Oracle Night

by Paul Auster

  I called off the showdown I had been planning for that evening and didn’t ask her a single question about her absence on Wednesday night. We did all the things she had warned me about on the answering machine, wrestling each other to the floor the moment she entered the apartment, then dragging our half-dressed bodies toward the bedroom, which we never quite managed to reach. Later on, after we had slipped into our bathrobes, we warmed the food in the oven and sat down to a late dinner. I showed her the new wide-slotted, bagel-compatible toaster I had bought that afternoon, and although that led to some sad talk about the robbery, it was cut short when my nose suddenly started to bleed, gushing out onto the apricot pastry that Grace had just put in front of me for dessert. She stood behind me at the sink as I tilted my head back and waited for the flow to stop, her arms wrapped around me, kissing my shoulder and my neck, all the while suggesting funny names for us to give the baby. If it was a girl, we decided, we would call her Goldie Orr. If it was a boy, we would name him after one of Kierkegaard’s books, Ira Orr. We were stupidly happy that night, and I couldn’t remember a time when Grace had been more giddy or effusive in her affections toward me. When the blood finally stopped flowing from my nose, she turned me around and washed my face with a damp cloth, looking steadily into my eyes as she dabbed my mouth and chin until all traces of the spill had vanished. ‘We’ll clean up the kitchen in the morning,’ she said. Then, without adding another word, she took me by the hand and led me toward the bedroom.

  I slept late the next morning, and when I finally rolled out of bed at ten-thirty, Grace was long gone. I went into the kitchen to take my pills and start a pot of coffee, and then slowly cleaned up the mess we had walked away from the night before. Ten minutes after I had put the last dish in the cupboard, Mary Sklarr called with bad news. Bobby Hunter’s people had read my treatment, and they’d decided to pass on it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mary said, ‘but I’m not going to pretend I’m shocked.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, feeling less chagrined than I thought I would. ‘The idea was a piece of shit. I’m glad they don’t want it.’

  ‘They said your plot was too cerebral.’

  ‘I’m surprised they know what the word means.’

  ‘I’m happy you’re not upset. It wouldn’t be worth it.’

  ‘I wanted the money, that’s all. A case of pure greed. I wasn’t even very professional about it, was I? You’re not supposed to write anything without a contract. It’s the first rule of the business.’

  ‘Well, they were pretty amazed. The sheer speed of it. They’re not used to that kind of gung ho approach. They like to have lots of discussions with lawyers and agents first. It makes them feel as if they’re doing something important.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why they thought of me.’

  ‘Somebody there likes your work. Maybe Bobby Hunter, maybe the kid who works in the mailroom. Who knows? In any case, they’re going to send you a check. As an act of goodwill. You wrote the pages without a contract, but they want to reimburse you for your time.’

  ‘A check?’

  ‘Just a token.’

  ‘How much of a token?’

  ‘A thousand dollars.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s something. It’s the first money I’ve earned in a long time.’

  ‘You’re forgetting Portugal.’

  ‘Ah, Portugal. How could I forget Portugal?’

  ‘Any news on the novel you might or might not be writing?’

  ‘Not much. There could be one piece to salvage from it, but I’m not sure. A novel within the novel. I keep thinking about it, so maybe that’s a good sign.’

  ‘Give me fifty pages, and I’ll get you a contract, Sid.’

  ‘I’ve never been paid for a book I haven’t finished. What if I can’t write page fifty-one?’

  ‘These are desperate times, my friend. If you need money, I’ll try to get you money. That’s my job.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘You think, and I’ll wait. When you’re ready to call, I’ll be here.’

  After we hung up, I went into the bedroom to fetch my coat from the closet. Now that the Time Machine business was officially dead, I had to start thinking about a new plan, and I figured a walk in the cool air might do me some good. Just as I was about to leave the apartment, however, the phone rang again. I was tempted not to answer it, but then I changed my mind and picked up on the fourth ring, hoping it would be Grace. It turned out to be Trause, probably the last person on earth I wanted to talk to just then. I still hadn’t told him about losing the story, and as I prepared myself to blurt out the confession I’d been putting off for the past two days, I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I had trouble following him. Eleanor and her husband had found Jacob, he said. They’d already checked him into a drug clinic – a place called Smithers on the Upper East Side.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ John asked. ‘They’ve put him in a twenty-eight-day program. That probably won’t be enough, but at least it’s a start.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, in a faint voice. ‘When did they find him?’

  ‘Wednesday night, not long after you left. They had to do a lot of finagling to get him in there. Fortunately, Don knows someone who knows someone, and they managed to cut through the red tape.’

  ‘Don?’

  ‘Eleanor’s husband.’

  ‘Of course. Eleanor’s husband.’

  ‘Are you all right, Sid? You sound completely out of it.’

  ‘No, no, I’m okay. Don. Eleanor’s new husband.’

