Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The riposte was pointless but cruel; cruel because pointless; and Dorothea was so silent on the drive back to the Institute that at last Colin Asch said, in an almost frightened voice, “That man—is he an evil man?”

  Dorothea laughed and said, “Oh, hardly evil! Just not so very nice.”

  “He seemed to know you,” Colin said hesitantly.

  And Dorothea said, “He’s someone connected with the Institute—one of the trustees,” but because the day was so brightly sunny, the mere fact of driving in Colin Asch’s handsome Cutlass Calais so innocently pleasurable, she decided to say nothing more of Roger Krauss; or even, so long as it could be postponed, to think of him. There would be ample time for Krauss later, at home. In her bath. In her bed. In the blurry hallucinatory hours of the night when Dorothea Deverell was so frequently wakened from sleep as by an urgent voice in the very room with her: and lay awake, most nights, for a long time, stiff and resistant and helpless.

  Colin Asch persisted, glancing at Dorothea, “He seems to have upset you, though. What was the name? Roger Krauss?”

  Dorothea said, almost gaily, “He didn’t upset me at all. I’m not that easily upset.”

  At the Institute she thanked Colin Asch for the elegant lunch—overpriced as she’d feared, but delicious. “Now I hope you and the Weidmanns will come to my house for dinner sometime soon, before Christmas at least,” she said, shaking the young man’s hand; and he, frowning, purse-lipped, retaining her hand just a fraction of a second too long, said, “Christmas is a long way off, Dorothea.”

  Dorothea Deverell lived, alone, seemingly by perverse choice, at the curve of a cul-de-sac called Marten Lane; there were no more than six or seven houses on the lane, each old, made of brick or stone, possessed of a crumbly storybook sort of quaintness though not—yet—certifiably “historic.” Dorothea’s house, bought with a small legacy when she was thirty-one, was made of an alveolate gray stone; the date 1878 had been chipped into one of the front steps. There were, facing the street, two square-cut windows on each of the floors, framed by black shutters in need of fresh paint; the roof was black-shingled, with a look of pushing downward, like a low brow. Inside, the first-floor rooms were large enough, without being spacious; the upstairs rooms, three bedrooms and an old-fashioned bath, were rather cramped. The single staircase at the center of the house was narrow and steep as farmhouse stairs—“Of course this was a country place when it was built,” Dorothea felt obliged to inform visitors new to the house. “It was probably a farm; this area was outside the village limits.” There came then the inevitable exclamations—how lovely, how perfect for you, how lucky you were to find it—and these facts Dorothea knew to be true. An irony of her circumstance was that, at the time she had been distractedly house hunting, she had resolved she would find a place, for herself, for life; she would never remarry, would never again expose herself to the risk (now needless: for wasn’t she self-supporting?) of unspeakable loss. And it was Agnes Carpenter, at that time more generally sociable and even, it had seemed, tolerably fond of Dorothea, who had told her about the house, urged her to telephone the elderly owner (a widow) before the house was officially listed with a realtor.

  Though renovated at some expense by previous owners—new kitchen, new electrical fixtures, new plate glass windows to the rear—Dorothea’s house exuded, still, a broody damp air, as if sullen secrets were retained in its walls that no amount of light or cheery interior decorating could dispel. And the ceilings, while not literally low, had the look of so being; Dorothea’s guests, entering her dining room, nearly always glanced up at the ceiling, and the taller men had an instinct to duck. Entering Dorothea’s bedroom, Charles Carpenter too glanced upward, a faint nervous smile on his lips. He was a tall man, about six foot two, and low doorways made him uneasy.

