Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And so we did.

  KARLA COMMANDED ME to help her and I obeyed. Afterward I would conclude I’d been in a state of shock. And I would wonder at the logic of bringing a badly bleeding man into the bathroom as he’d insisted, as I would wonder at the logic of not calling an ambulance. I would wonder, Did he live?—or did he die? Was I a witness to manslaughter? Was I an accessory? Stumbling and swaying like drunks, Karla and I walked the wounded man into the bathroom. Each of us grasped him around the waist and how heavy he was, how his terrible weight pulled me down. My head and jaw were pounding from the blow I’d taken, the left side of my face beginning already to swell. Karla was saying in a dazed voice, “You’ll be all right. Honey, you’ll be all right. It’s just flesh wounds, I think. You’ll be all right.” Her face looked coarse, makeup streaked in unflattering rivulets, mascara smeared beneath her eyes like ink; I saw that Karla wasn’t a young woman only a few years older than me but well into her thirties and now looking her age. In the dank, ill-smelling bathroom with no window and a single bare lightbulb overhead the wounded man sat down heavily on the rim of a bathtub, whimpering and cursing with pain. He was panting, yet couldn’t seem to take his injuries seriously, impatient with himself for being weakened and slowed down. I would never know if this man, Arnie, was Karla’s ex-husband or still her husband but it seemed they’d been married; there may even have been a child involved, and this child may even have died—from what they said, elliptically, and in fragments, and from what I was able in my distracted state to comprehend, this seemed to be the case. Clearly they were lovers even if they’d wanted to hurt each other badly; clearly Karla was appalled at what she’d done to him, the dozen shallow wounds on his hands, forearms, and neck and the deeper wounds in his chest and shoulder. Karla commanded, “Don’t just stand there, help us, for God’s sake.” I fetched towels, pillowcases, even soiled sheets from the bed. Clumsily we made bandages, thick wads of cloth to stanch the bleeding, or to try to stanch it; for blood soaked through the makeshift bandages within seconds, glistening on our hands and splattering onto our legs. Star-bursts of blood collected on the tile floor. The wounded man demanded cold-water compresses, which may have helped a little. His impatience with his bleeding wounds reminded me of my father’s angry impatience with his own infrequent illnesses and gave me a sense of the man’s personality. I would never know more about him. I would never know Karla’s last name. Though involved in this terrible episode, like sisters baptized in another’s blood, I would never see Karla or hear of her after that morning.

  The wounded Arnie was deathly pale but insisted to Karla for Christ’s sake he was all right, she hadn’t struck deep with the fucking knife and he’d had worse than this happen to him, he’d been shot for Christ’s sake and it hadn’t killed him. He gave her a wincing grin, saying, “So you did it, eh? Got guts, eh?”—which made Karla cry harder. She was crouched beside him with her arms around him and her forehead pressed against his. I stood in the doorway not knowing what to do. Next door, the maddened dog was barking furiously at us through the plasterboard wall, only a few feet away. The wounded man at last squinted at me, asking Karla who I was, and Karla said, “Nobody. A friend,” and the man asked, “A friend who?” and Karla said, “I don’t know! Nobody.” Karla didn’t so much as glance at me. The wounded man was panting, scowling; he stared at me for a long moment before saying, “You, you better leave. Don’t make any fucking calls, just go.” So I did.

  On the bedroom floor amid the wreckage of the curtains I discovered Karla’s beautiful silk scarf, which I carried away with me. I deserve this, I thought.

  3

  AS IN A NIGHTMARE it was 11:25 A.M. when I finally arrived for the interview.

