Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The skin of her face was drawn tight to bursting. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, blind. Her brain was struck blind, she could not bear it—such sensation, and the fleetingness of such sensation. All her bones turned to water. A convulsion in her loins that went on and on and on, leaving her faint, exhausted.

  … love you. Love love love you don’t leave me …

  There were no words that were genuine, the poet had said. Because all words have become worn, as pebbles worn smooth by the tide.

  As worn as stone steps. So many have trod upon.

  She’d protested, these words were genuine. For her. It was the first time she’d loved anyone. Truly loved a man.

  Pleading with this man with the sad-skeptical eyes, to believe her.

  Reciprocated desire is the risk. Juliana had grown to desire men at a distance. To experience herself as the object of desire: a figure in a mirror, unattainable.

  You see, hear yourself through a scrim of alcohol. Otherwise life is too raw. Touch blundering and too raw.

  She’d confided in Ned Spires that she’d once been engaged. In the spring of her senior year of college. Like a dream it had been, she’d been a fiancée and had had a fiancé. Like a dream, it faded from memory as soon as she’d wakened.

  And you didn’t love him? The fiancé?—with gentle irony Ned Spires spoke, like one teasing out inaccuracies in a child.

  No. I didn’t know what love was.

  And now—you know what love is?

  Are you laughing at me? That isn’t nice.

  Am I laughing at you. Darling, no. But I am wondering if you are laughing at me.

  Ned Spires went away, his wife’s mother had died. All the family was gone to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for eight, ten, twelve days.

  In the Wild Goose, she’d waited patiently at her place at the bar. Drink before her, vodka on the rocks. A pack of cigarettes. (But she rarely smoked, allotting herself only seven cigarettes a week.) Shutting her eyes, loving the guttural Johnny Cash voice, words directed to her. Turn, turn, turn.

  Wheel of fire.

  Ned returned from the ordeal of death, burial. They saw each other again. He’d missed her, he said. His life was being torn in half.

  She’d gone away, angry and hurt over a slight. No more than an intonation in the man’s voice. He had not pursued her into the parking lot and beyond, and so in desperation late that night she dared to call him at home—I think I love you. We’ve gone too far. You have caused this, Ned. The words were astonishing to Juliana, purely invented words, like froth on her lips. No idea what she was saying. Why she was even calling Ned; she’d promised she would never call him at home and only on his cell phone if the call was urgent.

  How many times had she ever called a man, any man, at his home?—not ever.

  Hearing Juliana’s voice, Ned was not so welcoming as she’d expected. Not so consoling, confiding. In a lowered voice cautioning her—I can’t talk now, Juliana. This isn’t good. Don’t call this number again, please. I thought I’d told you. Juliana was shocked by such a rebuke, she could not reply. In silence like a gaping wound, she broke the connection.

  Had she been drinking—well, of course. But not drunk.

  For hours then, the man would worry, lie awake and worry that Juliana might have injured herself. Done some violence to herself.

  Some violence to herself that might involve him.

  In her heart she hated the man. Had not the slightest intention of seeing him again, calling him again. Not the slightest intention of respecting his wishes, his marriage. Returning to the Wild Goose the next night, where she used a public phone so that he would not block her call.

  Not that she cared about Ned Spires, she did not. Not really.

  But her pride, her soul. As if he’d spilled a drink carelessly, making a joke of it.

  Again the lowered voice. Chastised, frightened when he realized who it was.

  … begging you Juliana, please don’t. I love you—I will always love you, but—you must know—this is a very difficult time in my marriage …

  Juliana laughed. It was not her, this was not Juliana Regan, this furious person.

  … your marriage! How dare you speak of your marriage! What of the marriage between us—you and me? We are married too …

  For it was true. Ned Spires knew it was true. Hadn’t he said it so many times. Hadn’t his poetry claimed this.

  It was a desperate fact, Juliana loved Ned Spires deeply. It was a sudden fact, a surprise to her. Like being shown a lab report—yes, a malignancy.

  Unexpected, yet as soon as you see it … Of course.