  In the house, Dorothea’s favorite room was not her bedroom, despite its romantic memories and hopes, but her living room downstairs, which centered upon a large fieldstone fireplace, and which she had furnished with a mélange of things, some from the days of her marriage, some inherited, some newly purchased: a marble-topped coffee table with Italian Provincial legs, a pair of Queen Anne chairs cushioned in dusty rose, a impractically cream-colored sofa in spirit like a chaise longue, outfitted with numerous pillows, upon which, in the evening, she liked to lie. There was a faded Chinese rug laid upon the hardwood floor that was too small for the room, but no matter. There were hanging plants, plants on windowsills, potted plants listing in corners. There were four antique clocks of which three were in working order but struck the hour at unexpected times; Dorothea liked their waywardness, suggesting as it did that time did not matter but might be a function of individual eccentricity. The coffee table was heaped with magazines and books, for Dorothea Deverell had become one of those persons who begins one book, lays it down and begins another, lays that down and begins yet another, and so until several are in orbit simultaneously; none powerful enough to dispel the others, yet none so negligible as to be shelved or tossed away. Since girlhood Dorothea felt obscurely that to open a book—a serious book, at least—was to enter voluntarily into a contractual relationship of sorts with its author: one was obliged to stay with it until the end, or, at the least, out of civility, one was obliged to make that effort. She read too with an almost fervid concentration, a groping sort of intensity, as if in pursuit of elusive life-altering truths or ghostly images of herself tossed up in distant mirrors in unknown rooms. And the old romance of reading returned to her, that evening, curled up on the sofa in her rather shabby cashmere bathrobe, her paperback of Shelley’s Selected Poems in her lap.

  She read, pausing now and then to recall that day’s so very unexpected excursion and to wonder at Ginny’s young nephew, who had orchestrated it—in fact (recalling the reservation, made without Dorothea’s knowledge) engineered it. In his presence Dorothea had felt alternately charmed and overwhelmed; now she was left, as with the aftertaste of too much wine drunk at too early an hour, slightly disoriented. The flamelike intensity of his being was admirable but exhausting: she would not want to see Colin Asch again soon, or too frequently—the remainder of her afternoon at the Institute was headachy and fatigued, as if the hour and a half spent at L’Auberge’s darkened interior had sucked her vitality from her even as it nourished her. (For the food had indeed been delicious, quashing the need for Dorothea to prepare any evening meal for herself at all.) At one point, driving her back to the Institute, Colin Asch had said apologetically that he hoped he hadn’t talked too much and hadn’t interrupted her too frequently—it was an old habit of his, he said, but only when he was in the presence of certain people. Most of the time, he said, he spent by himself, in silence, and that silence spilled over—he had used those actual words, “spilled over”—into time spent in company with other people; but when he was in the presence of certain people something seemed to happen. “I guess I’m just lonely. For the right kind of friend.” This, Dorothea had not wanted to pursue. She’d murmured something about his aunt’s having told her that he had a good many friends—hadn’t that young woman Hartley Evans telephoned him?—but this Colin Asch himself did not care to pursue, as if unworthy of their attention or as if in fact he hadn’t given it much thought.

  Like many quiet, intelligent, congenitally introverted people, Dorothea Deverell prided herself on her powers of analysis, of self and others. They were not assertive powers in any public sense, but they gave her solace at such times, for it seemed to her that the puzzle Colin Asch represented—Ginny Weidmann had referred to him as a “mystery” but surely that was exaggeration?—could be logically worked out if Dorothea applied herself to it. For one thing, the young man’s attraction for her, very likely temporary, was that of a son for a mother. (It would not surprise Dorothea in the slightest if she resembled the long-dead Mrs. Asch. She would ask Ginny to show her snapshots.) But the primary fact about Colin Asch was not really that he was an orphan—there are many orphans, after all—but that he was
a remarkable person: possessed of a lightning-quick mind, a true if mercurial intelligence, a lively tireless curiosity, and, rare in a young person, a respect for the feelings of others that had seemed, at times, almost morbidly heightened. He had watched Dorothea’s face closely; he had stared almost greedily—like an infant staring up at the adult faces above it, equipped by nature with the neurological mechanisms that would provide in time a decoding of their bizarre utterances, but only in time.

  How exhausting, though, such sympathy! Dorothea thought. Her impetuous young escort had several times, and always successfully, made a stab at guessing her thoughts.

  Like Dorothea Deverell herself, though in a more extreme fashion, Colin Asch had yet to “connect” with life. You could see it in his frank innocent open gaze before he opened his mouth to say a word. He had no career, and his prospects were as unformed as those of a bright eighth-grader. Too much attracted him—indeed, enthralled him. A young man of his gifts who spent his time driving aimlessly about the country, dropping in on relatives on the spur of the moment, or backpacking through Europe or northern Africa—clearly, no one had taken him in hand; no one had forced him to apply himself to the effort of growing up. It was admirable perhaps that he was looking for a job—Ginny Weidmann seemed to think so—but for what sort of job was he suited? His chatter about himself that day, both evasive and artless, had indicated he had never completed any course of study, had never earned any degree. Art school seemed the most pathetic sort of chimera.

  Dorothea perceived in Colin Asch, as in herself, a fatal lack of strength, drive, ambition. Not an excess but a deficiency of ego was the problem. He was a young man who could assert himself with parking-lot attendants and waiters but had clearly failed at asserting himself in the matter of life. A tempestuous uncharted energy, like that of Shelley’s West Wind, seemed to blow him about from place to place, and Dorothea had winced slightly at his ready employment of the word “evil”—even while doubting that he meant it in any literal sense. It was a child’s word, and it had sprung childishly from his lips. But he had not meant it, Dorothea concluded—he was too like herself.

  When Charles Carpenter telephoned that evening (by the ease of his voice Dorothea knew he was not at home but at his office in Boston, perhaps, or in some neutral place) and asked Dorothea about her day, she did not tell him about Colin Asch, reasoning that the little excursion would never be repeated, but she did tell him how cozily content she was, how almost blissfully happy, curled up on her sofa, reading a yellowed paperback book dating from her Bryn Mawr days; and what was his opinion of such verse—

  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

  Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

  And, by the incantation of this verse,

  Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

  Be through my lips to unawakened earth

  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dorothea asked, a little breathless. “We take Shelley for granted.”

  “Yes. Beautiful,” Charles Carpenter said.

  4

  “Beautiful.”

  Colin Asch’s breath streamed whitely from him, warm blood-heated vapor that immediately turned cold. Almost directly overhead a full moon shone: bone-white, powerful as a beacon of light, making his eyes ache pleasurably. Moonstruck: what did it mean? Was it real, was it a scientific fact or some old archaic superstition? I was moonstruck, Colin Asch would afterward record in the Blue Ledger, but he would not record his nervous excitement, his hopeful smile as he lifted the heavy binoculars another time. Not to blame: MOONSTRUCK.

  Inside the warm-lit house some fifty or sixty feet from where Colin Asch stood in the shelter of a snowy Douglas fir, she lay curled on a sofa in the innocence of believing herself unobserved. Colin understood by her position, bare feet tucked beneath the hem of the beautiful green robe, pillow behind her at about the height of her shoulder blades, that this was a familiar pose, a favored place: no one had ever seen Dorothea Deverell quite like that, nor had she ever seen herself thus.

  The telephone had just rung, and Dorothea Deverell had set aside her book, and now she lay back with the telephone receiver crooked against her left shoulder, the fingers of her right hand twining … nervously? happily? … in the phone’s tight-curled cord. Colin wondered to whom she was speaking, but it was true wonder, not jealousy, for it made him happy that she was happy, if those were the valid signs of happiness he observed in her face.

  This was not the first time that Colin Asch had positioned himself shrewdly in such a way as to observe unobserved Dorothea Deverell, but it was the first time he had trespassed on her property, the first time he had watched her in the sanctuary of her home where, that night, she was doubly safe, protected by the walls of the house and by her friend outside. Thus he felt no guilt, or nearly none. He guessed that, if Dorothea Deverell suspected his presence, she would throw open the door of the house to call to him. Colin, is that you? Colin? Why are you outside in the cold, why don’t you come in here …?

  He could imagine her voice, that lovely lifting bell-like voice.

  But of course she was still on the telephone, still curled up so comfortably on the sofa, her mahogany-dark hair glossy in the lamplight, her pale skin with a look of alabaster radiance, for even if one day Dorothea Deverell should suspect that Colin Asch was observing her at such private times or more public times, he understood that she was the kind of woman, a natural-born lady, who would never want Colin to know that she knew … for the specialness between them was just this: that each “knew” while appearing not to “know.” For this knowledge if too crudely revealed would ruin everything, the very sacredness of the understanding … like acting in a play while simultaneously “acting” and aware of both the audience and yourself, thus the danger of forgetting entire passages of dialogue, bringing the play itself to a premature end.

  But she knew. Didn’t she know? She knew—in a way. As Colin Asch had known immediately. Weeks ago. The first exchange of glances, the startled recognition. Soul-mate was Shelley’s word, soul-mate the word of the poets. Mate of one’s soul, and it is through the eyes the souls initially declare themselves, while words, groping, barely adequate, can only follow.

  And that day—their time together. When she’d listened so kindly, with such sympathy. Her smile, her warm intelligent eyes, her small hand warm and dry in his, yes thank you, thank you it has been a lovely surprise, though he understood she’d shrunk a little from him too; he would have to be careful in the future not to overwhelm her.

  Talking too much, asshole. Cool it.

  Guess I’m just lonely. For a friend.

  Afterward for a long time he was scared and excited, eyes kept filling up with moisture, spilling over, running down his face, and his pulse was fast, faster than he liked, as if he’d swallowed something unknowingly or been injected in a vein without his knowledge or signed consent. Driving the Olds along streets he didn’t know, on the expressway going west for a while, laughing, talking to himself, for a while singing fragments of church songs (“Come, O Holy Redeemer” was the one he seemed to know best) from his days in the boy choir before his voice changed, those days (years) remote to Colin Asch now and indifferent as a scene in a photograph or glimpsed on the far side of a river, and you can look at it, even hear it, without the contamination of emotion or desire; it is all other people, and they have nothing to do with you. Toward night when the streetlights switched on—how he loved that instant! like the first instant of creation!—the mania began to stabilize; he was able to meet H.E. as they’d planned in Luigi’s near the television studio and she had good news for him about the job he’d interviewed for, though she was pouty and sullen at first because out of innocent forgetfulness and not calculation he was almost half an hour late, but he was so sweet he was so apologetic so loving she forgave hi
m of course and they went back to her place and Colin Asch was laid and that stabilized him a little more, You’re so beautiful Christ I’m crazy about you can’t get enough of you love love love you baby, so sincere and almost pleading as if he were frightened of her of the power she’d have over him when all the while his brain was working fast and smooth as a machine and he explained that he couldn’t stay the night since his aunt and uncle were expecting him and he was already late. Thus he got away just past 10 P.M., kissing her at the elevator his arm so tight crooked around her head she winced in startled pain and their mouths bruised together, tongues sucking like the real thing oh sweetheart I’ll call you tomorrow try to see you tomorrow if I can wait that long in the elevator descending wiping lipstick and spittle from his mouth but he liked her really, did like her—she’d kept her word about helping him and the job would be his Colin Asch’s first step in the television business though he’d have to hold out for a slightly higher salary, he’d earned more than that as a taxi dispatcher and a lot more than that working on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago. “Are you serious about that salary?” he’d ask, smiling his sweet quizzical smile; then he’d say with a soft little laugh, “Well—I guess you are.” He got in the Olds and drove up to Lathrup Farms, parked at the mouth of Marten Lane in the shadows where no one was likely to notice the car, then crossed silently slantwise through lots neighboring 33 Marten Lane where Dorothea Deverell lived—tall beautiful fragrant trees lightly encrusted with snow, and the rears of the houses exposed like sawing through a skull: wild!—but he took no unnecessary risks, this wasn’t the time, eyes dilated in the dark and senses alert as a wild anmal’s in the presence of its enemies, until he was at the rear of Dorothea Deverell’s stone house where he’d never been before (though he had twice during the day when he knew Dorothea Deverell wouldn’t have been home strolled past the front with no intention other than simply recording with his eyes), standing crouched in the shelter of an evergreen, raising the binoculars shakily to his eyes. And there suddenly she was. There—she was.