The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As, in Malin Head Bay, a very long time ago now it seemed, he had been forbidden to ask about the pebbles vanishing one by one from the windowsill.

  This snowy-glaring island called Grindstone in the choppy St. Lawrence River seemed to have unleashed, in Zack, a mutinous spirit. Already this morning he’d left their rooms and had been running on the stairs and skidding on carpets in the hallway and when Hazel had called him back he’d come reluctant as a bad-behaving dog. Now, restless, he was prowling about her room: poking in a step-in cedar closet, bouncing on the brass four-poster bed which Hazel had neatly made up as soon as she’d slipped from between the bedclothes. ( No unmade or rumpled beds in any household in which Hazel Jones lived! It was the one thing that roused Hazel to something like moral indignation.) On the bureau was a carved antique clock with a glass face that opened: Zack was moving the black metallic hands around, and Hazel worried he might break them.

  “You’re hungry, honey. I’ll make breakfast.”

  She snatched his hands in hers. For a moment it seemed he might fight her, then he relented.

  Unfamiliar surroundings made Zack nervous, antic. He’d badly wanted to come to Grindstone Island for the weekend, yet he was anxious about changes in the routine of his life. Hans Zimmerman had told Hazel that for the young pianist as gifted as her son, his life must revolve around the piano. Always Zack woke at the same time each morning, early. Always he practiced a half-hour at the piano before leaving for school. After school, he practiced no less than two hours and sometimes more, depending upon the difficulty of the lesson. If he struck a wrong note he made himself start a piece from the beginning: there could be no deviating from this ritual. Hazel could not interfere. If she tried to make him stop, to go to bed, he might lapse into a temper tantrum; his nerves were strung tight. Hazel had seen him seated at the piano with his small shoulders raised as if he were about to plunge into battle. She was proud of him, and anxious for him. She took comfort in hearing him practice piano for at such times she understood that both Hazel Jones and her son Zacharias were in the right place, they had been spared death on the Poor Farm Road for this.

  “And you can play piano, honey. All you want.”

  As Gallagher had promised, there was a piano downstairs in the lodge. The previous evening, Gallagher had played before supper, boisterous American popular songs and show tunes, and Zack had sat beside him on the piano bench. At first Zack had been shy, but Gallagher had drawn him into playing with him, jazzy companionable four-hand renditions of popular songs. And they’d played one of Zack’s Kabalevsky studies from the Pianoforte lesson book, boogie-woogie style that made Zack laugh wildly.

  The piano was a matte-black baby grand, not in prime condition. It had not been tuned for years, and some of the keys stuck.

  Gallagher said, “Music can be fun, kid. Not always serious. In the end, a piano is only a piano.”

  Zack had looked mystified by the remark.

  In the kitchen, Gallagher had helped Hazel prepare supper. They’d bought groceries together in Watertown, for the weekend. Hazel had asked him, “Is a piano only a piano?” and Gallagher had said, snorting, “Only a piano, darling! Sure as hell not a coffin.” Hazel had not liked this remark which was typical of Gallagher when he’d had a drink or two and was in his swaggering boisterous mood out of which his eyes, plaintive and accusing, adoring and resentful, swung onto her too emphatically. At such time Hazel stiffened and looked away, as if she had not seen.

  I don’t know what your words mean. I am shocked by you, I will not hear you. Don’t touch me!

  She could guess what it had been like, living with Gallagher as his former wife had done for eight years. He was the kindest of men and yet even his kindness could be engulfing, overbearing.

  With some comical mishaps, and a good deal of eye-watering smoke, Gallagher started a birch-log fire in an immense cobblestone fireplace in the living room, and they ate on a small plank table in front of the fire; Zack had been very hungry, and had eaten too quickly, and nearly made himself sick. In the kitchen, he’d been upset by the tile floor: a black-and-white diamond pattern that made him dizzy, it seemed to be moving, writhing. In the living room, he’d been concerned that sparks from the fire would fly out onto the hook rug, and he’d been fascinated and appalled by the several mounted animal heads�black bear, lynx, buck with twelve-point antlers�on the lodge walls. Gallagher had told Zack to ignore the “trophies,” they were disgusting, but Zack had stared, silent. Especially, the buck’s head and antlers had drawn his attention for it was positioned over the fireplace and its marble eyes seemed unnaturally large, glassily ironic. The animal’s fur was a burnished brown, but appeared slightly matted, marred. A frail cobweb hung from the highest point of the antlers.

  Hazel had taken the boy upstairs to bed shortly after nine o’clock though she doubted he would sleep, he was over-stimulated and hot-skinned, and had never before slept in a bunk bed.

  Still, he’d insisted upon climbing the little ladder, to sleep in the top bunk. The thought of sleeping in the lower bunk seemed to frighten him.

  Hazel had allowed him to keep a lamp burning beside the bed, and she’d promised not to shut the door between their rooms. If he woke agitated in the night, he would need to know where he was.

  “Please be good, Zack! It’s a beautiful morning, and this is a beautiful place. We’ve never been in such a beautiful place, have we? It’s an island. It’s special. If you want to ‘marry’ Mr. Gallagher you would have to live with him in a house, wouldn’t you? This is like living with him, this weekend. This is his house, one of his family’s houses. He will be hurt if you aren’t good.”

  She spoke as if to a very young child. There was the pretense between them, that Zack was a child.

  Hazel rebuttoned his flannel shirt, he’d buttoned crookedly. She pulled a sweater over his head, and combed his hair. She kissed his warm forehead. So excited! Feeling the child’s pulses beat quick as her own.

  Neither of them belonged here. But they had been invited, and they were here.

  Hazel led Zack out of the room. The air in the hallway was rather drafty, with an acrid smoke-smell from the previous night.

  Except for the wind, and a sound of ice melting, dripping from the eaves, and the harsh, intermittent cries of crows, the house was very still. The sky was scribbled in fine, faint clouds through which the sun shone powerfully. It would be one of those balmy-wintry days. Hazel gripped Zack’s hand to keep him from running along the corridor and a wild thought came to her that she and the child might enter Gallagher’s bedroom, which was close by: tease the sleep-dazed man awake, laugh at him. Gallagher was a man who loved to be teased and laughed at, to a degree. She and Zack could climb onto the bed in which Gallagher slept…

  Instead they paused outside the door of his bedroom, to hear him snoring inside: a wet, gurgling sound labored as if the man were struggling uphill with an awkwardly shaped weight. It was somehow very funny that the snoring-snorting noises were not at all rhythmic, but uneven; there were pauses of several seconds, pure silence. Zack began laughing, and Hazel pressed her fingers over his mouth to muffle the sound. Then Hazel too began laughing, they had to hurry away.

  The flame of madness leapt between them. Hazel feared that the child would catch it from her, he would be uncontrollable for hours. Zack slipped from Hazel’s grasp, to prowl about the downstairs of the lodge. There was so much to see, with Gallagher not present. Hazel was most interested in a wall of framed photographs of which Gallagher had spoken slightingly, the day before. Clearly, the Gallagher family thought highly of themselves. Hazel supposed it was a sign of wealth: naturally you would think highly of yourself, and wish to display that thought to others.

  Amid the faces of strangers she sought Gallagher’s familiar face. Suddenly, she was eager to see him as a Gallagher, a younger son. There: a photograph of Chet Gallagher with his family, taken when Gallagher was in his mid-twenties, with a startlingly full head of dark hair,
a squinting, somewhat abashed smile. There was Gallagher a skinny boy of about twelve, in white T-shirt and swim trunks, squatting awkwardly on the deck of a sailboat; there was Gallagher a few years older, muscled in shoulders and upper arms, gripping a tennis racquet. And Gallagher in his mid-twenties in a light-colored sport coat, surprised in the midst of laughter, both arms flung around the bare shoulders of two young women in summer dresses and high-heeled sandals. This photograph had been taken on the lawn outside the lodge, in summer.

  Beautiful women! Far more beautiful than Hazel Jones could ever make herself.

  Hazel wondered: was one of the women Gallagher’s former wife? Veronica, her name was. Gallagher rarely spoke of his former wife except to remark it was damned good luck they hadn’t had children.

  Hazel knew, Gallagher had to believe this. He was a man who told himself things to believe, in the presence of witnesses.

