The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  What relief Seigl felt, telling Jet. What relief to confide in another person. He hadn’t realized how lonely he’d been. And how frightened of what was to come.

  Without speaking, Jet reached out to squeeze Seigl’s hand on the steering wheel. She’d removed her kidskin gloves. Her fingers were reassuringly warm, and strong.

  Seigl exited the expressway in a blur of emotion. For a confused moment he hardly knew where he was, and what time this was: he might have been driving his sister to the hospital to see their mother in intensive care. Or: was it their father who’d been hospitalized, and would never return home again.

  In a fierce whisper Jet said, “Whatever it is that’s happening to you, I love you, Joshua, and I’ll take care of you.”

  Seigl thought, No you won’t. I have other plans.

  Jet said, fumbling to light another cigarette, “ ‘Nerves.’ ‘Sclerosis.’ It would explain so much.”

  “In what way?”

  “If you had a condition of the nervous system. Like MS.”

  “Explain what, to whom?”

  “My own life, to me. How my life has unraveled.”

  Seigl laughed. “Unfortunately it won’t explain anything, since you don’t have my symptoms and are not me.”

  “But, Joshua, I have the seeds of—whatever it is. These things are inherited.”

  “In fact, no. They are not inherited.”

  “Yes, certainly they are. Everything pre-exists in our genes which we inherit at conception. All that we are destined.”

  “Like the fortunes in Chinese cookies, eh?”

  “You joke out of anxiety. Freud said, ‘The ego is the seat of anxiety.’ Your egocentric soul won’t allow you to imagine that another person, even your own sister, your soul mate, might share in your destiny.”

  Jet spoke with childlike solemnity, assurance. Seigl heard the gloating beneath. He saw that his mad sister wasn’t to be dissuaded from sharing in his fate, in fantasy at least.

  They began to laugh suddenly. Jet clutched at herself like a young adolescent girl being tickled. The giddy laughter of brother and sister rocked the car.

  5

  THE VISIT BEGAN with promise. True, Seigl was fearful of his sister. Yet her company enlivened him, he had to admit. Made him laugh as rarely he laughed these days, even if his laughter was likely to be incredulous, disapproving. But now that Jet knew of his uncertain health, she would be gentler with him. He hoped.

  On the way home, Seigl took Jet for lunch at a lakeside seafood restaurant with a dazzling view of leaden-blue choppy Lake Ontario. He listened to her words like surf breaking about him, hearing and not-hearing, thinking yes, of course he loved his sister, he was all that remained for her of their family and it had been selfish of him (if self-protective) to exclude her from his life for so long. Midway in the meal Jet abruptly excused herself to smoke a cigarette outside on the open, windy deck of the restaurant, within view of Seigl at their table inside who was testing the strength in his knees and thighs dreading the imminent climb of the nineteen stone steps to his front door. (In fact, there was another, easier but less attractive way into the house through a side door, but Seigl was reluctant to use this in Jet’s presence.) After lunch, Seigl drove past the large white colonial that had been their family home in a hillside neighborhood close by his own; he parked in the roadway so that Jet could gaze at the house through a scrim of evergreens, wiping at her eyes. She appeared to be deeply moved. “Oh, Joshua, I was so happy here. If only I’d known . . .”

  Seigl, to whom nostalgia meant little, like brilliant autumn foliage to the color-blind, tried to think of a consoling reply, but could not.

  At his house, Seigl managed to ascend the nineteen stone steps carrying two of his sister’s suitcases. By the time he reached the top his knees were trembling and there was a roaring in his ears as of a vast derisive crowd but no matter: he reached the top.

  When he and Jet entered the house, it was to the reassuring sound of a vacuum cleaner in the living room. And there was Alma in shapeless work clothes, her straw-colored hair tied back in a kerchief and her expression startled. “Jet, this is Alma, who’s helping me out these days. Alma, my sister Jet Steadman-Seigl, who’s visiting me from Palm Beach.” Alma scarcely raised her eyes to Jet’s face. She stood mute and abashed, the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner gripped in her hand, as Jet said hello brightly.

  They were hardly out of earshot when Jet exclaimed, “That ugly tattoo on her face! The poor thing.”

