Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Mrs. Pedersen continued dabbing at herself, not meeting anyone’s eye. “No. I made up a list, dear. I just go down the list item by item. I’m not hurried at all. I can take care of it. I’m not nervous at all.”

  Jesse tried not to look at her.

  In just a few days he would be leaving.

  But how could he leave? He loved them. He loved all of them, even Frederich. Since the day Mrs. Pedersen had locked herself in the bathroom, there was a silent, abashed bond among Jesse and Frederich and Hilda that they never spoke of, never acknowledged in any way. It seemed impossible to Jesse that he would be leaving them. The air rang with panic. His head ached. Yet it was necessary to leave them in order to take his proper place someday in this family—Dr. Pedersen had explained everything to him countless times. He invited Jesse into his study after dinner and talked to him cheerfully, dreamily, recalling his own days at the University of Michigan and his days in medical school there, talking for an hour or an hour and a half at a time while Jesse found himself staring at the closed door of Dr. Pedersen’s study, imagining how the screws could be taken out, carefully, deliberately, and how the door might be lifted off its hinges.… But when Dr. Pedersen asked him how his studies were going, Jesse was able to answer at once. Another voice seemed to answer for him. He could recite pages, chapters, he could outline entire books, speaking quickly and mechanically while Dr. Pedersen nodded. Sometimes it seemed to Jesse, joylessly, that he already knew everything. He spoke in so clear and unfaltering a voice that Dr. Pedersen could do no more than murmur enthusiastic agreement.

  He no longer asked Hilda for help with calculus. He had stopped worrying about calculus. He did not want to think about it. And he felt his sister closed against him now, her fear softening her and yet deadening her to him, while her brittle mockery in the past had been a kind of camaraderie he had guessed at by instinct; now he did not dare to test her. He did not want to meet her gaze again and remember what she said about Mrs. Pedersen. It was too ugly. The secrets between them were too ugly. If he happened to glance at Frederich he sometimes saw Frederich watching him, but it meant nothing; the bond among them had to be silent because it was so ugly. Jesse wondered if Hilda and Frederich had known all along that their mother drank, hiding in corners, in the bathroom, even in the basement—Jesse remembered the several times he had seen her coming up from the basement empty-handed, a bright fresh color to her cheeks, greeting him eagerly: “I was just checking to see if the basement is leaking.… All that rain.…”

  But he loved her. He would be leaving in a week.

  And then, one day after lunch, before he could get out of the house with his books, he heard a knock on his door. He knew it was Mrs. Pedersen before he answered it.

  “Where are you running off to today?” she asked.

  Flat-footed, she stood in the doorway. Not yet invited in. She filled the doorway in a huge mint-green cotton house dress; on her feet were straw shoes with orange tassels and small brass mock bells on the toes. She had brushed her hair so that the frizz was tamed into waves, lifting from her forehead. He could see the beginning of her pale scalp, where there were tiny flakes of skin.

  “Just out,” Jesse said.

  He had put on a white shirt and a tie.

  “Are you going to Buffalo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you’re going to Buffalo, you’re all dressed up.”

  Jesse stared at the tassels on her shoes.

  “I—I just wanted to ask you about your laundry—what you plan on doing with your laundry when you’re at school—”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” Jesse said. He felt her eyes on his face, his downcast face. Her fingers moved nervously about the embroidered pocket of her dress.

  “I bought a laundry case so that you can mail your laundry home, Jesse. I thought it would be the best thing, for you to put your soiled laundry in it and mail it home.…”

  “All right,” Jesse said.

  “It would be so much trouble for you to do it yourself in a laundromat,” she went on quickly, “or to have it done somewhere.… They don’t know how we want things done. They might put too much starch in your shirts. They wouldn’t bother matching your socks together for you.…”

  “All right,” Jesse said

  “Did you say you were going to Buffalo?”

  Jesse looked up miserably. “I think I will.”

  “Good, I have some shopping that has to be done. I’ll go with you.”

  “But I’m not going to stay long.…”

  “We don’t have to stay long. I just have a few things to buy.”

