Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  How, why, to what purpose, this has come to me in this desolate ruin—in which, strictly speaking, I am “trespassing”—I have no idea. For the obscure objects on the floor might be shards of glass, bits of crockery, strips of fossilized wallpaper, a button made of bone, a fragment of a yellowed ivory piano key … Once, a postcard from an otherworldly place in Utah called Bryce Canyon, badly weathered, its scrawled message only just barely readable—“Missing you all! Love you! Promise be home soon. Janey.”

  With this “idea” seeded in my brain, I hurry back home.

  At such times I must be extremely cautious, for descending the mountain is nearly as arduous as ascending, in some ways more treacherous, for it is easier to slip and fall while descending than while climbing; one can crawl uphill (if needed), but one cannot crawl downhill.

  In the brownstone on the river, a place of refuge rather more than a residence, still less a “home,” I quickly take notes in a fever of inspiration. (Of course, I do not think, inspiration. This is a word without meaning to me, though I believe it has some sort of sentimental meaning to you.) Too excited to stop for a meal, too excited to try to sleep, I “take notes” for hours, until I discover that it is past midnight, my eyelids are drooping, and my hand is aching, and exhaustion rises about me like murky water.

  Usually, in time, an “idea” from the mansion will be strong enough to develop into a work of considerable length. Novella, novel. (Yes, the faded postcard from Janey became a substantial novel, one of my most elaborately plotted.)

  But time is required for such an effort, as time is required for any growing thing to take root, send up shoots, falter into life, “flourish.”

  However, if I walk in another direction, along the river, past shuttered mills and small factories, past weatherworn brick row houses, past taverns with neon signs burning in daylight like insomniacs unaware that the night has ended—my “ideas” are likely to be of another sort, on the whole less ambitious.

  In town, my walking is not “hiking”—still less “climbing.” I keep a relatively fast pace, for walking slowly is maddening to me, fraught with peril, like riding a bicycle too slowly or speaking so slowly one is apt to forget the beginning of a sentence by the time one reaches the ending.

  Also, if you walk slowly, you are likely to be seen as ambling, idling. You are likely to be seen as one who wouldn’t mind a stranger falling into step with you with that most offensive of cheery greetings—How’s it going?

  Yet more offensive—D’you live around here?

  Herrontown, Pennsylvania, is a friendly place. It’s a friendly place in the way that a tide pool reeking with algae is a friendly place. Nothing much is happening, and you can’t escape.

  Yet Herrontown has “historic” significance. (Which is not why I am living here. I care for “history” only if I am writing about it.) Several skirmishes of the Revolutionary War took place in this part of the Delaware Valley, not far from Trenton, New Jersey. Often I find myself in the old city center—“historic” Herrontown Square. Near the eighteenth-century Episcopal church and churchyard. Near the Revolutionary War cannon and the monument to fallen soldiers of bygone wars. (The last war so honored is the Gulf War [1990–91].) Mourning doves scatter as I proceed along the walkway.

  In the small post office just off the square is a solitary clerk of indeterminate age—young?—no longer young?—from whom I sometimes purchase stamps; this individual is heavyset, with a melancholy/peevish face, straggling hair to his shoulders, in T-shirts stamped with obscure logos (Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath) that strain against his fatty-muscled torso. Often I am the only customer in the post office. Our transactions are civil but terse, unyielding—(I take care to avoid “eye contact” with this morose individual for fear that he might misunderstand)—as brief as possible. Inevitably I feel a tinge of something like sympathy for the post office clerk, if not pity. Yet also—No. It will not be you.

  As I leave, clutching a small sheet of stamps—(for why should I buy more than six stamps at a time?—I may not live to use them all)—the morose clerk sighs unconsciously, as a mound of sand might sigh if it could.

  A block away is the public library, housed in an old stone fortress of the Revolutionary War era to which plate glass windows have been added, somewhat incongruously; inside, unflattering fluorescent lights that make even robust library patrons look ghostly. The chief librarian, Ms. Laporte, is a stylish woman in her early fifties with a particular smile of recognition for me—“Hello, Mr. N__!”—for she’d known immediately who I am, or once was; on my second visit to the library she led me in triumph to a shelf of my books, which she’d arranged in the bookcase labeled LOCAL AUTHORS, and invited me to sign, and which I did sign, with some reluctance, having extracted from the earnest woman a pledge that she would protect my privacy in the future and refrain from pointing me out to anyone when/if I ever returned. “But of course, Mr. N__! We are just so honored”—spoken with an air of apology and not a trace of irony. With a small bequest to the library given by a generous/anonymous patron, Ms. Laporte has been able to subscribe to literary publications like Paris Review, Poetry, Conjunctions, Boulevard, McSweeney’s, TLS, and NYRB.

  Sometimes on wintry afternoons I drop by the library, perusing these publications as hailstones pelt against the windows. Thinking how snug we are in here, like survivors in a cataclysm, unable to (yet) know the dimensions of the cataclysm.

  Elsewhere in the library, high school students sprawl rudely at tables, clicking through laptops, as oblivious to their book-lined surroundings as two-dimensional figures in video games.

  Though the library is one of my places of refuge, in recent months I have been avoiding it. I am not sure why. Sometimes such impulses grip me—instincts for which there are no name, though possibly they are, like most instincts, related to self-preservation.

  Yet today I find myself entering the library. Unobtrusively, shaking droplets of rain from my coat. And there is Ms. Laporte at the front desk, surprised in the act of stamping a date into a library book for a patron, casting a startled glance in my direction, a confused smile, with an expression of—is it gratification or mortification? Inevitable that I will pass by Ms. Laporte’s desk, greet her with a courteous smile, though not a warm nor even a brisk handshake (for we have not had that sort of relationship), nor would Ms. Laporte offer her hand to me. And the thought comes to me, unbidden—Not you. Sorry!

  I know: Ms. Laporte is (possibly) in love with Mr. N__, the notoriously obscure and reclusive twenty-first-century author of enigmatic fictions.

  But though I share a name with N__, I am not in fact N__. Thus I have no responsibility for the fantasies attractive, well-groomed, and “stylish” women, married or un-, spin of me in their idle hours.

  As (partial) restitution for avoiding the library/avoiding Ms. Laporte for months, I will donate five hundred dollars to the Friends of the Herrontown Library.

  3.

  After the post office and the library, there is the neighborhood grocery store. Where, like Herrontown residents who have neither the inclination nor the energy to drive three miles to the glaring Safeway at the mall, I am obliged to shop for necessities.

  McGuire’s Grocery, corner of Humboldt and Depot. In a neighborhood of old redbrick buildings, small businesses, vacant storefronts. Draw a deep breath, step inside. A sensation of unease, anticipation awaits.

  Three cashiers. But only the third cashier is of interest.

  The name hand-printed on the little plastic badge is exotic—KEISHA. The woman herself is not at all exotic: in her late thirties, sallow-skinned, shyly awkward—“H’lo, sir, how are you today?” (Annoying query that cashiers at McGuire’s Grocery are evidently required to ask customers.) From a distance Keisha appears to be bald, but closer up you see that her delicate head is covered in a fine, soft down, the hair of a newborn. She is painfully thin—upper body, arms, wrists. Her face is a girl’s face cruelly drawn with fatigue, her eyeballs lightly flecked with blo
od.

  (Cancer? Chemotherapy? And now her hair is beginning to grow back?)

  Vaguely I recall, this is the female cashier who’d been wearing unflattering knitted caps on her head last fall. And then, for a while, could’ve been months, she’d disappeared from the grocery altogether. Until this minute I had not quite realized she’d been gone.

  Though the most physically frail of the cashiers at McGuire’s, Keisha is the most diligent and efficient. Deferential to customers, respectful and attentive to her work. Rarely smiling until she hands me the receipt for my purchases, and then a sweet, shy smile—“Thank you, sir.”

  Evoking the reply: “Thank you.”