  Seigl objected, “But is it a tattoo? A birthmark, I thought.”

  “No. It’s a tattoo. There’s more of it on her hands, and at the back of her neck.”

  “Her neck? How do you know?”

  “I saw.”

  Seigl was amazed that in those fleeting seconds his sister had absorbed so much that he, Seigl, hadn’t noticed in weeks.

  Jet continued to annoy him saying how relieved she was, that he had a cleaning woman to look after the house; she wasn’t the only one among the relatives to worry that he might turn “quirky and reclusive” living alone, and let the house fill up with emptied tin cans and old newspapers stacked to the ceiling. Jet meant to be amusing, Seigl supposed. He said drily, “In fact, there are cartons of papers in my study and in the basement. You won’t be disappointed.”

  Ominously Jet said, “I won’t! I want to see everything. I intend to be Joshua Seigl’s literary executor, pre-posthumous.”

  Seigl had ordered a meal from one of the gourmet food stores in town, which Alma had placed in a warm oven before leaving at six o’clock. In the foyer she stood hastily buttoning her cloth coat, retying her kerchief around her head. Jet’s presence seemed to have made her more than ordinarily self-conscious. Seigl now paid Alma weekly, though still in cash, but invariably asked if she needed money in the interim. Alma shook her head, no. Yet so insistently, Seigl guessed she didn’t mean it. Perhaps she was sending money home: somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, he’d gathered. Much of rural Pennsylvania, like upstate New York, had been in a recession for years. It was clear that Alma was from a poor-white background. The taxi at her disposal took her to Mount Carmel Avenue, presumably to a bus stop; Seigl supposed she must live across the river in the city, where housing was less costly. He had not asked about her living arrangements, for this was none of his business as her employer. “Please. Take this.” Seigl pressed two ten-dollar bills into Alma’s moist hand. Alma crumpled the bills in her fist as if she were too embarrassed to acknowledge them. On her way out to the waiting taxi she mumbled what sounded like, “Goodnight, Mr. Seigl!”

  That evening Jet observed of Seigl’s cleaning woman that she was a “strong, solid, earthy type. Like a Ukrainian peasant.”

  Seigl laughed. “How many Ukrainian peasants do you know, Jet?”

  But Jet was in a magnanimous mood. She was willing to laugh at herself, too. The visit to their former house, the news of her brother’s medical condition, seemed to have both sobered and gratified her. She took time to set elaborate places for Seigl and herself at the dining room table and lit a half-dozen tall tapering candles; she insisted upon serving Seigl as if she’d prepared the meal herself, and was anxious that it met with his approval. Though Seigl told her he couldn’t drink while taking his medication, Jet poured a half-glass of red wine for him anyway. “I can’t drink alone. I can’t even give the appearance of drinking alone.” She spoke as one admitting to a charming eccentricity.

  Out of politeness, Seigl lifted his glass and took a small ritual sip of wine. The taste seemed to spring into his mouth like a soft explosion.

  Midway in the dinner Jet leaned her elbows on the table to gaze avidly at Seigl. She asked, did he have a woman friend?

  Seigl shrugged evasively.

  “What does that mean, Joshua?”

  “It means that I don’t ‘have’ any women. There are women friends whom I see quite often, but . . .”

  “But no romance?”

  Seigl was uncomfortable be
ing interrogated. This was why he’d wanted to avoid any intimacy with his sister. Since their parents’ deaths she seemed to have swallowed them both up in herself. She was greedy, insatiable. But Seigl’s private life had always been private. His sexual life, certainly. Was Sondra Blumenthal a romance? The two had been friends for years. Well, perhaps more than friends. Seigl supposed that he had only to call Sondra. To speak frankly and intimately to her. To touch her hand, stroke her wrist. He had only to bring his mouth to hers . . . But the woman was too much like himself: he felt only affection for her. He dreaded misleading and hurting her. Sondra had the look of one already wounded in love.

  And Seigl had to wonder if, these recent weeks, he’d have been sexually potent with a woman. Only in his sleep did he feel anything like sexual desire.

  “It isn’t good to live alone. How well I know.”

  Jet poured more wine into their glasses as if she’d forgotten that Seigl wasn’t drinking with her. In the candlelight her darkly luminous eyes shone. Her ashy-streaked hair was buoyant. You would not have guessed that Jet was forty years old for her manner was naively girlish. Before dinner, Seigl had heard his sister speaking on her cell phone upstairs, animatedly, at times rather sharply. Speaking to a lover in Palm Beach, perhaps. Seigl felt very little curiosity about his sister’s life. Twenty years ago when Jet began to behave willfully and self-destructively, he’d learned that it was better not to know.

  After dinner, at a time when Seigl would normally be reading and taking notes in preparation for the next morning, Jet insisted upon playing chess. Seigl was reluctant, recalling games from years ago with his sister that had ended badly, in an upset game board and scattered chess pieces. Jet teased, “Not afraid I’ll beat you, Josh, are you? You’re the prodigy.”

  It was true: between the ages of ten and fourteen, Seigl had been something of a local prodigy. In Chess Club at his school he’d been the star. At the College of Mount Carmel he’d played with Jesuits and won. And there was the local coffeehouse where he’d played with allegedly brilliant players, and won. Karl Seigl had been uneasily proud of his son: a gift for chess must have been passed on to Joshua from his grandfather Moses and his great-grandfather Jeremiah whom he’d never known. As a thirteen-year-old, Joshua had been entered in several state and national tournaments where he’d played capably but not brilliantly, as if overwhelmed by the competition and by so much attention. A headline in the Rochester Sun-Times—

  13-YEAR-OLD CARMEL HGTS CHESS STAR BURNS OUT

  IN NYC TOURNAMENT

  had the power a quarter-century later to suffuse him with shame.

  It was cruel of Jet to recall Seigl’s “prodigy” years. But he supposed she meant no harm.

  So they set up the chessboard. It had belonged to their mother’s father: made of fitted squares of cherry wood, with exquisitely carved ivory pieces. Seigl had always felt more comfortable playing with cheap plastic pieces. Jet said casually that she’d been playing chess in Florida lately with “diverse Cuban-American friends.” Always she’d been an impulsive player, one who trusts in luck. Which Seigl knew to be an illusory ally in chess.

  Still, Jet made several inspired moves at the start of the game. He saw what she intended to do beforehand, but her decisions were good ones, and he allowed her to believe that he was taken by surprise, and that he was impressed. “You must be playing chess with some very good players,” he said. Jet said, frowning, “Of course. That’s how I learn.” After a strong opening, however, the game began to move more predictably, and slowly. When Seigl checkmated Jet’s king she appeared to be taken wholly by surprise as if both she and Seigl had stumbled into the situation. “It’s over? Your side has won?” Jet couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that Seigl had won.

  “Luck.” Seigl spoke with gentle irony.

  It would have been wise then to quit for the evening, as Seigl well knew, but Jet insisted upon another game—“To give me a chance to bounce back.” The hope was comical and touching and yet Jet played with painstaking seriousness this time, inching a piece forward, moving it back, chewing at a strand of hair like an adolescent girl.

  She was punishing him, Seigl sensed, for having won the first game. He had a choice of ending the game within a few moves, or allowing his sister to believe that her chess game was competitive with his; out of a possibly cowardly wish to keep things amiable between them Seigl chose the latter strategy. But he resented it, that his precious reading hours from 9 P.M. to midnight or 1 A.M. were so curtailed.

  Jet said suddenly, “This game! I remember now, Joshua. I dreamt this very game. Two nights ago.”

  Seigl could only murmur, surprised, “Did you!”

  Jet said, frowning, “You don’t believe me? Think I’m ‘confabulating’?” She groped for her wineglass without moving her eyes from his as if she dared him to look away in denial.

  It must have been a psychiatric term: “confabulating.” Not outlight lying, and not exactly fantasizing. But, yes. Seigl supposed that much of Jet’s mental life was confabulation.

  Jet persisted, in sisterly contentiousness, “Don’t you? Do you?”

  Seigl said, meaning to be conciliatory, “I neither believe nor disbelieve, Jet. I don’t know enough.” In fact, though the ancients whom Seigl revered took dreams seriously, as vessels of wisdom and warning from the gods, Seigl himself could credit dreams with no more significance than fleeting cloud formations, or the skeins of smoke rising from his sister’s annoying cigarette.

