Evil Eye

by Joyce Carol Oates

Why the blogs will be saying of Bart Hansen he’s one smart kid.

  Darkly handsome. Charismatic, generous—party-loving.

  Every teacher Bart had ever had, every relative of his, ­neighbor —friend of the Hansen family—assured the worried parents your son is a smart kid if he’d only just apply himself.

  K through twelfth grade at Rensselaer Day School, more or less that was the consensus—Bart Hansen is a smart kid if only he’d apply himself.

  He’d been a promising athlete. Middle school, upper school—football, basketball, swimming, track. Each fall he’d start off OK but then something would fuck him up—one season it was bronchitis, one season a sprained ankle, poor grades, academic probation, he’d get discouraged and smoke too much dope with his non-athlete friends so the coach had no choice but to drop him from the team.

  His parents nagging him When will you take responsibility for your life Bart—you are not a child any longer!

  His problem was, he’d been born the wrong color. If he’d been dark-skinned, some kind of slant-eyed Asian. Better yet, some kind of Native American. He’d be treated with respect not the way he was, treated like shit by his own parents. He could be himself and himself would be plenty.

  He made a terrific first impression. Everybody said so.

  Girls liked him—a lot. Then, if he was drinking, or high, or telling funny stories like the guys encouraged him, they’d kind of edge away and wouldn’t want to see him a second time. That was the problem.

  Every Delt-Sig party had been a fuck-up. Except freshman year a few times, the girls had been so young and naive and grateful for a guy to notice them, that’d been great. But then, things got fucked-up at homecoming, sophomore year. He never did figure out what the fuck had happened, he’d been too wasted.

  Bart Hansen hadn’t been the only guy this “Kima Klausen” had identified to the dean. The way his parents ranted about it, you’d have thought he was.

  Since the age of nine he’d suffered panic attacks. He’d looked like a healthy—husky—kid but the medical fact is, he’s susceptible to “wild swings of mood”—this would be Deekman’s defense.

  Upper-middle-class suburban parents instilled in their adolescent son a continuous state of nerves, anxiety, a feeling of being not good enough. Like so many other young people today in the United States he’d had to resort to self-medication for survival.

  Self-medicating—just pot at first, in middle school, then stronger drugs, lots of drugs. And alcohol.

  They’d kept him on a short leash like one of those pathetic little overbred dogs—jerking the leash anytime they wanted. He’d complained to his friends, bitter and aggrieved.

  Years he’d been complaining. Since seventh grade at least.

  Amber Bendemann would testify at the trial nobody thought Bart was serious! Invasion of the Body Snatchers he’d call it—he was the body snatcher and his parents were the bodies.

  I mean, like, if somebody really wanted to murder his parents would he talk about it so much? In the school cafeteria?

  Amber has this whiny little-girl voice, when she uttered these words there was laughter in the courtroom and even among the jurors, and the judge said sternly Quiet! There is nothing remotely amusing about these proceedings.

  Bart had pleaded not guilty of course.

  Though there was a possibility you could argue self-defense.

  It was far-fetched and tricky but the fact was, Laurence Hansen was a tall burly quick-tempered man outweighing his son by at least twenty pounds; if he’d been struck down by his son, Bart had to have done it in self-defense.

  Obviously Bart’s father had heard him come into the house. Had heard someone enter the house, through the garage. He’d been hiding in wait for the intruder, behind the bedroom door. It was misleading to claim that the father had been struck down helpless in bed, on his back.

  Luckily, Laurence Hansen hadn’t owned a handgun. Maybe he’d assumed that the Vector Security alarm was all that he needed to protect himself and his family.

  What had freaked Bart out—his father bellowing like a wounded calf. Lying in wait for him behind the door, and grabbing the door to open it as Bart pushed it stealthily open, and once he’d seen who the intruder was, once he’d identified Bart, and saw the ax in Bart’s hands, what his failure as a parent was going to cost him, the man was doomed: for there was, for the vengeful ax, no turning back.

  Like a kamikaze pilot. Their fuel was enough to get them to the target, not enough to return them back to the base. Once taken off in their kamikaze planes with the rising-sun insignia on the wings the young Japanese pilots could never return.

  He’d seen a documentary on the kamikazes, on TV. Actual film footage of some of the pilots, the planes. Like brothers they were, so young, except they were Japs. And so long dead, it was like another world.

  He’d have given his life for some great cause. He’d been born at the wrong time.

  Materialist sleaze decade 1990s, he’d been a young kid. You never shake off the toxins of your psychic environment.

  All his generation. Like, accursed.

  Second semester senior year at Rensselaer Day he’d spent in a dope haze with his friends. They’d taken SATs, they’d gotten their university acceptances/rejections, it was easy sledding downhill from there. He’d felt pretty good about Syracuse, the Sigma Nu chapter was a popular frat house on the Hill, his dad was Sigma Nu from the University of Michigan so he’d thought it would be a breeze getting pledged there but it had not worked out that way.

  Rush week had been a stark shitty time for him. You could say, he’d never recovered from rush week freshman year.

  So he’d pledged Delt-Sig. The guys had made him feel welcome. The guys had made him feel they needed him.

  The other fraternities hadn’t been impressed with Bart, much. There was a lot of high-pressure competition.

  Just Delt-Sig and two other fraternities, one of them on academic probation, had sent Bart Hansen bids.

  He’d gotten drunk. He’d gotten shit-faced falling-down drunk. Fuck Sigma Nu, fuck Deke, fuck the Beta Gams. He wouldn’t have pledged the fuckers if they’d begged him.

  Laurence Hansen had been Sigma Nu, University of Michigan ’80. It was a stunning surprise how the Syracuse chapter hadn’t given a shit for the Hansen legacy though Laurence Hansen had given the fraternity money—Bart had reason to believe no less than five thousand dollars over all.

  Start of rush week he’d thought—every freshman in his residence had thought—the Delt-Sigs were a bunch of losers, less than thirty actives living in the sprawling old Victorian house on Stadium Drive that looked like it had survived an A-bomb testing—like the outside paint had been leached of all color and inside on the walls you’d see the ghost-silhouettes of people who’d been vaporized into the wall and there was a rumor—(a rumor that turned out to be fact)—that the property was double-mortgaged and could be foreclosed anytime. On the inside walls in fact were framed group photos of Delt-Sigs from previous years—decades ago—three times as many members, and looking pretty good; in 1957 for instance the Delt-Sigs had had four rowers on the crew team that had competed in the national finals and come in third place, and 1966–68 they’d had half the S.U. track team and a star diver who’d gone on to compete in the U.S. Olympics; there were Delt-Sig alums who were state congressmen and at least one U.S. congressman, of which the fraternity was proud. In more recent years it looked as if the fraternity had had “challenges”—why this was, no one seemed to know. But the Delt-Sigs Bart had talked with, the Delt-Sigs who’d talked with him, at rush, had been really nice to him, and funny, and interesting—turned out, they liked the music Bart liked, and video games, and TV programs, and shared his opinions about politics and lots of other things—they’d made Bart feel like he mattered.

  So it turned out, pledging Delta
Sigma meant more to Bart than he’d ever have expected. Telling his father he didn’t give a fuck for Sigma Nu, he wouldn’t accept a bid from Sigma Nu now, all that was finished. His mother knew, and sympathized. Telling him not to feel bad about his father’s fraternity, just to make his own friends and forget the past.

  So it was like she double-crossed him, a year later—two years later—siding with his father saying If the fraternity drains so much of your time and money we can’t afford, and there are drinking parties every weekend, maybe it would be better if—

  —maybe a better use of your time for studying, a better use of your money for tuition—

  —your father can get you a summer internship he thinks at Squibb—

  You’d think they would’ve supported him—his own parents! It had meant so much to Bart to be re-admitted to the university.

  God damned university takes your money for the semester and does not refund.

  Sophomore year he’d gotten into trouble and had been placed on “suspension”—he’d returned home and enrolled in Rensselaer Community College a mile from the house, computer science, accounting, and economics. At the start of the semester things were OK, he missed the Delt-Sigs like hell but was attending classes and impressing his instructors, then somehow, who knows how, he’d gotten bored, missed classes, and hung out with his high school buddies smoking dope like old times so he’d blown all three of the courses he might’ve gotten A’s in—this was Rensselaer Community College for Christ’s sake, this was not Syracuse University!—so had to make some arrangements with a guy he knew, he’d gotten introduced to, who could provide him with transcripts from the registrar he could forge, gave himself A’s in computer science and accounting and a B+ in economics, which he figured he’d have gotten in any case if the semester had gone normally; and the surprise was—the dean’s office at S.U. informed him that he was being “reinstated.”

  This was awesome! His father and mother had been impressed and proud of him.

  He’d been, like, proud of himself for once. Not made to feel like he was utter shit and looked down upon by the world.

  Still he’s pissed: forty-three thousand a year and if you flunk courses, or get incompletes, it’s money down the toilet—just gone. He’s made to feel ashamed, he isn’t technically a “junior” like his friends. (He might not graduate with his class, if things don’t improve. He might not graduate!)

  The fraternity is on his ass, too. Not his friends but the God-damned Delta Sigma Corporation, it’s called.

  To be re-activated in Delta Sigma you must repay all outstanding loans as well as a good-faith deposit of $1,500 for 2012.

  He’s insulted. He tries not to think of it. Though he was initiated into Delta Sigma he knows there are guys in the fraternity who never accepted him—only just voted to admit him because the chapter needs members, it’s in danger of going off-campus.

  But mostly he’s crazy for the fraternity. His only friends in the world are Delt-Sigs. He wears the little gold lapel pin in the (secret) shape of an Egyptian scarab, he’s proud of. Jesus, he’d die for those guys.

  Which is why he was so astonished, deeply wounded, and mortified in his soul, to learn that several Delt-Sigs betrayed him to the Rensselaer police.

  In secret the police had “interviewed” every guy in the fraternity. In secret, at grand jury hearings Bart’s lawyer Davis Deekman hadn’t been allowed to attend, at least six of Bart’s frat brothers gave statements that must’ve incriminated him, for the jury had handed down an indictment—one count of homicide in the second degree, one count of aggravated assault with the intent to commit homicide, in the first degree.

  Bart’s account was, he’d remained at the Delt-Sig house all night. Lots of guys had seen him. He’d slept on the sofa in the basement in that room that’s a kind of no-man’s-land where spare furniture is kept, just lay on the old worn brown-leather sofa and slept, and didn’t wake up until about 8 a.m.—came upstairs into the kitchen at about 8:30 a.m. for breakfast.

  (There’s no formal breakfast at Delt-Sig, just breakfast supplies you help yourself to.)

  Obviously, Bart had been at the frat house all night. Guys would testify to this, they’d seen him at about midnight, or later, upstairs; he’d gone downstairs to crash; then, in the morning, they saw him again, and would provide him with an alibi for the night—it was the least he could expect of them and he’d been fucked, he’d never felt so betrayed, when at least three of the guys, the guys he’d been counting on, broke down when the detectives interviewed them saying that they hadn’t seen Bart except before about 1 a.m. and after 8 a.m.

  His brain just shuts off. Thinking of this enormity is like trying to shove some outsized object like a tennis racket into a small space like the inside of his skull.

  It was a weird story like something on TV. Trying to comprehend it Bart has the idea it is something he’d actually seen on TV but not recently, when he’d been a little kid maybe.

  All he knew was, he’d wakened in the frat house. He’d come upstairs and talked with the guys, he was feeling kind of excitable and high since he’d had a good night’s sleep, only a mild headache from the beer of the previous night, and some heartburn from the pizza, but he was feeling really good, and thinking of going to some of his old classes just to sit at the back of the lecture hall, to show his serious intentions, though he hadn’t actually gone—and next thing he knew, at about noon, the first sign that things were fucked-up, a reporter for the Syracuse newspaper came to the frat house, bulled his way inside and asked if “Bart Harrison”—“who lives in East Rensselaer”—was on the premises; and one of the guys went to find Bart, and Bart swallowed hard and was following him back, just knowing this had to be some kind of bummer, and it was at that moment that the Rensselaer PD cruiser pulled up outside the frat house at about thirty miles an hour and conspicuously braked to a stop. And nothing was ever the same again.

  Jesus! Like the earth opened, and I fell inside.

  And just fell and fell and fell. . . .

  He’d been so surprised. So shocked. He hadn’t been able to comprehend what the police officers were telling him at first.

  His father’s death—“murder.”

  His mother, severely injured, in a coma in the Rensselaer hospital—“in critical condition.”

  Crudely the police officers revealed this terrible news. Crudely and coldly eyeing the Hansens’ twenty-year-old son Bart with scarcely concealed contempt and Bart had not—had not ­comprehended—so stunned, the roaring in his ears so distracting, he hadn’t comprehended what any of them were telling him out of earshot of the Delt-Sigs somberly gathered in the front hall of the frat house—hadn’t fully comprehended the news—for he’d believed he had heard—he was certain, he’d heard—that they’d informed him that both his parents were dead—Louisa and Laurence, both dead—murdered. He’d been utterly surprised. Eyes widened, and tears welling in his eyes—hyperventilating and beginning to bawl like a baby so—shocked.

  My—parents? Somebody killed my—parents?

  My mom? My dad?

  He’d been panicked, he would be required to identify the bodies.

  His father! His mother! His—mother.

  He’d bawled like a baby mashing his fists into his eyes.

  He’d had to sit down. The elasticized waistband of his jockey shorts cutting into his skin in that way he hated, and a hot smell of his body wafting from him to the detectives’ nostrils judging from their expressions, a bad smell.

  My parents! My parents are—dead. . . .

  I don’t believe it! It can’t be real!

  I just t-talked to them the other—yesterday morning—they wanted me to come home this weekend but I, I—I explained to them—

  The police officers were quiet, regarding him. In their eyes he saw no sympathy, which was shocking to him, unner
ving.

  He hadn’t been prepared for the astonishment to come.

  They were telling him his mother was not dead but alive.

  His father was dead. His father had been murdered.

  His mother had been severely injured, yet was not dead but alive.

  Do you think that your mother is dead, Bart? Why do you think that your mother is dead?

  Stammering That—that’s what you told me. You told me—oh God—my p-parents were dead. But—

  No, Bart. Your mother is not dead. Your mother is in a coma.

  C-Coma . . .

  But before she lost consciousness she named you, Bart. Your mother named you as the person who had attacked her and had murdered your father, that’s you, Bart.

  This, Bart truly could not comprehend. This had to be totally impossible, the cops were lying to him.

  In someplace confusing to him he was sitting—the strength had drained out of his knees, he’d had to sit down. He saw how the police officers who were plainclothes were flanking him, one to his right, one to his left, and the lead detective, whose name he’d immediately forgotten, was questioning him like he already knew every answer Bart could give. This was—such a shock! His heart was pounding like a fist against his rib cage, he was hyperventilating and the cops didn’t give a damn, didn’t even notice—his mom would have noticed, and tried to comfort him.

  They were saying—what? His mother was in a coma. His mother was not dead.

  See, Bart: she named you. Your mother named you as the assailant. When the medics came to your house and the first police officers arrived your mother was still conscious though she’d lost a lot of blood, and so she was asked by one of our officers Do you know who did this to you, Mrs. Hansen? and though she couldn’t speak she was able to nod her head, yes; and she was asked, “Was the assailant someone in your family?” and she was able to nod her head, yes; and she was asked, “Was the assailant your son?”—(the officer was guessing, your parents would have at least one son)—and she seemed to be nodding, yes. And she passed out then and they took her away.