  Juliana could not bear to live without Ned Spires. Her very soul, her pride had been ravaged by the man.

  But she would not call him again. If he tried to call her, she would not answer. Calmly counting two, three, four nights, he would be lying awake and anxious and (just possibly) he’d left the phone off the hook. And let his cell phone lose its power so that she could not call his cell phone either. (She’d tried. Once.) But Juliana was patient, she could wait. Patient, cunning, intent upon revenge.

  It mattered to her that her daylight self, her professional, paralegal self, was an admirable person. Everyone agreed: Juliana was wonderful. Juliana was fired with idealism. All the lawyers liked Juliana, knew they could rely upon Juliana, admired her for her intelligence, idealism. All of them knew that she was taking night courses at John Jay. But after dark, another Juliana emerged, of whom they knew nothing.

  She was not responsible, Juliana thought. It was the condition of the human soul. This revelation of the daytime self, the nighttime self. The perfect clarity that vodka best provides.

  And so, she calls his number just one more time. The forbidden number.

  Having poured herself a drink. A full-size glass, but only half full.

  This time the wife answers, hesitantly. Fearfully. Yes? What? Who is this?

  Juliana has not heard this voice before but recognizes it immediately.

  Calmly asking if Ned Spires is there, she needs to speak with Ned Spires, she is one of those whom his poetry has touched.

  A former colleague at the university, an adjunct instructor.

  In fact she is in danger of her life, she must speak with Ned Spires, it is an urgent matter …

  (But why has Juliana said this? She has no idea, the unexpected words have sprung from her mouth.)

  At the other end of the line, the receiver clatters onto a surface—slipped from the woman’s fingers.

  Quickly Juliana breaks the connection.

  She has gone too far. She has blundered, said too much. She pours another inch or two of vodka into the glass. Already her phone is ringing.

  She sees, of course it’s Ned calling her. She has gone too far, he will be vexed with her.

  She’d been a reckless child. Lighting matches. Lighting matches, dropping matches. No intention of setting a fire. But the fire has happened.

  Timorously, Juliana lifts the receiver. And there is Ned’s voice, close in her ear, lowered, cautious.

  Juliana? You just called—did you?

  Don’t do this to me, Juliana. To us.

  My wife is not well—you know that. Please.

  I think—we have to stop this. Whatever this is, it must cease.

  Don’t ruin my life, Juliana. Please.

  If you love me—you’ve said—and yes, I love you—but—if you ruin my life—there will be no love …

  Juliana has not intended to speak, only just to listen, to hear the voice of the man she adores. To hear him admit how he has wronged her, to apologize. She intended to listen to him in silence, in dignity, perhaps she would forgive him, but these words are not the words she wishes to hear, these are words that inflame, goad. She hears herself cry—Your life? Goddamn you, what about my life? My life is in ruins.

  Breaking the connection, furious.

  Following this, much seemed to happen.

  Ever more swiftly, like the swirling of wate
r into a drain.

  Another night, waiting in a car borrowed from a lawyer friend, allegedly for a work-related errand.

  Cannily, not in front of the Spire house (of course), but two houses away. Headlights off. Ignition still on. At midnight seeing a light in her lover’s house upstairs. A single, weaker light downstairs. Like wildfire, elation overcame her. Flames licking at her hair, her fingertips. She’d brought a bottle of vodka with her. With defiant fingers she lifted the bottle, drank. Consoling herself—None of this is real. This is just a test. I can stop anytime. I will stop.

  It was within Juliana’s rights as the beloved of the man who lived in that house to approach the front door, to ring the bell. The lover’s poetry often spoke of risk, daring. To gain life one must be willing to risk life.

  Soon then, the upstairs light went out. The downstairs light remained.

  Juliana thought—He would come to me if he knew. He wouldn’t let me suffer like this.

  Waiting for him to come to her, but he did not come, and so finally, feeling very tired, she decided to drive away.

