Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Afterward she asked him if as a boy camping on the island he’d had fantasies of bringing girls here and he said curtly, as if the question were offensive to him, “No.”

  “Really? Not even when you were an adolescent?”

  “Big Burnt is like no other place.”

  He spoke disdainfully, and would say no more.

  By quick degrees he fell asleep, one of his arms outstretched and the fingers twitching. Lisbeth tried to lie beside him, in the crook of his arm, not very comfortably. Her breasts, her lower body ached. Her mouth throbbed as if bruised. At a distance she heard the voices of campers, and at a distance the sound of a boat on the lake. Her eyelids were heavy yet her brain was alert, brightly awake. She had not yet slept beside this man for in his sleep he was restless, sighing deeply, shrugging his shoulders, pushing her away if she came too near. Now she was wondering if she would ever sleep beside him, in any normal fashion. In a house, in the confinement of a shared life.

  Lovemaking. Making-of-love.

  As if love does not generate itself but has to be made—by the effort of two.

  She was sitting up, and had adjusted her clothing. Her hair was matted. Her skin felt sticky. Gnats circled her damp face, her hair. She took one of the man’s hands in hers—gently. She saw with curiosity that his thumbs were precisely twice the size of hers. The backs of his hands were covered in thin dark graying hairs. On the third finger of his left hand was the ghost of a ring—(she thought); the wedding ring he’d worn for years, and had, as he’d told her with a harsh laugh, “tossed away” after his divorce.

  She did not want to wake her lover for he seemed drawn, fatigued. Like the swimming, lovemaking took a good deal of energy from him. His face that was usually so alert, handsome in alertness as a predator bird, was slack now in repose. His mouth was slightly open. A glisten of saliva in the corner of his mouth. She wondered if she could love the man sufficiently, to compensate for his not loving her. Or perhaps, in some way, out of weakness perhaps, he would come to love her.

  In time, he stirred and woke. His eyelids fluttered, he was seeing her. “‘Lisbeth.’” The name seemed strange on his lips, a memorized name that made him smile in a kind of dazed wonderment as if the glowering sky was partly blinding.

  Lisbeth leaned over him to kiss him. “Welcome back to Big Burnt, Mikael.”

  It was not a naturally caressing name—Mikael. Yet in Lisbeth’s soft throaty voice, it had the effect of a caress.

  Overhead the sky appeared to be dimming. The air was humid but a cooler wind was rising. Lightning leapt among the clouds like exposed nerves but it was only “heat” lightning—so far away, its deafening thunder had dissipated to silence.

  “DON’T PANIC—HEY?”

  Another time he spoke playfully yet she understood the severity beneath—Don’t you dare become emotional, not in my presence.

  At last with a single sixteen-ounce plastic Evian bottle she’d begun to bail water out of the back of the boat, that had risen to a depth of—could it be six inches?—for Mikael Brun had decreed finally, bailing might not be a bad idea. Pelting rain and waves sloshing steadily into the rear of the boat so that the rear was much lower than the front did indeed cause Lisbeth to feel panic which (she hoped) she was able to disguise from her companion.

  He’d insisted that the boat was “unsinkable.” He’d insisted that she should not worry, he would bring them back to the marina safely. Yet Lisbeth thought Mikael was probably relieved, that she’d begun to bail water even as he hadn’t wanted her to think he thought it was necessary.

  Their things in the back were awash in churning water. The backpacks were thoroughly soaked. The oars were floating. Awkwardly in her seat Lisbeth was turned in a desperate attempt to bail out water. At least it might be possible to keep pace with the water coming into the boat though the sixteen-ounce bottle was much too small, absurdly impractical. She had never worked so hard, and so frantically, at any physical task. Emptying water out of the bottle, over the side of the boat; submerging the bottle (horizontally) into the water in the rear, allowing the bottle to fill, and again emptying it over the side of the boat . . . The continuous jolting and rocking of the boat, the agitated motion of the waves, not rhythmic but chaotic as if being shaken in a madman’s fist was making her nauseated. She felt as if she might vomit but would not succumb.

  Directly overhead were flashes of lightning, vertical, terrifying, so close that the deafening thunder-claps came almost instantaneously and she could not keep from whimpering aloud.

  “If you hear the thunder, you’re all right. You’re not dead.”

  Mikael was trying to be funny, even now. She supposed that was what he was attempting—to be funny.

  Ever more desperately she was bailing water. Like a frenzied automaton, bailing water. Whatever she could do was not very effective—the rear of the boat seemed steadily to be sinking. But she could not give up—could she? If she gave up she would crouch beside the man with shut eyes, pressing her hands over her ears, catatonic in terror.

  She was thinking how good it was, thank God her children were nowhere near!

  Still, she continued to bail water. Numbly she smiled, bailing water.

  Her clothing was soaked. Her hair hung in her face. She was shivering convulsively. Yet her heart beat hard in determination. One day, she and Mikael Brun would look back upon this nightmare and laugh, in recollection.

  Crossing Lake George in that storm we realized if we survived, we could survive virtually anything. Together.

