Evil Eye

by Joyce Carol Oates

  With grave disappointment Austin spoke. As Mariana stared after him he walked off, heavy-footed, disgusted.

  In the days and weeks following the first wife’s visit Mariana was susceptible to headaches, indigestion, insomnia.

  Mariana was keenly aware of how the house, Austin’s beautiful house, had been altered.

  It was not simply the husband’s wariness in her company: his air of caution, though often he smiled at her and seemed to agree with her, as one might humor a deranged person; it was something more fundamental, a distrust of her, as of a stranger living in his household.

  She fell into a habit of touching her eye: the left eye.

  She fell into a habit of touching her eye: the right eye. To assure herself that it was there, and not merely a socket.

  She fell into the habit of stroking her bare arm slowly and sensuously, as if comforting herself. Her fingertips seeking out tiny near-invisible moles in the pale skin.

  It was clear, the atmosphere of the house had been altered. The quality of the light refracted from the Bay miles away, as if a minuscule drop of toxin had been introduced.

  The most gorgeous orchid plant, a faint rosy pink striated with dark stripes, began to drop its petals.

  Nothing Mariana could do seemed to help. One by one the petals fell until only ugly skeletal stick-stalks remained.

  Glossy leaves from the jade plant began to fall. If Mariana watered the plant, leaves fell; if Mariana held back from watering the plant, leaves fell.

  One of the bonsai trees began to wither.

  Mariana was in a panic wondering if she should hurry out to a florist’s shop and buy new, healthy plants. For Austin would blame her, she knew. It had fallen to her to oversee the plants.

  Probably, it was too late. He’d noticed the sickly orchids, in particular. If Mariana tried to deceive him, that would not go well with her.

  A crack appeared in one of the beautiful earthen-colored Catalan bowls, but Mariana was certain she had not touched for months.

  She examined the blue-glass nazar hanging by the doorway. Waiting for it to slip from her fingers and shatter on the floor—but it did not, yet.

  What a hell, insomnia! The raging fever returned to her, after nearly a year.

  Long ago Mariana had used up the barbiturates her mother’s doctor had prescribed for her back in Connecticut. She made an appointment in Berkeley, without Austin’s knowledge, and received a prescription for sleeping pills. She’d told the doctor that she and her husband would be traveling to Europe soon, and that she needed as many pills as he could give her. She filled the prescription at once, at the nearest pharmacy. Driving home along the narrow twisting hillside roads she felt a terrible dryness in her mouth, as if she’d already begun taking barbiturates and would never again be fully awake. Home in the house she was grateful to be alone—so grateful! Austin was at the Institute and would return home late. He, too, had had difficulty sleeping in recent weeks, his sinus headaches had returned since Ines’s visit and he was beginning a strict regimen of antibiotics.

  In the living room flooded with late-afternoon light from the sky above the Pacific, Mariana spread a half-dozen of the gleaming little pearl-pills on the palm of her hand, staring at them with a faint, fading smile as if trying to recall their meaning.

  SO NEAR

  ANY TIME

  ALWAYS

  Oh! he was smiling at me.

  Was he smiling—at me?

  Quick then looking away, looking down at my notebook—where I’d been taking notes for a science-history paper—while spread about me on the highly polished table were opened volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book of Science, Science History Digest.

  A hot blush rose into my face. I could not bring myself to glance up, to see the boy at a nearby table, similarly surrounded by spread-open books, staring at me.

  Though now I was aware of him. Of his quizzical-friendly stare.

  Thinking I will not look up. He’s just teasing.

  In 1977: still an era of libraries.

  In the suburban branch library that had been a millionaire’s mansion in the nineteenth century. In the high-ceilinged reference room. Shelves of books, gilt-glinting titles, brilliant sunshine through the great octagonal window so positioned in the wall that, seated at one of the reference tables, you could see only the sky through the inset glass-panes like an opened fan.

  Will not look up yet my eyes lifted involuntarily.

  Still he was smiling at me. A stranger: a few years older than I was.

  Never smile or speak to strange men but this was a boy not a man.

  I wondered if he was a student at St. Francis de Sales Academy for Boys, a private Catholic school where tuition was said to be as high as college tuition and where the boys, unlike boys at my school, had to wear white shirts, ties, and jackets to class.

  Smiling at me in a way that was so tender, so kindly, so familiar.

  As if, though I didn’t know him, he knew me. As if, though I didn’t know him, yet somehow I did know him, but had forgotten as you feel the tug of a lost dream, unable to retrieve it, yet yearning to retrieve it, like groping in darkness, in a room that should be familiar to you.

  He knows me! He understands.

  I was sixteen. I was a high school junior. I was young for my age it was said—(not to me, directly)—which translated into an adult notion of underdeveloped sexuality, emotional immaturity, childishness.

  It wasn’t so unusual that a boy might smile at me, or a man might smile at me, if I was alone. A young girl alone will always attract a certain kind of quick appraising (male) attention.

  If whoever it was hadn’t seen my face clearly, or my skin.

  Seen from a little distance, I looked like any girl. Or almost.

  Seen from the front, I looked like a girl of whom relatives say Her best feature is her smile!

  Or, If only she would smile just a little more—she’d be pretty.

  Which wasn’t true, but well meaning. So I tried not to absolutely hate the relative who said it.

  This boy was no one I’d ever encountered before, I was sure. If I had, I would have remembered him.

  He was very handsome, I thought. Though I scarcely dared to look at him.

  Mostly I was conscious of his round, gold-rimmed glasses—that gave him a dignified appearance. Inside the lenses his eyes were just perceptibly magnified, which gave them a look of blurred tenderness.

  His face was angular and sharp-boned and his hair was scrupulously trimmed with a precise part on one side of his head, the way men wore their hair years ago; unlike most guys his age, anyway most guys you’d see in Strykersville, he was wearing an actual shirt not a T-shirt—a short-sleeved shirt that looked like it might be expensive.

  Smiling at me in this tentative way to signal that if I was wary of him, or frightened of him, it was OK—it was cool. He wouldn’t bother me further.

  He’d been taking notes in a notebook, too. Now he returned to his work, studious and intense as if he’d forgotten me. I saw that he was left-handed—leaning over the library table with his left arm crooked at the elbow so he could write with that hand.

  A curious thing: he’d removed his wristwatch to position it on the tabletop so that he could see the time at a glance. As if his time in the library might be precious and limited and he feared it spilling out into the diffuse atmosphere of the public library in which, like sea creatures washed ashore, eccentric-looking individuals, virtually always male, seemed drawn to pursue obsessive reference projects.

  So I continued with my diligent note-taking. Amphibian ancestors. Evolution. Prehistoric amphibians: why gigantic? Present-day amphibians: why dwindling in numbers?

  Trying not to appear self-conscious. With this unknown boy fewer than fifteen feet away facing me as in a
mirror.

  A hot blush in my cheeks. And I regretted having bicycled to the library without taking time to fasten my hair back into a ponytail so now it was straggly and windblown.

  My hair was fair-brown with a kinky little wave. Very like the boy’s hair except his was trimmed so short.

  A strange coincidence! I wondered if there were others.

  My note-taking was scrupulous. If the boy glanced up, he would see how serious I was.

  . . . environmental emergency, fate of small amphibians worldwide . . .

  . . . exact causes unknown but scientists suggest . . .

  . . . radical changes in climate, environment . . . invasive organisms like fungi . . .

  Then, abruptly—this was disappointing!—after fewer than ten minutes the boy with the gold-rimmed glasses decided to leave: got to his feet—tall, lanky, stork-like—slipped his wristwatch over his bony knuckles, briskly shut up the reference books and returned them to the shelves, hauled up a heavy-looking backpack, and without a glance in my direction exited the room. The soles of his sneakers squeaked against the polished floor.

  There I remained, left behind. Accumulating notes on the tragically endangered class of creatures Amphibia, for my earth science class.

  Did it occur to you to exit the library at the rear? Just in case he was waiting at the front.

  Did it occur to you it might be a good idea not to meet up with this boy?

  Of course it didn’t occur to you, he might be older than he appeared.

  He might be other than he appeared.

  Of course it didn’t occur to you and why?

  Because you were sixteen. An immature sixteen.

  A not-pretty girl. A lonely girl.

  A desperate girl.

  “Hey. Hi.”

  He was waiting for me outside the library.

  This was such a shock to me, a relief and a wonder—as if nothing so extraordinary had ever happened, and could not have been predicted.

  I had assumed that he’d left. He’d lost interest in me and he’d left and I would not see him again as sometimes—how often, I didn’t care to know—male interest in me, stimulated initially, mysteriously melted, evaporated, and vanished.

  But there he was waiting for me, in no way that might intimidate me: just sitting on the stone bench at the foot of the steps, leafing through a library book he was about to slide into his backpack.

  Seeing the look of surprise in my face the boy said “hi!” a second time, smiling so deeply, tiny knife-cuts of dimples appeared in his lean cheeks.

  Shyly I said hello. My heart was beating in a feathery-light way that made it hard for me to breathe.

  And shyly we stared at each other. To be singled out was such an unnerving experience for me, I had no idea how to behave.

  To feel this sensation of unease and excitement, and so quickly.

  Like a basketball tossed at me without warning, or a hockey puck skittering along the playing field in the direction of my feet—I had to react without thinking or risk getting hurt.

  Boldly, yet not aggressively he asked my name. And when I told him he repeated “Lizbeth” and told me his name—“Desmond Parrish.”

  Amazingly, he held out his hand for me to shake—as if we were adults.

  He’d gotten to his feet, in a chivalrous gesture. He was smiling so hard now, his glittery-gold glasses seemed to have become dislodged and he had to push them against the bridge of his nose with the flat of his hand.

  “I wondered how long you’d stay in there. I was hoping you wouldn’t stay until the library closed.”

  Awkwardly I murmured that I was doing research for a paper in my earth science class. . . .

  “Earth science! Quick tell me: what’s the age of the Earth?”

  “I—I don’t remember. . . .”

  “Multiple-choice question: The age of Earth is (a) fifty million years (b) three hundred sixty thousand years (c) ten thousand years (d) forty billion years (e) four point five billion years. No hurry!”

  Trying to remember, and to reason: but he was laughing at me.

  Teasing-laughing. In a way to make my face burn with pleasure.

  “Well, I know it can’t be ten thousand years. So we can eliminate that.”

  “You’re certain? Ten thousand years would be appropriate if Noah and his ark are factored in. You don’t believe in Noah and his ark?”

  “N-No . . .”

  “How’d the animals survive the flood, then? Birds, human beings? Fish, you can see how fish would survive, no problem factoring in fish, but—mammals? Non-arboreal primates? How’d they manage?”

  It was like trying to juggle a half-dozen balls at once, trying to talk to this very funny boy. Seeing that I was becoming flustered he relented, saying: “If you consider that life of some kind has been around about three point five billion years, then it figures, right?—the answer is (e) four point five billion years. That’s a loooong time, before October ninth, 1977, in Strykersville, New York. A looong time before Lizabeth and Desmond.”

  Like a TV stand-up comic Desmond Parrish spoke rapidly and precisely and made wild-funny gestures with his hands.

  No one had ever made me laugh so hard, so quickly. So breathlessly.

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world Desmond walked with me to the street. He was a head taller than me—at least five feet eleven. He’d swung his heavy backpack onto his shoulders and walked with a slight stoop. Covertly I glanced about to see if anyone was watching us—anyone who knew me: Is that Lizbeth Marsh? Who on earth is that tall boy she’s with?

  It seemed natural, too, that Desmond would walk me to my bicycle, leaning against the wrought iron fence. Theft was so rare in Strykersville in those years, no one bothered with locks.

  Desmond stroked the chrome handlebars of my bicycle, that were lightly flecked with rust—the bicycle was an English racer, but inexpensive, with only three gears—and said he’d seen me bicycling on the very afternoon he and his family had moved to Strykersville, twelve days before: “At least, I think she was you.”

  This was a strange thing to say, I thought. As if Desmond really did know me, and we weren’t strangers.

  Somehow it happened, Desmond and I were walking together on Main Street. I wasn’t riding my bicycle, Desmond was pushing it, while I walked beside him. His eyes were almond-shaped and fixed on me in a way both tender and intense, that made me feel weak.

  Already the feeling between us was so vivid and clear—As if we’d known each other a long time ago.

  People scorn such an idea. People laugh, who know no better.

  “Lizbeth, you can call me ‘Des.’ That’s what my friends call me.”

  Desmond paused, staring down at me with his strange wistful smile.

  “Of course, I don’t have any friends in Strykersville yet. Just you.”

  This was so flattering! I laughed, to suggest that, if he was joking, I knew he’d meant to be funny.

  “But I don’t think that I will call you ‘Liz’—‘Lizbeth’ is preferable. ‘Liz’ is plebian, ‘Lizbeth’ patrician. You are my patrician friend in plebian western New York State.”

  Desmond asked me where I lived, and where I went to school; he described himself as “dangling, like a misplaced modifier, between academic accommodations” in a droll way to make me smile though I had no idea what this meant.

  At each street corner I was thinking that Desmond would pause and say good-bye; or I would summon up the courage to interrupt his entertaining speech and explain that I had to bicycle home soon, my parents were expecting me.

  On Main Street we were passing store windows. Pedestrians parted for us, glancing at us with no particular interest as if we were a couple—Lizbeth, Desmond.

  Desmond’s arm brushed
against mine by accident. The hairs on my arm stirred.

  I saw a cluster of small freckles on his forearm. I felt a sensation like warmth lifting from his skin, communicated to me on the side of my body closest to him.

  Though I was sixteen I had not had a boyfriend, exactly. Not yet.

  I had not been kissed. Not exactly.

  There were boys in my class who’d asked me to parties, even back in middle school. But no one had ever picked me up at home, we’d just met at the party. Often the boy would drift off during the course of the evening, with his friends. Or I’d have drifted off eager to summon my father to come pick me up.

  Mostly I’d been with other girls, in gatherings with boys. We weren’t what you would call a popular crowd and no one had ever singled me out. No one had ever looked at me as Desmond Parrish was looking at me.

  Walking along Main Street! Saturday afternoon in October! So often I’d seen girls walking with their boyfriends, holding hands; I’d felt a pang of envy, that such a thing would never happen to me.

  Desmond and I weren’t holding hands of course. Not yet.

  Beside us in store windows our reflections moved ghostly and fleeting—tall lanky Desmond Parrish with his close-trimmed hair and schoolboy glasses; and me, Lizbeth, beside him, closer to the store windows so that it looked as if Desmond were looming above me, protecting me.

  At the corner of Main Street and Glenville Avenue, which would have been a natural time for me to take my bicycle from Desmond and bicycle home, Desmond suggested that we stop for a Coke, or ice cream—“If this was Italy, where there are gelato shops every five hundred feet, we’d have our pick of terrific flavors.”

  I’d never been to Italy, and would have thought that gelato meant Jell-O.

  In the vicinity there was only the Sweet Shoppe, a quaint little ice cream–candy store of another era, which Desmond declared had “character”—“atmosphere.” We sat at a booth beside a wall of dingy mirrors and each of us had a double scoop of pistachio-buttercrunch—this was Desmond’s choice, which he ordered for me as well and paid for, in a generous, careless gesture, with a ten-dollar bill tossed onto the table for the waitress: “Keep the change for yourself, please.”