  Thinking that in a sense she’d triumphed over Ned Spires. He’d been reduced to begging her not to ruin his life, a coward’s life. As Juliana’s lover, he’d been ardent, ecstatic. He hadn’t had a mind for his unhappy wife, then. And so now Juliana cared nothing for him. She pitied the man, a weak man finally, like Gordon Kechel, who’d given her up without a fight—who’d simply repudiated her without ever seeing or even speaking with her again.

  How could Juliana have loved Ned Spires!—the acne-roughened face, shadowed eyes. The pathos of his poetry, about which (though he tried to disguise it) he was so vain.

  Mere scribbled words, publications in magazines in which a poem was merely decorative amid a page of prose bounded by advertisements, a poetry prize or two—did the deluded man think such meager achievements would make him immortal?

  He would beg Juliana to relent, eventually. He would beg her to forgive him and to love him again. She knew. A drinker will always return.

  Yet when Juliana returned to the Wild Goose Tavern the next night, Ned Spires wasn’t there. She waited at the bar in her usual place until eleven p.m. He’d let her down, she should have known. Weak, a coward! Acquaintances of his from the university stopped here, weeknights. Juliana knew them by their faces, not names. She’d never been good at names. Nodding at Ned Spires when she was with him, and at her. But when Juliana wasn’t with Ned, not seeming to see her.

  Bastards. She hated them all.

  Into the Wild Goose in the later part of the evening came a familiar face, a white-haired older friend of Ned Spires, possibly a fellow poet, to whom Juliana spoke as a naïve young girl might speak.

  Asking this person if he knew “Ned Spires”—if “Ned Spires” was to be trusted? A good man?

  The white-haired man stared at Juliana in surprise.

  Asking her, why did she want to know?

  Juliana said that “Ned Spires” told her he was separated from his wife and filing for a divorce and she was wondering was any of that true …

  Seeing in the white-haired man’s face an expression of doubt, dislike, Juliana ceased speaking. For she was not accustomed to men regarding her with such condescension, especially not older men who were (usually) grateful for her attention.

  Carefully the white-haired man told Juliana that he “had not heard a word” about a separation, still less a divorce.

  “But Ned Spires is a ‘good man’—to be ‘trusted’?”

  The white-haired man frowned, for this line of inquiry was annoying to him. Pointedly he glanced at the bartender, who was eavesdropping from a few feet away, and so the bartender came to Juliana and told her politely that Ned Spires was an old friend and that she’d best return to where she had been sitting or, better yet, consider leaving, for it was after midnight.

  Did Juliana need a ride home? Any kind of help getting to her home?

  “No! I do not.”

  Juliana retreated, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. She had not intended this harshness—this was not her.

  Much of what she’d said was not Juliana speaking. Vodka, it was.

  Meaning to leave the tavern, on her way out of the tavern, but turning suddenly and returning to the bar to explain to the men. Their eyes shifting onto her in annoyance, dread.

  “He has threatened my life. ‘Ned Spires.’ I mean—that was what I’d learned. But—I think—” Juliana’s voice faltered, she felt as if she were grasping a rope, hauling herself up out of dark, churning water in which she might drown as the men stared at her. “I think I may have misunderstood. You are saying that Ned Spires is a good man. He is kind … I was one of his closest friends, we shared his poetry together. I don’t wish him ill. Yes, Ned is a good man, he is to be trusted. I see that now. I’m sorry, I was misinformed. I’ve said the wrong thing. You don’t need to tell him. I see now that I was wrong—he’d never said he was getting a divorce. He never said that to me.”

  Following this, Juliana avoided the Wild Goose. She did not telephone Ned Spires, she made no effort to contact him. And soon, then, she stopped drinking, or rather began the stages of not-drinking, which she envisioned as stone steps in a hill badly worn from many feet preceding hers, but Juliana too would ascend it, in time.

  7.

  But now, Blue Moon Café. At dusk, that heartbreak time.

  Blue Moon, blue neon. She won’t stay long.

  Taking pleasure in the anticipation. Just club soda, thanks!

  Taking pleasure in slow-driving along Front Street. Passing darkened storefronts in this small town on the Delaware River that has become familiar and comforting to Juliana, like home.

