Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Yours always, sadly,

  Trick

  Helene was watching Jesse’s face. “Are you very angry with him?” she said.

  Jesse shrugged his shoulders irritably.

  “I … I was so surprised.… I never thought.… Please don’t be angry with him, Jesse.”

  “I’m not angry. I don’t get angry,” Jesse said. He had an impulse to crumple this piece of paper too. He was certain that Helene had enjoyed reading it and having him read it. She was very warm, agitated, excited. How womanly she was in her excitement! Turning from her, disturbed by her, Jesse read the letter through again, more slowly. He could recognize Trick’s glinting smile behind it, that cautious skeptical leer of his. A dangerous man.…

  “He didn’t say I shouldn’t show the letter to you,” Helene said. “I feel very sorry for him … and we won’t be seeing him again, Jesse, after next week.…”

  “No, we won’t be seeing him again.”

  He took his own letter out to show her. It was not typed, as Helene’s was, but scrawled in Trick’s slanting handwriting, falling ignobly and clownishly down the page.

  “Here. Read this,” Jesse said.

  Dear Jesse:

  She has received a letter from me today. Will she show it to you? Or will she keep it a secret? If she loves you she’ll show it to you.

  Will you forgive me, Jesse?

  I mailed a declaration of love to her this morning. All day long I have been sick with shame, I want to die, believe me when I say that my life disgusts me, that I am disgusted with my work and my jokes, disgusted to the point of death. Jesse, there is such a gift in you! There is nothing in me. Your soul is as tough as the muscles of your body but my soul is flabby and drained and mealy from disuse. I am always examining myself in the mirror, hoping for a change. You don’t know what my room is like because you’ve never come up here. You’ve never seen the mirror in my bathroom. You can’t imagine how ugly a face looks in that mirror, especially my face. I am always staring at myself. I am always pulling my cheeks to show my eyes edged with red and crazy. I look like an ape. I joke with myself in the mirror. You are a man who does not even bother looking at himself in the mirror, because he knows just what he looks like. Always.

  I was wrong to send her that letter. Forgive me. After next week I will never see the two of you again. I will never bother you. Can I retreat from your lives with your good will, can I see you just once more? I will telephone Helene and ask if you will forgive me. I beg you to forgive me. May I take you out to dinner? And then I will vanish from your lives forever. I have been working on some poems. I think I will call them “Poems Without People.” I am the speaker in all of them but I don’t count myself as a human being, because I am drained out and soulless. Here is a poem I wrote this morning:

  SONG OF MYSELF

  I am a vile jelly

  that grew wings

  and a bumpy facial structure

  beneath your bare feet

  I would subside again

  to jelly

  to joy

  Yours always,

  Trick

  Helene read the letter through twice, carefully. “I don’t understand that poem,” she said.

  “The hell with it,” Jesse said.

  “What is he trying to say …?”

  Jesse took the letter from her and crumpled it in his fist.

  “Jesse, you shouldn’t do that. Please, Jesse. It’s like striking him … it’s … He loves us both very much.…”

  “The hell with his love.”

  “But he is a good person. He is a good person,” Helene said slowly.

  “He’s crazy.”

  He took Helene’s letter and angrily crumpled it too.

  “He asks us to forgive him.…”

  The telephone rang.

  Helene hesitated. Jesse waved her away, his heart pounding. “All right, answer it. Go ahead. Let him take us out. And that’s all, that’s the end of it, we’ll never see him again. Tell him that.”

  She went to answer the telephone, relieved. Yes, it was Trick. Jesse stood by the window and covertly watched her, jealous of the rosiness of her skin, the delicate energy of her face. She was a handsome young woman, yes, and this rivalry made her more attractive. He understood. He told himself that it was natural, he should not be so angry with her; he must control himself. Once they were married there would be no rival for her love. No Trick preening and weeping over himself … in fact, Jesse thought suddenly, she would not meet very many men at all, she would not meet his colleagues, she would be his wife and the mother of his children and she would belong to him entirely. She would belong to him. His heart pounded with the hot urgency of this fact, his need to make it come true, while Helene stood a few yards away, listening to Trick. Jesse could make out Trick’s voice—how could he talk so much! How did he dare to call! Helene was saying softly, “No.… Oh, no. Not at all, Trick. No. He isn’t angry, no. Please don’t talk like that.… Yes.…” After a moment she put her hand over the receiver and said, “He wants to talk to you, Jesse. He wants to arrange a time to take us out to dinner.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Jesse …?”

  “Make the plans yourself.”

  So she made the plans.

  Trick was to pick them up on Sunday, at seven o’clock; but for some reason he arrived an hour early. Jesse was already there. He remembered the several times Trick had come early to have coffee with him, always insisting that he was on time and that Jesse was mistaken; now, rather gaily, he insisted that he was to arrive at six o’clock, that Helene must have made a mistake, he even accused her of being “charmingly feeble-minded.…” He had bought a new outfit for the occasion: a jacket of white and powder-blue stripes, a dark checked tie that did not quite match the jacket but looked very smart, and pale-blue trousers that were tight at the waist, so that Trick’s stomach protruded painfully. His hair had been cut. Jesse saw, involuntarily, that Trick’s skull looked pinkish and weak at its crown.

