Michael managed to keep parental disapprobation out of his voice, nor did he smile at his sons’ art.
“Is this something you’ve seen on TV?—on a video?”
Joel nodded and mumbled, “Yes, Daddy,” as Kenny, at the same moment, nodded and mumbled, “No, Daddy.” Then Joel shook his head vehemently, and said, “N-No, Daddy,” and Kenny, at the same instant, nodded his head vehemently and said, “Y-Yes, Daddy!”
Now Michael O’Meara did laugh. Ruffling the hair on both his sons’ heads, saying, “Okay, guys: wash it all off.”
And this: the first morning of the first day.
At Swarts Lake, this place of convalescence and peace, the first day Gina O’Meara has ventured out onto the redwood deck of the handsome A-frame cottage her husband has rented for the family for the month of August; the first time since the assault, apart from isolated moments in their home, she has seemed to trust him.
Whispering, “You’re sure no one is watching us?”
Michael squeezes her hand. “Gina, I’m sure.”
“And the boys—?”
“They’ve wandered off.”
Gina loosens the scarf, timidly. Shaved for surgical purposes, her hair has grown back thinly and unevenly, and more silver than blond; her hairline has receded, exposing her forehead, which is a lurid cross-hatching of angry red scar tissue, where the razor slashed both horizontally and vertically. On the lower part of Gina’s face, the razor did not merely slash but gouged, dug, sliced, like a spoon. The effect is pathetic, grotesque: Gina looks like a porcelain doll whose face has cracked in myriad pieces, inexpertly mended, about to crack apart again at any moment. The surgical attempt to restore missing flesh to her left nostril and her lower lip has been only partly successful, as if porcelain has been mended, and crudely, with putty.
Poor Gina has had three skin-graft operations thus far and is scheduled for a fourth, in September. If she is strong enough to endure it.
Suddenly she cries, “Oh, God, Michael!—I’m horrible! Will you let me die?”
“Gina, I’ve asked you not to talk that way! I love you.”
Michael grips Gina’s hands firmly, so that she can’t spread her fingers over her face, to hide it.
He knows that, when she is alone, she touches herself constantly, tirelessly. Even in her sleep.
He says, urgently, “You mustn’t despair, Gina. Think of our sons, think of me. We love you. Everything will be all right.”
“But—”
“Oh, Gina! I’m your husband, I love you more than ever.”
A tear runs down Gina’s mutilated cheek, and then another, and another, though she is not crying, really; her mask of a face remains stiff and inexpressive. What is she thinking, behind that mask?—who is she, now? She has lost so much weight, her body has a look of having been mutilated too; her breasts have shrunken, yet are slack; her collarbone, ribs, pelvic bones protrude. Thus the layers of clothing, on even this warm summer day.
Michael contemplates his wife lovingly, yet with a practiced detachment; almost, a sense of satisfaction. For the woman is, now, his. His alone. Regardless of the miracle surgery to come, regardless of the bouts of hope, courage, pain, no other man will ever look at her again.
If she’d had a lover, or lovers, back in that other life—who among them would seek her out, now?
But Michael O’Meara is not thinking of such things really.
Just as he does not think of, in fact does not quite recall, what happened between him and Lee Roy Sears in Sears’ studio. And on the fire escape.
That entire day, that nightmare of a day, its infinitesimal moments, and the interstices between those moments, so synchronized, so like clockwork: all, now, a blank in his memory. A vacancy. An erasure.
Michael leans to kiss Gina, and, instinctively, though she must know better, she stiffens just slightly.
Gently he touches his lips to hers; he is careful to exert no pressure, to cause no pain. To show the woman that he is not revulsed, as another man would be, by that disfigured lower lip.
Murmuring, “You know I love you, don’t you? don’t you? darling Gina, don’t you?”
Until, as if the words are being squeezed from her, small cries of distress, helplessness, dread, she says, finally, her face shimmering with tears, “Yes. I know.”
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York. After graduating from high school, she attended Syracuse University and then earned her master of arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison before becoming a full-time writer. In 1963, she published her first book, the short story collection By the North Gate, and in 1964, when she was twenty-six years old, her first novel, With Shuddering Fall. Oates has written over forty works, many of which have won awards, including the National Book Award for them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, a World Fantasy Award, the National Humanities Medal, the Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), Blonde (2000), and Lovely, Dark, Deep (2014) were Pulitzer Prize finalists, and her 1996 novel We Were the Mulvaneys was a New York Times bestseller. Under the pen names Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly, she published eleven psychological suspense novels, including Snake Eyes (1992), Double Delight (1997), and Starr Bright Will Be with You Soon (1999). While writing and publishing books, Oates taught at the University of Windsor in Canada from 1968 to 1978, and then moved to New Jersey, where she currently teaches in Princeton University’s creative writing program as the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities. She also teaches creative writing courses at New York University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by The Ontario Review
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4514-8
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
JOYCE CAROL OATES
WRITING AS ROSAMOND SMITH
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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