I'll Take You There

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Vernor Matheius was staring at me. It was as if he'd heard, not my shy halting insipid speech, my well-intentioned words in imitation of such gestures of commiseration made to me by women or girls who'd hoped to console me for whatever hurts, deprivations, but my desperate thoughts. I, I can love you! He had seen, not felt, the brush of my fingers against his sleeve; how near I'd come to touching him. Sharply he said, "Yes? What?"—still staring at me, as if I'd accosted him; yet at the same time he was turning on his heel to escape; rudely giving me no time to answer, had I had an answer; he bounded up the steps to the rear exit, and was gone.

  Yet: I have done it, touched you. And now you know me.

  That morning, unlike most mornings, I did not follow Vernor Matheius out of the building and across the snowy quadrangle; I did not follow him at all; in confusion, a kind of delirium, I descended the stairs to the first floor of the Hall of Languages; the corridors, the stairs were crowded at this hour, just before eleven o'clock; I took refuge in anonymity. Now you will know me, the connection has been made. I could not believe my recklessness, my daring. I could not believe I had done such a thing, and not only dreamt it. Around me on the stairs were students from the class, familiar faces though we didn't know one another's names; with childish zest we spoke of the humiliation of the formidable "Mr. Matheius"; even I who adored him spoke in this way, smiling, greedy, not wanting the subject to be dropped; a hatchet-faced boy who was a senior in pre-law said, grinning, " 'Math-e-ius'—who's he think he is, anyway?" and another boy said vehemently, "It's weird a Ne-gro caring so much about—that kind of stuff." I did not object, I listened intently, it may even have been that I seemed to concur. For whom we love helplessly we love, too, to betray: any connection is thrilling.

  Even to hear brilliant Vernor Matheius called "Ne-gro" so carelessly, crudely—to hear his name spoken at all—thrilling.

  I found myself in the basement of the Hall of Languages where there were additional classrooms, cramped and ill-lit and melancholy rooms; low-ceilinged corridors and a sharp smell, in winter, of wet wool, rubber boots, a perpetual haze of cigarette smoke. In a remote corner of the basement there was a women's lavatory; often I used this lavatory, for it was always empty; a sickly odor of drains and disinfectant wafted from it. Here was a space that seemed older than the aging building that loomed above it, lodged deep in earth with only a small window to emit a wan, spent light. I remember this dismal place as distinctly as any place of those years and wonder if perhaps, in those dreams of mine that rake my soul and leave me, in the morning, exhausted yet curiously revived as if I have harrowed Hell, that region of the grindingly mundane, and survived, I dream of it often. For it was a place in which to hide; a place in which to weep; a place of inexplicable shame and melancholy; a place in which to use the antiquated toilet, and pull a chain flush that reluctantly and somberly released water from a rust-stained overhead tank into a yet more stained bowl; a place in which to check worriedly if, finally, my period had "happened"—as rarely it did, for I was twenty pounds underweight and experienced brief though painful periods no more than two or three times a year. For I was not truly female in certain crucial ways and both anguished and gloated in this fact. In the water-speckled mirror above a row of sinks I was struck by my face—was I smiling? I'd behaved with Vernor Matheius as I had never behaved in my life; approached a man I didn't know, and dared to touch him; almost, I'd touched the back of his hand, his skin; I'd forced him to look at me; to see me; I'd spoken directly to him; I'd offered him words of sympathy ("He didn't mean it, he spoke without thinking, he admires you very much, anyway there's nothing wrong really with being a Sophist— Protagoras was a Sophist and really so was Socrates") that were genuine, heartfelt if breathless; I'd acted without premeditation, not so much as an instant's premeditation, as one might rush forward to save another from harm.

  Almost it seemed to me, and would seem increasingly to me with the passage of time, that Vernor Matheius had somehow drawn me to him, physically, I'd had no real power to resist.

  In such involuntary acts, there is innocence.

  "But now you must leave it at that. You must not pursue him."

  These words were uttered in my voice. I was staring at the floating pale oval of a face in the mirror and so happy!—the face on this side of the glass, my living face, ached with happiness. I was feverish, I touched my fingertips to my lips, I kissed my fingertips that had touched the soiled sleeve of Vernor Matheius's jacket. Never again would I sleep. I might have died on the spot, I was so happy. Deep in the interior of the subterranean mirror with its discolored surface splotched from the sink, its lead backing corroding the glass like leprosy: how many generations, how many decades of girls since the building had been constructed a hundred years before, had gazed into such depths as I did, stark yearning eyes, female eyes, our reflections tangled together as in the marshy bottom of a pond, or a common grave.

  Yet I smiled, smiled—I was happy.

  8

  "Not following me, girl, are you?"

  The voice, his voice—not irritable but brash and teasing, as unexpectedly, to my embarrassment, Vernor Matheius halted on the sidewalk; turned abruptly to me, so I hadn't time to sidle away; I'd imagined myself invisible following him at a discreet distance, sometimes walking close beside others as if I were in their company; I had not seen him so much as glance over his shoulder as he'd strode along whistling; in this way I had followed him from the university library across the quadrangle and down a steep hill to College Place, from College Place to Allen Street, a business district of fast-food restaurants, bookshops, supplies stores, from Allen Street out to University Avenue and along University Avenue to the area of the medical center; of course I was in no hurry to overtake Vernor Matheius and when he slowed his pace, I slowed mine; he must have noticed me somehow; or sensed the intensity of my concentration upon him; my gaze so fixed upon him; and now he'd stopped at a curb, turned to me and laughingly called out, "Not following me, girl, are you?—eh?" This was meant to be playful; a flirtatious joke; yet the joke (of course) was that he wasn't joking, he knew very well I'd been following him, yet he could not absolutely know, he could not be one hundred percent certain (for we both knew Hume's indisputable argument regarding causality); yet there was the probability that I'd been following him; yet I could not acknowledge that I was, for—what a shameful admission! And what could Vernor Matheius have said in reply? So I had to protest as I did, my face burning as if it had been slapped, "Oh, oh no—I'm just—walking this way."

  "And what way is that, exactly?"

  Rapidly I invented a plausible destination: the University Health Services office which was about a block away. I had to return a form, I said.

  Vernor Matheius, towering above me, sucked at his mouth in a show of mock disappointment. "Just a coincidence, eh?"

  "A—coincidence."

  "Just 'atoms and the void,' eh?"

  Democritus was a philosopher of ancient Greece who was famous for a single axiom—In reality there is nothing but atoms and the void. I wasn't sure if he'd been a Sophist; he was one of those who, at the very start of philosophic inquiry, had handily reduced the mysteries of existence to shreds. For that was the way of philosophy: to reduce existence to pitiful shreds, or to inflate it to gigantic, smothering proportions. Either way, existence became unrecognizable.

  I laughed uneasily, and did not disagree. Somehow we were walking together on University Avenue; we crossed a wide windy expanse of pavement as a yellow DON'T WALK! sign flashed.

  I was overwhelmed and confused by Vernor Matheius's nearness. Hearing his voice, the voice, the voice that had so entered my consciousness, his voice like a roaring in my ears. His height, his quizzical bemused skeptical eyes, his habit of grinning to bare uneven yellow predatory teeth with a prominent gap between the two front teeth.

  Slyly thinking Don't imagine I can't see through you, girl: your skin is transparent.

  It would be a matter for me to contem
plate afterward: how rapidly, how irrevocably I'd stepped out of invisibility into visibility once Vernor Matheius had sighted me. How, one moment, I had been lost in my concentration upon him; I'd been anonymous, unseen; the next moment, I was forced to speak, to act, to be; forced to quickly improvise and invent, as in a game of rapid motions and counter-motions, like badminton (at which, as a high school girl, I'd won county tournaments). My very way of carrying my body, my facial expressions, the movement of my eyes, my hands, my legs; the way in which I walked, needing to keep stride with the man's loping gait; the way in which I displayed my "self"—all were a surprise to me, a revelation. As if a blinding spotlight were suddenly shining on me, and I had no choice but to perform.

