Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The mother stares at the screen, perplexed. Again, she is so agitated she has difficulty seeing.

  “I—I think that might be us. Though that doesn’t actually look like us. Especially me . . . That isn’t me. But the boy resembles Oliver. Oh—I just don’t know.”

  The recorded time, noted on the screen, is 12:25 P.M.

  The head of Museum security is very sympathetic with the mother. He rewinds the videotape, replays it. The mother stares avidly, as a starving person might stare at (a representation of) food, imagining it in three dimensions, smelling it. She is thinking how human beings recorded by such cameras are diminished, soulless. Flattened and distended like sea creatures of so little consequence they would not require names. Their limbs grow stubby, flaccid. Their faces are melting like wet tissue. It is particularly curious that on some of the screens you can distinguish adults from children only by height, and even that is not a reliable measure.

  The mother demands that she be allowed to enter the Labyrinth, that a security officer escort her, that they find Oliver, immediately. She is excited, her voice rises. Calmly it is pointed out to her that the boy has not been in the maze very long, by their calculation less than ten minutes, and that, if he is making his way through the maze as the brighter children do, he will need at least forty or fifty minutes to complete it.

  “You don’t want to disappoint your son, ma’am. He may make excellent time and be a top-ranked pilgrim posted on our website. Why don’t you wait here in our security office for a few minutes at least, before we enter the Labyrinth and create a commotion? Maybe your ‘Oliver’ will show up on camera, at the exit.”

  The mother is about to burst into tears—No! You are lying to me. Something terrible has happened to my son, I want to see him at once.

  But hears herself saying weakly yes, all right. Suppose that is sensible. Probably the child in the video was Oliver, though the woman did not much resemble her, the mother, in which case if Oliver entered the Labyrinth at 12:25 P.M., it is only 12:38 P.M., and not much time has passed.

  Many hours have passed. The mother is exhausted, her bones melting like wet tissue.

  “Why don’t you have a seat, ma’am. Try to relax. We will watch the camera trained on the Labyrinth exit, and see when your son emerges. And we will station a guard there, to bring him immediately to you. Shall I get you a coffee from our café?”

  9.

  In the Labyrinth there is no time. There are many times.

  The child is beginning to suspect that each time he chooses a fork in the path he is choosing a time that does not “differ from” but has no relationship at all to other times. His experience in the Labyrinth is not (he supposes) synchronous with the time preceding his entry, which has continued in his absence, nor with the time in which (he supposes, guiltily) his mother is now looking for him.

  Beginning to appreciate the ingenuity of the Labyrinth, which is more properly described as a Labyrinth of Infinitely Receding Triangles.

  For when the child makes a choice—left, middle, right—right, right-middle, left-middle, left—there is the alternative child-self who takes alternative paths. And each of these selves has engendered, or will engender, alternative selves.

  Already the (defiant) child is lost to the (overly-trusting) mother. As soon as he’d stepped into the Labyrinth loss suffused them each like a smell of brackish water.

  In the Zone, the child has been alone. The friendly black German shepherd dog has yet to appear.

  And then, at a subsequent fork of the path, the child is greeted by the friendly black German shepherd dog!

  Delighted, with childish relief. The child takes a seat in front of the German shepherd who is (obviously, the child can see this) a robot, though a very realistic-looking dog. The child pets the dog, wanting to think that the stiff synthetic fur is actual fur, coarse from the brackish pools. The tawny-golden eyes shine.

  The child is invited by the Friendly Dog to participate in an interactive game. Your Fractal Twin.

  Though the Friendly Dog is a “dog” he/it is also more essentially a mirror of the child.

  Oliver laughs, the Friendly Dog has made him very happy. Though he is eleven years old and not a young child yet he is not thinking so clearly now, to be made very happy by the Friendly Dog, and to trust the Friendly Dog when (he can see) the Friendly Dog is but the carapace of a machine that has (probably) not been programmed in the child’s best interest.

