Expensive People

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I said to Father, “Are you going to write her and let her know where we're going?”

  Father chuckled and said, “Tend to the road map, Buster. You're the navigator for this run.”

  Two hours later, lonely for companionship, I said, “What kind of work will you be doing now, Father?”

  “Cut out that Father business, I'm your Dad. Daddy,” he said cheerfully. “It's a line of work you'd be interested in yourself, Son. Top-security business, of course. Our new product is something that … well, I can't explain to you in any detail (not that I think you're a Red spy, Kid!) but I can say generally that it has the appearance of our regular product, which has a certain superficial resemblance to the product of my former firm, a platinum-covered wire, but there are immense differences! A most intricate thing indeed. Our research team has been working for years to perfect a certain device that… well, has immense value in determining the security of America. Do you understand?”

  My interest rose. “Is it a bomb then?”

  “A bomb?” He laughed. “Look, Kid, maybe and maybe not. On the day you get cleared I'll tell you. Okay?”

  “Do you think I'll get cleared too?”

  “If you keep your nose clean. If your mother keeps her nose clean.”

  “What?”

  “Kid, I almost lost my top clearance because of your mother. But no more of that. Forget it.”

  “What about Nada?”

  “Forget it, Kid,” he said.

  He was jolly and restrained, like a magician with birds tickling him inside his clothes.

  And so we drove on into the night and did not stop, for my father (and probably yours too) likes to drive straight through. “Drove straight through,” he'll say modestly when he reaches his destination. “Straight through” from Fernwood to our new town, which was called “Cedar Grove.”

  “That name sounds kind of familiar,” I said.

  “Ha, you're a riot, Kid! You know very well that we lived in Cedar Grove once before.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Ha, ha! I think you were about four or five. Yes, Cedar Grove is a fine place and we're headed for a fine new life because, you see, Dickie-boy I have got a rather pleasant financial reward in connection with my switching to BWK. But of that no more need be said.” And he wouldn't say any more either, because he was a little embarrassed over his success. He liked to talk about other men's successes and bring in his own by implication; he was modest, modest. So he chattered on about his new product, and the tie-in with the government, and the cultural advantages of Cedar Grove.

  There was something boyish and giddy in his talk. He frightened me. But he was not frightening—there was nothing frightening there, it was his cheerfulness itself that terrified. I had the idea that I was trapped in this car with someone who wanted to destroy me, not by crashing the car or turning to me but just by talking, chatting, confiding, laughing, chuckling, patting my skull. He loved me. It was clear that he loved me and I loved him. Why was I so afraid of him?

  I have on one hand this agreeable, well-appointed father, and on the other hand my morbid and obviously unnatural fear of him. I am unable to justify one by the other. They remain forever apart, and if I could get them together by telling you the tale of my dog Spark I'd do that, but when I tell that tale I either laugh miserably or cry hilariously.

  I think, while Father speeds into the domestic American darkness, toward Cedar Grove, I will tell you the tale of my dog Spark after all.

  9

  When I was very little Father and Nada gave me a nice Christmas present: a little dog named “Spark.” Spark was a dachshund, which word was pronounced not “dash-hound,” as the maid and the lawn men pronounced it, but in a fast, angry, wheezing way, like a sneeze. Father and Nada always said it correctly, and so did their friends. Spark did not know he was a dachshund, but his great sorrowful eyes seemed to indicate some misery or humiliation.

  “Isn't it a lovely doggie?” Nada cried.

  She hugged Spark and me together, entwining her arms about both of us. In the background, sketch in a Negro maid smiling maternally, with what in hand (for she must be busy)? Oh, a rag, a bottle of Anglo-Saxon Furniture Polish. What kind of day? Misty, mild; spring. Nada dressed in a beautiful new suit, new gloves and purse in hand, ready to press the button and raise the garage door and drive off, destination unknown. Yes, I can see her there. In a minute she will leave.

  Happy days are all one big blur of confusion, but so are unhappy days; in my sordid life, all days were blurs of confusion. But this was a happy day and blurred as usual with my shouts of joy and Spark's little whimpers and his fuzzy, downy stomach (more downy than the soft blond down on Nada's arms) and his caramel-candy-colored coat. He was delicious enough to eat! I hugged Spark in my clumsy arms and helped him wave good-by to Nada, who drove out and away, and I didn't turn aside from his wet leaping tongue.

  And then … Not a minute later there was an aqua laundry truck.

  In the driveway from out of nowhere, and a man with a cap on his head looking down, cigar in hand. Yelps, whimpers. The maid came running behind me and screamed. Then she came running back and grabbed my arm and said, “Richard, you better get inside here fast,” and I tried to get away to see where Spark had gotten to, but she took me back to the Family Room and turned on the television and that was that. I asked her for Spark and she said, “He's restin',” and turned the television volume up higher.

  Nada came, and Father came. They looked at me from the doorway of the Family Room. Father had his arm around Nada's shoulders. They were saying something and their faces were sad, but though they were looking at me I could tell I wasn't supposed to hear them so I didn't hear anything. I was not a spy in those days.

  We went out for a nice dinner, and I said, “Where's Spark?” and Father said cheerfully, “Spark had to go to the doctor. You know, like you did. Dr. Pratt.”

  “How come?”

  “Spark needs his measles shot.”

  The next day when I woke up there was no Spark to be scolded at for making a mess in the kitchen, or rolling around whimpering on the floor. Nada stayed home. She made fudge, but it was too salty so I had to eat it all myself. At noon Father's car drove in, and I looked close and saw that Father was in it, and he jumped out of the car with a big happy hello for us, and along with him was Spark.

  “Back safe and sound from the doctor—got his shots and he's set for life,” Father said.

  Spark yelped and whimpered and ran at Father's legs. Father had to pick him up and give him to me. Spark did not seem to know me, but after a moment he began to lick my face. Nada hugged us both, and when I looked at her I saw that she was so strange and beautiful. “Spark says he don't like doctors, just like me,” I told her.

  “He doesn'tlike doctors,” Nada said gently.

  And Spark and I played in the back and nearby stood Father and Nada, watching. They were happy. Father had his arm around Nada's shoulders.

  Then one day about a week later (I am guessing at the time) Nada and Spark and I went for a walk. Nada wore slacks and had a scarf around her head. It was a blowy, happy day. Spark and I ran along, yipping and dashing, Spark's short little legs chopping as fast as they could and me falling down once in a while, and when I did I didn't bother to cry.

  Nada said, “Wait for me,” when we ran ahead to the corner, but Spark didn't hear her and kept running on with his little legs pumping. Off over the curb he went, and in the air for a second, and still running, and I was right behind him, and Nada said more sharply, “Richard, wait!” and I made a lunge to grab Spark's little tail but it was too late. Out of nowhere came an aqua truck, not a laundry truck this time but a delivery truck, and its brakes squealed and its body shuddered and swerved, and there was a scream of surprise from Spark and a scream of anger from Nada, who cried, “Oh, no!”

  The delivery man stood talking to Nada. Spark was somewhere on the other side of the truck, but he was quiet, and Nada wouldn't let m
e go see him. I cried. Nada was crying too, but she was angry. The delivery man was not crying and he was not angry, he was like men are: they get things done. “Well, all right, you take that dog to the doctor,” Nada said. “To the doctor. And when he is well you will bring him back again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” the delivery man said.

  They both glanced at me to see if I heard.

  So Nada dragged me home. I cried for a while but then forgot why I was crying. She made fudge. We watched the Mickey Mouse Show together.

  That day there was no Spark, and the next day no Spark either. I asked the maid where Spark was, was he at the hospital? She said he was getting fixed up and he'd be back. And the next day at noon Father's car turned up the driveway, and Father got out a little rushed and dropped Spark at my feet and said, “Good Christ, I should be at the airport right now,” and said good-by and backed out again. There was a bad moment when Spark seemed to be running under the back wheel, but somehow he didn't run under it, or Nada's scream scared him out, and I chased him into the evergreens and picked him up. He was a lot bigger than he was two days before. His coat was not so soft. He whimpered and lunged in my arms, trying to get away.

  “Spark don't like me anymore,” I said, weeping.

  “Doesn't like you,” Nada corrected me, trying to pet Spark's bony,nervous head. “Bring him inside and we'll feed him. He's been at the hospital for two days. After all…”

  So we brought him into the house and he made a puddle right away on the kitchen floor, which the maid had just cleaned, and Nada said something she sometimes said to Father. We fed Spark and spent all day petting him and trying to make him stop whining. He wouldn't play, and I told Nada I didn't like him anymore, and Nada told me that I had better like him if I knew what was good for me.

  We had Spark for several years, then when we moved to Charlotte Pointe he had a nervous breakdown and never recovered.

  That is the tale of my dog Spark.

  10

  We arrived somewhere late at night. I remember lights, car doors slamming, the scuff and scrape of luggage. Then bed. An unfamiliar pillow, but I slept my familiar heavy sleep.

  I woke to hear Father arguing with someone. He was in the motel bathroom talking in a fast, furious voice with someone unknown. “Genet is not sensational,” Father said angrily. “You argue as if you were unaware that the cas Genethas been studied by Sartre and other intellectuals. It's all sewed up.” I dozed off again, and someone outside the motel-room door was scraping his luggage along. Two children argued bitterly. I woke up, startled, and it was dawn. I was alone in the cold motel room, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was I who had been left behind, not Nada.

  The bathroom was empty. Father had never been there, of course; Father had his own motel room. When he came in to wake me he had already shaved, showered, and combed down the thinning hair on the left side of his head. He was ready to go. “First we eat and exercise our stomach muscles,” he said happily.

  We ate in a glass-enclosed coffee shop attached to the motel. A waitress in a uniform too yellow brought us food. I had an enormous appetite in spite of being so tired, as if someone else had charge of my stomach. Father ate well as always. There were a few travelers in the coffee shop, crabby husbands and bright-eyed wives, businessmen reading newspapers. From a radio set atop a shelf by the cash register came morning music interspersed with advertisements for the cure of thinning blood and chronic backache. It was a cheerful, sunny place, and when we left, the waitress giggled at some witticism of Father's and spiked our green-and-white “breakfast check” onto a sterilized nail on which many another check had been impaled.

  “Things starting to look familiar yet?” Father said as he drove us closer and closer to Cedar Grove. “Ah-hah, hah—look at that. New bank! Remember any of this?”

  I stared out the window at the slow-passing sights, which were the sights of Fernwood. A bank with white shutters and white trim, pretty orange-red brick, evergreens framing everything; a shopping plaza empty of cars this early in the morning; across the way the Common, a big square area of green with library, courthouse, and post office, all of them constructed from the same mountain of buff bricks and according to the same plan. A feeling of lassitude overtook me, as if I were indeed coming home.

  “Just like coming home, eh?” Father said.

  We drove along. My eyelids were grainy, as if a few specks of sand had somehow worked in under them. The silence between Father and me was getting awkward, so I said, “Have you read Genet?”

  He looked at me sharply. “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I've been reading Genet,” he said, a little relieved. “I was just discussing his works with Mr. Body the other day. You were in the den. Did you hear us?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I don't recommend that writer for you, Buster, not right now,” he said comfortably.

  We turned off onto a handsome boulevard shaded by elms. Some of the elms had yellow tags on them, but Father did not notice. Father's car sped along silently. It was strange how being awake did not make much difference. It was like being asleep. Dimensions were blurred and edges softened and even Father's cheerfulness was easy to take. He meant no harm, after all, no matter how much harm he caused, and in Flavius Maurus' heaven he would have been sainted.

  “Look at that house! God,” he said admiringly.

  I didn't know which house he meant. It seemed important to me that I know, but already we were turning and entering a new street, and up before me arose more houses that looked different but were really familiar. I wondered if I should play the thinking game, to save myself from paralysis. I had to get awake enough for when Father finally stopped the car and pointed out our new home to me. What if I sat there all day, paralyzed? I tried to think of my mother, but at the very center of my vision there was nothing—a burned-out spot as if the mere thought of her had annihilated part of my mind.

  “Here we are, Buster. What do you think?”

  We were driving up a hill. A driveway up a hill. Blacktop, but not overly black and vulgar: a worn-smooth, conservative black. Sloping lawn, evergreens—some spiked up proudly against the house, others flattened out and creeping against the ground like sculpture. And the house—the house was (so I learned later) French Normandy, with a hint of a courtyard on one side, material that looked like hard-baked clay held together with strips of dark wood; wrought-iron gates, a tree growing placidly up near the doorway, everything lovely, lovely. It was a lovely house, and Nada would have wept to see it. Father said to me, “Buster, what's wrong? You're not crying, are you?” I astonished and dismayed the poor man at times. No, not crying, not crying! I was all right, I told him.

  We bounded out of the car. He was like a magician showing me a galaxy of tricks, optical illusions—look at this, it all belongs to us! We live here! All this lawn, Kid, and back here is a swimming pool, which we didn't use at the other house; see here, see the landscaping, see the bathhouse, see the bird bath, see the little grotto where all of us can have hotdog roasts and your little friends can join us, and here's a dog house in the exact shape of the big house, goddam cute!

  Maybe Spark can come back, I said to Father, but this was too cruel, you don't talk to your father like that. He stared at me and told me that Spark had died, didn't I know that? (Evidently he had no idea how old an eleven-year-old child was.) I knew it, I told him, but sometimes I forgot.

  Father led me around to the front walk, a lovely flagstone walk. Silvery delicate bushes, just greening up (it was late April), and look at those rhododendron bushes—five hundred dollars' worth, for sure! Over there shaggy, golden forsythia, and everything lovely, lovely. My eyes throbbed with such sights. You would know, waking in such a world, that happiness is to be inhaled with the misty fragrance of the flowers, but at the back of my mind a voice began to chant at the same time that Father chattered about the house, so as to drown out his voice, You won't outlive this ho
use, Buster! This is the last one. You've had it. So many houses, so many miles, so many maids, plumbers, lawn men, snowplow men, so many doggies, so many parties, so much eavesdropping behind doors, sofas, over telephones, through laundry chutes, furnace vents, air-conditioner vents, so many roasted cashews, so many silver trays, so much hatred, so much love! You have had it.

  Father rang the doorbell, silly, happy Father, and, shifting his weight from one big foot to the other, he chuckled just to be out here in the warm Cedar Grove sun. We heard someone coming, another maid I supposed, and then the door opened. The door was a most complex arrangement, very heavy; you must imagine a regular door and overlaid upon that a big greenish pane of glass and overlaid upon that a marvelously intricate pattern of wrought iron, half green (as if with age) and half gray, the pattern in the shape of a limp delicate vine, and blinding in the sun a nice vulgar brass doorknob—and when this vision was pulled aside there stood Nada herself!

  She hugged me, and Father towered over us, clearing his throat, terribly moved and embarrassed and overjoyed. Nada kept saying, “Richard, I'm so sorry … Richard, how are you? How are you?”

  “He's just fine, he eats like a little pig these days. Let's get inside where we can have some privacy,” Father cried, red-faced.

  Nada tried to gather me in her arms but I was too big. The three of us scuffled inside together.

  “Everything's fine, just fine, absolutely first rate,” Father cried.

  Nada bent down to stare into my face. “But how are you, Richard?”

  My heart was pounding heavily. I wanted to get rid of it, get free of its terrible rhythm, so that I could breathe the lovely perfume of her skin and hide in her arms, hide from everything. I had difficulty breathing and could not speak.

  “Richard?” Nada said. “What's wrong?”

  Father thumped my back. “He's just a little surprised, Sweetheart.”

  “You mean you didn't tell him?”

  “Well, you know—”