Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  A startled look in the stranger’s face. Eyes magnified behind thick lenses.

  Is this someone Jerald should know? Someone who knows him?

  It is frightening to Jerald, who rarely goes anywhere alone, whose mother has overseen much of his life, to realize that he has seen this man before: at the train depot, on campus, in the vicinity of the Math Institute.

  Jerald is a shy boy, too shy even to turn away quickly from a rude stranger as another boy might. Instead he stands irresolute at the foot of the math building steps as other students pass around him. His heart is beating rapidly. He’d had a triumph in the calculus class, the professor standing at the green board had directed a curt nod of approval in his direction—Good work. No words, just the nod, and the joy in Jerald’s heart, glaring up quickly, in gratitude.

  The stranger might be in his mid-fifties, or older—Jerald has a vague sense of adult ages. He wonders if it is someone who knows his mother?

  It is the eyes that frighten Jerald. So fixed upon Jerald’s face, intense and glaring behind the lenses of his glasses—owl eyes . . .

  Quickly Jerald moves on. In the wake of a noisy cluster of undergraduates as if he were one of them.

  IT IS TRUE, JERALD TABOR is fifteen. But not a mature fifteen.

  He is thin, underdeveloped for his age. Fairly tall—five feet seven—but with narrow shoulders, the face of a bright evasive-eyed eleven-year-old.

  His mother selects his clothes for him. Lays out his clothes for him. If he has distractedly misbuttoned a shirt she buttons the shirt correctly. It is rare for her to chide him. She does not at all mind his dependence upon her. She brushes his stiff pale hair which he is likely to have forgotten but she has no need (at least) to remind him to brush his teeth—that Jerald never forgets for the sensation of bits of food between his teeth is disagreeable.

  Much of his waking life Jerald is at his computer. If he is away from his computer he is immersed in his iPad.

  The actual world is blinding to him. A maze. But if there is a way to be memorized through the maze, Jerald will memorize it.

  The great adventure of Jerald’s young life until now: commuting to the Math Institute at the University each weekday afternoon for six weeks, mid-June through July, to take a course in advanced calculus.

  Five days a week Jerald takes the 11:47 A.M. train—alone—for fifty-three minutes to the University which brings him there well in time for his 2:00 P.M. calculus class. Five days a week his mother drives him to the train depot and will be waiting to pick him up when he returns at 6:09 P.M.

  On the Saturday before his first class Jerald’s mother and he rehearsed the trip to the University in every particular. Travel from home to the Math Institute, and back, can be divided into seven distinct steps and these steps Jerald has memorized as in a game of chess in which all moves are known beforehand.

  It was Jerald’s high school math teacher Mr. Edelman who arranged for Jerald to receive a summer scholarship at the Institute. “How far you can go in math isn’t for me to say, Jerald. But I know that you are already beyond me.” Mr. Edelman had spoken affably, frankly. You could see in his face the relaxation that comes with knowing one’s limits.

  Jerald has seen his math teacher at the mall with his young children and has understood that there is happiness in Mr. Edelman’s life, in the life of the family, that has nothing to do with the math-world. This would be beyond Jerald, he thinks. He will have to content himself with the higher life.

  Though sometimes it frightens him, there might be no higher life.

  How Mr. Edelman acquired a scholarship for Jerald at the prestigious Math Institute Jerald does not know though (he supposes) his mother has to know, for she’d had to approve.

  Jerald is enrolled in Calculus II for credit. Jerald is not merely auditing the course, he is enrolled in the course as if he were (already) a university undergraduate.

  You must not fail, Jerald. You must not embarrass us.

  These are unspoken words of course. Jerald’s mother would never speak so openly.

  The University is a very elite school. Often this is said, with an air of subtle reproach. As if very elite were an insult directed against those who are not, who cannot be, will never be very elite.

  Jerald’s mother has sometimes spoken of the University and all that the University entails with an air of reproach. Or rather, with an air of bitterness and chagrin. For she’d once been a Ph.D. student, and an instructor, at another university of nearly the same prestige, in another state.