  At the steering wheel of the boat Mikael kept on course. Tried to keep on course. His mood had shifted. He’d been elated at the outset, pushing off from Big Burnt, and then he’d been grim, abashed; but now again he was feeling elated, even reckless. They could not drown, after all—impossible! This was Lake George which he knew like the back of his hand. He had no doubt that he was going in the right direction and might have been a quarter mile from the marina.

  He’d been so happy that day!—he could not surrender that happiness now.

  On Big Burnt he’d felt as if he had come home. Yet it was a home from which others had departed. He’d felt like one who has opened his eyes in a strange place that is also a familiar place—a familiar place that is also a strange place. One of his lurid fantasies, that his father was buried on Big Burnt . . . Melancholia like an undertow had had him in its grip all the days of his life but now the raging lake was making him happy again, holding his course on the raging lake was making him happy again, bringing the woman back safely to the marina, not harming the woman as he’d vowed he would not do though it was within his power—as a child is made happy he was being made happy in sudden random gusts, waves.

  Of course, he would not blow out his brains. Ridiculous!

  There are ways less melodramatic. Ways that emulate natural causes. Whiskey, sedatives. He was a distinguished neuroscientist, he knew to obliterate consciousness the way a blackboard is cleaned. So many “sacrificed” animals in the Brun lab, so many years. The scientist’s hand would not waver at obliteration.

  Though possibly: he’d direct his lawyer to file a counter suit.

  He’d fire that lawyer and hire another, better lawyer. He would not slink away in disgrace. He would not slink away at all—he would never resign his professorship. He would certainly never step down from the directorship of the Institute which he himself had founded. Instead, he would appeal the university’s (hasty, ill-advised) decision if it went against him. If the appeal failed he would sue. He would sue the dean of the college, and he would sue the chair of his longtime department. He would sue each of the committee members. He would sue the president of the university who was ex officio on the committee.

  He could marry again if he wished. It was not too late.

  He would not make the same mistakes again. If he could remember these mistakes that had not seemed to be mistakes at the outset.

  He could marry this woman—Lisbeth. She loved him, and would
grow to love him more deeply. He would give her no cause not to love him as he’d done with other women, out of distrust of female weakness and subterfuge. But what was the last name, he’d forgotten . . .

  Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction. . . .

  Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth onto life.

  These biblical words came to him at the wheel of the little outboard, he had no idea why. He was no admirer of the Bible. He wasn’t even certain which of the gospels this was—St. Mark? Matthew? Carefully he’d explained to anyone who asked, to interviewers, he was not by nature a religious person yet, as a neuroscientist, he understood that probably religion is hardwired into the human brain.

  Wide is the gate . . . That was the problem: the lake was too vast, “broad”; it was the narrower inlet he sought, to bring them to safety.

  This inlet was close ahead. A few hundred yards perhaps. In a few minutes he would be close enough to the mainland to see exactly where he was.

  Already it seemed to him that the waves were less severe. He was nearing land—was he? To his left, a small familiar nameless island would appear; to his right, the rocky mainland. He would see—(was he seeing?)—lights on land; he knew where this was, very close to the marina. He had only to keep on course, even with this poor visibility he could not miss it.

  And yet, there was a thinness, almost a transparency now to the mist. Everywhere he stared was imbued with a kind of radiance. It was the illumination of the finite, that filled him with melancholy, but also, strangely, a great happiness, hope . . .

  And then, out of nowhere, there appeared a boat—a rescue boat?—and a male voice calling to them Did they need help?

  A Lake George ranger boat, suddenly beside them. Mikael was both immensely relieved and terribly disappointed.

  Out of the heavy rain a flashlight beam was directed at them, at the man’s grimacing face.

  “Hello? D’you need help?”

  “Yes! Please! We need help!”—the woman cried.

  He was furious with her, in that instant. But he did not contradict her. Abashed, he followed the ranger’s directions. He followed the larger boat, that accompanied them to the marina. To his dismay he saw that, as he’d anticipated, the marina was directly ahead. He would have brought the boat in safely himself, within ten minutes.

  Neither he nor his female passenger would see the flag at the end of the dock, high above their heads, hanging limp, sodden, unrecognizable as an American flag.

  There, in still-pelting rain, amid flashes of lightning and claps of deafening thunder the man and the woman were greeted by the young teenaged marina attendant in a yellow rain poncho. “Great! Great job getting back, mister”—the words were flattering as they were insincere. The young man secured the boat for them, that was bucking and heaving beside the dock; he helped each of them out of the boat, the woman first, then the man, with as much solicitude as if they were elderly or infirm, and their bones fragile. “Careful, ma’am! Sir! The dock is slippery.”

  RETURNING IN THE CAR to their motel several miles away, the man was silent in his soaked, sodden clothes as if abashed, brooding. The woman could not stop exclaiming how wonderful it was to be out of the boat, off the lake, in the car and out of the rain! She was delirious with gratitude, relief. How happy she was, and how determined never to step into a boat again in her life! If she was expecting the man to protest such an extravagant statement, he took no notice. Halfway to the motel the man abruptly braked the car on the shoulder of the road and asked if the woman would mind driving?—he had a migraine headache, all the muscles of his upper body ached.

