The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Wheatsheaf, inhabited now by strangers, is one of the oldest and most regal houses on Bayard Lane, having been originally built in 1769, with numerous additions to follow over the decades. It is in a palatial Georgian style with a “soft” redbrick facade, high roofs, a prominent portico, and narrow shutters framing its many windows, at the corner of Bayard and the road now known as Cleveland Lane. Through Josiah’s childhood his uncle’s house, a quarter mile from Crosswicks, had always seemed a more relaxed house than his own, or, at least, the household was given an air of gruff levity by Copplestone, who had no wish to compete with his older brother Augustus as a “serious” son of Winslow Slade. (Josiah’s family had always lived with the elder Slades, as Crosswicks was an enormous house, and might easily have benefited another family.) Like his friend Andrew Fleming West, Copplestone was admired through the West End for his generosity, hospitality, and “masculine” sense of humor; though social acquaintances knew little of the strain of his relationship with his son, Todd, a subject which Copplestone was not likely to discuss with them, or indeed with anyone.

  As he’d approached the house Josiah had heard a shout from a second-floor window and, glancing up, had seen his cousin Todd gesturing to him; during his conversation with Copplestone and Lenora, Josiah had heard similar outcries from the top of the staircase, but knew that, if he sought out his young cousin, Todd would hide from him—that was the boy’s sort of humor, for which, at this time, Josiah hadn’t much patience.

  At this time Copplestone was forty-seven years old, having been born in 1858; yet, as the man was bald, and favored muttonchop whiskers, and was rotund as Dean West, he looked a decade older. Copplestone had always had an easy and relaxed attitude toward life, as an heir of the Slade fortune: why others taxed their brains with riddles about the nature of God, and the divinity of Christ, and whether God be in or above nature; why did the innocent suffer, and the evil reap harvest—Copplestone could not guess. “The distinction between ‘eternity’ and a tankard of ale is a simple one: I can close my fingers around the tankard, and drink, while with ‘eternity’—I’d wait a very long time before my thirst was quenched, if I looked to sustenance from that.”

  Since Copplestone’s income was assured, he’d frequently indulged himself in speculations of a reckless sort: several years ago, he’d gone in with Trillingham Bayard in backing a private militia, to be hired by companies who needed protection against picketing strikers and the like, as with the United Mine Workers of recent notoriety, and the much-publicized strife in the “Silk City,” Paterson; he’d lost as much as $200,000 in backing Thomas Edison’s revolutionary scheme of cement furniture which had, as Copplestone affably said, “sunk without a trace.”

  Copplestone had also invested in the Cape May–Atlantic City resort area and he was involved in the Cape May Challenge Cup Race, betting lavishly, but not always wisely. It was a measure of Copplestone’s habit of favoring the underdog in such competitions, he’d financed a motorcar from the experimental workshop of Henry Ford, of Greenfield, Michigan, in a race on the Cape May sands, with the result that the Ford motorcar lost badly and the young inventor was so penniless he had to sell his racer in Cape May City, to a rival, in order to buy a railroad ticket back to Michigan! For Copplestone, in a swift change of mood, was so disgusted with the car’s performance he refused to finance the inventor’s return home. He’d had enough of “homegrown American” products—“Next time I’ll back the Ace Frenchman, Chevrolet.”

  Josiah’s ruddy-faced uncle was a very social person, unlike his older brother and his father Winslow; his presence at West End dinner tables assured a certain intensity of bonhomie. His skill at dialect stories was far in advance of Woodrow Wilson’s, though the men both favored “darky” accents; Copplestone had cultivated, too, a set of jokes featuring “Rooshian Jews” and “immigrant Poles.” Copplestone was a popular club-member in Manhattan, as well, though the effort of taking the train, or being driven by motorcar such a distance, was not appealing. In more than twenty years of marriage Copplestone had never been less than absolutely faithful to his wife, so far as anyone in Princeton knew.

  Copplestone felt obliged to punish his rowdy son Todd from time to time, but he doted upon little Oriana, who was clearly his favorite. He’d always expressed a great affection for his niece Annabel, and he was fond of Josiah who, as he complained, ought to have been his son and not his nephew; for they would have gotten along well, and he should have minded it less, that Todd was an idiot.

