Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Now, after Aunt Dell’s funeral, Dad came into the living room yawning and stretching. He’d been overhearing part of my conversation with Mother and said, “That Grandpa of yours. ‘The bull jumps the fence.’ ” He laughed, and I asked what did that mean—“The bull jumps the fence.” He said, “Just what it says. A bull will jump a fence if he can, or he’ll break a fence if he can, if he has to—to get to mate with a cow. That was old Hiram.” He laughed again, as Mother made a signal of disgust. “He had a woman friend? He was unfaithful to Grandma?” I asked. “Hell, he had women. And I don’t mean friends.” Rising from the sofa, Mother said, “I don’t care to hear this, frankly. It’s ancient history and none too pleasant.” “That was why Grandma was angry with him? He was unfaithful to her?” I asked. “Unfaithful—you wouldn’t use a word like that to apply to old Hiram,” Dad said, vastly amused. “Not to him or any of the men in his family.” Mother said, smiling at me, “Honey? You come out into the kitchen with me, we’ll start dinner. Come on.” She tugged at my hands as if I was a little girl, and like a little girl I leapt to my feet to follow her into the kitchen.

  What comfort, even at the age of thirty-nine, in a mother’s soft-grasping, firm hands. What comfort to be called, after so much time apart, “honey.”

  For this is a fact I’ve learned that has surprised me a little: we come to love our parents more as we grow older together, in a kind of jolting lockstep. Realizing at the midpoint of our lives, looking at them looking anxiously at us, My God. We’re all in this together.

  5. An Alternative Ending

  THE STRANGEST IDEAS in my head, sometimes when I’m partly asleep, but sometimes when I’m fully awake, I’ve shared with no one.

  Such as: I’ve been operated on in secret, the lower part of my body anesthetized, and my insides ingeniously arranged. Or, so vivid in my memory I must have dreamed it more than once, there’s a sac of slippery hairless wriggling little creatures inside me.

  If I shared fantasies. But I don’t share fantasies.

  And I don’t confuse fantasies with reality. In my profession, in order to help others—and helping others is the point of my profession—you learn to separate fantasy from reality in your own life as well as in the lives of others.

  My cousins are in Grandma’s kitchen gulping down glasses of ice water, bare-chested, sweaty, crowding each other at the sink, and Grandma says in that scolding way of hers you couldn’t always judge was it only just scolding or was it part-affectionate, as close to affection as the woman could bring herself with human beings as with animals including the very animals she butchered, Enough now, you two, go on out, and I’m at the round bare-board kitchen table helping Grandma prepare that special dessert of hers where you fry big thin round pancakes in a heavy iron skillet in butter and fill them with sugared black cherries and sour cream and bake them on cookie sheets, and the boys run out letting the screen door slam and I ask, Where are they going, Grandma? and Grandma says, Never mind, you stay here with me. You don’t want to be tramping around the fields with those big boys, and so I stay in the kitchen with Grandma helping her bake. All afternoon.

  It might have happened that way. Maybe it was meant to happen that way. But then, what would have been my life?

  SECRET, SILENT

  He was telling me he couldn’t drive me to the interview after all. Saying, “I know I promised, honey. But I don’t see how, things being what they are, this can be.” And I hear these words but can’t at first believe them. For I’m hurt as a child is hurt, slapped with no warning in the face, and I’m hurt as a seventeen-year-old is hurt, in my pride. Wanting to cry, You promised! You can’t do this! I thought you loved me.

  It was an evening in April. We were in one of the rooms of the upstairs house as we called it. And we were having this conversation that would alter my life, anyway Dad was having it, informing me on Thursday evening that he couldn’t after all drive me three hundred twenty miles across the daunting breadth of New York state for an interview at Albany State University where I’d been awarded something called a Founders’ Scholarship for tuition, room, and board provided I completed my application with an interview on campus—which interview had been scheduled, after numerous telephone calls, for Saturday morning at eleven o’clock. To arrive at the university by that time we would have had to leave home no later than four o’clock in the morning. Yet now Dad was telling me he’d have to work on Saturday morning; his foreman at the tool shop wanted him, for time-and-a-half wages, which couldn’t be turned down. Things being what they are meaning he needed the money, our family needed the money, he hadn’t any choice.

