Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ewan was a thick-bodied ruddy-faced man in the prime of life when he met Rosalind Max in a Falls nightclub, and introduced himself to her despite the fact that she was in the company of a political rival whom Ewan knew to be contemptible. He soon dropped his other women, and he and Rosalind were seen about town two or three or four times a week, a striking couple, not exactly attractive, though of course Rosalind was harshly and defiantly pretty (she spent an hour or more spreading onto her full, solid face a patina of bright make-up that left her skin glowing and poreless, and her dyed red hair was flamboyantly and blatantly artificial, razor-cut to give a gypsy effect; her lips were a flawless scarlet). It was commonly known about town that Ewan was crazy about her, though comically suspicious as well, and that, over a period of months, he had given her a number of costly gifts: the eye-striking blue Jaguar E-model with the dyed rabbit-fur upholstery and silver fixtures and a built-in telephone, and an emerald ring said to be a family heirloom (which the careless Rosalind promptly lost while sailing with a friend on the river), and a freezer stocked with filet mignon, and an ankle-length sable coat, and a twenty-five-foot sailboat with purple and green sails, and any number of smaller items. The penthouse apartment in the new apartment building overlooking the river was, of course, in Ewan’s name; but then the building itself was owned by his family. The more uneasy he was about her, the more generous he became.

  “Of course I don’t really love her,” he told Gideon once or twice, when the brothers still confided in each other, “she’s a—” and he uttered a word at once so obscene and so clinical that Gideon didn’t know whether to be disgusted, or amused. And Ewan frequently said, too, that he couldn’t possibly love her: she wasn’t worthy of his name.

  Nevertheless he gave her the apartment with its magnificent view of the river and the Falls and Manitou Island to the east, and he gave her the innumerable costly gifts, like any lover, like any befuddled excited lover, and he even arranged—exactly why, Rosalind did not know—for each of them to sit for a portrait, to be painted by an artist who moved about the fringes of Nautauga Falls society, and who had painted, for absurdly high fees, portraits of a U.S. senator from the area, and the mayor of Nautauga Falls, and the millionaire owner of the racetrack, and several society women, wives of businessmen and philanthropists, whom Ewan dismissed as far less attractive than his flame-haired Rosalind. The portraits had been completed by Christmas of the preceding year, and were hanging, at the time of the assassination, in the living room of the apartment: Rosalind’s was theatrical, rather stiff, but conventionally glamorous; Ewan’s showed a beefy, jowled, arrogantly handsome man of middle age, with eyes narrowed in merriment, or perhaps in meanness, and the soft pudgy flesh of his chin creased against his collar. It was almost an insult, that portrait, and indeed Rosalind had had to plead with Ewan not to attack the artist physically, but if one studied it long enough to become somehow attractive, even charming. The oddest thing about it was (as everyone attested who examined it long enough) that the portraitist had, whether knowingly or not (he claimed not) created a dull almost imperceptible aura about Ewan’s head so that it looked as if the notorious sheriff of Nautauga County had a halo. Which was, of course, vastly amusing to Ewan and Rosalind and their circle, and rather mysterious. For the halo wasn’t always there. But then again, if one peered closely and was patient, it reappeared.

  FROM THE FIRST evening of their acquaintance Rosalind’s independence excited Ewan: here was a woman who didn’t want to be married, not even to a Bellefleur. She was a part-time singer in nightclubs in the city, and an occasional photographer’s model, and she had done, she said, “theater.” (From the age of seventeen to twenty-one when, she said mysteriously, her life had been rudely altered, she had acted in supporting roles at the Vanderpoel Opera House, where comedies, musicals, and melodramas were sometimes performed; but of course Ewan had never seen her there.) Naked one night except for a frothy ostrich boa wound about her waist, Rosalind had high-stepped about the bedroom clapping her hands and singing in a hoarse, rowdy, utterly delightful voice, “When the Boys Come Home,” the concluding number, she said, of one of her most successful musicals. Ewan had stared, bewitched. It was obvious that he did love her.

