Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The mother looked on, fascinated. The child seemed to be in a trance, exuding an air of feverish intensity.

  The mother wondered—What is he doing? Is he—“taking possession” of what he draws?

  Concentrating on visual images the child was late in speaking. But when Oliver did begin to speak it was in phrases and not in single, monosyllabic words like the speech of most toddlers; soon too, his vocabulary flourished with such words as design, wish, depending-upon, accelerating.

  For a brief while, when he’d been very young, Oliver had been captivated by the word other.

  For what did other mean, really? When you pondered upon it.

  Other was not-this, and (possibly) that. Or (possibly) not-that.

  Other other other other.

  Once, he’d screamed and laughed—Oth-er! The mother had been alone with him at the time and had felt a moment’s faintness, the child was mad.

  But of course, the moment passed. Such moments pass.

  One thing was clear, the child was indeed other.

  And then one day the child (who was an inquisitive child but not as other children are inquisitive, rather as adults are inquisitive, “nosing” about a household) discovered in a storage closet the architect’s plans for the house in which the family lived, that had been built forty years before. It was a stucco, stone, and glass house constructed in a style made popular by Frank Lloyd Wright in an earlier era, though not so starkly beautiful as any house by the great architect, rather more resembling an upscale American “ranch” house. The child was excited by the architect’s plans which he’d examined with a magnifying glass and copied in colored pencils on tissue-thin sheets of paper. This became his play, his preoccupation. Soon he believed he’d discovered a secret passageway in the basement—a kind of large cupboard or crawl space opening from an obscure corner of the room. This, to the mother’s distress, he insisted upon exploring with a flashlight and emerged covered in cobwebs and blinking his eyes like a nocturnal creature thrust too rapidly into the light.

  Other parts of the house too, the child determined to be “secret.” A ghostly doorway in a corridor, a passageway of only six inches width inside a wall. You could not see these features of the house with just your eyes; you could only discover their existence through examining the architect’s plans, which were unfortunately now badly faded and creased. “But what are you seeing, Oliver?”—the mother would ask; and Oliver would direct her to look through the magnifying glass at the sketch of a door, or a passageway, or a “false ceiling” in the house plans which he’d discovered.

  But why is it so important?—the mother wondered. Is this some other—world?

  Neither she nor the father could comprehend the child’s preoccupation with this sort of “architecture.” Neither had troubled to glance at the architect’s plans and had long forgotten their existence. The house they’d purchased was the physical house and not the architect’s plan of a house that did not exist except on paper. At the closing they’d been given the architect’s plans in a folder that tied with a ribbon, as if it were a precious document; but neither had untied the ribbon.

  Twelve years later the child discovered the folder in the closet, which intensified his wish to become, one day, an architect.

  For each house designed by an architect, Oliver explained, was actually two houses: the one people lived in, and were meant to see; and the other, which they were not meant to see but which was preserved in the architect’s plans.

  This remark left the parents baffled. What on earth did their son mean?

  Whatever, it was not the sum of his words. For they repeated his words to each other, and were not illuminated.

  “What interests you about being an architect, Oliver?”—relatives asked the little boy, not sure whether they should be amused by him, or somewhat alarmed by his precocity, which marked him as very different from their own children; and Oliver said in a shy murmur that he wanted to draw “special houses,” which only an architect could draw.

  “The architect is the one looking down, and in.”

  In the child’s room there came to be an accumulation of books, glossy magazines. No design of any house or building that included detailed floor plans failed to captivate him. His favorite architects were Gaudi, Kahn, Wright, Graves, Gehry. There came to be a new word in his vocabulary—deconstruction. (The [controversial, disorienting] architecture of Gehry.) His many pencil drawings were of houses that did not (yet) exist. And he continued to draw plans of the family house with “special”—“invisible”—features added.

  It was bittersweet for the mother, to see in the child some of her own, inchoate yearnings. She’d tried to paint in her early twenties but had lacked confidence. Luminous visions in her head were crudely parodied by brushstrokes on canvas. She’d come too late for “figurative” art—too late for “abstract” art—too late for “pop” art and “conceptual” art. The child had no awareness of art as history, it was all one to him, present tense. He had no concern for being belated. The mother was thrilled by the child’s skill at drawing though he rarely drew figures (animals, people) as other children tried to do; his obsession was with the interiors of buildings, the skeletal outlines of material things, which never seemed to bore him. If human figures appeared in Oliver’s drawings they were positioned for practical reasons of scale, and had no identities.

  Oliver acquired notebooks, and made sketches of the interiors of places he visited, the homes of relatives and friends, transcribing what he saw (which was not likely to be what others “saw”) as others chattered around him. And then, he might point out to the homeowners some oddity, some imbalance or error in the architecture of their house with the suggestion that a door, a window, a staircase was in the wrong place, a ceiling too low or too high, a room too small or too large, and should be “rebuilt.”

  A wall should be removed—“It is blocking the spirit of the house.”

  A roof should be raised—“The house wants to be taller.”

  Such suggestions were met with blank faces, incomprehension or annoyance. “Well! Thank you, Oliver.”