  “Yes, we agreed on six o’clock—don’t you remember?” Trick said to Helene.

  “I must have forgotten,” Helene said slowly.

  “Six o’clock. Absolutely.”

  He drove them downtown to a large steak house. Trick and Helene did most of the talking. They were nimble and abstract with each other, their remarks scuttling across Jesse without quite touching upon him, as if they were both afraid of Jesse. Jesse himself felt unaccountably nervous. It was difficult for him to look Trick in the face. Trick chattered rapidly about any number of things, always circling back to the topic of the letters and the poem. “I shouldn’t have burdened you with my troubles,” he said. “Bad poetry should always be kept secret. It’s as boring as dreams—as private and as boring as dreams—”

  He ordered cocktails for them and made suggestions for dinner, reading off the menu to them. “I’ve been here several times. They serve excellent food here. It’s very reliable. In fact, my parents wanted to take Jesse here the last time they were visiting me but Jesse was too busy that evening.”

  Jesse’s head ached. All this troubled him, irritated him: Trick’s talk and Helene’s cautious quick agreement … the drone of other Sunday customers, travelers and parents visiting their children at the university.… So many people, so many crowded tables, so many confusing conversations! Jesse never ate in restaurants like this. It sickened him a little, the din of voices and silverware, the expense, the ceremony of food heaped upon plates, each table centered inward upon food and drink. Their drinks arrived and Trick proposed a toast to their wedding and their lifelong happiness. Jesse wondered if he was joking: but no, he looked serious.

  “Yes, to your lifelong happiness—to your happiness!” Trick said.

  Jesse fixed his gaze upon a complicated brass chandelier and tried not to pay much attention to what Trick was saying. He returned to the topic of the letters again, apologized again, and chided Helene gently once again about having for
gotten about the correct time. Jesse’s heart pounded with a sudden rage, because of course Helene had been right about the time and Trick wrong—and yet Trick kept insisting that he was right! Jesse did not dare to look at him. He was relieved when Helene murmured something placid, something agreeable—a vague apology for having forgotten the time—“I have so much to think of,” she said.

  “Ah yes, obviously you do!” Trick said at once. “In your life I am not a very crucial event. Obviously! In spite of my bulk, I am about the size of the jack of hearts seen sideways—or am I the joker maybe?” When Helene did not reply and Jesse sat silent, he went on to talk about the coming year and his expectations in Boston. He had many years of study ahead and he would have to undergo a formal psychoanalysis. He intended to be a psychoanalyst himself. “How ironic, you are thinking …?” he joked, but it was no joke, and neither Helene nor Jesse responded. After a moment Helene spoke of their plans for the next week. They would drive down and move Jesse into the interns’ residence hall. She planned to stay in Chicago for a while, perhaps she would get a job there, try to save a little money.… Trick laughed at this, as if to suggest that Helene did not need to have money with so wealthy a father; Jesse felt another pang of rage. He finished his drink.

  Trick ordered another round immediately.

  “But Trick, I haven’t finished my drink … I really don’t want another,” Helene said.

  Trick leaned against the table, big and anxious, his hair coming loose on one side of his head and falling lankly forward. Jesse narrowed his eyes and tried to look at Trick. He had been seeing that earnest, mottled skin for too many months. And that mouth. That moving mouth. And Trick’s big feet under the table, crowding against Jesse’s. Even when Jesse moved his legs to one side Trick bumped into them.

  “A cigarette. Let’s all have a cigarette,” Trick said.

  He offered cigarettes to Helene, who did not smoke, and to Jesse, who thought suddenly that he would like to smoke—but he hesitated, then refused. He would not take one of Trick’s cigarettes.

  Trick’s hands were trembling. He sucked at the cigarette and then at his drink, holding one in each hand. There was a feverish cast to his eyes. “I don’t think you forgive me,” he said finally.

  “Trick, please—” Helene said.

  “It’s Jesse. Jesse doesn’t forgive me.”

  “Jesse does. He does.”

  “Why doesn’t he look at me?”

  With difficulty Jesse forced himself to look Trick in the eye. “I am looking at you. I forgive you,” he said. His mouth smiled absurdly.

  “As soon as I mailed the first letter I knew I had made a terrible mistake.…”

  “Please don’t keep thinking about it,” Helene said.

  “But I’ll keep thinking about it the rest of my life. It’s one of the events of my life,” Trick said.

  “We can talk of other things tonight.…”

  “Yes, other things … we can talk of other things.… I should be able to express myself more coherently,” Trick muttered. “I want only to please you. The two of you. I don’t want you to leave Ann Arbor hating me. But what can a man say to two people in love, people who are going away together …? People in love don’t need anyone else to complete them or to say good-by to them or to take them out to dinner. Obviously not. They only acquiesce to their friends out of charity.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jesse said.

