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

by Because It Is Bitter

  but Alan's eyes brimmed simply with tears; it was as if Graice's hurt were his own: he'd gripped her hands in his and laid his head against her; they'd wept together in mutual commiseration.

  Graice thought, disbelieving, Does he love me, then?

  Blackened eyes. a bloodied nose. a cracked rib.

  bruises and bumps and lacerations particularly of her knees and the palms of her hands; she'd been dragged resisting across pavement clumps of hair torn from her head, and a chipped front tooth kicks to her lower belly, and between the legs the assault was sexual obviously though not in the most the clinical sense rape since there had been no actual penetration of the vagina. In her early delirium the patient said she didn't think they'd meant to hurt her as much as they had; it was because she'd fought them, resisted

  Eventually missis Savage would say, You must pray for them, dear, you mustn't harbor bitterness.

  Oh, yes. Oh, no.

  It's the only way. The Christian way. The way of health, forgiveness.

  Graice could tell Syracuse police only that her assailants were young black men. She wasn't sure if there had been four or five, hadn't seen their faces clearly, hadn't heard any of them call any other by name, could not identify the car, even its color. Nor was she certain of the location in which she'd been picked up except to know it was somewhere west of the river.

  Someone has predicted bad dreams for months, years.

  A lifetime of flinching when she sees black skin.

  Graice Courtney doesn't think much about it, never speaks of it with Alan any longer, nor does Alan speak of it with her, so many other things to concentrate upon with the wedding Saturday morning and the honeymoon trip by Pullman to New York City where they will stay for six days in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, then re turn briefly to Syracuse in preparation for their move to a handsome eighteenth century brownstone on Delancey Street, Philadelphia for Alan Savage has surprised everyone by accepting a position as assistant curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art instead of an academic position, and Graice Courtney may one day enroll in graduate studies at Penn, in art history, or so it's their plan, once things get settled. Moving into the Delancey Street brownstone, properly furnishing it, taking on the responsibilities of a young curator's wife she'll have a good deal to do.

  Please don't laugh when I say I want to be a good wife to you: I want to be worthy.

  Alan Savage frames his bride to He's lovely face in his hands, nudges her forehead gently with his, kisses the tip of her nose and then, lightly, her lips. she's a tall straight backed young woman but he's several inches taller and friends of the Savages have been commenting for months on the change in him, his new air of maturity, self assurance, yet playfulness too, he's quick to smile and rarely does he flare up any longer in annoyance at a goading re mark of Byron's; yes, perhaps he has begun to see the wisdom of his father's perspective, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art he'll be in charge of the extensive Duchamp and Modernist holdings in a context he plans of classic European art. for Alan Savage's agenda is to re late Surrealist experimentation to the tradition and not isolate it, as its practitioners demanded, as if it were sui generis.

  My Botticelli: how could you not be worthy ?

  Kissing her gently, questioningly. they're hidden away in the guest room on the second floor, rear, overlooking missis Savage's rose garden, in which Graice has stayed since the family moved back to town from Skaneateles at the end of August; Graice Courtney has left forever that shabby rooming house on South Salina Street and within weeks all memory of it will have faded from her mind or perhaps has already faded in this fragrant chintz furnished room with the graceful white louver shutters closed now against the humid September sunshine and her trembling bridegroom em braces her, kissing lips, eyes. his mothlike kisses.. bending to press his warm face against her hard little breasts like a child's fists inside her cotton shirt, stooping, finally kneeling, to kiss the pit of her belly, gently between the legs. as she stiffens, just slightly but doesn't close her fingers in his hair and, as if in play, urge him away as she's done many times, so this time he remains kneeling, hugging her around the hips, his warm face pressed against her, his eyes shut.

  If it excites Alan Savage to think of Graice Courtney having been the victim of a sexual assault. by young black men, faceless and nameless. it isn't a fact, or even a possibility, he'll articulate.

  It's I who must be worthy of you.

  Lunchtime but no one wants to sit down and there's the telephone again, it has been ringing ringing ringing for days, and missis Savage's voice lifts another time: Hello? Oh, hell lo!

  Twice daily the delivery truck marked UNITED PARCEL SERVICE turns up the looping gravel drive of Savage House, the Chinese import reception room has become a treasure trove of wedding gifts through which Alan Savage and Graice Courtney move, fingers linked, like staring children. in awe, in gratitude, on the verge of mirth. Graice says with a laughing little shudder that she'll be spending the first month of her married life writing thank you notes; Alan runs a hand through his hair confessing with a smile that he had no idea he had so many relatives: a veritable subgalaxy of Savages, Makepeaces, and blood related others.

  How will I ever re pay them?

  Tugging at his fingers his bride to be amends, We.

  They flee from such dazzling sights, the silver alone enough to stagger the eye, wander for a few minutes in missis Savage's rose garden, fingers still linked, and Alan Savage is quiet as if brooding, then says, with that air of sudden perception Graice Courtney so admires in him, like a match suddenly flaring into flame, Freud believed that only the delayed gratification of an infantile wish can bring adult happiness; that's why money, material things, rarely bring happiness.

