Expensive People

by Joyce Carol Oates

  You who've never read the secret words of the familiar, domesticated people you love, you who've never snuggled into their brains and looked out through their eyes, how can you understand what I felt? It's as if I had opened a door and saw Nada not as she wanted to seem to us, but Nada as she really was, a stranger, a person Father and I did not know and had no connection with. We are accustomed to people existing in orbit around us, and we dread thinking of their deaths because of the slight tug we will feel when their presence is gone—we'll be drawn out closer to the frigidity of darkness, space, death. We are accustomed to these smaller planets always showing the same sides to us, familiar, predictable, secure, sound, sane, accommodating, but when I looked through Nada's eyes I knew that I had been tricked, that she showed only her narrowest, most ignorant side to me, and that she had cheated me all my life.

  Did I still love her?

  I loved her more than ever, of course. Mothers who cringe and beg for love get nothing, and they deserve nothing, but mothers like Nada who are always backing out of the driveway draw every drop of love out of us. What's awful is that love is an emotion you can't do anything with. It has no value. We who love hopelessly are like noblemen in exile, an exile with no kingdom to look back at, to remember. Our beloved exists within the perfect halo of her own consciousness, selfish and adored, protected from us by the very violence of the love we feel. Is this a boy's love for his mother, you're wondering? Eh? Oh, let it be anything—any kind of love! I had enough love for any kind! I could outlast lovers, husbands, pals—and let me mention my most formidable rival, a woman with handsome olive skin, eyes slightly slanted (make-up? Oriental blood?), who wore dark wool, heavy jewelry and had advanced degrees in European history. She had been Nada's friend for a few months one winter. I remember them laughing softly together, that coy, sly tilting of their heads that meant secrets, intimacy, a closeness Father never knew and I certainly never knew, as I hulked about in the den, pretending to be looking for a book. Dr. Lippick, goddam you! But she disappeared finally, I don't know how, drawn out into someone else's orbit or knocked askew by someone in Nada's orbit, for Nada was always moving on, you know, like any major constellation, driving onward toward whatever it was she believed she was seeking, and along with her went satellites and particles of dust, among them myself.

  I said I was a nobleman in exile and that's garbage of course, it's sentimental bombast, and it isn't true either that I had no kingdom or memory of one. My kingdom was the place we were going to enter finally, Nada and I. Together. Time was passing us, like a gentle spring breeze that has come from some innocent cove thousands of miles away, and overtakes us, and passes us by. I had to get us safely into that kingdom.

  Was it that day or another day, after reading “The Molesters” again, that I made my purchase? Let's say it was that same afternoon. At about one o'clock I read the story, and at two o'clock I went into a small shop called Ax's Sporting Goods. I asked the man shyly about a rifle. He chuckled the way Father did and asked me how old I was. I looked at some rifles, touched them, smelled them. A rocking, nauseated sensation rose in me but I recognized it—it was familiar, it didn't alarm me. It wasn't a bad feeling. It was like coming out of a drug-induced sleep: waking is painful but you want it badly. You want it more than anything in the world, though it's easier to sleep; you could sleep forever and spend no energy. Ah, if I woke I would do many things! I would grow into manhood and be a son worthy of my mother! If I woke …

  In the end I went down the street to a drugstore and there bought a magazine called “He-Man Guns.” In the back of the magazine (which was partly a comic book) I found the grubby little ads I craved: “Are Guns Your Hobby?” “For Target Practice” “Halt!” “New Amazing Ballpoint Pen Gun $3.98!” “German Sniper Rifle Used by Mad Fanatic SS Men—Limited Number!” “Assemble at Home—Be a Sharpshooter!

  Protect Yourself at All Times!” Crummy drawings of rifles, machine guns, pistols, revolvers, bazookas, cannons, anything. “Own Your Own Cannon! Powerful Enough to Down a Tank!” Why not own your own tank too? But no tanks were for sale in this magazine.