  Or, the child would say nothing to the homeowners but remark to the parents on their way home that something had happened in the house that had left its (“invisible”) mark, which was evident (“visible”) only in his sketching.

  Did they see what he meant?—Oliver would try to show them in his sketches of the house; but the parents could never see.

  Easier to dismiss the child’s notions as play, imagination.

  It was also Oliver’s belief, explained to the bemused parents, that there were places (homes, school) in which the texture of the very air might become “denser” depending upon what was happening, or not happening: a “boring” space (school classroom, for instance) became a “dense” space requiring literally more effort to endure, thus literally more time to endure than if it were not boring. The equation for this phenomenon was

  T (time) = D (density) × E (effort)

  Oliver’s father laughed saying of course, it was common knowledge, emotions affect our experience of time; boredom makes time seem to pass slowly, as in an excruciatingly dull lecture on torts, while a pleasurable time may seem to end too soon. But the child frowned, saying with an air of rebuke that he did not mean that.

  Nothing so obvious, so commonplace as that.

  With infinite patience, over a period of months, Oliver copied the architect’s plans for the family house, until he could draw them without consulting the original. Then he began to experiment with additions of his own introduced into the drawings, that seemed to have the effect of altering features of the house.

  The mother began to notice that the house “felt” different, in some rooms; its ceilings were at unexpected angles or its floors slanted; its windows appeared to be smaller, or larger, or unexpectedly shaped; through glass panes the exterior world looked different even as it was (evidently) unchanged. The very air in certain parts of the house seemed “d
enser”—exuding a faint, sepia cast—than it had been even as in other parts of the house the air seemed lighter, purer.

  Were these changes the consequence of the child’s alterations to the house plans, or had the child perceived discrepancies in the house in which the family had been living obliviously, which his attentions had made evident? Had the strangeness in the house been but implicit previously, and was now explicit?

  The mother wondered if, gazing at her, the child might see something in her, in her (invisible) soul, unknown to her, unfathomable.

  Feeling a wave of something like panic, fear. That the child who was her child yet might acquire a perspective from which he could view her as dispassionately as he viewed the interiors of houses.

  One day Oliver asked the mother to participate in an experiment he called the “Zone of Invisibility.” This involved the mother waiting in the hall outside his room and knocking on his door several times; each time she knocked, if he answered No! she was not to come inside, but just to wait a few minutes and then knock again; only when the mother knocked and received no answer was she to open the door, and come inside.

  These instructions the mother followed, at least initially. It was not often the boy requested anything from her, let alone her involvement in his life, or rather in the life of his architectural imaginings, that were usually kept private and secret, and certainly not shared with the father. But after she’d knocked on his door several times she couldn’t determine whether she heard the boy’s voice, or just imagined it, and so she opened the door impulsively—discovering that Oliver wasn’t in the room after all, so far as she could see.

  “Oliver? Where are you?”—the mother tried not to sound alarmed.

  It was some sort of game, she supposed. Though the child had never cared for children’s games like hide-and-seek.

  The child had never cared for pranks. His play was serious play, and not ever a waste of his time.

  “Oliver? Oli-ver?” The mother looked in the child’s closet, and stooped to peer beneath the child’s bed, and even lifted the comforter on the bed though (certainly) she could see that no child was lying flattened beneath it and hiding from her.

  “Oliver?—where on earth . . .”

  She had to laugh, if nervously. The child was (certainly) in the room somewhere.

  There were two windows in the child’s room but these were shut tight, locked. If Oliver had crawled through a window to jump down to the ground outside he could not have shut the window behind him, still less locked it.

  Not that Oliver would have played so crude a trick on the mother. He was far too fastidious for such behavior.

  “Oliver! This isn’t funny . . .”

  Was it possible, the child had the power to create, somehow, an actual Zone of Invisibility in his room? But what did this even mean? A kind of hypnosis, a mirage that obscured the mother’s vision so that Oliver might be actually present, but she could not see him?

  “Oliver? I—I don’t like this. It isn’t . . .”

  How could it be, Oliver seemed to have vanished in his own room? That was not possible.

  Desperately the mother yanked open drawers in the child’s Maplewood bureau, as if Oliver could have squeezed inside one of these and shut the drawer upon himself!

  The mother took note of light fixtures in the ceiling. These were of ordinary dimensions yet the mother found herself wondering fantastically if the child had somehow shrunken himself to a miniature size, to hide inside one of these?

  It was not likely, and yet—the proof of Invisibility seemed to be that the child had become not-visible.

  Nor did the mother sense the child. Surely a mother would sense her child, if he were present . . .

  As, years ago, the mother had felt her hard-swollen breasts ache with milk, hearing the infant begin to whimper, in another room.

  How brainless she’d been, in those (happy, unquestioning) days! Like a creature with its head cut off, sheer instinct, breasts and womb, female body.

  However, it had not lasted. The fever-trance of motherhood had lifted, faded. Now and then she yearned for its return as one might yearn for ether, a fat thumb to suck in one’s mouth.

  But no, the prospect filled her now with revulsion. Really, the mother was eleven years beyond that stage in her life and did not want its return.

