Double Delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He would wait, and speak with Ava-Rose Renfrew when the shop closed at 6.

  The balmy, gritty-tasting September afternoon began to wane. It was 5 P.M., and then 5:30 P.M., and the parking lot began to empty. Gazing at the glass façade of West Trenton Beer & Wine, which was plastered with exclamatory posters, Terence had a thought of buying himself a six-pack of beer; or a bottle of wine.

  But no, he wasn’t a man to sit in his car, in a shopping center, and drink out of an object hidden by a paper bag, eyes riveted to the door of one of the stores: waiting.

  He did not want to think of the telephone call he’d made so impulsively that morning, to the conference organizer in New Haven, explaining, nervously, but he’d thought convincingly, that a “minor personal crisis” was preventing him from attending the conference and moderating one of the sessions. And how relieved he’d felt, as soon as he’d hung up the phone: how free!

  He did not want to think that he’d lied to Phyllis, and to his children. That this was the first time he was certain it was only the first he’d lied to them, ever.

  Nor did he want to think of the problem he was having at the Feinemann Foundation, which he believed must worsen, and which, ironically, he’d brought upon himself: Terence had invited the highly regarded poet Quincy Ryder to be a member of one of this year’s committees, not realizing that Ryder, now in his mid-fifties, had become deeply cynical and sarcastic. Though every sort of literary success had come his way (in addition to having been named Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress several years before, he had also won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry), Ryder was contemptuous of most other poets; he favored certain male Caucasians who were friends of his, or connected with him in some way, but disliked intensely “gays”—“Afro-Americans”—“feminists”—“ethnics”—those who rhymed their verse ineptly, and those who did not rhyme at all. Terence, whose gastric juices turned to acid in Ryder’s witty company, had a difficult time controlling committee meetings and luncheons, where Ryder’s remarks upset some, and made others laugh. Ryder had a smooth, red, shiny face like Puck, and a deceptively gracious Virginia accent; he wore dapper English-style suits, always with eye-catching vests; his cruelty, masked in wit, seemed to Terence the more inexcusable. The other day, Ryder had sputtered in mock surprise when the poet Myra Tannenbaum’s application came up—“The poor silly old cunt—who exhumed her?” When Terence protested, “Really, Quincy, I’ve been reading Myra Tannenbaum’s poetry, and I was impressed with—” Ryder retorted, not missing a beat, “Yes, no doubt, Dr. Greene, you were impressed.” There had been, too, a faint emphasis upon the title “Dr.,” which had had the effect upon Terence Greene of a fingernail drawn against a blackboard.

  But, of Quincy Ryder, at the moment, I do not wish to think.

  Chimney Point Shopping Center, like other commercial areas Terence had noticed in Trenton, appeared hard hit by the recession. The parking lot was rapidly emptying, as dusk came on; the only stores with customers were Discount Drugs, West Trenton Wine & Beer, Kmart. Only an occasional customer entered Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium, and Terence had the impression that few emerged with purchases. He felt sympathy for the young women—how long would they remain in business?

  Something Holly Mae Loomis had mentioned led Terence to think that she, and possibly other members of the family, was on welfare.

  Yet, how beautiful the old woman’s garden! Having little money did not mean being deprived of beauty.

  As the parking lot emptied of adult customers, it began to be used as a short-cut, or even a raceway of a kind, for teenagers in noisy cars and on motorcycles, who hung out at fast-food restaurants in the neighborhood. There was a 7-Eleven store across the street that seemed to be a gathering place. Shouts, squeals, screams of laughter punctuated the sound of motors. Most of the teenagers were male, but Terence saw a few girls among them. How could they expect to be treated, at the hands of such louts! Thank God, Kim did not behave in such a way. I could not bear it.

  The Schrieber boy, the one with the ridiculous name, and the lurid nose-ring, had departed from Kim’s life: So Kim had told Phyllis, and Phyllis believed her. And Terence believed her. I could not bear it.

  For all his uneasy vigilance, and his keyed-up nerves, Terence had not consciously noticed the man in the dark T-shirt straddling a motorcycle a short distance away. Terence had been peripherally aware of motorcycles and cars without mufflers crossing and recrossing the parking lot; but he hadn’t realized that the man on the motorcycle was by himself, not part of a group of rowdy youngsters, an adult, with an adult’s purposeful intensity. Only when Ava-Rose left the shop, and the man quickly approached her, and began speaking with her, did Terence realize what the situation was.

  Both Ava-Rose and Tamar left the shop at the same time, the one tall, slender, with splendid waist-long hair, the other short, fleshy, with hair close-cropped as a boy’s; the one in a skirt that fell to mid-calf, and layers of filmy garments, the other in the snug-fitting crimson sari that so startlingly exposed her midriff. When, at once, the man in the T-shirt strode up to Ava-Rose, Tamar quickly took her leave of them and walked away. Terence had the impression that Tamar, like Ava-Rose, knew the man.

  At first, they were talking together, intensely—the man in the T-shirt pressing forward, and Ava-Rose backing away. Then, Ava-Rose turned; the man caught her arm, and pulled her roughly back; Ava-Rose wrenched away, and began walking swiftly; again the man caught her arm, and pulled her back to face him. Terence was immediately out of his car and hurrying toward them. “Just a minute, you—are you bothering this young woman?”

  The man turned to Terence, surprised, and furious. He had a round bullet head, disheveled thinning hair, a broad nose that looked as if it had been broken. He was in his early thirties and resembled, in manner as well as type, T. W. Binder. “Fuck off, mister!” he said.

  Ava-Rose, frightened, began to run, and the man grabbed her by one of her scarves, and they wrestled together, and Ava-Rose screamed, and Terence threw himself blindly upon the man—not knowing what to do, only that he had to do something. Terence felt a blow to his chest and stumbled backward. He saw his assailant’s incredulous expression and mean narrowed eyes, lips stretched in a snarl—“I said, fuck off!”

  “Leave her alone! You can’t—”

  Perhaps Terence was about to say “you can’t do this”—he was not speaking coherently, and would not recall afterward anything he’d said—but his assailant rushed at him, swinging and pummeling, and Terence felt wild, hard blows to his face, chest, belly; he heard a woman’s scream of dismay, and a man’s infuriated shouts; he too swung his fist, or tried to swing it—striking flesh, but not hard enough to prevent a crude roundhouse right from flying into his left eye. As if struck by a board, Terence staggered, and fell. In the very swiftness and confusion of the moment he heard his uncle’s jeering voice of many years ago If you get knocked down, get up again—fast. But try as he could, Terence could not get up.

  Grunting, cursing, his assailant kicked Terence in the head, chest, belly, groin. Terence, fighting not to lose consciousness, had an impression of Ava-Rose Renfrew, hair in her face, struggling with the man, pleading, “Stop! Eldrick, stop!” Terence tried to grab a booted foot, even as the foot slammed into his side—and then suddenly the blows ceased, and there was a sound of running feet, and a motorcycle’s deafening roar; and, above him, swimmingly, like a figure glimpsed in a dream, Ava-Rose Renfrew was stooping, her widened eyes fixed upon his.

  “Oh! You! Why, I know you—don’t I?”

  In the midst of the crisis—the pain, the fright, the rush of adrenaline that nearly burst his heart, the sense of a profound and irrevocable insult visited upon one man by another—Terence Greene heard clearly Oh! You! Why, I know you—don’t I?

  As if his very soul had spoken?

  What happened following the attack by Eldrick Gill, Terence was never to recall clearly.

  He did
recall sitting up, at once, as Ava-Rose Renfrew spoke to him; for even in his distressed state, head and body throbbing with pain, and his sense of himself temporarily shattered, he did not want to appear a weak person in the young woman’s eyes. His nose was bleeding, and he was swallowing blood, choking and sputtering, and Ava-Rose Renfrew knelt beside him murmuring words of consolation as, with something gauzy and fragrant, a scarf? a shawl? she wiped blood from his face and dabbed at his aching nose. A scent as of cloves, cinnamon, vanilla lifted from her, loosed by the agitation of her arms, the movement of her thick, springy, fair-brown hair. Terence’s left eye was swollen and awash with tears, so that he wondered if he’d lost his sight in that eye yet how happy he was, how transcendentally how unspeakably happy.

  Terence’s numbed lips moved—“Are you all right? Did he hurt—”

  The young woman’s reply was passionate, furious—“Eldrick Gill doesn’t have the power to hurt me! And he knows it!”

  A dozen silver bracelets slid and clattered on her slender arms as she helped Terence to his feet. Terence swayed, his knees buckled, yet he managed to stand; as in a dream in which all things are allowed, because nothing is forbidden, he felt the shock of her arm slipping around his waist, steadying him. “You’ll be all right, I’ll take care of you, he’s gone, how brave you were, you saved my life! You did!” Ava-Rose was murmuring more to herself than to Terence; she was furious; yet solicitous of him, as a mother of her mistreated child. For a woman so delicately boned, of a height several inches less than Terence, Ava-Rose was surprisingly strong.

  In front of the brightly lit West Trenton Beer & Wine, several people stood watching; no doubt, they had watched the entire beating. A man called, “Hey, you want the police?—an ambulance?” and Ava-Rose Renfrew called back, with surprising vehemence, “No we do not! This is a private matter.”

  To Terence she said, warmly, “Never, never summon the police unless you want them messing in your life, too!”

  Terence, who certainly did not want the police called, nor any ambulance, said quickly, “I am all right—or nearly.”

  “Maybe some ice on your face, to keep the swelling down,” Ava-Rose said, “—some painkiller pills for when it really starts to hurt. I’ll be your nurse.”

  Terence saw that, unsteady on his feet as he was, he was walking; this remarkable young woman whom he scarcely knew was supporting him, seemingly leading him, to his car. He’d taken the wadded blood-soaked cloth from her and was pressing it against his face, inhaling its sweet, close fragrance. The fabric was a dark silky cotton, threaded with gold.

  “I’ll drive!” Ava-Rose said. “You relax.”

  Terence reached into his trouser pocket for his car keys—but Ava-Rose already had the keys: in her hand.

  She helped him into the passenger’s seat, and hurried around to the driver’s side, briskly efficient, bracelets and necklaces clattering. Terence tried not to groan aloud with pain—in his groin, the pit of his belly, his head where that madman had kicked him. He worried that his body would be covered with ugly bruises, a badge of shame.

  If you get knocked down, get up again—fast.

  Once some bastard hurts you bad, he’ll need to hurt you again. If you don’t stop him.

  Ava-Rose Renfrew drove Terence Greene to her home at the farthest end of Holyoak Street, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She sat very straight behind the wheel of the heavy BMW, as a young girl might sit at the controls of a powerful machine that is at the same time a kind of plaything, there to do her bidding. She showed some hesitation approaching intersections, and once or twice had to apply the brake a bit sharply, but otherwise drove with a curious excitable confidence. Her blood too raced with adrenaline: Terence, acutely conscious of her closeness, felt the heat of her warmed skin, and imagined he could see, with his uninjured eye, her beautiful hair crinkle with static electricity.

  She was muttering fiercely, as if thinking aloud, “Eldrick won’t follow us here, would he dare!—hadn’t better, oh no!—that coward!—that beast!—hitting a defenseless man!—threatening to kill!—‘the downward path’!—his, and T.W.’s!—two of a kind!—but not me!—oh, no!”

  Terence asked, “Your assailant—you know him?”

  Ava-Rose said, “I know him, but he sure doesn’t know me!”

  Ava-Rose had to press down on the brake pedal suddenly, and swung out her arm as if to prevent Terence from being propelled against the dashboard: The gesture was so unpremeditated, and so intimate, Terence smiled despite his throbbing mouth.

  Never before had he been a passenger in his own car; rarely, indeed, did he sit passively in any vehicle except taxis and, now and then, in a limousine provided by the Feinemann Foundation. Yet, half-lying in the seat beside this virtually unknown woman as they sped, at dusk, along a shabby street in Trenton, he felt in his passivity, as in his physical weakness, strangely content.

  As they approached Ava-Rose’s house, however, Terence said, awkwardly, “I—I’ve been here, you know: I visited with your aunt the other day.”

  Ava-Rose gave Terence a shrewd sidelong glance. “Oh, I know! I mean, I surmised so. You looked real familiar back there,” she said, softly—“and there could only be one of you.”

  “Terence Greene, one of the jurors—”

  “Dr. Greene, Auntie said! Oh, you were so kind to her.” Ava-Rose reached out her hand to shake Terence’s. Each of her fingers had a ring, sometimes two; her nails were filed short, and looked bitten, but were polished a purplish-silver color. Her handshake was dry, warm, brisk. “I’m Ava-Rose Renfrew as I guess you know?” She laughed, shyly.

  Terence too laughed, though his head immediately rang with pain.

  “Yes, I guess!”

  The sun was disappearing at the western horizon in a massed bank of clouds, shot with red veins; the gorgeous sunset was a consequence of air pollution, yet it was gorgeous. At the farthest edge of Chimney Point, at least when the wind blew off the Delaware River, the air was relatively clear. The light had a look of autumnal chill.

  And the old wood-and-stucco house with half its shutters painted robin’s-egg blue, and patches of moss growing on its roof!—and the jungle of growth in the front yard! Because he could only see with one eye clearly, the house and garden appeared, for all their color, queerly flattened, like a water-color.

  “I—love this house,” Terence said. “The first glimpse I had of it—”

  “I do, too, love it!—I only hope we won’t lose it.”

  Terence was about to ask about this, but Ava-Rose muttered, “Shucks! Those men!” seeing that a van was parked in the driveway, close to the street. It was an old vehicle, of no color, with letters on its sides that had been scraped off; a fluorescent-orange bumper read HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS! Apparently wanting to bring Terence closer to the rear door of the house, so that he wouldn’t have to walk so far, Ava-Rose drove the BMW around the van, bouncing over ruts and a patch of grassy earth, and back into the driveway. She braked, hard; the engine coughed and died.

  “How is that bleeding, Dr. Greene?—how is your poor eye?”

  It was Terence’s groin and lower belly that really hurt, but he was reluctant to say so. As he slid slowly—very slowly—out of the car, Ava-Rose ran around to help him, slipping her arms around his shoulders, and then his waist. Her hair against his cheek left him breathless; the warmth of her body, the very shimmering of her gypsylike clothes and excessive jewelry, left him faint. Quicksilver as a match’s flame, Terence felt a moment’s panic—he had never desired any woman so much. Yet not in his body, for his body was wracked with pain.

  As Ava-Rose helped Terence up the crumbling brick walk, the teenaged Chick hurried out to give them a hand. If he was astonished to see Ava-Rose bringing a bleeding stranger home, he gave no sign; indeed, he seemed quite prepared to help. He whistled, and said, sympathetically, “Oh wow, man!—looks like somebody did you!”

  Terence began to say, “I think it looks worse than—” when
a stabbing pain in his lower belly weakened him, and he nearly fell. Husky gum-chewing Chick slung an arm around Terence’s shoulder and all but hoisted him into the house.

  “Lord, Lord! What have they done to you!”—Holly Mae Loomis stood in the kitchen, staring at Terence in horror, wringing her hands in her apron.

  “Not ‘they,’ Auntie—‘him.’ You know who.” Ava-Rose seemed on the verge of tears, now she was safely home.

  “Eldrick Gill?”

  “He went wild and attacked this innocent man.”

  Chick whistled again, and made a chuckling sound, like grating pebbles, deep in his throat. “He’s gonna get his, just wait.”

  Both Ava-Rose and Holly Mae Loomis scolded the boy for so speaking. Ava-Rose said, as if by rote, “‘Tempt not the darkness for it is soon on its way.’”

  There was a high-pitched jabbering as of a jungle bird, and a dog’s frantic barking, and, from elsewhere in the house, girls’ cries and a man’s deep baritone voice. Ava-Rose and Chick helped Terence to a divan in a big, barnlike room; they lifted his legs, which were leaden, and swung them deftly around so that he lay stretched out, like a hospital patient. At once the throbbing pain in his groin and belly became bearable. Something moistly hot and soft as a chamois cloth soaked in hot water flicked against his face, and Ava-Rose cried, “Buster Keaton, go away!” To Holly Mae she said, “Please bring us some ice, Auntie, wrapped in a towel.” With quick, deft fingers she loosened Terence’s clothing, unbuckled his belt, tugged at his necktie, and opened his shirt collar, even unlaced his shoes and tugged them off. She drew her fingers tenderly across his forehead as if to determine if he was feverish. “So brave!—so kind! Risking your life for me, a stranger! Mr. Terence Greene, you are of ‘that bright, blissful legion’ the Book of the Millennium promises.” There came then the shock, after a moment a deeply comforting shock, of ice lowered against Terence’s throbbing left eye.