Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And where would she go, when she left Lily? Was there really anyone awaiting her in Manhattan?

  In a corner of the comfortably cluttered room was a large cork bulletin board to which Lily had tacked all sorts of things—snapshots of Wes, Deedee, and friends; snapshots of pottery she’d given away or sold; a calendar; schedules relating to her teaching; postcards. One of the numerous postcards was of Death Valley; the colorful glossy photo of Death Valley in springtime, brilliant pink cactus flowers, eerily sculpted sand dunes, a sky so brightly blue it looked artificial. Lily saw that Sharon was staring at this postcard; she’d gone very still, the cigarette burning in her fingers. After a moment, aware that Lily was watching her, Sharon said, “So many postards!—you have a lot of friends, Lily.” Lily said, “I just haven’t taken any cards down. They go back for years.” Sharon said, “This one of Death Valley—it’s very striking,” and Lily said, frowning, “Which card is that?—I don’t remember. It’s years old, I think,” and Sharon said, “I’ve been in Death Valley, in winter, that’s the only time to drive in the desert. I’d been in Las Vegas with—a friend. A long time ago.” Sharon’s face was hidden from Lily, whose heart had begun to beat rapidly. Lily said, as if just recalling, “I couldn’t read the handwriting on that card very well but I think it’s from a cousin of ours—Louise Widener?—she moved to Ohio, I think, when we were in high school.” Sharon marveled, “Are you still in contact with Louise?” and Lily said, “Well, apparently!” And laughed.

  Sharon laughed, too. And began at once to cough—an ugly hacking sound. She backed away from the bulletin board and turned blindly and, still coughing, collided with the table upon which the glazed earthen-hued bowl had been placed; and before Lily could leap up to steady it, the bowl toppled to the floor—toppled, and shattered into pieces.

  For these are the days of vengeance, that all things that are written may be fulfilled.

  Lily hadn’t needed to reread the Death Valley postcard, that drunken-scrawled red message. She knew it vividly, by heart.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, Lily! I’m so sorry.”

  Of course, Sharon was appalled, crestfallen at the accident.

  There was no doubt in either sister’s mind—it had been an accident.

  Sharon pleaded with Lily please forgive me! dropping to her knees to gather up the broken pieces even as, fighting back tears, her heart pounding in fury, Lily assured her it was nothing, not important, only a bowl—“Please! Never mind.”

  But asking Sharon to go away for a while, to leave her alone to sweep up the broken pieces by herself.

  Guiltily Sharon pleaded, “Oh, but Lily—”

  Lily could not trust herself to look at her sister. Sharon had removed her tinted glasses in a dramatic gesture to stare at Lily in dismay; she was visibly trembling, as if frightened.

  Lily whispered, through gritted teeth, “Sharon, please.”

  Like Lily, Sharon was revulsed by stories of violent crime and tragedy and so she declined to watch TV news with the Merricks, nor did she apparently watch much TV at all. (There was a small set in her room but she’d mentioned to Lily she had yet to turn it on—“I don’t want to contaminate my thoughts if I can help it.”) For the first several days of her visit she’d avidly read the Yewville Journal in the kitchen, with Lily, particularly seeking out names of old friends and classmates; then, abruptly, in her impetuous way, losing interest.

  Which was just as well, as Lily remarked to Wes. For the story of Stanley Reigel might have upset her.

  It had been the Tuesday, April 4 issue of the Journal that carried the front-page news, complete with photograph and inch-high headline, of Reigel’s death. Seeing the dead man’s picture, reading of the “alleged suicide,” Wes had been shocked; he’d known Stanley Reigel for years though they’d never been friends. And Lily was acquainted with Connie Reigel from PTA.

  Naturally there was a good deal of flurried attention paid to the case by the local media, since such news—violent, mysterious death of any kind—was a rarity in Yewville.

  Subsequent issues of the Journal and news reports on local television mainly repeated the original story, however; the basic facts remained unchanged. The county coroner ruled that Reigel’s death was indeed suicide and that he’d been heavily drinking for hours before he died. Mrs. Reigel was unavailable for comment but relatives and friends of the dead man reiterated that he had no reason to take his own life; a friend, Michael Dwyer, an aide of the Yewville mayor, was quoted in the Journal saying that Reigel might have been having business troubles but there was nothing crucial that he knew of, and that he “just wasn’t the type to commit suicide.”

