Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In sulky silence N____ listens to the exchange, standing a little apart from the two, as if he were not the Professor’s chief and most trusted technician, and the girl’s most intimate acquaintance, indeed, in the girl’s fevered imagination, the father of her baby-to-be.

  N____ is relieved that the Professor has let drop Ontology repeats philology. And notices that in his enigmatic way the older man seems rather in awe of Mary Frances. (Is he reconsidering his chilling strategy of deleting her from Project Galahad by allowing her to die, or rather arranging for her to die after giving birth?) N____ feels a stab of something like sexual jealousy as the Professor’s playful remarks provoke the pregnant girl to blushing, and to giggling foolishly.

  In reply to his queries Mary Frances tells the Professor that she is staying on campus that summer and not returning home—“I love it here! I have my own apartment here. The wonderful maternity clinic, I could not get anywhere else.” Glancing at N____ as if waiting for him to concur. Waiting for N____ to declare proudly to the white-haired gentleman—We are having this baby together, Professor.

  N____ says nothing of the sort. Stiffly N____ stands several feet away from Mary Frances and the smirking Professor as if disdainful of listening to their conversation.

  Though wincing when the Professor asks, “Have you selected a name for your baby-boy-to-be, my dear?”

  “Oh! How did you know it would be a baby boy?”—Mary Frances asks, wide-eyed.

  “Why, I—I did not know—it was a guess.” Adroitly the Professor smooths over his blunder saying he has a sort of “second sight” about such matters, an intuition based upon how far back on her heels an expectant mother balances herself. “Male fetuses tend to be heavier, on the whole, than female. The mother’s posture corrects for this.”

  “His name is maybe going to be—well, we don’t know. Yet.” Mary Frances’s face turns rosy; she’d come close to revealing her favored name, “Nath’iel, Jr.”

  Soon then the Professor goads Mary Frances into stammering that yes, she and N____ are engaged, kind of—“Nath’iel doesn’t want people to know but well—we are.”

  Clapping her hand over her mouth in the realization that she has revealed a secret! Mary Frances is chagrined.

  N____ smiles grimly. He is certainly not going to chide Mary Frances in front of the Professor who has been glancing at him bemused.

  Of course, the Professor knows that N____ and the experimental subject are “engaged.” And the Professor knows that the “engagement” is supposed to be a secret. It is mischievous of him, like a naughty grandfather, to have pried the secret out of credulous Mary Frances.

  “Well, then. Congratulations are due to you both! But I will keep your secret, of course.” Pausing then, before saying, with an amused glance at N_____, “And why does your fiancé want to keep the engagement secret, Mary Frances? I am just curious.”

  “Because”—Mary Frances casts a dismayed look at N____, “Nath’iel might be deported by the US government if he ‘enters into a contract’ …”

  “Yes. I see. That is so—‘Nathaniel’ is not an American citizen quite yet.”

  Is there a veiled threat here? But why? The Professor has always favored N____ and has assured him that, under his protection, N____ will be granted citizenship soon.

  Unexpectedly, as if he were addressing a child, the Professor asks Mary Frances if she likes animals?—of course, Mary Frances says yes. The Professor asks if Mary Frances would like to visit the animal lab on the eighth floor of Life Sciences?—of course, Mary Frances says yes.

  N____ hears a humming in his ears. N____ feels faint. A strong desire to strike the smirking Professor on his right temple where a pale-blue vein throbs like a writhing worm. Strike, smite. Cast the white-haired Professor down dead.

  The humming in N____’s ears is just air-conditioning. By now N____ should be accustomed to the climate control of Rockefeller Life Sciences Hall where currents of cool air buffet heads like malicious spirits. Outside, a premature heat wave has come in early June.

  N____ says there isn’t time for them to visit the eighth floor even as the Professor slides his arm through Mary Frances’s arm with startling familiarity and leads her to an elevator. With his ID card the Professor accesses the (restricted) floor where experimental animals are kept in air-conditioned isolation.

  On the eighth floor the Professor leads Mary Frances through another security door into the animal quarters where the air is both cold and stale-smelling. Though the Professor has not exactly invited N____ to accompany them N____ has clearance to enter the animal quarters at any time he wishes, and it would be awkward for the Professor to exclude him.

  So many animals! Rats, mice in small wire cages. Chattering monkeys, marmosets in larger cages. Mary Frances is amazed, wide-eyed. The circulating air is so chilly, Mary Frances hugs herself, shivering. Oh but the smell.

  Against a farther wall, in large cages, are several chimpanzees. Like prisoners in solitary confinement sighting their jailers, and suddenly aroused to attention. Is it mealtime? Too soon for mealtime? Most excited and garrulous is the handsome young specimen Galahad, screeching and flinging his arms about eagerly to draw the attention of the stocky rust-haired girl in red shorts and billowing striped blouse whom he has never seen before.

  Galahad recognizes the men, coolly ignores the men. Though in Galahad’s crafty shiny eyes the thought that, if the Professor comes near enough to his cage, Galahad will seize the Professor’s wrist and sink his teeth in it to the bone.

  N____ isn’t sure how Galahad regards him. Seemingly, Galahad “likes” him, for N____ often gives Galahad treats. Yet, N____ knows better than to trust the crafty wild animal whose semen he’d been milking for weeks.

  “Ohhh is this a chimpanzee?”—Mary Frances is thrilled. She pronounces the word carefully. “Gosh! He’s big. What’s your name, Mr. Chimpanzee?”

  The Professor tells her: “His name is ‘Galahad.’”

  “Oh hi there—‘Galahad.’ That’s a nice kind of high-class name somebody gave you … Wow, you are big, and you are handsome.” Brightly Mary Frances smiles at the chimpanzee, to N____’s relief not seeming to recall having heard the name “Galahad” recently. “You kind of smell, though. I guess you can’t help it.”

  Galahad extends his forearm through the bars, hairless palm up and fingers extended in an urgent appeal. Though pared short his nails are sharp-looking. So curious, Mary Frances must be thinking, the chimpanzee’s palm is as hairless as the palm of a human being, and as pale as her own. The chimpanzee’s face is hairless, and his shiny-black eyes resemble her own. The chimpanzee’s coarse hair covering most of his body is dark russet-red-brown, the approximate hue of her own hair.

  Playfully Mary Frances waves her hand, sticks out her tongue, and Galahad immediately mimics her by waving both hands, sticking his tongue far out, to her delight—“Monkey see, monkey do. That’s just what it is!”

  Mary Frances asks the Professor what the animals are doing in the lab, and the Professor says they all do their work, humans and animals alike—“Furthering the cause of science. Shining a beacon into the deep, bleak cave of ignorance.”

  “Do you, like, do ‘experiments’ with them? Like make them run through mazes, to get bananas?”

  The Professor laughs. “Bananas are the favored reward, yes.”

  With a genial smile the Professor turns to N_____. “D’you have your cell phone, N_____? Please take a picture of your friend Mary Frances with Galahad.”

  N____ is offended by this command and pretends to pat his pockets, searching for his phone. Tells the Professor that he doesn’t have his (damned) phone. With the same genial smile the Professor instructs N____ to look more thoroughly, of course he has his phone, a chief technician is never without his phone, and so N____ discovers the cell phone in a deep pocket of his khaki shorts.

  Pictures of the smiling experimental subject standing in front of the caged Galahad who smiles in his own devious-chi
mp way, baring saliva-wet teeth.

  N____ is furious with the Professor for so manipulating Mary Frances and him. N____ has no choice but to obey the Professor. He will mail to the Professor several colorful and unnervingly sexual pictures of Mary Frances posing in front of the chimpanzee’s cage which (N____ supposes) will long outlive them all—human mother of the first hybrid Humanzee, chimpanzee father of the first hybrid Humanzee.

  Even if the hybrid doesn’t survive, even if the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage, prints of these images will survive as priceless collector’s items. As an amateur historian of his field N____ has to wonder what names, what findings, will accrue to them. The Professor’s name, surely. But his own? Very likely not.

  Galahad has begun leaping about inside his cage, so far as Galahad can leap about inside his cage, frantic to keep the wavering interest of his human visitors. Putting all dignity aside the handsome chimp emits a heart-piercing cry, repeatedly bumping his flat forehead against the bars of his cage with a lovelorn expression. “Oh—you are something!” Mary Frances cries. There is something like a fever between them, an electric spark of mutual recognition, N____ can’t help but notice.

  Naively Mary Frances approaches the chimpanzee’s cage to pet his head through the bars as N____ deftly intervenes: “No. Stay back. He might bite.”

  Indeed, Galahad clicks his sharp glistening teeth, angry at being thwarted. Mary Frances backs away cringing. Galahad has begun to shriek, baring his teeth in a savage expression, furious with the experimental subject as if she has personally wronged him. He spits, reaches his forearms through the bars, claws at her, rubs his (suddenly swollen, bright pink) penis against the bars. Quickly N____ ushers stunned Mary Frances away as the Professor chides the chimpanzee: “You are a naughty boy, Galahad. Such bad manners, you never learned from us.”

  In another cage a smaller, more somber chimpanzee with a thinner pelt crouches in a posture of dread. N____ sees that poor Maude’s scalp has been shaved recently, that electrodes have been inserted in her brain in a battery of neurological tests. She shrinks from both the Professor and N_____. She is less lively than usual though gazing fascinated at Mary Frances with mournful brown eyes. Mary Frances says cheerfully: “Oh, hi. I bet you’re a female, are you? Looks like you had babies—lots of babies.” N____ sees that it isn’t just the chimpanzee’s scalp that has been shaved but her bruised upper arms where IV lines have been inserted.

  Mary Frances asks what the chimpanzee’s name is and the Professor says her name is Maude.

  “That’s a nice name—‘Maude.’ Did you have baby monkeys, Maude? What’d they do with your babies?” But Mary Frances becomes contrite, the female chimpanzee is looking so sad. “Gosh! D’you think I could feed her and the other ones? Like, bananas? Would that make them happy?”

  Unfortunately no, Mary Frances is told that the animals are fed only on schedule, and given treats only during trials. Otherwise they would be clamoring for food continually and would be unmanageable.

  Before the tour ends the Professor has one more request of N____: would he please take pictures on his cell phone of Mary Frances and him together, in front of the chimp cages. But N____ dares to say no, can’t, his cell phone has lost its charge.

  The Professor gazes at N____ for a long moment, bemused. Or is the Professor alarmed. Saying then, in a tone that will not be contradicted, that N____ can use his cell phone, in that case.

  N____ has no choice but to concur. His usual stoic-Asian demeanor has become jaundiced, sullen. Taking several pictures of the smiling white-haired Professor and the smiling experimental subject in front of the captive chimpanzee’s cage and noting only belatedly, scrolling through the images hours later, that the Professor’s right hand is cupped casually, yet unmistakably, at Mary Frances’s waist; and that the two are standing closer together in the image than N____ would have sworn they’d been in life.

  Maybe he will have mercy on her, then. Won’t arrange for her to die of an “embolism.”

  5.

  “Oh! Feel Nath’iel, Jr. kick.”

  Reluctantly N____ allows Mary Frances to seize his chill hand in his, to press against her alarmingly swollen belly where in fact N____ does feel, with a tremor, a distinctive kick.

  “That’s for-sure a boy baby! You can tell.”

  On a baby calendar Mary Frances is marking off days in a bright-red crayon. It is midsummer, and then it is late summer, and soon it will be September and the fall term at the University where Mary Frances has decided not to enroll until (maybe) the spring term since Nath’iel, Jr. is due near the end of September.

  Or maybe she won’t enroll then. Maybe (Mary Frances is thinking) she will be a full-time mother for as long as she can be. As long as God advises. (N____ has not tried to dissuade her.) She has made no mention of nursing school for months.

  Dr. Ellis’s estimate of two hundred sixty days is weeks away. Yet N____ is uneasily aware of the fact that the gestation period for Pan troglodytes verus is only two hundred thirty-seven days, and so the hybrid baby could come “early” while at the same time, since the gestation period for Homo sapiens is two hundred eighty days, the hybrid baby could come “late.”

  Mary Frances has struck up conversations with other expectant mothers casually encountered in town. In their exchanges it doesn’t seem to have come up that Mary Frances’s due date is earlier than the average, nor has Mary Frances betrayed the trust of Dr. Ellis and confided in these other expectant mothers that she has a “special” maternity care under the auspices of Rockefeller Life Sciences.

  There has been one upsetting incident: after months of estrangement Mary Frances receives a call from her home, and a series of text messages from an older sister named Rhonda, informing her that their mother has been ill with an “undiagnosed condition”—“some kind of bad arthritis,” and “depression, maybe.” The messages are reproachful, chiding. Mary Frances is panicked that she will be expected to return home, and she cannot possibly return home, not in the (pregnant) state she is in, and not if she has to leave N____ behind …

  N____ is relieved to see how devoted Mary Frances is to him, and how adamantly she insists that she certainly will not return home—“Not for a long time, maybe never. They would never accept Baby, and they would never accept you.”

  N____’s pride is bruised just slightly, that Mary Frances has to insist upon her allegiance to him over her racist family.

  In midsummer heat in the Edgar Street apartment with its barely functioning window air conditioners the very pregnant experimental subject lies contentedly on a sofa for hours watching TV, or half-watching TV, surrounded by baby books, women’s health books, baby clothes ordered online, bibs, diapers, rattles, small stuffed animals; nibbling handfuls of raisins and Cheese Bits, Rice Krispies, stale pizza slices, broken doughnuts, syrupy-sweet fruit yogurts in four-ounce containers—“As long as it isn’t ice cream, Nurse Betty says it’s OK.” Her favorite weird foods are swaths of peanut butter on Count Chocula cereal and sushi swathed with mustard.

  Despite Dr. Ellis and Nurse Betty who have cautioned her not to gain more than twenty pounds, by the first of August the primigravida has gained thirty-four pounds and has become so large, at times she can barely heave herself to her feet, and must clutch at furniture, or N_____, to keep her balance.

  How large is the hybrid fetus?—eight pounds, five ounces.

  Eight pounds, eleven ounces.

  Nine pounds …

  During the soporific summer months when even some of the research faculty are away from their laboratories, and the Professor himself retires to Lake Tahoe with his family, N____ tries to maintain the Professor’s directive to keep the experimental subject on edge; to thwart her expectations of his behavior and resist any sort of domestic routine. The female’s disadvantage is our advantage. But it has several times happened, away from Mary Frances, in the chill of the lab in Life Sciences, or in his own apartment some blocks from Edgar Street, N____ begins to feel—is it al
one? Lonely? It is not an existential condition N____ has felt often in his previous life, and he is surprised and resentful to be feeling it now.

  Calling Mary Frances on her cell phone and vexed when she doesn’t answer at once. Doesn’t return his calls within minutes. Hours?

  Though he’d set aside an evening to be alone with crucial reading in his field, catching up on scientific papers, N____ becomes restless, decides to join Mary Frances for supper after all. Stops by the Chinese restaurant for her favorite takeout—greasy/oily sauces with lumpy chicken nuggets on mounds of sticky white rice or noodles. To counter these large portions Mary Frances will restrict herself to two six-ounce containers of fruit yogurt, and not ice cream.

  So happy to see N____ in the doorway her eyes fill with tears. Declaring to him that she and Baby were missing him badly. “Like, we just prayed to God, ‘Please let Nath’iel come over,’ and thirty minutes later—here you are.”

  Despite the faulty air-conditioning at the Edgar Street apartment Mary Frances seems to be enjoying the third trimester of her pregnancy. Not only are her thick ankles swollen, her entire legs are swollen; the lard-colored skin of her belly is stretched tight; her breasts have become half again as large as they were. Her face appears swollen, even the eyelids; her eyes have become slits, out of which her adoring eyes shine. The pregnancy is a great cocoon inside which something is growing, thriving, eager to burst free. Even the expectant mother’s “tummy troubles”—(N____ guesses this means constipation, doesn’t inquire further)–don’t upset her greatly, for Dr. Ellis has prescribed a battery of drugs for her to take if natural remedies fail.

  N____ glances away not wanting to see Mary Frances unclothed—her pregnancy is so enormous. But sometimes plaintively she asks him to help her rise from bed, or from a chair; to help her step out of the bathtub, where she takes long steamy-hot soaking baths, exulting in the contentment of late pregnancy; whispering and singing lullabies to the feisty Nath’iel, Jr. in her womb. N____ stands outside the door, his cheek against the door, listening. Feeling just slightly excluded.