of north central Minnesota — she was badly short of breath, climbing the trail. Also she was very cold, trembling. Her eyelashes were stuck together as if frozen. Her eyes spilled frozen tears. Her husband had died and abandoned her and this now was her fate, in Sourland. Even the spider bites on her body throbbed with the heat of accusation. There was a hot ribaldry to these itches. She fumbled to pick something up with which to protect herself — a broken tree limb. She would strike the man with it, if he came too close. If he set the dog after her, she would murder the dog. She was running, hunched-over. Her limbs ached, her head ached, she tasted vomit. She slipped on an icy rock, fell and cut her hand. She forced herself to her feet. She was talking to herself, whispering. She’d become a hunted creature. The man shouted after her knowing exactly where she was. From the first, he’d known. She could not hide from him, her footprints were revealed to him. He carried a flashlight in one hand and in the other hand he gripped a walking-stick like a figure in a Grimm’s fairy tale. He would seize her and drag her back to the cabin by her hair. She would be cleaved in two, the man would jam his fist into her, his penis hard as a club deep inside her body. She would be cleaved in two, she would die. She could not survive another assault, she would die.
Something screamed nearby — a screech owl. There was a blurred frenzy of wings not twenty feet away overhead in the pine boughs, an owl striking its prey in the shadow of a boulder, a rabbit’s shriek, the tiny death was over in an instant.
All this while the moon hung crooked in the sky. The man was hunting her, swiftly yet not in haste. His movements were never careless, he knew the trail by night. In his left hand he held a flashlight and in his right hand he gripped a five-foot walking-stick. It is a terrible thing, to be pursued in the night by a man with a five-foot walking-stick. Sophie tried to hide, she’d crawled behind one of the great white boulders like the eggs of a giant prehistoric bird. Soph-ie! Come here! You’ll hurt yourself for Christ sake.
She heard the click! of the walking-stick. The stick against the frozen earth. Striking the rocks, deflected from the rocks. By now it was well past midnight. By now the moon was careening across the sky, toward a distant horizon. Sophie scrambled to her feet, stumbling into the wild for she’d lost the trail. Yet telling herself I want to live. This is proof, I want to live and I will live. She slipped, she fell. She fell hard, injuring her wrist. And her ankle — she’d turned her ankle. Oh! her ankle had twisted beneath her, she cried with pain, disappointment. She was sure she’d heard the bone crack. She was sick with loathing for herself. For now the man was close behind her, closing the distance between them. The light of the flashlight swarmed onto her, blinding her. How he’d known that she’d left the cabin, she could not imagine. She’d been so quiet, so circumspect! Now the man loomed above her. He’d put away the flashlight, he had no need of the flashlight now. And there was moonlight, that came splotched and strangely glowing through the trees. Like a cornered animal she struck out at him, a small vicious creature, a mink, a ferret, she had only her claws to protect her, and her teeth. But the man was too quick for her, and wary. She could only flail with her hands, that were numb as with frostbite. She was on the snowy ground now, amid the rocks, sprawled, helpless. She was crying softly, all passion had drained from her. The man had triumphed, he was lifting her, grunting as he lifted her, in triumph, gloating. She knew, he had to be gloating. He had to be laughing at her. She had not the strength to scream at him to tell him how she hated him, she despised him, all that he’d done to her and would do to her, he was repulsive to her. In silence he lifted her, his arm around her waist. He was a man who would say little, Sophie knew. She would have to communicate with such a man in a way more primitive than words.
He held her, standing. She could not have stood, on her own. Her right ankle throbbed with pain. Her clothes were torn, her hair was wild as tangled briars. Still he held her steady. She was sobbing, pushing at him, yet weakly now. There was no hope, she could not escape him. She’d gotten less than a mile from the cabin, for all her cunning and desperation. By daylight you would be able to see how far. By daylight he would laugh at her. The pig-bulldog would laugh at her. Footprints in the snow, her prints and his prints in pursuit, until he’d caught up with her, hauled her to her feet, he would half-carry her back down the trail to the cabin where a fire still smoldered in the fireplace, where the bulldog had been confined and yipped frantically as they approached. Bitterly she was saying she didn’t want to be with him, she didn’t want this. She had made a mistake, she didn’t want this nor did she want him. She was sobbing with pain, frustration. She leaned against him, with great difficulty she walked, her right ankle was near-useless. Still the man held her, walked with her bearing the brunt of her weight as they made their way cautiously in slow downhill skids, on the icy rock. His was a perverse and unyielding strength, she understood would not fail them. She could feel the heat pulsing from his body, through the nylon parka. She asked how much farther it was back to the cabin and the man said, “Not far.”
Many thanks are due to the editors of the magazines and journals in which, often in slightly different versions, these stories originally appeared.
“Pumpkin-Head” in The New Yorker.
“The Story of the Stabbing” in The Dark End of the Street, edited by Jonathan Santlofer.
“Babysitter” in Ellery Queen; reprinted in Horror: The Best of the Year 2006.
“Lost Daddy” in Playboy.
“Bonobo Momma” in Michigan Quarterly Review; reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses 2009, edited by William Henderson.
“Bitch” in Boulevard.
“Amputee” in Shenandoah.
“The Beating” in Conjunctions.
“Bounty Hunter” in The Guardian.
“The Barter” in Story.
“Honor Code” in Ellery Queen; reprinted in The Finest Crime and Mystery Novellas of the Year, edited by Ed Gormand and Martin Greenberg.
“Probate” in Salmagundi.
“Donor Organs” in Michigan Quarterly Review.
“Death Certificate” in Boulevard.
“Uranus” in Conjunctions.
“Sourland” in Boulevard.
JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is a Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the 2010 recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
www.harpercollins.com/joycecaroloates
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
STORY COLLECTIONS
By the North Gate (1963)
Upon Sweeping Flood and Other Stories (1966)
The Wheel of Love (1970)
Marriages and Infidelities (1972)
The Goddess and Other Women (1974)
The Poisoned Kiss (1975)
Crossing the Border (1976)
Night-Side (1977)
A Sentimental Education (1980)
Last Days (1984)
Raven’s Wing (1986)
The Assignation (1988)
Heat and Other Stories (1991)
Where Is Here? (1992)
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Selected Early Stories (1993)
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994)
Will You Always Love Me? (1996)
The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque (1998)
Faithless: Tales of Transgression (2001)
High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966–2006 (2006)
Wild Nights! (2008)
Dear Husband, (2009)
Jacket design by Allison Saltzman
Jacket photograph © Karl Gough/Trevillion
SOURLAND. Copyright © 2010 by The Ontario Review. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East — 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10 022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com