  I’d had to run several blocks after leaving the brownstone to find a pay phone in a drugstore so that I could call a taxi, and I’d waited with mounting anxiety for a taxi to arrive, and the ride itself seemed to take forever, and at the university I had to ask directions to the admissions office, and once in that building at the top of a steep hill I had to spend frantic minutes in a women’s room in a state of physical distress, afterward trying to make myself presentable for meeting the associate dean of admissions who would be interviewing me: for the front of my raincoat was stained with both vomit and a stranger’s blood, and there was a wide, wet stain on the skirt of my navy blue wool suit, which I cleverly disguised by shifting the front of the skirt to the side and covering the stain with my raincoat, which I’d carefully folded so that the stain didn’t show and hung over my arm. It looked quite natural, didn’t it, for me to be carrying my coat over my arm, on a warm April morning? Of course I had to wash my hands and my face; without removing my nylon stockings (which were now marred by runs) I managed to lighten the bloodstains on my legs. The left side of my face was swollen so that I looked as if I had mumps on just that side, and there was an ugly bruise taking shape but this too I disguised, or believed I disguised, by looping Karla’s long scarf around my neck and tying it in a bow at my jawline. In the mirror I saw an unnaturally pale girl with stark, shadowed, blood-veined eyes and windblown hair and a look about the mouth that might have been desperation or triumph. I’m here. I’m here!

  I’d missed my appointment of course. The dean was interviewing other students. His receptionist advised me to reschedule my interview for the following Saturday but I said that wasn’t possible—“I’ll wait.” Staring at my swollen jaw and rumpled clothes the receptionist tried to discourage me but I said I couldn’t come back to Albany another time—“I’m here now.” I must have spoken sharply, for the woman pursed her lips and said nothing more.

  You can’t deny me, I’ve come so far.

  Waiting in the dean’s outer office as other students my age, glancing at me curiously, came and went. Pacing in the corridor outside. And more than once retreating to a women’s rest room to stare at my reflection, which seemed to waver in the glass. A ghastly radiance shone in my skin. My eyes resembled Karla’s—glittery and dilated. And the silk scarf with the crimson peonies was so beautiful, the most beautiful item of clothing I’d ever worn.

  Not until 1:20 P.M. would the associate dean have time to “fit me in.” And then I was allowed to know it was something of a special favor. The man’s name was Werner—I was careful to address him as “Dr. Werner,” perceiving him as one of a sequence of adults in my adolescent life who must be judiciously courted, placated, seduced. This man was frowning yet kindly, with deep dents and fissures in his middle-aged, claylike face; he’d have been willing to forgive me for being late if only I might have explained myself, yet I couldn’t seem to explain myself except to say tersely that I’d come from Port Oriskany on the Greyhound bus and had been unavoidably detained. “ ‘Unavoidably’—? You didn’t have an accident, did you, Miss—” he peered through bifocals at documents on his desk and pronounced my tricky ethnic name with elaborate care. Tell him yes! Arouse the bastard’s sympathy. This was a reckless voice not my own, which I ignored. I thanked Dr. Werner politely and told him no, I was fine. “Is this your first visit to Albany?” he asked, as if such a fact might help to explain me, and I murmured yes it was. I believed I was speaking normally despite the stiffness in my jaw and a fiery ache that ran along my gumline as if every tooth there were abscessed. Dr. Werner shuffled through documents in my folder, now and then making notations with a pen. Though I knew there were bookshelves in his office it seemed that my vision was narrowed as if by blinders and I could see only Dr. Werner clearly. I was very tired suddenly and yearned to rest my arms on the edge of his desk and my heavy head upon my arms for only just a moment. I saw the man’s fleshy lips move before I heard his question—“Why do you believe you would make a good, dedicated teacher, Kathryn?” But I didn’t recall having said I wanted to be a teacher or that this subject was the purpose of our conversation. Tell the man something. Out of pride, you must not fail. So I spoke. Falteringly at first and then with more confidence. I saw that Dr. Werner stared at me, my dilated
eyes and swollen jaw, but I’d long been an articulate child and though I might stammer under pressure, words rarely failed me; especially adult words of a lofty, abstract nature. I spoke of what my own education had meant to me so far, how it had “saved my life by giving purpose to my life”; I spoke of how my grandparents, Hungarian immigrants, hadn’t had the opportunity to be educated beyond grade school and were barely literate in English; I spoke of my parents, growing up during the Depression, who hadn’t graduated from high school—“I want to be part of the world beyond that. A world of the intellect and of the spirit.” Tears stung my eyes, these words so moved me; even as, offering them to a stranger as I was, in the hope of winning his approval, I felt deeply ashamed. Dr. Werner was nodding, and frowning. Perhaps he was moved, too. Or embarrassed for me. His wide dark nostrils pinched. He’s sniffing you. Smells blood. Menstrual blood, he’d think. Oh, shame!

