Expensive People

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Mr. Spoon? I guess not at all.”

  He chuckled as if this reply had no meaning. “Would you say, Mr. Everett, that Mr. Spoon strikes you as a man of integrity? Or not?”

  “I don't know him, I guess.”

  “From your necessarily limited point of view, what would you say?”

  “I don't know—”

  “You are uncertain?”

  “I guess so.”

  He frowned, about to write. “Is that your final consideration? You are uncertain about him?”

  “I guess so.”

  He wrote this down. His face cleared and he smiled again. “Has Mr. Spoon ever betrayed any weak or deviant behavior to you? Excessive drinking, boasting, telling of family or business secrets, implying political connections in high places? Boasting of physical powers, of mental agility? Have you any reason to suspect that he is being blackmailed? Has he ever—think carefully—has he ever made any proposals to you of a certain type?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I only saw him a few times from the doorway—”

  “What doorway?”

  “In our house.”

  “What was he doing in the doorway?”

  “No, I was in the doorway.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Spying.”

  His cheeks reddened. He said lightly, “You have a sense of humor, Mr. Everett, well developed for one so young. According to my notes, you have been expelled from Johns Behemoth, your mother has left this house and is living in New York City with someone named Sheer—and we know all about him too!—and your father is playing off GKS against Federal Bison and BWK. So there is no point in hiding the truth, Mr. Everett.”

  “Who? What's Sheer?” I said. “Who is Sheer? Who's that?”

  “Our subject is Spoon,” he said. “Would you say, Mr. Everett, that Mr. Charles Spoon is the type of man who could be trusted with secrets pertaining to our national security? Your life, my life? Would you want to trust this man with the life and death of our civilization?”

  “I wouldn't trust anybody—”

  “Eh?”

  “No, I wouldn't! Who's this Sheer?”

  “You wouldn't trust him?”

  “Who is Sheer? Where are they?”

  “So you wouldn't trust Spoon—that's significant. You are the thirteenth person to suggest that you wouldn't trust Spoon with the life and death of our civilization. Mr. Everett, never mind about Sheer. I mentioned his name only so that you would understand that I know you, and there is no point in lying to me.”

  “I wasn't lying,” I said miserably.

  “When there is no longer any point in lying, no one will lie,” he said gently. His eyelids were half closed; he looked for a moment as if he were in the presence of something sacred. Then he drew himself up to his full height and said in a brisk, snappy voice, “You look a little cold, kid. Why don't you go inside? Of course, you understand, don't tell anyone about this. You understand?”

  I understood.

  —

  This was my “freedom.” Expensive People could be subtitled “Children of Freedom.” I am too tired to go back and work in this secondary theme, about “freedom,” and the many children involved in my story, and anyway this isn't fiction, it's life. “When there is no longer any point in lying, no one will lie”: that would make a good epigraph for a novel. But in life there are no epigraphs, no reason for emphasizing one remark over another, and so I refuse to emphasize that, right? The hell with that. The hell with the government man. But it seems to me I saw him just the other day that man or one exactly like him, bred out of the same race, standing outside the shabby “family-run” grocery store where I buy my mountains of food, and looking at me in a certain way. Does that mean they are after me at last? After so many years of freedom, of legal innocence, they've decided to believe my confession? What does it mean? What will happen? Will anything happen?

  4

  Gregory Hofstadter was in oil and rarely seen. He flew everywhere, dined with princes and premiers; there is a photograph of him in Gus-tave's room, riding in a jeep across ice-cream-smooth slopes of sand in the company of fierce white-clothed Arabs! What a father! He traveled third-class and slept with vermin, just for fun; he made a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he had an audience (in a group of six) with the Pope, he snapped a picture of Khrushchev when Khrushchev was in Berlin, and Khrushchev seems to be waving at him! He went surfing out in California, in early May, and the Premier of Bongata ferried him about in a gigantic yacht one August; he was a regular guest at Saari's villa on the Italian Riviera, and I heard him talk animatedly with Father about just what electronic music was striving for: he had been in a special audience, including Queen Elizabeth, treated to the premiere of “Symphony for Silence” by Baxterhouse.