  Jesse said nothing.

  “But before we leave I have a few things to do,” Mrs. Pedersen said. “I have to telephone my father and see how he is. Then I have a list, a list of things to do.… I’m going through the list one item at a time so that I don’t get confused or nervous.… Can you wait for me? Can you wait? It will only take ten minutes for me to get ready.”

  “All right.”

  “Only ten minutes, I promise!”

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  After she left he seemed to smell, dizzily, the scent of alcohol. Or was he imagining it?

  He got his books and his suit coat and went out to the car. He sighed. A twenty-five-mile drive ahead. The entire right side of his body sagged, it felt aged and alarmed. To sit beside Mrs. Pedersen in the car! That distance! To feel her stirring beside him, crowded in the front seat, feeling her fierce, helpless gaze upon the side of his face.…

  He waited. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. He leafed through a notebook in which he was taking notes, and his handwriting looked odd to him, the handwriting of a stranger. Maybe he had picked up the wrong notebook by mistake …? But no, it was his notebook. He could not concentrate.… He could already smell Mrs. Pedersen’s presence, beside him in the cramped front seat of his car.…

  Dora came out of the side door and said, “Jesse, Mrs. Pedersen asked me to say she’s hurrying fast as she can. She’ll be just another minute.” He thanked Dora and put the key in the ignition. Maybe if he started the engine the car would somehow move forward, he would somehow escape.… Another ten minutes passed. Jesse sat staring out the windshield, his eyes glassy. He could not remember how long he had been waiting. At last Mrs. Pedersen appeared in a rush, carrying a large shopping bag and a straw purse and her coat over one arm. She must have dropped something because she exclaimed and stooped to pick it up. Jesse opened the door for her. He wondered what she was doing with all these things—in the shopping bag there were a jar of cold cream and a hairbrush and a small plastic box of hairpins on top; the bag itself was quite heavy.

  Jesse drove out to the highway while Mrs. Pedersen apologized for being so slow.

  She began to talk as if making a well-rehearsed speech. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, each hand gripping the other. Jesse’s head swam. He was certain he could smell whiskey.

  “Jesse, I have not thanked you for what you did the other day. For helping me as you did. I am thanking you now.” Both she and Jesse stared straight ahead. “I made a mistake. A bad mistake. If Dr. Pedersen had come home too early … Jesse, I made a mistake but I am not going to make it again. I’ve made many mistakes but I’m not going to make them again. I have come to a crossroads in my life. I have been thinking very seriously. I have been talking to my father and to Reverend Wieden. I have assessed my life, my past life, and I have come to a certain decision. But I want to thank you for helping me the other day. Hilda and Frederich would never have helped me. They don’t love me. They’re afraid of their father. They don’t love me.” She spoke in rapid, breathy snatches now. “We all live together in the same house, I prepare them three meals a day, I am their mother, I love them in spite of their attitude toward me but … but … I am ready to make a certain decision in my life because I know what my fate must be.…”

  What was she talking about?

  Jesse yearned for the coo
lness of the library. The quiet movements of bodies, girls’ bodies, distant from him, the grave serious impersonal silence. He could sit there for hours, absolutely alone. He could read for hours. Alone. Absolutely alone. And he would be safe there as Jesse Pedersen, a boy with a home and a family to return to, a table to sit down at in the evening, when it was safely evening and Dr. Pedersen was home.

  Mrs. Pedersen was speaking in a feverish voice: “Jesse, I have made my decision. I spoke to my father. He has known about my … my problem.… He has tried to counsel me. But now he has failed me. He doesn’t understand, he is too old to understand … he keeps asking me what will happen to me, won’t I be ashamed—how will I take care of myself—He doesn’t understand.”

  Jesse did not dare to ask her what she meant.

  “Jesse, I am not asking for your approval. I don’t want to involve you, just as I do not want to involve my father. He has offered me money but I said no. That would involve him. That would make Dr. Pedersen very angry at him.… I have my own money, I have all the money I need. Here,” she said, lifting her straw purse, “here is everything I need.… I took a taxi to the bank yesterday and got everything I need. I’m ready.”

