Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And her thick kinky-crimped hair, sticky against the nape of her neck. The necklace of carved beads, earthen-hued, he’d bought for her, resting against her neck, damp-glowing skin as she lay beside him sprawled, unclothed—in an ease of intimacy that had come quickly to them, possibly too quickly to be sustained.

  She’d smiled happily, stroking the outsized beads, that had been crafted by Ojibway (Ontario) Indians.

  “Thank you!”

  ADULTERY OF SOME GENERATION preceding his own, when the world was sepia-toned and there were rules, expectations. A world in which it was assumed you knew the statutes.

  Like his old cameras that required film, he’d relegated to the back of his photography equipment closet—that was adultery. Quaint, outmoded. “Obsolete.”

  The old way of a sequestered love, marriage, a wife whose happiness depended upon your remaining faithful, children whose “respect” for you was at risk—he hadn’t the cruelty (or the courage, that amounted to the same thing) to walk away. He had not.

  (SHE’D NEVER ASKED HIM for money, he was thinking.)

  (But why, why such a low mean thought? This wasn’t worthy of him.)

  MONTHS PASSED, A SUMMER—he wasn’t waiting to hear from her, not exactly. And now September, and nearing November—the anniversary of their first encounter.

  On the pedestrian walkway, the white-muslin skirt lifting around her legs. A stranger, back to him, dark-red hair and no one he knew, why hadn’t he walked past, why had he lingered, hungrily his eyes moving on her, even before she’d turned to expose her face—the blood-red mouth, dark bemused eyes. Of course I see you. I see you seeing me.

  She’d denied it, however.

  Many times he’d returned to the bridge, with his camera. Looking for—what?

  SHE’D GIVEN HIM JUST A SINGLE GIFT, a DVD of several Balanchine ballets, soon after they’d seen the Martha Graham film. Since he’d expressed enthusiasm for the Graham film.

  In her ardent girl’s voice that had so charmed him, and then, by degrees, so annoyed him, she’d said that he would “love” the Balanchine dances. She’d expressed the (wistful) wish that they might see some Balanchine together, that summer possibly—the New York City Ballet performed at Saratoga Springs each July.

  (He’d thought: What is she thinking? Where would the husband and children be? Where, my wife?)

  He’d thanked her for the Balanchine DVD. He’d meant to play it, but had never gotten around to playing it. Probably, he’d never taken it home, he’d find it one day in a desk drawer in his office, or, after his death, clearing out his office, his wife might find it and wonder: Balanchine? Why?

  SEARCHED FOR THE PHOTOS he’d taken of her sleeping. Her unclothed body partly covered by a rumpled sheet. Crevices, shadows. A strand of hair across her forehead.

  In his computer he searched for the photos until at last, he gave up.

  Where?

  THE STORY WOULD END, he thought. He had to see her again.

  Months later when he’d forgotten her, the lovemaking in the damp bed, the sharp sweet smell of calla lilies in his nostrils, their languorous limbs tangled together—months beyond the anniversary of their first meeting he began to think of her so keenly, he could not sleep.

  His wife, his children—at the epicenter of their lives he felt famished, diminished as a husk. They never saw him.

  A year, and more. And then one day in early summer he drove impulsively out of Fleuve Bleu on Route 17 east into the rolling hills of the Adirondacks, to the Village of Rensselaer Falls.

  He hadn’t called her. He hadn’t wanted to risk calling her.

  He made his way to Eagle Road. (Not Eagle Street—he’d misremembered.) His heart was beating quickly in the exhilaration of great danger though he told himself, consoled himself—At any time, I can turn back. I will turn back.

  Eagle Road was a narrow winding road at the edge of the village. There were sidewalks on Eagle Road but they were sunken, overgrown with weeds. At 44 Eagle Road a gravel driveway dipped down to a stand of straggly pines and beyond the pines an idiosyncratic house of stucco, brick and wood, 1950s Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired “modern” that looked as if it had been built by an untrained hand. There were vertical panes of glass, a front door of hammered copper. He recalled that she’d mentioned her husband having some talent for carpentry, but she had not elaborated and he hadn’t inquired.