  But he was suspicious. At times he felt sick with dread that she had betrayed him—was betraying him at that very moment—and nothing would do but that he had to telephone her, or send a man over on some contrived pretext (bringing her a dozen white roses, or a chocolate mousse, her favorite dessert, from the city’s prestige restaurant in the Nautauga House); once he had ordered the police helicopter flown back to town from some dreary backwoods logging community where a tedious murder investigation was underway, and it had landed, creating quite a disturbance, on the penthouse terrace. (That day, a gentleman in a trench coat was observed leaving Rosalind’s apartment hurriedly, but when Ewan questioned Rosalind she explained quite convincingly that she’d woken with a miserable toothache, and had called her dentist over for an emergency consultation.) Another time, Ewan observed at the racetrack that his mistress’s bets—for $25, $40, all small sums—were placed on quirky horses with 100–1 and 85–3 odds, and that these horses won; but Rosalind explained that she’d overheard her hairdresser chatting with a woman patron, and remembered the names of the horses mentioned, and, of course, she just had good luck. She wasn’t a close friend of anyone connected with the racetrack, she said, and as for jockeys—jockeys repulsed her physically. Which Ewan believed, after some deliberation. His jealousy was such that he imagined lovers of Rosalind’s crouched in closets, or hiding in shower stalls, when he entered the apartment unannounced; he did find outsized footprints in the pink marble bathtub, and hairs not Rosalind’s or his own on her silk-covered pillows, and his stock of ale, kept in the apartment’s second refrigerator, was often decimated; but he was sensible enough to doubt his own suspicions, and at any rate Rosalind always joked and teased him into a good mood. You spend all your time chasing criminals, she said, naturally you’re suspicious. But you mustn’t let it color your vision of human nature, Ewan. After all—! We pass this way but once.

  Though Ewan enjoyed the city’s nightlife, and felt quite wonderfully flattered by being seen in the company of gorgeous Rosalind Max, he liked best, as he told Gideon, spending a long period of time—twelve hours, eighteen hours—locked up in the penthouse with his mistress, with a generous supply of liquor, ale, salted peanuts, frozen pizzas, and doughnuts (glazed, powdered, cinnamon, apple, cherry, whipped-cream) from the city’s most popular bakery, Sweet’s. He and Rosalind made love, and drank, and ate, and made love again, and drank, and made love, and fixed themselves enormous meals out of the freezer and refrigerator, and drank and ate doughnuts, and slept awhile, and woke to make love, and poured themselves more drinks, and finished off the rest of the doughnuts . . . and so the weekend went; at such times they consumed more than two dozen Sweet’s doughnuts, and an unfathomed quantity of other food and drink. I don’t love her, she’s a notorious bitch, Ewan complained with a wry smile, but, you know, I can’t think of a better way to spend my time. . . . Then you’re very fortunate, Gideon said curtly, and broke off the conversation. (The brothers had been growing apart for years, and after Gideon’s accident, and his acquisition of the Invemere airport, they rarely spoke; it happened that they were rarely home at the same time, and when they were they tended to avoid each other.)

  It was 3:00 A.M., Sunday morning, when, after a protracted bout of lovemaking, eating, and drinking, Ewan had fallen into his stuporous sleep, and was snoring loudly (indeed, Rosalind was to say that she owed her life to her lover’s snoring—it had kept her awake—she’d decided to take a bubble-bath—and happened to be in the bathroom, sunk in the luxurious hot water, when the assassin broke into the apartment and into the bedroom and began firing at poor Ewan); and he never woke up again—never, that is, as Ewan Bellefleur, the sheriff of Nautauga County.

  How quickly it happened! A stranger bursting into the room—
firing seven shots from an automatic pistol—Ewan bleeding onto the silken pillows and sheets—Rosalind hiding terrified in the bathroom. And then everything went quiet again.

  How quickly, how irreparably . . . And after it appeared that the murderer had gone Rosalind came out, shaking, knowing what she would find in the bed, and yet screaming when she saw it: her poor naked helpless lover, her dead lover, his body riddled with bullets, the very top of his skull penetrated. He was dead, yet his fingers still twitched.