  He took Gustave and Gustave's cousin and me all the way downtown to a concert, which was held in an expensive, modern, concrete-block auditorium at the very center of the city. Though the city was being rebuilt, no one went down there anymore; just a few people who had to work there, and misguided tourists. But no women ventured into the city because why should they? Why, indeed! All you will find in the city is streets littered with papers, wrappers, dirt, grit, spit, bloody phlegm coughed up by bums, and on the blowy park benches the bums themselves looking humble and malicious in their shabby clothes. (“And each one of them a pervert,” Gregory Hofstadter said in a cheerful, angry voice to us children.) No “Ladies Day” at the local theaters can lure our lovely mothers down to this squalor! Do they care if they can get in for fifty cents, or if a ripple-haired movie star will be on stage in person? They don't give a damn and they are absolutely right. Gregory Hofstadter swore at the congested traffic and blew his nose, waiting for a light to change, as if he had to get rid of his nervous energy somehow.

  “I hope this trio or whatever it is is good,” he said to Gustave. “We're going to a lot of trouble to get down here.”

  Gustave sat up front with his father, and Maureen and I sat in back. Maureen had pale, sharp-boned cheeks, a very pretty pink spring coat; she was Gustave's age, two years older than I. She played the piano and the harp, Gustave said. She attended Miss Chote's School for Girls, a most exclusive and expensive school in Fernwood Heights, whose students were the sisters and cousins of the Johns Behemoth boys.

  Mr. Hofstadter was having trouble because if he got in the right lane, cars ahead of him would slow to make right turns. If he lurched over into the left lane, swearing under his breath, the car ahead of him always paused to make a very slow, creaky left turn. “Oh, those … oh, those bastards!” he muttered, not for us to hear. We children were talking quietly, and when Mr. Hofstadter spoke Gustave simply raised his voice to drown him out.

  “Did you see that? God!” Mr. Hofstadter said, wiping his forehead. “That nut turned right out in front of that other nut.”

  There was some difficulty at the entrance to the parking lot, since two lines of cars were preparing to squeeze into a one-lane space. We waited. Gustave said cheerfully, “We'll be inside and settled in a few minutes.” His father buzzed down his window and leaned out to yell at a parking attendant. “Hey, you! Yes, you! Come over here—you.”

  The boy limped over to us, and as he emerged out of the dark and into Mr. Hofstadter's headlights he turned into an old man with a sullen look.

  Mr. Hofstadter gave him a mysterious bill, and he and we children hopped out and the old man crawled in. “How d'ya work this? Okay, I got it,” the old man said sullenly. We walked away, free.

  Mr. Hofstadter was a rotund, cheerful man who was always beaming down on us. When he smiled, he smiled just like his wife Bebe, but, like her, he often let his face relax and the gloriousness of his good humor drained away at once, while the smile took longer to fade. It was like looking at two people at the same time.

  “Dick, I hear your father is up to some monkey business,” he teased.

  I didn't know
what he was talking about. I was afraid it had to do with Nada, though of course I should have known no Fernwood gentleman would allude to anything that serious. So I smiled shyly and said nothing.

  “Yessir!” Mr. Hofstadter said. “And did Gustave tell you about me? I'm leaving BOX and going in with Precept Oil. Did Gustave mention my new position?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  This pleased him, and he rumpled Gustave's hair. I felt my own hair being rumpled.

  The chamber-music group did unsurprising but fine pieces. Mr. Hofstadter began to cross and uncross his legs during the Andante movement, but the Allegro kept him interested. There was a moderate crowd. It occurred to me then that music was like eating, and both of them were like sleep: something to do that drew you into it, hadn't anything to do with you as a person. You could inhabit the vacuum of your freedom like a fly buzzing aimlessly in a locked car, and not worry about getting out or about what you should be doing since you couldn't do anything anyway until you did get out.

  At intermission, while Mr. Hofstadter went out to the foyer to smoke, Gustave said nervously, “I should apologize for Father—”

  “No, no! The concert is wonderful,” Maureen said.

