Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Beneath him, a long dizzying drop to a pit of water that was dark and fairly still. In front of him the other locks, the other levels of water, vibrated with energy—the noise of water splashing angrily from one level to the next. A continual racket. Jesse felt how the brain might grow dizzy exposed to such frenzy, the spectacle of water churning and splashing and passing away, endlessly, within the human contrivance of falls and locks.… A few other people, men of a certain aimless, apologetic age, stood on the bridge, leaning on the railing as he did, staring down. Nothing else to do. They were men who for some reason were alone, and Jesse glanced away from them, as if in shame, in fear of their loneliness. He thought of his Grandfather Vogel. He erased the thought. Behind him traffic moved as usual, not very much of it on a weekday morning in Lockport. Women strolled downtown to shop, in no hurry. In the distance there was a church steeple, hazy in the sunlight. What was so fascinating about this, Jesse thought, was its ordinary nature—the canal, the locks, the noisy water; the town itself ordinary and quiet, as if it had existed for centuries, with a profound certainty of its right to exist, no awareness of the fact that it had no reason for existing, no guarantee of its right to exist. It was here; it moved in a slow, timed orbit. Already he could define himself against it: Jesse Pedersen on the big bridge, waiting for a barge to come through the locks. But he saw none in sight. He would not be able to wait for hours, like the solitary men who hung around the locks having nothing else to do. He had to be home by noon.

  … That terrible rush of water out of a pipe, a large rusty pipe … the explosive fall of water from one level to the next, down a series of small cliffs of water, the water boiling and frenzied and yet, in places, oddly tranquil, as if its surface were somehow firm, hard enough to walk on.… He stared, fascinated. Hypnotized. A dank, fetid odor rose from the deepest pit of water, directly below him. Jesse leaned over the railing. It was important for him to see everything, as much as he could see. Along the canal’s banks buildings had been built, decades ago, that seemed to descend into the foundation of gray, dreamlike rock itself, their peaks and arches and chimneys rising to the sky, their lower parts descending into the smudged, rain-washed gray rock, as if going back to a time when there was no distinction between human life and the life of rocks. Had they slept for thousands of years before being wrenched out of the earth, dug up to make way for the canal …? Jesse frowned and thought of the calm, wide, muddy canal that existed away from the sequence of locks, winding into the distance. No one would suspect, approaching the locks, that the water could turn so violent and dangerous.… Below, workmen were talking about something. Maybe arguing. An official with a white shirt and tie approached them. Jesse would have liked to hear their conversation, for they seemed to him privileged, walking so casually in an area forbidden to everyone else, blocked off by high fences and “No Trespassing” signs. They moved their arms, gesturing, but Jesse could not hear anything they said. He could not even make out the expressions on their faces.

  He looked away from them, disturbed by their remoteness and by the fact of their activity, their work, their arguing. He was reminded of the Pedersens. Very soon now, at luncheon, he would be quizzed about how he spent the morning. In the evening, at dinner, he would be quizzed about how he spent the afternoon. Dr. Pedersen asked each of the children in turn what he had done, what “progress” he had made … what “observations” he had made.… At first Jesse had been allowed to sit in silence, amazed at the things Hilda and Frederich reported, too amazed to realize that he would have to take part in this himself. But his newness wore off after the first week. Dr. Pedersen had turned to him and asked, in his grave, kindly, rather maidenish voice, “And what use did you make of today, Jesse? Please tell us.”

  He had stammered something. His voice had faltered, faded. Hilda and Frederich had stared down at their plates, as if in sympathy for him, and Mrs. Pedersen smiled nervously at him, encouraging him, not quick enough to realize that he was hopeless. Dr. Pedersen had kept after him, though. Several minutes of questions, questioning. He was very patient. He said nothing that was critical to Jesse, but Jesse understood that he had failed.…

  “I’m sorry,” he had said miserably.

  Dr. Pedersen had nodded, as if accepting this, his lips pursed and mute. After that, Jesse was prepared for the quizzing, he made sure that he had something to say: he had read another chapter in the chemistry textbook he would be studying in the fall at the Lockport high school, or he had read a biography from Dr. Pedersen’s library—on Czar Nicholas, on John Paul Jones, on Rembrandt; or he had played with the microscope and slides Dr. Pedersen had given him—not played, worked—for the word “played” was not used in the Pedersen home; or he had written a thank-you note to his “Grandfather Shirer,” Mrs. Pedersen’s aged father, thanking him for the set of the Boys’ Wonder Books he had given Jesse; or he had written a letter to his grandfather, his old, other, real Grandfather Vogel, who never answered these letters. Dr. Pedersen insisted that Jesse write every week. That was one of his duties, Dr. Pedersen said.… Today he would say he had been reading this book, a history of the Erie Canal.

  He had taken it out of the Young People’s room of the library, a bright yellow-bound book called Clinton’s Ditch: A History of the Erie Barge Canal. Jesse had never read very much in the past, he hadn’t had the use of books, but now he understood that it was through books he would make his way into the Pedersens, more deeply into them. Anxiety often lifted the short hairs at the back of his head: he had wasted too many days of his life already, he would never be able to catch up. “You will not hurry,” Dr. Pedersen had said to him, “but you will catch up with Jesse Pedersen. Do you understand?” Yes, he understood. He had slept away his life, it seemed to him now, even after the adoption process had begun and he had made his way carefully through the crowd of boys at the Boys’ Home, marked off from them as if by a physical distinction. They had disliked him, they had envied him—he was a surprise to them, a disturbance. You’re really lucky, they said. And he felt the truth of that remark, the truth of his luck, his good luck, in being picked by Dr. Pedersen.

  Below, the waterfall hammered away at the sides of the canal. Jesse felt its urgency as his own: to become Jesse Pedersen, to catch up with Jesse Pedersen. The Pedersens sat at a dining room table, in Jesse’s imagination perpetually sitting, monumental and immense, towering in his dreams at a perpetual meal, at the center of which Dr. Pedersen sat weighty with judgment and patience. Even their shadows were enormous.

  Now he was never alone. Never by himself. He was not Jesse, but Jesse Pedersen. Even when he went to bed at night in his own room he was not really alone. Out here, on the bridge, he was not really alone. They were present, watching him. Grave and patient and kindly. Jesse could not remember clearly now what his life had been in the past. He had been alone, often. That other Jesse: pale, scrawny, much younger than this Jesse. That boy had died, perhaps. He had passed out of existence. Or, if he existed anywhere, it was on Grandpa Vogel’s farm, out in the deep, vast, silent country, the country where language itself had yet to be created, a world of grunts and nudgings and sorrow, too much sorrow. That Jesse had worked until his body ached, until the wound in his back pounded with a sullen, demonic rage.… And Grandfather Vogel: he still existed, out there, in the same world. But his power had been taken from him. He did not count. He was remote and silent and forgotten.

  At the Pedersens’, each day began at seven o’clock. They sat down together at breakfast at seven-thirty, the five of them, and Dr. Pedersen began by asking them what they had done the evening before. He was usually brisk and jocular at this meal. Then he talked about the “Map of the Day,” the general structure the day would take for each of them—what plans did they have? what did they think they would accomplish? At dinner this “Map” would be measured against their actual achievements. Dr. Pedersen was always very demanding of himself, listing his intentions and then, hours later, stating how far he had fallen short. �
�The world begins every morning,” he was fond of saying, “and it ends every night.”

  His voice buzzed in Jesse’s brain, louder than the noise of the waterfall. Jesse started home, leafing through the book as he walked. He was beginning to feel a little anxious. The book struck him as a child’s book, much too young for a fourteen-year-old. He skimmed the paragraphs as he walked. Quick. Hurry. Maybe he should write a short report on the book and not try to remember any of it … his memory was not very good.… Both Hilda and Frederich could remember pages and pages of detail. They were strange children; they had been written up in newspapers and magazines, Jesse had discovered. They were extraordinary, and Jesse was ordinary, only ordinary.… He tried to make up for this by being more obedient than they, more docile, more eager to please Dr. Pedersen and his wife. He had trained his face to show no expression except one of intense, contemplative respect.

  It always excited Jesse to climb the long, low hill to High Street and over to Locust Street. Coming home. Here was home. Houses gradually became larger, more impressive. Great elms, high rippling leaves that blocked off the hot sun; houses that were mansions, fearful in their size. He remembered how exhausted he had been from climbing the hill the first time he had walked out here. That Jesse had had no idea, hadn’t guessed what would happen.… He could never have guessed at the size of the Pedersen house. A shout might echo forever in its vast foyer and its hallways and rooms. The foyer was cavernous. “At Christmastime we put up a tree here,” Mrs. Pedersen had told him. The staircase curved around this foyer and opened to the second floor, which was lined by a balcony. From the center of the ceiling a great mass of crystal hung—this was called a “chandelier”—and the staircase was carpeted entirely in dull, dark gold. Jesse had never seen such things. There were no words for him to match to them. Behind the house there was another house, a “carriage house,” where the Pedersens’ Negro servants lived, a couple named Henry and Dora; Jesse did not know their last name. His own room was on the second floor, at the back of the house. It was a room in which he slept alone, he might close the door and sleep, alone, for the first time in his life. In this room, which was so quiet that it frightened him, he pressed his hands against his face as if to obliterate it and prayed, Let me be like them, let them love me, let everybody know that I am one of them.

  Jesse hurried up the long flagstone walk and let himself in the front door. He smelled food cooking. Rich, heavy odors of food. It was nearly time for Dr. Pedersen to come home for lunch; he came home every day to change his shirt and to have lunch with his family. It was strange, how this family had lunch together; Jesse had not known families did this. It was important that everyone sit down at the table together, eat together, sit together for a certain amount of time. Jesse was nervous and hungry, thinking of the meal ahead. He hurried through the foyer, feeling once again a sensation of disbelief, as if he were in the wrong house. Since the adoption had been completed, he had no reason to feel this way, this sense of unreality, of suspension; he knew now precisely who he was.… From the rear of the house, from the “music room,” came the short, choppy, blunt notes of a piano, Frederich’s playing. Every day Frederich sat at the handsome grand piano, picking out notes, shading in small intricate spots on a piece of paper, “writing music,” as Jesse had been told. A page of Frederich’s music was incredibly elaborate, and also messy—there were hundreds of notes, some shaded in carefully, very deeply with a dark lead pencil, others hardly more than scrawls, with many erasures and areas that had been crossed out so roughly that the paper had torn. The music room was a large oval room at the rear of the house, its outside wall made entirely of glass. In this room were the grand piano—which smelled of fine, rich, polished wood and wood oil—and several tables piled with books and sheet music, either Frederich’s own compositions or those by established composers, and a filing cabinet in which Frederich kept cards on everything. Jesse had not known what to make of Frederich at first. But now he understood that Frederich had a “gift,” a “talent,” and that this set him apart from other boys.

  Jesse went back to the kitchen, where he knew he would be welcome. There Mrs. Pedersen and the Negro woman, Dora, were preparing lunch. “Jesse, hello! How are you, dear?” Mrs. Pedersen said. “Did you go out to the library and get back again so fast?” She was always surprised at anything Jesse did, no matter how simple, as if she did not believe him capable of doing much; and she was always pinching the flesh of his upper arms and frowning at his thinness. “What are you reading today?” she asked. She frowned and held the book up to her shortsighted eyes. Leafing through it, she frowned more intently and Jesse understood that she thought the book a mistake but she was too polite to say anything. “We’re all very pleased that you have such an interest in this area,” she said. “I think everyone should know the history of the city he lives in. Don’t you, Dora?” Dora agreed, but without much enthusiasm. She was a short, squat woman, not nearly so heavy as Mrs. Pedersen and not so soft; she was muscular, quick on her feet, always busy. Her skin was a dark, troubled purplish-brown; she did no more than glance at Jesse. She was busy with the meal, stooping to pull something out of the oven, while Mrs. Pedersen glanced through Jesse’s book. “Yes, it seems interesting. Informative,” she said, and handed it back. “You certainly do walk all over, Jesse. Have you ever seen anyone like this boy, Dora, to walk all over the city? You must be very tired!”