  (Idiot? Did Copplestone carelessly speak of his only son in this way? I’m afraid that, yes he did. And not always when Todd was safely out of earshot.)

  Josiah’s aunt Lenora, née Biddle, was Copplestone’s age; not a beauty but a “handsome” woman, if somewhat fleshy; though small-proportioned when seated beside her portly husband. Her hair was of no memorable style and in any case usually covered by a morning-cap, or afternoon-cap, or bonnet, or hat; she rose early each morning, and always bathed twice—the first immersion was for soaping and washing; the second, for rinsing. She attended church services nearly as often as church services were available, and always read her Bible before bedtime; it did not greatly matter to Lenora which book of the Bible she read, only that she read a few pages, as intently of Hosea, or Nehemiah, or Zephaniah as of the Gospels or Genesis, for she would not remember what she’d read only a few minutes later, only that her mood was calmed, and prepared for bed. Each day also Lenora prayed that Todd would revert himself to normal boyish ways as, she seemed to recall, he’d behaved when he was younger; for, like her husband, Lenora found it difficult to believe that their son wasn’t choosing to behave badly, and might have learned to read and write if he’d tried harder; but Lenora never scolded Todd, and was brought to tears when Copplestone decided it was “time for a whipping.”

  Of her many activities, Lenora was most proud of her prominent position in the New Jersey Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and her role in the Ladies’ Altar Society of the First Presbyterian Church. But Lenora was most famous in the community for her excellent way with foods, particularly pastries: her specialties were cream-and-custard cakes and tarts of all varieties from quince to boysenberry. It was declared that a West End lady could scarcely sink into her sickbed before Lenora arrived with a prettily trimmed basket of dainties from her kitchen; she was most solicitous of the chronic invalids in town, visiting them weekly. “Ah, it is Lenora Slade again,” Adelaide Burr would say with a little scream of a laugh, “so I know I am sick; and have little hope of recovery.”

  Yet there was in Lenora an inclination to be severely critical of behavior that deviated from her own, and, with her nephew Josiah present, Lenora couldn’t resist bringing up the subject of Wilhelmina Burr whom, she said, she had never entirely trusted, for her “wanton” influence on Annabel, since the girls were classmates in elementary school. Wilhelmina was “outspoken”—“capricious”—“disrespectful of her elders”; she dressed scandalously, in “Turkish trousers” and “unskirted bloomers.” Most alarming, Wilhelmina had quarreled with her parents about living in Manhattan, and she was attending art classes in which, it was said, nude persons of both sexes were known to pose; Lenora had heard too, from the Stocktons, that Wilhelmina now smoked cigarettes occasionally. It was common knowledge in Princeton, Lenora said primly, that this aggressive young lady had “set her cap” for a certain young man whose name she would not mention.

  “Aunt Lenora, you’re right—you should not mention it.” Josiah was both bemused, and irritated; he felt a pang of guilt, for Wilhelmina whom he meant to contact, but seemed never to have time, or the opportunity.

  “Well. Others do, you know. Quite frequently.”

  “I’m sure all that you’ve heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.”

  This was a prim statement of Josiah’s own, in which he could hear a faint echo of his grandfather Winslow.

  “Wilhelmina might have kno
wn, you know—about Annabel.”

  “What about Annabel?”

  “She might have known, or suspected—something. She has behaved very strangely, very stiffly and guiltily, since—that day.”

  At this moment the tall doors leading to a rear, flagstone terrace of the drawing room were flung open, and Todd whom no one had known had crept outside, now came in, brashly; humming and singing to himself as if he were alone, and quite ignoring his cousin Josiah. Lenora tensed, as if awaiting a crash of her elegant tea-table; but seemed to take no notice as the glittery-eyed boy snatched at the remaining crustless sandwiches and little cakes. Todd then flung himself daringly into the divan beside his glowering father, and chewed noisily, all the while loudly humming “Zip Coon” and stroking an imaginary, immense belly, in mockery of Copplestone.

  Neutral of expression, his posture now rigid, Copplestone stared fixedly before him, at Josiah, and gave no sign of his son’s intrusive presence. When Josiah greeted Todd, Todd only just nodded, without a glance at his cousin, and continued eating.

  He is accursed. But he has always been. Yet, he is my cousin, and I love him.