  Read my desperation in the rapidity with which I settled upon one of these ads, distinguished in no way from the others, bought some envelopes in the drugstore and took out one of them, made out the coupon at the bottom of the ad, and actually slid into that envelope along with the coupon several handfuls of dollar bills Father had given me off and on, forgetfully, spasmodically, the way he sometimes offered people chewing gum or free tickets he'd been handed himself, forgetfully and spasmodically, everything accumulating in his pockets. And I bought a stamp in the stamp machine, was cheated of a penny, and addressed the envelope in my boyish block letters, and mailed it down at the corner. It took no more than five minutes and I was on my way.

  1

  A friendly pilot skimming low over Cedar Grove would see as much of it as anyone else, but once in a while there are little cracks that let light through. One day I was downstairs doing my math homework (I was enrolled in a double-session geometry class at school; it was mid-July of an unforgettable summer) when Nada came into the den. She was chewing on something. She sat on the sofa and for a moment said nothing, was probably not even looking at me. Then she said, “How old are you?”

  I looked up, surprised. She was chewing on a piece of celery. “Eleven,” I said.

  “Eleven,” she said vaguely, as if counting mentally on her fingers to make sure I was legitimate. “You know, Richard, I'd like us to talk but there doesn't seem to be anything to talk about. Have you noticed that?”

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “Do you have friends? What do you do? What are you always reading? Would you like to go to camp this summer? Your father said you might be interested in the Little League team, is that true?”

  “I don't remember saying that.”

  “I'm sure you don't. He must have imagined it,” Nada said sarcastically. She finished the piece of celery and wiped her fingers lightly on the sofa covering. “What have you been reading lately, Richard?”

  I laid down my pencil reluctantly. What if I told her I spent my time reading the things she had written, understanding nothing except to know that the sympathy she showed in her stories must have used up all the sympathy she had in her? You would think nothing would be easier to get than sympathy from Natashya Romanov, but here was Natashya Romanov herself, in yellow silk slacks and a yellow and green blouse, staring at me as if I had just crawled out of a crack in the wall.

  “Science-fiction stories,” I said.

  She looked disinterested at once. “Richard, did you miss me while I was gone?” she said. “Why didn't you answer my letters?”

  “When?”

  “When I was gone, silly. When I was gone.”

  It pleased me to be called “silly” by her. “I was busy with school.”

  “Oh, that ridiculous Johns Behemoth, that disgusting Nash! But did you miss me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did your father take away the letters I wrote to you, or did you see them?”

  “I saw them.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes, Nada.”

  “He wanted to come between us, but it's over now and I don't blame him. Your father and I are friends now. Everything is forgiven.”

  “Father was very nice—”

  “He wants you to call him ‘Daddy’”

  “Daddy—”

  “But call him anything you want. I don't care.”

  “He was very nice, he took me to the movies and bowling. He was nice all the time,” I said miserably.

  “Did he drink much?”

  “Drink?”

  “Richard, you don't really know your father. He's a man you haven't met yet. Don't let him fool you.”

  “Yes, Nada.”

  She stared at me. “What the hell do you mean? You sound as if you're imitating someone. What is it? Are you imitating the person I'm supposed to think y
ou are? Who do you talk to? Listen to? How will you grow up normal if you keep listening to the wrong people? I know you were eavesdropping on me the other day when I was on the phone. I heard you upstairs, my little friend, but I was too polite to accuse you.” She had been speaking seriously, but now she laughed. All of Nada's words were canceled out by her destructive laughter. She gave me the same sideways look a boy had given me the other day, except that boy had been wearing a sweatshirt with JESUS SAVES on its front and dark sunglasses, so that as a matter of fact one shouldn't have expected a “look” from him at all.

  Out in the hallway, at the bottom of the door that led to the basement, something moved suddenly—a tiny face and paws emerged for an instant and then disappeared. It was not enough to wake me from my stupor so I said nothing to my mother. Maybe I had imagined it anyway. Nada talked on and I noticed that she had taken on a new style of talk, this “my friend” business, and that this meant she had herself taken on a new friend. When she fell silent I was afraid she would leave, so I said quickly anything that came to mind. “Mrs. Hofstadter cut Gustave's fingernails and toenails the other day, with a clippers, and she almost severed his little toe.”

