Evil Eye

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She’d twisted her hands out of his grip, but now she seized his hands, his large hot hands, and held them tight.

  In a lowered voice she said, I never told anyone.

  He said, Until now.

  He deserves to die. Anyone who harms a child.

  But you promised!

  Fuck my promise. That was before.

  And then he was saying, I promise not to harm him. But I would like to talk to him.

  She called home. A rarity in recent years.

  She preferred e-mail. Though she did not often write to her parents, either.

  At once her mother heard something in her voice. Her mother asked what was wrong, why was she calling so late in the evening, was it an emergency?—sounding both frightened and annoyed.

  A mother’s first thought is Pregnant!

  She said, No! It is not an emergency.

  She said, The emergency was years ago. Not now.

  Her mother said, Emergency? What are you talking about, Cecie?

  Tell me how G. is. I don’t hear about G. much any longer.

  G. was Grandfather. Or, as he’d liked to be called, with a French flourish, Grandpapa.

  He’s—well. I mean, reasonably well, for his age. He’s just returned from—I think it was the Amalfi Coast. He’d gone on a tour, with friends. He’s still involved in politics, behind the scenes. You know how the Brankrofts are! He comes to dinner here at least twice a week and sometimes after mass we have brunch at the High Bridge Inn. I wish he and your father got along better together but he just—sort of—ignores Matt. He asks after you . . .

  Does he? Does he ask after me?

  Of course. Grandpapa always asks after you.

  What does he ask?

  What does he ask? Just how are you doing, your work, are you engaged, or seeing someone—the usual questions.

  He wants to know if I’m “engaged” or “seeing someone”? And why is that his business?

  Your grandfather asks after all his grandchildren, now that so many of you are scattered and living far away.

  But me, he asks after me?

  Why are you asking me this, Cecie? Why now?

  I think you must know why.

  What do you mean? I—I don’t know why. . . .

  Why didn’t he ever remarry, after Grandma died? Wasn’t anyone good enough for him? All those rich widows!

  Why are you asking such questions? Why about your grandfather? You sound so angry, Cecie. . . .

  No. I’m not angry. Why would I be angry?

  I have no idea, Cecie. You’ve always had this way about you—this unpredictable short temper—first you call late, you must know a phone ringing past eleven p.m. usually means bad news, and now—

  She interrupted saying, I think I’ll hang up now.

  Please, wait—

  I’m sorry to disturb you, Mother. You’re right, it’s late. Good night!

  None of them knows. None will guess.

  Our secret is safe little darling sealed with a kiss.

  She told N.: It isn’t an issue in my life. I never think of it, truly.

  Bullshit. You think of it all the time.

  N. touched her. His warm broad hand across her belly, a lover’s casual caress and she stiffened at once.

  All the time you are thinking of it. I could see it in your face, before I spoke to you.

  She wanted to protest: she was always so much more than whatever had been perpetrated upon her.

  A fact she kept to herself, to nourish herself like something warm—a heated stone, or medallion—a kind of shield—pressed against her breasts and belly, secreted beneath her clothing.

  She took pride in all that she was, that had nothing to do with the naively trusting little girl she’d been more than fifteen years ago.

  For instance, she was a swimmer: almost a serious swimmer. In the dark of winter she rose early to swim in the university pool, for which she paid a yearly fee since she’d graduated from the university with a master’s degree in social psychology.

  In the shimmering water, her body dissolved into pure sensation, the strength of her muscled arms and legs to keep her afloat and to propel her forward. Once, N. would observe her swimming in the university pool, in the early morning, and would stare in surprised admiration. For her body was sleek, slender, and yet strong—this was not the body of a female victim. If you’ve been thinking you know me, you are mistaken.

  And she took pride in her professional career. Such as it was.

  (And was G., too, proud of her? She had to suppose so. Her mother continued to forward greetings from G. to her; occasional cards, presents. He’d learned her latest address in order to send her a lavish bouquet of two dozen yellow roses in celebration of her appointment at the arts foundation. She’d shocked friends by gaily tossing into the trash.)

  She had her job. Her new position. She loved books—­nineteenth-century novels, classics—her favorites were Bleak House, Middlemarch, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. She could reread these, late at night when she couldn’t sleep; or she could watch the late-night Classic Film channel—Cary Grant, Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth. Their faces were comforting to her, like the faces of distant relatives.

  Several times she’d seen The Red Shoes. Mesmerized and deeply moved.

  She felt a perverse sympathy for the murderous lovers of Double Indemnity. Each time she saw the film the ending came to her as a shock—for it might so easily have been another kind of ending.

  She went to gallery openings. She went to poetry readings. She bought books for the poets to sign, which she kept in a special place in her loft apartment, on a window sill in the sun.

  What are these? N. asked curiously.

  She selected one of the slender books, opened it as if casually, and read lines of surpassing beauty and wonder:

  What a fine performance they gave!

  Though they didn’t know where they were going,

  they made their prettiest song of all.

  N. asked what did this mean? Was it a happy poem?

  She said, I think so. Yes.

  Another thing about her, another special thing, to set her off from the pack of other good-looking young women, Cielle dressed exclusively in black.

  She told him about the flatbed. A man chained on the flatbed behind a truck hauled on the interstate.

  He whistled between his teeth. Where’s the man being taken, to a slaughterhouse?

  Yes. To a slaughterhouse.

  But do you get that far? In the dream, I mean.

  No. It’s just the flatbed behind the truck, and him on it chained and knowing where he’s being taken. He has plenty of time to think about where’s he’s being taken and what will be done to him then.

  But you’ve never gotten that far.

  He seemed to be goading her into saying Not yet.

  They were lying together on her bed. On the rainbow afghan on her bed. There were ways of intimacy, ways of avoiding her sexual fear, they were learning, in compensation.

  In each other’s arms not fully undressed. As a parent might comfort a fretting child so N. comforted her. Kissing her forehead, the hot pit of her neck that made her laugh wildly, and squirm.

  It wasn’t your fault, Ceille. I hope you know that.

  She knew. She wished to think so.

  A young child, an adult—there is no way that a child can “consent.” The law recognizes this. And the moral law.

  She smiled. She laughed. For G. had quoted a German philosopher to her once, in one of his playful extravagant moods in which he pretended that she wasn’t a little girl but an adult and an equal—“The starry heavens above me, and the mora
l law within me.”

  Why G. had quoted Immanuel Kant to her, she had no idea.

  Only just he was a highly successful public man who tired of being public and accountable and responsible and adult and so at these secret times he was playful and extravagant and could not be predicted in his behavior as he could not be reined in, or controlled.

  He smelled of a sweet cologne dabbed on his clean-shaven jaws. You wanted to smile at this fragrance, or you wanted to hide your face and cry. His tickle finger was a special finger and the nail always kept clean and filed by G. himself with an emery board carried in his pocket.

  You’re thinking of him now, Ceille? Tell me.

  She bit her lip. She would not.

  It makes me sick, Ceille. When you think of him. When you’re with me, like this, and God damn, you think of him.

  She wanted to console him Yes. It makes me sick, too.

  His name? Who he was, to you?

  He was—he—

  Her heart beat painfully. She was frightened she would faint.

  —he was very clever. No one ever knew, or suspected. In all those years—six years. He was trusted.

  And did he victimize other girls? What about your sisters?

  No.

  No? Are you sure?

  She tried to think. She was laughing, this conversation was so ridiculous, years too late to matter.

  Oh no. I mean—yes. I’m sure.

  He hadn’t adored them. They were older, less attractive.

  I was his little darling!

  It would not be unpremeditated. Therefore, it would have to be skillfully executed.

  N. had a law degree. He’d practiced law for several years. He told her to contact the relative who’d molested her for six years and to arrange to meet him in a neutral place.

  Quickly she said no.

  Unless she said The cemetery.

  N. asked if it was a cemetery where people would be likely to be visiting, where they might be observed.

  She said no. Her grandmother had been buried in a part of the cemetery owned by the Bankcroft family and this was at the edge of the cemetery near a pine forest.

  You won’t hurt him? You will just speak with him.

  That’s right. Just speak with him.

  G. must have thought it was strange, at last she called him. It had been years since they’d seen each other for of course she had avoided family gatherings as soon as she’d left home.

  Cecelia! Is it you?

  The shock in his voice. Yet the old warmth beneath, she’d forgotten.

  She’d been very clever. She’d learned G.’s current telephone number in a circuitous way so that the fact that she’d sought out the number might not be immediately evident. She had not asked her mother or her father, for instance.

  She heard herself say, I miss my old life, Grandpapa. I am having some hard times now. I am very lonely, Grandpapa.

  Grandpapa. This had been the magic name.

  Pronounced as if French. Emphasis upon grand.

  Blithe and bright she spoke to the astonished man at the other end of the line. Asking to see him, so that she might introduce him to her fiancé who was a secret from the family.

  Secret? But why?

  When you meet him, you will know. I will trust in your intuition.

  This was flattering to him, she knew. This was the silver hook in his fat wet lip, that would doom him.

  In Cross Cemetery. We can meet there.

  In Cross Cemetery?

  Yes. Please.

  But—why don’t you come to the house first. . . .

  At Grandma’s grave, we can meet. Where we used to walk, Grandpapa, remember?

  Of course I remember, darling. How could I forget?

  Truly the old man was flattered, hypnotized. This slow hour of his old-man life and the phone had rung and it was his little darling calling him who had never in her life called him before.

  I’ve kept up on your news, darling. Your mother keeps me informed. I know you’ve moved. I know you have a new job that sounds important but I would guess it probably doesn’t pay much so if you need some money, darling—just let me know.

  That would be very kind, Grandpapa. We could talk about that.

  Before hanging up the phone she said suddenly, Oh I miss you, Grandpapa! So much.

  Each would be away for the weekend. N. in New York City, Ceille in Washington, D.C.

  So they told friends. So N. told his near-grown children.

  In N.’s SUV they then drove west to Rochester. It was a clear, sunny, vivid autumn morning in October.

  She’d had a sleepless night. She warmed her hands at the dashboard heating vent as N. drove.

  She was distracted by a pickup truck speeding ahead of them. The flatbed of the truck, piled with what appeared to be lumber.

  And the lumber secured to the flatbed by chains.

  She said, as if she’d only just thought of this, He’s older now. He isn’t a danger now. I’m sure.

  (She was not sure. She was certainly not sure of this.)

  I’ve heard he has had medical problems. I think cancer of some kind—prostate, probably.

  (Of this she was more certain. Her mother had kept her advised of her Grandpapa Bankcroft knowing how much he meant to her, far more than he meant to his other grandchildren.)

  N. said, Of course he victimized other children. Before you, and after you.

  N. said, You didn’t tell. He’d terrified you, and you didn’t tell. And so, another little girl was victimized after you. That is the pattern.

  N. was not accusing her. Carefully he spoke, sympathetic.

  Now we’re breaking the pattern. This will end it.

  She wasn’t hearing this. She was thinking maybe it had been a mistake to have confessed to N. For now the secret had been revealed. She’d unfurled a precious garment to be trampled in the mud.

  She laughed, shivering. She was very excited!

  Playfully she warmed her icy fingers between his legs.

  N. pushed her hands away. Don’t distract me, darling. I’m trying to drive.

  He’d made a reservation in a high-rise upscale hotel outside the city, eleventh floor overlooking the interstate and, in the distance, the serrated skyline of the city of Rochester. They were registered under a fictitious name as Mr. & Mrs.

  Her love for N. was no longer a separate thing she could detach from her and hold at arm’s length to contemplate.

  Her love for N. had burrowed deep inside her. Her love for N. was inextricable from her fear of N.

  In Cross Memorial Cemetery they saw him: the lone tall figure, still erect, well dressed, with a head of thick white hair. In his right hand he gripped an ebony cane in a way to suggest that the cane was mostly for show, not really needed.

  He is only seventy-two or seventy-three, she said. He is not old.

  Grandpapa had brought a pot of golden mums to the grave. The grandmother’s grave.

  It was famously known, locally—how grief-stricken G. had been, how heartbroken at the end of the long good marriage of forty-six years.

  So good then, G. had had his family to console him. His young relatives, grandchildren.

  On the graveled path they approached G. It was afternoon, the sky was amassing with clouds blown down from Lake Ontario. The last visitors were leaving the cemetery.

  Now G. had sighted them. G. was alert and staring at them. At her. Slow happy recognition came into his face like candlelight.

  Hi, Grandpapa!

  Cecilia!

  He moved to her, just perceptibly favoring his right leg. He would have taken her hand extended to him to squeeze her hand in greeting—but N. stepped between them.

  D
on’t touch her!

  White-haired G. stiffened. His smile faded.

  His face was fine-creased, clean-shaven. He was a handsome old man who did not look his age. She felt a touch of vertigo in his presence.

  N. was addressing G. calmly. Yet you could feel the mounting anger.

  N.’s anger was inward, secret. Like N.’s love, that was indistinguishable from possession.

  G. began to stammer to N. Foolish words were shaped by the old-man lips and wattles in the old-man face trembled.

  She stood a little behind N. She saw that her grandfather had forgotten her in the exigency of the moment.

  I—I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. Keep your voice down, please.

  G. was indignant but G. was pleading. She was remembering how she and her family had heard G.’s voice frequently on the local radio news; they’d seen him often on television. He’d been a politician—township council, U.S. congressman on the Republican ticket—in the prime of his career.

  G. was backing away from N. now. G. was visibly shaken—this was not the reception he’d anticipated.

  His favorite granddaughter and her fiancé!—her secret fiancé.

  Introduced to him.

  Wanting a blessing from him.

  With a shaky hand G. was tugging a handkerchief out of a pocket, dabbing at his nose.

  A red-veined nose, this was. Still handsome and still youthful but broken capillaries marred the clean-shaven skin and the alert eyes were ringed in creases.

  He said, I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. If you don’t desist, I will call 911.

  N. spoke further. N. was accusing G. of certain acts—“repeated statutory rape”—“sexual assault upon a minor.”

  G. said indignantly, What has the girl been telling you! I did nothing to be ashamed of.

  He said, Those were lost years. The girl was lonely.