Double Delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Phyllis asked, “Honey, what is it?” but Kim had turned aside, blundering gropingly through the dining room, murmuring, “No no no oh God no,” and when Phyllis caught up to her she pushed away at first, on the verge of hysteria. But Phyllis would not let her daughter escape upstairs to her room; she embraced her, and held her tight, and comforted her, as, by degrees, Kim’s resistance melted away, and at last she was hugging her mother in turn, hugging her hard, like a young, frightened child. “Mommy, it’s Studs—he’s come back,” Kim sobbed, and Phyllis said, “Studs Schrieber?—he’s back?—alive?” and Kim said, “Mommy, I thought he was dead, I thought he was gone, I’m so afraid of him, oh Mommy I’m so afraid,” and Phyllis, holding the agitated girl, began to feel fear herself, sensing, with a mother’s immediate instinct, what her young daughter would tell her, what she must hear—“Mommy, he made me do things, I didn’t want to, he made me, with his friends, too, the other guys, oh Mommy he hurt me, he twisted my arms and punched me and laughed at me, I thought he was dead, I thought he was killed, I was so happy he was gone, I’m scared Mommy, he hurt me, he did nasty things, I was so happy he was dead and now he’s back—”

  And so, Phyllis Greene learned of one of the secrets of the household at 7 Juniper Way, Timberlane Estates, Queenston.

  Later assuring Kim, now lying pale and exhausted atop her bed, as Phyllis stroked her burning forehead, that never never would anything like that ever happen to her again—“I promise.”

  Phyllis was herself pale, and exhausted, as if having lived through the ordeal of labor and childbirth another time. Her own daughter abused. Sexually exploited. By a young man whom at one time at least Phyllis had rather liked—hadn’t, in any case, so strongly disliked as Terence had disliked him. (How accurate Terence’s judgment had turned out to be!) Beautiful Kim, sensitive Kim, only fifteen years old, seemingly innocent, inexperienced, virginal. Certain of the details Kim had sobbed out, in Phyllis’s arms, led Phyllis to suspect that there would be more to reveal, in time. If Kim was reluctant to tell her mother, perhaps she would tell a therapist.

  “My God, what a horror!”

  And who was to blame? Phyllis recalled, with self-disgust, how, as long ago as last winter, she’d happened to notice bruises on Kim’s arms; but had been willing to believe, unquestioningly, that the bruises had been caused by Kim’s newest passion—“gymnastics.” Kim was always staying after school to participate in “gymnastics.” And hadn’t there been “practice sessions” even on Saturdays sometimes. And during Easter break.

  And she recalled how, months ago, before Studs Schrieber had disappeared, the subject of Kim’s bruised arms, yes and her bruised neck, had come up for some reason at dinner; and Kim had giggled nervously, then turned sullen, and changed the subject. And Phyllis noticed how Terence was staring at Kim—until, gradually, it become obvious that he wasn’t seeing her at all. He was looking through her. He was thinking of something, or someone, else.

  Not that the moment had made much of an impression on Phyllis. For she too had been thinking of something—someone—else.

  “Jesus! How could we have been so selfish, and so blind!”

  Phyllis sat beside Kim for a long time, until Kim drifted off to sleep. Stroking Kim’s forehead, her long silky rippling hair. It was not a vow, nor even a promise, but a blunt statement of fact—“We will be changing our lives. All of us. Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

  She took Kim and Cindy on an impromptu outing—“It’s been so long since we’ve done anything together, just the three of us!” She hoped the radiance of her smile deflected attention from the quaver in her voice.

  No, it was no one’s birthday. Nor an anniversary. It was not a holiday. Kim, subdued since the episode of the other day, perhaps understood that Mother had something to tell them. Cindy suspected nothing.

  Phyllis drove them down into the Delaware Valley, westward from Queenston along a succession of curving, hilly, scenic hills. Through Mount Rose, through Hopewell, through Lambertville; across the high, narrow bridge above the Delaware River and into New Hope, Pennsylvania; then south along the river road to Washington’s Crossing. To the old Inn at Washington’s Crossing, where Phyllis had not been for years.

  “Didn’t we used to go here, Mom?—a long time ago?” Cindy asked.

  “Yes,” Phyllis said, “—a long time ago.”