  Jet said, “It was this game. I remember. Exactly. Don’t smirk like that. And don’t try to tell me what my own psychic experience is. I’ve had enough of mind-manipulators in my life. And all of them male.” The bitterness in her voice was unexpected, and revealing.

  Seigl moved a chess piece. Three more moves and Jet’s queen would be immobilized and her king checkmated and he could escape to the sanctuary of his bedroom to read.

  He was midway in a scholarly study of Virgil’s metrics. He was relearning much of what he’d once known. To be a translator is to be in perpetual training, for you can never know enough about your subject.

  Jet was saying, with an air of pride, “It’s so uncanny. I dreamt of this exact game. Wish I could see how it ended . . . The pieces are identical, the way they’re on the board now. And you and I like this. And yet, we were mixed up with the actual game, somehow. As if we were chess pieces! And there was a female. The queen. There was only one queen in the game. Not Mother but a stranger, someone younger. Her crown was her hair all braided and twined. And her crown was on fire . . . somehow.” Jet shuddered. The memory of her dream seemed suddenly to alarm her.

  Seigl wasn’t following much of this. He was waiting for Jet to make a move, any move. This slow dull game that meant little to him but an annoyance seemed to mean too much to Jet, a danger signal.

  Jet persisted, “Your attitude toward dreams, and toward me, is insulting, Joshua. I sense your disdain. But dreams are real. They are hardly just smoke, or clouds floating in the sky. What you pretend to believe.”

  “I do?” Seigl was startled. When had he told Jet his feelings about dreams?

  Jet laughed. “Your attitude! So male! Passive-aggressive fucking male. So superior, and so myopic. The myopia of rationalism.”

  Jet enunciated the word rationalism as if it were a comical obscenity.

  Seigl was led into speaking defensively. A big clumsy dumb carp drawn to a baited hook. He said, stammering, “Rationalism is a—a frail vessel against the flood of superstition and barbarism in the world, I grant you. But it’s all we have—it’s civilization.”

  “Tell the Nazis about ‘rationalism’—‘civilization.’ The Final Solution.”

  “Please, Jet, let’s not get into this. The Nazis were mad. Europe was gripped in madness.” He thought of the book on witchcraft Alma had been paging through in the Book Seller. Centuries before the inflamed collective soul of Europe in the twentieth century.

  Seigl had purchased this book,
in fact. For Alma. He’d thought that she might learn from it; she was intelligent, surely she had intellectual yearnings. He’d left it downstairs in her room, conspicuously on a table, but she had yet to mention it to him.

  Jet said, “A dream is a rational event, in code. It’s like the alphabet: you must know how to decode it, or you’re illiterate.”

  Seigl said, annoyed, “How can anyone possibly know whether dreams ‘mean’ anything, let alone what they might mean?”

  Jet stared at Seigl incredulously. “You don’t believe in Freud? You don’t believe in the unconscious?”

  Seigl laughed. “Freud and the ‘unconscious’ are hardly identical.”

  Now Jet launched into a spirited defense of Freud. She spoke fiercely, if not altogether coherently. She groped for her nearly empty wineglass and would have overturned it if Seigl hadn’t prevented her. She’d been drinking red wine more or less continuously since dinner and was obviously drunk and becoming dangerous. An addictive personality, one of Jet’s doctors had labeled her.

  And very likely, Seigl thought, Jet herself was taking medication. Tranquilizers, anti-depressants. Fashionable prescription drugs in place of the outlaw street drugs she’d experimented with years ago. She’d become addicted to therapies, psychoanalytic jargon and psychobabble, in place of religion perhaps. To Jet, this was a kind of religion. All this fed into her inflated sense of herself and her absurd mission to aid in her brother’s thwarted destiny. Madness!

  Jet was scolding Seigl: didn’t he know that Freud was a “pioneer” of the “nocturnal landscape” within? He’d virtually discovered the unconscious! He’d formulated the distinction between “manifest” and “latent” which was a key to comprehending the collective unconscious.