  Jesse drove for another mile before he could speak. Then he said, not looking at her. “What do you mean …?”

  “I am leaving my husband.”

  “What?”

  “I am leaving Dr. Pedersen. I am leaving.”

  Jesse’s heart lurched. “You’re leaving? Leaving them—?”

  “I am leaving them to start my own life.”

  “But—”

  “Yes, I am leaving today. I am going to a hotel in Buffalo. Everything is planned,” she said hotly. “I can make plans. I can make a list and carry it out. I am not drunk, I am absolutely sober. Look.” And she held her hands out before her. They trembled only a little.

  “You’re going to a hotel now? Today? To a hotel?”

  “If you won’t take me downtown, I’ll take a taxi. I have money. I can take care of myself.”

  “But—What will he—”

  “He will be very angry. I know. But for years I’ve known I would have to leave him. It’s a question of survival. My sanity. I tried to explain this to my father and to Reverend Wieden but they didn’t understand; men don’t understand, they don’t see that I am a human being of my own, I am … I am Mary Shirer.… I am still Mary Shirer.” She began to cry. “I want to go back to being her, that girl. I want … I want to be myself again … I don’t know how this happened, this fat, the time that went by.… So many years have gone by.… I’m afraid I might go crazy, I might die if I don’t leave him.…”

  “But what are you going to do?” Jesse said. “How will you live?”

  “Alone. I’ll live alone,” she said, crying. “For years I’ve known it, I’ve been planning for it, and now the time is here; I will die if I don’t escape from him, from that house; I am not a freak like the rest of them, I didn’t used to be a freak and you were not a freak in the beginning either.… I loved you right away, Jesse, because you were like me, the way I used to be. I wanted to be loved too, like you. I wanted to be loved by Dr. Pedersen and no one else. I wanted to be owned by him.… But I wasn’t a freak in the beginning. I was Mary Shirer. I don’t know what happened, what he did to me, but I have to leave him now because … because in another week you’ll be gone, Jesse, and there will be no one to help me.…”

  Jesse stared at the highway ahead. It looked as if there were heat waves, teasing, in the distance. Could he smell the heat itself, or was that sharp sweet scent from Mrs. Pedersen?

  “You’ll help me, won’t you, Jesse, you’ll help me …?”

  She touched his arm. He flinched.

  “Otherwise I will go crazy. I will die. I will have to take my own life.”

  Her sobbing became wild. Jesse drove along in that same weightless, suspended daze, the same pressurized trance he had endured for the past several days. “Jesse, please. Please. Answer me, don’t turn away from me now.… I will die if I don’t escape.… It’s for the salvation of my soul!” Jesse turned to stare at her, alarmed, and it seemed to him that he was staring directly into her soul—he had seen it the day of her collapse in the bathroom—and he could not turn away—

  “Jesse …?”

  “Yes. All right,” he whispered.

  She began to weep helplessly, noisily, like a child. Jesse drove all the way downtown, bypassing the university, his face grown violently hot. In the rearview mirror he saw a red, puffy face, was that his face?—the face of a fat boy of uncertain age, a stranger. You were not a freak in the beginning.…

  Downtown, Jesse circled the hotel Mrs. Pedersen had chosen while she dabbed at her wet face and tried to fix herself up. Her flesh-toned make-up had smeared badly. She wiped her face and throat and the back of her neck. “Jesse, what will I say to them? I don’t know how to check into a hotel.… Somebody else always did it for me.…”

  Jesse’s voice sounded hollow. “I don’t know. Just say you would like a room.”

  “I would like a room.”

  “Maybe you should ask the price first—”

  “No, I don’t care about the price! I have plenty of money. My family has always had plenty of money. I have enough for the rest of my life.… I would like a room. A single room.” Jesse rounded the block a second time, then a third time, while Mrs. Pedersen stared out at the crowded street. Downtown Buffalo was airless and warm. She said uncertainly, “You’re coming in with me, Jesse, aren’t you?”

