Evil Eye

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He hates me! That look in his eyes.

  He doesn’t love me after all. It has all been a masquerade.

  “Stupid! But I will learn.”

  She was the fourth wife. She could not bear to think that there might one day be a fifth wife.

  The variable y in the equation in which x was the invariable.

  It had been reckless of her, unthinking, stupid—to have provoked her normally good-natured husband to such a display of temper. She had herself to blame, wholly.

  And that unnerving look in Austin’s eyes, as of sheer loathing: no recognition of the young wife whom he’d claimed to adore.

  Just that look of murderous fury—this was quite a surprise.

  Yet, set beside the terrible surprises of her parents’ deaths, it was hardly devastating. I can live with it. I will!

  Austin’s previous wives had failed to accommodate this temper, Mariana supposed. But their expectations of marriage had to have been far different from hers.

  Of course Mariana understood, when she thought about the situation more calmly, that there had to be another side to Austin Mohr. No one can be universally admired all of the time, as Austin seemed to be at the Institute; no one can be continuously good, rational. Sane.

  When Mariana had first arrived at the Institute she’d been impressed with how everyone seemed to admire Austin Mohr. He’d acquired a kind of mythic status: generous, kind, brilliant.

  She’d half-expected to hear that yes, of course, Mohr was ­“flirtatious”—or worse—with young women at the Institute; he’d been involved with theater and filmmaking all of his adult life, surrounded by attractive, ambitious young women, so this had seemed inevitable. Yet, Mariana hadn’t heard anything disturbing about Mohr; he had no reputation for exploiting women, and no reputation for flying into fits of rage; though it was said of Mohr that he could “lose patience”—he “didn’t suffer fools gladly”—these were very minor qualifications.

  Presumably, Mariana’s predecessors had felt the sting of his terrible temper. Very likely, his children.

  Which is why they’ve fled him. All of them.

  It was the unpredictable nature of Austin’s moods that disconcerted Mariana. She’d vowed not to provoke him—she would not ever make such a mistake again, interfering with his possessions, in his house; but there were other, equally trivial errors she might make, addressing him in a way he interpreted as overly familiar, in the presence of others; in the kitchen, when they were preparing a meal together, making a suggestion to Austin about the recipes he was considering—innocently and naively as if she and Austin Mohr were on a par, and Austin Mohr not the more experienced cook.

  And a terrible blunder she’d made, naively preparing a side dish of spinach one evening without consulting Austin, because spinach was a food Mariana thought might complement the seafood marinara recipe Austin was preparing; Austin had been furious, as if Mariana had insulted his judgment—“The meal I’m preparing is complicated, and complete, without any need of a ‘side dish.’ I can’t imagine what you’re thinking, Mariana. Why you would want to interfere.”

  It was very like tossing a lighted match into flammable ­material—a sudden explosion, a fire burning out of control.

  Mariana offered to throw out the spinach, which enraged Austin all the more.

  Mariana felt ill as Austin raged at her in the close confines of the kitchen that was, to Mariana, usually so warmly attractive a room, with a wooden butcher block table, dark red floor tiles, framed posters of Picasso and Matisse lithographs on the walls. Arteries stood out in Austin’s sweaty forehead like writhing worms. Though Mariana apologized repeatedly, desperately, yet Austin continued to rage at her. She was baffled why such petty incidents made him so furious—she couldn’t help but feel that possibly he was joking—but of course Austin wasn’t joking but was deadly serious, slamming pots around, grinding his teeth in fury. That very day at the Institute there’d been an open debate about a controversial project and Austin had spoken calmly, clearly, and forcibly, without any suggestion of irritation or annoyance, still less childish rage. As if, in the intimacy of private life, in the close physical intimacy of marriage, another Austin Mohr flourished, reveling in excesses of infantile emotion, not to be repressed.

  It must be all women he fears and loathes—I am only the current woman.

  And sometimes, in their lovemaking—in which Austin was invariably dominant, always initiating lovemaking and always designating when lovemaking was completed—Mariana’s husband exhibited a willful, even reckless impulsiveness, which left Mariana baffled and chagrined rather than hurt. (For lovemaking was so much less personal than other forms of engagement. In lovemaking, Mariana had no doubt but that her widely experienced husband scarcely recalled which wife, or which mistress, he held in his straining arms.) But their lovemaking passed almost entirely in silence and so the particular hurt might be more readily forgotten.

  If Mariana whispered I love you! to Austin, often he’d drifted into sleep and could not respond. His sleep was heavy, sweaty, labored; his breathing was hoarse and irregular; like a waterlogged body Mariana thought him, floating just beneath the surface of the water. . . .

  The thought of Austin’s death terrified her. Her throat closed up, the thought was so awful.

  Oh but I love you! I love you. . . .

  Yet how strange it was to Mariana, that Austin seemed deaf to her apologies. She had never met anyone who seemed so resolutely not to hear. It hardly mattered if Mariana gave in immediately, admitting her mistake and apologizing, as if in his fury Austin was remembering previous experiences with women in which he’d been thwarted, insulted, betrayed.

  She wondered if he blamed the first wife, Ines, for the son’s death. Maybe that was it: he could not forgive the woman, he was not even aware of his rage for her, that spilled over onto Mariana.

  She was so lonely sometimes! The mad thought came to her, she would become pregnant, despite the man’s precautions: she would have a baby, that she would be less lonely.

  But now, how wounding it was to Mariana, a soft-spoken young woman who had never learned to assert herself, still less to defend herself—the way in which her husband glared at her as if he loathed her; the very man who, in the early weeks of their romance, had gazed at Mariana with eyes soft with love.

  That love she’d believed—-she’d known—to be genuine.

  Now she didn’t know what to believe. Her husband would “love” her again—but could she believe him?

  It was as if Austin saw, in Mariana’s place, an ever-shifting female form, diaphanous, unpredictable, and untrustworthy, that fascinated and enraged him by turns. He did not see her.

  Already in this first year of marriage Mariana had thought several times that the marriage must be over. Her husband had had enough of her—was finished with her. He’d looked at her with such disgust, dismay, incredulity, rage—he’d actually clenched his fists as if he’d have liked nothing better than to strike her.

  She’d wanted to flee the house. It was a beautiful house in a beautiful setting and yet—Mariana was coming to hate it.

  Flee the Berkeley hills, so beautiful and yet so treacherous—the tight-curving narrow roads, hardly more than single lanes, rising into the steep misshapen hills, in which more than one center of gravity seemed to draw one downward, vertiginously; all of Panoramic Hill, as it was called, a fire hazard, obviously—for no fire trucks could make their way on such twisting roads.

  It was earthquake terrain, too. When Mariana mentioned this fact, Austin laughed dismissively.

  “The world will end, too, one day. Fortunately, I don’t plan on being here.”

  Here was I, and not we. In his careless fantasy of the apocalypse, Austin wasn’t including any wife.

  After one of Austin’s outbursts Mariana was sure that Austin would
let her go. And she wasn’t sure that she really wanted to remain with him, in so precarious and unstable a marriage.

  Then again she thought, chilled, Without this man, I am nothing. I am a daughter/orphan. I don’t exist.

  After the spinach incident they’d had a strained dinner together on the deck overlooking the Pacific sunset: Mariana hadn’t dared to speak, and Austin had scarcely glanced at her. He’d been preoccupied with other thoughts, that Mariana supposed had little to do with her, who’d entered his life so relatively recently.

  He will tell me to leave. Is that what he told the others? It’s over, please leave. This is my house.

  But that night, when she was preparing to sleep in one of the guest rooms, and not in their bedroom, assuming that Austin didn’t want her anywhere near him, there came Austin storming to the doorway to rebuke her.

  “What kind of game is this! My wife belongs with me, in my bed.”

  My wife. In his state of supreme disgust Austin seemed to have forgotten Mariana’s name.

  “Hel-lo! You are Mariana—the new wife?”

  The query was in such heavily accented English, the glamorous white-haired woman’s expression so droll and curious, like that of an animated Kewpie doll, Mariana had a fear that she was being mocked even as the woman thrust out her small-boned beringed hand to shake Mariana’s hand.

  “I am Ines Zambranco, and this is my niece Hortensa.”

  “Yes—hello . . .”

  “Unless—we have come early? Is Austin not ready to see us? Hortensa and I can go away somewhere and return a little later of course—if you would wish this.”

  Mariana had hurried to answer the ringing doorbell and was breathless. It was so, Ines Zambranco and her niece had arrived more than an hour early, and Austin was in another part of the house, changing his clothes.

  Mariana stammered, “Of course, come in—please. You’re not at all early . . .”

  “But I think yes, perhaps we are? Hortensa and I, we have come by taxi, you see. From the airport. And it is not possible to time an arrival perfectly, in such circumstances.”

  “No, oh no—of course not. Please . . .”

  Mariana was smiling nervously at both women—too confused to shake hands with Ines’s niece who was standing beside Ines on the front stoop, a head taller than Ines, just slightly behind her, like a servant, burdened with a shoulder bag, a tote bag, and a large roller-suitcase. Mariana was trying not to think They have come early deliberately. They want to unsettle me.

  Mariana looked from Hortensa back to Ines: this time, Mariana nearly fainted.

  The gaily chattering Ines Zambranco was missing an eye. Where her right eye had been there was an empty socket.

  It was a profoundly shocking moment: for you were led to look from the left eye, which was expertly made up, enlarged with eye shadow in shades of mauve and taupe, and outlined in black mascara, to the missing eye, where you saw what appeared to be a shadowy emptiness; your instinct was to look back at once to the left eye, that was gazing at you, alert with consciousness, and with a kind of merriment as well, as if the little white-haired woman with the missing eye, perfumed and elegantly attired as she was, knew perfectly well what you were thinking, what a shock you’d had—though of course, smiling fixedly at her, determined to behave as if nothing were wrong, you would not acknowledge the missing eye.

  Yet—Mariana could not prevent it—she glanced back at the empty socket, which had been made up with cosmetics as well, black mascara outlining the socket’s edge and an arched eyebrow penciled in above, a subtle combination of white, gray, pale brown that matched the other perfectly drawn eyebrow. The effect was both sinister and glamorous—for Ines Zambranco was a dramatic presence, looking much younger than her age of more than sixty, with a white-powdered face like a geisha’s, and suffused with a sort of vivacious merriment like a naughty child.

  Even Ines’s white hair wasn’t merely an older woman’s white hair—it had been cut short and bristling like a rock star’s punk hair and when you looked more closely, you saw that the “white” wasn’t a soft white but a metallic white, obviously dyed.

  And the gold sandals on Ines’s tiny feet: three-inch heels that brought the flamboyant little woman to a precarious height of about five feet two. Her miniature toes peeped out, the nails polished ruby-red to match her fingernail polish and her pursed smiling lips.

  “Please—come inside. And your suitcases—shall I . . .”

  Though she’d been anticipating Ines’s visit for several days, Mariana wasn’t prepared for such a surprise: why hadn’t Austin warned her that his former wife was disfigured? (Unless Austin didn’t know? Was that possible? The missing eye had to mean cancer—didn’t it?)

  And there was Hortensa: plain, dour, with skinned-back hair and small close-set eyes, flat-heeled ballerina slippers, mud-colored polyester trousers and matching jacket, about Mariana’s age and height but at least fifty pounds heavier. In her sullen face Mariana’s bright smile was rudely deflected and in response to Mariana’s greeting there came a barely audible mutter.

  Mariana led their guests into the foyer. She was deeply embarrassed, anxious. She’d seen that Ines was amused by her discomfort over the missing eye. And whatever Ines was saying to Hortensa, in staccato Spanish, was probably not flattering to her, the new, young wife.

  Mariana wanted to call for Austin to announce that their guests had arrived but she knew that Austin wouldn’t like to be interrupted. In his bedroom, or in his bathroom, preparing to be seen by others, Austin did not care to be hurried in his elaborate personal grooming.

