Joyce Carol Oates - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Because It Is Bitter

  Can it?

  For some minutes Graice Courtney simply stands with her hand on the doorknob of the door to the office of The Journal of art and Aesthetics, Room 346, Strouse Hall. She is not thinking of anything, not even of the assassination, not even of the practical fact that she might go home to her room on South Salina Street and crawl into bed with the covers over her and wait out this strange and inexplicable arousal of her soul this sense of loss and of lostness, true terror.

  She might do that. She might give herself up to tears.

  And: Alan Savage will be coming to see her that evening, at least that was their plan; he'll take her out to dinner, he wants to discuss something serious with her, his future plans, her future plans, too long nebulous But the prospect of re turning to that room fills Graice with dread.

  She notes that Strouse Hall is nearly deserted.

  She notes that there is no purpose to her remaining where she is, foolishly gripping a doorknob to a locked door.

  So she descends the stairs, slowly, as if reluctantly and on the second floor encounters a shaggy haired graduate student pushing his way out of a men's lavatory; he's a young man Graice knows only slightly, a young man rumored to be enormously bright, his field of specialization the baroque; and this young man and Graice Courtney on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, exchange swift apprehensive glances Don't talk to me, don't say a word about what has happened, the assassination, the public death; I don't have time for it, I am not like the re st of you but there's no danger: neither speaks except to murmur hello, they pass each other quickly.

  There follows now a confused period of time, for what use is there to make of time when time is infinite, and where to go when there's nowhere? As she won't be able to explain afterward to Alan Savage.

  As she won't make much effort to explain afterward to Alan Savage.

  He'll telephone her in the late afternoon and no answer, he'll arrive at the rooming house at seven as they'd planned but of course she isn't there, nor any message, nor has the house manager seen Graice Courtney since that morning. It isn't like Graice to forget, Alan Savage will say, it isn't like her but Graice isn't thinking of what it is, or isn't, like her to do or to fail to do; she's forgotten Alan Savage altogether, or nearly, she's simply walking. swiftly walking the steeply hilly streets and sidewalks of the university area, on Comstock, on Waverly, on Marshall, in the fine chill insidious rain, in the waning afternoon light.

  Too agitated to re main in one place for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Thinking, Why do you care? You don't care!

  Squinting at the sky with a sensation of slow gathering horror, seeing its look of crude, burgeoning life, unicellular life.

  Seeing how, just at dusk, the sun appears briefly, watery yet luminous. a floating eye. Why do you care?

  She's as upset, incensed, as a pauper approached for a handout.

  She's as upset as, at the first, those terrible hours at the first she'd been at Persia's death.

  When they came to tell her, Your mother is dead.

  Waking Graice Courtney the patient's daughter in the plastic bucket chair in which she'd fallen uncomfortably asleep, neck cricked, mouth slackly open as a dying fish's, those words she had truly not expected she must hear: Your mother is dead.

  She'd murmured, Oh.

  Hadn't cried. With an air more of surprise than shock, Oh.

  And now this public death, this public expenditure of emotion, every face glimpsed on every street, every moment heavy with the news, the latest bulletin, Kennedy's death at the hands of a lone sniper, why should she care, she does not love John F. Kennedy, though, yes, she has admired him, as naturally she would admire a young vigorous unmistakably intelligent President, his courage in pressing for civil rights legislation in the face of racist opposition; certainly she admires him but she's skeptical, she's inherited Duke Courtney's cynicism about all human motives, thus it's absurd, this sense of loss, of childish grief. Who is the man to you, why shouldn't he die, doesn't everyone die, why not him, why not all of them, why such hypocrisy, why?

  In a secondhand bookstore on Marshall Street she's jammed in with a dozen others watching a television news broadcast, standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of the suspected sniper Lee Harvey Oswald as he's marched quickly past the camera by Dallas police men; Graice sees that he's young, slight bodied, defiant, white.

  Graice says, His name is so American sounding, isn't it? Like a name in a ballad.

  Her voice is strange and wondering, and no one directly replies.

  Graice says, A terrorist has to be willing to trade his life for his victim s.

  Again, no one re plies.

  On the television there is newsreel footage: Vice President Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President of the United States.

  And where are John F. Kennedy's are mains ?

  En route to Washington, D. C. Airborne.

  All so unreal.

  On University Avenue in front of the popular student tavern the Orange she's stopped by a bull necked young man named Jake who invites her to come have a few beers with him and his buddies he's a fraternity man, the cryptic insignia of his house re produced in imitation satin on his corduroy jacket W: re having an Iraiceh wake, says Jake heartily, just like that s. o. b. would like and Graice declines but smiles, trying to bypass this young man with whom she is slightly though not warmly acquainted; there's a history of his increasingly aggressive pursuit of her and her increasingly adamant rejection of him but it isn't a matter of which she thinks much except at such times when she sees him she's forced to think, to realize herself as a figure of some significance in another's life, an annoyance, an insult, an insoluble problem, yes, and his fraternity brothers know too, yes, and he's already a little drunk and thinking well of himself and Graice is thinking, yes, that's the attitude, it's a holiday of a kind, why not simply get drunk, if drunk is what you're happiest in; but Graice is walking away and the bull necked young man calls crudely after her, You and everybody else making such a goddamned big deal out of that asshole getting shot, well somebody needed to do it, somebody had the guts to do it, and the next to go's gonna be Martin Luther King enunciating the name as if it were a bad taste in his mouth and Graice calls over her shoulder angrily, But you didn't have the guts to do it, did you, neither knowing nor caring what she's saying but walking swiftly down the hilly street as the fraternity men yell after her, hooting and whistling, sounds she'd rather not hear.

  It's dark now. Streetlights have come on, car headlights, lights in homes.. there's a glimmery insubstantial look to the world, she's walking undersea, deeper and deeper undersea down the long hill out of the university neighborhood as the shapes of things blur and dissolve around her.

  And who are you? And why do you care? And why do you imagine it means anything, that you care? What power has your caring to keep another alive?

  Hours have passed, it's nearly nine o'clock unless the clock is wrong, a plump moon faced glowing clock in the darkened window of a branch of the First Bank of Syracuse, and she's crossing Pearce Boulevard into a rundown neighborhood somewhere on the far side of downtown beyond the illuminated buildings of Niagara Mohawk Power, beyond the railroad and warehouse district where a century ago that pioneering genius Ezra Savage built his original ware houses, all the buildings long since razed like the original store on Clinton Street, but the original Savage home on East Genesee still remains and is designated by a plaque from the New York State Historical Society on one of their romantic autumn afternoon drives Alan Savage took Graice Courtney to see It.

  Crossing the Onondaga River on the Erie Street bridge and the river is a wide dark featureless stream from which gusts of cold seem to rise.

  on the far side there's a cobbled street glistening in blinding patches of reflected light, and running across it in the wake of a city bus brightly lit within like a Hopper painting, only the driver and two passengers Graice discovers that her feet are wet, her cheap woolen coat soa
ked through, hair straggling in limp tendrils in her face. I wrote him three times, he never answered. When my mother died, he never called.

  The harsh brackish smell of the river. Drizzling rain, rising mist, an undersea world miles from the university, on lower ground.

  At least, here, you can breathe.

  Some of the intervening hills are steep, others more subtle. But always the descent.

  You feel these hills most acutely in the calves of your legs.

  Graice hesitates but decides to enter a tunnel like underpass below a railroad embankment, for otherwise where's she to go?

  Back? Back up the hills? Back to her room so snug so cozy to await deliverance? She's fearless, humming loudly to herself, Blue Skies is a witty sort of pop tune to hum on a night of such wet and dark and oblivion and there's a sound of dripping and a sudden shocking stench of stale urine old newspapers and leaves rotted together underfoot.

  darkness. She's fearless and defiant, humming in the shadows but half running up the steps to escape.

  I knew how he wanted me, I could feel his blood swollen pen is.

  But it was only his body, between the legs. Not him.

  She isn't crying, she isn't that kind of young woman and never will be that kind of woman; icy hearted, harder than nails, her husband will one day say in hurt in outrage in simple bewilderment Why did you marry me if, why do you insist you love me if?

  Yes but I do love, yes but I I do, I will, I'll make the effort, I won't be cheated. She isn't crying but she's tired and everything seems by degrees to have gone soft as in a watercolor wash: the infrequent headlights of passing cars, the street lights, TULAS BAR B Q in re d neon and MONTY'S a tavern in tawny gold neon through which white incandescent tubing has begun to show in patches.

  And the warm lit interiors of rooms in this neighborhood of ramshackle houses, shabby row houses, brownstone tenements jammed up against one another where families are watching television together. footage of Dallas, re runs of newsreels, interviews, up to the minute bulletins Jackie and the children and Lee Harvey Oswald and Lyndon B. Johnson and the limousine, the motorcade, the re st.

  A national mourning, a luxury of grief, in which Graice Courtney isn't going to share.

  At an intersection there's a flashing yellow light and a car cruises through, windows down, rock music blasting, a carload of what appear to be young black men or boys but Graice doesn't notice, she's suddenly so tired.. light headed. Minuscule drops of rain have collected jewel like on her eyelashes.

  Everything has begun to turn soft, to blur, time too has become soft; you blink and blink to bring your vision into focus but this is focus, this is the world. not evil but madness.

  Objects, and we among them, objects in others' eyes, losing their shapes, definitions, names: the boundaries separating them gone, their very skins torn off or peeled deliberately away as in that deathly painting at which Graice Courtney stared for a very long time one day in doctor Savage's library at his home, turning the pages of an enormous Italian produced book of Titian platesa late oil of Titian's titled Marsyas Flayed by Apollo. The skinning alive of a satyr who's in fact a human being. Not evil but madness.

  No: she's in a municipal building, not in doctor Savage's home, saying in a strong, clear voice, He never meant to kill, it was my fault.

  She's light headed, faint.. has to go to the bathroom.

  Passing open doorways, windows close by the sidewalk, passing children playing in the rain, raised voices inside rooms only a few yards away, curious eyes observing her she pushes into a little cafe advertising barbecue and Coca Cola and to the black woman behind the counter she explains her need, the sudden ths tress of her need, in a low shamed voice, and the black woman blinks at Graice Courtney in turn in surprise at seeing a young white woman in here, this hour, this weather, this day of all days, but she says, Why sure, honey, though with an air of hesitation, she's a woman of about fifty, thick bodied, short, with a sad, lined, jowled face, smoky skin, bifocals riding the bridge of her nose, eyeing Graice with an air somewhere between concern and pity, Sure honey you're welcome to use it, lemme show you where, and once the plywood door is latched shut or nearly shut and Graice Courtney is seated on the cracked toilet seat, no paper tissue to arrange on the seat for protection and no time for such fastidiousness in any case, urine gushing out of her, she's nearly weeping in re lief or is it perhaps sympathy with her body, its expulsion of fluid poison.

  And not minding for a moment the filthy floor of the lavatory, the overpowering odor, the nearness of voices.

  There's no toilet paper so she searches her pockets for a Kleenex.

  Finds a single wadded Kleenex for which she's enormously grateful.

  And the toilet flushes. for which she's enormously grateful.

  When she returns to the front where the black woman and her customers await her, quite frankly looking at her, several men, one or two other women, she smiles stricken with embarrassment at everyone and at no one, running her fingers nervous as small birds through her damp hair.

  There was no mirror in the little lavatory, thus she's spared a nightmare vision of herself, her appearance in these strangers' eyes.

  Her shoes are soaked through.

  Says the black woman proprietress with a motherly frown, 'Anything wrong, honey? You're looking a little Graice says quickly, shyly, Oh thank you, I'm fine. Thank you.

  She pauses. Tries to smile. The name stitched on the collar of the black woman's snug fitting dress is Mandy. Gold letters on pale yellow cotton.

  She says, I. I'm maybe a little hungry.

  Mandy says, Yjawl sure do look hungry, that's for sure! She slaps her hand down flat on the counter meaning sit down, sit and I'll feed you, no more nonsense.

  Graice sits. Graice unbuttons her damp coat but doesn't take it off.

  The cafe is just a storefront, a counter and a single row of stools, several small tables, a mouth watering aroma of barbecue, grease, French fries, catsup, and the air's thick with cigarette smoke and a scent of hair oil. Graice hasn't wanted to look directly at anyone except squat kindly Mandy, who seems to have taken a liking to her.

  That morning Graice had gone out to classes without her purse or wallet as she often does but, good luck, she has some loose change in her coat pocket, enough for a cup of hot black coffee and a thick slab of pie, Mandy's proud to say her home baked pie for that day is boysenberry and it's good, and Graice sits at the counter of the Ninth Street Cafe trembling with hunger eating boysenberry pie so delicious its taste sears her mouth, drinking coffee sweetened with milk, as, by degrees, the voices of the other customers resume their low earnest talk resumes as if she isn't there.

  So white skinned, so provisional. maybe in fact 5hA isn't there.

  Mandy stares at Graice Courtney, concerned. You out walkin', or what?

  You from the university up there? and Graice nods mutely, mouth filled with pie, and Mandy still staring, says, How're you gonna get back, then? It's a long way back and it's late. Adding, when Graice doesn't respond I was you, I'd take a taxi. Want me to call you a taxi?

  Graice says quickly, I don't have any money for a taxi.

  Can't you pay the man when you get where you're going? Get some money from somebody where you live?

  Mandy is mildly incredulous, impatient. What's this white girl doing here, tonight of all nights?

  There's a re d plastic radio on a shelf above the grill tuned to NBC News. unavoidable news. Graice has walked into a scene of emotion and jangled nerves in this cafe, it's unavoidable, nowhere to hide tonight in America, nowhere to escape. The latest from Washington D.

  C. , the latest from Dallas, Texas. a rushed interview with an eyewitness Secret Service man. further information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone assassin.

  Then music: Will You Love Me Tomorrow? by the Shirelles.

  Mandy and her customers discuss the news in voices that range from thoughtful to vehement, angry to aggrieved. Graice listens, thinking,
Why do you care that a white man has died? Why do you put your faith in any of us? What she most wants to do isn't cry but cradle her head in her arms on the counter, shut her eyes, vanish.

  Mandy appears to be the most agitated. She's been crying, that's why her face is so puffy, lined, her big breasts rising and falling with feeling, the lenses of her glasses misting over. Oh Gawd, she's saying, ain't it the terriblest terriblest shame, that poor man, poor missis Kennedy left with those little children, how's she gonna tell those children what a cruel thing happened to their daddy out in plain daylight, and Graice realizes that it's she whom Mandy is addressing, she says, Yes, it's terrible but her voice is faint and unconvincing, as if she's thinking of something else or has something to ask of Mandy in turn Why put your faith in any of us? but thinks better of asking.