Nemesis

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Maggie’s cheeks burned brighter. She stammered vague happy words. Thinking, Oh, God, what a pity, she could not say in turn, careless, reckless, even in the guise of semi-drunken palaver, that Calvin too looked lovely, that is to say beautiful, for indeed in Maggie’s eyes the man was beautiful: blunt-boned, with deep-set intelligent eyes, an olive-pale and somewhat roughened skin. He was tall, taller even than Maggie Blackburn in her black medium-heeled pumps; his posture had a military correctness, an air of pride. He retained strong traces of his Maine accent—he’d been born in Bangor but had not lived there since boyhood—and Maggie could not help but associate some core of masculinity, or intransigence, with that distinctive accent, those cool nasal vowels and consonants. “May I get you a drink, Calvin?” Maggie asked, walking with her friend into the kitchen where a bar had been set up. So seemingly at ease, Maggie Blackburn, tall, poised, and calm amid the giddy roaring in her ears: He has come. He is here. In my house.

  Eyeing the display of bottles, Calvin Gould, ever public-minded, said, “Don’t forget to send a bill to the school, Maggie; this is an official function.”

  Maggie protested, “Oh, no, Calvin, really—I think of this as my own party. Mine.” But the words sounded wrong, not at all what she had intended.

  Shortly afterward, to her disappointment, Maggie was separated from Calvin, for the Lichtmans were leaving—so soon?—and Maggie saw them to the door; and once it was known that Calvin Gould had arrived guests drifted in his direction … for, as provost, serving with an ailing and generally ineffective president, Calvin was the most politically powerful person at Maggie Blackburn’s party. Even Portia, who would have said she scorned the pettiness of Conservatory politics, murmured, sighting Calvin Gould, “Ah, Calvin is here! I have a bone to pick with that man.” And moved grandly upon him.

  It was frustrating for Maggie, caught up in her duties as a hostess, to be able to catch little more than snippets of Calvin’s conversations with her guests; she too had things she might have said to him, and surely, for they shared many musical interests, he had things to say to her.

  Over the years, like many other residents of Forest Park, Maggie had had few occasions to meet Calvin’s wife, Naomi, for the woman was eccentric, reclusive, stubbornly unsociable … an artist of a kind, though it was not really known what kind; it was said that Calvin had married his wife when they were both quite young, college or even high school sweethearts in Maine. Seeing Mrs. Gould, Maggie had had to resist the impulse to stare, to stare hard; for, yes, she was … not jealous exactly, or even envious … rather more curious. Why her and not me? What are her qualities that I so sadly lack? Maggie’s sense of Mrs. Gould was that of a strong-willed individual, dark as Calvin Gould was dark, resembling him slightly, but restless, skeptical, somehow intractable. Once Maggie had seen the woman in, of all places, a public park, lying on the grass sleeping; another time Maggie had seen her, at a short distance, at a Conservatory function where she had coolly but unmistakably rebuffed all attempts to befriend her: a tall, slope-shouldered, harshly handsome woman wearing makeup for the occasion as if in parody of the occasion and of the other, more clearly feminine faculty wives: bright crimson lipstick, rouge prominent on her cheeks, eyebrow pencil applied with a dramatic hand. Mrs. Gould’s hair coiled in a frizzled tangle on her shoulders; oversized white-framed sunglasses hid half her small face: a striking presence, but rather intimidating. For an ambitious administrator Naomi Gould was hardly an ideal wife, but the liberalism of the Forest Park Conservatory of Music, conjoined with the high worth of her husband, seemed to excuse the liability.

  Of course, not everyone agreed on the “high worth” of Calvin Gould. He was, to Maggie’s surprise, a controversial figure, admired by the majority of the faculty but disliked and distrusted by others. He was perceived to be overly ambitious, demonically driven, a fanatic for work, and exacting in his demands of others’ work; ruthless, at times, in his dealings with colleagues—some of whom, especially the older ones, resented being manipulated by a thirty-nine-year-old provost. Yet Calvin had been a tireless fund-raiser, especially dedicated to improving scholarship programs for students; he had helped to secure, for the composer-in-residence Rolfe Christensen, an endowed chair that brought with it a salary rumored to be the highest at any music institution in the world; he had hired any number of gifted younger faculty, including Maggie Blackburn, defying a ninety-year tradition of exclusively male instructors in her department. For these reasons, and for countless others, Maggie would be Calvin Gould’s partisan for life.