  It seems that I have become something of a regular customer at McGuire’s (by default, for I would rather not patronize the dingy grocery at all, as I would rather not “patronize” any store in any way that might be construed as routine, predictable). I am not so frequent a customer as to greet Keisha with anything like surprise, or pleasure, at seeing her back at the cash register. (As if having returned to McGuire’s is any sort of life!) Still less would I presume to ask how the poor woman is, as I have heard others do, with maddening cheer. So, Keisha, how’s it going?—you’re looking good.

  Such flippant greetings are offensive to me, even if they don’t seem to be offensive to Keisha, who merely smiles and murmurs a courteous reply.

  None of your business. Leave me alone. Go to Hell.

  But no: not this young woman. Not likely.

  Today my purchases in McGuire’s are few and unremarkable. I will not note them here, for there is an obscure sort of shame in presenting, for the world’s glib judgment, anything so intimate as the items a solitary individual purchases for himself to eat/drink in the solitude of his barely furnished residence—None of your business is the appropriate commentary.

  Less than a half dozen items for Keisha to briskly scan and push along with her thin, deft hands. On the third finger of her left hand she wears a plain wedding band that fits her fingers loosely. So, she is married.

  Hardly surprising. Very likely the woman is a mother, too.

  Paper or plastic?—Keisha will inevitably ask, though you’d think (I would think) she’s intelligent enough to recall that she has asked me this question before and that I am the sort of ecologically conscious customer who would prefer paper over plastic.

  Still, the cashiers at McGuire’s always ask. No matter if they have asked numerous times before. No matter that I always give the same answer.

  To help the alarmingly thin Keisha, I will “bag” my groceries myself. Indeed, I am feeling a reluctant sort of tenderness—weakness—in the vicinity of the cashier, and a peculiar impulse to reach out to touch her (very thin) wrist, as if to give comfort.

  And the baby-fine hair that scarcely covers her scalp! My fingers yearn to stroke Keisha’s hair, which appears, in the harsh fluorescent lighting overhead, the hue of soft, faded copper.

  And I find myself thinking, with a thrill of wonder—You. You will be the one.

  4.

  And so a decision has been made, it seems.

  Yet not (so far as I can comprehend) by me.

  Walking home along the river at my usual brisk pace to signal to whoever might be observing—There is a man with a destination.

  Carrying the (single, paper) bag from the grocery that weighs heavier than I’d have anticipated.

  It’s a wide, windy river, the Delaware. Gusts of wind stirring the waves into small whitecaps.

  A sensation of unease, agitation has come over me. Is it the wind. Pricking tears in my eyes. (Each night before bed I take one drop in each eye of a stinging liquid, allegedly to slow the ravages of a premature glaucoma; my eyes have grown sensitive.) A mounting tension, excitement, as if something were about to burst into flame.

  When the flame illuminates the newspaper page from beneath with an exquisite, quivering radiance. That is how I am feeling!

  The decision has been made. The choice.

  Postal clerk, librarian, cashier—cashier.

  (It should be clearly stated: I have very little interest in “characters” of the kind that populate prose fiction. The individuals I’ve described who live in the small town in which I seem now to be dwelling are not “characters,” but actual living people—that is their singular, sole identification. They are not representative or significant. There is no way to imagine that they are of any worth except to a small circle of persons who know them, if even to those.)

  It’s true—(I see now)—I’ve been aware of the cashier Keisha for some time. Not entirely consciously, but—aware.

  Usually, cashiers, clerks, waiters, and waitresses pass into and out of my consciousness without definition or identity. If Keisha had not returned to work, I would not have missed her, and even now, I am sure that if I never saw her again, she would soon fade from memory.

  Does that sound harsh? It does not feel harsh.

  Since I have long ago exhausted my patience with others, indeed with my own self, there is really no opportunity for emotion to flourish, as bacteria flourish in warm, humid recycled air (like hot-air dryers in public lavatories touted as “sanitary”). For reasons that will remain my own business, by the (relatively young) age of thirty-four I’d had enough emotion. I’d had enough interest, curiosity. Quite content not to become involved with another person for the remainder of my life.

  If you love, you will regret it.

  To love is to love unwisely.

  Harden your heart! Before another hardens it.

  Yet by the time I reach home, my heart has begun to beat rapidly. My eyes blink rapidly, as if a blinding light were being shone into them.

  “I will! I will do it.”

  Rare for me to exclaim, even in the privacy of my house. Rare for me to laugh aloud, as I am doing now.

  What I will do: set a plot in motion and see where it ends.

  (If it ends. Some plots have no natural conclusions.)

  I will send Keisha a fifty-dollar bill with no explanation. Just a folded sheet of paper in an envelope with the terse message, in small caps—FOR KEISHA.

  Address the envelope to Keisha c/o McGuire's Grocery, Humboldt & Depot Streets, Herrontown, PA.

  Stamp the envelope. Take outside, mail in a corner mailbox.

  (Does it signify anything that the mailbox less than fifty yards from my residence has been defaced with graffiti in white spray paint?)

  (In conventional fiction, certainly: such graffiti would be “symbolic.” In the less-classifiable prose for which N__ is known, the very point of the observation may be its [ontological] pointlessness.)

  Calculating when this envelope will be received by Keisha. Not tomorrow, but surely the following day. When Keisha arrives at the grocery, the manager McGuire will hand the envelope to her with a quizzical smile—Keisha! Here is something for you.

  Taken by surprise, embarrassed, suspecting nothing and with nothing to hide, Keisha will (probably) open the envelope as McGuire looks on; she will be stunned to discover the fifty-dollar bill with the scarcely explanatory note for Keisha.

  Almost, I can hear the woman’s baffled stammer—Oh. Oh, dear. What on earth is … Almost, I can see the blush rising in her sallow-skinned girl’s face.

  Beyond this, what inane remarks McGuire might make, what comments from coworkers expressing surprise, amazement, a twinge (no doubt) of jealousy—I have not the slightest curiosity.

  Out of the void, a fifty-dollar bill sent to her—Keisha will be suffused with wonder: Who is her (anonymous) benefactor? And why her? One of the great mysteries of the woman’s life, never to be (fully) explained.

  5.

  Humdrum, ordinary, predictable, unexceptional—banal, trite, commonplace. The lives of most, possibly all, inhabitants of Herrontown, PA, whose population declined precipitously in the 1950s with the closing of several factories and whose most distinguished architecture is a ruin—the old Erikson mansion atop Wolf Pit Mountain. (Absurd to speak of Wo
lf Pit Mountain as anything other than a high, steep hill with a scenic view of the Delaware River extending for miles.)

  All that is new in Herrontown, or relatively new, is, at the river’s edge, a redbrick factory that was once Pennsylvania’s premier manufacturer of ladies’ hats and gloves, now under reconstruction into what the builder describes as a luxury condominium village.

  (Will the condominium village ever be completed? Doubtful.)

  (Like repairs to the old, once-elegant brownstone in which I live amid minimal furnishings, curtainless windows emitting a stark, raw light from the river, bare hardwood floors, and boxes of books I haven’t gotten around to unpacking, for there are—literally!—no bookcases in the house to receive them, and I have not gotten around to purchasing bookcases, reasoning that the effort involved might be disproportionate to the actual use I will make of the [several thousand] books that have followed me around for decades like old, lost, reproachful loves, most of whose names I have forgotten.)

  Humdrum and ordinary setting, in the most humdrum and ordinary of seasons—late winter, early April.

  Gunmetal-gray clouds swollen like tumors, strips of snow remaining beside walls, in shaded places. Today, a Thursday, most humdrum and ordinary of weekdays and yet the day that, by my calculation, Keisha should receive the envelope from her employer, which should have been received by McGuire in that morning’s mail, and so in late midafternoon I return to the grocery to purchase a few items, though it is much too soon for me to return.

  (Will anyone notice? Steeling myself for a lame remark from McGuire.)

  As soon as I enter the store, my eyes seek out Keisha. She is one of just two cashiers on duty at this hour, and she appears to be more distracted than usual, talking with a customer, smiling, glancing about. Searching for—who?

  I can sense (I think) a subtle alteration of the air in McGuire’s. Judging from casual remarks cast in Keisha’s direction by her coworkers, it would seem that her surprise gift is known to them.