Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Looking so intently for a telephone had caused the light-headedness to return, as well as a curious fatigue mixed with anxiety, as if, even as Abigail understood (of course!) that she was trespassing in a private household, and had no right to be here, and was behaving very strangely for a person who valued privacy as she did, nonetheless she felt a strong impulse to lie down somewhere, in some quiet place where she would trouble no one and no one would trouble her, and when she was rested and thinking clearly again, she would complete the task for which she’d entered the house of strangers … Though for the moment the very concepts phone, call, husband had passed out of her consciousness.

  She knew her name, though: Abigail R—. And the address of the house in which she’d lived for thirty years—she was sure she could recall it, if required.

  However, as long as she was in this (unfamiliar) house and no one seemed to be home and she was certainly disturbing no one, she reasoned that she might as well use a bathroom, for she’d been needing to use a bathroom since the accident, she winced at the loud sound of the toilet flushing and the groan of old pipes, an echo of the pipes in her own house that needed replacing. And afterward, taking time to wash her face with cool water, dabbing at her bruised forehead and blood-stippled nose with wetted tissues. A strong smell of lavender soap lifted to her nostrils, a scent that brought comfort.

  The children in this household too had grown and gone away, she thought. For you could not have such luxury soap in a downstairs bathroom if there were children in the house; you could have only utilitarian soap, and even this they’d leave filmy with the grime of their hands. Impossible, too, to have such delicate linen guest towels!

  And so, there was something sad, bittersweet in the soap scent.

  Wincing, too, to see her face close up in the bathroom mirror—often she was mystified that she looked so unlike herself, more resembling one of her older female relatives than herself; though in the eyes of the world, she supposed, she was—still—considered an attractive woman, well-groomed, poised, cultured. Her skin was still relatively unlined, her hair thick and glossy. She had not the courage, for instance, to dress other than expensively, as she would never have dared to appear in public without judicious makeup; her daughters, who’d scorned makeup when young, would have been appalled to see their mother without it, even in the privacy of her home.

  Wiping her hands on a linen hand towel as discreetly as she could and returning the towel to its proper place as neatly as she’d found it.

  Thank you! I am so grateful. I will not stay long, I promise.

  Continuing now through the downstairs of the house, looking for—exactly what, she couldn’t recall, but she would recognize it when she saw it. A small item. A small item placed on a table … Unsteady on her feet and indeed the floorboards of the house were uneven, a characteristic of older houses, like basements—“cellars”—with oppressively low ceilings that could never be raised.

  Giddiness increased, unless it was faintness. The sensation of unreality grew like waves lapping about her legs. She was hesitant to lean forward and lower her forehead to her knees to increase the blood flow into her brain, for she feared the action might make things worse and she would fall in a dead faint and be discovered by strangers and reported to authorities.

  Had to lean against walls. Against the backs of chairs. She seemed to know the way—somewhere. Feeling the need to go upstairs, surrender her pride, and crawl on hands and knees up the (carpeted) staircase, out of breath and wincing with pain.

  At the top of the stairs, resting for several minutes before heaving herself to her feet. Almost there, she consoled herself. Wherever it was she needed to go. She’d have to conserve her strength, dared not squander it heedlessly; once she’d slept for an hour, she was certain to feel much better and to know what to do next.

  Someone she’d meant to contact—a husband? Her husband?

  His name had fallen away, his face was a blur. His name—well, she would know his name, to which her own name was attached …

  With the instinct of a blind creature she staggered into a room containing a bed. At the top of the stairs, first right. It was a large room—it was a large bed. Her trembling hands managed to pull back a satin comforter so that she could fall into the bed with a shuddering sigh—every bone in her body dissolving, disappearing into the most exquisite sleep; and when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a ceiling less than eight feet above her head, unless it was a low-hanging cumulus cloud. She smiled at the sight! Her brain was well rested, a kind of balm had washed over it.