  Nor could my mother drive me. “You know I can’t be away from Grandma for so many hours.”

  I told Mom yes, I knew.

  “Please look at me! I’m talking to you.”

  I told Mom yes, I knew she was talking to me.

  “I know you’re disappointed, but it can’t be helped. When you’re older you’ll understand, things happen to us that can’t be helped. Poor Grandma—“

  I wasn’t listening. At the time I didn’t understand how my mother was terrified of her own mother’s dying, though Grandma was eighty years old and had been ill for years; how despite all circumstances, and some of them grim, there’s a profound distinction between being a woman who still has her mother and being a woman who does not. What I heard of my mother’s plea was Things happen. Can’t be helped. When you’re older you’ll understand. That deadly refrain. That litany of defeat. My young heart beat hard in defiance, Oh no I won’t, not me!

  “I’VE FIGURED OUT a way I can get to Albany, without Daddy driving me. By Greyhound bus.”

  “So far? Alone?”

  “I won’t be alone, Mom. There’s another girl in my class—” with ease I supplied the name, an acquaintance, not a friend, a name my mother might recognize, “—who’s going to be interviewed, too. I asked around at school today. Her father can’t drive her, either.”

  All that day I’d planned this, these very words. To be spoken without reproach or rancor, simply a statement of fact. There are other fathers who can’t help their daughters at such crucial times. It’s an ordinary matter to be remedied in ordinary, practical ways. I’d called the Greyhound station: there was an overnight bus that left Port Oriskany at 11:10 P.M. that night, made numerous stops along the Thruway and arrived in Albany at 7:50 A.M. tomorrow. Presumably, passengers slept on the bus.

  My mother stared at me, I was so effervescent, so happy, all smiles; so very different from the way I’d been the previous evening, and from my truest most secret self. I expected her to object to such an adventure, my traveling such a distance, overnight, meeting with strangers in a city where we knew no one, had no relatives, and in fact Mom did object, but weakly, saying she didn’t think it was a good idea for young girls to be traveling by themselves, but Dad shrugged and declared it was fine with him—“Hell, the girl’s no fool, she can take care of herself.” He was relieved, obviously. He needn’t feel any guilt now. Fondly he squeezed my shoulder, he called me “sweetheart.”

  In this way, it was decided.

  2

  DAD DROVE ME to the Greyhound station that night. The bus, which looked massive, spouting exhaust in a bluish cloud, was already boarding when we arrived at eleven o’clock. Dad had been drinking after supper and his handsome, ravaged face was flushed but he was nowhere near drunk, only in good spirits; he’d probably be dropping by one of his taverns before returning home. First, he saw his daughter off for her interview, gave me a big hug and a wet kiss on the side of my face and told me, “Take care, sweetheart! See you tomorrow.” There was no sign of my classmate, whoever she was supposed to be, but Dad wasn’t suspicious as Mom would have been. He seemed to believe me when I pretended to be pointing out someone on the bus, waving happily to her—“There’s Barbara. She’s saving me a seat.”

  Most of the passengers were men traveling by themselves, but there were several women, among them, hurrying late
to board, a striking young woman who might have been in her mid-twenties, with crimped auburn hair and thin arched eyebrows and a very red, moist mouth. She called out, “Driver, wait for me, please!” This was intended as a flirtatious joke, for the bus driver wasn’t about to leave just yet; he laughed and assured the young woman she’d gotten there in time, and did she need help with her suitcase?

  I was several passengers ahead of this woman, making my way along the bus aisle, but I observed through the windows that, as she hurried past my father out on the pavement, the two of them glanced searchingly at each other. Their gazes held for a long moment as if they were waiting to recall that they knew each other. So the young woman in staccato high heels climbed up into the bus, breathless, with an air of entering a space in readiness for her, like a stage; she took for granted that people would be looking at her, women and men both, and was careful to make eye contact with no one. By this time most of the single seats had been taken. I’d found one of the last ones, toward the rear of the bus; I glanced back at the auburn-haired young woman hoping she’d follow me and sit with me, but she didn’t notice me, and took a seat with one of the better-dressed men passengers who’d risen gallantly to give her the window seat.

