Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  When Mariana drew breath to speak again—Excuse me? Who are you?—the words choked in her throat. For now she was beginning to be frightened. She was alone in the house—her husband had not yet returned home from work. She was a small-boned woman, of forty-three—not strong, and not very aggressive. She’d been a high-school athlete but her days of competitive physical exertion, the contention of one body against others in the exigency of the moment, had long since ceased. Apart from her husband she had very little physical contact with anyone any longer—and her contact with her husband was likely to be routine, predictable, and brief.

  If she could move fast enough she could—maybe—slam the bedroom door—this was a door with a lock—(she thought: she’d never tried to lock it)—to keep out the intruder; or, she could run into the bathroom that opened off the bedroom—(which certainly had a door with a lock)—but then, she’d be trapped in the bathroom—(but if she remained in the bedroom, where she was now, she would be trapped also). But—could she force herself to step forward, in the direction of the intruder, and seize the doorknob to shut the door? And—if the intruder grabbed the door, to prevent her? Or—grabbed her? Swiftly her brain was working with the desperation of a brain whose oxygen is being depleted; but she could not move—she could not breathe. As in the corridor so intimately close the shadowy male figure stood also unmoving—poised as if about to leap—his head turned to the side as if he were listening at her—sniffing her—though not yet confronting her. He appeared to be waiting—for what? Mariana’s voice? Mariana’s scream?

  She couldn’t see his face but she was beginning to be aware of his quickened breath—a harsh animal-panting.

  And she could smell him—an acrid animal-smell, that made her feel faint.

  This is no accident. He has come for me. But—who is he . . .

  Outside, a vehicle approached the house—a flare of headlights lifted to the bedroom windows—for suddenly it was dusk. There came Mariana’s husband in his steel-colored Land Rover elevated from the pavement like a military vehicle. In that instant, as if released from a spell, now alert and alarmed, the male figure in the corridor turned and hurried away—limping? The clear, curious thought came to Mariana—Oh! something is wrong with his hind leg.

  Downstairs, her husband called to her—“Hello! I’m home.”

  It was a familiar pronouncement, and did not inevitably require a reply. Though often Mariana called down—“Hello!”—or, in a tone of wifely welcome—“Hi! I’ll be right down.” By the time Mariana descended the stairs, and entered the kitchen, Pearce might have left the room for another part of the house and on a bench by the side door his overcoat would have been flung, for Mariana to pick up and hang in the hall closet.

  They had been married for nineteen years. Marital customs spontaneously created at the outset of the marriage prevailed in somewhat attenuated if not useless forms. In a voice of forced casualness Mariana said, “Pearce—did you see anyone outside? Leaving our house? In the driveway?”

  “Who?”

  Pearce was frowning at Mariana as if she’d interrupted his line of thinking. In his hands was the Italian leather attaché case she’d bought for him, for a recent birthday, to replace an identical attaché case she’d bought for him years before.

  “Someone—a person—a stranger—no one we know . . . He was just . . . I didn’t . . .” Mariana paused, trying to catch her breath. By nature she was not an excitable woman, still less was she a woman inclined to hysteria; she did not imagine things, and took some pride, as a woman, in resisting extremes of emotion. Had she had a genuinely upsetting experience just a few minutes ago, or had it been wholly—imagined?

  For now it seemed to her in the cheerily-lit kitchen that was like a glossy photograph of a kitchen, among pale-peach-colored counters, a dark-orange floor of Mexican tiles, a massive cook’s stove and a massive Sub-Zero unit with faux-cherrywood doors, that she’d probably just imagined the intruder upstairs. Some trick of the meshed shadow and sunlight just outside the bedroom. Whatever the figure had been, it had vanished with no sound like a dream rudely awakened by a slamming door. The new, curious thought came to Mariana The territory isn’t large enough for two males of the identical sub-species.

  Pearce was regarding her with a commingled expression of concern and impatience.

  “What do you mean—did I ‘see’ someone? Was someone here? At the door? I didn’t see any car leave, if that’s what you mean.” Pearce paused in the smiling way of a seasoned lawyer about to deliver a coup de grâce. “Who did you expect me to see?”