  Yes you see through me, you know me. This must all have happened before.

  Since the morning of the professor's insult, Vernor Matheius had ceased attending the class. Suddenly, irrevocably—he was gone. At the back of the hall was the row in which he'd sat, there was the desk in which for weeks he'd sat, beneath the clock; but now he was gone, and would not (I seemed to know, with resignation) be back; though I glanced over my shoulder repeatedly during class as if with a nervous tic, needing to check the time; for the hour between ten and eleven was interminable now, and empty of meaning. How dull, disappointing European Ethics was without Vernor Matheius to enliven it!—I wasn't the only person who felt the loss. Even those students who'd disliked Vernor Matheius intensely regretted his absence. And most of all the professor who seemed to me sad, elderly, reading from his lecture notes, adjusting his glasses and clearing his throat; in the harsh glare from the leaded-glass window his creased, windburned-looking face exposed; like me glancing frequently toward the empty desk beneath the clock. I glared at him, doodling in my notebook. Now you see what you've done, you ridiculous old man. Out of vanity.

  I had no choice, I had to comment on his absence from the class, it would have been unnatural for me not to; and Vernor Matheius shrugged indifferently, and said, "I wasn't enrolled, just auditing. Not much in it for me, frankly." So I said, hesitantly, "It's very—quiet now, without you," and Vernor Matheius said, "Good. I was intrusive, I think," and quickly I said, "Oh, no—not at all," and he persisted, "Yes, wasn't I? Come on: I always talk too much," and I said, almost vehemently, "No. You made the class come alive." At this, Vernor Matheius made a curious sucking sound with his teeth, as if sucking spit through his teeth, a comical-mocking sound I'd never heard before but interpreted as an expression of extreme doubt, and grinning sidelong at me he said, "So now it's dead without me, eh?" and I found myself backed into a corner by the logic of his argument, forced to say, "Yes."

  Vernor Matheius was not walking me to the University Health Services but the office happened to be in the direction in which (by chance and coincidence) we were walking. So it happened that we walked together; people on the street, glancing at us, might have imagined us as a couple; an interracial couple, of whom there were a few at the university; not many, for there were not many non-Caucasian students, but a few. I was carrying a duffel bag, and was in horror it would bump against Vernor Matheius's side; yet I didn't want to switch it to my other arm, for that would remove the buffer between us; and he might misunderstand; or understand too well. We weren't talking now; Vernor Matheius had resumed his whistling. I had sometimes noticed how, striding across campus, making his way through slower-moving groups of students that seemed to part, like molecules, for his swifter passage, he often whistled; frowning and smiling to himself, lost in thought; yet his eyes moving continuously, restlessly—you could see that nothing eluded him. How tall the man was, six feet three or four; how lean, like a knifeblade; his handsome head disproportionately large for his shoulders and body, as if the rest of him had failed to keep pace with his intelligence. There was a slight lurching hunch to his left shoulder as if he had an old injury, and carried himself guarded against pain; yet never registered pain; in fact he was in buoyant good spirits, whistling through his fleshy purplish-plum pursed lips. It would not have occurred to me in my naivete to wonder Am I a factor in this man's happiness? Is there invariably something sexual in a man's happiness? Pulled down tight over his head was a grimy knitted navy blue cap with white starburst designs, that looked handmade; the crimson wool scarf looped around his neck, also moderately soiled, flapped in the wind; the khaki sheepskin jacket flapped open, the zipper broken; his hands were bare in the 10°F. cold—he'd lost his gloves. Vernor Matheius was one of those older, driven students perpetually distracted by thought, or by some mysterious urgency that made it impossible for them to get their clothes on right; I suppose I was perceived in this way myself, for I'd long been careless of my "personal appearance"—my "grooming" as it was called—though now, in recent weeks, I'd made a concerted effort to improve. For how do you make yourself visible, to one who has no awareness of your very existence?