  My voice, stricken, trailed off into silence. The ache in my jaw was fierce. Mistaking my hesitation for shyness, and liking shyness in a girl, Dr. Werner was deciding he liked me; he concluded the interview by praising my scholastic record, which was spread out before him on his desk like the innards of a dissected creature—and my teachers’ “glowing” letters of recommendation—and assured me that I was exactly the kind of dedicated young person the university hoped for as Founders’ Scholars. The interview was over: Dr. Werner had heaved himself up from his swivel chair, a shorter and stockier man than I’d believed; he was smiling, showing an expanse of pinkish gum, and congratulated me on the scholarship which was, he hoped I knew, highly competitive, awarded to no more than twenty students out of an entering class of eleven hundred; my final acceptance forms would arrive at my home within a few weeks. I said, stammering, “Dr. Werner, it might not be absolutely true—that I want to be a teacher. That I know what I want to do with my life.” Dr. Werner snorted with laughter as if I were joking, or he wished to think I was joking. He repeated that the final acceptance forms would arrive within a few weeks and he hoped I’d have a good return trip home. I said, “Then I am—admitted? I’m in?” I felt a stab of dismay. Was my life decided? Had I agreed to this? Dr. Werner said, with just perceptible impatience, “Yes, of course. Our interview is only a formality.” He extended his hand for a brisk, firm handshake and sent me on my way.

  Hurrying down a flight of vertiginous stairs—so like the stairs in my dream of the previous night!—I realized that there might have been blood on my hand, still; that I hadn’t been able to scrub every stain off. I could envision Dr. Werner, his claylike face creased in revulsion, contemplating his own blood-sticky hand.

  4

  But I won’t come back here. Not here.

  Returning to Port Oriskany on the 5:35 P.M. bus I was sitting alone, my head slumped against a window. My face was throbbing with pain but it was pain at a distance, for I’d swallowed a handful of aspirins to numb it. Much of that day would be lost to me in cloudy amnesiac patches like strips of paper torn from a wall. How I would explain the silk scarf to my mother I didn’t yet know, but I wasn’t much worried. I was in a state of exhilaration. A state of certitude. On the mammoth lumbering bus like a prehistoric creature vibrating with energy. I wanted to sleep yet my eyes wouldn’t close. Far to the west as if at the end of the Thruway, there was a horizon seething with red like the flames of an open furnace.

  The countryside darkens by rapid degrees, I begin to see my face reflected in the steamy window. A face-to-come, the face of my adulthood. And beyond it my parents’ faces subtly distorted as if in water. For the first time I realize that my parents are a man, a woman; individuals who’d loved each other before they’d ever loved me. And they do love me, only they can’t protect me; nor do they know me. I realize that I will leave home soon. In fact, I’ve already left.

  Part Three

  A MANHATTAN ROMANCE

  Your Daddy loves you, that’s the one true thing.

  Never forget, Princess: that’s the one true thing in your life of mostly lies.

  That wild day! I’d woken before it was even dawn; I seemed to know that a terrible happiness was in store.

