Black Dahlia White Rose: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Breathing quickly. Trying not to become exasperated. Her hands have slipped loose of their protective grip and are fluttering about like panicked little birds.

  “What I mean is that, through his extreme passive-aggressive nature, the man provokes others, his former wife for instance, to rage.”

  “You experience ‘rage’? And how does this ‘rage’ manifest itself?”

  This is coming out all wrong. It’s like Weedle is turning a meat grinder and what emerges is wrong.

  “It doesn’t! Not me.”

  Candace’s voice is trembling. Tiny scalding-hot bubbles in her blood, she’d like to claw at the imperturbable freckled-nun-face.

  “It doesn’t? Not you? Yet you seem very upset, Mrs. Waxman—Candace . . .”

  “I think I want to see my daughter. Right now.”

  “ ‘See’ her? Take her out of class, for what purpose? So that the three of us can talk?”

  “No—take her home.”

  There is a pause. Candace is breathing quickly in the way that a balloon that has been pricked by numerous small puncture wounds might breathe, to keep from deflating.

  “Take her home! I think that—yes. Take her home.”

  More weakly now. For, having taken Kimi home—assuming that Kimi would agree to come home in the middle of the school day—what would follow next?

  Imperturbable Weedle does not advise such an act. Imperturbable Weedle is telling Candace that taking Kimi out of school—“interrupting her school-routine”—would be “counter-productive”—especially if Kimi’s friends knew about it.

  “Yesterday Kimi was quite defensive—she insists that the injuries are ‘accidental.’ It was the girls’ gym instructor Myra Sinkler who noticed the leg bruises, initially—this was about ten days ago—then, just yesterday, the shoulder and upper-arm bruises. Then Myra discovered the head injury—a nasty-looking little wound in Kimi’s scalp, which should have been reported at the time, if it took place, as Kimi claims, in school—in the girls’ locker room, after gym class. But no one informed Myra Sinkler at that time and no one can verify the account that Kimi gives—so we are thinking, Myra and I, that the ‘accident’ didn’t happen when Kimi says it did, but at another time. And somewhere else. When Kimi was questioned she became excited, as I’ve said ‘defensive’—it’s never good to upset a traumatized child further, if it can be avoided.” Weedle paused. Traumatized hovered in the air like a faint deadly scent. “Kimi promised us that she would tell you about the situation, Candace, but evidently she didn’t. That was about the time I’d called you and left a message. In the interim—you didn’t ask Kimi anything?”

  “Ask her—anything? No, I—I didn’t know what to ask her . . .”

  “You don’t communicate easily with your daughter?”

  “Well—would you, Dr. Weedle? If you had a fourteen-year-old daughter? Do you think that mothers of fourteen-year-old daughters and fourteen-year-old daughters commonly communicate well?”

  Candace speaks with sudden vehemence. The moist protuberant nun-eyes blink several times but the freckled-nun-face remains unperturbed.

  “Well—let me ask you this, Candace: what is Kimi’s relationship with her father?”

  “Dr. Weedle—is this a conversation, or an interrogation? These questions you are firing at me—I find very hard to answer . . .”

  “I understand, Candace, that you’re upset—but I am obliged to ask, to see what action should be taken, if any. So I need to know what Kimi’s relationship has been with her father, so far as you know.”

  “Kimi’s relationship with her father is—the man is her father. I was very young when we met and arguably even more naïve and ‘optimistic’ than I am now—obviously, I wasn’t thinking. The two look nothing alike and have very little in common—Kimi is clearly my daughter—one glance, you can see the resemblance—though Kimi is just a few pounds overweight, and a much sweeter girl than I’d been at that age. Is she ever! Too sweet for instance to say she doesn’t much want to spend time with her very dull father—but she isn’t, I think, frightened of him.”

  Was this so? Candace never asks Kimi about her weekends with Philip out of a sense of—propriety, you could say.

  Or dignity, indifference. Rage so incandescent, it might be mistaken for an ascetic purity.

  But mostly boredom. Candace is so bored by all that—enormous chunk of her “life”—like a clumsily carved male-likeness on Mount Rushmore—the features crude, forgettable.

  You can’t just erase me from your life. How can you imagine you can do such a thing . . .

  Easily. Once Candace makes up her mind, breaking off relations with certain people, it’s like an iron grating being yanked down, over a storefront window. And the store darkened, shut up tight.

