You Can't Catch Me

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Yet women liked him; were drawn to him; confided in him, asked advice of him, sought sympathy from him. The mothers of Richmond debutantes whose seasons were rapidly receding particularly sought him out, in those years when Tristram accepted invitations more readily. It was noted that, living alone in his parents’ house, Tristram was becoming, by degrees, rather unsociable and reclusive. But he remained a Virginia Heade, after all, and therefore a person of importance: the last living male issue of a stock descended from Erasmus Heade, the Revolutionary War general; a gentleman to his fingertips; courteous, soft-spoken, modest, and irreproachable in his morals. Not a handsome man in the usual sense of the word he was nonetheless attractive in his big-boned, rather self-conscious way; he was the kind of man at whom people stare, bemused, or frankly perplexed, as if trying to remember his name. He had the look of being someone’s cousin: a presence mysteriously lacking identity.

  “It is as if my normal life, my ‘real’ life, had somehow been deflected from me,” Tristram once said, in a fumbling attempt to explain himself to a young female cousin named Abigail, who had taken a kindly interest in him. “‘Deflected’—how? By who?” Abigail asked. “That’s just it,—I don’t know how, and I don’t know by who,” Tristram said, shrugging. Abigail looked at him quizzically, as if he were a riddle to be deciphered. She was a very pretty girl, engaged to a West Point cadet, and primed for all that life, in the social class to which she belonged both by birth and temperament, had to offer. “But what exactly do you mean, Tristram?” Abigail asked. “You have a ‘real’ life somewhere else, and your life now, your life here, as the Tristram we all know, is false? Or your life here is the only life you know, and the other is—what? Lost? Inaccessible?” Tristram smiled in embarrassment, eager to change the subject. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “It all happened before I was born.”

  Though his family’s fortune had dwindled over the years, with a rude, precipitous drop in the late 1970s, it seemed to be known about town that Tristram had inherited enough to live comfortably on, if he had wished to live comfortably; he could marry if he chose, and support a wife and children, even without working as a lawyer. He had stopped attending services since his mother’s death, but remained a financially supportive member of the First Episcopal Church of Richmond; this held him in good stead with the community. He was known to have no vices, no bad habits, no eccentricities … at least, no eccentricities not amenable to reform.

  “If Tristram would only marry,” his mother said, in her final, exhausting illness, when she spoke tactlessly, sometimes even recklessly, sensing how little time remained, “—all might yet be well. But he must hurry. After I am gone he will need someone to take over.”

  Tristram’s mother had loved him very much; and Tristram had loved his mother. Yet, in the months following her death, he began to forget her; as, to his surprise, and dismay, he’d forgotten his father shortly after his death. I mean to be a dutiful son, Tristram thought,—but what is my duty?

  It was strange, how, in the two or three rooms of the twenty-room house (a small mansion, really) at Royalston Place, which constituted Tristram’s house-within-a-house, he seemed to thrive, like a tough, sinewy, weedy plant. Chicory, perhaps: the hardiest of weeds, growing in thin dirt, or in gravel, yet with sky-blue flowers of exquisite beauty. While others may have worried over him, Tristram never worried about himself because he did not think overmuch about himself. A cloistered life has the advantage of silence, and silence spares us echoes. The primary focus of a day spent at Royalston Place was nearly always the arrival of the morning’s mail, which, delivered anywhere between ten-thirty and noon, rarely failed to contain a bookdealer’s catalogue or brochure, or a letter from a fellow collector. (Tristram wrote regularly to some twenty-odd people, all men, only a few of whom he had actually met.) Of course, the most exciting days were those when Tristram received a new purchase, ordered and paid for by mail. The 1722 edition of Tyburn Calendar; or Malefactor’s Bloody Register, published by Swindell’s of Hanging Bridge, London; a 1685 edition of Dryden’s Tyrannic Love; a 1778 edition of the anonymous English translation of The Infamous History of “Count Cagliostro”—at such times Tristram’s happiness was direct and unbounded as a child’s.