  Now that Jerald who is her only son and indeed her only family has been given a scholarship to the Math Institute she is not so bitter though she is still wary.

  She is proud of Jerald, of course. Yet she is anxious for him.

  . . . must not fail. Even if no one knows but us.

  Failure preoccupies Jerald’s mother. Much of life, most of life, for most people, is failure. For failure is measured by a significant lack of success.

  There is much in their lives about which Jerald’s mother does not speak to him. So much that Jerald does not hear. Yet anxiety pervades the household as a faint chemical odor sometimes pervades the air of the small suburban community in northeast New Jersey where they live.

  In the calculus-world all anxieties rapidly fade. It has always been the case that while doing math, even simple arithmetic when he’d been a child, Jerald has forgotten the ordinary anxieties of his life; he forgets even his mother whose pride has kept him leashed close to her, in an old dispute (about which Jerald knows little) with the man said to be his father.

  The location of Jerald’s father is not clear. Not even the man’s exact name is known to Jerald for it is (evidently) not Tabor—this is the maiden name of Imogene’s mother. It has not (yet) occurred to Jerald to question his mother who has assured him that his father has cut off all ties with them and is so remote from them as to inhabit another “galaxy.”

  Sometimes his mother’s pinched mouth refuses to utter so much, the unspoken words become a din like nocturnal insects in the dry heat of summer that keep Jerald awake at night.

  But the calculus-world is another world. It is both distant and contiguous with this world, into which Jerald can pass like a child stepping through a transparent wall.

  “HELLO. IS IT—JERALD?”

  He has not eased away in time. Saw Owl Eyes approaching him on the walkway after class and now too late.

  It has always been painful to Jerald, to give pain to another. To seem to be, still less to be, discourteous to any adult.

  So, now. Trapped.

  “I think we know each other? At least, I know you—‘Jerald Kovacs’—”

  The stranger speaks with a faint accent and with an air both hesitant and eager. Such yearning in the voice, Jerald wants to flee.

  He is not at ease with the emotions of others particularly adults. It is frightening to him to be responsible.

  “Not ‘Kovacs’?—has your mother changed your name?”

  Changed his name? He has no idea. The possibility has never occurred to him.

  Shyly shaking his head no. For indeed—literally—with the unyielding logic of the computer—Jerald Kovacs is not his name.

  Owl Eyes seems not to register no and steps nearer. Owl Eyes risks a smile.

  A hot midsummer afternoon yet the owl-eyed man is wearing a brown cloth jacket with pleats and buttons, over a white cotton shirt. His trousers are of a texture too heavy for summer. On his feet are leather sandals that expose waxy-white toes with gnarled and discolored toenails.

  “But it is ‘Jerald’—isn’t it?”

  Jerald ducks away vaguely shaking his head. It is not like him to be rude but he has panicked, he must escape.

  Hears Owl Eyes call after him—“Jerald? Wait, please . . .”

  No no no.

  On lanky-long legs near-running. His heart is a frantic fluttering in his chest like a trapped bird.

  THE STRANGER SEEMS to know him: Jerald.

/>   He is Jerald. He is not ever Jerry.

  He is a shy boy but he is also a vain boy, he thinks well of himself. He has been taught to think well of himself, that he will not despair of himself.

  You are special, Jerald. You are special to me.

  Many times he has been warned by his mother: do not speak with strangers. Do not let strangers speak with you.

  Yet (he is thinking) his mother would have wished him to behave more courteously with Owl Eyes who might be (Jerald sees this now, with a stab of chagrin) a professor at the University, a person of importance not to be so rudely dismissed.

  Politely might’ve said Sorry sir my name is not Kovacs. That is not my last name.

  Might’ve said Sorry sir but I have to catch a train . . .

  This is how another more responsible boy would have responded, Jerald supposes.

  Another boy, or a girl, his age, approached by an owl-eyed stranger with a faint accent, carrying a briefcase.

  Jerald will tell his mother of course. Jerald’s mother always questions him closely about the University, whom he might have met there or at the train depot.

  It is late afternoon, a waning hour, temperature above ninety degrees on this midsummer day. University undergraduates are wear-ing shorts, torn jeans, T-shirts, sandals. All are older than Jerald and yet they seem younger than he, more carefree, careless, exuberant. Like glittering minnows they move in waves. Their eyes pass through Jerald Tabor for he is invisible.

  It is a comfort to him, to be invisible. That is the promise of the math-world.

  He has slowed his pace. No need to run!

  What time is it?—only 4:35 P.M.

  His train home doesn’t leave until 5:16 P.M. He hopes that the owl-eyed stranger will not follow him to the train depot for (he believes) he’d seen the man there at least once . . .

  The train arrives at the University depot at 5:12 P.M. and departs just four minutes later but Jerald always boards well before this. These precise times Jerald’s mother wrote down for him but of course Jerald has no need to consult her notes for Jerald memorized them immediately, it is no effort for Jerald to memorize even complicated notations and Jerald is very anxious about arrivals and departures, away and home.

  By a circuitous route—(in case Owl Eyes is following him after all)—Jerald arrives at the depot nearly a half hour early.

  Few passengers here at this time. No one who looks familiar.

  No one who glances at him with more than passing interest.

  Jerald has his ticket purchased that morning by his mother. Several times he checks the ticket in his wallet just to make sure.

  Jerald’s stop is the first stop. Soon he will be home.

  What can go wrong? Nothing can go wrong.

  His mother will be awaiting him at the depot. His mother will probably be in her car, awaiting his train. He will see the car first. He will feel a stab of comfort seeing the gunmetal-gray compact car awaiting him.

  Comfort in this knowledge certain as mathematical certainty, or almost.

  Awaiting the 5:12 P.M. arrival Jerald sits on a bench at the farthest end of the platform facing the track where no one is likely to approach him. His iPad is open, he has lost himself in the calculus-world where no one can follow him and no one is named.

  JERALD’S MOTHER HAS SAID she’d left the university world just in time.

  Escaped with my life.

  Jerald has asked few questions of his mother for it is not very real to him, a time before his birth. A time before his mother was his mother is neither comprehensible nor desirable to contemplate.

  Jerald understands that his mother “works”—as other adults “work”—but Jerald knows little of the nature of her work and has not been encouraged to ask about it.

  Nine to five, five days a week, a routine job in an office, a job requiring little thinking and little decision-making for she’d Put all that behind me when I’d lost my nerve.

  Nerve is what you need for a certain sort of life. But one day she’d had enough, she said. At the prestigious university in another state.

  No more books, no more thinking. Not the kind of thinking that requires nerve.

  Jerald’s mother had vacated her small office shared with several others. She’d set out on a table armloads of books with a sign FREE BOOKS PLEASE TAKE! Psychology, computer science, math, economics, analytic philosophy, biology, even art history. These books had caused her to think too much, and had made her sick.

  Essentially it was whatever was inside the books that had made her sick. Prying open such books with your fingers, trying to read, underline, comprehend and assimilate—what a risk! Like biting into a sandwich in which there is broken glass. Or something poison. Rotted.

  When Jerald’s mother thought obsessively (she’d told Jerald) she had trouble breathing. Trouble sleeping. Strangers “tramped” through her dreams. The solution (obviously) was to give away the toxic books that had once meant so much to her when she’d been young, hopeful, and stupid.

  It was not like Jerald’s mother to speak like this to him. Afterward Jerald (who was twelve at the time) would find it difficult to believe that his mother had ever spoken so openly about her personal life, and at such length.

  She’d described how she hated that the books began with particular sentences which excluded all other sentences. This made the books incomplete. What was incomplete was a lie. What was a lie was an insult. What was an insult would do harm, like a wound.

  The solution was to give away all that tied her to her old self, to cut her ties with the past and make a new life.

  There was no information about the father. Or about other men who (Jerald very vaguely recalls) had appeared sometimes in their home and at mealtimes.

  Shyly Jerald had asked about father. He had not said my father but rather was there a father?—in a voice so soft his mother seemed scarcely to have heard.

  If a man appeared in his mother’s life, and if a man disappeared out of his mother’s life, there was no available information. There was no language, only just silence.

  It is very easy to forget silence.

  Yet Jerald’s mother has kept a few books from that long-ago time before his birth. Mostly paperbacks, textbooks. Surreptitiously Jerald has perused them in the damp basement of their house. He’d been younger then, no more than nine or ten, curious. He had not yet imagined that curiosity might be wounding.

  In one of the textbooks he’d seen a passage outlined in yellow marker—

  Life on earth is believed to have evolved from a single primitive species, a self-replicating molecule that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago. The agent for evolution is natural selection.

  Numerically, he understood billion, as he understood million. But in no actual way.

  He’d asked his mother what billion meant. With a quick smile she’d drawn a graph on a sheet of paper in which one half-inch represented 100,000 years and so 1,000,000,000 would leap off the page and onto the wall, around the corner and onto the hallway wall. Jerald’s mother laughed at the child’s perplexed face.

  “Of course you can’t imagine, silly. No one can.”

  JERALD DOES NOT tell his mother about the owl-eyed man who has (mis)identified him as Jerald Kovacs. Jerald will keep a watch at the University and try to avoid Owl Eyes.

  He had not liked Owl Eyes saying your mother.

  What right had a stranger to say those words—your mother!

  It is understood that Jerald tells his mother everything—or nearly. Not about his math classes which have become too abstruse for her to follow but other, easier classes, and always about people, adults and classmates, who have “interacted” with him. But Jerald has no intention of telling her about Owl Eyes because (he believes) she will become upset, agitated and (possibly) report Owl Eyes to University authorities.

  A stranger has made unwanted advances to my son who is only fifteen years old . . .

  Jerald’s mother has access to his computer, his iPad
. Not a nook or a sliding panel or a shadowy crack in Jerald’s life is inaccessible to his mother though (in fact) (so far as he knows) his mother does not often investigate his online activities which are math- and science-related almost exclusively.

  Jerald’s mother is not jealous of others in Jerald’s life—(classmates, friends)—for there are no others.

  It’s a paradox, she has said. Pronouncing the word with care—paradox.

  Nothing matters except family—the bond of mother and son. This tie will prevail when all other ties fail.

  Yet, all that is merely personal in life is transient and of little intrinsic worth. Jerald’s mother is enough of a scientist/mathematician to understand this.

  “You will live in both worlds, Jerald. No matter how far you go in the math-world you will always return to your mother.”

  “AFRAID YOU’RE ON THE WRONG TRAIN, son.”

  These words most dreaded by Jerald Tabor.

  He has given his ticket to the conductor as usual but this time the conductor frowns at it for there has been an error, it is Jerald’s error, in an instant Jerald breaks into a clammy sweat and is rendered helpless.

  Seeing the stricken look in Jerald’s face the conductor takes pity on him and explains that the train he has boarded is an earlier train running seventy minutes late due to a breakdown and the train he should have boarded is running just four minutes late.

  And so it has happened that Jerald boarded the train at the correct time but the train he boarded was not the correct train.

  Fortunately the conductor assures Jerald that the train he is on is stopping at the University in any case.

  “I can accept your ticket, son. But just for your information—you are on the wrong train.”

  Jerald murmurs thanks. He is weak with relief.

  As the conductor moves away Jerald feels a wave of shock, that his mother should have been so careless, and failed to protect him. Very easily it might have happened that Jerald had boarded a train that would take him far from the University, to a distant place . . . She’d driven him to the depot that morning as usual and had taken it for granted that the train that pulled beside the platform at the “right” time was the train Jerald should have been taking.