  She remembered, but dimly; as if through a scrim. The Greenes—Terence and Phyllis and the children Aaron, Kim, little Cindy. What a happy family, how attractive, how American.

  Gone where?

  Phyllis was not a sentimental woman, but her eyes filled with tears.

  In the Inn’s foyer was a handsome, squawky parrot on display in a large brass cage. It was an Amazonian bird with bright feathers—red, yellow, emerald-green. “Hey, I remember this guy, sort of,” Cindy said, peering up at the parrot. “Do you think it’s the same parrot, then and now?”

  Kim said, with that sudden flare of knowledge that, in a child, so impresses a parent, “Sure it is. Parrots live a long time—longer than us.”

  Luncheon in the Inn’s dim-lit, romantic old dining room was leisurely and very pleasant. It was very nice. It would be memorable for the three of them, and so Phyllis determined that it would be very nice. Her eyes filled repeatedly with tears (to her distress: for truly she was enjoying herself) which she brushed away, she hoped unobtrusively, with a corner of her napkin.

  Cindy chattered happily throughout the meal. Kim, with little appetite at home, ate hungrily here. Phyllis regarded her daughters with love, wondering, Was I mad? maddened? to have neglected them so? my daughters whom I love? And my son—have I lost him? Is it too late?

  Cindy knew nothing of Kim’s revelation of the other day, and would know nothing. Kim was to begin seeing a woman therapist who specialized in adolescents the following week, and had asked Phyllis not to tell anyone—“Especially not Daddy.” (Asked why “especially not Daddy,” Kim had said, worriedly, “Because maybe he’d kill Studs?—if Studs really is alive, and comes back?”) Phyllis had shared her emotion, which oscillated between rage at the young man who had abused her daughter and rage at herself for not having prevented it, with only one other person in Queenston. This person was not Terence Greene.

  Near the end of the meal, Phyllis drew a deep, shaky breath, and smiled at her daughters, not one of her assured, radiant smiles but a faint, hopeful smile. “Kim honey, Cindy honey—I have something to tell you. It’s about the family, and our future. It’s—”

  There was a burr in Phyllis’s throat, and for a moment she could not speak. Kim, frightened, reached for her water glass and drank thirstily. Cindy arched her eyebrows and said in a brave, bright voice, “You and Daddy are getting a divorce?”

  He knows. He must know. Does he know?

  “Excuse me, Terry? May I come in?”

  Terence glanced around quizzically, for Phyllis’s presence in his study, at this late hour of the evening, was unusual. “Certainly,” he said.

  Phyllis had so rehearsed the crucial, irrevocable words she must say that, faced now with saying them, she could not. A flame passed up into her face. Her eyes flooded absurdly with tears.

  She said, stammering, “I—wonder if you’ve heard? The Schrieber boy? There’s a rumor he’s back, after all these weeks.”

  Terence was sitting at the late Reverend Winston’s massive desk, opening a stack of mail with the late Reverend Winston’s ornate brass letter opener. The scrolled initials WSW—“Willard Symons Winston”—were prominent on the curved handle. As Phyllis spoke, Terence fumbled a bit with the knife, driving the sharp blade up inside the length of the envelope and tearing it unevenly. (How touching a sight it was, Terence Greene opening mail that held neither personal nor professional interest for him, in his usual methodical fashion! The gutted envelopes were discarded individually in a wastebasket, their contents arranged neatly before him.) Terence glanced up squinting, and asked Phyllis to repeat what she’d sai
d—he hadn’t quite heard.

  “There’s a rumor among the kids, evidently, that the Schrieber boy”—Phyllis, her jaw clenching, could not bring herself to call him by any other name—“is back. But the Schriebers themselves—”

  “‘Back’? Where?”

  This was an odd question, and Terence’s squinting, incredulous expression was odd as well. But, in her preoccupied state, Phyllis scarcely noticed. “Back here. Somewhere in the area. One of Kim’s friends—”

  “He’s back? But how? Back from—where?”

  Terence’s fingers twitched as if with a spasmodic nervous reflex. The brass letter opener fell clattering onto the desktop. Phyllis saw that her husband was greatly amazed by this news, yet that there was, too, an undercurrent of dread beneath: She wondered if somehow he’d known about Kim’s experience with Studs Schrieber, and had spared her.

