Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Lying on the creamy-colored sofa, scattered pillows around her, vivid green robe, the peep of bare toes, expression somber, intense, wholly surrendered to the book she was reading—which he saw with a thrill of pleasure was Shelley’s Selected Poems: his very book! She knew nothing of him of course. Sensed no alien presence. He would stay only a few minutes, then leave as quietly as he’d come, for the last thing on earth Colin Asch wanted was to frighten or upset or in any way embarrass Dorothea Deverell: “I’d rather blow out my brains.”

  In the stark unflattering sunshine of midday Dorothea Deverell had looked to Colin Asch’s sharp eye slightly less beautiful than he recalled from the evening when he’d first seen her, and on the afternoon of the music recital through his magical smoked lenses, but now by lamplight the woman’s youthful beauty was restored. Alabaster-smooth skin, eyes so dark as to appear black … the curve of the brow, and the narrow curve of the nose … the perfect slightly pursed (wetted?) lips. As she read Shelley’s poetry she was sounding the words to herself like music. She read the poetry as if by that means she were reading Colin Asch.

  No human face but the sculpted face of Saint Teresa. The Italian sculptor Bernini. Was it Bernini? The perfect face—was it Saint Teresa?—lifted in dreamy ecstasy, sleepy eyelids hooded, and there stood before her a smiling angel with a golden spear just drawn back from plunging the weapon into her heart—or was it Leonardo? In that instant Colin Asch was excited but made no move to touch himself not wanting to desecrate the moment.

  Moonstruck.

  He lowered the binoculars to give his numbed forearms a rest, then raised them again. Old-fashioned heavy binoculars but high-powered: he’d found them poking around in the Weidmanns’ basement gathering dust on a shelf with broken-stringed old tennis racquets, the kind with wooden frames. If he had asked his aunt or uncle for the use of the binoculars they would have said yes of course but he was too shrewd to ask: never ask any more favors than you require. Just take. And keep your mouth shut. (Colin intended to replace the binoculars as discreetly as he had replaced the diamond earrings and the onyx cufflinks when he decided to stay with the Weidmanns as their guest … though he hadn’t troubled to replace the money in Aunt Ginny’s purse, knowing, rich bitch, she’d never miss such small change, and she hadn’t, and even if she had would she dare accuse him to his face … him?)

  Inside the house, the telephone conversation had acquired a new urgency. Dorothea Deverell no longer twined her fingers in the cord but was gesturing with that hand, sitting up, speaking intently … Crowning, and smiling, and smiling frowningly, even nodding, baring her teeth in a grimace of emotion. What was she saying? Was it a quarrel? Suddenly, the perversity of the situation struck Colin Asch: for Dorothea Deverell, showing emotion, waving her hand in the air, behaved, as people do in such instances, as if the party at the other end of the line could see her while knowing of course that he (or she) could not—yet, simultaneously, unknowingly, she was in fact being observed through binoculars. And for the first time Colin Asch felt a wave of guilt, shame. For he was taking advantage of the woman he admired most in the world, and he could not rationalize that this would have given her pleasure—ah, hardly!

  Yet he did not lower the binoculars. It was late—nearing midnight. The white-glaring moon had shifted its position overhead. As if sensing his presence, Dorothea Deverell glanced upward, staring at the window, frowning severely—but Colin knew she could not see him; he was too far away, and hidden; and, in any case, the windowpane of a lighted room, at night, reflects only the interior of the room. Dorothea Deverell ran her fingers through her hair in a sudden impatient gesture that seemed to Colin out of character. Was she about to cry? Was she laughing? A spasm of unreadable emotion passed over her face. What was she saying? To whom was she saying it? And at so late an hour? A lover? Did Dorothea Deverell have a lover?

  Colin Asch took a step backward as if someone had shoved him.

  “I wouldn’t like that.”