  He was dead, he must have been dead, shot at such close range: yet his eyelids fluttered. So she screamed and screamed.

  BUT OF COURSE Ewan did not die, and it was a measure of his neurosurgeon’s skill, as well as the resiliency of his own constitution, that he recovered as quickly as he did: a mere five weeks in the hospital, two in the intensive-care unit. And then he moved to a convalescent home on Manitou Island, chosen by the Bellefleurs for its proximity to the manor, as well as the excellence of its professional staff.

  Ewan did not die, and yet—and yet it could not be said that he had survived. Not the Ewan Bellefleur whom everyone had known.

  Some forty-eight hours after the shooting, when Ewan first regained consciousness in the intensive-care ward, his eyes rolled, and his pale lips moved, and he tried to grasp the hand of the attending nurse—and his initial words, but dimly grasped, had to do with blood and baptism. He then lost consciousness again, and remained in a comalike state for another two days, and when he again awoke, this time permanently, it was observed at once by Noel and Cornelia—the only people allowed to see him at that time, for Lily had collapsed and was inconsolable—that this Ewan did not appear to be their Ewan.

  He recognized them, and seemed to be unusually clear-minded about the ward, the hospital, the delicate operation performed on his brain, and the circumstances of what he called his “misfortune.” But he spoke in a near-whisper, and his manner was contrite, even chastened; it alarmed his parents that he said not a single word about the attempted murder—he knew that someone had tried to kill him, certainly, but he showed no anger, no bitterness, not even any curiosity about the assassin’s identity. (The assassin was never to be found, though the sheriff’s office and the city police launched an extensive investigation. If only Rosalind had caught a glimpse of the man—! But of course she had not, nor had anyone in the building, including the doorman in attendance downstairs, seen him; and the gun—a quite ordinary .45 Colt automatic, found twenty floors below in the alley—proved to be untraceable.)

  From the first, then, Noel and Cornelia had known something was gravely wrong. Of course they were grateful that their son had survived: how many men, even with the bodily constitution of a bull, like Ewan, could have survived five bullets in the chest (miraculously, they had passed through him, striking no vital organ), a cruel shoulder wound, and a bullet lodged in his skull . . . ? And he had lost so much blood, and had arrived in the emergency ward in an advanced state of shock. But the Ewan who regained consciousness, the Ewan who held their hands and comforted them, and spoke gently (and apologetically) to his wife, and wept with delight to see Vida and Albert, and was so courteous with the nurses . . . this Ewan was no one they knew.

  He was soft-spoken, he was contrite, he blushed with shame over the circumstances of his “misfortune” (for he was never able to bring himself to do anything more than allude to Rosalind, and the penthouse apartment, and his life of “error”); only while in the convalescent home, when he was free to walk, with a cane, about the sloping lawns, in the company of one or two members of his family, did he bring up—and then hesitantly, apologetically—the experience he had had, and the necessity, now, for changing his life.

  Of course, he said quietly, he would resign his office. Had already resigned, in fact. Knowing what he did about life—about the nature of sin—about the baptism of blood—and Our Saviour’s overseeing of every moment of our lives—he could not continue with his worldly occupation; even the very memory of it filled him with dismay. (That he had actually carried a handgun! That he had gloried in his rifles, automatics, shotguns! His soul was aggrieved.) Since he had no secrets from them or from anyone he was willing to show them the letter he had written to his former mistress, breaking off all further relations with her, and signing over the apartment to her for as long as she wished to have it—though he could not resist begging her to consider the self-defeating sinfulness of her ways, which might one day drag her down to Hell. His parents and his wife prudently disclaimed their right to read the letter, and it was sent by registered mail to Rosalind Max, who never replied. (Though of course she kept the apartment, and the car, and the rest of the gifts, including even the twin portraits.)