  Sierpinski triangles within triangles. Oliver tries to calculate how far inside the Labyrinth he actually is, how many triangles in. Five? Six? More? He’d intended to navigate the maze by reverting always toward the center but has been distracted in the Zone.

  Begin with any key.

  Oliver strikes the return key. On the screen instructions appear. These, he follows. Questions appear, he answers. Almost Oliver laughs, the game is not so difficult as he’d expected.

  Strike any key. For all keys are a single key and no single key matters.

  Oliver hesitates. Which key to strike? But of course, it does not matter—all keys, like all doors, lead to the same place.

  Oliver strikes the letter O, as a capital. For O. means Oliver.

  In that instant the Friendly Dog reaches out in a swift unerring gesture of a foreleg, seizes the child by his upper body and with a powerful wrenching snaps the child’s upper spine and neck, as one might snap the vertebrae of any small mammal. There is no resistance, the child had no idea what was coming, and in the next instance the child ceases to exist.

  The small limp body lies broken on the floor. Still warm, though no longer breathing, within seconds it is liquefied. Through vents in the wall a vacuum sucks the remains away and within thirty seconds nothing remains of the child except shreds of clothing, pieces of a sneaker, a glaring-white fragment of bone. A smashed iPad.

  By the time the next pilgrim/subject takes a turn in the path, and discovers the Friendly Dog, these pieces of debris too have vanished.

  10.

  It is 12:47 P.M. The anxious mother has returned to the entrance of the Labyrinth and is making a spectacle of herself, as visitors to the Museum look on gravely.

  Demanding again to be taken into the Labyrinth by Museum officials. Threatening to call the police.

  But is she absolutely certain that her child entered the Labyrinth?

  Yes, she is certain. Yes!

  Doubt is being raised. Witnesses have been discovered who do not agree with the mother’s charges. A Museum guard says that he’d seen the mother with a small boy, a “sweet-faced, shy” boy with eyeglasses and a school hoodie, but not in the vicinity of the Labyrinth: in the Museum café.

  A middle-aged man whom the woman is certain she has never seen before steps forward to volunteer that he’d definitely seen a “red-haired boy, a little mischievous scamp, ten or eleven years old” playing the Fractal Topology video game—but that had been on the first floor of the Museum, at least two hours before.

  Weakly the mother protests, that could not have been Oliver. There is only one Oliver, and he must be in the Labyrinth, except the Museum officials won’t allow her to look for him, she will have no choice but to go to the police . . .

  Rehearsing how she will plead with the father—Our son has disappeared. I have lost him. Forgive me, our son is lost in the Fractal Museum.

  11.

  “Ma’am.”

  A kind person is pressing damp towels against her forehead. She has no idea what she looks like. In the security video her features seem to have melted, her face is a blur. She is of an unknown age: somewhere between twenty and forty. But no, she has not been twenty in a long time. Her hair is faded-red, possibly it is laced prematurely with silver. Her skin is drained of blood, the redhead’s pallor, an Irish complexion perhaps, freckles like splotches of rust-tinged water.

  “I don’t know why I am here. I’m not sure where I am. Though I have been drawn to—fractals.”

  This is hardly true. She isn’t su
re what fractals are. Something to do with—math? physics? computers?

  “. . . mixed up with black holes. Gravity—events.”

  She has been a wife, and a mother. She has wrestled with the conundrum: inside the laundry dryer which is a (finite) space, how can articles of clothing disappear?

  If a pair of socks disappears, you do not notice. Only when one sock disappears do you notice. So possibly there are more disappearances than are perceived.

  In the black hole, gravity sucks light inside. You must imagine for you can’t actually experience or measure non-being. Indeed, the universe may be mostly non-being.

  She is feeling better. She has forgotten what it is she has forgotten.

  Amnesia! It is a rare malaise of the spirit that amnesia cannot heal.

  Strangers are whispering about her. She is both anxious to leave and yet reluctant to leave. She is desperate to flee this place of confinement yet she is wary of being excluded, expelled. She knows: if you exit the Museum, there is NO RE-ENTRY.

