The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  When they’d first been seated, Nicolas had caught sight of his reflection in a mirror and recoiled with a pained smile. Helene, laying a hand on his wrist, assured him—“But you look very handsome, Nicolas! Please don’t frown.”

  A glass of red wine, and a second glass, and Nicolas’s creased face began to relax.

  During dinner the subject of Euripides arose. The Bacchae, which Nicolas had been reading. Helene recalled the vivid, catastrophic ending—the ritual sacrifice of the (mortal) King Pentheus to the (god) Dionysus.

  A band of crazed women, followers of Dionysus, had torn the man’s body to pieces in an erotic ecstasy, beheading him. His own mother is seen carrying the severed head under the illusion that it is the head of a wild beast.

  Weird! Nicolas marveled.

  “Not like anything you could do today on a stage—people would laugh—but in a movie, maybe: a woman with some guy’s severed head. And the woman his mother.”

  Near as he could figure, Nicolas said, the ancient Greeks were nothing like Americans today. Terrible fantastic things happened to them that were caused by “gods”—the blame was always some “god”—which they didn’t question.

  Helene said yes, the Greeks were religious but not in the way that Americans are religious: their sense of life was tragic, and the only response was to accept suffering. “The Greeks didn’t believe in a transcendent God who loved them, or in a savior who died for them. They didn’t believe in ‘good works’ or even in ‘faith’ like Christians. Whatever would happen, would happen. You deserved your fate—like Pentheus—even if you didn’t ‘deserve’ it.”

  Nicolas shifted and squirmed in his chair. A pained grimace rippled over his face. Helene wondered if the discussion of Greek “fate” hit too close to home for him. Unconsciously he’d been rubbing the wasted thigh muscles of his left leg.

  Nicolas drank, and ate; within minutes he’d devoured a twelve-ounce plank steak, scalloped potatoes and hunks of bread; and took up a third glass of wine. His face flushed red, his eyes shone with a kind of aggrieved resentment: “My mother died and my life fell apart. Getting sick when she did. It happened at the wrong time like my asshole drunk-father walking out when I was starting ninth grade in a new school . . . you could count on him to fuck things up for his kids when he could. And her . . .” In this account it seemed that Nicolas had been enrolled at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, not New Brunswick; then it seemed that he’d taken courses at the local community college, in business and computer science; it wasn’t clear that Nicolas had ever finished any course—always he’d dropped out even when his grades were high.

  Why was this, Helene wondered.

  Jinxed by fate all his life.

  Worst mistake then, Nicolas said vehemently, he’d enlisted in the U.S. Army. Twenty-six years old, desperate for some fucking purpose to his life. Wound up in Operation Desert Storm—1991—U.N. troops led by the U.S. and the U.K. Sandstorms, sand fleas, terrible heat and nobody knowing what the fuck they were doing there, in someplace nobody knew—“Middle East.” He’d seen some of the guys in his platoon get hit bad and one he’d seen die. He’d been shot up—taken for dead—half his face blown off —some kind of shrapnel in his skull. Worst thing was, he was fucking sure it’d been the U.N. “coalition” that was responsible—“friendly fire”—like a bad joke. Couldn’t prove it, but he’d known. Anyway it happened fast. He woke in some shitty hospital. Kept waking in some shitty hospital someplace and finally it was told to him, you are back home in New Jersey—in the VA hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Weird how he’d been shipped back home without knowing it. Kind of in pieces like some broken thing, the pieces jiggle around and break more, he’d been shipped home in pieces not knowing it. And a worse joke yet was rehab where it was a long time before he could walk like even a cripple walks, eat food with his actual mouth not through a funnel, shit in the way you’re supposed to shit, or keep his eyes from jumping all around like an actual screw was loose inside his head. Half the muscle was missing from his left-leg thigh and what was left looked like string dark-meat chicken.

  Helene was deeply moved. Wanting to promise I will be different, Nicolas. I will not abandon you.

  “You get shipped out to die. When you are shipped back you are dead not knowing it.”

  Harshly Nicolas laughed, then began to cough. His flushed face grew redder still and angry tears leaked in the corners of his eyes.