  I was five years old; I was feverish with excitement; when Daddy came to pick me up for our Saturday adventure as he called it, it had just begun to snow; Momma and I were standing at the tall windows of our eighteenth-floor apartment looking out across Central Park when the doorman rang; Momma whispered in my ear, “If you said you were sick, you wouldn’t have to go with—him.” For she could not utter the word Daddy, and even the words your father made her mouth twist. I said, “Momma, I’m not sick! I’m not.” So the doorman sent Daddy up. Momma kept me with her at the window, her hands that sometimes trembled firm on my shoulders and her chin resting on the top of my head so I wanted to squirm away but did not dare, not wanting to hurt Momma’s feelings or make her angry. So we stood watching the snowflakes—a thousand million snowflakes drifting downward out of the sky glinting like mica in the thin sunshine of early December. I was pointing and laughing; I was excited by the snow, and by Daddy coming for me. Momma said, “Just look! Isn’t it beautiful! The first snow of the season.” Most of the tall trees had lost their leaves, the wind had blown away their leaves that only a few days before had been such bright, beautiful colors, and you could see clearly now the roads curving and dipping through the park; you could see the streams of traffic—yellow taxis, cars, delivery vans, horse-drawn carriages, bicyclists; you could see the skaters at Wollman Rink, and you could see the outdoor cages of the Children’s Zoo, which was closed now; you could see the outcroppings of rock like miniature mountains; you could see the ponds glittering like mirrors laid flat; the park was still green, and seemed to go on forever; you could see to the very end at 110th Street (Momma told me the name of this distant street, which I had never seen close up); you could see the gleaming cross on the dome of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Momma told me the name of this great cathedral, which I had never seen close up); our new apartment building was at 31 Central Park South and so we could see the Hudson River to the left, and the East River to the right; the sun appeared from the right, above the East River; the sun vanished to the left, below the Hudson River; we were floating above the street seventeen floors below; we were floating in the sky, Momma said; we were floating above Manhattan, Momma said; we were safe here, Momma said, and could not come to harm. But Momma was saying now in her sad angry voice, “I wish you didn’t have to go with—him. You won’t cry, will you? You won’t miss your momma too much, will you?” I was staring at the thousand million snowflakes; I was excited waiting for Daddy to ring the bell at our front door; I was confused by Momma’s questions because wasn’t Momma me? so didn’t Momma know? the answer to any question of Momma’s, didn’t Momma already know? “I wish you didn’t have to leave me, darling, but it’s the terms of the agreement—it’s the law.” These bitter words It’s the law fell from Momma’s lips each Saturday morning like something dropped in the apartment overhead! I waited to hear them, and I always did hear them. And then Momma leaned over me and kissed me; I loved Momma’s sweet perfume and her soft-shining hair but I wanted to push away from her; I wanted to run to the door, to open it just as Daddy rang the bell; I wanted to surprise Daddy, who took such happiness in being surprised; I wanted to say to Momma, I love Daddy better than I love you, let me go! Because Momma was me, but Daddy was someone so different.

  The doorball rang. I ran to answer it. Momma remained in the front room at the window. Daddy hoisted me into his arms, “How’s my Princess? How’s my baby-love?” and Daddy called out politely to Momma, whom he could not see, in the other room, “We’re going to the Bronx Zoo, and we’ll be back promptly at 5:30 P.M. as agreed.” And Momma, who was very dignified, made no reply. Daddy called out, “Goodbye! Remember us!” which was like Daddy, to say mysterious things, things to make you smile, and to make you wonder; things to make you confused, as if maybe you hadn’t heard correctly but didn’t want to ask. And Momma never asked. A
nd in the elevator going down Daddy hugged me again saying how happy we were, just the two of us. He was the King, I was the Little Princess. Sometimes I was the Fairy Princess. Momma was the Ice Queen who never laughed. Daddy was saying this could be the happiest day of our lives if we had courage. A light shone in Daddy’s eyes; there would never be a man so handsome and radiant as Daddy.

  “NOT THE BRONX, after all. Not today, I don’t think.”

  Our driver that day was an Asian man in a smart visored cap, a neat dark uniform, and gloves. The limousine was shiny black and larger than last week’s and the windows were dark-tinted so you could see out (but it was strange, a scary twilight even in the sun) but no one could see in. “No plebeians knowing our business!” Daddy said, winking at me. “No spies.” When we passed traffic policemen Daddy made faces at them, waggled his fingers at his ears and stuck out his tongue though they were only a few yards away; I giggled frightened Daddy would be seen and arrested, but he couldn’t be seen, of course—“We’re invisible, Princess! Don’t worry.”