  Wes had heard from mutual acquaintances that Stanley Reigel had in fact been having financial problems; drinking problems; and marital problems. He’d been separated from his wife intermittently for the past several years. Until recently, he’d been attending AA meetings but had begun drinking again. He’d been found dead in his car with a torn-out page from a Bible with verses marked in red ink folded inside his shirt—this was what police were calling a “suicide document.”

  A page torn from a Bible! How strange.

  Lily and Wes took care to speak about Reigel’s death in lowered voices, not wanting Deedee, in an adjoining room at the time, to overhear. Wes had had disagreements with Reigel over the quality of his work and his billing practices, and hadn’t approved of Reigel’s private life (Reigel was often seen in the company of women, in local taverns) but he was reluctant to speak ill of the dead. “Suicide is a terrible thing. For the survivors especially.”

  Hesitantly Lily said, “But everyone claims Stanley wasn’t the type—”

  Wes said bluntly, “Under the circumstances, everyone is the ‘type.’”

  It was that remote, eclipsed side of Wes Merrick speaking, that Lily feared. The Vietnam veteran, a battered survivor of alcohol, drugs, wartime horror—Lily dared not imagine.

  Seeing the look in Lily’s face, Wes immediately softened, taking her hand—poor sweet Lily, so easily upset!—and assuring her with a smile that of course he wasn’t the type; not so long as he had her and Deedee. Lily kissed him, as if this was a truly placating remark, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. She supposed that, in any number of Yewville households, in the privacy of their bedrooms, worried women were extracting from their husbands such assurances as she’d indirectly extracted from hers. For of all violence suicide is the most terrifying, as it is the most mysterious.

  It occurred to Lily that Sharon probably knew nothing about the death and would not know unless someone told her, since she’d stopped reading the newspaper and never watched TV and, if she went for brief walks, wouldn’t be speaking with anyone likely to inform her; Lily would caution Deedee not to bring up the subject. “In her state of nerves, anything can upset her,” Lily said. “She’d gone out with Stanley Reigel, I believe. Just for a while, when we were all in high school.”

  There came Sharon somber and shyly repentant to the door of Lily’s workroom. Asking forgiveness another time; berating herself for her clumsiness. “—I started to cough, got faint-headed—so dizzy I almost blacked out—lost my balance and next thing I knew—”

  Lily interrupted the flow of rapid, anxious words with a touch to her sister’s wrist. “Sharon, it’s all right. It was an accident. I’ve broken plenty of bowls.” Adding, not quite truthfully, “Bowls as nice as that one.”

  “But it was beautiful, it was special—wasn’t it?”

  Lily hesitated. “I can make another.”

  “Will you allow me to pay you for it, at least?”

  “What? Of course not!”

  “Suppose I’d bought it? And took it away with me? It was worth at least—five hundred dollars.”

  “Sharon, don’t be silly.”

  “Then I’ll know you aren’t angry, Lily.”

  In a gesture Lily couldn’t help but see as theatrical, but riveting, there stood Sharon in Lily’s workroom drawing out bills from a wa
llet (sleek alligator hide, expensive, a large flat wallet of the kind a man might carry); as Lily stared in astonishment, Sharon drew out bill after bill—$50, $100 bills.

  Lily was shocked. “What on earth are you doing, Sharon? What can you be thinking? Stop.”

  “But I want to repay you, Lily, however I can. Not just for the bowl I was so damned clumsy I broke but for—everything. My visit here. My being so welcome here.”

  “Sharon, you’re our guest. I haven’t seen you in years. I won’t hear of it.”

  Stubbornly Sharon said, “But I do owe you money, Lily, don’t I? You’re just too generous to mention it. I borrowed money five or six years ago when I was down on my luck—in Houston, I think—I don’t remember how much but I remember you came through for me.” Sharon breathlessly pushed the bills at Lily, who was too surprised to know how to respond. “I have money, Lily—I’m not poor—men have paid what they owed me—some of them, at least. Just the groceries for my visit—won’t you let me contribute something?”

  “Sharon, you’re our guest. This isn’t right.”

  Lily had forgotten the money she’d lent Sharon; for it had been a secret from Wes, and being a secret from Wes had gradually faded out of Lily’s consciousness.

  “Can I give it to Deedee, then?”

  “To—Deedee?”

  “Or—isn’t that a good idea?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Since their initial conversation about Deedee, Lily and Sharon hadn’t spoken of Deedee in that way again; it was as if, altogether naturally, Sharon were truly the girl’s aunt. This, too, Lily had nearly pushed out of consciousness as she’d been feeling, since Sharon’s arrival, a sense of pride, elation, privilege in being a mother, and not a childless woman like her sister.

  Sharon said, impatiently, “Then let me give something to you and Wes, for household expenses. Here.”

  Lily, embarrassed, refused to touch the money. But Sharon left it on Lily’s cluttered workbench, a heap of crisp new bills—$2300.

  2

  The Secret Journey

  Always unpredictable! Sharon had decided, she informed Lily, not to call her old friends and classmates, even their Shaheen relatives, just yet.

  “All I really treasure of the past, Lily, is you.”

  She’d been looking through the old scrapbooks their mother had kept. Laughing, and crying; absorbed for hours; then bursting into Lily’s workroom with a childish complaint—“The last part is so messy! Everything’s out of order! So much is missing!”

  As if Lily were curator of “Sherrill’s” career.

  As the days passed, however, Sharon grew restless; needed to get out-of-doors, to exercise her long lovely dancer’s legs. Walking, even in the freezing mist, in the wind, in harsh sunlight, wearing her darkest-tinted glasses and a scarf tied tight around her head.

  She’d discovered a frayed old coat of Lily’s in the hall closet, a khaki-colored trench coat with a hood. It was a coat Lily would have sworn she’d tossed out years ago. Of course, Sharon could wear it all she wished. As well as Lily’s boots.

  “Where do you walk, Sharon? I’d love to join you.”

  Quickly Sharon said, “Oh, no. People would see you, Lily, and recognize you, and next thing you know they’d recognize me. And I’m not ready for that yet.”

  Though, now it was April and the days warmer, the wind likely to be from the south and not the chill Canadian north, Sharon was looking stronger, healthier. Of course she was still thin—far too thin, by Lily’s standards—but some of the color had returned to her cheeks and her eyes were less blood-veined and there was an air almost of jauntiness about her, a smile playing at her lips.

  Lily was disappointed, but supposed she saw Sharon’s point.

  “Well. Someday soon, I hope. Before …” Lily’s voice trailed off, she might have been about to say Before you leave us. Or Before it’s too late.

  Sometimes by day, sometimes by night.

  Slipping from the side door of the house, her private door.

  Restless and excited and purposeful in her sister’s khaki-colored coat worn with the hood. Even on overcast days wearing her dark-tinted glasses. Even, sometimes, at night.

  Reasoning If they are hunting “Starr Bright” they will not recognize me.

  Or, veins thrumming with one of her sparely administered speed capsules, of which she had perhaps thirty left hidden in the lining of her suitcase, If I am “Starr Bright” I am invisible!

  In the frayed glamorless coat that was Lily Merrick’s yet would not have been identified even as Lily Merrick’s for it was one of how many hundreds, thousands of such coats in Yewville. In the black rubberized boots, she winced and laughed to see on her feet. So ugly! No style at all! Yet dear Lily her sister, almost-twin-sister, had chosen them of her own free will.

  The first of her walks she’d undertaken shyly, when she’d only just arrived at her sister’s. Not yet trusting her strength. Her brain dazzled by weeks of flight, body exhausted. When she’d been so jumpy the sound of a ringing telephone at the Merricks’ or a knock at the door or simply Wes’s footsteps (unconsciously heavy, urgent-sounding on the stairs to the second floor of the house) could throw her into a panic. But quickly she grew more confident, bolder. She slipped from the house and cut through the rear yard, through a gate in the wooden fence and into the alley behind; a narrow unpaved old-fashioned lane where trash cans were neatly kept and where some homeowners had garages, converted stables. This residential neighborhood had been semi-country not many decades ago. At East Avenue, she might cross to follow the alley to the end of the next long block; at Hawley Street she might cross to follow the alley to the end of that long block, where the houses and yards were smaller, though still neatly kept. Occasionally a cat would peer at her from atop a fence, or raise its tail to approach her, mewing questioningly in that way of an animal saying Do I know you? and Sharon would pause to pet it if allowed. Occasionally a dog would bark at her, friendly or otherwise, and she’d hurry on by. She might follow the alley to its end in a field below the Yewville Water Refinement Plant and above Route 209, a two-lane state highway of gas stations, fast-food restaurants and video stores and strip malls that had been rapidly thrown up in the 1980’s. So far! The ordinary little alley that passed behind 183 Washington Street! Who would ever have guessed she, Sharon, presumed to be unwell, physically and emotionally a cripple, could have hiked so far, so quickly?

  And so she might turn back, return home.

  Or she might not.

  A more circuitous route was also through the alley (for she would not have wished to be seen leaving the Merricks’ house by the front, onto Washington Street) in the opposite direction, to Bank Street; across then to All Saints churchyard where, following graveled paths into the interior of the old cemetery, she might have been mistaken for a mourner—hooded head bowed in submission before weather-pocked crosses, wide-winged apocalyptic angels. (One afternoon discovering engraved on a black marble marker of 1859 He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into the night.) At the rear of the cemetery was a secret way out through a partly collapsed stone wall, a quick glance behind her to see if anyone was watching But no: God has rendered me invisible in His mercy and she stepped through!

  And followed then gropingly a rough-trodden path through underbrush and scrub trees that led gradually downhill, running parallel with East Avenue but hidden from view even in leafless late winter. Crossing then the raised meridian of the Buffalo & Chautauqua Railroad track. And again no one to see! And no locomotive rushing at her. Entering then breathless a jungle-like area of dumped debris, abandoned stained and torn mattresses and smashed lamps, ravaged furniture as in a vengeful holocaust of domestic bliss; a sight that left her panting with excitement as if such must be a sign sent to her, for her eyes only, from above. Crossing then an edge of the railroad yard where on the night of April 3 a pig would die bleeding to death behind boxcars derelict and lonely-seeming on ru
sted tracks. And so out to Depot Street, shabby row houses and vacant buildings, and beyond then a short block to State Road, Route 11, where there were no sidewalks, open areas of thawing mud bravely traversed in Lily’s sturdy boots. Here too were gas stations, motels, X-rated videos and branch banks, a 7-Eleven store open twenty-four hours a day, the Circle Beer-Liquor-Wine and the Eight-Ball Lounge and Artie’s Tavern. Also an upholsterer’s shop, a dry cleaner’s, Suzi’s Chinese Take-Out, Rita’s Beauty Salon. In the near but hazy distance, across four lanes of rushing traffic, was a new Ford dealership all gleaming vehicles and flapping flags, and, only just visible from the 7-Eleven, a high-rise Ramada Inn lifting from a landscape gouged out as if giant children had dug and maimed it with picks. Fifteen years ago all this had been open fields, farmland. Wild!

  All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.

  Where she’d seen, by the sheerest chance, unless of course it was a sign of God, a pickup truck bearing the broad white letters DWYER’S FENCE CITY hurtling by.

  In disguise then as a plain, dumpy middle-aged woman with a sallow skin and no makeup, slumped shoulders in a shapeless trench coat, in mud-splattered and comically ugly rubberized boots, she purchased a carton of filter-tip cigarettes in the 7-Eleven; and a can of ice-cold Diet Pepsi, laced with caffeine, which she drank where she stood, thirsty as a dog. If the clerk was busy with other customers she paused to glance quickly through tabloid papers in search of news—“STAR” KILLER STRIKES AGAIN IN SAN DIEGO?—L.A. COP PSYCHIC UNEARTHS “STAR” VICTIMS BURIAL GROUND. She smiled to read of new outrageous and unsolved cases of murder and mutilation and bloody graffiti thousands of miles away. She smiled to think how “Starr Brights’s” power would outlive even her who had brought it into being.