  She has come to loathe and fear the atmosphere of the Fractal Museum which is a constant murmur of fans, air vents, machines. A constant murmur of voices. Children’s complaints, small ticking sounds like the manic heartbeats of crickets.

  She hears too acutely. All of her senses are too acute.

  Needs a tissue. Her nose is running, eyes leaking.

  In the tote bag are receipts for many (old, recent) purchases. Two tickets to the Fractal Museum. Adult, child.

  Obviously a receipt for two tickets must belong to someone else for she’d come to the Museum alone. Must’ve fluttered into her tote bag or been given to her by mistake. She crumples the receipt and sets it aside as if it were an annoyance.

  “Are you feeling better, ma’am? You are looking a little better—not so pale. Still, we should call an ambulance . . .”

  “Please don’t call an ambulance!” Suddenly she is begging.

  She will not sue the Museum, she promises. Oh please!

  Can’t imagine why she is here. Whatever this place is.

  It is explained to her that she is approximately two hundred and fifty miles from her home. If indeed she has come from New Haven, Connecticut, which her driver’s license indicates is her home, as it has indicated that her name is Amanda.

  Directions to her address by car have been printed out for her by the kindly Museum staff. (As if, having gotten to the Fractal Museum, she could not simply reverse her route, to return home!)

  But she is polite. She is a polite person. Trained to be polite, and by nature polite. Thanking the Museum people. The woman with the Pritt badge. Courteous Museum guards. Individuals practiced in dealing with hysterical visitors. Mothers who have lost their children. Adults who have lost their elderly parents in the Fractal Museum. Husbands who have lost their wives. Miscarriages?

  A stillborn baby is not a fetus. A fetus is not a baby. A fetus has no history.

  They have been very kind: they have brought her to this warm, interior room where it is quiet. She can lie undisturbed on a sofa, she can rest. For if she tries to stand too quickly the blood will drain from her head, and she will faint. It is an effort to keep her eyes open.

  Gradually she becomes aware of something strange about the room. The walls. On all sides, walls that are not covered in wallpaper, or with a coat of paint, but rather with something like—could it be skin? Soft-leather skin like the skin of a (not-yet-born) creature.

  Exuding an air of warmth. Blood-warmth. Thinnest of membranes, lightly freckled.

  “Ma’am?”—smiling M.W. Pritt stands before her with tawny shining eyes, offering a very black cup of coffee from the Museum café.

  12.

  Days dark as Norwegian nights. Rain pelting against windows, rushing down drainpipes. The husband away and the wife, the mother, at home with the baby cuddled in her arms. Both naked.

  Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood.

  Before the birth, cells from the embryo made their way through the placenta into the very marrow of the mother’s bone. After the birth, cells remain in the mother that might one day be required for the restoration of the mother’s health.

  How happy she is! Suffused with joy.

  He’d told her no. That is, he’d told her yes.

  PREGANNT.

  No: pregnent

  No: pregnant.

  Her tongue was numb. Her tongue had become a desiccated old sponge. Her tongue could not manage speech.

  “Amanda, what did you say?—preee—”

  Fear. Wariness. Caution. The (instinctive) male response.

  They’d made their (his) decision. Well, it was hers (his), too.

  Will you love me, she’d asked.

  Will you love me.

  He took her to the Clinic. Of course—he’d driven.

  Waited with her. Held her hand. He’d brought work to do. He always brought work. His eyes danced with work. His soul festered with work.

  He was/was not the father. Yet.

  At that age, has the fetus a soul? No.

  The correct term is not “age”—I think. The terminology is weeks: how many.

  The crucial thing is, you don’t name them before birth. That is not a good idea.

  Primitive people often do not name babies/children until they are several years old. So that if they die, the loss is not so great.

  An unnamed child is not mourned as a “named” child would be mourned?

  Her name was called. A name was called, beginning with A.