  A bit rattled, she half-wondered if, without having told her she would do so, Kim had after all told Terence. Was that possible?

  Phyllis’s thoughts raced. She could not see how, given the brief amount of time Kim would have had, and the nature of their household, this was possible; nor why, after what Kim had so earnestly said, she would have changed her mind without telling Phyllis.

  “Terry, how do I know? As I said, it’s only a rumor among the kids. The Schriebers themselves know nothing about it. It was Suzi Ryan who called Kim, and I spoke with her mother, Marian, and she said she’d called Doris immediately—which is more than I would have done, I think—and Doris was terribly upset, because the family knows nothing about the boy except that he disappeared weeks ago, without a trace. Poor Doris!—she says they’re waiting for a ransom note. They want so badly to believe he might be alive. And now this rumor—”

  Terence’s squint increased, as if Phyllis were standing in too much light. “He—‘Studs’—is back? Back in Queenston?”

  “Well, no one seems to know. Except—”

  “But isn’t he dead? Didn’t he—die?”

  So curious an expression had come over Terence’s drawn, ashy-skinned face, Phyllis did not know what to make of it; except she recalled how, that first time Terence had ever set eyes upon Studs Schrieber, catching him and Kim in the family room, he’d reacted with extreme and uncharacteristic rage. But so far as Phyllis knew, and she was fairly certain, Terence had never seen Studs Schrieber since that day. When the subject of the boy’s disappearance had come up conversationally, at home or elsewhere, Terence Greene’s usual response had been none at all.

  Phyllis, who had spent hours summoning her courage to speak with Terence on another, far more urgent subject, now regretted having brought up this vexatious subject. Emotion welled in her voice; she so detested Studs Schrieber, she feared she was losing control. “I wish he had died, to tell the truth! At least, that he was gone. Safely away—somewhere.”

  Terence shook his head, as if to clear it. “He is dead. I mean—he was. Wasn’t he?”

  Phyllis said, “There never was any body found, and though the police claim to have questioned a lot of people involved in drugs around here and in Philadelphia, no one seems to know anything definite. If the Schriebers don’t know, I doubt that he is back—it’s probably just teenage fantasizing. Can we please change the subject?”

  Terence had picked up the brass letter opener again, and was turning it distractedly in his fingers. “You say—someone called Kim? I’d better talk to her.”

  Phyllis was dismayed. “But why? Why talk to her? Call Marian Ryan if you want to, but leave Kim out of it. You’ll just upset her—you know what girls that age are like.”

  “I’m not sure that I do. I’m not sure that I know what anyone is like any longer.”

  “Well, teenagers tend to be morbid about certain things. It’s wisest not to indulge them.”

  Terence’s face had grown warm; Phyllis could see oily beads of sweat at his hairline. If they were not having so tense a conversation and if she still loved him she would have wiped the sweat away with her fingertips.

  Terence said abruptly, “Did he call her?—that’s what I want to know.”

  “Who? What are you saying?”

  “Did that—bastard, that—punk!—that animal!—call her? That’s what I want to know.”

  Terence’s outburst was so sudden, the look of revulsion in his face so intense, Phyllis was almost frightened. She did not like the agitated way he was turning the letter opener in his fingers, gripping it by its sharp blade as well as its handle. “Terry, I told you,” she said, meaning to calm him, “—Suzi Ryan called her. And a few others from QDS. Certainly the—boy—himself has not called her. No.”

  “She may have lied to you, Phyllis. She lies to us all the time. How do you know he hasn’t called, if he’s alive, and back?”

  “Because Kim would have told me,” Phyllis said. “I believe her. What do you mean by saying she ‘lies to us all the time’? That’s a terrible, cynical thing to say about your own—”

  “Nevertheless it’s true. Don’t you know it’s true?”

  “Certainly not. I—love Kim. I love her very much. I—”

  “She may love you too, and she may even love me, but that doesn’t preclude lying to us. To whom would we care to lie, if not to our ‘loved ones’?”

  This bold admission was at once so blunt, and so subtle, Phyllis was taken aback.

  “You’re being ridiculous now. You’re not making sense. I wanted to talk to you about—something. And—”

  “Surely you are talking to me about something?”

  “Something more—personal. Private. I’ve been putting it off for a long time, and now I—”

  Terence hunched his shoulders, still seated at the desk. It was clear that he was extremely agitated; and that he was making an effort to contain himself. If only he would stop fussing with that damned letter opener!