  “It's wonderful of him to bring us down,” I said.

  Gustave fussed with his program notes. “I'm afraid Father doesn't know much about music. But he has an instinctive appreciation of some pieces.”

  “It's better that way,” said Maureen at once.

  “I wish I had his natural instinct,” I said. “It's so … so natural.”

  “It comes without any contemplation,” said Maureen. “I'm ruined for anything spontaneous. I've been studying music for ten years.”

  “Well, Father likes things that he likes. If they appeal to him,” Gustave said. He showed the slow, cautious pride one shows in hearing one's children being praised.

  After all this, Mr. Hofstadter must have disappointed his son by insisting that we leave before the final work. “Want to get out of that parking lot before the crowd,” he muttered. Gustave tried to argue, but his father got to his feet and started out, and we had to follow him. We stumbled over feet on our way out, but in the aisle we were joined by a dozen, two dozen people slipping on their coats, looking shrewd and relieved on their way to the parking lot. The trio had just begun its final piece.

  “Too much congestion,” Mr. Hofstadter said.

  In the small crowd of those desiring to avoid congestion we descended into the chilly April evening. Mr. Hofstadter walked fast, as Father did. Fernwood men always walked fast. Seen from the back, they looked angry; that must have been why Maureen said to Gustave, “I hope your father isn't angry about anything.” Gustave said, “Why should he be angry?” but his reply was dubious. We had all learned long ago that when adults did favors for you, their jolly good natures could change suddenly and inexplicably.

  “They're all trying to kill us, it's nothing personal,” I said.

  “What was that?” said Gustave, cupping his ear.

  But Mr. Hofstadter was waving on the three of us—obviously children who had never been childish or even especially young.

  Need I mention that Mr. Hofstadter was an excellent driver? Had you seen how he swung his big Lincoln around some mediocre automobile and roared up to the exit, squeezing in ahead of several other cars, you would certainly have marveled at his skill. Fernwood men drive well, and they never have accidents or get tickets from the police. When Mr. Hofstadter got into his car he looked enthusiastic and pleased. I noticed that. Gustave climbed in beside him, with a quick, unconvincing smile that was meant to bring us all together, adult and children, but which had no effect at all.

  I think that Mr. Hofstadter had already forgotten about Maureen and me in the backseat, and that he gradually forgot about Gustave, as the intricate skills of driving captured his imagination. He was a born driver. The “driver” is a man who settles himself into his “driving” the way others of us settle into a good book or a good sleep. You can tell when the “driving” sets in by the change of expression. But no, it isn't really a change, it's a solidification, an intensification. Let me explain. The first five minutes on the expressway were taken up with Mr. Hof-stadter's genial chatter. I think he was chattering about a new painting he had bought, or his new position at Precept Oil, and how unfortunate it was that Gustave would have to leave Johns Behemoth—it was his fifth, or sixth, school in the last three years—or maybe he was talking about the next trip he would be taking, to Australia. Then, as the “driving” set upon him, his sentences faltered off into nothing, his shoulders straightened bulkily I could see his neck grow thicker and stronger as if preparing for battle. In the rearview mirror I could see his eyebrows furrowed down close to his narrowed eyes. His lips were pursed together hard and a tiny film of perspiration glowed on his forehead.

  Gustave talked on bravely, but Maureen and I only mumbled our replies. Mr. Hofstadter changed lanes, swerved in front of slower, moronic drivers who couldn't keep up, tapped his horn, leaned on his horn, swore out through his flawlessly clean windshield at the anonymous faces of fellow drivers who just couldn't keep up. “Accidents caused by slow drivers,” he said panting. “Look at them! That nut over there! Look!” But he roared by so fast that we had no time to look, nor did we trust ourselves to look at the other vehicles speeding along with us. The expressway had been an excellent route a few years ago, but now it was out of date. Even on a Tuesday evening there were too many cars. Mr. Hofstadter showed his dissatisfaction by drifting up close to the rear of a car, breathing heavily, tapping on his horn, jerking his head back and forth in a tight series of disapproving, outraged shakes, and his hands gripped the wheel the way they might have gripped any weapon, with confidence and pride and barely restrained vengeance.

  We sped along the expressway and out toward the suburbs, passing beneath sleazy viaducts and overpasses where Negro children dawdled, some of them kicking pebbles off onto the passing cars, and while the perspiration gleamed on Mr. Hofstadter's handsome forehead and his shoulders in their expensive tweed began to hunch up with cunning, we children tried to keep up our miserable conversation. I think it was Maureen who said, “Music is the only thing that can make you happy without qualification,” or else I said it; and Gustave replied, his sentence peaking in the middle with the sudden swerve of his Father's excellent automobile, “Music bypasses the mind altogether …” We drifted on to talk of chess, but our desperate conversation inside the hurtling vehicle of steel and glass could not compete with the lusty dramas taking place on all sides of us. Poor children!

  “There, so much for him,” Mr. Hofstadter would mutter; or, “Like this—this is the way it's done!” He was not talking to us, of course. He was talking to the other drivers. A man in a car as fine as Mr. Hof-stadter's gave him some trouble. They sped along side by side for a while, not glancing at each other, and when Mr. Hofstadter began to drift toward that car the car did not budge, no, not an inch, nor did anyone sound his horn, and Mr. Hofstadter laughed huskily and straightened out again, pressing his accelerator down to the floor. “We'll see, we'll see,” he whispered. He finally did get ahead of the other car, but only after an interlude of sharp squealing brakes. “I was engaged in this three-dimensional chess game,” Gustave said nervously. “My opponent is a member of London Teen-Mensa …”

  After a few confused moments we flashed under an overpass, and just at that moment some kids dropped something over—a length of pipe, maybe—and it hit the windshield of a car alongside us. The car immediately swerved and fell back. Mr. Hofstadter accelerated. Maureen and I looked out and saw the car bounce up on the shoulder of the expressway, veer along at a tremendous speed, and crumple against a series of posts.

  “Oh, look! Look at that!” I cried.

  “Filming,” said Mr. Hofstadter.

  The accident was already some distance behind us.

  “What?”

  “It's a rehearsal. Television show,” Mr. Hofs
tadter said and kept on going.

  Gustave had told me once that his father had been born on a yacht on the Detroit River, one sunny Sunday many years ago. The birth had been the result of a grand slam dealt to his mother by a kindly hostess, and so Mr. Hofstadter had come into the world a few weeks early, lusty and bawling and ready to go. He hasn't stopped yet. He's still going strong, I know, since a recent Time showed him in a photograph with several fierce sheiks, aging but still handsome. And Gustave, if you're interested, is already a senior at Harvard, excelling in mathematics, and Maureen is studying in Bristol, and they're all growing up, going along their ways, “getting along,” but I, I sit here at the end of my life. Now I have my meals sent up from a roachy delicatessen because it's easier that way and I can avoid the unfriendly stares of people in this neighborhood. It's strange how people end up, how different their destinies are, though at one time in their lives they've been together in a hurtling automobile just a few feet or a few seconds from death.

  5

  REVIEWS OF EXPENSIVE PEOPLE

  Everyone imagines with horror the opinions of others, but few people are unfortunate enough really to know what these opinions are. We are all paranoid, all self-loathing and vaguely doomed, but only writers and other exhibitionists are told the terrible truth about themselves. Ordinary people never know anything. They suspect but do not know. Years pass. Nobody gives a damn, nobody is watching. They die. They are forgotten. I, Richard Everett, will die and be forgotten and never know the truth about myself, if there is “truth,” and so …

  And so I have made up some truths. Last night I made them up. I should keep them for an Appendix to this book, but I am greedy and impatient and masochistic, and so here they are. The posthumous future doesn't seem quite real to me, but I suppose it will come. Can it be possible that you are reading this book in 1969, or later? This moment seems so real to me, so gluey and sluggish, that only a great effort of will can get me past it. I won't be alive to see the actual reviews of my exhaustive work, and no doubt that's just as well. But I imagine they will take these forms: