Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In cyberspace, this (piteous) declaration was taken at face value. Several Aryan males had written to Elinor seeking to befriend her.

  What is the long-legged girl going to do “next year”—attend dancing classes in Manhattan. Juilliard?

  Maybe it isn’t the husband’s fault entirely. A paradise of bachelors, but a Tartarus of maids. Love is biology, fate. Love is just metabolism. Flesh-eating bacteria in the heart.

  Must mean something that fat and fatal echo each other.

  Fat the essence of fatal.

  Fatal containing fat.

  The wife is facing the long-legged girl, teacup in (shaky) hand. Hoping that the perfect girl does not see the wife’s uneven, bitten, dirt-edged nails, or peer too deeply into the wife’s mildly bloodshot eyes.

  Girls at the college are so wealthy, they make a fetish of dressing shabbily. Faded T-shirts, torn jeans. There are at least a dozen rents in the long-legged girl’s designer jeans. Yet there are unmistakable touches of wealth: the newest smart phones, expensive wristwatches, sports cars. Smiles flashing like scimitars, the gleam of expensive teeth.

  It had become a fad that year, wearing pajamas to class beneath coats. In warm weather, going barefoot.

  “Professor Stockman opened my heart …”

  Professor Stockman opened your legs.

  And what long beautiful legs, smooth as swords. Elinor feels faint imagining them wrapped about the portly, dense-fleshed Victor who frequently smelled of his underarms after he had been at the college too many hours, immersed in his work.

  “… the most wonderful, generous teacher …”

  Most wonderful, generous lecher.

  The wife has to laugh, imagining the husband’s myopic expression while having sex, that prissy frown he directs at the newspaper in the morning most mornings to avoid having conversations with his family.

  Oh, how could the husband have sex. The man is so out of condition he could not execute a single push-up on the floor.

  As if the long-legged girl knows exactly what she is imagining, the wife pauses, coloring faintly. The girl seems to have been moved by her own, inane words. The wife supposes that even spoiled rich girls succumb to emotions now and then, unavoidably.

  Like one wielding a paddle a little too energetically the wife takes up the conversation, causing it to veer off-course.

  “You’re hoping to continue as a dancer, you say? Bound for—New York City? Good that your parents can pay your way. It’s a cruel world, dancing—you’re already too old, I think. If you’re twenty, still less twenty-one, that’s old. You’d have to have a genuine talent to overcome your age but I have to say, I don’t think that you—quite do.”

  Blankly the long-legged girl gapes at her. The wife smiles as you’d smile at a gaping infant in a crib who has not the slightest idea what you are saying to it, so that you can say anything.

  “Of course, you have nerve. Audacity. Dancing the way you did—stomping around half-naked—that takes guts.”

  This is very pleasurable to the wife. Like playing Ping-Pong with a badly handicapped child who can barely grasp the paddle.

  The Bengal tea is very tasty. But so hot, it has slightly scalded the wife’s mouth. It has caused the wife to perspire inside her baggy clothes.

  “When you have your first babies, Tracy,” Elinor says pleasantly, “your figure will slacken, as mine did. You will become flaccid, flabby—you will gain fifty or sixty pounds. That’s the point of the female body—to have babies, and to become flabby. Following which, the normal response of the male is to seek younger victims, I mean females, to impregnate. It’s the way of the world without which there would be no evolution of Homo sapiens.”

  That is not true, precisely. The wife knows better.

  “You are not the only girl, you know. You shouldn’t feel guilt. (You don’t feel guilt? Well, good!) Victor has been a lecher for so long, his girls have become mothers; their offspring could be his grandchildren. And we wonder—will the man have sex with his own grandchildren? The girls, at least? Will he try?”

  What’s-her-name—not Tracy but Stacy—is shocked. The perfect jaw hangs open. The long-legged girl has met her match—and more. Except that she has been trained to be polite to her elders, no-matter-how-slovenly-elders, Stacy would jump up and flee the house on quaintly named Hope Street where her idol Victor Stockman resides with his witch-wife.

  “I—I think that I should leave now, Mrs. S-Stockman …”

  “What an original idea, dear! Yes. I think you are correct.”

  Small comfort in being snide. Small comfort in revenge. But small comfort is all that a betrayed witch can expect.

  Now on her feet the long-legged girl resembles one of those long-legged birds that seem always to be about to teeter, and fall. She is confused, embarrassed. Perhaps (Elinor thinks) Stacy has never been spoken to in quite so blunt frank unabashed a way in her privileged life. Perhaps (Elinor thinks) the lethal potion has begun to course through her delicate veins.

  “Here—this—for Professor S-Stockman …”

  In the tote bag is the gift the long-legged girl is leaving for the Professor who so changed her life. Elinor sees that it is a briefcase or attaché case of some impossibly elegant soft leather with gold trim—Gucci.

  “There’s a c-card inside …”

  The girl speaks softly, apologetically. Lowering her eyes.

  The wife is determined not to register all this chagrin, self-effacement. Briskly she takes the tote bag from the girl: “Thank you, dear. It will mean much to Victor, to add to his collection.”

  “His collection?”

  “Gucci is something of a cliché, as leather-goods gifts from grateful students go. But you couldn’t have known this.”

  “Oh, I—I’m sorry …”

  “Why should you be sorry? You couldn’t have known.”

  The long-legged girl laughs awkwardly. Her face is mottled with the heat of embarrassment, adolescent shame. One of the little valentine-napkins has fallen to the floor and she stoops to pick it up.

  “You can leave now, dear. You have made your point.”

  “Oh. Did I s-say, there’s a card inside …”

  “Yes. You said. Victor will be especially intrigued to read the card.”

  The long-legged girl looks as if she is about to cry. She is a nice girl really. She is much too old to take dance lessons in Manhattan, it is good that someone has been frank enough to tell her. The wife feels a rush of sympathy too late, she has hardened her heart against all long-legged girls.

  Ushering the dazed-looking visitor to the front door, and so out onto the front stoop. So little time has passed since her arrival!—scarcely a half hour.

  An eternity. Never again repeated.

  Behind the window watching the long-legged girl walk away. Not so confident as she’d appeared in previous weeks, months when the wife had sighted her everywhere in the village like an assault of delirium tremens. Does the wife imagine it or is the girl less than steady on those long perfect legs? Is the girl pausing at the end of the walkway, to lean against a post as if drained of energy? The silver-blond hair obscures the pale face, the perfect profile.

  The wife had not realized, the girl had bicycled to Hope Street from the college, a distance of about a mile and a half; there is her smart Italian bicycle propped against the front gate.

  With a wave of guilty excitement Elinor imagines the long-legged bicyclist on Main Street, and on College Avenue where there are trailer-trucks: the bicycle careening, falling. The front wheels turning sharply and the girl losing control, falling in front of a thunderous truck. A terrible scream, and silence. She seemed to lose her balance. The bicycle jackknifed. I couldn’t stop in time. God help me, I couldn’t stop in time.

  So vivid the trucker’s earnest voice, the look in the man’s eyes, the look of a stricken father. He will be aghast, his life will never be the same. The wife feels sorry for this stranger, deep sympathy for him; but not for the lon
g-legged girl who’d dared to come beneath her roof bringing her husband a token of her banal esteem, boldly entering the wife’s domain with the Gucci label in hand.

  Not the trucker’s fault, a careless college girl has died beneath the gargantuan tires of his trailer-truck.

  A bulletin would be issued by the township safety officer. Bicyclists have been warned many times about riding on Main Street (Rt. 31). The speed limit is thirty miles an hour. Trucks can’t possibly stop in time if bicyclists turn into their lane. This is a tragedy that might have been avoided.

  “God help her. God help us.”

  The wife is no longer feeling so airy, ebullient. The basketball-heart has begun to shrink. She has become too tired to walk outside, let alone peer down Hope Street to see how far the bicyclist has gone. (Before Stacy has collapsed? But has Stacy collapsed?) Her head is riddled with light like bullet holes. Yet, she is having difficulty holding her head upright for it seems to want to sink down, downward to her feet.

  Well, it’s funny!

  (What is funny?) (Everything.)

  She will lie down for a while, she thinks. Plenty of time before she needs to start supper and anyway her family doesn’t respect her.

  The teapot is still hot, half-filled with pungent Bengal tea. Red paper napkins on the tray. The matching Wedgwood cups in their saucers, with cracks thin as hairs.

  Difficult to climb to the highest floor of the house—what is it called? Halfway up the first flight of steps she is panting. Thighs ache, knees ache, back aches. Head.

  What is the name she seeks—attic?

  An attic. Antiquity.

  Lowering her bulk-body onto a stained nubby sofa. Why is she so warm, sweating as if she’d been toiling in a field like a beast. The springs beneath her moan as if surrendering to love. Yet perhaps it is a joke, one of those cruel jokes people make about fat girls.

  No matter. She will wait for her deliverer, whoever he is. Whoever they.

  Later, a door slams open two floors below just dimly waking her from a sleep heavy as concrete—“Mom? Mom?” The little darlings’ voices are edged with irritation, concern. They have reason to be annoyed with their mother—of course. Who does not have reason to be annoyed with a mother?

  Crouched on little skiffs the children are borne by the river current past her. Looks like the Amazon River—that swift curling mud-colored current, and beneath the surface predator-shadows (piranhas? alligators?) darting and drifting.

  She is safe from them, for now. Love of them has lacerated her heart, but no more.

  Sign of the Beast

  1.

  It was a time of sin. It was not a time of innocence.

  It was a time of physical disgust. For I remember well.

  The birthmark on my (left) cheek like a pustule was shameful to me.

  It was not large, I suppose—the size of a copper penny. And it was of the hue of a penny that has become damp having been gripped in a childish hand.

  The sign of the beast it was called in laughter, by one who should have known better, and who caused me much hurt and chagrin in my twelfth year.

  This cruel individual was our Sunday school teacher at my parents’ church. We were to call her “Mrs. S____” but I did not call this individual any name at all. I did not and do not ever utter this name. When I’d first started Sunday school our teacher had been an older white-haired woman my grandmother’s age, who had known my grandmother and so was kindly disposed to me and not uneasy with me for my size, as adults sometimes were. (“And what do you think, Howie?”—very courteously white-haired Mrs. Pearson would inquire of me in our Bible story discussions; but still I was shy in answering, and mumbled my reply.)

  But then, one Sunday Mrs. Pearson was not in the classroom and we were told to go away and return the next week and when we did, Mrs. S____ had taken her place. (The rumor was, our teacher had gotten very sick with something terrible like cancer. We were not supposed to know this.) Mrs. S____ was excited and nervous and friendly-seeming, with a quick sharp laugh like the sound a fox might make and damp bared gums.

  “Hello, children! I’m here now.”

  And, when we sat silent and staring: “You could say hello to me, too. Hello and welcome.”

  And so we murmured Hello and welcome.

  “How about, Hello and welcome Mrs. S____.”

  And so we murmured Hello and welcome Mrs. S____.

  In her behavior Mrs. S____ was youthful and loud-talking which made us uneasy, for children are not comfortable when adults behave as if they are not adults. Often it seemed that Mrs. S____ was winking at us as if there was some joke between her and us, unexplained.

  “How-ard!”—so Mrs. S____ soon acquired the habit of calling upon me in class, for she could see how I slouched in my seat, staring at the floor and hoping not to be called upon.

  Knowing that I was clumsy in my speech, and could be made to stutter while reciting Bible verses though I was one of the older children. And that my face flushed in a way to provoke laughter in the others.

  (Why is the misery of a child so hilarious to other children? Even more unnaturally, it seemed to be hilarious to Mrs. S____.)

  Though Mrs. S____ was scornful of my efforts, or amused by them, I did try to memorize Bible verses as we were instructed. But even when I knew the verses my tongue felt strange in my mouth like something dried-out like an old sponge and I could not speak clearly so that Mrs. S____ would interrupt, “How-ard! Is that chewing tobacco in your mouth?”—and so the others would giggle.

  At other times I would sit in my desk with my head bowed and eyes lowered, and my left hand pressed against my cheek to hide the birthmark as if innocently. My silent prayer was Jesus, do not let Mrs. S____ call on me!—but much of the time Jesus paid no heed, or may have been in league with Mrs. S____ to make me squirm in misery.

  Hunched and downcast grinding my back teeth in rage against those who laughed at me.

  It was strange—though Mrs. S____ was scornful of me as one of the poorer students in the class yet she seemed well aware of my identity. Or rather, she seemed well aware of me. As we entered the classroom at the rear of the old red-brick church our teacher would stand at the door to greet us in her friendly-seeming manner, to most of the students calling out gaily, “Hello!” or “Good morning!” as if she had not troubled to learn their names; but invariably she said to me, with a little wink, “Why, How-ard! How handsome we look this morning!”

  Handsome. My face flushed with heat—such mockery was hurtful to me. For there was nothing handsome about my face and particularly the birthmark on my cheek that throbbed with resentment.

  Once when I had to pass close to her, to take my assigned seat in the first row, Mrs. S____’s hand leapt out to stroke my cheek. “Why, How-ard! Are you shaving?”—(which of course I was not). Again, all of the class laughed.

  (I had it in my mind that Mrs. S____ had really wanted to touch the discoloration on my cheek as if to determine if it was a birthmark or just a pimple, and this made me very angry.)

  Especially it was embarrassing to me that Mrs. S pronounced my name in a singsong mocking voice—How-ard. How-ARD Heike. I did not understand what was so funny about my name except perhaps it was an older person’s name, yet she did not call me Howie as Mrs. Pearson had done.

  Mrs. S____ was confusing to us for resembling our mothers while behaving very differently from our mothers. She wore clothes of a kind our mothers might have worn for church or “dress-up” but her clothes were tight-fitting, showing her shapely body, especially her bosom and hips; around her waist she often wore a shiny black patent leather belt cinched tight. Her face too was shiny as if it had been polished. Her eyebrows were plucked and penciled into thin pale-brown arches and her “permed” hair was shiny-black as if dyed. Restless as glittering water in a stream her eyes moved over us and there seemed always something mirthful about us to make her smile.

  “Boys and girls, always remember: Jesus loves you, when no one else
does!”—this was a typical remark of Mrs. S____’s, called out to us gaily, as if it was happy news and not hurtful.

  Sunday school lasted one hour, in an overheated room at the rear of the old red-brick church on Price Street, followed by church services at ten A.M. Even before Mrs. S____ made my life miserable it did not seem fair to me that I had to endure two hours of sitting very still while my parents and other adults had to endure only one hour. Already as a young child I was big for my age, and restless if I had to stay still for just a few minutes let alone an hour. Though I had been told many times that God loved me, and Jesus loved me, I did not know what that might mean. I did not doubt that there was a God in the sky above us watching us at all times but I could not imagine God (or His son Jesus) caring for me or even being aware of me any more than walking along a path you might step on scurrying ants without noticing or giving a damn if you did happen to notice.

  If I did something to draw God’s attention to me, that would be a mistake. There was a vague uneasiness among the Sunday school class that you could make God very angry and He could smite you dead as He did with Old Testament people.

  In her singsong voice Mrs. S____ read verses to us from the Bible creasing her forehead if the subject was very grave like the afflictions of Job or the crucifixion of Jesus and the flames of Hell but making another sort of face if the subject was somewhat comical like Jonah in the belly of the whale, or Moses surprised by the burning bush, or Jesus driving the “moneylenders” out of the temple which Mrs. S____ demonstrated by pretending to be wielding an invisible whip and crying, “Out, devils! Out!” like a crazy woman on TV.

  We were surprised by such vehemence in our teacher, and did not know what to think. Most of us had never seen our mothers behave in such a way.

  “D’you not think that ‘moneylenders’ are devils? Well! You will learn.”

  And Mrs. S____ would wink at us, most pointedly at me.

  (I could not understand why except maybe Mrs. S____ believed that my father owned Heike Lumber which was a family business mostly owned by an older uncle. My father did work for Heike Lumber but it was a bad joke to think that he made much money, as my father would himself have said. And so maybe Mrs. S____ thought, or was pretending to think, that my parents had more money than they did, and so it made sense for money to be associated with me. It was not right, I thought, to be teased and tormented for that.)