  Nada frowned. “You say the wildest things, Richard.”

  “It's true. Mrs. Hofstadter has been acting funny.”

  “You're too critical of adults,” she said. “Anyway, my little friend, if a mother wants to clip off her son's little toe, or indeed his big toe, who has a better right?”

  “Don't you like Gustave?”

  “Of course. He's nice.” She stretched out her legs and sighed lazily. “What say for a treat, friend? Should I drive us out to Ho-Jo's and get you a cone, or would you like to go down to the cellar and stick your head in the freezer? There are some vanilla cones down there.”

  “I don't want to go down in the cellar.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are some mice or something down there.”

  “Oh, you're crazy!” She laughed. “We don't have mice here. What do you think this is, a slum? We could drive out to Ho-Jo's then.”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  “Why, mice out there too? Mice everywhere?”

  “I'm not sure if it's mice.”

  Nada straightened. She had heard our maid, Libby who was in the kitchen doing something; some pans clattered. “That woman can't suppress her unconscious hostile feelings,” Nada said. “Listen to her banging around!”

  “She's nice.”

  “Oh, everyone's nice.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Then the telephone rang at Nada's elbow. She said, “No, I'm sorry, I wish I were Natashya Everett but you must have the wrong number. No, I wish I were that woman.” She hung up and winked at me.

  “Seriously, Mother, there are mice or something down there—”

  “What's this, now you're calling me ‘Mother’? Weaned at last? Don't give me that solemn weepy look through your glasses, my friend, I don't particularly care to be called ‘Mother’ by anyone. I don't respond to it. I'm trying to hold my own and that's it. No ‘Mother,’ no ‘Son.’ No depending on anyone else. I want you to be so free, Richard, that you stink of it. You're not going to blame me for anything.”

  “Who should I blame then?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Not even Father?”

  “Especially not him.”

  “Isn't there anybody?”

  “My own father, my drunken madman of a father,” Nada said, but without her usual melodramatic conviction. It was plain that she regretted having hung up on that call. “If you don't be quiet I'll buy a Home Clipper-Cutter from the Discount Mart and cut your hair here at home and ‘almost sever’ your ears, little chum. You and Gustave both.” She reached over and stroked my hair.

  She was right, it did need to be cut. Father took me out on Saturdays when he had his own hair cut, but sometimes he was far away and forgot about me; it was possible for me to go a long time without having a haircut. Like most things about me, my long hair did not quite matter.

  “You know, Richard, once I spent two days tracking down a single lie of your father's. Two days of my life. And I discovered that he hadn't lied, no, but when he told the truth he told it in such a way that one thought, Good Christ! That tnustbe a lie. That's your father.”

  “Nada, what is an ‘abortion’?”

  She sat up and her hand moved away from me. There was something too casual about her expression.

  “An ‘abortion,’ if you must know, is something that fails to come off. Let's see: we plan on Father grilling steaks for us tonight, but at the last minute Father fails to come home. Hence, the steak barbecue is ‘aborted.’”

  “Is that what it means?”

  She was silent for a moment, not exactly looking at me. It was never possible to tell what she was looking at or thinking. After a moment she said, “What say we drive out to Ho-Jo's then, Pal? Stuff ourselves on some cheap tasty food? Father will be gone tonight and tomorrow night, so we can eat anything we please and at any time we please.”

  “You never tell me the truth, Nada,” I said bitterly.

  “Oh, you're making me tired. Leave me alone, you little pest.”

  The telephone rang and she picked it up at once. “Yes, hello. Yes,” she said quickly.

  Sunk in my lethargy, I watched her and thought how strange it was that she was my mother, that there was so much that should be said between us but which would not be said. The time in which to say it was running out like that breeze drifting gently past us as she dawdled and talked with that Other Person …

  “Oh, I can't talk now, don't annoy me,” she said in the same voice she had used with me. “When, tonight? No, not tonight. Tomorrow. Yes, he won't be back. Look, I can't talk now. I've told you not to call me. Yes. Good-by”

  “Who was that, Nada?” I said.

  “Don't Nada me, you little fake,” she said. She rose lazily, happily. Her voice was slightly detached, as if she were still on the telephone. “Look, are we going out to dinner or what? Why do you sit there?”

  But we never got out to dinner that night: a strange thing happened. Libby slipped down the three steps that led to the back porch, spraining an ankle, and we had to tend to her. We had been about to leave when this happened, and dutifully we came back. That's how it is in ordinary life. Scenes move toward sensible conclusions, then someone slips and falls and ruins everything. Now, years later, I still nurse an unreasonable hatred for Libby.

  2

  She was a greedy woman, my Nada. You know the story of the old grouch Juvenal eating until he was sick, out of pure spite at the heaven of sensuality he could not enter, and if you know that you also know the story of Laurence Sterne and Charles Churchill come to London (but not together), lunatic, depraved gluttons of clergymen whose only aim in life was to devour as much of anything as was available!— and all of history gives us these weird writers whose scribbling must in itself have been a kind of grossness, but not enough to satisfy, coming to London or Paris or Rome or New York, anywhere, to fill their stomachs and brains with whatever was handy. But even as Juvenal vomited as he ate, so Nada did vomit back out much of what she took in so eagerly; and even as Sterne and Churchill met their ends in excess, so did Nada invite her finish by an excess of greed.

  On the evening following Libby's fall Nada went out at about five. She said, “Richard, will you be all right? I have to see someone.”

  I heard her drive out and watched the yellow car disappear down Labyrinth Drive and wondered whether I should follow her on my bicycle; but no, you don't do that. And at five-thirty what should turn in our drive but another yellow car? It was Father come home a day early.

  He drove up but did not drive the car into the garage. I noticed that. I was sitting in the kitchen, in the darkened breakfast nook, waiting. I heard Father's car pause, stall, stop. I heard him sit there for a while, looking in at the empty garage. Finally he got out and came to the back door.

  “Fathe
r?”

  He stumbled up into the kitchen. “Oh, it's you,” he said. There was a moment when his smile did not work, then it worked. He rumpled my hair as if this were an obligation to me. “Nada not in just now, eh? Is she shopping for food?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Did she say where she went?”

  “I don't remember.”

  “Yes, hmmm,” he said meaninglessly He wandered into the dining room and turned on the lights. I followed him into the hall, then into the living room. This living room was rather long. You could not be certain, standing in the doorway, if the room was really empty or not. There was always the feeling that someone was sitting down at the other end, screened by a giant plant or disguised simply by distance. In the instant before Father switched on the light I thought I saw someone sitting by the fireplace.

  “When did she leave?” Father said.

  “A few minutes ago.”

  “So late? Very strange,” he said. We wandered back into the hall. Father switched on another light, and we heard the scratch of tiny nails down at the far end of the hall, by the basement door. “What in good Christ is that?” he said, genuinely astonished.

  I ran to open the basement door, and we saw two chipmunks dashing madly down the carpeted stairs.

  “What's that?” Father cried. “Rats? Mice?”

  “Chipmunks.”

  “But what are chipmunks doing in here? In our house?”

  “They must have gotten in by mistake.”

  Father was panting hoarsely. We listened and heard the scratching of tiny, frenzied toenails downstairs, then something happened to Father. He grunted and took off his suit coat and thrust it at me. “I'll get 'em,” he said. “Little saucy bastards!”

  He ran downstairs two and three at a time, a big, heavy, sweating man, and at the landing he grabbed the broom Libby had left and, wielding it like a great weapon, made his way into the main room of the basement. Three chipmunks scattered, panicked, and Father started after them with the broom raised and his chest sending out great bursts of rage. “Hyar! Hyar!” he cried, like a mythical Texan routing a maverick steer.