  “She sees her father, you’d said, on alternate weekends? Does she seem happy with this arrangement?”

  “ ‘Happy’? For Christ’s sake, no one I know is ‘happy.’ This is the U.S.A. Are you ‘happy’?”

  Candace is perspiring—something she never does! Not if she can help it.

  Relenting then, before Weedle can respond, “Well—yes—frankly yes, I think Kimi is. Happy, I mean. She’s happy with her classes, her teachers—her life . . . She’s an only child—no ‘sibling’ ”—(with a fastidious little wince to signal that, in normal circumstances, Candace would never utter so tritely clinical a term)—“therefore, no ‘sibling rivalry.’ ”

  Weedle allows Candace to speak—fervently, defiantly. Hard not to concede that what she is saying mimics the speech of the mother of an adolescent who doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about—hasn’t a clue. Can’t even remember exactly what the subject is except she’s the object of an essentially hostile interrogation and not doing so well—Lee W. Weedle, Ph.D., is one of those individuals, more frequently female than male, to whom Candace Waxman is not so very impressive.

  When she escapes back home she will take another thirty-milligram lorazepam with a glass of tart red wine and maybe go to bed.

  Except: what time is it? Not yet 11:30 A.M. Too early for serious sleep.

  “And what about boys, Candace?”

  “No—no boys. Kimi doesn’t hang out with boys.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend? She says not.”

  “You’ve seen Kimi. What do you think?”

  A sharp crease between Weedle’s unplucked brows signals that this is not a very nice thing for Kimi’s mother to say, however frank, candid and adult-to-adult Candace imagines she is being. Quickly Candace relents: “I’m sure that Kimi doesn’t have a boyfriend—even a candidate for a boyfriend. She’s—shy . . .”

  “And what about other boys? In her class? Or older boys, from the high school, possibly?”

  “Kimi never mentions boys. The subject hasn’t come up.”

  “You are sure, Candace?”

  “Yes, I am sure.”

  Poor Kimi! Candace is embarrassed for her.

  Grimly Weedle says: “Of course, there are boys even at Craigmore who intimidate girls—harass them sexually, threaten them. There have been—among the older students—some unfortunate incidents. And there is this new phenomenon—‘cyberbullying.’ Has Kimi ever mentioned being upset by anything online?”

  “No. She has not.”

  “It’s a strange new world, this ‘cyberspace’ world—where children can ‘friend’ and ‘unfriend’ at will. We are committed to protecting our students here at Craigmore from any kind of bullying.”

  “Committed to stamping out bullies. I like that.”

  They will bond over this—will they? Candace feels an inappropriate little stab of hope.

  “But Kimi hasn’t mentioned being harassed? Bullied? ‘Teased’?”

  “I’ve said no.”

  But Candace is remembering—vaguely, like a photo image coming into just partial clarity—something Kimi mentioned not long ago about older boys saying gross things to the ninth grade girls, to embarrass them; pulling a
t their hair, their clothes; bothering them. On the school bus, this was. Candace thinks so.

  Candace asked Kimi if any of these boys were bothering her and stiffly Kimi said, “No, Mom. I’m not popular.”

  Candace knows that terrible things are said about the behavior of some of the middle-school students—both girls and boys—at Craigmore. Oral sex in the halls and beneath the bleachers, girls younger than Kimi exploited by older boys with a hope of becoming “popular”; boys bragging online about girls’ lipstick smeared on their penises. Not at this private suburban school perhaps but at nearby public schools—boys physically mistreating girls, sexually molesting them in public; grabbing and squeezing their breasts, even between their legs. Some of this behavior is captured on cell phones—and posted online. From the mothers of Kimi’s classmates Candace has heard these things—she’d been so shocked and disgusted, not a single joke had occurred to her. Where Candace can’t joke, Candace can’t linger. It is very hard for Candace to do earnest.

  She’d been upset at the time. Seeing poor sweet moon-faced Kimi, a shy girl, with not-pretty features, hair so fine it sticks up around her head like feathers—among such crude jackals.

  “If Kimi says she hurt herself accidentally, then Kimi hurt herself accidentally. My daughter does not lie. She is not deceitful.”