  As time passed and he mended and grew strong Ewan was willing to talk more openly, and with a great deal of spirit, about his “baptism.” Evidently he had died, or almost died, and at the very moment of death, as he was about to pass over into the other world, Jesus Christ Himself had appeared, and called out sternly to him, for it wasn’t time yet for him to die, how could he die when he hadn’t fulfilled his task on earth!—and he had better kneel, and submit to baptism. So Christ Himself had baptized Ewan, and with Ewan’s own blood. (He had touched Ewan’s chest wounds, had even poked a forefinger near his heart, in order to bloody his hands for the baptism.) They were together a long, long time, Ewan on his knees, Christ standing before him, instructing him, not so much in the sinfulness of his past life—for Ewan knew very well, now, the scales had fallen from his eyes and he knew—as in the life ahead, which would be extremely difficult. He would meet resistance, especially from those he loved; especially from his family. (Even Lily, though “religious,” did not really believe.) But he must have courage. He must never slacken, he must forever remember the circumstances of his baptism, and Christ’s love, and though the world might mock him he must only go forward to meet his destiny and fulfill himself on earth.

  They stared at him, speechless. Their faces lengthened with grief. Ah, Ewan! What has happened to Ewan! Their Ewan . . .

  Lily wept, and collapsed again. She moaned in her delirium that that whore had murdered her husband: why didn’t the police arrest her and throw her in jail! Of course Rosalind Max had done the shooting herself. . . . Everyone in Nautauga Falls knew that.

  Noel and Cornelia and Leah and Hiram had no idea what to think. Ewan wasn’t demented and yet he wasn’t sane; his brain evidently had not been damaged, and yet . . . Gideon visited with him only once, and came away shaking: with distress or rage, no one knew. Ewan had seized his brother’s hands and pleaded with him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, and to accompany him, Ewan, on his pilgrimage to Eben-Ezer in the western corner of the state; he had pleaded with Gideon to cast off his worldly pursuits and devote himself to the Lord, before it was too late. For somehow it had come about—no one knew exactly how, nor could anyone at the Manitou clinic explain—that Ewan had met with a certain Brother Metz, who claimed to be a direct descendant of the German “saint” Christian Metz, who had founded the sect known locally as “True Inspiration” a century ago. The stooped, bearded, eagle-nosed old man had appeared at the clinic, and he and Ewan had spent several hours together in earnest discussion, on the veranda, but where he had come from . . . how he had known about Ewan . . . was to remain forever a mystery.

  With tears in his eyes Ewan announced to his family that he would not be returning to Bellefleur Manor.

  He had, he said, relinquished all his worldly goods, with the exception of $10,000, which he had given to Brother Metz’s community at Eben-Ezer, as soon as he was formally discharged from Manitou he was to journey, on foot, to the community, where he would live for the rest of his days. He might in time become a minister in the True Inspiration church, when Brother Metz deemed him worthy, but of course he had no plans, he had no ambition, whatever the Lord wanted of him would come to pass, and in that would reside his happiness. . . .

  He would not, he promised, harangue his famil
y about their misguided lives. The pursuit of money, the pursuit of power—the mad desire to amass the wilderness empire old Jean-Pierre had once owned, which had brought him to his doom—! No, he would not harangue; that was not the way of True Inspiration. One lived one’s life as a model of Christian virtue, just as Christ had lived His faultless life. So Ewan explained, gently. There would be no preaching except to those who wanted to believe.

  His fellow policemen and his many acquaintances in the Falls assumed he was joking, until, one by one, they visited him. And came away, like Gideon, appalled. For Ewan Bellefleur wasn’t demented and yet he wasn’t sane. . . . Most baffling of all was his lack of interest in revenge. He didn’t appear to care about the progress of the investigation; he adroitly changed the subject when one of his lieutenants named certain names, suspects among Ewan’s numerous enemies in the county. Nor would he suggest names himself. (As for the theory that poor distraught Rosalind had had anything to do with the attempted assassination . . . Ewan simply shut his eyes and shook his head, smiling.) His associates were shocked at the change in him, and though they discussed it in detail, for weeks and months (indeed, the conversion of Ewan Bellefleur provided material for debate among people who barely knew him) they were never able to decide: was he midly insane, had the bullet damaged his brain, or was he far healthier than he’d ever been before, in his entire life . . . ? But it did seem perverse, even repulsive, they thought, that a former sheriff should have so little interest in apprehending a dangerous criminal.