  His parents did indeed rapidly recede into the past, like comets hurtling themselves into an unfathomable ether. In time they became confused in Tristram’s book-bemused memory with his grandparents; and they, with their parents, whom Tristram had not known, of course, except as daguerreotypes and family legend had preserved them. Similarly, both sides of the family, his mother’s (her maiden name was Buchanan: she too was descended from an illustrious ancestor, a confidant of George Washington’s during his presidency) and his father’s, became confused in his memory; as things, valuable in themselves, like cuff links, gold watches, tie clips, and the like, seem to lose their value by being jumbled together in a drawer. (Like certain drawers in Tristram’s quarters, in fact.)

  Tristram’s interest in antiquarian books began in early adolescence, when, overweight and shy to the point of pain, he spent a good deal of time in his grandfather Heade’s library; a walnut-paneled book-lined place of enormous solace and comfort. Books, Tristram quickly learned, were his friends: they never failed in time of need. Miserable at the prospect of, or, what was worse, the fresh memory of, his clumsiness at one or another tea-dance or family gathering, he could hide himself in his grandfather’s library for hours at a time. His father did not approve, of course; it was Mr. Heade’s directive that guided Tristram to the University of Virginia, for his undergraduate work, and law school. But books, as they are our friends, are not jealous lovers, who forsake us for having forsaken them: while Tristram tried his hand (or his brain) at the wise, adept, fairly cruel ways of the world, he knew in his innermost heart that his truer life was elsewhere, awaiting him.

  And so indeed it was. Or seemed to be, until the arrival of Fleur Grunwald in his life.

  Tristram Heade had had his share, since adolescence, of those elusive yet candidly erotic “masculine” dreams whose point of waking is orgasm; though they had reached a frenzied peak in his late teens he was plagued by them still, at a time in his life when he believed himself too mature (and too intelligent) for such fantasies. Waking, in his bed, after one of these dreams, he would lie very still, in a paralysis of shame; and distress; in the aftermath of a purely physical sensation too powerful to be called, simply, “pleasure.” Indeed, Tristram found very little pleasure in it.

  But if I marry, I should say when I marry, it will be different, he thought. For then of course there would be a real woman in his arms, and not a phantasm that vanished upon waking.

  And he would love this woman in a normal, daylight fashion, as husbands love their wives.

  Doomed to sleeplessness at such times, Tristram would leave his bed, and wander barefoot about the house … passing out of the quarters he retained as his into the “other” part of the house … which, since his mother’s death, he had begun quite consciously to think of as “other.” As if the very house he had inherited was a stranger’s, trespassed at risk. Yet, the memory of an erotic embrace, a sexual union, explosive if unwished, and violently powerful, if distasteful, drove him forward. He was too excited, still, to sleep! He would never sleep again!

  Of course the house was empty. But: might she be waiting for him somewhere upstairs?—in one of the closed-off rooms?

  Whoever “she” was.

  But of course “she” did not exist.

  Or, granted her possible existence, “she” did not exist in terms of Tristram Joseph Heade.

  Though he suffered from a mild night blindness, and had difficulty seeing clearly on these nocturnal prowls, Tristram carried a candle to light his way; a flashlight would have seemed too practical … too unromantic. He smiled a sick, crooked, abashed smile, grateful to be alone, thus unperceived, by those who would have pitied him or feared for his sanity. He knew of course that there was no one in the hou
se, in any of the rooms, not his parents’ bedroom, not his mother’s sewing room, not the upstairs sitting room, not the numerous guest rooms … yet, stubbornly, he continued on his rounds, his candle held defiantly aloft and his heart kicking against his ribs. His senses were alert to the smallest, most muffled sounds: the scurrying of tiny clawed feet overhead (mice?); a low hoarse whispering (the wind under the eaves?); a sound as of folds of silk rubbed harshly together (curtains? somehow stirred by the wind?). One night he entered a room unused for years, in which, as family legend would have it, a visiting cousin (female) scandalously entertained a young man (in some versions a Confederate Army lieutenant, in other versions merely “a young man”), and heard, or believed he heard, an exchange of whispers, and a startled little spasm of giggles … and smelled an odor of violets, old, stale, yet somehow poignant … though of course the room was empty: nothing except a few items of furniture, covered in lugubrious white shrouds. Upon another, more disturbing occasion Tristram entered the old billiards room, Mr. Heade’s hideaway as Mrs. Heade had tolerantly called it, and saw, to his astonishment, a single playing card, the queen of spades, lying on the carpetless floor.… Tristram picked the card up, puzzled, noting that, though not new, it was still shiny; and not covered with the acrid layer of dust that covered the floor itself. His sensitive nostrils also detected a faint smell of pipe tobacco; and, out of place in this most masculine of settings, a woman’s perfume … rich, heady, over-sweet … a strident scent very different from the genteel, girlish scent of violets.

  Tristram wondered: had his father had a secret woman friend?—a “mistress”?—one of the servant-girls, perhaps? The thought was immensely disturbing; it both repelled and excited him. Though he could scarcely remember the man who had been his father, he did, suddenly, recall the pungent odor of his pipe tobacco; and his own hope, as a boy, that he too would smoke a pipe someday; his father’s very pipe, and his father’s very brand of tobacco: “Old Bugler.”

  Suddenly frightened, Tristram backed hurriedly out of the room. His hands shook and his eyes filled with moisture. In the hallway, in flight, he imagined he heard a throaty sort of laughter behind him … but it must have been, of course, the wind. The wind in the eaves.

  2

  Tristram was hurriedly knotting the cord of the quilted-silk black robe when he noticed that the robe was no item of apparel he knew. It was a beautiful Japanese-style kimono, not at all like his ordinary flannel robe; it must have belonged to Markham. He had pulled it from a hanger in the closet without looking.

  “Just a minute, please! I’m coming.”

  The knocking at the door continued with increased urgency, as if Tristram’s call hadn’t been heard; and when he opened the door he saw on the threshold the most extraordinary young woman.… No one Tristram knew, and no one who knew him; yet her face, her eyes, the very set of her mouth seemed familiar to him. She was breathless as if she had come a long distance to his door, at enormous risk.

  He seemed to know, too, what she would say, before she spoke.

  “Angus …? It is Angus?”

  Tristram made an effort to smile, though stricken to the heart. “I’m afraid you have the wrong room. The wrong man.”

  “But—isn’t it Angus? Angus Markham?”

  The breathless young woman wore a wide-rimmed hat of some smart, black-glazed material; a thin black veil obscured yet did not quite hide her enormous eyes, which appeared to be brimming with moisture, or with intense feeling: fixed upon Tristram, as if willing him to be that other, absent man, their gaze was almost more than he could bear. “But Angus it is you … isn’t it?” she pleaded. “If you’re angry with me … I know, I know you have every right to be angry with me.… Please don’t be: oh please! I have no one but you.”

  “But I—”

  “I know I disappointed you in Saratoga Springs. Like a high-bred filly, you said, who bolts her first important race. And now … as you see … I am paying for it. Please don’t turn me away! I am terrified someone has seen me come here.”

  So Tristram invited her inside, and shut the door quickly after her; all the while trying to explain that, though he and Angus Markham resembled each other to an uncanny degree, they were two quite different and distinct individuals.

  But the young woman seemed not to hear. She continued to stare at him with an expression of such childlike yearning and hope, and guileless adoration, he felt his senses reel. How lucky, the absent Markham! With trembling fingers she lifted the translucent veil from her eyes, which were brimming with tears; brightly dark eyes with long curving lashes; set wide and deep in her rather moon-shaped face, the whites perfectly white and the irises a hazy golden brown, like miniature suns. Her mouth was small, the upper lip particularly short, but beautifully shaped; her nose long, slender, narrow at the tip. Tristram was reminded of a doll’s face—one of those painted porcelain dolls of the previous century, whose fussy, lace-trimmed velvet and silk costumes were sewed by hand, by genteel ladies with a good deal of leisure and a love of small, pretty, charming things.

  It is she, he thought. A queer smile tugged at his lips; the sick, crooked smile of his nocturnal quests.

  “You do remember, don’t you, Angus?” she said. “Fleur Grunwald … to whom you were once so kind? For whom you once … seemed to feel some affection?”

  Tristram drew his breath in slowly; made every effort to speak calmly, reasonably. He said, “I’m sure that Markham would remember you, Mrs. Grunwald, but, as I’ve tried to explain, I am not the man; I am not Angus Markham.”