  . they aren't infantile wishes.

  Graice Courtney laughs, murmuring, What re mains, then?

  Someone calls them from the house; it's lunchtime: cold shrimp and scallop salad, green salad, fruit on the table but no one wants to sit down and there's the telephone again and though Mercedes answers it missis Savage can't resist taking any call for it's the caterer with a crucial question, or the photographer with a crucial question, or doctor Niemann's secretary, or doctor Niemann himself, or one of Gwendolyn's sisters, or one of Byron's aged aunts, or the society editor of the Syracuse Journal wanting to know the exact number of wedding guests expected, the exact number of nights the newlyweds will spend at the Plaza Hotel, the exact title of Alan Savage's new appointment at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  These many callers, missis Savage is happy to oblige.

  Confiding in the society editor of the Journal, an old acquaintance, that she and doctor Savage will miss their son and new daughter in law enormously away off in Philadelphia but the family will be vacationing together in January, in Barbados, two lovely weeks at the re sort hotel to which she and doctor Savage have been re turning faithfully for the past seventeen years.

  There's an old favorite song of missis Savage's running through her mind these days, a Cole Porter dance tune; sometimes it surfaces and she finds herself humming or singing under her breath:. you are the one.

  But where is doctor Savage; why hasn't he come to lunch?

  His library is empty: he seems to have left the house.

  The doorbell rings briskly at the rear of the house; it's the champagne delivery: cases and cases of French champagne.

  Lunch is prepared, plates laid on the dining room table, but no one sits down except missis Vitale, who's a special guest today, and hungry, in a grim smiling mood which only discreet praise from missis Savage can placate, and a glass or two of tartare d wine, and food.

  For it isn't only the bride's dress that re quires last minute alteration but missis Savage's pink silk sheath, which missis Vitale sewed especially for the occasion: the skirt, missis Savage abruptly decided, is a full inch too long and makes her look dowdy.

  Amid the lovely bridesmaids and the yet lovelier bride, she, the matron of honor, the groom's mother, has
a horror of appearing dowdy. it isn't vanity but familial pride.

  Alan and Graice, the one in khaki sports clothes, the other in shirt and jeans, appear in the dining room but only to take away plates of melon and grapefruit, and coffee, and sections of that morning's New York Times which doctor Savage left scattered about. not that they don't like missis Vitale with her busy monologue and immense appetite but, yes, these precious days, they prefer to be alone.

  These languorous September days, a lovesick fragrance to the air.

  Even as the Savage household is in a perpetual state of expectationah, there: the telephone again.

  Alan and Graice drift out into the sun porch, this place of white wicker, potted ferns, plump chintz cushions; Graice cuts them both slices of melon and pries apart segments of grapefruit; Alan spreads the New York Times out on a table, sighs, mutters, it's Vietnam again, more Vietnam in the headlines, what is Vietnam?

  A year ago, wasn't it, the prediction was made by President Kennedy that we'd be out of Vietnam within a year, yet it looks as if things are steadily worsening: since the torpedo attack on U. S.

  destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August and the Congressional re solution authorizing President Johnson to take all necessary measures to maintain peace in the free world, it seems that more American troops are continually being ordered in, more military advisers: Where is it going to end, Alan Savage says, another Korea?

  Another war?

  Graice says, Isn't it a war already?

  She's frowning, leaning on Alan's shoulder, quickly skimming the front page, eating grapefruit with her fingers.

  Featured on the page is a photograph of a black infantryman, First Battalion, Fourteenth Infantry, Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, Camp Warrior, Pleiku Province, in eerie juxtaposition with a skull just behind him, hoisted on a tent pole.

  Graice says stubbornly, If people are dying, it's a war, and Alan says, unconsciously echoing a re mark doctor Savage made the other evening at dinner, If the madmen don't start dropping nuclear bombs on one another it isn't somehow a re al war. Not in 1964.

  Graice turns away.

  News makes her nervous; it tells us how powerless we are, she has said, shows us how we're only tiny figures in an immense constellation.

  Especially war news. Especially news of Vietnam.

  missis Savage pokes her head through the doorway of the sun porch, flashes them her lovely loving smile. Though in her own words run off her feet these days, missis Savage has never looked healthier, in better spirits. There you are, you two! I was beginning to wonder.

  Alan lets the newspaper fall, pushes it aside, says teasingly, Did you think we'd eloped, Mother?

  missis Savage says, Oh, it's too late for that!

  In another room, the telephone begins ringing.

  Where is doctor Savage? Has he driven over to the university?

  On Graice's plate two slender crescent moons of honeydew melon remain, one for Alan, one for Graice. Delicious, Alan says, licking his lips.

  That morning, Graice woke long before dawn. Lay there in her canopied bed, on a mattress that sighed beneath her weight. Lay there listening as sparrows began to stir in the English ivy outside the window, small wings thrashing, sweet liquid cries.

  Each cry a question? Lifting in a sort of question?

  A lifetime of flinching at black skin and, yes, it's true, to a degree it's true, though when she smiles, and she smiles often, her smile is white glistening and flawless, you'd never know.

  A punch in the mouth, knuckles hard as rock.

  A kick between the legs. No, kicks.

  White cunt. White pussy. Uhhhh huhhhhh.

  You think we don't know you, cunt? We know you.

  The chipped tooth, discreetly capped, cosmetic dentistry and no expense spared by the Savages, is indistinguishable from Graice Courtney's other front teeth. Though sometimes, believing herself unwatched, she touches it, pries a little at it. Just to see.

  Delicious, says Alan. I guess I am hungry.

  In another room missis Savage is laughing delightedly over the telephone, it must be a relative or a dear friend, there are so many.

  A constellation, complete in itself. Each figure named and cherished and it is wisest to forgive, it's the only Christian strategy, and forget too if you can.

  After lunch missis Vitale re turns to her sewing, the doorbell rings and it's the United Parcel Service man for the second time that day: an armload of wedding presents hidden inside plain brown wrapping paper.

  Where's Graice? Two of missis Savage's friends have dropped by for a brief visit, not more than five minutes, Gwendolyn, they insist, we know how busy you are. But have some coffee at least, says missis Savage, and here's Alan to shake hands, blushing and boyish and yes they've seen this young man grow up, amazing! Isn't it always amazing!

  The fact of time, time passing, time passed and never to be retrieved but you do get used to it.

  Do you?

  Don t you?

  Don't you. what?

  Get used to it.

  Used to. ?

  Time passing.

  Oh, no! Oh, yes, I suppose.

  Where is doctor Savage, has he driven over to the university?

  Today is a day off, he'd promised to stay home and give me a hand but you know Byron, any disruption in his schedule frightens him, and he can't stay away from that office of his, you know Byron!

  Where's Graice? Alan is playing a re cord of the beautiful Schumann song that Matilde Ferri the soprano a friend of the Savages for twenty odd years will sing at their wedding; Graice has heard the song already more than once and agrees it's ideal for the occasion but where is she?

  upstairs in her room? the hi fi volume turned up and everyone listening attentively to an English soprano singing Schumann's Help Me My Sisters : Help me, my sisters help me to prepare for my wedding day. A scratchy re cording, made in 1952, but the singer's voice is crystalline, so beautiful missis Savage sits weakly on a chair arm, a gesture unlike her, touches her fingertips to her eyes, saying, I only hope, Alan, that Matilde can sing half so well on Saturday.

  Alan too is brushing his eyes. But he looks up smiling, says teasingly, Surely Matilde can do a little better by us than half When Graice re turned to Hammond in May, primarily to visit Leslie Courtney, she was astonished by two things: the first, that her uncle had only the previous week moved both his studio and his living quarters to another downtown location, a nicer neighborhood, on a side street called Chippewa, where COURTNEY'S PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO is one of a row of small shops, antiques, upholstery, secondhand books, but the major difference is that now, at long last, Leslie is facing the sunny side of the street! After twenty years in the shade.

  As he told Graice excitedly, it wasn't just that 591 North Main Street was a shoddy building in a depressed neighborhood, nor even that he'd settled into a sort of permanent rut there, but, one January day, no customers and he'd been staring out the front window observing sunshine on facing buildings bright as Vermeer yellow, and somehow suddenly the words of one of Persia's songs came to him in a sort of waking dream: that bouncy jivey tune Sunny Side of the Street which Persia used to sing in one of her characteristically cheery moods. It seemed to me almost as if I were hearing the song, hearing her voice, Leslie said, those silly but somehow endearing and inspiring words. You know: Life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street! It was as if your mother had nudged me, Graice, the way she'd sometimes do, a nudge or a pinch, to wake me up and I did wake up, and thought, Why not? Why not move to the sunny side of the street? What have I to lose? Next year I'll be fifty years old.

  So Leslie arranged to borrow money from friends new friends, Graice gathered: he'd begun teaching photography courses at the local YMCA, and the director and his wife have become quite fond of him, were happy to lend him money , scouted about for a new location in the downtown area, a small studio with living quarters close by, his primary requirement being that the shop face the sout
heast, thus the morning sun, so precious in winter mornings in upstate New York. And here it is, 43

  West Chippewa, he said, and here I intend to stay. What do you think of my new place, Graice?

  Graice was thinking that the new shop, apart from the neighbor hood, and the building, which was newer and cleaner than the old, very much resembled the old; Leslie seemed to have moved every thing intact, including the framed photographs on the walls and the jumble of frames and cartons and paraphernalia at the rear All his furnishings were the same, and in the same general arrangement.

  And there was Houdini the midnight black cat, plumper and more impetuous than Graice re called, but the same creature still: clambering about on her lap, regarding her with tawny golden eyes and purring loudly. She said, moved, It's lovely, Uncle Leslie! It's.