  Pearce was a lawyer by nature as well as by training: he carried with him a cloud of excited contentiousness like a concentration of stinging gnats. As a young man he’d been very attractive, with a sort of blond-Viking swagger—at least, Mariana seemed to recall being attracted to Pearce Shutt as a young man; now, in his early fifties, Pearce had become heavy-set, pear-shaped, with a sulky jowly face like a late Roman emperor and glaring deep-set eyes in which there gleamed a remnant of his boyish self, as in a slow-fading TV face. Pearce had been a competitive tennis player not so long ago—a trophy winner in the annual Crescent Lake Country Club tournament—an enthusiastic “sportsman”—deer-hunting in Michigan, trout-fishing in Colorado and bone-fishing in the Florida keys. After thirteen years at Extol Pharmaceuticals he’d recently been promoted to chief legal counsel—Pearce’s particular expertise was defending the corporation against a flood of lawsuits involving the prescription antidepressant Excelsior, now the preeminent psychotropic drug on the American market.

  Pearce’s argument was that a certain percentage of depressed individuals will commit suicide whether they take medication or not. In courtrooms across the country he argued with faultless logic that deceased users of Excelsior were suicidal before beginning medication—otherwise, the medication would not have been prescribed for them. Depressed individuals are by definition at risk for suicide, and only depressed individuals commit suicide; therefore, if Excelsior is prescribed for individuals who are severely depressed, and at risk for suicide, these individuals may commit suicide. But Excelsior is not the cause of the suicide, and Extol Pharmaceuticals cannot be liable.

  “Well? Who did you expect to see?”

  Mariana had no idea what her husband was asking her. Her heart was beating quickly and her sensitive nostrils were still pinched from the harsh acrid animal-smell of the shadowy stranger in the upstairs hall. Stammering she said:

  “I don’t—didn’t—expect to see anyone . . . I think it must have been a mistake. He’d come to the wrong address with some sort of”—Mariana’s almond eyes widened with a sort of reckless innocence like the eyes of a child who has just discovered the possibility of inventing “truth”—“package like UPS. But not UPS—some other service.”

  “Yes? What other ‘service’?”

  “I—I don’t know . . .”

  “But he didn’t ‘deliver’ anything, did he? Where is the package?”

  “Package?”

  Abruptly then as often he did, Pearce lost interest in interrogating Mariana, as a predator loses interest in pursuing prey because the prey is revealed to be scrawny, elderly, or diseased, or because the predator isn’t really hungry. With a mirthful knowing laugh—(but what was it that Pearce knew, Mariana wondered, that so unnerved her?—this was one of Pearce Shutt’s mannerisms)—he brushed past her to the glass-front cupboard where liquor was kept. It was 7:28 P.M.: Pearce’s first meeting at corporate headquarters in East Orange, New Jersey, had been at 7:45 A.M.; he would pour himself a glass of his favorite bourbon, seize a handful of Brazil nuts, and settle into his black leather La-Z-Boy chair in the TV room to watch news on three channels simultaneously until Mariana summoned him to dinner at which time Pearce would rub his hands zestfully together and mutter, with an air of just barely concealed impatience, yet boyishly, cheerily: “Well! Good! I’m starving.”

  Upstairs in the large house the rooms were empty—emptier than usual it
seemed—no intruder. Of course, there could not have been an intruder. Mariana knew.

  Yet the faint acrid sweat-smell of—someone, something—a male body at the height of arousal—remained in the corridor outside the bedroom . . . Pearce took not the slightest notice of it and so Mariana was left to conclude that she was imagining it, too.

  A weekday evening like any other, Mariana thought.

  So lonely!

  *

  And then, in the early evening of the following day, when Mariana was returning home from grocery shopping, she saw something moving in the dense shrubbery beside the driveway—a deer? a large dog? In the headlights of her car there was a flash of glaring eyes and swiftly then the creature turned, and was gone.

  “Oh! God . . .”

  Mariana would have liked to think it had been a deer—just a white-tailed deer—there were many deer in Crescent Lake Woods . . . Mariana didn’t want to think that a creature of that size might be a neighbor’s dog, or a stray dog, wandering on their property.

  Possibly, the creature could be a coyote. There were coyotes in this part of northern New Jersey. Less likely, a wolf.

  Only the rear of the Shutts’ three-acre property was fenced. The front was open to the road, though the house itself was some distance from the road, at the end of a long circular driveway and near-invisible from the mailbox.

  And the house was dark!—darkened. Another time, Mariana had driven away without having left even a single light on, as she’d driven away without turning on the elaborate and expensive “security” system that Pearce had had installed. If Pearce knew, he’d have reprimanded her. If the house is broken into, if valuable things are stolen, and the security hadn’t been turned on, the insurance company will refuse to pay us. Do you realize what this could cost us . . .

  Mariana continued along the driveway. The headlights of her car illuminated the most harmless and familiar sights—the desiccated remnants of flowerbeds, skeletal rosebushes, several leafless birch trees and a swath of evergreens—whatever the creature was, it had vanished—but no—there it was!—in the shrubbery at the garage—another time came a flash of glassy-glaring eyes, predator-eyes, as the creature vanished into the shadows behind the garage.

  Mariana wondered if it was frightened by the car, or—wanting to hide from her, to prepare for an attack.

  A dog-like creature, of the size of a German shepherd—its fur seemed to be sand-colored, dark-mottled as if soiled—its ears pricked up though oddly rounded, unlike a dog’s ears. Mariana had the impression that the creature was oddly hunched-over—a primate of some sort—like a baboon . . .

  Panicked she thought How will I get out of the car!

  She didn’t want to turn the car around and flee—take refuge in a neighbor’s house—like a silly, hysterical woman. Still less did she want to drive back into town where she had women friends, or call Pearce on her cell phone and arrange to meet him somewhere—these possibilities seemed excessive, unwarranted.

  Pearce would have said Call the police! 911! If anyone tries to break in or threatens you.

  “No one is threatening me. I am all right.”

  Adrenaline flooded her veins. All of her senses were aroused, alert to the point of pain. She knew herself observed from the dense tangled shrubbery at the side of the garage though she couldn’t see the creature’s eyes.

  Tawny-golden eyes, they’d been. Not-human eyes.

  For eleven of the nineteen years of their marriage Mariana and Pearce Shutt had lived in this large attractive pale-gray stone-and-stucco house—described by the architect as French Provincial/contemporary—set back from Crescent Lake Drive in a cul-de-sac, with frontage on Crescent Lake. It was the sort of house that corporation lawyers like Pearce Shutt lived in, as the truly large custom-designed “estates” in this affluent area of rural/suburban New Jersey were owned by corporation executives. They had no children—there hadn’t been a time Pearce judged to be the absolutely right time in his career for the distraction of children—and so the house seemed to Mariana disproportionately large like a house in a malevolent fairy tale, subtly taunting, mocking its inhabitants.

  At the sides and the rear of the house were many shrubs and tall trees and weather-ravaged flowerbeds—at the edge of the property, a deciduous woods bordering the lake—the creature could be lurking in any number of places, invisible. His—its—coat was spotted, soiled-looking—perfect camouflage. The property was fenced off at the rear to keep out marauding deer but frequently it happened that deer were sighted grazing on the lawn, having found a way through the fence, so the rear of the house certainly wasn’t protected from intruders.

  Dusk had come quickly on this grim November day—by late afternoon the earth had darkened, only the sky remained relatively light—riddled with clouds like grimacing mouths. Mariana would ordinarily have parked her car in the circle drive at the front of the house, where a door led directly into the kitchen; now, she thought she should park inside the garage, and shut the garage doors, before she left the protection of the car and entered the house. It would not follow her into the garage—would it?

  The garage was large enough for three vehicles. Pearce had instructed Mariana numerous times to keep all the doors shut, even if she was just going out for an hour or so—it wasn’t good to send a signal to any perspective burglar or home invader that no one was home in a house in Crescent Lake Woods where the minimum price for homes was in the area of two million dollars. Of course, Mariana often forgot, especially during the day; and so now one of the garage doors was up—(on Mariana’s side of the garage)—and the other down—(on Pearce’s side of the garage)—and she could have no idea whether the creature was already in the garage, having trotted ahead of her.

