The (Other) You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  X is less amused having discovered that the café has no liquor license. No wine, not even beer. A very strange sort of café!

  No meat on the menu either, not even seafood. Not even oysters. And X has come so far. . . . For a moment, a genuine expression comes over X’s face, of childish disappointment.

  Restarting the iPhone, continuing the interview. Extending the iPhone aggressively in your direction.

  “You were saying, my friend?—when we were interrupted?”

  8.

  You must know, I am not your friend.

  Explaining to X as you have explained countless times: You were not in Santa Luce at the time of the “event.” You were not married to that woman at the time.

  You were not an absent dad. You insist, you have never been anyone’s dad.

  Whoever wishes to blame you, take a good look in the mirror.

  As Jesus said, he who casts the first stone had better be without sin.

  Yes it’s curious, why you chose to live in Santa Luce. Why, when you might have lived in any of the great cities of the world, you came to Santa Luce where nothing happens, repeatedly.

  Curious, eccentric. Yes. But not reprehensible.

  When you can’t prevail, retreat. Eventually the world will come to you.

  In Santa Luce there is “local news”—but not “news” that will travel more than a few miles beyond the perimeter of Santa Luce. The police department here is comprised of fewer than a dozen officers. The department is housed in a single-story municipal building that also contains the public library and the township office. At the time of the (alleged) Purple Onion bombing, which was also known as the (alleged) suicide bombing, there were only four full-time officers on duty. The police chief Dave Ruggles, fifty-eight, a thirty-year veteran in law enforcement, was slated for early retirement in another month.

  No one was more surprised than the residents of the upscale community. No one was more shocked. You knew (of course) of “suicide bombers”—Islamist fanatics who dwelled in faraway places with unpronounceable names. You were filled with pity seeing smoking rubble, carnage, lifeless bodies on your flat-screen TVs.

  You hesitated to switch channels for you knew that you should bear witness to the world’s suffering. But such suffering soon becomes repetitious on flat-screen TVs.

  You were not in Santa Luce at the time. You are certain.

  Not clear that such an act of violence could occur here. The midday terrace of the Purple Onion is the most innocuous of privileged places.

  What was the motive for the (alleged) bombing? The delusional bomber himself hadn’t known.

  Posted in his Facebook account—I am not politicle, I did this for mysef

  Inexpert, fumbling-fingered, the suicide bomber blew himself up with his (partial) bomb. Three other persons died in the blast, it was claimed. Seven persons injured including the café proprietor who was seen helping the wounded though she was herself bleeding badly from a head wound.

  Parts of bodies, hair, food mixed as in a crude low-speed blender. Shattered glass, metal fragments, teeth, toes. Pieces of skull, brain. Remains of a wild staring eyeball. Fingers, no nails. Brain matter, pulpy and suety, laced with shreds of kale flung across bloodstained flagstones.

  Most lurid photos not shown in local media but, within minutes, widely disseminated online and in weeks, months, years to come.

  Santa Luce Police Chief Ruggles collapsed at the bloody scene. Near-fatal cardiac episode. Treated by EMTs at the site with other casualties.

  No, that is not funny. Not as it was replicated on social media. Viral on Twitter. Cruelty of the young.

  At the time of the explosion we can imagine chaos, pandemonium. Sirens. Emergency vehicles, barricaded streets. Police helicopters from adjoining townships.

  The (alleged) suicide bomber was nineteen years old, a dropout from Santa Luce High School two years before. Son of a single, divorced woman who lived less than a mile away from the Purple Onion on (coincidentally: for this is your street too) Cargot Street.

  While still in high school the (alleged) suicide bomber had been suspected of having made prank calls to local schools, libraries, theaters, and other public places threatening bombs, shootings. Online he’d posted mysterious references to ARMAGEDDON.