  In many of the Gallagher photographs there was a broad-chested man with a large, solid head, a blunt handsome face like something hacked out of stone. This man was stocky, self-confident. Always in the photographs he was seated at the center, hands on his knees. In photographs taken when he appeared older, he was gripping a cane in a rakish gesture. His face resembled Gallagher’s only around the eyes, that were heavy-lidded, jovial and malicious. He was of moderate height with legs that appeared foreshortened. There was something stubby about him as if a part of his body were missing but you could not see what.

  This had to be the father, Thaddeus.

  In a cluster of photographs, Thaddeus was seated with a mannequin figure that looked familiar to Hazel: ex-Governor Dewey? A short man with sleekly black hair, prim little mustache like something pasted on his upper lip, shiny protuberant black eyes. In those photographs in which others appeared, Thaddeus Gallagher and Dewey were seated together at the very center, glancing toward the camera as if interrupted in conversation.

  These were summer photos of years ago, judging from the men’s attire. Thomas E. Dewey a dapper little mannequin in sports clothes, very stiff in his posture, purposeful.

  Those others. Who surround us. Our enemies.

  The flat of his hand striking the newspaper’s front page, on the oilcloth covering of the kitchen table. His rage spilled out suddenly, you could not predict.

  Except she’d come to know: all politicians, public figures were objects of his hatred. All figures of wealth. Enemies.

  “It’s another time now, Pa. History has changed, now.”

  Strange, Hazel had spoken aloud. She was not one to speak aloud even when safely alone.

  Seeing then another photo of Gallagher as a boy: looking about sixteen, long-faced, somber, with a mildly blemished skin, posed in a suit and tie in front of a small grand piano, on what appeared to be a stage. Beside him stood an older man in formal clothes, regarding the camera sternly: Hans Zimmerman.

  “Zack! Come look.”

  Hazel smiled, Gallagher was so young. Yet unmistakably himself as Zimmerman, though much younger, in his early forties perhaps, was unmistakably himself. You could see that the piano instructor took a certain pride in his pupil. Hazel felt a curious sensation, almost of pain, dismay.

  “I don’t love him. Do I?”

  It came over her then, she would never fully know him. The previous night in bed in these unfamiliar surroundings she had thought of Gallagher close by, she’d known he was thinking of her, hoping that she would come to him; she had felt a stab of panic, in her dread of knowing him. Since Tignor, she had not wanted to make love with any man. She did not trust any man, not to enter her body in that way.

  Yet now it seemed obvious, she could not know Chet Gallagher even if she became his lover. Even if she lived with him. Even if he became a father to Zack, as he wished. So much of the man’s soul had been squandered, lost.

  “Zack? Honey? Come see what I found.”

  But Zack was preoccupied, elsewhere. Hazel went to find him, hoping he wasn’t being destructive.

  There he was standing on one of the leather sofas, peering at the “trophy” mounted over the fireplace mantel. The air here smelled of woodsmoke. How like her son, drawn to morbid things!

  “Oh, honey. Come down from there.”

  In daylight the buck was more visible, exposed. A large, handsome head. And the antlers remarkable. You knew this was merely an object, lifeless, stuffed and mounted, eyes shining with ironic knowledge but in fact mere glass. The heraldic antlers were foolish, comical. The deer’s silvery brown hair was matted and marred and Hazel saw numerous wisps of cobwebs on them. Yet the trophy was strangely imposing, unnerving. Somehow, you believed it might still be alive. Hazel understood why her son was drawn to stare at it in fascination and revulsion.

  Hazel came up quietly behind him, to nudge him in the ribs.

  Saying, in her playful Hazel Jones voice, “Somebody ‘married’ him.”

  By the time Gallagher came downstairs, in the late morning, Hazel and Zack had had breakfast. Hazel had cleaned the kitchen: the stove top, and oven; the counters, that were mysteriously sticky; the cupboards that required fresh paper liners, and which Hazel neatly arranged, turning the labels of cans to face out. She’d opened windows to air out the woodsmoke and musty odors. She’d straightened stacks of back issues of Life, Collier’s, Time, Fortune, Reader’s Digest. Dragging a chair to stand on, she’d dusted each of the “trophies,” taking most care with the buck’s antlers. When Gallagher saw her Hazel was sitting in a patch of sunshine leafing through My Thousand Islands: From the Time of Revolution to Now. Close by, Zack was practicing one of his Kabalevsky studies.

  “My little family! Good morning.”

  Gallagher meant to be jokey, jocular, waking so much later than his guests, but his quivering red-rimmed eyes swam with tears, Hazel glanced up involuntarily to see.

  20

  He was saying, reasoning, “Why should it matter so much, Hazel? If people are married, or not? McAlster is only a caretaker. He doesn’t know you, or anyone who knows you.”

  But Hazel Jones did not want to meet the caretaker.

  “But why not, Hazel? You are here, and he knows I have guests. It’s perfectly natural. He opened the house for us, he’ll want to know if there is anything he can do for you or Zack.”

  But Hazel did not want to meet the caretaker.

  Running away upstairs when McAlster’s pickup approached the house.

  Gallagher was amused. Gallagher was trying not to be annoyed.

  He loved Hazel Jones! He did respect her. Except her quick bright laughter grated against his nerves, sometimes. When her eyes were frightened, and her mouth persisted in smiling. Her way of speaking airily and lightly and yet evasively like an actress reciting lines in which she can’t believe.

  Gallagher understood: she’d been wounded in some way. Whoever was the father of the child had wounded her, surely. She was uneasy in situations that threatened to expose her. It was a wonder she hadn’t worn white gloves, pillbox hat, high-heeled shoes to Grindstone Island. Gallagher vowed to win her trust, that he might set about correcting her: for Hazel Jones’s imagination was primitive.

  His Albany relatives would see through her awkward poise, at once. Gallagher dreaded the prospect.

  His father! But Gallagher would not think of his father, in terms of Hazel Jones. He was determined that they would never meet.

  Yet it was ironic, that he should fall in love with a woman who, in her soul, was more a Gallagher than he was. More conventional in her beliefs, her “morality.” What is good, what is bad. What is proper, what is not-proper. Hazel hid from the caretaker because she could not bear it, that a stranger might suppose she was Gallagher’s mistress, spending Easter weekend with him.

  Other women whom Gallagher had brought to stay with him on Grindstone Island hadn’t been so self-conscious. These were women of a certain degree of education, experience. An employee like McAlster had no existence for them. Nor would they have cared what he thought of them, not for a mom
ent.

  Not that McAlster wasn’t the most tactful of men. All Gallagher employees, on Grindstone Island or on the mainland, were tactful. They were hardly likely to ask their employers awkward questions, or in fact any questions at all. McAlster had known Chet Gallagher’s wife Veronica for six or seven years always politely calling her “Mrs. Gallagher” and several summers ago when there apparently ceased to be a “Mrs. Chet Gallagher,” McAlster had certainly known not to inquire after her.

  When McAlster drove away in his pickup truck, Gallagher called teasingly up the stairs:

  “Haz-el! Hazel Jones! Coast’s clear.”

  They went outside. They hiked down to the river, to the Gallaghers’ dock.

  In the bright sunshine the river was starkly beautiful, a deep cobalt-blue, not so rough as usual. The wind had dropped, the temperature was 43° F. Everywhere snow was melting, there was a frenzy of melting, dripping. Gallagher wore dark glasses to shield his eyes against the sun clattering like castanets inside his skull.

  Am I hungover? I am not.

  A manic little tune, of castanets. Fortunately, Hazel could not hear it.

  How striking the view of the St. Lawrence, from the Gallaghers’ thirty-foot dock! Gallagher, who had not been out on the dock since the previous summer, and certainly would not be there now except for his guest, pointed out the lighthouse at Malin Head Bay, several miles to the east; in the other direction, a smaller lighthouse at Gananoque, in Ontario.

  Hearing himself say, who had not sailed in twelve years, “In the summer, maybe we can sail here. You and I and Zack. Would you like that, Hazel?”

  Hazel said yes she would like that.

  It was like Hazel to revert to her usual mood. As soon as she’d come downstairs, the issue of the caretaker was forgotten. There could be no protracted hardness or opposition in Hazel, always her moods were melting, quicksilver. Gallagher had never met so intensely feminine a woman, she was fascinating to him. Yet she would not make love with him, she held herself at a little distance from him, uneasy.