  For the garage was so large, and its corners so shadowed; there was a phalanx of trash cans and recycling barrels; there were stacks of cardboard boxes, gardening tools, miscellaneous pieces of furniture; the wily creature could hide behind any of these, and Mariana wouldn’t know until it was too late—until she left the protection of her car.

  And the light inside the garage, emitted from bare bulbs—if you looked directly at this light, it was blinding; otherwise the bulbs cast a grudging sort of illumination, as if through gauze.

  Slowly Mariana drove her car into the garage. Unlike Pearce’s steel-colored Land Rover, Mariana’s vehicle was slender, compact. She was prepared to back up swiftly if she saw something moving inside the garage. More than once she’d scraped the right-hand side of her car driving the car inside the garage—as Pearce insisted she do—and she dreaded this happening now, in this tense situation. She could see nothing in the garage—nothing that signaled danger—but in the rearview mirror there was only a shadowy haze like a TV screen gone dead—just outside the garage there appeared to be nothing at all.

  Mariana was biting her lower lip. She’d begun to perspire inside her clothes.

  She was calculating: the door that led into the back hall of the house was only a few yards away, directly in front of her car. She hadn’t locked the door, she supposed—Pearce would have chided her, if he’d known—but often she forgot—or didn’t think it was so very important; now, she could make a dash for the door and get it open and get inside within a few seconds; the groceries she would leave in the car trunk. Once she believed the car was inside the garage she punched the remote control to lower the garage door and at once there came a rattling thudding noise louder and more jarring than she expected, like hammers striking the roof of her car.

  Narrowly the descending door missed the rear bumper and trunk of Mariana’s car. Thank God! She’d done this correctly.

  Mariana turned off the car motor. The sudden silence was unnerving.

  Either she was alone in the garage now, in her car; or, the creature had slipped into the garage and was inside the garage with her.

  Either she was safe. Or she was in danger.

  How long should she wait? A predator could wait for a very long time for suc
h is the predator’s nature.

  “I will. I will do it. I will be all right.”

  Mariana took hold of the car door handle. She was calm, determined. He is in here with me. He is observing me. He has come for me. She knew she must show no sign of fear, nor even of being aware of the presence in the garage; if there was a presence in the garage. She would behave as if she believed herself safe, alone—giving the predator no reason to rush at her—then opening her car door swiftly and scrambling out of the car and running to the back door where her slippery fingers fumbled at the doorknob but managed to open it—for, fortunately, the door was unlocked, as she’d left it.

  Inside the house, Mariana shut the door quickly. She threw the bolt, and was safe. Relief flooded her veins, she felt close to fainting.

  She would leave the groceries for later. When Pearce returned home she would return to the garage without his noticing, for certainly Pearce took little notice of what Mariana did while preparing dinner. She would tell him nothing of what had happened to her.

  Safe inside the house! Inside the house! Thinking So long as the door is locked, he can’t follow.

  Why so many lights, Mariana?”

  “Because—I’m welcoming my husband home.”

  In a gesture of extravagance that was wholly unlike her, Mariana had switched on outside lights: lights at the front door, and at the kitchen door; floodlights on the roof of the garage; lights in the courtyard and lights illuminating the fountain in the pond and lights along the driveway to the road. Even the deck lights were ablaze, and floodlights at the rear of the house, not visible from the driveway.

  With a giddy laugh Mariana came to her frowning husband, to kiss his cheek that was cold from outdoors. Pearce was too startled to kiss Mariana in return, or to embrace her; nor did Mariana embrace him, in the rough-textured dark woolen overcoat he hadn’t yet unbuttoned and flung off.

  And that night preparing for bed Mariana stared from the bedroom window down at the lawn that was sheathed in darkness now, and indecipherable. Her breath steamed the cool windowpane as she leaned near. Was there—something below? She stared until her eyes blurred with moisture but saw nothing, no one.