  Possibly, it hadn’t happened quite as it was reported. Possibly, the young suicide bomber had only “threatened” to detonate a bomb. Acting on a tip, local police officers discovered, in the house the boy shared with his mother, materials for making bombs, as well as a “small arsenal” of guns. Much was made in the media of the fact that the boy’s mother had long been a gun control activist who’d (evidently) failed to notice that her son was hoarding rifles, ammunition, and explosive materials beneath her very roof.

  Rarely do you watch TV. Yet more rarely, what is bruited as “breaking news.” Yet you recall having seen the distraught mother of the (alleged) suicide bomber interviewed on local TV: once-attractive, now ravaged face, eyes bloodshot and voice hoarse from weeping, defending herself to the camera: If you have a nineteen-year-old son who dropped out of high school without graduating, unemployed, living at home, locks himself in his room playing video games, won’t let you in his room even to clean it, won’t talk to you when he sees you, won’t look you in the face, you wouldn’t need to ask these questions, you would understand.

  Bursting into tears. Painful to watch. Quickly you switched channels.

  You admired the woman’s courage even as you pitied her. Baring her tattered soul on TV. Every pore of her aging skin, every burst capillary in her eyes, every crease and dent in her face—exposed to the ravenous eyes of strangers. If you had half such courage, such audacity, such heedlessness you would not have required the circuitous route of artist to confront the world but would have confronted it without subterfuge, head-on.

  You consider confessing this to X—but no. Better not. Such a sincere remark would only return to haunt you.

  “. . . an artist is one who detaches himself from his surroundings. If indeed the artist perceives his surroundings it is as material. Not as surroundings.”

  Damned voice overloud in your ear. Or, X is leaning closer to you than you would wish.

  In panic you think—Is this someone who knows me? Someone I should know?

  You have always feared interviews. Often you fear that an interviewer is someone who knew you in another lifetime, whom you fail now to recognize.

  Someone who knew you when you were not yet yourself but no one. And no one who has been no one is ever not-no one in the memory of those who knew him at that time.

  “. . . like a dirigible, your imagination—your soul; floating and roaming the sky while your body, and these other bodies, are left behind here below.”

  To these soaring yet somehow accusatory words you can think of no reply. You dread to feel that you have been found out.

  Acknowledging that yes, there may be some truth in that observation, but you have always been a practical person as well as an artist. Calmly you tell X that it’s a common mistake, to overemphasize the “romance” of the artist. In truth, most artists are bourgeois individuals who care about their comfort, their routines, their safety, the next meal, social status, finances . . . The implication being, you are not among the bourgeois.

  X hasn’t been listening. X has been frowning at his iPhone. Peering at the little screen. Fussing. You feel a flash of sheer rage as X mutters, “Sorry! Excuse me, I think something is seriously fucked up here . . .”

  As if it were not X’s fault but the fault of the device.

  X dares to insist, please would you repeat what you’ve been saying?—“In the identical words if you can.”

  Identical words! You’ve totally forgotten what you were saying.

  “Man, I am sorry! I can see that you’re annoyed as hell. I don’t blame you in the slightest. You are a famous person, and a very busy person, and this interview with me is a terrible imposition . . .”

  X is veh
ement, contrite. Forcing you to protest—“No. Not at all. I’m not—annoyed . . .”

  Smugly X is saying: “We all know people who fantasize. It’s a child’s first strategy of defense. In the artist, fantasizing is compulsive. It might seem voluntary to the artist, but in fact it’s involuntary. It’s a retreat, but an aggressive retreat. People engage with you, you appear to be engaging with them, but you are not involved in the slightest—are you?”

  X laughs offensively. Though you are annoyed as hell you insist yes, of course you are involved; you are involved in the conversation.

  “Well, you appear to be. With me. Right now. But we both know that you are not—really—here.”

  Again, you insist, foolishly: “I—I am here. I am here.”

  Even as X peers impudently at you, leaning forward on his elbows. To your additional annoyance, he has caused the glass-topped table to tilt.

  The more you smile, the more you insist, the more reasonable and amicable you are, the more insistently you stare into his eyes, the less you are here, with X.

  Observing the two of you from an aerial perspective. Twelve feet above the Purple Onion terrace. Your head is inclined forward, you give every sign of listening to your companion who is also leaning forward, shoulders hunched.

  From above, the two heads are scarcely distinguishable. On both, hair thinning at the crown, dark streaked with gray. Almost, your heads could be brought forcibly together, joined at the forehead.

  And then, abruptly the scene fades. Bursts to white. A deafening flash like a nova and yet—soundless.

  9.

  Where is your mind?—no one has ever thought to ask.

  Already in the cradle. In the crib. In the mommy’s arms. At the mommy’s breasts. In the arms of the daddy.

  Drifting, detached. Resisting capture.

  In school, in a row of desks. In church, in a hardwood pew.

  Leaping ahead to the solution of the problem. Impatient with “steps.” As others spoke slowly enunciating each syllable of each word like a tightrope walker buffeted by wind.

  Though you sat very still at your desk with your hands clasped and beneath the desk your feet side by side like roots secure in the earth.

  But your brain was buzzing. In flight.

  Blizzard. Swirling, spiraling wet-white-blossom snow.

  You have slipped away. Sleek and sinuous as an eel forcing your way to freedom.

  In fact, you are yourself, but a child. That old-young child. Making your way along a road. An unpaved road, in a forest. The trail splits in two, each equally faint, trampled grass and damp earth. You take the left trail but then, when the trail splits again, this time you take the right trail. Is there any reason? Any reason of which you know?

  Something tugging me forward. A kind of gravity.

  10.

  Dyslexic was the label. The way your eyes scramble letters front to back, upside-down. Fuck words!

  Your mind turns off, detaches. Whoever is speaking you hardly listen to, though it’s your “self.”

  Might be a stranger or might be you.

  If you blow yourself up which you don’t think (seriously!) you will do, or if you do it’s something you can erase or delete or repeat, reboot, it will be mostly an experiment to see how many brain neurons retain the memory of who you are, what the fuck you thought you were doing, and what your guy-friends will think when they see the footage online, on their iPhones, if you had guy-friends. Or on TV. Every cable channel. Any scene in your life, plucked out of your memory, you only see yourself at a distance of about five, six feet. Was that who I was? No.

  Not that you hate yourself. Not that you love yourself. Mostly, you stare at whoever he is, a brain inside a skull inside a head with “hair” on top and “face” at the front and you marvel at how such a creature came into existence.

  Well, the “hair” and “face” can be peeled away. Fast!

  Not just you, it’s the human part of it that is hard to understand.

  Wonder if you have already died and some part of you has remained behind, like vapor. Or a strong rotted-rancid smell.

  Making your way along a path cut jaggedly through underbrush. Many paths through the underbrush but this is your path. Glance down—you are wearing your hiking boots. The kind that protect your ankles when you’re climbing in a rocky terrain.

  You’d tried, alone. Not much fun alone. Not good to be alone in a remote rocky place.

  Dad! Hey, God damn. . . . Where’d the bastard go?

  Never planned to grow up to be the (alleged) suicide bomber. Never planned to grow up at all.

  11.

  For the record: you weren’t in Santa Luce at the time of the (alleged) bombing. You weren’t in California. You weren’t in North America. You are not sure of the details, even if it took place, or what it was that took place. And it isn’t clear that it did take place. For what an extraordinary act of courage, if it had! You doubt that you are capable of it.

  Though you are beginning to see, the Purple Onion has been repainted. Rebuilt. Can’t remember what color the walls used to be but the cream color is new. Flagstones also look new, synthetic.

  But the wisteria vines are mature, gnarled. The wisteria vines are not new.

  If there was a detonation it looks as if only a part of the terrace was destroyed. A corner of the restaurant. (You seem to have read this somewhere. Or heard it somewhere—a rumor?) You were not here in Santa Luce at the time and you are not an individual who doomscrolls the Internet in pursuit of the most stomach-churning news.