  “All right.”

  “Please come in. Please. Just stand by the door and wait for me. You don’t have to come to the desk.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s so busy here … everything is so confusing …”

  Jesse managed to park the car, and he and Mrs. Pedersen walked back to the hotel, both ungainly in the heat. Mrs. Pedersen carried her big straw purse and Jesse carried her shopping bag and coat. The shopping bag was beginning to tear. The entire right half of Jesse’s body, the half near Mrs. Pedersen, had begun to prickle violently. He had never felt anything like it before. Jesse gnawed at his lip and stared into the faces of people passing them: these people knew everything. They could recognize freaks when they saw them. Mrs. Pedersen was talking nervously, loudly. It was obvious that she had been drinking. These strangers on the Main Street of Buffalo could see that perfectly well—a huge drunken woman and a huge boy, waddling along in the sunlight, both of them panicked.

  They went into the hotel and approached the desk. Mrs. Pedersen clutched at Jesse’s arm. Finally he went up to the desk clerk and said, “My mother would like a single room, please.”

  The desk clerk smiled past Jesse at Mrs. Pedersen, who stood a few feet away. “Yes, for how many nights?”

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said.

  He turned miserably to Mrs. Pedersen.

  “I don’t know.…” she said.

  Silence.

  “An indefinite amount of time?” asked the clerk politely.

  “Yes, I think so,” said Jesse.

  A bellhop took them up to the room, which looked out onto the street several floors below. It was not a very pleasant room. Mrs. Pedersen looked too large in it; she bumped into a writing desk, she nearly knocked over a lamp. Her face was florid and astonished. As soon as the bellhop left she went to the window and ran her finger along the sill. She held her finger for Jesse to see—it was dirty!

  “I just can’t believe this, Jesse,” she said.

  She sat down on the bed and it sagged beneath her. Jesse stood, not knowing what to do. Should he leave? What was going to happen? Mrs. Pedersen began taking things out of the shopping bag one by one, setting them on the bedspread, moving dumbly and slowly. She licked her lips. “Oh, I forgot something … I forgot something.…” she said slowly. “I should have stuffed some clothes in here.…”

  “You didn’t bring any clothes?”

  “I forgot. I forgot about c
lothes.”

  They stared at each other. Mrs. Pedersen’s eyes were bloodshot.

  “Oh, I forgot. How did I forget? You were in such a rush and I didn’t want to keep you waiting … I was afraid you might drive away without me.… I …”

  “Maybe you could buy some clothes here,” Jesse said.

  “No, I don’t want to go out. It’s so busy down there—all those people. No. I can’t go into a store. I think I’m going crazy, Jesse, I’ve got to get hold of myself.… What he did to me, Jesse, what he did …! I will never forget, my body and my soul have been sickened by it, by him, by the years as his wife.… I don’t know what will happen to me.…”

  Jesse stared at her ugly, streaked face. What was going to happen? And then, wearily, after several minutes, he said what he had known all along he must say: “I’ll drive back to Lockport and get your clothes.”

  “Oh, Jesse, will you? Will you? It would mean so much to me, Jesse, I left so much behind, I got confused and left so much behind.… I can make out a list and give it to you.…”

  She looked around vaguely. Jesse got her some stationery from the desk. He lent her his own pen. It took her nearly twenty minutes to make out the list, her face contorted as she tried to think. Jesse went to the window and looked down at the street four stories below. He could hear Mrs. Pedersen’s heavy, strained breath. Occasionally she muttered something inaudible. Was this happening? Was this really happening? The windowpane was very grimy and it refracted the sun’s rays into a faint rainbow a few inches before Jesse’s eyes. Was any of this happening?

  Behind the dirty glass, in the sky, there were great fluffy clouds. Puffs of clouds. The sky was a dead, flat blue, the clouds were perfectly white. Silence in the sky. One of the clouds compelled Jesse to look at it: it had the beginnings of a face, the features broad and shallow and mocking. But firm. There were eyes there, and a faint nose, and the indication of a mouth. Its expression distant but mocking.