  This was not the first time in Colin Asch’s life that he had been drawn powerless to resist into the orbit (as he thought of it, and wrote of it in the Blue Ledger) of Woman; for there had been, many years before Dorothea Deverell, the summer when Colin Asch was thirteen years old living with relatives and he’d gone with them to their Wyoming ranch where there was a woman named Mindy—or was it Mandy?—the young blond wife of a neighboring rancher with whom Colin’s relatives were friends, and this woman taught Colin to ride a horse, and this woman saw in Colin’s face what no others wished to see. Too bad you aren’t my kid! she’d joke, roughing his hair, giving him a poke in the arm as boys do with one another, but she had her own children, horse-riding loud-mouthed children who hated Colin Asch, and that summer he’d followed her with his wide staring sleepless eyes and was discovered several times outside her house in the early morning before sunrise where he hadn’t any reason to be or any right so there were cruel jokey things said and she stopped coming around and Colin knew they all talked behind his back; thus before they left at the end of August he took his revenge and though no one could prove it had been Colin Asch who had set the fire they seemed all of them to know; thus he came to hate Mindy (or was it Mandy?—he hated even the name) and the family he’d lived with, whose name he had never recorded in the Blue Ledger. And at the Monmouth Academy there was Mrs. Kendrich, the chaplain’s wife who had befriended Colin Asch from the start, giving him books to read and offering critiques of his poetry and praying with him, and when the rumors began of the headmaster’s secret circle it was Mrs. Kendrich who went to Mr. Kreuzer; thus there was bitterness between them and division at the school … and the night that Colin Asch discovered the body in the bloody bedclothes and ran outside barefoot in the snow it was Mrs. Kendrich who found him … who saved his life. And at the inquest she had protected him.

  And there were one or two others recorded in the Blue Ledger—no more. In the course of fifteen years, no more. And none of the women had been so wonderful as Dorothea Deverell: none so beautiful, and none so well-bred and ladylike, so refined, so intelligent too—for Dorothea Deverell was a match in intellect for any man. (Only by chance, by way of a remark of Colin’s aunt, had he learned that Dorothea was the author of three small art books: monographs, with color plates, on the American artists Isabel Bishop, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Dove! Of course she was too modest to have mentioned them herself when Colin had asked about her work.)

  And she is an heiress. One day (perhaps) to inherit yet more.

  And she is independent of any man.

  And she is pure. And good. And yet unjudging.

  Of the one tenth of one percent of the world’s population that stands apart from the rest she is clearly one of us—yet speaks softly and sympathetically.

  Her influence is palpable as the moon’s on the tide but it is an influence for peace, for calm, for love, for surrender. Not the fierce pounding surf but the gentle lapping on the beach like the approach of sleep. Like the joy of the Blue Room itself—no sound, no shadows! No gravity!

  So Colin Asch recorded in the Ledger, sitting on his bed, 4 A.M. and as awake as at midday and writing, writing … his pen moving rapidly across the page as if entranced with no regard for lines, margins, red-inked columns. (The Ledger, appropriated from a closet of office supplies at the Monmouth Academy, was an accountant’s book, of an awkward size, its covers of stiff cardboard and much battered and stained over the years. Especially toward the front pages were missing, crudely torn out. Other pages were covered in handwritings of various types, in various shades of ink, predominantly blue but also green, red, purple, and crimson; there were erasures that had resulted in serious tears, mended with transparent tape; there were sections crossed out so elaborately that no one not even Colin Asch himself could have deciphered them. For the past six years or so the code Colin used had been consistent but before that he’d used other far more tricky codes; thus if he looked back to earlier entries he was often stymied by their meaning though
he never doubted that, had he the time and patience to puzzle over them, he could crack his own ingenuity!) Like a man running with a pyramid of eggs in his hands, heartstoppingly beautiful exotic eggs he saw them, the aqua of robins’ eggs but larger, painted eggs perhaps as at Easter, like a man entrusted with beauty of exquisite fragility he was desperate to record certain wonders, to set down permanently certain visions and revelations entrusted to him, which had their focus entirely upon Dorothea Deverell and granted no significance at all to the fact or facts that so pleased others—that of the numerous job interviews Colin Asch had had in the past two weeks several offers had been made to him and excellent offers too for prospective employers were bowled over by the young man’s appearance manner intelligence sensitivity wide-ranging background and experience in many walks of life above all by his ability to speak and to “relate,” and he had decided after all to accept the position at WWBC-TV though the beginning salary was modest and might forestall for a while Colin Asch’s moving to an apartment of his own. How exciting, dear, how lovely, Aunt Ginny’d said, clasping his hands warmly; you could see the affection shining in the old girl’s eyes, Aunt Ginny was one of the few people on this shitty planet who gave a shit for Colin Asch and he knew he could rely on her, if there was some stiffness beginning with Martin Weidmann—and Colin Asch’s powers of detection were raised to the nth power in such matters, just try to put something over on this boy you cocksuckers—he knew she would protect him, take his side, for it would come to that eventually, in such circumstances living in such close quarters like a family though the Weidmanns had had sense enough to give Colin his own key and to allow him complete privacy, still it always came to that in the end—a woman bravely defending Colin Asch against some detractor or enemy.

  “Fuckers.”

  And then, a moment later, since the hoarse word hung strangely in the air: “But things are changed now.”

  It was true: Colin Asch had a job in television, he’d performed so charismatically on the talk show—Dave Slattery’s On Your Toes—calls to the studio Hartley said were five to one in his favor which was “fantastic” and “unprecedented” because Slattery’s viewing audience was usually conservative if not reactionary and Slattery did his best to trip people up on camera but Colin Asch maintained his good-natured calm smiling dignity remembering always to look directly into the camera with the red light burning to make eye contact with the invisible television audience; thus he won even Slattery’s grudging respect it seemed—and viewers you would not predict to be tolerant of weird ideas like vegetarianism and the “rights” of animals, not least Colin Asch’s long shining Christly pale hair, were wild for him as Hartley Evans said. And she said, each time she introduced Colin Asch to one of her co-workers, “He’s a natural for the medium.”

  And indeed Hartley Evans’s co-workers liked Colin Asch very much too. Shook his hand warmly and sincerely. Congratulated him. A few days later in the studio the manager interviewed him just casually over coffee in Styrofoam cups; yes there was an opening, a sort of assistant’s assistant, you could say it was a sort of internship, not much salary to begin with but “there’s definitely a future,” and Colin told him of his experience in Germany and also a job he’d had with a small television station in Galveston, Texas, sure he could get references if that was necessary, if that wouldn’t hold things up—“I’m eager, you know, to get started.” The manager shrugged off the need for references in this instance, the job was practically on-the-job training after all, a handshake and it was settled, and Hartley Evans slid her arms around his neck afterward, nuzzling and biting his lower lip, fiddling her fingers in his hair as if she had the right, but Colin Asch was suffused with pleasure and allowed it, allowed her anything she wished, childishly passive even malleable in her hands until of course it was time for him to assert his dominance, enter her between her legs, “make love” as it was called—his mind floating and skittering free of his laboring body there between the slightly fattish white thighs opening and closing in an increasingly frenzied rhythm until with a scream (Colin Asch could not have said it was from her throat, or from his) it was over, and an hour later it seemed, though in fact it must have been the next morning just before noon, he dropped by the old renovated Tudor mansion that was the Brannon Institute just to inform Dorothea Deverell quietly but proudly that he had a job—“I’ll probably be on camera in about six months”—with WWBC-TV in downtown Boston, his face lighting up happily at her face lighting up happily at his good news. He was mildly disappointed when she confessed she hadn’t seen the talk show, rarely watched television she said, but clearly she was impressed by the position, by what it meant for Colin Asch’s future in the media; he heard himself saying excitedly that “the electronic media is the soul of America, the communal soul,” and with this Dorothea Deverell puzzlingly concurred, and though he’d meant to mention her books to her—that he intended to buy them, to read them, to discuss them with her—he’d had time only to skim through his aunt’s copies thus far—it was wild! so many interviews for jobs, so many telephone calls, in the past five or six days!—all that slipped from his mind in the exigency of the moment but he came to his senses quickly when Dorothea Deverell invited him to sit for a few minutes, realizing that he’d better be discreet and get the hell out: he knew she was busy (the telephone had rung on her desk, she’d put the call on hold) and he was busy too, expected down at the studio early that afternoon. Just thought I’d drop by to say hello, he said, and Dorothea Deverell smiled and said, Any time, Colin, and all accomplished smoothly absolutely naturally with not a single misstep. At the door hesitating, glancing back—“I suppose I share your disdain for television, Dorothea, but it is a job: a beginning.”