  Gratefully the woman drove the rest of the way, still in rain. How she hated rain, in the Adirondacks! She’d been shaken for just a moment—thinking He is disgusted with me. He will make me get out of the car and walk back in the rain.

  Of course, he was not angry at her in the slightest. He too was relieved—obviously. Several times he embraced her, kissed her roughly on the mouth as soon as they entered their motel room.

  Their nostrils pinched, the room smelled musty. Outside the sliding glass doors to their little balcony the vast lake was invisible in rain, mist. Perhaps there was no lake at all, they’d been under a cruel enchantment. There was no “visibility” from the windows of their room, they had only each other.

  In revulsion for their soaked, soiled-seeming clothing they took lengthy showers. The clothing was hung to dry, by the woman. When Lisbeth came out of the shower she saw Mikael hunched over his laptop, sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed. At last the terrible storm was lifting. Rain came less ferociously. Lisbeth returned to the bathroom to dress and when she emerged again, she saw Mikael on the phone, on the balcony. She heard his lowered voice. She heard him laugh—somehow, this was disconcerting. For he had not laughed with her.

  How lonely she felt, he’d moved so quickly beyond her! She understood by the way in which his gaze slid over her, appraising, bemused. He told her he’d decided to return to Cambridge a day early, they would leave in the morning. Early Sunday morning—“We’ll beat the traffic.”

  Tenderly he stooped to kiss her. Rubbed his rough beard against her cheek. As if it had all been a joke of a kind and their lives had never been seriously at risk.

  “Hey. You saved us with all that bailing.”

  SHE WOULD PROTEST AFTERWARD, he’d given no sign.

  No sign. No hint. Not a word.

  He hadn’t been unhappy. (No more than any of us are unhappy!)

  Many people would contact her. Most of them were strangers. Brun’s family, ex-wife, relatives. Colleagues at Harvard and at the Institute. Journalists. She’d been unable to keep confidential the (shameful, incomprehensible) fact that Lisbeth Mueller had been the companion of Mikael Brun for several days before he’d returned to his Cambridge home and killed himself. She’d had to give statements to police. She could give only a faltering, uncertain testimony that altered each time she gave it. She did not lie but she neglected to tell all that she might have told. What had been intimate between them, she would never reveal. She would not show anyone—not even the grieving Brun children—the pictures of Mikael Brun alone and with Lisbeth Mueller—on her iPhone. Nor could she bring herself to reveal to anyone that among the final words Mikael Brun had said to her were these playful, not-very-sincere words—Hey. You saved us.

  For she had not saved them, had she.

  She was furious with the man, and came to hate him. She was devastated. She was in love with him, and wept for him, in a frenzy of grief she could not reveal to anyone. She could not sleep for she was pleading with him—Why? Why did you do such a thing to yourself, and to me?

  It was clear, Mikael Brun had prepared his last things before he’d left for Lake George. All had been neatly organized, awaiting his return from Big Burnt. That seemed to be incontestable, she would not contest it. Her heart was lacerated by the realization that, in his last hours, her lover had forgotten her entirely. Not one of the last letters had been addressed to her.

  She could not think of any words she might wish to utter to anyone. She had not an adequate language, she had no script. And so, eventually she gave up trying.

  Owl Eyes

  Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen. That seems young.”

  It is an inane remark. He steels himself for more.

  In the advanced calculus class at the Math Institute twenty-six university students regard him with curiosity. Unmistakably, Jerald Tabor is the youngest individual in the room. His cheeks smart with an obscure sort of shame as the late-middle-aged professor continues in a vague kindly manner:

  “Well, it is true in math there is no ‘young’—no ‘old.’ In math all ages abide equally . . .”

  The professor is a renowned mathematician, Jerald knows. Has been told.

  Though the professor’s name is not one Jerald will readily recall as he will not readily recall the man’s face if he happens to encounter him o
utside the classroom.

  Still less is Jerald Tabor likely to learn the names of other students in the class, or their faces. In the six-week summer session he will scarcely glance at them at all as in the public school he has attended for years he has made little effort to learn the names and faces of classmates. Jerald is unsentimental and pragmatic: memory is precious, not to be squandered on what is inconsequential.

  In this class as in other classes Jerald feels “islanded”—uncomfortably distinct from the other students. As often he feels “islanded” in life.

  As if—almost—he can see a shimmering aura surrounding him, setting him apart from others.

  They see him, or some variant of him. Always from the outside, at a little distance.

  Sometimes these others are friendly. More often, they are not so friendly. They can be cruel, crude, indifferent, curious. They can be unexpectedly kind. Sometimes they are resentful as the undergraduates in this class are likely to be resentful of a skinny lanky-limbed fifteen-year-old high school junior with math skills (allegedly) sharper than their own.

  Jerald’s mother has told him many times that he is special. He understands that he has no choice in the matter.

  THERE!—THE OWL-EYED MAN. Staring at Jerald so strangely.

  Not often is Jerald aware of his surroundings, still less of strangers in public places. Yet he notices this man.