Jack of Spades

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  As in a fairy tale we changed places over the years. My first serious stories, Irina helped me revise, even typed for me; it was Irina who provided ideas for plots that weren’t so far-fetched as mine, but lively and surprising; it was Irina who provided dialogue where my dialogue was flat and repetitive. Irina had written a senior honors thesis on prevailing themes in fairy tales, and these themes she’d suggested to me as concepts for my mystery novels, to give them what Irina called gravitas. Memorably, when she was eight months pregnant with our firstborn, Irina carefully retyped a forty-page story of mine, with corrections, and sent it to the venerable mystery magazine Ellery Queen where it was promptly accepted for publication.

  Following that, agents began to write to Andrew J. Rush. I chose a Manhattan agent whose clients included some of the bestselling mystery writers in the country, and I have remained with this excellent agent ever since. Though my stories were frequently rejected, my first attempt at a novel—(with my dear wife’s help)—was met with encouragement and enthusiasm; within two years I had a contract for another novel, with a (moderately) generous advance from a publisher with a strong mystery-crime-detective list. I was not yet thirty years old.

  Since that time, I have never been without a writing project—a plan of action. And I rarely look back.

  Having given up trying to write, Irina turned to “art.” As I am not any sort of expert on art I am always supportive of her efforts even when I can see (I think I can see) that her watercolors are only just wanly pretty, and in no way original; so too, her glazed ceramics and her macramé are interchangeable with those executed by her women friends in the area, who take courses at the Mill Brook Valley Arts Co-op and whose houses are gradually filling with their creations, like ships gradually sinking beneath the weight of ever-more cargo.

  Of course, I didn’t suggest any of this to my dear wife who tries so hard.

  Sometimes, I came upon Irina’s notebooks around the house. She’d given up trying to write prose fiction but was trying to write poetry—mostly just random lines that were exquisite (I thought) but made no sense.

  And sometimes too, I came upon Irina crying.

  At first, Irina would deny that she was crying.

  Just—“Sitting here thinking.”

  Or—“It’s just nothing, just a mood. I don’t really have anything to do that I want to do, I guess.”

  Or, after I’d questioned her—“Maybe it’s some stupid thing like being lonely. Please let’s forget it.”

  Or, suddenly, one day, wiping angrily at her eyes—“You take my ideas from me, Andrew. I don’t have anything left that is my own.”

  This was stunning to me. Almost, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard.

  “Irina, that’s ridiculous! I’ve never taken any ideas from you except those you’ve given me freely, that I’d thought you had wanted to give.”

  This was true! Irina laughed wanly, and did not disagree.

  “In fact, Irina dear, you’ve taken ideas from me.”

  I was referring to suggestions I’d made to her, to improve her watercolors. And years ago before she’d given up writing I could see (I thought that I could see) fairly obvious variants of themes, settings, even characters and dialogue appropriated from my novels though I would never have spoken of this to my dear fragile wife.

  The fact was, the children were growing into adolescence, and beyond. The children did not need their mother so much any longer though it seemed, painfully at times, that their mother needed them. I insisted that Irina see a therapist—in time, a sequence of therapists. She began to write again, though she didn’t show me what she was writing. (I did not inquire.) We went on vacations to St. Bart’s, Paris and Nice, Rome, Florence, and Venice. We stayed for as long as two or three weeks. During such interludes I managed to get some work accomplished (for I brought my laptop and notes everywhere with me—I am nothing if not industrious!) while Irina spent time sightseeing, taking photographs, befriending other tourists.

  When we returned, Irina seemed quite energized, for a while. But soon she began to lapse into her moods—her “melancholia.”

  But teaching at the Friends School was rejuvenating to Irina, at least. Though the private school paid a paltry salary and seemed to exult in its very “specialness”—its quasi-amateur faculty grateful for their jobs in a worthwhile mission. Those colleagues of Irina’s whom I’d met seemed like unusually dedicated people—mostly women. But the headmaster was male, with an impressive degree from Princeton; and Irina’s particular friend at the school was an Asian-born math teacher with an unpronounceable name resembling “Huang Lee.”

  I’d met “Huang Lee” just once at a Harbourton library fund-raiser. It was startling to me, “Huang Lee” wasn’t at all what I’d expected, a somewhat stiff and deferential Asian-American but a quick-witted individual who made his (white) listeners laugh. Irina had happened to mention to me that “Huang Lee” was one of the more popular teachers at the school and that girl students were “always falling in love with him.”

  At this, I had to laugh. Back at Highland Park High School, girl students were always falling in love with their English teacher Mr. Rush.

  I wondered: would “Huang Lee” be at the school meeting? Would “Huang Lee” (whom I believed to be married, with young children) stay for the buffet supper?

  From my octagonal study window I watched Irina drive away in the Subaru station wagon (the less glamorous of our vehicles: the other, more usually driven by me, is a new-model Jaguar). I watched her turn left at Mill Brook Road, in the direction of Hadrian six miles away. For a moment I felt a curious impulse to follow her.

  I like not that.

  Such phrases Jack of Spades inserted into the stream of my thoughts, that were random and inexplicable and not to be taken seriously.

  I like not that. Nor should you.

  16 Tumbrel Place I

  Soon after Irina’s departure I drove into Harbourton along our winding, narrow country roads. With a gentlemanly flourish I delivered the box of books to the library. Jody Harkness (the head librarian) wasn’t there but my presence created a flurry of interest among the other librarians who called me “Mr. Rush.”

  “When is your next novel coming out, Mr. Rush? I hope soon!”

  “Soon. Yes.”

  At 6:00 P.M. it was still bright as midday though the sky had been overcast since morning. I realized that I’d forgotten to make dinner plans with my friend at the Harbourton Inn.

  In Harbourton, where I’d grown up, I had many friends and still many more friendly acquaintances. Yet it was beginning to be unnerving, I seemed rarely to see any of them, any longer. (I did not want to think that my old Harbourton High classmates felt uncomfortable in my presence since I’d become something of a local celebrity. And it had to be awkward for them and their wives to invite Irina and me to dinner at their modest homes, after visiting us in Mill Brook House.)

  I found myself driving slowly through Harbourton. Slowly, along Chapel Street in the direction of the historic district: courthouse, post office, red-brick Episcopal church and rectory, Tumbrel Square, cobblestone cul-de-sac Tumbrel Place. In this distinguished old residential neighborhood there were few pedestrians. During the day you were likely to see lawn crews, delivery vans, postmen; in this hour of early evening, all looked deserted. This was a neighborhood of large, dignified, once-beautiful old houses set back from the street—“stately homes” built in the 1800s. The oldest could be dated to pre–­Revolutionary War times, when (it was not improbable) General George Washington had been a guest beneath its steep shingled roof on his way to the Battle of Trenton.

  The residence at 88 Tumbrel Place was a large, gaunt, rather ugly Edwardian house of bricks so aged they seemed bleached of color. Here was a petulant sort of dignity. The roof was ­luminous-green, covered thinly in moss. Tall oaks surrounding the house had been maimed by storms an
d were missing parts of their limbs. Though I knew that the wild-white-haired Ms. Haider could not be home yet I felt a quivering of excitement imagining that she stood at one of the second-floor windows, gazing at me as casually I drove past the house to park my car a short distance away, by the Episcopal rectory.

  You have immunity now. No one will believe her.

  The curse must be exorcised.

  I’d come to realize that it was so, there was a kind of “curse” on me since the shock of the summons in my mailbox. Since the sight of the wild-white-haired witch-woman who’d wanted to destroy me.

  Yet oddly, it seemed to me that the “curse”—a sort of free-floating, lethargic malaise, like the dank smell of a toadstool brought too close to the nostrils, that made it all but impossible for me to concentrate on my work—had fallen upon me before the arrival of the summons itself.

  An enemy in my peaceful life. Of whom I had had not a clue.

  Too long I’d been a trusting person. Wanting to believe the best of everyone.

  Parked my Jaguar, put on old, tortoiseshell-framed eyeglasses with lenses that magnified my eyes like a fish’s eyes. A grimy dark green baseball cap which I’d found by chance in the library parking lot, I pulled down tight over my head.

  In the backseat of the vehicle was my dark green tote bag and a book-sized box, in which I’d placed a single quite heavy hardcover book. The box I’d wrapped in tinsel wrapping paper and decorated with a white satin bow, from my dear wife’s present-wrapping closet. My heart beat quickly in anticipation. Jack of Spades laughed.

  Very clever, Andrew! But we will see how you carry it off.

  Unhurried, with the sauntering gait of one who lived in the shabby-genteel neighborhood, I returned to 88 Tumbrel Place carrying both the tinsel-wrapped box and my (empty) duffel bag. (To my relief, I had no impression of a ghostly white-haired figure at any of the windows.) A few blocks away on South Main Street there came a sound of traffic but here in historic Tumbrel Place it was silent as the grave.

  A wrought iron gate, which required some exertion to push open. Up the weatherworn flagstones to the oaken front door, and the doorbell.

  No answer. (No one inside?)

  Politely then, I used the door knocker that was in the shape of an American eagle.

  And again no answer.

  Pondering then if I might (unobtrusively, unnoticed) saunter along a flagstone path beside the house, that led through a tunnel of overgrown shrubbery to the rear, or whether this might be unwise and reckless, when unexpectedly the door was opened, to my surprise—and there stood before me a short, squat, barrel-chested black man with upright swirls of gray hair, in a snug-fitting black gabardine coat and mismatched trousers, who greeted me with a ferocious scowl.

  “Yas? What’d you want?”

  Quickly I reasoned that this belligerent individual had to be Haider’s caretaker. The man was so short, scarcely five feet tall, he had to crane his neck to glare up at me.

  I asked if this was the Haider residence and was curtly told, “Yas. Ha’der res’dence. What’d you want?”

  I explained that I was a rare book dealer from Bangor, Maine—and a publisher of high-quality books—and a writer-friend of Ms. Haider. I had brought her a “special edition book” she’d requested several months ago which only recently had I been able to “acquisition.” I asked if I might give the book to Ms. Haider in person, since it was a rare, rare edition?

  “Nah. Mz. Ha’der ain’t seein anybody.”

  But the caretaker was regarding me less fiercely now. In my grimy baseball cap, with my thick-lensed glasses and gentlemanly way of speaking, it was possible to interpret me as a literary ­eccentric—indeed, a very plausible “writer-friend” of C. W. Haider.

  I added, with a disarming smile:

  “I am truly sorry to intrude on this household but—I am expected, you know. My name is King. Steven.”

  “‘King.’” The suspicious eyes blinked. “You sayin you are—that famous writer?”

  “No! I am Steven—S–t–e–v–e–n. He is Stephen.”

  “But—you are some kind of writer?”

  “Yes. And a publisher as well, with an interest in publishing Ms. Haider’s work.”

  This was the inspired thing to say! The caretaker smiled broadly.

  “She goin to like that, sir. I mean—Mr. King. Mz. Ha’der goin to be real happy about that.”

  It was touching, the black servant cared so genuinely for his employer! He introduced himself as Esdra Staples.

  “‘Esdra.’ So good to meet you.”

  I extended my hand to shake his. For a startled moment he hesitated—(obviously, Esdra Staples knew his place)—then he shook my hand. Esdra’s hand was half again as large as mine, and mine is not a small hand—remarkably strong, and warm-blooded.

  “Mz. Ha’der ain’t home at the present time, but I can take the book for her. I will take good care of it. She trusts me, all kinds of things.”

  “I think my dear friend Ms. Haider requested that the book be placed in her hands. It’s not only a rare purchase, but has sentimental value to her.”

  “Well. That too bad, Mr. King. See, she ain’t here.”

  “When will she return?”

  “She ain’t said.” Esdra spoke guardedly. His forehead furrowed with a pained sort of solicitude.

  “Well, then—where is she?”

  My concern was so seemingly genuine, Esdra relented.

  “Ms. Ha’der taken sick, and she being treated. Some place she goes, in New Brunswick. She be home soon, they sayin.”

  “Oh! Ms. Haider is ill?”

  “She been like this before, when old Mr. Ha’der died and she was grieving. She ‘checked herself in’ and after a few weeks she was fine, and came back home.”

  “Really! That sounds—optimistic . . .”

  I felt a wave of sympathy, and guilt. It had not been my fault that C. W. Haider had worked herself into a convulsive fit and collapsed but I could well understand how years of frustration, fury, and failure could drive an aspiring writer to madness and breakdown.

  I explained to Esdra that Ms. Haider and I had an “epistolary” relationship exclusively—“That is, a friendship through the mail”—but had not yet met; I told him that Ms. Haider had volunteered to lend me several books from her library to help in my research into the American Gothic novel. In fact, I hoped to incorporate some of Ms. Haider’s own writings in my study.

  “Yah, she always writing, seems like. She gon be pleased to hear that. But she didn’t tell me about anybody coming to pick up books . . .”

  “If I see them, I will recognize them, Esdra. Of course.”

  With a touching sort of naïve trust Esdra led me into the interior of the Haider house. There were shadowy, dank-­smelling rooms that appeared to be shut-off and unused. Ghostly sheets drawn over furniture, even over chandeliers. At the rear was a comfortably cluttered room containing a beautiful old mahogany desk heaped with books and papers, an aged leather sofa and cushioned chairs, a wide stone fireplace. The walls were mostly bookshelves and these were crammed with books. On the floor, an Oriental carpet worn threadbare in places and in other places retaining its intricately meshed colors. I thought—This is her home. I have no right to intrude in the woman’s home.

  On the sofa, on a quilt, lay a sleek black cat regarding me with eyes glaring like gold coins. The cat’s long tail switched restlessly but the cat did not leap up and run away in alarm.

  Esdra was telling me that Ms. Haider was “all the time ­writing”—as long as he’d been working in the household, going back to a time when her father Mr. Haider had hired him.

  “See, Mz. Haider has a ‘mission’—‘message’ to the world—she says. She been trying so hard to have a book published by some place real—not where the writer pays the printer. She will be very happ
y to see you, Mr. King . . .”

  I wondered if Esdra had ever read anything by his mistress? And did he know about her “missions” of litigation? Did he know—did he suspect—that she was not quite sane; or rather, was his loyalty unquestioned, even as, shrewdly, he would have no wish to delve too deeply into her activities?

  I wondered if C. W. Haider had no relatives, or perhaps no relatives with whom she was on friendly terms. The dignified old Edwardian house had been deteriorating for decades and the life of its household, so to speak, had retreated to a single room. Without the “caretaker”—what would become of the household, or of its mistress?

  Indeed Esdra Staples did seem dwarf-like, like a servant in a fairy tale. He was compact, and short, though without the typical upper-body deformity of a dwarf. He was wearing soiled work trousers and what appeared to be a very old, ill-fitting butler’s black jacket, with rolled-up cuffs. From a remark he’d made as he was leading me through the house I understood that he didn’t live at Tumbrel Place but a distance away; he came to the house at least once a day, to bring in the mail, feed the cat, check that things were all right.

  “I’ll leave this here, Esdra. Thank you!”

  I set the tinsel-wrapped box on the desk, prominently. This, Haider would see as soon as she stepped into the room.

  Bringing the gift, the book, had been an inspiration out of nowhere—out of the (previous) night. I’d taken Stephen King’s Misery from my bookshelf and “inscribed” it

  To C. W. Haider with everlasting gratitude

  Your friend & sincere admirer

  Steve King

  Bangor, Maine

  I’d disguised my handwriting—of course. I’d included a little drawing of a mock-smiling face.

  How incensed Haider would be, when she returned to this!