  Helene was thinking: she could pay Nicolas’s tuition, if he wanted to return to school. Clearly he was very intelligent. He could take the SAT exam and be readmitted. Surely there were special provisions for veterans and particularly disabled veterans. . . .

  “. . . see, they lied to me. They lie to every asshole enlists in the U.S. fucking Army. This-here you see ain’t me. It’s what’s left of me. Fuck I’m gonna complain to them, that just fucks you up more, nobody wants to hear some banged-up asshole saying he’s in pain, his head is in pain, every thirty days I got to have a ‘blood infusion’ to keep my blood from rotting. They’re saying my ‘T-count’ is too high, or too low—my ‘immune system’ is fucked. See, I am a dead man, but I am not dead.”

  Helene laid her hand on Nicolas’s wrist. “Of course you are not dead. I will help you—all that I can—to retrieve your life for you.”

  Now diners at nearby tables were openly staring at them. How rawly aggrieved Nicolas’s voice, and how hoarse and labored his breath had become! Helene made a gesture as if to brush the man’s damp hair back off his forehead and he stiffened suddenly, as if recoiling; then said, in a tremulous voice, “You are a beautiful woman, Helen—Helene. Must be, God sent you.”

  He was drunk. His mouth twisted strangely. Tears welled in his eyes. Helene saw that a cuff of the beige cashmere blazer was stained with watery steak-blood. When Nicolas tried to stand, his left leg buckled beneath him. Blindly he grabbed at the tablecloth, the table almost overturned, their waiter came hurrying with a look of acute alarm. “Fuck fuck fuck you all”—the widow would be certain, afterward, she had not heard.

  Stricken with guilt, and with something more intimate than guilt, the widow could not sleep.

  She would hire the disabled veteran Nicolas: she would pay him generously.

  Nicolas could be her driver, perhaps. When she needed to travel to New York City or to Philadelphia, she would hire him.

  He would be loyal, trustworthy. He would be devoted to her.

  Whatever his duties were at Helping Hands, Helene was certain he could replicate them in her household. Helping to maintain the five-bedroom house in which she now lived alone; in which, as she recalled, a caretaker had once lived in a basement apartment, to oversee the household for the elderly couple who’d owned the house previously.

  Of course, forty-six is far from elderly. But the maintenance of the expensive house and grounds was more than Helene could do by herself.

  She was a widow with money, Nicolas was a just slightly younger man, intelligent, sensitive, respectful of her. Nicolas was cultured, in his way—or could become so.

  They would attend the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. They would visit museums, travel to Europe. They would visit Rome, Florence, Sienna, Venice. They would stay in five-star hotels and their rooms would be next to each other and with (maybe) a door between.

  It was not difficult to imagine: Nicolas Zelinski would be her companion.

  He was the age of a younger cousin, or brother. In the clothes she would give him, he would not look so desperate. She would see that he received the very best medical care—not the VA hospital in New Brunswick but specialists in New York City.

  Surgery at the New York Hospital for Special Surgery. His damaged leg, back.

  Dental work to replace the missing incisor that gave him, even when he smiled, a look of animal rapacity.

  As her escort he would accompany her to events to which she could not otherwise bear to go alone. He would drop her off at the entrances of buildings, in bad weathe
r. He would hold an umbrella over her head. He would be her younger, devoted brother. He would be an old dear college friend. A bachelor friend of her late husband’s who had stepped forward to protect the widow, in her bereavement.

  In time, this trusted companion could handle Helene’s business affairs perhaps. The complicated finances, the many investments, the exacting tedium of bookkeeping.

  Helene? We need to speak with you. Please.

  Helene—can we come to see you? Please.

  Or—would you like to come here?

  Come visit! Stay with us! Please.

  It has been too long.

  We miss him too, you know. We are mourning him too.

  These messages Helene deleted.

  “You have the wrong person. That woman doesn’t live here anymore.”

  But this was a shock. She called Helping Hands and asked for “Nicolas” and was informed, in a drawling/nasal New Jersey voice: “Not here today.”

  A second call, and she was told: “‘N’c’las?’ Nobody here by that name.”

  Calmly she said: “I’m calling for ‘Nicolas Zelinski’—Helping Hands. I have his card.”