  Badly Josiah wished he’d left Wheatsheaf a few minutes before, to have escaped Todd. Now, he feared a sudden outburst of his uncle’s temper, and the possibility of Copplestone “disciplining” Todd.

  Since the outing in Crosswicks Forest months before, Todd’s skin had become noticeably darkened from the sun, for he spent a good deal of time outdoors and now looked, as his sister said, like a “Red Indian.” He had always had a playful/feral manner but lately, he behaved as if his clothing, or perhaps his skin, chafed him. Clearly he’d been upset by Annabel’s abrupt disappearance, as by his relatives’ reaction to it; he was both noisier than usual, yet at times quieter—prattling to himself, then lapsing into stony muteness during which times, to his mother’s distress and his father’s rage, he appeared to be deaf as well as mute. (It was known to Josiah that his nephew hadn’t uttered a coherent sentence since that Saturday morning in June, though his parents would not speak of it.) His appetite had grown so erratic, he ate only at wayward, unexpected times, preferring to feed himself in the kitchen, to the alarm of the cook. Though he’d been many times forbidden to leave Wheatsheaf unaccompanied, Todd often disappeared for baffling periods of time as if into “thin air”; then, he reappeared, with no explanation. More than once, his parents had been on the brink of alerting the Princeton police, for Todd could be found nowhere; nor did he seem to be at Crosswicks, or any other house in the neighborhood, when worried calls were made. The domestic staffs at Wheatsheaf, Crosswicks, and elsewhere whispered of Todd as a demon; and there were several older women servants who, when they encountered Todd, rapidly made motions in the air of an old German Hexenbanner.

  Josiah’s aunt Lenora was trying gamely to continue speaking with him, as if nothing were wrong, but Josiah was distracted by a new prank of Todd’s—for Todd had produced an old cap of Josiah’s which Josiah had not seen in years, and had set it atop his spiky hair at a rakish angle. When Todd stood, saluting Josiah in a mocking way, Josiah said sharply, “That’s enough, Todd.” He was as much a boy as to snatch the hat from his young cousin, at the risk of overexciting Todd, but Todd only just looked hurt, and reproachful; and now began to whistle “Zip Coon” in a particularly high-pitched tone, that at last provoked his father to rise from the divan, seize hold of his antic son, and begin cuffing and boxing him about the head, chuckling angrily: “Have I not told you and told you, Todd—you must not upset your mother.”

  Josiah at once intervened, managing to separate father and son; but suffering one or two of Copplestone’s blows to his own face; as Todd had already been injured, it seemed, for his nose was bleeding, and his wail was loud as an infant’s. Muttering still, and loudly panting, Copplestone reached around Josiah to seize Todd again, and give him a final violent shake, before turning on his heel to storm out of the room.

  During these upsetting seconds Lenora remained sitting very straight in her chair, presiding over her tiny gleaming kingdom of tea things, and gently chiding her son: “You see, Todd, you have aggravated your father again. God have mercy on us all, if his wrath does not abate.”

  COME TO TEA, Josiah! I have no news—but feel the need to speak to you of what has happened to alter all our lives.

  Since June, Josiah had avoided Pembroke, which was Wilhelmina’s family home, on Campbelton Circle, though the FitzRandolphs had several times invited him to dinner, and Wilhelmina to tea, or to simply “drop by.” And it troubled Josiah, that Princeton gossip conspired to say that poor Wilhelmina was hopelessly in love with him. This Josiah neither believed nor wished to believe, for he was too gentlemanly to wish to hurt anyone; yet had too much pride, to consider “Willy” Burr a suitable mate for himself—for she and Annabel had been so close, for so long, he’d come to think of Willy as a sister.

  Yet, she continued to invite Josiah, at some expense, he thought, to her own pride. And he felt sympathy for her, and a wish to make amends to her, and so accepted.

  Pembroke, one of the smaller and less distinguished of the larger West End homes, was razed in the 1940s, to make way for newer houses; at this time, it was a striking specimen of the Tudor style, as it was generally copied in America, with an impressive front door boasting original brass rim locks, brought from London; a high-ceilinged foyer and spiral staircase leading to the upper floors; a rather dark interior, paneled in walnut; but, at the rear, a charming little garden or breakfast room to which Josiah was led by Wilhelmina herself, who’d answered the door when he rang the bell. In this room, which was filled with lushly flowering plants and small fruit-bearing trees, as well as Egyptian vases containing remarkably large and beautiful feathers, Willy appeared to have been reading, on a comfortable rattan couch, for there lay a slender, opened volume of poetry. Josiah asked what it was and Willy said, “I’m not sure, Josiah! I have been reading, and rereading, and I have vivid sensations—but scarcely know what to think.” Josiah took up the small book: Poems. Its author he’d never heard of: Emily Dickinson.

  “Josiah! Please take a seat. It has been so long.”

  Wilhelmina spoke gaily and with no trace of reproach, only her usual frank friendliness and dimpled smile.

  Quite surprising Josiah by offering him a cigarette out of a Turkish morocco miniature case which he declined, with the excuse that he only smoked in the evenings, after dinner; and then, only cigars.

  “Why then, I hope you will not mind if I smoke. For I find, it calms my nerves.” Wilhelmina spoke with a slight betrayal of breathlessness, lighting a cigarette with a tiny gilt-trimmed match. Josiah had never seen any West End woman, of any age, smoke a cigarette before, and was quite fascinated by this new, unexpected behavior of his sister’s friend.

  “Tell me, Willy—did Annabel smoke?”

  “Annabel! Of course not. You would have known it, if she had.”

  Willy was wearing casual clothes, in fact a pair of those Turkish trousers which Josiah’s aunt deplored, that looked like pajamas; but over this she wore a middy-blouse and an attractive quilted duster, or housecoat. High on her bosom she’d pinned a lady’s watch. Her day shoes were of dark leather, and her stockings of silk, Josiah saw when by chance he glanced at her ankles.

  It was whispered of Wilhelmina Burr that she cared not for the fashionable extremes of corsetry, and so could boast nothing like a Gibson Girl figure; far from being wasp-waisted, like her more stylish contemporaries, Willy struck the eye as solid, sturdy; a healthy girl, with no subterfuge. Yet, it seemed that Willy had spent more time than usual at her toilet that day, for her thick, often unruly dark hair was now smoothly drawn into a pompadour, and affixed with amber combs and pins. It was with a playful air of dress-up, rather than feminine affectation, that Willy had tucked a lacy perfumed handkerchief into the V of her middy-blouse, and insinuated a tiny pink tea rose into her hair.

  “This smoking is new to you, Willy, isn’t it? And who ga
ve you that fancy cigarette case?”

  Willy smiled evasively, tucking the case into a pocket of her Turkish trousers. “A friend.”

  “A new friend?”

  “Yes. New. And no one you know.”

  By her expression, Josiah was prompted to suppose that the gift was from a male admirer. He felt just the slightest prick of jealousy.

  Willy murmured: “A new presence in Princeton, a houseguest at Drumthwacket.”

  Yet stubbornly, Josiah would make no further inquiry.

  Though Willy had hurried to open the front door herself, to prevent its being opened by one of the household staff, she had no choice but to allow the housekeeper to bring in tea, for that lady would have been scandalized if she had not, and might have informed Mrs. Burr. But Willy took a visible pleasure in presiding over the tea service, and pressing upon Josiah the usual sort of fare—cucumber and watercress sandwiches on crustless white bread, and buttered scones, and quince tarts topped with cream. It may have been the radiant heat of the old, silver teapot, or the fumes of steam that rose from Josiah’s cup of Ceylon tea, or the sub-tropical atmosphere of the garden room itself, that caused Josiah to begin to feel warm, and yearning to tear open his stiff-starched shirt collar.

  As if she had no pressing reason for having asked Josiah to visit her, Willy spoke in an animated voice of the new Broadway hit, Mr. Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West which she hadn’t yet seen, but wanted very much to see. (Was Willy suggesting that she and Josiah go together?) And there were other, Princeton topics about which Willy spoke, in her open, frank, friendly way, until Josiah, beginning to become restless, intervened to ask if she had heard anything at all—anything—of Annabel; and Willy said, with a look of hurt, that of course she had not—“If I had, I would have told you all immediately. I would have called.”

  Josiah then asked if Willy could recall anything Annabel might have told her, however slight it might have seemed, about “Axson Mayte.”