  And she said at once, “Oh, yes, of course.”

  The world is a lonely place, lonely as the grave. We live in silence primarily—and in solitude—and this fact the “media” would deny. From this flows the power of the “media” for both evil and good.

  These observations Colin Asch recorded thoughtfully in the Blue Ledger, after his first week of assistant manager’s assistant at the station. One day soon he would reveal his findings to the television audience—if the fuckers who ran WWBC gave him a chance.

  “—I mean it just seems so damned unjust that a woman of Dorothea’s qualifications and, let’s face it, her quality should be treated like that,” Ginny Weidmann was saying into the telephone, as Colin casually passed the door. “Especially since Howard Morland has always been so fond of her and these past few years—is it his health? is it his heart?—he has certainly taken advantage of her goodwill, and, you know, her capacity for—I don’t know—her capacity for not wanting to see the truth of the situation. I’m not saying of course—who am I to say?—that Roger Krauss’s nephew or whoever he is isn’t qualified, for all any of us knows even more qualified—no, but I didn’t say that, Sandra! For God’s sake don’t misquote me!—but I am saying that Dorothea has a right to the directorship, a moral right, quite apart from her qualifications, and the board of trustees should be forcibly reminded of that if necessary.” She paused; she listened; Colin Asch, hovering just beyond the doorway, paused too, his heart going hard but slow in his chest. Ginny said with a harsh exhalation of breath that might have been a sigh, “No, nothing is definite, it’s all just rumor. Martin says we should let things develop as they will—for one thing, Howard hasn’t officially announced his retirement—and Dorothea’s programs this season have been so successful, I’m sure even Roger Krauss can’t fault them—I really can’t see, you know, how the board could vote against offering her the directorship, how, you know, they could actually do it. I mean, Evelyn Mercer is a trustee and she is such a sweet, basically a sweet decent fair-minded woman—of course she is the only woman; that’s one of the problems. Roger Krauss has made it into such an issue of sex—of gender—talking so irresponsibly as if Dorothea has her present position only because she is a woman and that the board did her a favor by hiring h
er!”

  Colin, in his car, driving in early evening traffic along the boulevard, on his way to inspect an apartment in Lathrup Farms Mews—a brand-new apartment-condominium complex actually located in the suburb of Danvers, immediately adjacent to Lathrup Farms: Colin was “looking at” apartments now—whistled from start to finish, flawlessly, that classic song of Schumann’s, “Widmung.”

  December 19: Colin Asch is twenty-eight years old.

  Lying awake sweating and calculating … if there were some tactful way of allowing Dorothea Deverell to know of the birthday he was sure she’d want to have him, and the Weidmanns of course, to her house for dinner, for hadn’t she promised weeks ago and she surely did not seem to be the kind of person, the kind of woman, who fails to honor her promises, he has happened—ah, really just by chance! really by chance!—to see her now and then in the village, in Lyman’s (the quality grocer where Ginny Weidmann shops too, and Colin cheerfully goes on errands when he’s in the mood) and in the dry cleaner’s and in the library where it’s clear everyone knows her name, everyone likes her—faces lighting up as she approaches, as if she were bringing a warmth of pure radiant light—and in the drugstore making purchases, her back to him poised and straight in the attractive black cloth coat with the filmy fur collar, then crossing Main Street to the parking lot to her car, the classy Burgundy-red Mercedes Colin Asch has come to know so well, he observes quietly from a post near a building just to see: if the car’s motor starts, or if, you can’t always tell, the car’s wheels might spin in the ice; there is a treacherous layer of hard rippled ice beneath the powdery snow, and Dorothea Deverell might need help.…