  “Nah, ma’am. No ‘Zoo-lin-ski’ here.”

  “The name is ‘Nicolas Ze-lin-ski.’ He is certainly there.”

  “Nobody here by that name, ma’am.”

  She was very upset. She was agitated, sleepless. She was a starving woman and yet she could not eat. Her heart had atrophied, like the wounded man’s thigh muscles. You could reach your fingers into such a wound, as into the wounded side of Christ.

  Another time, nearing the darkest day of the year, the accountant came to the house on Birnam Wood Circle, Quaker Heights. The accountant with the close-set sinister eyes arriving midmorning following one of the widow’s sleepless nights. She’d served him coffee—(Helene was an unfailingly gracious woman, she’d been bred to serve others)—but could not concentrate on his words. When he passed to her checks prepared for her signature she could not sign, her hand shook too badly.

  “Can I trust you? How can I trust you? And what is the point of this? Oh God—what will I do with so much money?”

  She wondered: had Nicolas been dismissed from Helping Hands?

  He’d been so angry, the last time she’d seen him. After the dinner at the General Washington Inn had come to an abrupt end. After she’d enlisted their waiter to help her walk Nicolas out to her car—she’d given the man a twenty-dollar tip. Collapsing into the passenger’s seat flailing his fists, mumbling and laughing mirthlessly and he’d lapsed into an open-mouthed sleep smelling of red wine which he’d spilled onto his shirt front and at Liberty Street she’d tried to help him from the car and part-waking with a laughing grunt he’d grabbed at her, pawed and struck at her, seizing her head, lowering her head to him, pressing his hot wet mouth against her mouth, and as Helene shook her head he gripped her harder, prodding her lips with his tongue, now penetrating her mouth with his tongue, and Helene had pushed him away—“Nicolas! Oh please—please stop.”

  The fury in the man’s eyes, the savage twist of his mouth—she’d felt a stir of dread, and yet of excitement knowing He is my friend. He would not hurt me really. God has sent me to him.

  At last she called Helping Hands and left a message on the voice mail.

  Calmly as if reciting a poem.

  This message is for Nicolas.

  Please come to 28 Birnam Wood Circle, Quaker Heights. I have things for Helping Hands—men’s clothing in very good condition.

  And also appliances, furniture.

  Please come soon!

  My name is Helene.

  This message is for Nicolas.

  5.

  He had come to her house, at last.

  On a bright December morning the front doorbell rang. Quickly Helene came downstairs to answer, seeing the van in the driveway—metallic gray with DISABLED VETERANS OF NEW JERSEY HELPING HANDS in red letters on the side and the clasped-hands insignia beneath—and there on the doorway stood Nicolas Zelinski and his coworker Gideon.

  “Why, hello! I wasn’t expecting . . .”

  It was a shock to Helene, to see Nicolas on her doorstep—so suddenly. Smiling at her and calling her “Mrs. Haidt”—tactfully, since Gideon was present—explaining that Helping Hands was behind in pickups but they hoped she still had her donations for them.

  “. . . I mean yes of course. Please come inside.”

  “Thanks, ma’am! OK we keep our boots on?”

  “Your boots? Oh yes of course . . .”

  The stony-pale eyes lit upon Helene, and past Helene into the dazzling interior of the house, in a way that was both intimate and yet discreet, impersonal. You could not have known—(grim-faced Gideon could not have known)—that there was any connection between the Helping Hands staff worker and Mrs. Haidt of 28 Birnam Wood Circle, let alone an emotional bond; you could not have guessed that Helene’s heart was beating so rapidly, she felt for a moment that she might faint.

  Several times she’d called Helping Hands and left her plaintive message. Nearly two weeks had passed and she’d reconciled herself to the possibility of not seeing Nicolas again, unless—again!—she drove back to South Falls Street, Trenton, with more of her husband’s clothes which she could not quite bring herself to do, just yet.

  Must not abase myself. Must take care!

  Telling herself that she would hear from Nicolas again. Unless something had happened to him, he would reenter her life.

  The men had been gazing upward at the house which was large—a Colonial-contemporary of fieldstone, brick, wood and stucco with numerous latticed windows, several chimneys and a massive slate roof—though not so large as other custom-designed houses in the residential neighborhood Birnam Wood.