  Not home, not quite yet. But soon.

  Much has changed in Juliana’s life since the Wild Goose Tavern. Three years since Ned Spires. Shame and desperation, bad memories steeped in vodka.

  Now Juliana no longer drinks. Certainly not vodka, which is lethal.

  Not even beer, with Patrick.

  Unknowing, innocently, Patrick has urged her. C’mon, Julie! Just a sip, it’s just beer.

  But now, since she has become pregnant, Patrick no longer urges her to drink. Instead, he fusses over the food Juliana eats, watches over her almost too carefully.

  It has been just a month. Already Juliana feels changes in her body, she is certain she isn’t imagining … Fascinating, though in a way frightening, for isn’t this her body?

  Exactly as she’d imagined, Patrick is in awe of her and of the pregnancy.

  Pregnant women are the most beautiful women.

  I am the happiest man alive.

  Soon Juliana will be thirty years old. By which time she and Patrick will be married.

  A good man, a kindly man, reliable, intelligent—knowing little of Juliana’s former, secret life before she’d met him.

  Why is Patrick not more curious, Juliana wonders.

  To Juliana, curious and suspicious are near synonymous.

  In this lack of curiosity, this trustfulness, Patrick somewhat resembles Gordon Kechel.

  Once a drinker, always a drinker whether drinking or not—Juliana understands this principle but has never considered herself a drinker in any clinical sense. Not an alcoholic.

  Ned Spires had been an alcoholic. Not Juliana.

  Life-saving to Juliana, she’d managed to escape the man. He’d pleaded with her to stay with him, to marry him, he’d divorce his wife of twenty-five years and marry her, but Juliana understood this was folly, she’d escaped with her life.

  As Juliana is a good, steady driver, in control of her vehicle, so (she tells herself) she is in control of her drinking.

  She has yet to visit the Blue Moon. Months living in this town, aware of the Blue Moon, which she passes frequently and which exerts no particular pull on her, except at night when the blue neon sign glimmers in the window and her heart is quickened to the point of pain.

  So deeply moved sometimes, she has to brake her car,
park at a curb until the powerful emotion has passed.

  All that I have lost. But—what is it I have lost?

  Even if she were still drinking, Juliana reasons, she’d have stopped by now. Since learning she was pregnant. She’d have stopped on the very day she’d found out.

  The pregnancy is still something of a shock to her. When she wakes in the morning and the realization sweeps over her. As if in her dreams there is no pregnancy, her body remains a girl’s body, untouched.

  Waking, she is stunned to realize her situation. Her condition. Not an idea, a physical fact. On the calendar there is marked the (probable) due date—July of next year …

  So far away! Juliana feels a touch of panic that she will not be able to bring this pregnancy to term. Already she has found out, no reason except wishing to know, mere curiosity, how late in a pregnancy a woman can safely have an abortion.

  She hasn’t yet given much thought to childbirth, to an (actual) infant she will be nursing. She has thought fancifully of the upstairs room in the house on Mill Street, which she and Patrick will convert into a nursery.

  At less than six weeks it’s too early to determine the sex of the baby. An ultrasound has been scheduled for Juliana’s eighteenth week. They will postpone painting the nursery walls—rosy pink for a little girl, sailor-blue for a little boy.

  Since the pregnancy, there has been a renewed energy in their life together. Focus, Patrick has said happily. All lives require focus.

  Each commutes to work, but in contrary directions. Juliana hasn’t yet given much thought to what she will do after the baby is born, in what ways her life will be altered.

  She hasn’t informed her employers, not just yet. Possibly next week.

  The Delaware River is the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In this former mill town on the river a young couple can afford a down payment on a renovated row house (originally built in 1922).

  Thrift-shop furnishings, wallpaper bought at a discount. An overgrown backyard they’d cleared of debris—children’s broken toys, rotted lumber, even a pair of thigh-high fisherman’s boots. It would be a forty-minute drive from this house to the Wild Goose Tavern, the Shamrock Inn. The Black Rooster, across the river in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is slightly closer.