Joyce Carol Oates - Broke Heart Blues

by Broke Heart Blues(lit)

  Stunned into silence, we returned to Dwayne's back lawn and to our "celebration." We were demoralized, aggrieved. It was now 4,20 A. M. --"My God! How did it get so late?" It was in fact Sunday morning. On Dwayne's increasingly defective tape deck, the Freaky Five's hit single "Gonna Sneeze Antifreeze" was chuffing and roaring like old times. It struck us as perverse, the mirrored disco balls continued to wink and leer, the strobe light continued to pulse lewdly in our absence--"A vision of earth mankind has vanished. Beyond all sentiment and nostalgia. Brute Existenz."

  we began to laugh. Even those who'd been sobbing as if our hearts had broken began to laugh. What the hell! John Reddy Heart had been here, and was gone, and how did that alter our condition from what it had been only a few minutes before? We resumed our frantic dancing. Shaking shoulders, hips, breasts. Arms swinging, legs blurred with speed and heads flung back, long hair flying. Aureoles of perspiration framed our heads like crowns.

  Some of f us leapt screaming and flailing, or were pushed screaming and flailing, into the shimmering Olympic-sized swimming pool. From the icy depths of second, enormous refrigerator in his enormous kitchen our host Dwayne Hewson produced, like a magician, more beer. We'd depleted the pistachios and other snacks but Sonny Deidenbach whom were getting to know, and like a lot, had impulsively ordered a half-dozen party pizzas (twenty-inch diameter) which were delivered by a wide-eyed black kid in a Cornell T-shirt who ventured with comical caution into our midst like Odysseus descending into the Land of the Dead, aghast swarms of wraiths rushing at him. Sonny and Dwayne quarreled goodnaturedly over which of them would pay, for of course each to pay, most of us tossed down bills and coins, as the kid in the Cornell T-shirt smiled nervously at us, but it was a smile at least, and then waving and retreating hurriedly he thanked us for our generosity part drunken carelessness and part drunken good spirits, we must've tipped him a hundred bucks) and was gone. ("You think he lives in Willowsville? Is it, um, now?"

  "Of course it's integrated! What d'you think this is, apartheid?"

  "But where exactly in the village is it integrated'? ") Though some of had heard this tale before in a number of differing versions, we listened enthralled as Scottie Baskett told us of having discovered, on a back street in Las Vegas, a modest adobe house in which Dahlia Heart and her family had lived emigrating to Willowsville. "What an adventure! Later I'd be at the hotel not to walk around in such neighborhoods by myself, even in daylight--'Everybody has a gun permit in Vegas. But no one me, I wasn't afraid in the slightest. No one was home at the Hearts' old house--I remember the address perfectly, 47 Arroyo Seco Street--but there was a next-door neighbor, a true spirit of the West, clearly part Native American.

  At first he was suspicious of me but when I introduced myself as a and classmate of Dahlia Heart's son John Reddy, the old man's face alive. His eyes, cloudy with cataracts, shone. He told me of time, a long time ago now, when Dahlia Heart was just a young woman, a girl really, living in that house, he described her in such detail--!

  I could've kicked myself not to have brought along a tape recorder. And a camera. He opened his heart to me, the poor old fella. (He knew he hadn't to live.

  It was touching, how he recognized me as a doctor! --as if he'd a lot of experience with doctors. ) Some of what he told me was about Dahlia Heart, 'the most beautiful, glamorous woman' he'd ever seen, and some of it was about being young in those days in Vegas. Son, he said, his quavering, it's not the same now. You kids don't know what passion is.

  You've got to want to die for a woman, and to kill for her. If you lack that passion, son, you have not lived." Scottie paused. Except for the deafening Freaky Five sound, you could've heard a pin drop. "I could see this great-souled old man, of another era almost, a vanishing America, had loved as much as any man can love a woman. Obviously, he'd been her lover. The thirty or forty years that had passed were nothing to him, Dahlia Heart existed for him vividly. And it came to me in that instant with the illumination a lightning flash that I was in the presence of John Reddy Heart's father." Inside the pounding beat of the Kinks' "Tongue in My Heart" was a poignant silence. Some of the girls were crying. Even Jon Rindfleisch who'd been laughing uproariously all evening wiped at his inflamed eyes.