  Mariana took the heavy tote bag from Hortensa and led the women into the guest wing of the house, which had windows facing the Pacific. All the while Ines was exclaiming, chattering brightly—Mariana couldn’t follow her words, so heavily accented they might have been Spanish—while Hortensa followed in her aunt’s wake, flat-footed and unsmiling.

  You could see a family resemblance between the older woman and the younger: but where Ines’s features were delicate, and the geisha-white cosmetic mask gave her a bizarre sort of histrionic beauty, Hortensa’s features were coarsened and plain; in defiance of her aunt’s glamour the niece wore no makeup on her sallow skin, had done nothing to soften the effect of her coarse thick eyebrows, and refused to stretch her thin, flat, colorless lips into anything approaching a courteous smile.

  Where the aunt was petite, a doll of a woman who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, the niece was hefty, stolid as a young heifer; inside the mud-colored polyester jacket her breasts were enormous as swollen, sagging fruit.

  Mariana’s first houseguests, in her new marriage! She was feeling just slightly faint, Ines’s perfume like a rich, overripe fruit wafted to her nostrils.

  She hoped that Austin would hear Ines’s high-pitched voice or the sharp clatter of her shoes against the tile floor. Mariana wanted to scream at him Come here! Help me! Your wife has arrived.

  “Aus-tin! How good to see you! And not changed at all—or almost. A year flies by quickly, does it?—so much happens, yet no change.”

  Whatever Ines was chattering in her maddening bright voice Mariana couldn’t follow. She saw that Austin greeted his former wife with a forced sort of hearty enthusiasm, as he might have greeted a visitor to the Institute whom he knew slightly; with a stiff little smile he stooped to allow her to brush her lips against both his cheeks, leaving a ruby smear on both cheeks that would have annoyed him greatly if he’d known. For the evening Ines had changed into a startling costume—a puckered strapless top in deep purple satin, incongruous with her bony shoulders and thin, flaccid upper arms, and a flimsy skirt like cobwebs, cut at an angle so that it looked torn. Around her thin neck was a jade necklace that had to be, Mariana surmised, a gift from Austin, for it very much resembled the jade necklace Mariana herself was wearing, though it w
asn’t so ornate or so heavy as Mariana’s. Ines’s alarmingly bare shoulders gave her a fragile but dignified look. Inside the puckered satin, her breasts were small as if shrunken.

  The shadowy socket where her right eye should have been gave her face a squinting asymmetrical cast like a female face in a Picasso painting. Yet you could see that Ines had been beautiful, once; and had retained the image of that beauty even now.

  What a strange couple they were: the bristly-white-haired woman so short, and so petite; the former husband so much larger, looming over her. Ines did suddenly seem, despite her air of frantic gaiety, considerably older than Austin.

  And Mariana saw that yes, Austin must have known about Ines’s missing eye, for he showed no surprise, still less alarm or concern, at the ghastly sight of the empty socket; in fact he’d barely glanced at Ines’s festive face, turning quickly to Hortensa, with a similarly hearty/impersonal greeting and a handshake.

  Hortensa made no effort to appear friendly, or even very animated. Neither she nor Austin hugged the other or brushed lips against cheeks. Mariana was impressed with the sulky girl’s resistance to Austin’s charm. She thought She is immune to the man and wants him to know.

  It was an old sour relationship, Mariana supposed. Austin and Hortensa were linked by marriage, or had once been—obscure relatives thrown together with nothing to say to each other.

  Drinks? Would they like drinks? Briskly Austin ushered his guests into the living room, urging them to sit down on the long white-leather sofa facing the view of the city in the distance, the Bay and bridges. In fading sunlight the Golden Gate Bridge shimmered just barely visible.

  “Ah! As always—espectacular! If there is no worry—shall I say this?—of el terremoto.”

  Ines remained on her feet speaking lightly, laughing. Mariana knew that el terremoto meant the earthquake and that this subject stirred in Austin, as in other longtime residents of the San Francisco/Berkeley area, a predictable sort of dismissive laughter.

  “Well—it will take more than el terremoto to move me from here.”