  She would hear no ill of the man. Could hear no ill. If forced to she turned very pale, or blushed fiercely, or leapt to defend him, often indiscreetly. After an incident at a dinner party some months before, at the Nashes’, when Calvin Gould’s “ambition” had been an issue and Maggie had been unable to sit in silence, hearing the man wrongly attacked, Portia MacLeod had taken her aside and advised, gently, that she be more … circumspect. “Do you want people to begin to talk about you, Maggie?” Portia asked. “Do you want it to get back to him?” Deeply embarrassed, Maggie had not known what to say. “It was a principle I was defending,” she said finally. “Not a person.” Maggie was one of those people who lie so awkwardly, to whom the most rudimentary sort of subterfuge is a foreign language, the effort seems, to others, almost touching. So Portia felt, contemplating her friend.

  How much more suitable Maggie Blackburn would have been for Calvin Gould than that impossible woman he married.

  It was 8:10 P.M. So quickly.

  In Maggie’s living room there erupted a keyboard crescendo: Charles Ives–Henry Cowell tone clusters, or a riotous parody thereof. But can such music be parodied, seeing it is parody?

  Rolfe Christensen, Distinguished Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence at the Forest Park Conservatory of Music since 1977, who owned a concert-grand Steinway, muttered a rude assessment of his hostess’s mere Knabe—eight-foot, of “insufficient” resonance—as he got up from the piano. His little gathering of listeners laughed.

  In the foyer, at the front door, stood Maggie Blackburn, whose beauty—tonight, yes, and always—seemed somehow, in the crush of voices, eyes, handshakes, witticisms, egos burning and winking like fireflies, beside the point: saying goodbye to guests who (it seemed) had only just arrived.

  “Is my party ending … so soon?”

  In the dining room someone surprised in careless laughter swung an arm, thus spilling red wine on the heirloom Chinese rug of creamy-yellow wool threaded with pale pink roses, but “Oh, don’t bother,” Maggie insisted, “please, it’s nothing,” as Morley Nash, squatting, swabbed away with a damp paper napkin shredding gradually to bits.

  She recalled other parties, other years.

  That sense of loss, of something draining away.

  So soon?

  A waterfall of plumbing in his wake, there appeared, in the hall, Rolfe Christensen, burly and magisterial, adjusting his hunter-green sports slacks, making his swaying way, as if to a musical beat, back from the rear of his hostess’s house … from the neat little bathroom where he’d left a damp towel twisted from a rack as if its neck had been wrung and the lid of the toilet seat splashed with his pungent urine; and before that, it isn’t unlikely, the composer had been poking about in the rear rooms, as was his custom at parties, drink in one hand, cigar trailing smoke in the other. I am Rolfe Christensen; I do what I do. A creature of impulse. The music in his head was one of his own old compositions, a shrewd employment of a musical theme of Milhaud’s, some percussive tricks of Stravinsky’s, genius and impulse in electric cohabitation. Sighting the rather priggish Calvin Gould in one room he steered himself, as if steering a bulky boat in narrow waters, in another direction, and there was Bill Queller in the kitchen doorway, Bill Q who was, to Christensen, an old, old story but a trusted story, yes, and the great man’s literary executor too, for though Rolfe Christensen certainly did not intend to die for a very long time it isn’t ever too early to mak
e preparations, so many of his acquaintances dying lately (of illnesses too foul and too depressing, yes, and too contagious to be named).

  So Christensen advanced upon Bill Q, winking what felt to him a neon-greenish eye, and curled his upper lip, a lip precisely the color of Cohoe salmon, and murmured, “Mmmmmmmm, sweetie, move your ass and let me by.” And Bill Q, the really quite talented cellist, the gentlemanly bald bachelor of whom it was said always, Isn’t it strange he hasn’t been more successful, was torn between a fit of laughter and a more proper response of chagrin, if not horror, for there was Andrew Woodbridge the Conservatory attorney close by, possibly listening … and there appeared Calvin Gould the provost, both married men, presumably straight men made to feel distinctly uncomfortable overhearing their gay colleagues’ banter.

  Bill Queller, a man of strong conservative upbringing, overcome rather more by chagrin and horror than by hilarity, succumbed to a spasm of coughing.

  Rolfe Christensen, his eye on some young graduate students in the other room, pounded his friend on the back in passing. “Cough it up, cough it up! Don’t swallow!”

  The party was waning. Guests were slipping steadily away. Maggie Blackburn, perspiration shining on her upper lip and forehead, eyes bright, smiled a happy-sad smile, the smile of an unmarried hostess: How nice of you to come, thank you so much for coming, must you really leave so soon? A spirited little crew of graduate students, male and female both, Maggie’s particular friends, were carrying things out into the kitchen, running water in the sink, making motions toward tidying up. It was kind of them but Maggie watched with melancholy eyes. So soon? Everything ending so soon? And where was Calvin, surely he’d meant to take Maggie aside to talk with her; there was in fact something she’d been intending to ask him but it seemed to have slipped her mind. “Thank you, Maggie—lovely party!” the MacLeods cried, on their way out, and Portia kissed Maggie on her burning cheek, and Maggie’s heart ached at the ease of her friend’s walking off arm in arm with her husband, Byron, out to the street, to their car, and home.

  Maggie caught sight of roses lying atop a bookcase as if flung down, Brendan Bauer’s thoughtful gift, long-stemmed white roses and how had she forgotten them?—she took them up and hurried into the kitchen seeking a vase. And, there, became involved in an emotional debate among the graduate fellows regarding the foreign language (German or Italian) requirement in the advanced degree program at the Conservatory; thus she was prevented from joining Calvin Gould in the other room, and then others were leaving, calling out goodbye, and thanks, and Maggie hurried to the front door, feeling a heavy plait of hair beginning to uncoil, and there were half-moons of perspiration beneath her arms, and in the wintry chill at the door she seemed to feel herself becoming invisible—as she’d felt, frequently, at the Old Westbury Convalescent Center and Nursing Home—as her guests backed away into the night waving goodbye to her, goodbye goodbye Maggie Blackburn.

  So soon.

  By the time Maggie returned to the living room, only a few of her guests remained. The piano was now silent, with a look of abandonment. Maggie was smiling, though no one glanced in her direction. A frieze of images leapt forward like a Bosch dreamscape: Rolfe Christensen in his red-green plaid sport coat, metallic hair rising in tufts, engaged in an animated conversation with—was it young Brendan Bauer, backed against a bookshelf?—Brendan’s childlike round eyeglasses winking in mirth and his lower lip caught in his teeth in a shy, or sly, smile; there was handsome Nicholas Reickmann, hair becomingly disheveled, engaged in a hilarious conversation with the Nashes; there was, in his tailored pinstripe suit, mahogany-dark hair crisp and gleaming as if lacquered, Calvin Gould in conversation with—yes, it was Cecilia Ch’en, she of the straight jet-black hair, flawless camellia skin, and limpid black eyes—the young Chinese-American soprano whose voice in its upper register was so eerily beautiful Maggie never heard it without wanting to weep.

  By nine-fifteen they were all gone. Maggie’s two-bedroom house on Acacia Drive, the charming little 1940s Cape Cod, was restored to its usual quiet.

  Belatedly, as they were going out the door, Maggie’s graduate students asked would she like to join them? They were going out for pizza and beer at Aldo’s, on Route 1. Maggie was aware of their kindness, for of course they could not possibly want her, an elder and a teacher. “Another time!” she said, smiling.

  In parting, Rolfe Christensen had been almost cordial. It was said that a moderate dosage of alcohol brought out in him, sometimes, an unexpected warmth—though he could be volatile and bad-tempered too. But he smiled at Maggie, even winked, as if there were some bemused understanding between them, thanked her and called her “Margaret Louise” with a quaint lilting of his voice. It seemed he was going to drive Brendan Bauer home in his white BMW; and Brendan, thin cheeks glowing as if pinched, said, with virtually no hint of a stammer, “Thank you so much, Miss Blackstone—excuse me, I mean Blackburn.” And Calvin was warm and smiling, thanking Maggie too, shaking her hand briskly in parting, saying she must certainly send the bill for the party to accounting services. There beside him stood Cecilia Ch’en with her gleaming straight curtains of hair, her rosebud mouth, petite and perfect and murmuring thank you to Miss Blackburn, whom she scarcely knew except as a semipublic figure. It seemed that Calvin had volunteered to drive Cecilia back to her residence hall on campus—“No trouble, it’s hardly out of my way,” Calvin said.

  And now the utterly silent house.

  Maggie kicked off her tight shoes, headachey and exhausted she went from room to room, gathering up party refuse her students had overlooked. There was a partly eaten jumbo shrimp lodged between the strings of her Knabe and, underfoot, mashed into the carpet, the remains of a deviled egg. Crumpled paper napkins, discarded plastic forks. In the kitchen she leaned against the refrigerator to steady herself, the overhead lights were so bright. That terrible clarity always so much more blinding after guests have departed, after we are restored to ourselves. But what was she hearing, a faint sound of music? Piccololike music? Could it be Rex singing, at this time of day?

  Maggie went to her study to investigate, drawn by the cascade of lovely liquid warbling notes, and knew at once, opening the door, that something was wrong: the room was cold and drafty, and there was an acrid odor of cigar smoke. Someone had been in here, smoking, and he’d opened a window a full foot high. A damp chill wind blew in.

  Still Rex sang, with a terrible sort of deliberation and urgency Maggie had never before heard in him. His tiny red-orange body quivered; he stood on the perch closest to Maggie, feathers pressed against the bars of his cage. On the floor of the cage amid the shredded bits of corncob, Sweetpea lay dead: on her side, an eye partway closed, utterly still, stiff.

  Maggie could not believe it. She fumbled, opening the cage, reached inside, picked up the small lifeless body. The external feathers were cold but the body itself felt warm. “Sweetpea? Sweetpea?” she said. Still, she could not believe it.

  4

  This much is known and, in time, would become a matter of public record: from approximately nine o’clock in the evening of Saturday, September 17, 1988, until approximately six-thirty in the morning of Sunday, September 18, 1988, twenty-seven-year-old Brendan Bauer, a newly enrolled graduate student in the Forest Park Conservatory of Music, was in the company of fifty-nine-year-old Rolfe Christensen, Distinguished Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence at the Conservatory, in Christensen’s house at 2283 Littlebrook Road, Forest Park, Connecticut: whether Bauer was a guest, a “freely consenting adult,” a “willing and active participant” in what occurred, or a captive, “held against his will,” “terrified into submission” by force and threats against his life, would be a matter of debate.

  Where genius and impulse cohabit, none dare legislate.

  Consider the old French proverb, Erotic love is a mystery which, once solved, is at once forgotten.

  Mmmmmmm. Sweet.

  Just don’t provoke me.

  DON’
T make me angry.

  DON’T MAKE ME ANGRY.

  AND DON’T PLAY GAMES WITH ME.

  Rolfe Christensen wasn’t the sort to use force, for with his powerful charms of persuasion he had no need. Nor was he the sort to “take advantage of” students in his tutelage, for, again, he had no need.

  He was no seducer, surely no rapist … though certain practices, undeniably, gave pleasure.

  To subdue another against his wish and to make that very wish yield.

  Oh. Undeniably.

  Down the evolutionary slope from gentleman to groveling beast the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Rolfe Christensen happily descended when he drank, and he drank frequently, though not always excessively, at least in public; true, Christensen behaved sometimes eccentrically in public depending upon the liberality of “public,” but there were things the man clearly would not do in public because they were things you did (if, indeed, you did them) exclusively in private.

  Meaning: no witnesses.

  Or, at the most, one.

  As the white BMW turned onto Juniper Road bordering the eastern edge of the Conservatory campus, Rolfe Christensen inquired of his passenger Brendan Bauer, casually, as if he’d only now thought of it, “Would you like to drop by my house, Brendan, for a nightcap or a bite to eat? It seems to be rather early.”

  “I-I—” A pause. A seeming-sincere look of uncertainty, hesitation.

  “You mentioned earlier having admired my ‘Adagio for Piano and Strings’: I have a tape of the only really decent performance of the piece, done at the Santa Fe music festival in 1983, and if you’re interested I’d be happy to play it for you.”