  “‘Mrs. Grunwald’! Angus, how can you!”

  She flinched as if Tristram had struck her; indicating, with girlish hurt and reproach, the left-hand lapel of Tristram’s resplendent black robe—on which the initials A. T. M. were prominently embossed. Tristram felt the blood rush hotly into his face as if he had been caught in a lie.

  “The initials on the robe are misleading,” Tristram said. “I … there is an explanation … but I am not … the man you seek.”

  He was standing foursquare before the door, however, blocking the young woman’s passage; and made no move to step aside. He thought again, It is she.

  Confused, blinking dazedly, as if she understood nothing Tristram had said, or was incapable of grasping its significance in relationship to her entreaty, she said, “I had known you could be playful, Angus, but I hadn’t known you could be cruel. Or would want to be, with me.”

  Tristram said quickly, “I am not playful, I assure you, Mrs. Grunwald! I am not cruel.”

  “But why do you call me by his name?” she asked naively. Her eyes, widened, round, were fixed upon Tristram’s with a look of stupefaction, as if she were in a state of exhaustion, or hypnotized. “Aren’t I Fleur to you any longer?”

  There lifted from her clothing and hair a faint, wild fragrance of lily-of-the-valley, that pierced Tristram’s senses with its sweetness; and drew moisture to his eyes. She repeated, “Aren’t I Fleur to you any longer?” and when Tristram did not answer said, “You were right, Angus. ‘You will be desperate to leave him some day,’ you said, ‘when perhaps it will be too late.’”

  Tristram said helplessly, “But why … are you desperate? Is it …?”

  “Angus, are you mocking me?”

  “Of course I’m not mocking you.”

  “Yet you seem to want me to humble myself before you,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “As if you are not the man of honor, the gentleman, you are. As if, in a nightmare, you are someone else.”

  Tristram wanted very badly suddenly to take the young woman’s hands in his; to give what comfort he could. Yet he could not accept it, that, on the basis of a misunderstanding, he had any right to touch her: if it was Angus Markham she wanted, and not Tristram Heade? No, there was no choice, no honorable alternative: “Mrs. Grunwald, I must insist that I am not Angus Markham; I am not your friend. That is, I am not … Angus Markham. Nor do I know Markham. Nor do I know where he is.”

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nbsp; Even now Fleur Grunwald touched a handkerchief to her eyes, and looked searchingly at Tristram, for a dazzlingly long moment. Her lovely eyes! Her flawless skin, which the faintest blemish would have disfigured! And the burnished-brown sheen of her hair, caught up in a twist at the back of her head, from which a few wavy strands escaped, as if caressing her lovely throat.… She wore a high-buttoned black dress of some fine light woolen material, with a matching jacket whose long puffed sleeves covered not only her wrists but the upper parts of her hands; her many-layered skirt fell nearly to her ankles; her shoes were black patent leather pumps. With her tiny pearl-cluster earrings, and an antique pearl-and-diamond brooch at her throat, and the veiled hat, Fleur Grunwald reminded Tristram of no one so much as one of the well-to-do young matrons of Richmond society, of that world he had seemingly lost.

  “Is it ‘Mrs. Grunwald’? And you say you are not mocking me?”

  Tristram stood mute, and miserable. He and Fleur Grunwald regarded each other in mutual doubt in a long pained moment charged with imbalance and peril, very like those near-forgotten episodes of Tristram’s early adolescence when, stiff and overwarm in formal attire that never seemed to fit correctly, he had had to approach girls with whom he might dance. There was a formula question he had to ask but it had slipped his mind.…

  Fleur Grunwald was saying, not accusingly so much as in a resigned, matter-of-fact voice, “If this is to punish me, Angus, for having … disappointed you, in Saratoga, please know that I have been punished many times over for having refused you when you offered to save me. You were so dear to me, so kind! So generous! To have seen in my face how unhappy I was, in secret,—when no one else, none of his circle, would ever have seen; or seeing, would have offered to help. For Grunwald is a man whom other men admire, and fear, even if they do not like him. And the first Mrs. Grunwald, and the second Mrs. Grunwald, and now the third Mrs. Grunwald … are interchangeable to such men. Perhaps,” she said, “we are interchangeable. And so we are lost.”