The (Other) You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Soon they were able to reclaim their house. Even the windows were sparkling-clean—Luce had washed them herself. With an air of genuine pride Andrew praised Luce: “What a great job you’ve done, darling!”—not seeming to notice what was missing in the house, that had made it cluttered and shabby before.

  With relief Andrew retired to his study with the spectacular, if now partially ravaged, view of the Catskills and the Hudson River, shut the door quietly but firmly as he always had, resumed his work. He’d brought his laptop with him to Poughkeepsie, of course, but few of the books he needed; disrupted from his routine he’d been disoriented, irritable, but now he could immerse himself again in his work, and detach from his surroundings. All that really mattered, Andrew joked, was that power was restored to the Hill, and Wi-Fi.

  In time, Thursday poker nights among the survivors would be resumed.

  11.

  Yet, from this day Luce begins to perceive that Andrew is sometimes short of breath ascending stairs. He isn’t so likely to charge ahead on their hikes as he has been; indeed, Andrew less frequently suggests hiking with Luce on their favorite hiking trails in the Catskills. Though he has been proud of completing three New York City marathons, and often speaks warmly of the experience, it seems to Luce that Andrew has virtually stopped running even on the flat jogging trail beside the Hudson River.

  More recently, returning home from an evening rehearsal of the little quartet in Hazelton, letting herself quietly into the house not wanting to disturb Andrew, Luce happens to see, through a doorway, her husband as he rises from his desk chair, but rises unsteadily. Ah, Andrew has lost his balance!—a startled look in his large handsome face.

  Soon then, within a few seconds, Andrew regains his balance. He has reasserted control, no need to flail his hands in panic.

  By now Luce has eased out of sight. Shortly she will call cheerfully to Andrew, informing him that she’s home, and Andrew will respond, “And how was the rehearsal, darling?”—in his affable way, not troubling to listen to Luce’s reply but wanting to establish that yes, Luce is home; as Andrew is home. Despite the possibility (Luce thinks) that the very earth beneath home is shifting.

  Luce has seen nothing to disturb her, not that she will recall.

  Forget what you have seen—it never happened.

  12.

  Waking to a thrill of—is it hope?

  Beginning to feel again her old excitement. A stirring of curiosity, anticipation. Preparing for the dinner party. Rehearsing the Schubert quartet with her dear musician-friends.

  True, their playing has become somewhat ragged since the last time they’ve been together. Scully seems annoyed with Luce, as a music instructor might be annoyed with a star pupil. Tyler is easily winded and Heddi continually forgets to turn off her damned cell phone. Death and the Maiden is (possibly) a naive choice, why hadn’t they settled for something easier?

  But they don’t feel the dismay and exasperation they’d have felt in the past, enduring one another’s mistakes. Scully’s bad temper, Tyler’s self-disgust, Luce and Heddi trembling with anxiety. Now they are forgiving of one another’s flaws as they are forgiving of their own.

  Look, we’re amateurs. Let’s face it, OK?

  Luce is feeling hopeful. Luce is feeling that they are not—yet—beyond surprising one another.

  And Andrew. Andrew has surprised Luce, too.

  Discovering in their online checking account that her husband had evidently transferred twenty thousand dollars from his private savings account into the joint account, subsequently donated to several Dutchess County disaster funds, without informing her. Luce is shocked, but Luce is impressed. (As an adjunct instructor at Bard she barely makes that amount of money per term, after taxes. Fortunately Andrew’s books are bestsellers that continue to sell well in paperback.)

  Luce thinks of Andrew with renewed tenderness. She has felt concern for his health. His breath—often quickened. High blood pressure? Heart trouble? Andrew will keep his health issues to himself, Luce supposes, until such time when he no longer can.

  She will take care of him, she realizes. No doubt, she will outlive him, for that purpose perhaps.

  This, the destiny for which she was born . . . Is that possible?

  Obsessively Luce consults websites for the latest data on air, earth, water pollution in the Hudson Valley. She would not want Andrew to know how compulsive she has become—how prone to catastrophizing. The long-term effect of pesticides, additives, hormones on the human brain. Organic foods vs. farm-factory foods. A chart graphing degrees of toxins in fish and seafood. Luce is outraged reading in Consumer Reports that fish is often mislabeled—tilefish (high in mercury) sold as halibut, farmed Atlantic salmon sold as wild-caught Pacific salmon, tilapia masquerading as “sole” or “bass.” Types of tuna are cynically mislabeled, “red snapper” is rarely red snapper. Luce hasn’t bought swordfish in a decade—swordfish is saturated with mercury. Luce pitches her voice to make a wry observation, not to complain, for Andrew dislikes complaining and whining—“It seems that everything we eat, and any air we breathe, is ‘toxic.’”

  “Does it!”—Andrew agrees, vehemently. As if Andrew has been listening.

  13.

  Andrew is absorbed in selecting wine for the party, that is his chief responsibility, along with choosing several very good cheeses from the Cheese Board in town. To much that Luce utters, no matter how carefully it is pitched, not complaining, not a cri de coeur, Andrew pays little heed. But he is pleased that Luce has followed his suggestion and (re)washed the crystal wine glasses by hand, that are usually left with chalky streaks from the dishwasher.

  “About time, some festivity on the Hill! As if we’ve all died and gone to Hell but different regions of Hell, that don’t overlap.”

  It’s clear as the first guests arrive at their house that the Stantons have been missing their friends more than they knew. Luce finds herself reduced to tears, even Andrew is touched. There are exclamations, handshakes, embraces. These are friends of many years. Once, young married couples, young parents, middle-aged parents, now grandparents—most of them.

  Two (recent) widows, one (recent) widower. Ken Jacobs, once a brash young research chemist who’d warned of global warming thirty years ago, and is still writing articles on the subject. Clive Turner who’d gloomily predicted a “white nativist” revival in the United States at the very outset of the Obama administration, long before Trump erupted on the political scene. Jaqueline La Port, poet/ feminist/ anarchist now wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis but looking beautiful and brave in a flowing scarlet sari. Ben Ferenzi and Dannie Kozdoi, divorced from their respective wives and now married to each other. Another widow, and a divorcee. A distinguished Bard musicologist whom Luce doesn’t recall having invited to the party, indeed a professor emeritus she is certain died sometime last year, arrives in pinstriped seersucker propelling himself on a walker, haltingly but in good spirits, with a bottle of champagne for his hosts—“Hello, friends! Am I late, or am I early?”

  Parking on Vedders Hill Way is difficult, so most drivers let out their passengers and park some distance away. Here is Glenda Flynn depositing Tyler at the foot of the gravel driveway, up which he limps gamely with a cane in one hand and his cello case in the other, thumping against his thighs.

  Wheelchairs, walkers, canes. Little knitted caps on (bald) heads. A contingent of chemotherapy walking wounded, of whom two are total surprises to Luce—she’d known of Edith Danvers of course, but not Sallie Klein and Gordon Jelinski. Jack Gatz arrives blank-blue-eyed and smiling broadly but with a muttered aside to his host: “Why the hell’s so many people here for poker night?”

  And here is Gregory Cardman, one of Andrew’s marathon-runner friends, gleaming scalp, hairless head, no eyebrows, eyelashes—skeletal-thin, but shaking Andrew’s hand, hard.

  “Jesus! It’s been so long.”

  “Is it—Greg? It is.”

  Handclasps, hugs. Kisses.

 
; Kisses near the mouth. Wet kisses boldly on the mouth.

  “. . . yes, sometimes we feel very lonely on the Hill. ‘Survivor’s guilt’ is real. We feel uneasy that we have been singled out for a reason, our house untouched while so many of our neighbors have lost their homes, though (in fact) we don’t really feel we’ve been singled out for any reason—for who, or what, would do the ‘singling out’? This isn’t Puritan New England—we don’t believe in a God of wrath. But you can see how people become superstitious—trying to make sense out of chaos. There is such a powerful human yearning to imagine our lives ‘destined’—‘purposeful.’ No one wants to think that our lives are random tosses of dice.”

  “. . . but are tosses of dice random? Isn’t there a statistical predictability? If you have enough data, won’t an algorithm predict—something?”

  More crucially, what sort of world will younger generations inherit?

  Talk of children. Grandchildren. Boastfully. Wistfully.

  Well, some of the children are activists. Grandchildren too. Pro–gun control. Ecology, environment. “Animal liberation.” But some of the grandchildren are not so involved, frankly. Some of the grandchildren are barely literate. Video games, cell phone games, nonstop social media.

  “Vaping”—e-cigarettes.

  “‘Vaping’—what exactly is ‘vaping’?”—Andrew asks with a faint sneer.

  Do I have to take any of this seriously? It will all pass away in time, won’t it?

  Luce has hired a twenty-year-old from the college to help with the party. Long straight blond hair, oversized T-shirt, jeans. Deftly moving among them, a darting silver minnow among thicker slower-moving fish.

  “Oh!—look . . .”

  Dazzling-beautiful-bloody sunset beyond the mountains like a cluster of burst capillaries.

  * * *

  Having reconnoitered in a back bedroom for a harried half-hour the little quartet appears on the deck, gleaming instruments in hand.

  Violin, violin. Viola. Cello!

  Encouraging applause. (Though some guests continue talking, laughing. Not all can hear acutely.) Luce feels her face flush hot. What on earth was she thinking, arranging for this musical evening!

  It takes a certain chutzpah to perform in front of your closest friends. Much more difficult than public recitals.

  “I always forget how small a violin is!” Audrey Jameson foolishly exclaims.

  “Yes! They are so exquisite, like toys.”

  The musicians are seated. A curt nod of Pete Scully’s head and abruptly the music begins. Such urgency in the familiar opening notes of Death and the Maiden are struck, even the musicians seem to be taken by surprise. For how frail a vessel, music! On this ravaged hill where half the landscape seems to have disappeared and the sky beyond the mountains is a fireball.

  Though the allegro movement begins shakily the musicians gather strength as they press onward like rowers in a skiff on rough water, keenly aware of one another, yet never glancing at one another, determined to maintain the pace set by the swiftest rower.

  Luce is dazed, light-headed. Her fingers move of their own volition, it seems—her hand wielding the bow, her arm in a continuous motion. Though every cell in her being warns her no! she glances sidelong at Scully seeing, or imagining she sees, in the violinist’s gaunt face a look of fierce concentration raw as sexual pain. Luce is stunned, distracted—No. Don’t show us that face. What are you thinking!

  Luce feels exposed, eviscerated. As if the man’s anguish is her own.

  Yet somehow it happens, even with a perceptible faltering of Luce’s bow, and a mistake—or two—from the cello, and missed notes from the viola, the first brilliant movement of Death and the Maiden comes to an end. Not a triumph but neither is it a disaster. Its violent shifts of mood have disguised the musicians’ jerky playing. A wave of visceral relief ripples through the gathering. Tyler wipes his perspiring face with a white cotton handkerchief. Heddi glances sidelong at Luce daring a small conspiratorial smile. So far, so good! Scully, hunched forward frowning at the music on the stand before him, is grinding his teeth.

  Another nod of Scully’s head and the second, andante movement begins, more gracefully than the first. At least, the instruments are together! With schoolgirl posture Luce fixes her gaze on the bars of music before her, she is determined not to be distracted. She is not frightened, she is not abashed, she is thrilled to be playing Schubert with her musician-friends. The small gleaming instrument in her hands is the most beautiful object imaginable, yet somehow it has come into her possession—hers! A gift from a doting grandmother many years ago, and a responsibility. She grips the violin tight, for it thrums with life. She leans into the music, above the violin, embracing the violin to her breast. Oh God! What we live for. Is there anything else. As the musical theme gathers power there is—abruptly, rudely—a sudden spasm of coughing, one of the guests in the very first row, God-damned coughing the musicians try to ignore, who the hell is it?—at last the afflicted individual slips away to cough elsewhere, sounds as if he’s coughing out his guts, as the movement lurches to an end. God damn.

  Scully is furious. Scully does not dignify this audience by glancing out at them. Tyler too is flushed with annoyance, blowing his nose loudly in the vivid-white handkerchief that looks to Luce like a flag of surrender. Heddi looks as if she is about to cry, fussing with her instrument as one might fuss over a fretting child.

  In the brief interlude Luce dares to look for Andrew—where is Andrew?—for a fleeting moment Luce is frightened, her husband has abandoned her, he and blank-blue-eyed Jack Gatz have drifted off together to play poker in Andrew’s study . . . But then Luce sees him, seated at the edge of the circle on a foot stool, almost out of her range of vision. Andrew has a glass of red wine in hand, and Andrew is drinking steadily. Which is not like Andrew. Luce hopes that his mind hasn’t been drifting. Luce hopes that she has not humiliated herself, in her husband’s eyes, by this rash if unwitting act of self-exhibition. It seems ominous to Luce, Andrew isn’t making much of an effort to meet his wife’s gaze, encourage her. Hey! I love you.

  With the sharp—“Demonic”—scherzo the quartet resumes. This is a breathless movement that rivets the audience’s attention until—unfortunately—the harsh cries of birds interrupt. Circling hawks, at dusk. Swooping, plunging on widened wings to capture their (shrieking) prey in the lower air, or on the ground, distracting the listeners, in this way distracting the musicians. At least, the scherzo is short. Damage is minimal.

  There is even a light smattering of applause, a nod to the musicians that the audience is on their side, not the birds’.

  This is not quite the little quartet Luce recalls from their early robust days. Each of the musicians in their twenties, then! Even Tyler, the eldest. An intense erotic awareness among them, tight-strung, utterly absorbing and thrilling though (as Luce recalls) indefinable, thus unspeakable. Was she sexually enthralled by the imperial Scully, or was she romantically drawn to the more gentlemanly Tyler; possibly, was she infatuated with Heddi Conyer, the most beautiful freckle-faced individual she’d ever seen, close up? Or was it the music they played, or attempted to play? Like climbing a mountain together, attached to one another by life-lines, each dependent upon the others? Was it the actual, literal violin that has been Luce’s (secret) life, entrusted to her hands? Was it the mere feel, the smell, the beingness of that violin? The sounds of the music the musicians’ strings created together, a heart-aching swelling, a pulsing deep in the groin, indeed unspeakable? How happy they’d made one another, though often how exasperated, furious! Like siblings, struggling together for dominance, clarity. Jealous, bitterly so. Euphoric, ecstatic.

  Now Luce wields her recently restrung bow, a new woman, in some ways (she wants to think) a younger woman, less dependent upon the (elder) men. She will outlive them, she knows. She will outlive her husband. That will be her fate, she must accept—it is what the gathering intensity of Schubert’s music tells her.


  Tyler’s head is bowed, he too is leaning into the music, drawn into its swift skimming momentum. Scully, longtime concertmaster of the Little Chamber Orchestra, rumored to be reluctant to relinquish his position despite his illness, is playing now not so aggressively, as if, beside his companion violinist he is willing to acquiesce to her; as if thrice-weekly dialysis has rendered him something less than what he’d been, but something more as well: a crystalline transparency where once he’d been opaque, elusive. Pale-freckled Heddi too seems altered: an undercurrent of passion, possibly rage, in the dulcet sounds of the viola, where previously the violist had been tentative as if feeling herself unworthy of the music.