  Ken Fischer was holding Verrie Myers's white-knuckled hands in his, Ritchie Eickhorn was holding Evangeline Fesnacht's white-knuckled hands in his, Dwayne Hewson scowled, as if in pain--"Navajo, I bet. That hair, and that look in John Reddy's eye." Tears shone on Kate Olmsted's face with a startling radiance. She said, gently reproachful, "If only you'd had a camera, Scott. If only." The red sickle moon had long disappeared, sucked over the edge of earth and into the void. We shivered.

  Somehow, who knew how (for we all protested we were stuffed to the with succulent roast pig), the enormous party pizzas, thick with slices of pepperoni and Italian sausage, had been devoured.

  Crusts sharp as broken glass if you happened to step on them with bare feet lay scattered on the terrace for the Hewsons' disdainful maid to clean up, with other garbage, morning. Still, there was a hunger for dancing! A ferocity for dancing! "Like we'd been bitten by one of those giant poisonous spiders--a tarantula? And, to sweat the poison out, had to dance, dance, dance till we dropped." Blake Wells was blowing his clarinet as we'd never heard him blow it back school--wild screeching breathy wavering notes. Scottie Baskett trombone, a clumsy instrument, something was wrong with the but Scottie managed to blow a few notes loud, piercing, terrific!

  There was Jax Whitehead (taking Pete Marsh's place) at the drums, eyes shut, in a swoon as he slammed his fists drummer-boy-fashion against a metal table top--Ka-boom! ka-boom! ka-boom! There was Chris Donner, inspired, on cymbals--except these were caterers' aluminum trays Chris was crashing together. Had these guys ever played

  "Tongue in My Heart" before.7--they secmed to know the music, anyway the wild percussive beat. With little cry, Vcrrie Myers leapt up and hauled Ken Fischer laughing to his feet and--there they were again, our Queen and King of the Senior Prom, dancing before our enraptured eyes, swaying and stumbling together, like spent boxers, for the Kinks' slam-dunk beat. Lulu Lovitt, blouse falling off shoulder, was dancing with her old steady Jake Gervasio, slither-bumping frenzy of copulating insects. Trish Elders, her pale, pettish tightened in a knot, was dancing with a grinning, gyrating Sonny Deidenbach forehead was beaded with sweat of an eerie reddish hue. There were Zwaart and Suzi Zeigler twined together like drowning creatures, and laughing softly into each other's avid mouth. Ketch Campbell we'd thought had gone home hours ago was dancing with clumsy abandon, swinging head, shoulders, chunky ass, with a panting, perspiring Sandi Scott--"My God. Sandi would never have stooped so low in real life." Our whiz Petey Merchant we'd thought, too, had long since slipped dancing like a puppet jerked on a string with hot-eyed Kate Olmsted stamped the tile terrace with bare, wounded feet as if trying to injure herself.

  Ritchie Eickhorn, maudlin-drunk, was clapping his hands, chanting-O youth O America like gold coins falling from our pockets!

  So many coins! such riches! no need to stoop to pick up what you've dropped.

  We clapped for Ritchie, we were proud of Ritchie--America needs poets! ) Yet it was disturbing to see how, at the edge of the terrace, pale-skinned languid Ginger McCord had been drawn at last into the arms of her sweethcart Dougie Siefried, though Dougie's arms had lost their sinewy-muscular definition, in fact they were skeletal-thin, and his freckled boy's face showed veins, arteries, spidery nerves through translucent skin. Tall, basketball forward, Dougie leaned over Ginger, smiling into her uplifted, heart-shaped face, teasing, making her laugh as he'd always done, kissing the tip of her pert, perfect nose even as he swung them away, turned and gyrated away out of the lighted poolside area and into the shadows and we called after them--"Ginger? Ginger, come back! Don't go with him! Ginger!" Beneath the frantically revolving disco mirrors, alternately annihilated by the powerful strobe light, Babs Bitterman, page-boy hair glistening on her shoulders, and Steve Lunt
with his tough-guy Marine-issue crew cut were pressed tight together grinding chests, bellies, pelvises. As they turned, we saw in speechless horror the glass-pellets like stitching in their young faces. A triangular patch of Steve's skull missing above his right ear. And Babs who'd been so vain of her good looks, always to the lavatory to freshen her lipstick, pat powder across her face--what was wrong with her right eye? They lifted their tight-clasped hands to wave at us, with wan, mildly mocking smiles.

  There was Smoke Filer dancing with a girl whose face we couldn't see.

  Whose name we didn't know. We'd forgotten! In the yearbook, pretty, dimpled-smiling face was positioned, her curled hair and wavy bangs, we'd see nothing, a blank. There was Smoke Filer winking at her, and, over her head, at us. His handsome weasel-face crushed, pulped. His chest (he'd been a little anxious about, not so thick with kinky hairs as his teammates, naked as a child's set beside John Reddy Heart's dark-haired muscled chest) crushed. "They said the T-Bird steering column had pierced him a spit.

  Through his chest, out his back. Those were the reckless defiant days after seat belts had been installed in most cars but before the era of seat-belt laws." His face a glowering demon-mask of lust, the soiled white bandageturban askew on his head, Dwayne Hewson was dancing with not one two sexy, desirable women, mature women with breasts and asses, them around, grunting, cursing--"God damn, who stepped on my toes? "-as they shrieked and pushed at him, hair in their faces, out on the lawn. On the tape deck was playing a strangely distorted

  "Die Lovin' You," another hit single by Lollipop. The wind had risen, rocking the disco mirrors. One of them had shattered, pieces of glass lay underfoot. The of the aqua water shivered, quaked. These were damned fine-looking women, Pattianne Groves, Mary Louise Schultz, Shelby Connor white panties we'd glimpsed at pep rallies when she leapt, twisted, turned, spread her legs as in an embrace of multitudes--where had Shelby from, so suddenly? We feared she'd left the party, slipped away disgust.

  And now came rushing at them--" Gonna die lovin' you!

  "--hot-skinned Millie Leroux, and there was--wild! --little Trish Elders he'd once, tenth grade, took her to the Glen Theatre that smelled mouthwateringly of stale buttered popcorn to see 2001, A Space Odyssey and poor Trish was so freaked by the movie, by the nightmare ending, she'd begun to cry on the way home and Dwayne had to comfort her like a goddam older brother, what a letdown, what a bummer, he'd heard from Jon Rindfleisch kiss Trish if you went about it in the right way, she wasn't all elbows and nervous giggles like other girls, but he'd screwed up, never told any of the guys, in fact he'd entirely forgotten since this moment, hadn't even tried to kiss her in fact, green-eyed Trish Elders who'd gone riding (it was enviously reported) in John Reddy Heart's Caddie. Pattianne was Dwayne's steady, a good kid but Christ he was bored with her, "necking" was the limit, she'd gone about it like homework, but no French-kissing--not once. Not once!

  Anyway it was sexy Verrie Myers he'd been crazy for since kindergarten, Verrie Myers he'd dreamt of touching, gripping in his hands, kneading squeezing and sort of twisting (like clay, like dough--weird! ) in his strong eager hands, perennial tease Veronica Myers you couldn't help wanting to tear (as old Bo memorably observed) with your teeth. "Hey--Verrie? Dwayne was startled to see she'd come to join them, running barefoot across the lawn and leaving, for once, crestfallen Ken Fischer behind.

  Why the fuck wasn't Ken dead? Dwayne had adjusted, like most of us, to Ken's death, he'd shook his head over the "riddle" of another's suicide, in he'd helped to promulgate the rumor, he'd felt sick at heart by the of his old friend and teammate but he'd gotten over it and now Ken was back was just like him. ) "Hi Dwayne!" Verrie cooed in the throaty contralto of her film successes, immense partly clad Blond Goddess hovering on the with that sly-seductive smile, perfect heaving breasts, "'Gonna lovin' you! lovin' you baby! lovin' you-uuu ba-byyy!" No exaggeration, every hair on the nape of Dwayne Hewson's twenty-one-inch bull-neck stood up.

  He was a hefty, thunderous billy goat with tufted ears, horny stabbing the grass. He'd have said he was chasing these part-nude shrieking girls, tearing at their soft, melting skins, their flyaway hair and glistening lips and peek-a-boo nipples, but somehow it seemed to be he, Dwayne Hewson, Wolverine quarterback, Willowsville mayor and well-respected local businessman, a husband and a father of four kids, and damned fine kids they were, he was proud of them and of himself--somehow it was he they chasing, he staggered panting, heart leaping in his chest, on hands and knees in the spiky evergreen hedge at the rear of his expensive Mill Race Lane property, the girls' fingers tore away the soiled bandage-turban, there it flew across the grass like a wounded bird, now their bold hands stroked his amazed body teasing, tugging, pulling, as his good dull wife would've never done, and--"Hey, my trunks! "--they'd thrown him down, flopped him over like a big fish and tugged, torn at his trunks, managed to pull off the tight-fitting trunks (that invariably left an angry red mark at his fatty waist, God damn he hated that) so suddenly he was naked, soft, limp genitals exposed, though trying to laugh, "Hey girls! This isn't funny.