  You didn’t know the (alleged) suicide bomber. You didn’t know his (alleged) father who’d moved away from Santa Luce years ago, a research biologist. Yes, you knew the mother. You know the mother.

  You are not the father. You are not to blame.

  Single mother, divorcee. Grim bright brave civic-minded, activist.

  The kind who takes Pilates classes. Yoga. She’s a vegetarian, not a vegan but she believes passionately in organic foods. Shelf of vitamin pills—A (anise seed) to Z (zinc). One of the smaller houses on Cargot Street. You’ve passed that house countless times without knowing who lives there. The (alleged) suicide bomber had an ordinary name—Howard, Howie. He’d been a child like any other child. Baby like any other baby. Soft-boned head like any infant’s. Years were required to shape him into the (alleged) suicide bomber. Pimply face, pimply back. On his back, reddened pimples like boils. Topology of pimples, pustules, boils. Scratches with his nails. Draws blood. Homely face, eyes too small. Nose too long. Homely rhymes with lonely. You’d heard them quarreling all your young life. Behind shut doors, drone of adult voices. Why’d you marry me then, if you hate me. Why’d we have a child. Now—it’s too late.

  Your dad moved out, you were just a kid. Ten, eleven. Scrawny little guy. Trying to figure—How’s it your fault? Knew it was your fault. Cried and cried.

  Learn young that crying will bring you nothing except a runny nose, headache, sick sensation in the guts. So badly you wanted your dad to return you’d remained upstairs hiding when he did return for a visit. Howie, come down—your father is here. . . . Your mom calling up the stairs excited, drunk-sounding.

  Fuck you, Dad. Thanks and fuck you.

  Love you son, you know that don’t you.

  Yes I know that Dad, fuck you very much.

  Fuck you too, son.

  Fuck you Dad!

  Laughing. From inside the room you’d barricaded the door.

  Angry at you, like hell your dad is going to climb the stairs and knock on your door. God damn spoiled kid.

  Years later, still hear these words through the floorboards.

  Years later, no one would dare knock on your door for you’ve posted warning signs: NO ENTRY. NO TRESPASSING. VERBOTEN.

  A smaller sign, female figure, X drawn through it in black.

  You were never a Nazi. Whatever they said of you, assholes got it wrong at school. Sure, you’d inked stuff on your arms. One of the tattoos meant to b
e a four-leaf clover but the swastika is tricky. Hammer and sickle? You wore long sleeves. You picked at the scabs. Some of the cuts became infected. Fuck!—a hurtful kind of pleasure scratching and scratching.

  Disappointment you saw in adult faces. Teachers, your mom.

  (Your dad too for sure. Except you never saw your dad any longer.)

  Think that I am a disappointment? I will give you something to be disappointed about.

  Think that I am fucked up? I will give you fuck-up.

  Mesmerized by the Internet. Hours, nights. Years. Age thirteen to whatever you are now—nineteen? Waking with an aching neck, head on your desk like it’d fallen off your shoulders. Cheek on the desk-top. Eyeball pressed flat. Faint hum of the Internet like your own fetid breath. Had the idea since sixth grade. Researching for years. For months actively working on the Device.

  Never thought of it as a bomb. Technical term—explosive device.

  Not a fucking terrorist. Middle East, towelhead ISIS. Not an asshole Nazi either.

  Thing is, you are unique. You are not a herd animal. ISIS, Nazis are herd animals.

  To yourself you call it the Device. (Not once do you utter the word bomb.) Shave your head like a monk.

  Howie? Honey? Why on earth did you shave your—

  You’d yanked the cap down over your ears. Tight over your forehead. Stiff-backed walked away from your mom. None of your business, Mom, fuck you.

  Beginning to lose your hair, like your dad. Male pattern baldness. Already combing your hair, hairs came out in the comb. Fucking shit, only nineteen.

  Trying to decide, where. The Device is only as effective as its location.