  “I’m sure she is not, Candace. But if she has been coerced, or threatened—”

  “Kimi has always been accident-prone! As a small child she had to be watched every minute, or . . .” Candace has a repertoire of funny-Kimi stories to testify to the child’s clumsiness though the stories don’t include actual injuries, of which there had been a few. Just, Candace wants this hateful suspicious “school psychologist” to know that her dear sweet daughter is prone to self-hurt.

  “And Kimi’s friends are all girls. They’re all her ninth grade classmates. She’s known most of them since elementary school. Great kids, and I don’t think they ‘hang out’ with boys.”

  As if unhearing, or unimpressed, Weedle says: “Adolescent boys can be terribly predatory. They can sense weakness, or fear. At almost any age, however young, if there’s a ringleader—an ‘alpha male’—with a tendency to bully, he can manipulate the behavior of other boys who wouldn’t ordinarily behave in such a way. These boys can harass girls like a pack. And girls can turn against girls . . .”

  Candace protests: “Kimi has never said anything to me about any of this! I really don’t think what you are saying pertains to my daughter and I—I resent being . . .”

  Candace feels a sensation of something like panic: really she doesn’t know what Kimi is doing much of the time, after school for instance upstairs in her room, with the door shut; frequently Kimi is at her laptop past bedtime, or texting on her cell phone, as if under a powerful enchantment; sometimes, one of Kimi’s girlfriends is with her, supposedly working on homework together, but who knows what the girls are really doing on laptops or cell phones.

  If Candace knocks at the door, at once the girls’ voices and laughter subside—Yes Mom? What is it?

  A careful neutrality in Kimi’s voice. So Mom is made to know that this is not little-girl-Kimi at the moment but teenager-Kimi.

  The interview—interrogation—is ending, at last. Weedle shuffles papers, slides documents into a manila file, glances at the cheap little plastic digital clock on her desk. Candace sees a pathetic little array of framed photos on the desk—homely freckled earnest faces, in miniature—Weedle’s parents, siblings, little nieces and nephews. Not one of Weedle with a man.

  “You will call me, Candace, please, after you’ve spoken with your daughter this evening? I hope she will allow you to examine her injuries. We didn’t feel—Kimi’s teachers and I—that the injuries were serious enough to warrant medical attention any longer. But you may feel differently.”

  Feel differently? Meaning—what? In a haze of eager affability Candace nods yes.

  Yes she will call Weedle—of course.

  Yes she is an attentive, vigilant, loving and devoted mother—who could doubt this?

  (Wondering: is this interview being recorded? Videotaped? Will Weedle use it against Candace as evidence, in a nightmare court case?)

  (Is the former husband Philip Waxman in some way involved? Is Weedle on Waxman’s side?)

  Faintly now Weedle manages a smile. As if to mitigate the harshness of her words:

  “I will wait until I hear from you before making a decision about reporting your daughter’s injuries, Candace. Kimi is certainly adamant that they were ‘accidental’ and we have no proof that they are not. But, you see, if I don’t report ‘suspicious injuries’ to a child, and there are more injuries, that are reported, I will be held to account and I may be charged with dereliction of duty.”

  “Well, Dr. Weedle, we wouldn’t want that—would we! ‘Dereliction of duty.’ Absolutely not.”

  Candace bares her beautiful teeth in a smile to suggest—to insist—that her words are lightly playful merely. But Weedle reacts as if stung:

  “Mrs. Waxman, this is not a joke. This is a serious matter. Anything involving the well-being of a vulnerable child is serious. I would think you might be grateful that the staff at Craigmore is alert to a situation like this, rather than reacting defensively.”

  “I am grateful—very! The tuition I pay for Kimi’s education here suggests how grateful! But I warn you—and Kimi’s teachers—if you over-react about something harmless—if you call the ‘hotline’ and involve the police—I promise, I will sue you. I will sue you, and the others involved, and the school board. I will not allow my daughter to be humiliated and used as a pawn in some sort of ‘politically correct’ agenda.”

  Feeling triumphant at last, Candace is on her feet. Weedle struggles to her feet. With satisfaction Candace sees that Weedle is shorter than Candace, and at least a decade older; Weedle is a homely woman, exuding the sexual allure of one of those inedible root vegetables—turnip, rutabaga.

  “Good-bye! Thank you! I know, Dr. Weedle—you mean well. In fact I am impressed, the school staff is so vigilant. I will talk with Kimi this afternoon—as soon as she returns from school—and clear all this up. Shall I make an appointment now to see you next week—Monday morning? At this time?”

  So brightly and airily Candace speaks, it seems she must be making a gesture of reconciliation. Such abrupt turns of mood are not unusual in Candace but Weedle is slow to absorb the change. Warily she tells Candace that Monday is a school holiday—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. But Tuesday morning—

  Candace laughs almost gaily. Something so funny about this.

  “ ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday’! Every month there’s a ‘great man’s’ birthday! Sometimes there’s ‘Presidents’ Day’—three for one. And how many ‘great women’ birthdays do we have? Is Eleanor Roosevelt so honored? Emily Dickinson? Amelia Earhart? What about—Circe? Circe is a goddess—that’s big-time. Or was there more than one of her? Is ‘Circe’ the singular—or the plural? Is there a ‘Circ’ and the plural is ‘Cir-say’? Like goose and geese—ox and oxen?”

  Weedle stares at Candace with an expression of absolute perplexity.

  “All right! Tuesday, then. Same time, same place—I promise, I will be on time.”

  Candace thrusts out a glittery-ringed hand to shake Weedle’s pallid hand—one of those warm-friendly-intimidating gestures Candace has perfected, like a sudden parting social kiss to the cheek of someone who has been entranced by her, yet guarded.

  Strides out of Weedle’s office. Already she is feeling much, much better.

  At the front entrance of Craigmore Academy Middle School Candace has her cigarettes in hand and by the time Candace locates her car, on the far side of a lot she doesn’t remember parking in, she has her cigarette lighted.

  It’s so: Kimi’s friends are all girls she has known since grade school. A small band of not-pretty/not-popular girls of whom at least two—Kimi and Scotia Perry—are invariably A students.

>   Friendships of girls unpopular together. Candace hopes that her daughter’s friends will remain loyal to one another in high school which looms ahead for them next year like an ugly badlands terrain they will have to cross—together, or singly.

  Scotia is not Candace’s favorite among Kimi’s friends—there is something subtly derisive about the girl, even as she politely asks Mrs. Waxman how she is, and engages her in actual conversations; Scotia is stocky and compact as a fire hydrant, with a ruddy face, deceptively innocent blue eyes and thick strong ankles and wrists—a girl-golfer!

  (Candace has never seen Kimi’s friend play golf but she has been hearing about the golf “prodigy” for years.) Scotia is an all-round athlete who plays girls’ basketball, field hockey and volleyball with equal skill, while poor Kimi takes aerobics for her phys-ed requirement—Kimi shrinks from sports and has difficulty catching balls tossed to her so slowly they seem to float in mid-air. Though not a brilliant student, Scotia so thrives on competition that she maintains an A average in school; she also takes Mandarin Chinese at the local language immersion school and she has been a savior of sorts for Kimi, as for their other friends, helping them with malfunctioning computers.

  (Scotia has helped Candace, too!) From a young age Scotia exuded a disconcerting air of mock-maturity: Candace recalls when, after Kimi’s father had moved out of the house in the initial stage of what was to be, from Candace’s perspective, an ordeal like a protracted tooth extraction, both painful and intensely boring, Scotia said with a bright little smile,

  “Hope you had the locks changed on the door, Mrs. Waxman! That’s what women do.”

  (In fact, Scotia’s parents are not divorced. This droll bit of information must have come to Scotia from other sources.)

  Last year, in eighth grade, Kimi’s closest friend seemed to have been a girl named Brook, displaced over the summer by Scotia Perry. Now it’s Scotia who spends time in Kimi’s room as the girls prepare class projects together, or work on homework; watch DVDs, do email, text-messages, Myspace and Facebook; snack on cheese bits, trail mix, Odwalla smoothies which Candace keeps stocked in the refrigerator—Strawberry Banana, Red Rhapsody, Super Protein, Mango Tango, Blueberry B Monster. Often Candace is out—with friends—for the evening and returns to discover that Scotia is still on the premises, though the hour is getting late—past 9 P.M. She can hear, or half-hear, the murmur of their girl-voices, and their peals of sudden girl-laughter; she’s grateful that Kimi has a friend though Scotia Perry seems too mature for Kimi, and too strong-willed; and Scotia’s mother hasn’t made any effort to befriend Candace, which feels like a rebuke.