  A was unsteady on her feet for they’d provided her with a round white pill and she had not slept the previous night nor many previous nights lapping leaden against a hard-packed shore. Her companion who was/was not the father walked with her to the door gripping her icy hand and his eyes were damp with tears hot and hurtful as acid. Asking her yet another time if she was all right and what could she say but yes of course.

  Stumbling back to his chair in the waiting room. He would wait, how long. The actual surgical procedure was not more than a few minutes. They knew: they’d researched the procedure. They were the type to (carefully, exhaustively) research all things that touched upon their lives which challenged their control.

  Prep took a while. Anesthetic is recommended. Absolutely. Cervix is forced open wide with a speculum, very tender, interior of the body, best to be numb, asleep. Suction.

  Oh Peter—I took a tranqizziler. Feels so funny . . .

  Tran-lil-lizzer?

  On the gurney, legs spread. Shoes off, in stocking feet. Naked from the waist down. Very cold, shaking. OK to keep the bra on. Otherwise, naked. Paper smock, pale green like crepe paper.

  This will pinch a little. Hey—that vein just wriggled away . . . .

  . . . small veins. Maybe use a children’s needle . . .

  . . . will take twice as long. Let me try.

  Suction. Suck-tion. It did not hurt, she was miles away. If there was hurt in the room it was not hers. Head was a balloon bobbing against the ceiling. Heels pressed hard against stirrups.

  The vacuum sucked thirstily. The gluey remains vanished.

  In the other room the distracted father was logging into his laptop.

  Password, invalid. What the hell?—he types it again, alarmed. This time the screen comes alive.

  In another story, the son hopes to be an architect.

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

  13.

  “Ma’am? You are looking as if you have lost something.”

  Yes, she has. She has lost something. She laughs awkwardly for she isn’t sure what.

  Is it so obvious—the terrible loss in her face?

  The uniformed woman is smiling at her. A smile stitched into the face. M.W. Pritt is the name on the plastic badge.

  “He was just here with me, a few minutes ago. He—I think—went into the Labyrinth . . . I suppose he must still be in the Labyrinth.”

  It had been a child. Or, an elderly white-haired gentleman with kindly eyes
that would not engage with hers.

  Uncertainly Amanda speaks, almost apologetically. Her heart is beating rapidly as if hoping to outrun her anxious thoughts.

  He is gone gone gone. You have lost lost lost him. You are damned damned damned and this is hell hell hell.

  “Ma’am—‘Amanda’—I’m sure that I saw you come into the Museum about an hour ago, and I’m very certain you were alone. In fact you’d come into the Museum at the same time another woman came in, a woman of about your age, who had several children with her, and I’d thought at first that you were together, friends who’d brought their children to the Museum together. But that wasn’t the case, evidently. You were alone. You are alone. You bought your ticket and you made an awkward joke about the tickets being expensive—‘for such an obscure museum.’ And our ticket seller Mary Margaret said: ‘Distances are deceiving in the Museum, ma’am. Visitors are often surprised.’ For some reason, you laughed at Mary Margaret’s remark.”

  It might be her passport Amanda was afraid of losing. Many of her dreams are of losing her passport in a foreign country where she doesn’t know the language. Often she’d lose her plane ticket as well.

  “But—this isn’t a foreign country, thank God!”

  Laughing nervously. M.W. Pritt in boxy jacket and pleated skirt, bosom hard as armor, regards her with something beyond pity but does not join in her laughter.

  “There are many variants of ‘foreign,’ Amanda. Some people are surprised to learn.”

  And: “I don’t think you quite realized why you were laughing, Amanda. Sometimes it’s better to think before you laugh.”

  That is certainly correct. Amanda has no idea why she’d laughed that morning purchasing a single, overpriced ticket for the Fractal Museum in Portland, Maine.

  14.

  After the Fractal Museum she will drive to Prouts Neck at the shore, to hike along the beach in a swirl of icy froth. The Atlantic has been whipped to savagery by rushing winds on this November afternoon. Scarcely is it possible to imagine another season, a warmer light—waves peacefully lapping to shore, expelling foam like harmless tongues lolling on the beach.