  Of course, the parents spoke vaguely, smilingly, of another child. In conversation with others, especially relatives, they were prone to say how nice it would be, how ideal, if Oliver had a baby sister. He is too much the center of our lives, that is not good for him or for us.

  Once upon a time, a man and a woman had as many children as God sent them. That is, the woman had as many children as God directed the husband to afflict upon her.

  There was no refusal. Not of the man, and not of a woman’s task.

  “Oliver? Please don’t scare me, honey . . .”

  A spell of vertigo overcame her brain. Sat down hard on the child-sized bed, that yielded to her weight. The wild thought came to her that cunning Oliver had attached himself monkey-like to the box springs below the mattress and was hiding beneath the bed but not on the floor, so she’d failed to see him . . . But when she knelt panting to peer beneath the bed another time, of course there was no one.

  A world without the child. A world depleted of the child.

  The child who held the marriage together like cartilage in the (shared) spine of conjoined identical twins.

  “Oliver! P-Please . . .”

  Realizing that she lived for those moments when Oliver was (again) hers. When the child would smile spontaneously at her.

  It could not be, that this vivid presence might vanish from the world. As you’d switch off a lamp and be plunged into darkness.

  But then, suddenly: “Mom? Hi.”

  Out of nowhere the child appeared. Behind her, on the farther side of the bed.

  Smiling at the astonished mother, pleased and excited. The experiment had been a greater success than he’d expected.

  “Oh, Oliver! You frightened me . . .”

  She would chide the beaming child, she would strike her hands together in a display of motherly exasperation, but also motherly pride, vanity. He’d been naughty, hiding from her; but he’d been very clever too, for he had fooled her utterly, because he was such a clever child.

  Quite the most clever child she had ever encountered.

  She embraced him, kissed his fevered forehead. Later she would think—He must have been hiding in the closet. Of course.

  3.

  “Oh, Oliver. Oh no.”

  The Fractal Museum was closed! Closed Saturdays and Sundays, November through April.

  What a disappointment! All the way to a desolate interstate exit on the northern outskirts of Portland, Maine—to discover the damned museum closed . . .

  The website that had posted Saturday and Sundays as open had not been updated since September—that was the explanation. The child could not be blamed but the mother blamed herself: why hadn’t she telephoned ahead, just to make sure the Fractal Museum really was open?

  It is the off-season now in Maine.

  But there is a good side to the disappointment: more time to explore the beautiful Atlantic coast a short drive away. Walking with the son, just the two of them. Rare for the mother and Oliver to be alone together in a place like this.

  Arm in arm, when the walking is treacherous. Rocks, boulders. Crashing surf. She will take pictures of the rocky coast, white-capped frothing waves pounding against the shore at Prouts Neck, that Winslow Homer depicted in his extraordinary drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings.

  They will visit the Winslow Homer Studio at Scarborough, which is on the way home.

  Out of a kind of shyness the mother has never told the child about her love of art and her hope to be an artist, before his birth. Her awe at the work of Winslow Homer in particular. She is excited now at the prospect of sharing Winslow Homer with him . . .

  4.
/>   In fact, the Fractal Museum is open. It is a Saturday morning, and the Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays: the website was correct after all.

  Thank God! Oliver would have been disappointed, sullen and sulky. The mother would have had to find some other quasi-intellectual diversion for him, museum or otherwise, in Portland, before daring to suggest walking along the coast at Prouts Neck or stopping at the Winslow Homer Studio in Scarborough.

  “Well—here we are!”—for her own sake as well as the boy’s the mother is trying to sound upbeat, cheerful.

  It is rare for Oliver to scramble out of a vehicle so eagerly. Usually he is scarcely aware of having arrived at a destination reluctantly looking up from his iPad.

  “Oliver—don’t run.”

  Parking the vehicle the mother feels something like a (ghost) hand pressing against her chest in warning—Go back. This is wrong. It is not too late.

  5.

  You may enter at any door. All doors lead to the same place.

  (The reverse is not true.)

  HOW STRANGE, THE FRACTAL MUSEUM looks as if it is comprised of several buildings, simultaneously!

  Oliver tells the mother no. That is an illusion—“simultaneity.”

  But—what does he mean? The mother is perplexed.

  Politely Oliver explains: “We don’t see all sides of the Fractal Museum simultaneously. We see just one side at a time—the Museum is deliberately constructed so that we ‘see’ what is being presented to us to be seen. It’s ‘fractal architecture’—there are sides of the Museum that appear to us in sequence but our perception is that they are ‘simultaneous.’”

  Adding, as the mother ponders what he has said: “Nothing is ‘simultaneous’ with something else—that’s an optical illusion.”

  Oliver is eager to take pictures of the Fractal Museum. He has been planning this, the mother assumes, for weeks.

  Seen from the front the Fractal Museum appears to be made of some attractive but commonplace material like sandstone, with narrow vertical plate-glass panels in a pattern that repeats itself (one would assume) on all sides of the building; it is foursquare, three stories high, set back from a state highway. Seen in a partially filled asphalt parking lot, and resembles a moderately well-kept medical office building.