  They were three seats ahead of me on the other side of the aisle. I would hear them talking together for the next forty minutes as the Greyhound heaved its way through Port Oriskany streets and out to the Thruway. The man’s voice was indistinct but persistent; he did most of the talking; the young woman’s responses were few, and punctuated by nervous laughter. I wondered how it was possible to fall so quickly into conversation with a stranger; there was something thrilling in it, risky and dramatic.

  I’d brought with me The Plays of Eugene O’Neill and was midway into that strange, surreal play The Hairy Ape which was so very different from the other O’Neill plays I’d struggled through, and fascinating to me, for I believed I would like to write plays someday; but my attention was drawn repeatedly to the couple several seats ahead, particularly to the auburn-haired young woman. Who was she? Why was she traveling alone on an overnight bus to—where? The bus’s final destination was New York City. I wanted to think she was headed there. She had the looks and style (I thought) to be an actress or a showgirl of some kind. I’d had an impression of a fine-boned profile, a delicate nose, wavy shoulder-length hair, and the sharp gleam of gold earrings. She’d been wearing a dark blue raincoat shot with iridescent threads which she’d removed with some ceremony when she took her seat, folding it and placing it in the overhead rack with her bags. Around her neck she’d knotted a stylish silk scarf, crimson peonies on a cream-colored background. I was curious to know what her companion was saying to her so earnestly, but there was too much noise from the bus’s motor; it was like trying to hear my parents’ murmurous voices through a wall, mysterious and teasing. I had the idea that the man was offering the young woman a drink from a bottle or flask in a paper bag and that she’d declined more than once. (Alcohol was forbidden on the bus.) My heart pounded with a sudden thrill of excitement. I’d deceived my parents, and they would never know. I would escape their plans for me, whatever those plans were, or were not: my mother had several times said plaintively that it was too bad my scholarship at Albany couldn’t be “cashed in”—we could certainly use the money to help pay my grandmother’s medical bills.

  Most of the other passengers had settled in to sleep by midnight; only a few, like me, had switched on overhead lights to read. The auburn-haired young woman and her companion sat in semidarkness. I’d begun to lose interest in them when I heard a woman’s voice sharply raised—“No, sir.” A man said, “Eh? What’s wrong?” trying to laugh. But already the young woman was out of her seat, determined to leave. “Go to hell, mister.” She grabbed her coat and the smaller of her bags from the overhead rack and, incensed, began to make her way toward the rear of the bus. Behind her the man stood, protesting, “Hey wait, hey c’mon—I was only kidding. Don’t go away mad.” The bus had begun to slow; up front, the driver must have been watching through his rearview mirror, ready to intervene. The young woman stood beside my seat panting and glaring at me. “D’you mind?” she demanded, and before I could tell her no, of course not, she swung into the seat heavily. “That bastard. That son of a bitch.” She ignored the scrutiny of others close about her as, charged with outrage as with static electricity, she ignored me. Her oversized handbag of simulated lizard skin was crowding against my legs and her clumsily bunched coat was pressed against me. I’d moved over toward the window as far as I could. I was flattered she’d come to sit with me, even if she hadn’t exactly chosen me, and hardly dared speak to her for fear of being rebuffed. Finally, seeing that the man in the seat up ahead had given up, she stood, folded her coat and placed it in the overhead rack, smoothed the long sexy angora sweater she was wearing down over her hips, and sat down again. Her movements were fussy, showy, self-dramatizing. She said, with a sidelong glance at me and a tight smile, “Thanks! I appreciate it. That bastard mistook me for someone I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry. These damned buses!”

  I was somewhat overwhelmed by her. Close up, she was beautiful. Her smooth creamy skin that seemed poreless, unlike my own; her thick-lashed mascaraed eyes; that glistening of female indignation of a kind I could never express except in mimicry or parody. “I don’t know why I expect anything better on a damned bus,” she was saying. “It’s not exactly first-class travel accommodations on the New York Central Pullman. You’d think by now I’d know.” I was tempted to tell her that she hadn’t needed to sit with that man, or with any man at all. Instead I said again that I was sorry she was upset, but probably he’d let her alone now. “I’m not upset, I’m disgusted,” she said quickly. “I can take care of myself, thank you.” But this wasn’t a rebuff, evidently, for a moment later she asked, “What’s that you’re reading?” I showed her the opened pages and she frowned at the small print as if nearsighted. “ ‘Hairy Ape’? Jesus. Never heard of that, what’s it about?” I tried to explain, so far as I knew, which wasn’t very far, that it was a play set on an ocean liner and there was a fierce, muscular man named Yank Smith who worked with the furnaces and he was proud of himself as a man who made the ship go until—“He turns into an ape, huh? Sure! There’s been a movie of that, I bet. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen him. Don’t tell me,” the woman said, laughing. I had to laugh with her. Amid a scent of talcum and warm flesh there was a mild sourness as of whiskey lifting from her. “My name’s Karla with a ‘K.’ What’s your name?” I’d drawn back the heavy book that seemed embarrassing to me now. “I’m Kathryn. With a ‘K.’ “ She said, “I’m going to Albany, what about you?” I said, “I’m going to Albany, too.” She said, “I’ve got important business in Albany, what about you?” I said, “I guess I do, too.” She asked where I lived and I told her, and I asked where she lived and she said, stiffly, she was between cities—“But not Albany. That’s for damned sure.” She added, loud enough for her ex-companion to hear if he was listening, “We should sleep then, best we can, and not let any assholes trouble us.” Without waiting for my reply Karla reached up and switched out the overhead lights.

  I’d shut the book anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate.

  THE ROMANCE of night travel by bus. When you’re alone, and no one. The thrill of such aloneness. The strange headachey insomniac nights of such aloneness. I tried to sleep, my eyes shutting upon a kaleidoscope of broken, bright images. I thought—My head is a doll’s head, my eyes are glass eyes that open and shut but not with my volition. Through my eyelashes I saw headlights appearing and disappearing like lone comets on the mostly deserted Thruway. Outside was a steeply hilly landscape, dimly visible by clouded moonlight. Living in such a landscape, as I’d done since birth, you don’t need to see it to know it’s there. How happy I am. How scared, and how happy.

  It was 3:10 A.M. when the Greyhound lumbered off the Thruway to stop at an
all-night service station and restaurant. Karla, who’d been sleeping, woke and poked me in the arm with unexpected sisterly solicitude. “You awake? C’mon, we got ten minutes.” There was a parched taste like dried glue at the back of my mouth. It was a relief to be fully awake and on my feet. Only a few other passengers climbed out of the bus with us, most remained sleeping. Outside, the air was a shock, so damp and cold. Though this was the last week in April, a fine gritty sleet was being blown across the pavement. Beyond the dull-glaring fluorescent lights on their tall poles illuminating the service station and the restaurant there was nothing, as in a stage set. Neither Karla nor I had troubled to put on a coat and we ran shivering toward the restaurant. I saw that Karla was barely my height in her impractical high-heeled ankle-strap shoes. Her coral-pink angora sweater fitted her slender body snugly at her breasts and hips; to emphasize her small waist, she wore a tightly cinched shiny black belt; her skirt, not quite reaching her knees, was some shimmery synthetic fashion, dark crimson. “Don’t look at asshole, he’s poison,” Karla warned me out of the side of her mouth, like a tough girl in the movies. The man she’d been sitting with had gotten to the restaurant entrance before us and was standing by the door holding it open for us, staring at Karla with doggy reproachful eyes. I supposed he was drunk, he had that look. But it wasn’t possible for me to ignore him as Karla did; I couldn’t be rude. “Thank you,” I murmured as Karla and I slipped inside.