  Whattre your husbands gonna say about this, girls?" But they no mercy. It was worse than a football scrimmage. Worse than guy on the other team jumping on you. Truly he was surprised, these good girls?

  Millie Leroux who'd taught Sunday school was fantastic! Since her hysterectomy a few years ago she'd told Connie she was convinced life was over or maybe, who knows, maybe just begun? Plucking, tearing his penis, laughing at the look in his face. But Pattianne too was laughing, as hexd never heard her laugh before, wicked sly laughter, and sweet Mary Schultz biting her lip, pink snaky tongue protruding between her lips, and witchy Trish Elders, and Veronica Myers straddling him like an Amazon, prodding a naked knee into his naked belly--"No mercy, Dwayne! We the ball, the ball is you!" The surprisingly strong middle-aged girls of the Circle managed to their squirming prey aloft, and how Dwayne kicked, squealed, shrieked with laughter--"Girls! Have mercy!" We stared in amazement as they buck-naked hairy host like a pig to the spit across the dewy grass and into the swimming pool, tossed him in with screams of female triumph, tore off their clothes and leapt into the water themselves. A gaping observer would afterward claim that actual steam rose from the pool when Dwayne those girls hit the water--"They were so hot." It happened so quickly! Like the collapse of the redwood deck, Reddy's sudden appearance and departure! But Kate Olmsted, that photo-historian of our class, was already scrambling for her camera. Quite a few of us would be uneasy with Kate's use of the prints next fall at her gallery opening, but Kate was adamant that Dwayne wouldn't have minded--"You know that wild sense of humor of his. He'd have memorial exactly like this." We whistled and applauded and stamped our feet. Several of us couldn't resist jumping into the pool ourselves, part-or fully-clothe , joining Dwayne and the scandalous women paddling and splashing, playful as seals.

  Lollipop's

  "Die Lovin' You" was still playing, a defective tape marred by high thin batlike whistles. The wind was up. The eastern sky was lightening. A new day, already? Too soon! It was 5,20 A. M. How we laughed, laughed and applauded, sure, Dwayne was a little out of condition, that belly, that torso, some of us guys embarrassed of our own guts were gratified to see Dwayne's, and that something swinging between his hairy legs like sausage, definitely puffing hard, flailing to keep afloat as the girls and tickled him, his bug-eyes bloodshot and he had a raw head wound we hadn't noticed till now, poor Dwayne Hewson, Mayor of Willowsville, fiftynine rather than forty-nine, but the fact remains, Dwayne was one blissed-out fella in that pool, and if you can't die young you can at least die happy, eh Dwayne?

  At dawn, on Mill Race Lane, a small flotilla of vehicles, from the number of the previous night, moved away from the Hewsons' handsome old colonial.

  Already in our memories Dwayne's house, the swimming pool and the orgiastic dancing and nude-Dwayne-tossed-in-the-pool-by-nymphs, beginning to fade.

  As Richard Eickhorn would write'in his posthumously
published masterwork, the dithyrambic poetry sequence Broke Heart Blues-You never lose what you never had.

  Never have what you hadn't lost.

  There'd been no intention to drive in a kind of funeral procession! -somehow it just happened. "Ken in the new Jag, and Verrie snuggling beside him, naturally took the lead. The rest of us followed." In fact, Trish Elders and Shelby Connor, giddy with an exhaustion would have seemed to any suspicious husband post-coital, hair stringy-damp and smelling of chlorine from Dwayne's pool, were riding with Ken and Verrie in the miniature back seat of the robin's-egg-blue sports car.

  many of us had admired at the curb outside Dwayne's. Classy! Must be that "troubleshooting" for Motorola's big bucks, eh Ken? ) Trish who herself "wrecked" was in no condition to drive home to wherever she living--on the lake shore? She'd have had difficulty saying which lived there with her unless they'd already decided to separate, no--this was a new marriage, to a man who respected her art, or said he did, this marriage would last.

  Behind the Jag was Art Lutz at the wheel of his feisty Dodge Grand Caravan. Sleepy Mary Louise Schultz snuggling close beside him, on his shoulder.

  Next was Ritchie Eickhorn in his airport-rental Toyota, a silent Evangeline Fesnacht beside him staring into space with the look of granted a vision at the cost of being struck blind.