  The driveway was long—uphill—designed to loop about a stand of Scotch pines, in front of the house, while continuing to the side, to the three-car garage not visible from the front door.

  Inside, from the foyer and front hall you could look through the beautifully furnished living room to a floor-to-ceiling latticed glass door and through this door to a long sloping lawn lightly stippled with frost and abutting a lake upon which white swans paddled in decorous idleness like figures in a pastoral painting.

  Both men glanced about with veiled gazes as Helene led them to the rear of the house, into the kitchen.

  She was pained to see that Nicolas was walking stiffly, dragging his left foot. He wore a soiled windbreaker, work trousers and on his head a woolen cap that looked like something purloined from a bin at Helping Hands. His jaws had not been recently shaved and the ridged and rippled scar tissue on his cheek glared red. His graying-dark hair had been tied back into a short pigtail at the nape of his neck—Helene had never seen Nicolas’s hair in a pigtail, that gave the man a swaggering piratical look. On his feet were the heavy hiking boots, trailing bits of damp leaves onto the floor.

  “Beautiful house, Mrs. Haidt. Big!”

  There came the quick-fl ash of Nicolas’s smile, and a glimpse of the empty socket in his lower jaw, where the incisor was missing.

  And how dazzling-bright the kitchen, with Mexican tiles on the floor, a center-island work area of gleaming hardwood, eight-burner Luxor stove and copper pans overhead hanging from hooks; the counter space was considerable, in flawless white. The room included a breakfast space with a mounted TV and a latticed bay window overlooking the sloping back lawn and the lake.

  “What d’ya think, Gid? You seen anything like Mrs. Haidt’s house before?”

  Nicolas spoke admiringly, and not ironically—Helene was sure. But the burly black man in a Helping Hands denim jacket thrust out his lower lip saying what sounded like Yah sure, been in Bir’m Woods before.

  Helene was explaining that she had both clothes donations and some appliances and furniture, which were downstairs in the basement; there was a basement door they could use, to bring things outside without taking the stairs up to the kitchen, but one of them would have to move
the van around to the garage.

  Nicolas sent Gideon off on this errand. Alone in the kitchen with Helene he moved about self-consciously, shifting his shoulders as if he were uncomfortable. His gaze was restless, evasive. His mouth worked and twitched. He was pretending an interest in framed photographs on the walls—travel photographs of Greece and Italy, taken long ago by Helene’s husband. Helene wanted to draw near him and touch his arm but sensed that Nicolas would ease away with a frown. In a bright hostess-voice she asked, “How are you, Nicolas? Have you been—busy?”

  Nicolas shrugged, yes.

  “I left messages for you, I’d hoped that you might call back. I was worried—just a little. You’d said something about a ‘blood infusion’. . . .”

  But this was a mistake: Nicolas did not want Helene to speak of his health, or of anything personal, intimate. She supposed, not with Gideon near.

  They waited for Gideon to return. Helene’s heart was still beating painfully and her mouth had gone dry. If only Nicolas had come to her house alone . . .

  But then? What then?

  It was a weekday, 9:20 A.M. Helene hadn’t expected any delivery or tradesman that morning; she’d assumed that Helping Hands would call to arrange for a pickup date and time. She hadn’t had time to prepare for a visit from Nicolas—though she was wearing dove-gray wool flannel trousers, a black Shetland sweater, low-heeled canvas shoes in anticipation of going out later in the day on errands.

  If she’d known that Helping Hands was in the neighborhood, she’d have done more with her hair that morning than run a brush through it hurriedly; she’d have applied makeup to her thin, sallow face, darkened her eyebrows, reddened her mouth.

  She’d have tied a silk scarf around her throat. A touch of color, to gladden the heart.

  Still, in the reflective bottoms of the copper pans, Helene had a glimpse of an attractive and even composed female face; the face of a gracious woman, welcoming visitors into her house though they’d taken her by surprise. Helene had to check herself from offering the Helping Hands men something to drink—coffee?—fruit juice?—the instinct in her to be hospitable, as an American woman of her class, was so strong.