  Jesse was the only Pedersen who walked any distance.

  “You’re not too tired to have lunch, are you?” Mrs. Pedersen said. She touched Jesse’s forehead and with a slow bemused movement of her thumb stretched the skin there, so that she could peer into Jesse’s eye. But this must have been a joke, her pretending to be a doctor, because she laughed girlishly and released him. She sat at the large worktable in the center of the kitchen, a table made of plain, untreated wood, and began chopping onions. She sighed. Seated like this, her weight eased down in a chair, she was most at home, most herself. Jesse liked to watch her work like this, she was so intent and uncritical. Her thick legs were outspread slightly beneath the table; she wore neat white shoes that were like nurses’ shoes, with white laces tightly tied. Her apron was white also, but a little soiled from the morning’s work. As she chopped the onions Jesse saw large, delicate beads of perspiration forming on her face and dropping occasionally down onto the broad expanse of her breasts. She was a big, wide woman. She wore white most of the time beneath her work-aprons, and when she moved Jesse could sometimes see faint stains beneath her arms; but there was usually a smell of perfume about her, not a smell of perspiration, a rich, sharp, concentrated fruity odor, and Jesse could sometimes see where her talcum powder, patted heavily on her skin, showed above the collar of her dress and turned her soft, pale flesh to a flourlike coarseness.

  She glanced up and Jesse’s attention must have pleased her. “Jesse, why don’t you sit down and keep us company out here? Dora and I need a man’s presence, we need a man’s judgment. Give him a taste of that sauce, Dora. What do you think of it?” Dora spooned him some white creamy sauce and Jesse, a little embarrassed at her closeness, her lifting the spoon to his mouth, tasted it. He nodded. “It isn’t too strong?” Mrs. Pedersen asked. “Well, good. That’s a relief. Jesse, sit down and rest after your long walk. You can read your book if you want.”

  He sat at one end of the table, clearing a small area for himself. While Mrs. Pedersen and Dora worked, he began reading Clinton’s Ditch. He forced himself to read quickly, skimming paragraphs. At the end of the first chapter he realized that he did not remember much of what he had read, so he forced himself to go back. Mrs. Pedersen was humming. She glanced down at him and said, “Jesse, am I disturbing you?” He shook his head no, and for emphasis closed his book. “I’m afraid I am always disturbing my children. They have so much work to do, they’re so serious, and I come along and disrupt them. This morning I had to bother Hilda about the clothes she’s going to take to Chicago—don’t you wish we could all
go along tomorrow? In the beginning I went along to Hilda’s examinations—of course she was a small child then, and she needed her mother.… But Dr. Pedersen says this trip is special and that there wouldn’t be enough for the rest of us to do. And, of course, Frederich would be home alone. I don’t like to leave him alone.… But isn’t Hilda brave, to face those doctors and professors? I don’t think I could do it, do you Jesse? Would you be frightened? But maybe you wouldn’t—you’re a brave boy yourself.…”

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said.

  When she stared at him as she did now, her eyes bright as if with tears, thick-lashed and glittering in the lardy expanse of her face, Jesse sensed that she was thinking of what had happened to him. His past. His father. His other family. He wanted to change the subject, to make her think of something else.

  “Or am I embarrassing you, Jesse? I’m always embarrassing my children!” She got to her feet, pushing herself up with her elbows, and came over to Jesse. With the edge of her apron she blotted the moisture off his forehead. He submitted to this, feeling very young. He was never certain of how to act around Mrs. Pedersen—should he give in to her mothering or should he draw away like Hilda and Frederich, so she would know he was too old for this? “Jesse, I need your opinion on this, this little muffin,” she said, buttering a muffin for Jesse, as if she thought he might not be able to butter it for himself. “I’m trying a new recipe.”

  Jesse’s mouth watered. He realized he was very hungry.