Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It absorbed his rapt attention, that Charles Carpenter was Dorothea Deverell’s lover and no one knew save Colin Asch. He was their protector, in a way. You could think of it, that way.

  He yearned to draw Charles Carpenter off into a corner of the room and say confidentially, man to man, “I know, Charles. But your secret is safe with me.”

  Carpenter had a tall, slim, slightly round-shouldered figure, probably rather slack-muscled at his age; his hair appeared grayer than Colin recalled. His long lean horsy face was handsome but creased as if with worry or tiredness … still, Colin could see why Dorothea Deverell or another woman might admire him. So reasonable. So solid. So patrician. So like the father you’d maybe choose if you were a baby again. And had a choice.

  Which wasn’t the way the fucking world was constructed.

  Then they were summoned to dinner, and there were exclamations at the splendor of Colin Asch’s table—the scented candles, the roses, the gleaming English bone china and sterling silverware—and after all his guests were seated and the champagne poured, Colin resplendent in his tuxedo and red silk vest rose to toast Dorothea Deverell in a high, quavering voice—“our guest of honor: one of the most accomplished women of her generation”—and Dorothea laughed, exclaiming, “My God, Colin—really!” as if they were old casual friends, but Colin insisted and spoke excitedly of the several books she had written, and her years of dedication to the Institute, until he fell abruptly silent and stood staring down the length of the table at her—he had more to say but could not utter the words. In any case the mood at the table was festive and unserious, Colin Asch’s awkwardness scarcely mattered, went perhaps unnoticed, so he ended, blushing, “—anyway, let’s drink a toast to Dorothea Deverell, and wish her health and happiness forever!”—and the moment passed.

  Colin sat down. His head was ringing as if it were inside a clapping bell.

  He wanted suddenly savagely to murder everyone. All of them.

  No—he was in a giddy exhilarated mood. Never in his life had he attempted anything like this: an ambitious dinner party. He was telling the women close beside him that he thought there was nothing happier on earth than to bring people together in festive settings. Susannah Hunt, pleasantly drunk, lifted her glass and cried, “I’ll drink to that!”

  Now there followed the elaborate procession of courses, the realization of Colin Asch’s fevered consultation with the caterer and his several changes of mind: oysters forestière followed by Chateaubriand of beef with espagnole sauce and wild rice and intricately cut vegetables followed by a salad of red lettuce and Belgian endive followed by French cheeses followed by strawberry chiffon pie followed by coffee, tea, liqueurs in tiny sparkling glasses, Swiss bitter-chocolate dinner mints … and though Colin Asch who’d paid for all this tried gamely to eat he had not much appetite. He’d gotten hooked on the champagne and red wine, alternating glasses until the champagne ran out, doing a good deal of talking and laughing less fearful now of getting loud he had every right to enjoy himself freely at his own fucking party entertaining the entire table with anecdotes of travel in Germany, Greece, Morocco … and then there was a general conversation about a racial incident that had taken place in Roxbury a few days previously in which Colin Asch as a former “television person” could participate, his opinion in fact solicited by none other than white-haired aristocratic Howard Morland, who was clearly quite taken with his young host … and talk shifted to AIDS, and to politics, and to an event that was scheduled soon to occur at the Brannon Institute, and to area restaurants, particularly several new and highly recommended restaurants of which Colin Asch had not heard, thus could inquire (of the gourmet Paul Wylie) after them … and the meal was passing swiftly or was it passing with dreamlike slowness … and Colin Asch saw that Dorothea Deverell was happy … was happy … engaged in conversation with friends at her end of the table and hardly more than glancing now and then (ah, how discreetly! how skillfully!) at her lover Charles Carpenter, who in turn did not frequently glance at her; they must be old well-practiced lovers, accustomed to such situations.

  But Colin Asch had the power to end all that.

  There was spirited conversation about the stock market, and Third World poverty, and the ever-imminent “global crisis,” and when the way cleared for Colin to volunteer his opinion he launched into a lengthy earnest explanation of the X-factor in human genetics—did they know that one tenth of one percent of the human race is instinctively bred to lead the remainder? that there are by nature “master” beings and “slave” beings? that social institutions that fail to acknowledge this are doomed? A sharp slightly shrill edge to Colin Asch’s voice signaled to certain of his guests that this subject meant a great deal to him and perhaps at the moment he was not to be contradicted, but others registered nothing out of the ordinary so there followed a lively discussion, confused and disjointed and a bit combative, until Colin heard himself talking too loudly and clamped his jaws prudently shut, making an effort simply to smile, to nod, to let the ignorant assholes talk, he was magnanimous enough to accommodate dissenting points of view. The bosomy perfumy women at his end of the table were united in any case in trying to make him eat—“Colin the food is delicious, you simply must eat it”—and Colin fumbled with his fork and chewed a bit and swallowed, washing whatever it was down with a big mouthful of red wine then shaking his head like a dog to clear it, staring down the length of the table past the tall glittering candles and the ruby-red roses in their crystal vase at Dorothea Deverell so beautiful in her white lace jacket, her eyes shining like a young girl’s. He raised his voice to thank them all, suddenly, “For coming here! Tonight! For being my friends!” His mouth worked as if puzzled: “I want to be your friend! To be one of you! I am one of you, for Christ’s sake!” He was breathing quickly, almost panting. Their many eyes both intimidated and excited him. He added, gripping the edge of the table as if he feared falling from his chair: “I want to be good!”

  This released a chorus of protesting voices, primarily female, Ginny Weidmann’s and Susannah Hunt’s the most earsplittingly soprano: “But you are good, Colin! You are good! You are an angel! Silly boy, Colin!”

  So that quieted him for a while, stirred his emotions so he was in danger of crying, his head lowered and his eyeballs sliding as if greased in their sockets: weird! Then suddenly it was nearing the end of the meal—so suddenly coming to an end!—and Colin Asch lurched to his feet, inspired another time, smile wide and bright as a jack-o’-lantern’s, and again he lifted his wineglass high above his head and proposed a final toast: “To somebody not with us tonight who made all this possible”—and there was a flurry of amused quizzical speculation about who this mystery person might be—but Colin Asch winking and grinning refused to say, repeating, “To someone not with us tonight who made this all possible by being not with us tonight”—and at this Dorothea Deverell flinched visibly and cast Colin a look of such shocked disapproval, such transparent warning, he bit his lip and went silent, swaying at his place smiling stupidly the glass still lifted above his head … the gaiety at the table awkwardly fading … until Mrs. Hunt in throaty dry Tallulah Bankhead style said, “No doubt an absent parental figure—the very best kind.” And this naturally provoked a fresh round of mirth, at least in those ignorant of Colin Asch’s “tragic” background.

  Then Colin was sitting again, his heart pounding wildly.

  Thinking: She saved me.

  Thinking: Saved us both.

  With the excuse of wanting to help serve the coffee and tea in person Colin Asch was able, unwitnessed, to stir into the cup of herbal tea intended for Dorothea Deverell the finely ground drug he had prepared, as easily and innocently as if he were stirring sugar into it, and this he served to her without arousing the slightest suspicion, and returned to his seat at the far end of the table nursing a final glass of red wine and watching her sip at her cup—until finally it was emptied. Horse-sized barbiturates, his female friend in Fort Lauderdale had called
them, prescription pills strong enough to knock out a horse, and to this, yes, Colin Asch could attest. Though he scorned reliance upon drugs, mainly.

  And then it was midnight and the party was over—a fantastically successful party but now at last over—and Colin Asch stood in his miniature foyer saying good night, shaking hands, thanking his guests for having come, and there stood wrapped in her fur coat prepared for the cold lovely Dorothea Deverell with heavy eyelids and an unfocused sort of smile … teetering on her white satin high heels to lean forward to kiss Colin Asch on the cheek as if they were the oldest and dearest of friends as if they had known each other all their lives.

  “Thank you, Colin. It was wonderful.”

  “Dorothea. Thank you.”

  While the caterer’s assistants labored to clean up in the kitchen, Colin Asch retired to his bedroom to change from his formal attire to jeans and a black turtleneck sweater and Nike jogging shoes. So wired by this time he could barely contain himself, he did push-ups on the carpet—fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, then gave up counting—till finally the hired help went home and things were quiet as the tomb, yet still shrewdly he forced himself to wait another forty-five minutes before leaving in the low-slung black Porsche for 33 Marten Lane.

  9

  The telephone was ringing persistently, jarringly, in a distant room. Or was someone speaking to her from a distant room. She could not make out words, only murmurous modulations of sound; she could not see, though her eyes were open. Nor could she move for her limbs were paralyzed … heavy and leaden as if waterlogged.

  It was frightful, horrible: yet, becalmed in her bed, paralyzed, she was not capable of feeling such emotions. Her own interior voice, muted, solicitous, was both warning and gentle admonition: This is your punishment. This is your reward.

  “How can it be? My God!”

  When, early in the afternoon of Sunday, March 6, Dorothea Deverell finally woke from her heavy stuporous dreamless sleep—the sleep of a dead woman—it was to the appalling knowledge that she had slept for nearly fifteen hours.

  Her bedside clock showed 2:40. She thought at first that the electricity must have gone off and that somehow (she was too dazed to have reasoned how) day and night were reversed.

  When she tried to get out of bed she was too weak; her legs would not hold her. A tiny pin might have been dislodged in her upper vertebrae, for her head rolled helplessly on her shoulders. “What has happened to me? Was I drunk last night?” Her eyeballs were as seared as if she had been staring for hours into a naked light, and the interior of her mouth was parched, scummy, vile; her nostrils were so pathologically dry she felt them as twin passageways leading up into her brain. Not in recent memory had she felt herself so thoroughly debilitated, so ingloriously wrecked. “But did I make a fool of myself?” She wondered if she would dare telephone Charles Carpenter to inquire. Though surely it would be more prudent to say nothing, in the hope that nothing would be said to her.

  A vertiginous five minutes was required simply to get Dorothea Deverell from her bed and into her bathroom; wherein, in the mirror above the sink, a wan, etiolated face awaited her. Another half hour was required to get her but partially dressed and downstairs … descending the staircase like an invalid who can no longer trust in the efficacy of her own limbs or the substantiality of the physical world to support her. How her head ached, how her eyes burned! How thoroughly wretched she felt! She saw that the folklore of the classic hangover was needed to mitigate its sickening horror. To suggest that the drinker has brought his misery upon himself, thus is, after all, in control of his fate.

  Yet she could not recall having drunk more than two glasses of champagne at Colin Asch’s party, and perhaps a single glass of red wine. Or had she drunk more, half consciously? Had she blacked out on her feet? She could remember virtually nothing of the ride home in the limousine, or of undressing for bed.… She knew herself a woman unaccustomed to alcohol; yet, more to the point, unaccustomed to such fevered celebration, such an insistent focusing of others’ attentions upon her: Dorothea Deverell. It left her giddy and childlike and wholly uncritical, as if, unprepared, a reckless hiker in the mountains, she had gone too high too quickly.

  She could not tolerate so much as the thought of breakfast, but stood at the sink drinking ice water and trying not to notice how her hands shook. If this is your debut into a new life, Dorothea, her interior voice admonished, perhaps you are unfit.

  Toward evening, by accident, she discovered that her rear terrace door was unlocked. This was a rude little shock—though she must have left it unlocked herself since, so far as she could judge, nothing in the house seemed to have been taken, or even disturbed; there were no footprints visible on the carpet. In the excitement of the past several weeks she’d become careless, though; increasingly, break-ins and acts of vandalism were being reported in the North Shore area. You must get a burglar alarm installed, Charles Carpenter repeatedly urged her, and repeatedly Dorothea promised, yes, she would.

  She checked the upstairs, and nothing there appeared to have been disturbed either.

  Belatedly, still feeling rather dizzy and unreal, Dorothea made her bed and picked up, in the room, her white silk slip which the night before she had tossed on a chair, her brassiere and underpants lying on the floor, the exquisite white outfit Colin Asch had given her for Christmas unceremoniously draped across her bureau.… She checked it anxiously for stains but found none: white is so beautiful and so impractical. It was a costume Dorothea Deverell would never have chosen for herself, even granted the willingness to pay an inflated price for clothing, yet she liked it very much, now; prized it, in fact; for she’d looked really quite remarkably beautiful in it the night before, as if the bloom of her young womanhood had been restored. To see Charles Carpenter’s eyes drifting to her, dwelling upon her, in love … in what must be called, for all Dorothea Deverell’s mincing behavior of the past several weeks, a husbandly sort of tenderness … how could she fail to be grateful for that? And Colin Asch had been naïvely happy to see her in it, ignorant of the fact that the reasons for her having worn it were sheerly expeditious: she had so forestalled planning what she would wear to the dinner party, she’d gone through her closet only the afternoon before, in mounting anxiety, to discover that really she had nothing suitable: no evening dress except a burgundy velvet sadly worn at the elbows and seat and a long black rayon skirt that was rather battered-looking at the hem and, in any case, rayon.

  But fortunately she had white satin shoes to go with the jacket and skirt, and a white beaded bag. Which went perfectly.

  PART THREE

  10

  The call came for Dorothea Deverell late in the afternoon of April 11, a windy, sun-splotched day. She would remember it forever as the second of the telephone calls to abruptly reorder the course of her life.

  Dorothea was in her office at the Institute—her old office still, since Mr. Morland, though rarely at the Institute these days, had yet to vacate his—engaged in a somewhat groping conversation with a Lathrup Farms matron who, newly widowed, was considering giving a sizable donation to the Institute in her late husband’s name with the proviso that she “maintain some say” as to its specific use. To this, Dorothea felt she could hardly object; yet, recalling past episodes in the previous director’s experience, when such provisos brought with them unanticipated problems, she was reluctant to simply agree. Perhaps Mrs. Harmon would like to join the Building Committee? the Programs Committee? Perhaps she would like to be an honorary member of the Friends of the Morris T. Brannon Advisory Council?

  To these suggestions the impeccably dressed Mrs. Harmon made no reply, as if unhearing, but, smiling tightly at Dorothea, said in a small, stubborn voice, “The thing is, Miss Deverell, that I want Edgar’s name to be preserved. I want to be certain that it not be forgotten.”

  “Of course,” Dorothea said, nodding in sympathy, “I understand.” She was about to say more when there was a sudden knock at the door, curt an
d sharp, and in the same moment Jacqueline entered, with a look so unlike her usual—so stricken, so apologetic—that Dorothea’s blood simply ran cold.

  “Miss Deverell?” Jacqueline said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt you and Mrs. Harmon, but there seems to be an emergency call for you.”

  “Ah, really! Is there! Then I’ll take it in the other office.”

  Dorothea spoke almost calmly. Her family was so attenuated by this stage in her maturity, the pool of her blood relatives so shrunken, there could be no emergency in her life excepting one pertaining to Charles Carpenter.

  He is dead, she thought, lifting the receiver.

  For, after all, hadn’t she lived through this horror already? In the distant past, as in a distant lifetime?

  Thus it required several seconds for Dorothea Deverell to realize that it was Charles Carpenter who was on the line and that it was he to whom the horror had in fact happened.