  Through the twenty years of their marriage, Phyllis had often been exasperated by her husband’s quirky, half-conscious mannerisms; but this was the first time she felt a bit unnerved. Her wifely instinct was simply to reach over and remove the knife from his fingers, as one might do with a child, but a strange observation of her mother’s, made at the time of Mrs. Winston’s last visit, gave her pause. Terence is a dangerous man. I’m afraid of him. I never want to be alone with him again.

  Fanny Winston had said this after a purported near-accident in Terence’s car, when Terence was driving her home from the hairdresser’s. Phyllis, who had not been present, and knew how her mother inclined toward hyperbole and melodrama, supposed she’d been exaggerating in describing the episode; Terence himself had said he’d skidded a bit, that the brakes on the Oldsmobile needed repair. But Phyllis’s mother had persisted in thinking there was more to it than that, and, when she’d spoken most recently with Phyllis on the phone, she’d said she intended to revise her will—with the intention of leaving her son-in-law out.

  Phyllis had been impatient with the older woman’s complaints, which, she didn’t doubt, sprang from wounded vanity, and not from any accurate perception of poor Terence. But now, uneasily watching Terence at his desk, turning the letter opener in his fingers, breathing audibly and sweating, she herself felt a stab of alarm. Dangerous man. Afraid of him. Never want to be alone with him again.

  Phyllis said, hesitantly, “We haven’t really talked together, Terry, in a very long time. I don’t mean that it’s your fault—it’s both our faults equally. I’ve been so—busy. And you—at the Foundation, and—traveling—as much as you do. I—Oh God, this is so hard to say—”

  Terence sighed, or was it a stifled sob? He flung the letter opener away from him, probably not intending so careless a gesture: The letter opener struck a squat ceramic vase filled with pens and pencils, and everything toppled off his desk and fell noisily to the floor.

  Phyllis flinched. She hoped that Kim and Cindy were both asleep. She hoped that they would not mistake the noise for something it was not.

  Terence said, with a melancholy
little smile, “You don’t have to tell me, Phyllis. I think I know. You’re in love with another man, and you believe you want to divorce me, and marry him. Matt Montgomery—yes?”

  Now Phyllis could not contain her emotion. Tears filled her eyes, and ran down her cheeks, more swiftly than she could prevent. She felt, in that instant, all her old, lost love for Terence Greene—an unspeakable sense of longing, embraced and then relinquished.

  She said, in a choked voice, yet wifely and reproving even now, “Oh, Terry!—not Matt. Mickey Classen.”

  For some months, since approximately September of the previous year, Phyllis Greene had suspected that her husband Terence was leading a double life. He rarely makes love to me anymore had been yet more grimly replaced by He rarely looks at me anymore! It was Phyllis’s fixed idea, however, that Terence was having an affair—no doubt, he imagined himself “in love”—with one of his young woman assistants at the Foundation.

  (Phyllis had no real reason to think this. But had not her own father, that figure of rectitude the Reverend Willard Winston, had, if not an actual affair, a “serious flirtation” with an attractive young secretary, when Phyllis was in high school?—hadn’t the Winstons’ seemingly unshakable marriage been cruelly shaken, with permanent results? Phyllis, never directly told anything, had inferred much, with the hurt, vengeful passion of an adolescent girl, and she had never forgotten.)

  It would not have occurred to Phyllis to suspect anyone in Queenston, for she’d long had the sense that Terence was not at ease in Queenston.

  Phyllis herself had, over the years, enjoyed romantic friendships with a number of Queenston men of her immediate social circle, and beyond. In so affluent and self-regarding a community, such “friendships”—shading sometimes, though not inevitably, into “affairs”—are not uncommon. Phyllis Greene was an attractive, ebullient, much-admired local personality; her husband was well liked, though considered, in some quarters, “too intellectual”—“too serious.” It was natural that Phyllis emerge as the more popular of the Greenes, natural that she play tennis with the husbands of those friends who did not themselves play tennis, natural that she have lunch, and drinks, and occasionally even dinner, with male acquaintances who appealed to her sense of humor and “adventure.” And Queenston Opportunities had brought her, surely not by design, numerous opportunities not restricted solely to business.