  ‘The reason I called is to ask a favor. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Whatever it is. Just ask and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday, and they have visiting hours at the clinic from noon to five. I was wondering if you’d go up there for me and check in on him. You don’t have to stay long. Eleanor and Don can’t make it. They’ve gone back to Long Island, and they’ve already done enough as it is. I just want to know if he’s all right. They don’t lock the doors there. It’s a voluntary program, and I want to make sure he hasn’t changed his mind. After all we’ve been through, it would be a pity if he decided to run away.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should go yourself? You’re his father, after all. I barely know the kid.’

  ‘He won’t talk to me anymore. And whenever he forgets he’s not supposed to talk to me, he feeds me nothing but lies. If I thought it would do any good, I’d hobble up there on my crutch and see him. But it won’t.’

  ‘And what makes you think he’ll talk to me?’

  ‘He likes you. Don’t ask me why, but he thinks you’re a cool person. That’s an exact quote. “Sid’s a cool person.” Maybe because you look so young, I don’t know. Maybe because you once talked to him about a rock band he’s interested in.’

  ‘The Bean Spasms, a punk group from Chicago. One night an old friend played a couple of their songs for me. Not very good. I think they’re gone by now.’

  ‘At least you knew who they were.’

  ‘That was the longest conversation I’ve ever had with Jacob. It lasted about four minutes.’

  ‘Well, four minutes isn’t bad. If you can get four minutes out of him tomorrow, that would be an accomplishment.’

  ‘Don’t you think it would be better if I took Grace along with me? She’s known him a lot longer than I have.’

  ‘Out of the question.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jacob despises her. He can’t stand to be in the same room with her.’

  ‘No one despises Grace. You’d have to be unhinged to feel that way.’

  ‘Not according to my son.’

  ‘She’s never breathed a word to me about this.’

  ‘It goes all the way back to when they first met. Grace was thirteen, and Jacob was three. Eleanor and I had just gone through our divorce, and Bill Tebbetts invited me down to his country place in Virginia to spend a couple of wee
ks with his family. It was summer, and I took Jacob with me. He seemed to get along with the other Tebbetts kids, but every time Grace walked into the room, he’d punch her or throw things at her. One time, he picked up a toy truck and smashed her on the knee with it. The poor kid was bleeding all over the place. We rushed her to a doctor, and it took ten stitches to sew up the wound.’

  ‘I know that scar. Grace told me about it once, but she didn’t mention Jacob. She just said it was some little boy, and that was all.’

  ‘He seemed to hate her right from the start, from the first moment he laid eyes on her.’

  ‘He probably sensed that you liked her too much, so she became a rival. Three-year-olds are pretty irrational creatures. They don’t know many words, and when they’re angry, the only way they can talk is with their fists.’

  ‘Maybe. But he kept it up, even after he got older. The worst time was in Portugal, about two years after Tina died. I’d just bought my little house on the northern coast, and Eleanor sent him over to stay with me for a month. He was fourteen, and he knew as many words as I did. Grace happened to be there when he showed up. She was out of college then and about to start working for Holst & McDermott in September. In July, she came to Europe to look at paintings – Amsterdam first, then Paris, and then Madrid. After that, she took the train to Portugal. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, and we had a lot of catching up to do, but when Jacob got there he didn’t want her around. He muttered insults at her under his breath, pretended not to hear her when she asked him questions, and once or twice even managed to spill food on her. I kept warning him to stop. One more nasty move, I said, and I’d ship him back to his mother and stepfather in America. And then he crossed the line, and I put him on a plane and sent him home.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He spat in her face.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘The three of us were in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for dinner. Grace made some innocuous remark about something – I can’t even remember what it was – and Jacob took offense. He walked over to her waving a knife in his hand and called her a stupid bitch, and Grace finally lost her temper. That’s when he spat at her. Looking back on it now, I suppose it’s lucky he didn’t take the knife and stab her in the chest.’

  ‘And this is the person you want me to talk to tomorrow? What he deserves is a swift kick in the ass.’

  ‘If I went up there myself, I’m afraid that’s what would happen. It’ll be a lot better for everyone if you go there for me.’

  ‘Has anything happened since Portugal?’

  ‘I’ve kept them apart. They haven’t crossed paths in years, and as far as I’m concerned, the world will be a safer place if they never see each other again.’13

  Grace didn’t have to go to work the next morning, and she was still asleep when I left the apartment. After talking to Trause on Friday, I had decided not to tell her about the promise I’d made to go to Smithers that afternoon. That would have forced me to mention Jacob, and I didn’t want to run the risk of stirring up bad memories for her. We had lived through a difficult stretch of days, and I was loath to talk about anything that could cause the slightest agitation – and perhaps destroy the fragile balance we’d managed to find again in the past forty-eight hours. I left a note on the kitchen table, telling her I was going into Manhattan to visit some bookstores and would be home by six at the latest. One more lie, added to all the other little lies we had told each other in the past week. But my intention wasn’t to deceive her. I simply wanted to protect her from more unpleasantness, to keep the space we shared as small and private as possible, without having to entangle ourselves in painful matters from the past.

  The rehab facility was housed in a large mansion that had once belonged to the Broadway producer Billy Rose. I didn’t know how or when the place had been turned into Smithers, but it was a solid example of old New York architecture, a limestone palace from an age when wealth had flaunted itself with diamonds, top hats, and white gloves. How odd that it should have been inhabited now by the bottom dogs of society, an endlessly evolving population of drug addicts, alcoholics, and ex-criminals. It had become a way station for the lost, and when the door buzzed open and I went inside, I noted that a certain shabbiness had begun to set in. The bones of the building were still intact (the huge entrance hall with the black-and-white tile floor, the curving staircase with the mahogany banister), but the flesh looked sad and dirty, dilapidated after years of strain and overwork.

  I asked for Jacob at the front desk, announcing myself as a family friend. The woman in charge seemed suspicious of me, and I had to empty my pockets to prove I wasn’t trying to smuggle in drugs or weapons. Even though I passed the test, I felt certain that she was going to turn me away, but before I could begin arguing my case, Jacob happened to appear in the front hall, walking with three or four other residents toward the dining room for lunch. He looked taller than the last time I had seen him, but with his black clothes and green hair and excessively thin body, there was something grotesque and clownish about him, as if he were a ghostly Punchinello on his way to perform a dance for the Duke of Death. I called out his name, and when he turned and saw me, he looked shocked – not happy or unhappy, simply shocked. ‘Sid,’ he muttered, ‘what are you doing here?’ He separated from the group and walked over to where I was standing, which prompted the woman behind the desk to ask a superfluous question: ‘You know this man?’ ‘Yeah,’ Jacob said. ‘I know him. He’s a friend of my father’s.’ That statement was enough to get me in. The woman pushed a clipboard at me, and once I’d printed my name on the sheet for visitors, I accompanied Jacob down a long hallway into the dining room.

  ‘No one told me you were coming,’ he said. ‘I suppose the old man put you up to it, huh?’

  ‘Not really. I happened to be in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.’

  Jacob grunted, not even bothering to comment on how thoroughly he disbelieved me. It was a transparent fib, but I’d said it in order to keep John out of the discussion, thinking I’d get more out of Jacob if I avoided talking about his family. We continued in silence for a few moments and then, unexpectedly, he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I heard you were real sick,’ he said.

  ‘I was. I seem to be getting better now.’

  ‘They thought you were going to die, didn’t they?’

  ‘So I’m told. But I fooled them and walked out of there about four months ago.’

  ‘That means you’re immortal, Sid. You’re not going to croak until you’re a hundred and ten.’

  The dining hall was a large sunny room with sliding glass doors that led out to a small garden, where some of the residents and their families had gone to smoke and drink coffee. The food was served cafeteria-style, and after Jacob and I loaded up our trays with meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and salad, we began looking for an empty table. There must have been fifty or sixty people in the room, and we had to circle around for a couple of minutes before we found one. The delay seemed to irritate him, as if it were a personal affront. When we finally sat down, I asked him how things were going, and he launched into a recitation of bitter grievances, nervously jiggling his left leg as he spoke.

  ‘This place is for shit,’ he said. ‘All we do is go to meetings and talk about ourselves. I mean, how boring is that? As if I want to listen to these fuckups pour out their dumb stories about how rotten their childhoods were and how they stumbled off the true path and fell into the grip of Satan.’

  ‘What happens when it’s your turn? Do you get up and speak?’

  ‘I have to. If I don’t say anything, they point their fingers at me and start calling me a coward. So I make up something that sounds like what everyone else says, and then I start to cry. It always gets them. I’m a pretty good actor, you know. I tell them what a crud I am, and then I break down and can’t go on anymore, and everyone’s happy.’

  ‘Why scam them? You’re just wasting your time
here if you do that.’

  ‘Because I’m not an addict, that’s why. I’ve fooled around with junk a little bit, but it’s not a serious thing for me. I can take it or leave it.’

  ‘That’s what my college roommate used to say. And then one night he wound up dead from an overdose.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he was probably stupid. I know what I’m doing, and I ain’t gonna die from no overdose. I’m not hooked on the stuff. My mother thinks I am, but she doesn’t know shit.’

  ‘Then why did you agree to come here?’

  ‘Because she said she’d cut me off if I didn’t. I’ve already pissed off your pal, the almighty Sir John, and I don’t want Lady Eleanor getting any stupid ideas about stopping my allowance.’

  ‘You could always get a job.’

  ‘Yeah, I could, but I don’t want to. I’ve got other plans, and I need a little more time to work them out.’

  ‘So you’re just sitting here, waiting for the twenty-eight days to end.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep us busy all the time. When we’re not wearing out our asses at those god damn meetings, they make us study these terrible books. You’ve never read such garbage in all your life.’

  ‘What books?’

  ‘The AA manual, the twelve-step program, all that horseshit.’

  ‘It might be horseshit, but it’s helped a lot of people.’

  ‘It’s for cretins, Sid. All that crap about trusting in a higher power. It’s like some baby-talk religion. Give yourself up to the higher power, and you’ll be saved. You’d have to be a moron to swallow that stuff. There is no higher power. Take a good look at the world, and tell me where he is. I don’t see him. There’s just you and me and everyone else. A bunch of poor fucks doing what we can to stay alive.’