  The house was both eye-catching and shabby: a property its owners couldn’t maintain as it was meant to be maintained. Like other lots on Eagle Road, this lot was thinly wooded and had no proper lawn; here were wild-growing ferns, tall grasses and shrubs. A meandering gravel walk led from the driveway to the front door of the house.

  There was an attached garage with a battered-looking overhead door. Scattered in the front yard were scrap-metal sculptures: horse, pig, parrot on perch, windmill. Some of the sculptures were rusted and others were brightly painted in patchwork colors, as a child might have painted them.

  His heart contracted—She lives here? Here.

  It had not occurred to him that by this time, Juliane and her family might have moved away.

  In his vehicle at the top of the driveway he sat, uncertain. He didn’t want to attract attention, yet it didn’t seem, in this neighborhood of scattered houses, that his car was likely to attract attention.

  And then he saw the garage door lifting, slowly. And a figure appeared, a female figure, thinner than Juliane had been, he was sure—a daughter? This person was ushering a younger girl out of the garage. They were headed for the top of the driveway. (Were they going to bring recycling bins back to the house? He saw emptied bins at the curb.)

  He saw then, the individual he’d thought was a girl was Juliane. Walking hand in hand with a child of about eight. Oh, but she was far thinner than he remembered—she wore a shirt, jeans, sandals. The shirt fell loose from her shoulders and the jeans fell loose from her hips as if it might be held in place by only a belt. Even at this distance he could see the hollow at the base of her throat. She was bareheaded and there was something wrong—her hair wasn’t stirring in the wind, it was much shorter, thinner. Her beautiful dark-red hair! He felt a stab of sheer horror, she’d been ill and he had not known—was that it? She’d kept herself hidden from him in her illness.

  These months, now a year they’d been apart and not in communication—he’d imagined the woman coldly indifferent to him, or angry with him, that he had not loved her as much as she’d hoped to be loved; he had not loved her as much as she’d loved him. All that time he’d imagined her healthy. He could not have thought of her as other than healthy. It had been painful to him, a blow to his masculine pride, that the woman had been the one to walk away from him.

  Now, he pressed his foot on the gas pedal. (Was she looking up at the road? Had she seen?) Quickly, he drove away.

  No idea where he was going. His thoughts beat wildly in his head like panicked bats.

  For a while he drove blindly. He hadn’t meant to come to this place and now—he was desperate to escape. Yet, he didn’t leave Rensselaer Falls. He found himself parked beside a stream, a rocky creek or narrow river on a road that intersected with Eagle Road, in a region of boulder-strewn hills. He wondered if this was the Blue River—Le Fleuve Bleu? He tried to imagine the geography. A map of Lawrence County.

  He thought—But why am I here! What does it mean, I am here . . .

  THEY’D ROLLED THE RECYCLING BINS down the driveway. Yellow plastic for cans and bottles, green for paper, cardboard. Rolling the bins was noisy, reckless. It wasn’t a good idea, the plastic bins dented easily.

  In the house she felt faint, breathless. She was switching on lights, for dusk had come early.

  She hadn’t seen him at the top of the drive. Or rather, she hadn’t realized that she’d seen him.

  Had it happened again, as it had happened on the bridge over the Blue River? She’d seen the man, but not clearly. He had seen her—that was certain. She’d felt the impact of
his seeing her. In a haze of sudden alarm her eyes had passed over him, the SUV at the top of the drive, a stranger’s car, and the driver was a stranger, behind the wheel. For she had no expectation of seeing the man, ever again. She had no wish to see him. He had not loved her enough—he had loved her, but not enough. The shock and terror and exhaustion of her illness, and her need to deny the seriousness of her illness to the children, had ravaged her as fiercely as the months of chemotherapy had ravaged her, and left her burnt clean of desire. Her bones felt lighter, as if the marrow had been sucked out. She did not fear what would happen next, if the cancer recurred. For she had already considered her death, she’d come to think of it as her death, unique to her. But it would not be a violent and surprising death, not that. Not the death of action movies, that leaves the victim screaming in terror. The cancer-death is slower, slow-paced. The cancer-death is mitigated by medication that is a kind of lethal injection, a numbing that rises along the spine, into the chest-cavity, the throat and the brain. It is a numbness that is peace as you see that your death is not separate from you but is you in the way that nourishment taken into your body is transformed into you.

  In the fatherless house the children often bickered. The girl was eight and small for her age. The boy was eleven, wiry and sharp-elbowed. The one was a handful of feathers, the other a handful of pebbles. Now, seeing the mother’s face, they paused and stared. The girl came to her, wanting to be embraced. The boy held back, too old now for embraces, and too sharp-elbowed. For a year they’d been frightened of their slow-speaking mother, who’d once been so fluent and so funny, but they had not—ever—thought that she could die, for that was an unthinkable thought. That was not a thought you allowed in the window, that was a thought you kept outside the window as a screen sensibly keeps out hornets, flies, mosquitoes. Absolutely sensible, that is what you do—you keep such things out. That is what she did. And the father, the children’s father, of course that is how he behaved—You can’t die. Won’t die. It’s treatable. We both know—well, we know—lots of people who . . . We know, and they didn’t die. Most of them.

  And once he’d said to her, in anguish—You’re selfish! You’re letting this happen!

  In the end the children’s father hadn’t been able to bear it. She had been such a young beautiful woman, he couldn’t bear to see the change in her. And so she’d sent him away, taking pity on him. He hadn’t wanted to go—he’d protested—yet in relief he’d left the house at 44 Eagle Road. He returned when she invited him for dinner, and he visited with the children and took them to children’s movies, child-meals, in neutral territory. He returned if she beckoned him, but he did not beg to return permanently. He hadn’t suggested a legal separation, still less divorce. Each was thinking—Why? Our time together is ending of its own volition.

  Now she hears a vehicle at the top of the driveway, another time. The coppery taste of chemicals at the back of her throat has grown sharper. She thinks—But he wouldn’t! He has let me go.

  She is frightened, but she is resolute. She steps outside shivering in her shirt and jeans. The children have been drawn off, to TV. The wind has picked up. She has lost nearly twenty pounds, her clothes hang on her. Badly she has missed the Blue River, the smell of the river, the wind whipping her thick crimped hair. She’d ended her job with the textbook publisher, she’d told him about the cancer, the biopsy and the surgery and the chemo, eight months of chemo that lay ahead. She had not told anyone else in Fleuve Bleu.

  She was thinking of him, Rutherford—the first, hard kisses that had taken away her breath. The randomness of it, love as haphazard as playing cards blindly dealt. He’d seen her above the river, and a second time he’d seen her, in pelting rain. She must’ve seen him, of course. She is smiling, remembering. His hand, his playful hand, fingers clasping hers and gripping tight, so she can’t pull loose. Oh, she misses him!—she has missed him. Her heart is beating painfully, she is having difficulty breathing. Then she sees him again, at the top of the drive. He hasn’t turned into the driveway, his SUV is parked on the road where she’d imagined him, how many evenings at this time. The headlights are on. He has climbed out of the vehicle and is standing now at the top of the drive. Tentatively, as if he isn’t sure who she is, or whether she will remember him, he lifts a hand to her in greeting. Furiously she calls out to him—“Go away, God damn you! Go away please.” Her voice is weaker than she’d anticipated, she isn’t sure that he has heard her.

  He is going nowhere. She sees that, at the foot of the gravel driveway, wind whipping the thin fabric of her jeans around her tensed legs.

  Big Burnt

  From the start the plan had been to include a woman. Not the woman but a woman.

  Yet it hadn’t been clear if the woman would be a witness or whether the woman would be involved in a more crucial role.

  “DON’T PANIC.”

  Her eyes glanced upward, in alarm. Somehow, without her awareness, the sky had darkened overhead. The temperature was rapidly dropping and the wind was rising.

  At the wheel of the small rented outboard boat the man pushed the lever that controlled its speed and the boat leapt forward slapping against waves in a quasi-perpendicular way that was torture to the woman though she was determined not to show it.

  “We’re not in trouble. We’ll make it. Just hang on.”

  The man spoke almost gaily. Quickly the woman smiled to assure him—Of course!

  They were only a few minutes out onto the wide wind-buffeted lake when lightning flashed overhead in repeated spasms like strobe lights and there followed a deafening noise like shaken foil, many times magnified.

  The lake was the color of lead. The first raindrops were flung against their faces like buckshot.

  The woman, shivering, was sitting so close beside the man, she could easily have lifted her hand to touch his wrist, that was covered in coarse dark hairs; she might have touched his shoulder in a gesture of (wifely) solicitude. If the situation were not so desperate she might have—(playfully, provocatively)—pressed her hand lightly against the nape of the man’s neck.

  He liked her to touch him, sometimes. Though he rarely touched her in such casual ways. His sidelong glance at the woman would be startled as if she’d touched him intimately.

  (But is not all touch intimate?—the woman reasoned. For her, touch was the most intimate speech.)

  For the past two and a half days the woman had been calculating how to make the man love her. The man had been calculating how, when the interlude at Lake George was over, and he’d returned alone to his home in Cambridge, he would blow out his brains.

  EARLIER THAT DAY, when they’d taken the boat to Big Burnt Island, several miles from the marina at Bolton’s Landing, the lake had been calm, even tranquil—glassy. Vast lake and vast sky had reflected each other in an eerie and surpassing beauty that made the woman’s heart contract with happiness.

  “What a beautiful place you’ve brought me to, Mikael!—thank you.”

  The woman spoke warmly like a heedless child. In an instant she was the ingénue Nina of The Seagull. She heard her voice just too perceptibly loud, rather raw, over-eager. Yet the man who did not smile easily smiled then with pleasure. Yes, this was what he liked to hear from a woman’s mouth. For indeed the vast lake surrounded by pine trees was beautiful, and his.

  Now, a few hours later, the glassy surface of the water had vanished as if it had never been. All was agitated, churning. The wind made everything confused for it seemed to come from several directions simultaneously. The sky that had been a clear, pellucid blue that morning was bruised and opaque.

  “Christ! Hang on.”

  “What?—oh.”

  The man was white-lipped with fury. On their left, out of nowhere, a large motorboat bore upon them like a demented beast. In normal daylight this twenty-foot boat would have been dazzling-white like their rented boat but the light was no longer normal but dimmed, shadowy. In normal weather boaters on Lake George were courteous
and respectful of others but with the approaching storm, no. In the wake of the larger boat that crossed their path their boat shuddered as if rebuked. Thump-thump-thump the small boat slapped against waves sidelong, slantwise.

  Don’t panic. He will hate you if you panic. You are not going to drown.

  She had an old terror of collision, chaos. A childhood terror of dark water covering her mouth, a panicked swallowing of filthy water. The sensation of water up her nose, recalled from swimming as a girl in a school pool amid a flailing of arms and legs of other girls, thrashing, splashing, sinking, gasping for air, and yet there came water up her nose and into her head feeling as if it were about to explode.

  The woman gripped the seat beneath her. Tightly with both hands. Crazed waves in the wake of the rushing boat were making her head pitch forward, and then back; forward, and back. She was being shaken like a rag doll. Her neck ached alarmingly—whiplash?

  Frothy water was beginning to wash into the boat, onto the woman’s feet, wetting her legs, her hair and her face.

  Deftly, or perhaps it was desperately, the man turned the wheel, that the boat might roll with the waves. Always he was shifting the speed lever—forward, back. And again forward, and back. The boat jerked, bucked crazily. But no sooner was one danger past than another boat, not so large as the first, but large enough to stir waves like punitive slaps against the smaller boat, crossed their path from the right, at a fast clip.

  Just. Don’t. Panic.

  She’d resisted the impulse to press her hands against her eyes, in a childish gesture of not-seeing.

  Surely they would not be capsized on the lake? Surely they would not drown?

  She didn’t think so. Not possible. Well—not probable.

  This was Lake George, New York, in late August. This was not a remote region of the Adirondacks. Or a third world country vulnerable to typhoons or tsunamis where thousands of people died in the equivalent of a key-click. There had to be rescue boats in a severe storm—yes? The equivalent of the U.S. Coast Guard?