  At the Health Services building Vernor Matheius waved good-bye to me without breaking stride, or breaking off his whistling; blindly I turned in to the building on my fictitious errand; wandered the corridors for five, ten minutes before daring to return to the street; to a pearlescent-gray, windy March day; and when I did, stepping out onto University Avenue, to my astonishment there stood Vernor Matheius, waiting.

  His mouth smiled at me, a sly-glistening gap-toothed smile, and said, "Find what you were looking for?"

  9

  Aged eighteen I'd left home, Strykersville, New York, with no idea of who I was or who I might be; knowing only who I was not, and did not wish to be: all that, until that time, I'd known. At Syracuse, I haphazardly cobbled together a personality out of scraps; like my grandmother's quilts made of mismatched scraps of cloth. You don't inquire into the origin of scraps but only of the shrewd use of which they are made.

  From my brother Dietrich (who'd been a Marine immediately out of high school, before returning to farm) I borrowed a way of carrying myself with dignity; from my high school history teacher, a way of questioning others' remarks without being rude (though in fact, I suppose I was sometimes rude); from a girl named Lynda who'd been my closest friend in high school, a way of being "good"—"generous"—without seeming silly; from the Lutheran minister's grown daughter, a way of regarding people with flattering widened sincere-seeming eyes, not the narrow, veiled eyes natural to me; from my father I borrowed a habit of skepticism and doubt, the loser's distrust of anyone who has more money than he has, or even the appearance of more; yet from my father, too, a contradictory impulse, for he had a weakness for card playing and gambling, which attests to reckless optimism. The gambler's philosophy is a simple one. So little hope of things going right for you, why the hell not bet all you've got?

  At Syracuse there were so many new models for me. At any rate, possibilities.

  My most articulate, persuasive professors (who were exclusively male); scattered residents in my freshman dorm, known to me only by name; a number of the Kappa girls who now, when they saw me on campus, stared through me with expressions of undisguised loathing. (The more inventive of the Kappas had spread fanciful rumors of my "congenital leprosy"; my "mixed racial background"; my "disgusting" grooming habits; my "selfishness" is not tutoring them; my "public nervous breakdown" in the presence of Kappa alums. Of these outrages, the last was truly unforgivable.) My so-called personality had always been a costume I put on fumblingly, and removed with vague, perplexed fingers; it shifted depending upon circumstances, like unfastened cargo in the hold of a ship. Periodically in high school I would make a desperate effort to be "nice"—"normal"—"well-liked"— "popular." When I was once elected to a class office, vice-president of my senior class, I resigned in a panic. I couldn't explain that the sunny-seeming good-girl citizen my classmates had elected to office wasn't me, but an experiment I had not expected to succeed.

  The personalities I assembled never lasted long. Like quilts carelessly sewn together, I periodically fell apart. Sometimes the collapse was brief, a siege of exhaustion, nausea and sleeplessness t
hat left me stunned, but purged; at other times, and such times were becoming more frequent, the collapse was more serious, involving a period of manic, nervous behavior followed by a physical breakdown—"flu" I would call it, or that popular undergraduate malady "mononucleosis." I was too weak to get out of bed, too weak and demoralized to read, write or think coherent thoughts; my bowels churned and ached with diarrhea, though I hardly ate; all appetite for food vanished; my body burned with fever and my head with pain. Yet there was a curious solace in such a collapse, a sharp, sour pleasure; for I would be compelled to think Now you know what you are, now you know. Stark and simple and beautiful as gleaming white bones picked clean of all flesh. Now you know. Yet I lived in dread of the one day I would fall utterly and irrevocably into pieces and would lack the strength, the will, the purpose, the faith to reassemble myself another time.