Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As the house in which she found herself, this very bedroom, was intended to replicate or to actually be her bedroom, and her house—yet was not.

  Abigail recalled that dreams are inaccurate in small, baffling ways. Why?—to understand, one would have to understand the human brain, which is beyond comprehension.

  A small mistake can be a cataclysmic mistake. Once such a mistake has been made, who can unmake it?

  Why didn’t they send better actors!—Abigail had to laugh.

  And then: if they’d sent better actors, she would never have realized. A captive, and the “husband” the captor, the keeper of the key, and she, the “wife,” would never have realized.

  “You are very tired, dear. And you know, darling—you are not well …”

  Silently she demurred. Yes. No. But yes—she was very tired.

  The man had the advantage, obviously. He must have a key to the door, for he had dominion over the house. As the roles had been cast, to the male has gone the dominant role, and it would be futile for Abigail to protest so late in her life. If the stranger confronting her would not acknowledge the imposture, if he continued to behave belligerently as if Abigail were, indeed, his wife of thirty-two years, there was little that Abigail, his captive, could do about it.

  A weariness had settled over her like a fine-meshed net.

  With a forced affability, as a husband might do, moved to magnanimity in the face of a sullen and unreasonable wife, the man reverted to the (familiar, comforting) subject of his day at work: conference calls, meetings, luncheon. He spoke of his plans for the next day and the next, reciting more names, a litany of names, ___, ___, and ___. For if you are a man among men, you are securely in the world only if there are such witnesses to testify to your existence, and your worth.

  In this way, beating Abigail down as one might beat down a defenseless creature with a broom, not injuring the creature but (merely) beating it down, down, wearing it down; the captive swayed on her (bare) feet, very tired now, faint-headed, weakened as the fine-meshed net tightened about her. When had she eaten last, she could not recall. When had she slept last, she could not recall. When had she drawn a deep breath of fresh air, the kind that fills the lungs to capacity and thrills the soul, she could not recall. When had she heard her own name enunciated, what name was hers, she could not clearly recall. Perhaps she was anemic, her blood would require an infusion. Perhaps her brain had begun to dry, crumble like clay. Perhaps she could no longer chew and swallow solid food; soft-blended food would have to be provided by her captor or captors, or she would perish.

  The exasperating certitude with which the white-haired man spoke made Abigail realize that she’d lost such certitude. In the accident perhaps—her forehead slammed against the windshield.

  That was it: the beginning. Her fingertips touched the swollen bruise, sensitive between her eyebrows, as a third eye, yet unopened.

  She’d misplaced crucial words. She’d left her handbag behind, and the small electronic device with which (she knew! she felt this so strongly) she could have summoned her true husband, who would have annihilated this imposter. She’d lost the key to—something. What, she wasn’t sure. In a shadowy region of her brain, these crucial words resided, but she could not locate the region, and if she did, she could not have opened the door, which was locked, or its doorknob sabotaged so that it turned uselessly in the hand. Now she recalled that she’d been seeing signs in recent days, weeks: the faces that mirror your own face, familiar faces that behave in unfamiliar ways, faces whose expressions you must decipher in order to decipher your own condition—those faces that have been smiling, alert, admiring through your lifetime but have now (inexplicably) ceased to smile. When these faces betray alarm, dread, pity, you shrink from being seen by them and you no longer wish to see them.

  She cried how she hated him!—why didn’t he let her die?

  Pushed his hands away, screamed at him not to touch her even as he protested: “But I love you! My darling wife, please …”

  Now he did advance upon her. Clumsy, weeping. As an older man might weep, unpracticed in tears. His arms in the woolen shirt around her, Abigail in the flannel nightgown smelling of her body. She was not without shame—shame would cling to her to the last.