  The bed was so large she felt dwarfed within it. The sheets were of exceptionally good quality but dampened by her sweaty sleep, for which she felt chagrin; she reasoned that if she had time, she would change the sheets, and no one would be the wiser.

  She lifted herself onto her elbows, staring. Where was she? This was not a bedroom familiar to her, yet it “felt” familiar—spacious, with pale rose (silk?) wallpaper and attractive furnishings that looked like family heirlooms. One of them was a massive mahogany bureau, atop of which a row of framed photographs had been placed with loving attention.

  For you are securely in the world only if there are such photographs of loved ones to testify to your existence, and your worth.

  From the bed, however, Abigail could not make out the faces in the photographs. Some were very likely older relatives, others were children. But all were hazy with light reflected from the windows, unnaturally bright for a late afternoon in March.

  Here was a rude surprise: Abigail’s clothes had been removed from her body!

  So strangely, she appeared to be wearing a nightgown. Neither familiar to her nor unfamiliar: a nightgown of soft flannel in a pink floral pattern, that fitted her naked body loosely.

  She blushed hotly to think that someone had dared to undress her while she’d been asleep and had put a nightgown on her, as one might prepare a child for bed or undress a hospital patient; she’d given no consent to anyone to touch her, still less to remove her clothing … That she’d been undressed—and dressed—without having awakened suggested that she’d been sleeping very deeply, perhaps for a longer period of time than she’d imagined.

  “Hello? Is someone here?”—her voice seemed to reverberate in the air close about her.

  On her feet, shakily. Bare feet on a carpeted floor. Even the light woolen socks had been removed by whoever had dared to undress her.

  While she’d slept, her heartbeat had slowed. Now it was rapid again, painful. All her senses were alert.

  She must escape! Must find her clothes and dress and slip from the house. Whoever had dared touch her might return at any moment.

  Shuddering to think it might have been a he. A stranger, daring to strip her naked even as she lay oblivious in sleep as profound as death.

  She searched for her clothing in the room and could not find it, though her single shoe lay on the carpet beside the bed as if it had been tossed down. She thought—But just one damned shoe is useless!

  In fact, this was not true. Had she not climbed out of her car and walked along the roadway and entered this house wearing but the single shoe?—she could do this again if necessary.

  Another surprise: when she tried the bedroom door, the doorknob was loose in her fingers.

  So, though the doorknob turned and turned, it did not open the door.

  She pulled at the doorknob. Yanked, tugged.

  Panicked, she called out, “Hello? Hello?”

  Rapping on the door with her fist. “Hello? Is somebody there? I—I’m in here … I’m upstairs, I’m here.”

  She pressed her ear against the door. Beyond the rapid beating of blood in her ears she could hear—something …

  Voices? Footsteps? A door opening, closing? The ordinary sounds of a household, at a little distance.

  Desperately she struck her fists on the door. Calling out, crying—“Hello hello hello! Let me out!”—until her throat ached, her voice was cracke
d and hoarse.

  Was she being kept captive? Was she a—captive?

  Of course it was likely a mistake of some kind. A misunderstanding.

  Mistaken identity, was it? She, Abigail R___, closely resembled another woman, perhaps … This other woman was the one intended to be captive.

  Standing now close by the mahogany bureau, still she couldn’t make out faces in the photographs. No matter how she squinted, the faces inside the frames—adults, children—remained out of focus, hazy with light.

  And the view from the second-floor windows: tall trees, mostly leafless, a landscape that was still sere and bleached from winter, though beginning now to revive; since trees surrounded the house, there was no visible horizon, all was foreshortened.

  Yet when she looked more closely, she saw that the scene was flat and unconvincing, like a stage set; trees, grasses, sky, overly bright sun seemed all at the same approximate distance from her, lacking depth.

  The wave of dizziness intensified. Was she flat as well, in this landscape?

  When had “perspective” come into human consciousness?—she tried to recall.

  Medieval art was strangely flat; there was no illusion of depth. Human faces lacked expression, as if the artists of the time did not “see” the plasticity of the normal face. Children did not resemble children, but rather stunted adults.

  She pressed her heated face against the windowpane, trying to see at a slant—a corner of the barn that had been converted into a garage, a glimpse of the country road where her car was stranded a quarter mile away, front wheels in a ditch.

  Oh, why had she abandoned her car so quickly! She should have tried to free it from the ditch. If she’d rocked the car forward and back, forward and back, gaining momentum by degrees, as a more confident and skilled driver might have done, she might be home now. Instead she’d given up at once, defeated.

  Instead she was trapped in a stranger’s house. Only a few miles from her own house, captive.

  Her bladder ached sharply, as a child’s bladder might, in animal panic.

  A bathroom adjoined the bedroom, Abigail went to use it, hurriedly.

  Here was a spacious, white-tiled bathroom that was clearly in frequent use. Thick towels hung on racks, slightly askew. There were two sinks, neither entirely clean. A mirror just perceptibly spotted. Electric toothbrushes (two), a twisted tube of toothpaste, hand lotion, hand mirror, hairbrush, combs (two), cuticle scissors, tweezers … At least two people used this bathroom. Abigail lifted the hand mirror and saw, yes—it was a silver mirror, heavy in the hand, ornately engraved but in need of silver polish.

  Mirrors ran the length of the bathroom in panels. In each mirror a wraithlike figure in a shapeless gown, like a shroud, stared at Abigail, aghast.

  Then she saw, the bathroom had a second door that might lead into another bedroom or into a hallway, but when she seized the doorknob to turn it, she discovered that the door was locked.

  She could have sobbed. The doorknob had turned in a normal way but to no avail, the door was locked.

  Stumbling back into the bedroom, Abigail saw to her astonishment that a stranger had entered the room in her absence. At first she could not see his face clearly—it was blurred, like a smudged thumb. He must have unlocked the door—the door with the broken doorknob—for there appeared to be no other way into the room. And what was he carrying?—a heavy cut-glass vase of dazzling white flowers that exuded a pungent fragrance. Gardenias.

  Flowers for the invalid!—for her.

  “Why, darling! What are you doing out of bed?”

  He was startled, alarmed. Genuine concern for her, an undercurrent of dismay and exasperation.

  “And your feet—bare.”

  Abigail was sure she’d never seen this man before. He had thick white gnarled-looking hair, a low forehead, and a broad, flushed face; he wore a dark pin-striped suit that fitted his stocky figure somewhat tightly, a white shirt and necktie, polished dress shoes. Indeed, he’d brought the bouquet of white flowers for Abigail, setting the vase on a bedside table.

  How powerful, the sickly sweet smell of gardenias! Abigail felt dizzy, dazed, as if ether had been released into the airless room.

  Stunned speechless as the stranger addressed her worriedly: “Please go back to bed, darling. D’you want to catch pneumonia again? Next time might be fatal. And what if you’d fallen when no one was here!”

  “But I—I—I don’t belong here …”

  “Bare feet! For God’s sake.”

  He would have led Abigail forcibly back to the bed, but she shrank from him, rebuffing his hands, preparing to scream if he touched her—but he did not touch her; instead, unexpectedly, he shrugged and turned aside, as if Abigail’s behavior had offended him.

  “Ah, well. It’s just good that I’ve come home. I never know what—what in bloody hell—I will discover.”

  He laughed, harshly. Clearly he was disgusted. But he was dismayed. Yanking off his necktie and hanging it in a closet on a rack of other ties. Abigail could see that these were expensive designer ties. His back to her, oblivious of her, matter-of-factly he removed his suit coat and hung it carefully in the closet; removed his white dress shirt, his trousers, and his shoes to change into more comfortable attire—red plaid woolen shirt, khaki trousers, moccasins.

  A heavy sigh—“Jesus Christ. I never know.”

  Abigail stood staring, astonished. This stranger was changing his clothes before her eyes with the casual disdain of a husband. Almost, she was moved to apologize, for clearly there was a profound misunderstanding between them.

  To Abigail’s greater astonishment, the white-haired man proceeded to recite to Abigail, in grim detail, his day: an early-morning conference call with clients in Tampa and Dallas; a luncheon meeting at the club with ___, ___, and ___; much of the afternoon spent at his desk, going over accounts with ___; then, on the phone with ___; then, another conference call with clients in San Diego and Houston—

  Abigail interrupted: “Excuse me!—but I want to go home …”

  The white-haired man ceased speaking. A coarse red blush deepened at the nape of his neck. All this while he’d been standing with his back to Abigail, stiff and unyielding, refusing to face her. She sensed that he was very angry; he had not liked being interrupted in the midst of his report, which had seemed to him important and should have impressed his listener.

  “I—I said—I want to go home … You’ve locked me in here, I don’t belong here, I want to go home.”

  Abigail was shivering violently. The sensation of faintness deepened. She said, stammering, “You—you have no right to keep me here! It’s against the law—to keep me against my will! I never consented. I don’t know you. I had an accident on the road, but I’m not injured—I don’t need any medical care—I’ve been able to rest, and I’m ready now to leave—I want to go home.”

  “Darling, you are home. Please just get into bed.”

  Gently, grimly, the man reasoned with Abigail. He was several inches taller than she and at least thirty pounds heavier, his breathing audible. He might have been appealing to a neutral observer—he was being the most reasonable of men.

  Abigail protested: “I—I am not home. I don’t know who you are. This is wrong—this is not my home …”

  “Of course this is your home! You’re just very tired, dear. It’s time for your medication.”

  “No! No medication!”

  Abigail’s voice rose in alarm. The white-haired man dared not press the issue.

  “It’s a mistake. I don’t belong here. There was a detour. At North Ridge Road …”

  Buoyantly these words came to Abigail, as precious as a life jacket to one drowning in treacherous waters—North Ridge Road.

  Other words she’d lost, could not retrieve, but somehow these crucial words had returned to her, which she was sure would impress her captor.

  “Detour?—I didn’t notice any detour, darling. You haven’t been out—what would you know of detours
and road conditions? I’ve been out. I’ve never heard of any North Ridge Road—I think you must mean Northanger Road. But that’s nowhere near here, that’s over in Hunterdon County.” The man spoke patiently, and with an air of sorrow. Though white-haired, he wasn’t elderly; probably in his early sixties. You could see how disconsolate he was. How close to despair. How bitterly he blamed her.

  And how awkward Abigail was in the flannel nightgown that fell billowing to her ankles and would have tripped her if she’d dared to push past her captor and escape out the door …

  But no: she seemed to recall that there was no escape through that door, at least for her.

  No escape!—as her captor insisted that she return to bed, as if she were ill. As if the fault were somehow hers, that she was in this predicament and he was obliged to be with her, overseeing her. For of course she could not be trusted to be alone. For of course she had proved that by her behavior. Insisting that of course she was home, this was her home, it was upsetting to him, as it was to their children, when she demanded to be allowed to go home when this was her home, for she was only just tired, and she was only just confused and had not taken her afternoon medication; but she should be comforted to know—she was home, this had been her home for thirty-two years.

  Abigail protested: “But—you are not my husband! This is ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous. Of course I am your husband, and you are my wife.”

  For a long, painful moment they stared at each other. Each was trembling, furious.

  The thought came to Abigail—You have hurt this man’s feelings terribly. What if he is your husband—what if you are mistaken?

  The sensation of faintness deepened. Vertigo, in the brain.

  A mistake, some sort of mistake, but whose fault?—Abigail could not comprehend.

  More likely, Abigail thought, the man with the gnarled-looking white hair and wounded, peevish face was intended to be her husband but had been poorly chosen for the role; as she, Abigail, the wife of another man, had been cast as his wife just as poorly.