  “Jesse is irritated with me. Yes. I knew it. I anticipated it. I stayed up all night last night and wrote some poems.… Would you like to see them?”

  Trick seemed not to notice that the waitress was bringing their dinners to them, and as he reached awkwardly into his coat pocket he nearly jostled her. “Oh, excuse me!” he cried. “I didn’t see you … are you back already?… Everything is going so fast.…”

  “We can read the poems later. It’s too dark in here,” Jesse said.

  “You can hold them up to the light,” Trick said.

  He handed them across the table to Jesse and Helene while the waitress put down their plates. Jesse wanted to tear up the pieces of paper and toss them in Trick’s face.

  Helene held up the first piece of paper. “Why do you call them ‘Poems Without People’? That’s such a strange title.…”

  “Because, because I can’t write about people. I don’t know anything about people,” Trick said eagerly. He hunched forward against the table, pushing himself onto the edge of his chair. His knee nudged Jesse’s. “What do you think? Which one are you reading? I’m sorry I didn’t have time to type them out … my handwriting looks like hell.…”

  Jesse looked on while Helene held the piece of paper up to the light.

  THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

  the pavement is cracking with the fever

  of their feet

  buildings shudder with their springy weight

  newly built, still the buildings are obsolete:

  their elevator cables sigh even at night

  look, there are smoke-smudges blossoming

  into souls!

  beings the size of thumbprints bloom

  bubbling up out of sewers

  the tightest manhole covers cannot keep them down

  they are falling lightly on bits of soot

  angels the size of our smallest fingernails

  sparkling protoplasm!

  we are drowning

  it is like carbonated water

  it is like crystals baked into tons of ice

  we are drowning

  our fingers thresh the glittering air

  we drown back into ourselves

  into the shouting wave

  we are helpless as the meeting of two blank

  hot walls of air

  or two lovers pressed together

  in perpetual daylight

  “What do you think? What do you think of it?” Trick said.

  He was talking very loudly.

  Jesse, who made no sense of the poem and who felt a sudden violent exasperation with Trick, took the poems from Helene and folded them in two. “We can talk about this after dinner,” he said.

  “Oh … did you fold them?” Trick asked.

  They turned to their dinner—Jesse picked up his fork angrily; Trick picked up his knife and fork as if he had no idea of what to do with them. He sawed at the meat on his plate. He cut his steak into several large pieces and raised one to his mouth. “I’m only guessing at life,” he said humbly. “The only person I can write about is myself. That’s why I call the sequence of poems ‘Poems Without People.’ Because the only person in them is myself and I don’t count.”

  Trick glanced at the meat on his fork and lowered it to his plate, confused.

  For some reason Jesse felt his mouth twisting into a smile—a grin. He laughed out loud. Trick glanced up at once, blinking. “Why are you laughing, Jesse? Are you laughing at me? In front of her?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Jesse said.

  But his face was still oddly, brightly amused—he could hardly keep from laughing again.

  Trick cut the piece of meat into two smaller pieces. His movements were brisk and self-conscious. “I like to see Jesse laugh. I shouldn’t complain. He doesn’t laugh often enough for a young man his age. I like to see the two of you together, smiling together. Do you know I’ve followed you? Oh yes,” he said gravely, nodding. He put down both his knife and fork and stared at the heaped food on his plate. Mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, a large greasy juicy steak.… He seemed unable to think of what to do with all this. He glanced up at Jesse, smiling. “Yes, I might as well admit it. I have no shame. I’ve often followed the two of you at a discreet distance, in disguise. Sometimes in disguise as a trash barrel, sometimes as a dancing bear.… But it’s so cruel to be always kept at a distance, especially a discreet distance.…”

  “Trick, are you joking?” Helene asked nervously.

  “Joking,” Trick said flatly. He seemed to be testing, tasting the words. He shook his
head no. No. Confused, he picked up a large roll and broke it into smaller pieces; he buttered one of the pieces crudely, but then put it down on the tablecloth near his plate. His eyes skimmed over Jesse’s and Helene’s plates.

  “You aren’t enjoying your dinner. You aren’t eating anything.”

  Jesse and Helene had not touched their food.

  “Why aren’t you eating with me? Do I offend you?” Trick said.

  “Trick, please.… You must be joking,” Helene said.

  “You accepted my offer to take you out and then you forgot about the time. Deliberately. You tried to imply that I had come an hour early in order to embarrass me. And now you’ve come out with me, as my guests, and you won’t eat in order to embarrass me. You are demonstrating that in my presence you have no appetite!” Trick pushed his own plate away from him abruptly. The tablecloth was pulled up and Trick’s water glass would have been upset if Jesse hadn’t steadied it. “You are passing judgment on me and I can’t stop you. You can see right through me into my brain. Shall I confess something …? I did a terrible thing a few days ago. I did it with you in mind, Helene. In a cadaver room … I had an idea suddenly … the idea came to me the way my poems come to me, in a fierce rush, like a dream … in a cadaver room I helped myself to a piece of a human being.…”