  Holding her tight. Holding her as a drowning man might hold another person, desperate that she not escape. Abigail could not breathe, this person was squeezing the breath from her. Arms against her sides, bound tight. As together they staggered toward the bed, fell heavily onto the bed. The physical reality of another’s body is always a shock—size, density, heat. His tears wetted her face. She had not the strength to break free. Until at last, too exhausted to resist, she lay beside her captor, weeping with him, in deference to him, her brain blank, annihilated. Her eyelids were too heavy to keep open and so what bliss to surrender to sleep; what bliss, the sweet, sickly, dazzling white smell of gardenias that pervaded the room entering her nostrils, flowing up into her brain like ether, precipitating the most delicious sleep in the arms of the stranger.

  His arm over her, heavy, comforting.

  “My darling wife! I will never abandon you.”

  Something was pressing on her chest. An opened hand, a sweaty palm. Terror of suffocation.

  Waking abruptly to glaring light. Was it another day, a morning, or was it the same day, interminable?—had she endured a night?

  But sleep had bathed her raw, aching brain. She could think more clearly now.

  Here was the shock: beside her in the rumpled bed lay the man—the man with the gnarled-looking white hair, the stranger intended to be her husband, on his back, open-mouthed, asleep, breathing deeply, as a drowning man might suck at air.

  Stunning to Abigail to realize that she’d slept beside her captor. Hours of oblivion, shame.

  In her sleep she had not known. Yet she must have known. Could not have not known.

  Again it came to her: how large, how solid, how purposeful, how real, a (masculine) body beside a (female) body, horizontal in a bed.

  In the night the man must have pulled off the red plaid shirt—his fatty chest was exposed in a thin, stained undershirt. Beneath the satin comforter his lower body might have been naked. (She could not bear to look. Would not.) On the carpet beside the bed lay the man’s red plaid shirt, trousers that looked as if they had been flung down.

  The white hair was disheveled. The face showed strain, fatigue. Coarse hairs had begun to sprout on the jaws. The eyelids quivered. A whistling sound in the nose. Oh, she’d been hearing that whistling in her sleep, it had insinuated itself into her sleep, in her dreams, a bright red thread of mercury, a poison seeping into her brain. Abigail shrank from the man, in revulsion for his damp, perspiring body and in dread of waking him. A despairing thought came to her like a reversed prayer—Will I have to kill him to be free?

  An unnatural light shone through windows overlooking a flattened landscape, a bright-blue papier-mâché sky. Piercing laser-white of spring sunshine, from which there is no escape.

  And the sweet-poisonous smell of gardenias—this too clung to bedsheets, pillow, her hair, which was matted and wild about her head, as if she’d been a captive not for less than twenty-four hours but for many days.

  On her (bare, tender) feet!—carefully easing out of the bed. Scarcely daring to breathe for fear that the imposter-husband would awaken suddenly.

  She must escape her captor.

  She must act quickly, immediately.

  She must not allow her captor to take the advantage again. To wake, to overcome her.

  Rapidly her thoughts careened along a roadway to an unavoidable destination: she would break the vase over the man’s head as he slept, cracking his skull and rendering him helpless; the blow might not kill him, for Abigail had no experience committing so desperate an act, no sense of how much strength might be required to execute it; nor did she want to hurt another person, even an adversary. Even a poorly cast actor meant to be her husband.

&n
bsp; And if she rendered her captor unconscious and helpless, where would she find the key? In a pocket of his trousers? In a drawer somewhere in the room? She had no idea.

  Absurd, she could never hurt another person. Not Abigail R___! She had neither the will nor the strength.

  He was not to be blamed, perhaps. As blameless as she. As confined.

  But she was trembling with excitement, adrenaline flooded her veins like liquid flame. So long as the man slept, she had a chance to escape. So long as he possessed no consciousness of her, she was free of him. In a closet she discovered women’s clothing, she snatched at a jacket, at slacks, a soft jersey fabric that would be warm against her bare legs, a pair of shoes sturdy for running.

  On the bed, amid rumpled sheets, the white-haired man continued to sleep heavily. His breathing was irregular and hoarse, painful to hear. In his nose, the thin whistling sound that grated against Abigail’s nerves.

  For some minutes, as in a curious trance of lethargy, Abigail regarded the imposter-husband with mounting rage. Obviously he was the one who’d undressed her. Apart from Abigail, he was the sole actor in this preposterous, haphazard drama in which she’d been confined. He had gazed upon her naked body, he had dared to touch her, commandeer her. He had dared to lock her in this room, and he had dared to overwhelm her with his superior weight, his very anguish, he’d dared to force her to lie docile in his arms, too weak to resist. All that he’d done he had done to her.

  Waking from her trance as if someone had snapped their fingers to rouse her, Abigail stealthily lifted the heavy cut-glass vase and carried it into the bathroom, removed the flowers, and, as quietly as she could manage, poured out the water; breathing calmly, thinking calmly, silent on bare feet, she returned swiftly to the bed where her captor lay sleeping, and not giving herself time to think, she raised the vase high over her head and brought it down hard on the skull of the slumbering man, who wakened instantaneously, gave a high, shrieking cry, thrashing, bleeding profusely as with fearless hands Abigail again lifted the vase as high as she could and brought it down a second time against his skull …

  Wanting to cry in triumph—It isn’t my fault. You took me captive. I didn’t choose this. You will survive.

  Quickly then, Abigail dragged up the comforter to hide the ruined, blood-glistening face. The body had convulsed and had ceased twitching.

  She knelt beside the man’s discarded clothing. Searching pockets, frantic to find a key.

  Hastily she pulled off the bloodstained nightgown. Hastily she washed her hands in the bathroom, taking care that no faint blood residue was left on the towel. She threw on clothes she’d pulled from the closet, scarcely troubling to note whether they fitted her. No time to spare, shoving her (bare, tender) feet into shoes that fit, or nearly. In the other closet she discovered, in a pocket of the dark pin-striped suit coat, a key chain—keys; to her sobbing relief, one of them fitted the bedroom door and allowed her to open the door with a single assertive twist of the knob.

  “Yes! Like this.”

  Now she had only to retrace her steps. Hurriedly, down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the rear door into fresh, cold, bright air, no one to observe, no one to call after her, now frankly running in the awkward shoes of a stranger, panting, out to the road and along the road a quarter mile or so to her car, which was exactly as she’d left it the previous day—front wheels in a shallow ditch, rear wheels on the road.

  In a haze of exhilaration, running in bright, cold air. How rarely she ran now, in this phase of her life! After the confinement of the bedroom, after the stultifying embrace of the captor-husband, what joy to draw air deep into her lungs.

  So relieved to see her car, Abigail laughed aloud. Though the car was shamefully mud-splattered. Her husband would be astonished, disapproving. What have you done, Abby! I just had that car washed. A white car, impractical. After a little difficulty she managed to open the door to the driver’s seat, managed to climb inside. There, the key in the ignition!—just where she’d left it.

  “Yes. Like this.”

  And now, would the engine start?—Abigail shut her eyes, turned the key. After a little hesitation the familiar sound of an engine starting. Her luck had held.

  Now the task of rocking the car forward and back, forward and back, determined to get the front wheels free, until at last the wheels began to gain traction, borne by momentum. White exhaust billowed up behind. The wheels strained, but took hold. Abigail laughed aloud in sheer relief.

  With a final jolt, the car was up on the road. Four wheels, solidly on the road. She could breathe now. Her eyesight had become sharper, she was breathing more deeply. Since taking up the vase of flowers in her hands—making her way silently into the bathroom—she’d been electrified by a rush of adrenaline that had not yet subsided. If only she’d had more faith in herself the previous day—if only she’d been guided by instinct—she would be at home now, and safe.

  Driving back in the direction of North Ridge Road. At least she believed that she was driving in the direction of North Ridge Road.

  Several miles, passing few vehicles. She wasn’t seeing detour signs. Yet the landscape seemed familiar. And there, abruptly, was North Ridge Road.

  And there, again—the barricade and the jarring yellow sign: DETOUR.

  Again, no one in sight. No road crew repairing the road, no impediment that she could see, beyond the barricade itself.

  This time Abigail drove around the barricade, boldly, with no difficulty, onto the grassy roadside and back up again onto the pavement, and continued on North Ridge toward her home, which she calculated was less than two miles away.

  The sun was still unnaturally bright, luminous. Budding leaves were just perceptibly greener than the previous day. Her heart was suffused with hope, within minutes she would be home.

  CURIOUS

  1.

  Q. Many of us, your admirers, have long been curious—where do you get your ideas, Mr. N__?

  A. Ah! This too has long baffled me. We are all mysteries to ourselves, enigmas …

  Truth is, my friend, I’ve never had the slightest curiosity about where my “ideas” come from—my own or anyone else’s.

  In fact, you may be surprised to learn that despite my reputation as the most erudite and cerebral of twenty-first-century writers, I have very little curiosity about anything.

  Indeed, I am not even curious about my lack of curiosity. It might be said that I resemble an individual with a neurological deficit that prevents him from identifying faces—“prosopagnosia,” or “face blindness.” In the most extreme cases the afflicted cannot recognize even their own faces in a photograph or a mirror, let alone the faces of relatives or friends.

  No. I’m not curious why. Who cares why?

  Face blindness, color blindness, tone deafness—these are not personal choices, but deficits in the brain. It is said that sociopaths have no care for morality, psychopaths have no care for another’s pain, the autistic have no “theory of mind”—no ability to imagine the interior lives of others. To be lacking in curiosity is to inhabit a small but distinctive category.

  I am not even curious about the curiosity of others, as a scientist might be. No more than I would be curious about a dog sniffing excitedly in a pile of rotted leaves. Whatever the dog might unearth in the next several seconds, whatever the excitement of the dog, who cares?

  But now that you have asked me the (inevitable) question, the (unanswerable) question, indeed the (stupid) question, I am provoked to speculate. As, feeling a sudden itch on my skin, I am provoked to scratch recklessly enough to draw blood.

  Where do the ideas informing the bizarre and seeming inexhaustible fictions of N__ come from?

  2.

  It is true that my “ideas” do seem to come, as some observers have noted, from some odd, quirky, distant realm of being. Not daily life, not newspaper accounts. Not personal experience. (Not usually!) Not others’ work—not since adolescence. (Myopic) biographers have
tried to trace lines between (what they know of) my life and (what they can glean) of my art, with unconvincing results. Any idiot with an impressive vocabulary can argue a “casual” relationship where there is none.

  I rarely refute the most implausible notions. I am respectful of the eccentricities of others, so long as they are not malicious or meant to denigrate me. Though I don’t “take pride” in my achievement, any more than I “take shame” in it, for whatever it is, it does not seem wholly my own, yet I suppose I must bear some responsibility.

  What is curious, I suppose, is that ideas don’t “come to me”—really. Rather I go to them.

  It will depend upon where I venture. If I hike up (oddly named) Wolf Pit Mountain at the edge of the desolate little mill town in which I find myself living in the sixth decade of my life, on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River; if I make my way through tall, stiff grasses along the bluff, if I dare to push open the door of the old “Erikson mansion”—(a Greek Revival ruin invaded by generations of impudent children); if I dare to step inside, proceed cautiously across the (rotted, perilous) hardwood floor; if I find myself in a derelict drawing room where wallpaper hangs in strips like flayed skin, and overhead, the remains of a crystal chandelier shattered with BB pellets yet “chimes” in the wind; if awkwardly I squat to the floor to examine small, obscure objects like jigsaw puzzle parts awaiting the touch of the master; if, that is, a sequence of mysterious elements are in order, like DNA—it is possible that an “idea” will come to me with a palpable jolt, like an electric current.

  Though sometimes it’s another sort of experience altogether—a sensation as swift and sudden as a tick hopping onto a warm patch of skin and instantaneously embedding itself there.

  By which I mean a deer tick. The smallest, most malevolent of ticks, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence.