Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

The boy came forward to shake Jesse’s hand. “I’m Allen, I’m from Kentucky originally. I call this my home now. Where are you from?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Oh, hell, Chicago is an evil city,” the boy said seriously. “Forget it. Up here is the end of the world. Your mind doesn’t have to race to keep up with itself here because it’s the end of the world already—everything is at peace. Isn’t it, Annie?”

  The woman made a brief scoffing sound.

  “You want to see some of our work?” the boy asked. “A lot of us were here all summer. Then it began to break up, people can’t keep themselves pure, they bring evil and discord everywhere.… We slept outside in the barn then, when it wasn’t so cold. You should have come up this summer.”

  “You want me to wake them up?” the woman interrupted angrily.

  “Well—I don’t know—” Jesse said.

  “This goddamn dog will get him out of bed on the run. Mad as hell first thing in the morning,” the woman said. She wore a man’s raincoat that was spotted with paint. Her legs were bluish. “Look, what is your name and what do you want? He’ll want to know.”

  “I’m a friend of Reva’s.”

  The woman smiled brutally. “What’s your name?”

  “Jesse.”

  “Is she expecting you?” the woman said with a bright, brutal smile. “Or is it a surprise? Her birthday, maybe? Or your birthday? You her brother or something? An old husband or something?”

  “Just a friend,” Jesse said.

  He spoke calmly but he was very excited, very agitated.

  “Okay, fine. You wait out here and I’ll see what’s what,” the woman said.

  The boy who was trying to drag the collie back from Jesse, smiled in embarrassment. “Annie isn’t like that really. She’s a good woman,” he said unconvincingly “You paint, or what?”

  “No.”

  “No? Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  The boy stood stooped over, with his arms around the collie’s neck. He smiled up at Jesse. “I work in oils exclusively. I’m so goddamn slow you wouldn’t believe it! Only five or six canvases to show for the whole summer, but Max says they’re worth it.… You know Max’s work, huh? You saw his show in Chicago?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “All that big stuff, huh? Yeah, he’s good, he’s a genius. No doubt. A bunch of us followed him up here from Ithaca. There were—I would estimate—about forty people in the beginning, off and on, and then this summer about twelve, but that was because Max was in the hospital for a while. Oh, yes, and he was in New York for a while too. He didn’t know what his plans were, couldn’t make up his mind. He only charges us for board up here. He’s a wonderful teacher—I had him at Cornell. He was a great teacher. Did you ever work with him?”

  “No.”

  “You’re just a friend of—of—”

  “Of Reva’s,” Jesse said quickly.

  Jesse let his eyes move about the place: the old house, the piles of rotting lumber, an old haystack, aged barns. What was this? Why was he here? A scrawny boy with a very badly blemished face was smiling at him, staring at him curiously. If Reva was actually here, inside this house, if she was actually about to appear to him … why, then, Reva would be degraded by this setting, she would be as ugly as the place itself. Jesse thrilled suddenly at that thought: Reva become degraded, ugly.…

  “She’s such a … pretty woman.…” the boy said shyly.

  Jesse flinched.

  “There’s one other guy up here right now,” the boy said, lowering his voice, “but he’s not much good. He sleeps in the front room. He’s sort of an old guy. He works all the time though, you got to admire his energy. Forty canvases since July, Jesus! They’re in the barn mostly. In fact most of them are pictures of barns, different angles and lighting. You know—Monet—‘The Haystacks’—that kind of thing.”

  “What?”

  “Monet.”

  Jesse smiled in confusion. Money?

  “Like ‘The Haystacks’ and ‘Water Lilies,’ playing around with different light and stuff. He wants to treat the barn very subtly, but it doesn’t come out quite like Monet’s work. Ha! He tries to be utterly faithful to reality,” the boy said confidentially, “in spite of what Raeder tells him, and as a matter of fact we all tell him. Like painting the barn the way it actually is, halfway done in red—and it only turns out looking crazy. Because the real barn, the barn right there, looks kind of crazy halfway painted, so why should a painting of that barn look any better? I don’t believe you should be faithful to reality when reality doesn’t warrant it, do you? Reality isn’t everything!”

  Jesse could not pay attention to all this. His heart was pounding mightily, nervously, he kept staring at the house and waiting for Reva to appear.

  “Look, tell me your opinion precisely. Do you think that reality warrants our absolute fidelity?”

  “No—I don’t know—” Jesse said vaguely.

  “What is reality, that it should so enchant us? Entice us? Wear our fingers down to the bone with love for it?” the boy said. He had begun to sound a little vexed, even angry. “Reva is like that, she’s so demanding and heavy … I mean heavy in her expectations.…”

  “What?”

  “When she models for us. Her expectations of what we paint.”

  Jesse stared at the boy. “She modeled for you?”

  “Sure, lots of times.”

  “Reva modeled for you?”

  “She isn’t very good, really. She isn’t professional. She just sits there. Max fixes her up, twists her arms around and all that. He made her sit with her neck stretched back, her head way back like she was looking up at the sky. She could hold that pose for fifteen minutes maybe, which is fairly good, but she isn’t a professional because she is too self-conscious. You always know it’s Reva, it’s Reva, and you get sort of … sort of excited.…”

  Jesse smiled tensely.

  “We all model for one another,” the boy said. “The kids are pretty good, for kids—Max’s kids—but kids don’t make good subjects, there is something very banal and sentimental and boring about the very shape of a child, you know. Unless you want to emaciate them or stretch them out or something, you know, something fanciful. But a kid is just death to draw.”

  Jesse could hear someone arguing inside the house.

  “Dr. Vogel?”

  Reva had poked her head out the back door. Her blond hair was wild. It fell loose about her face and onto her shoulders, uncombed. She was blinking out into the morning light, a face glazed over with sleep, filmy and beautiful. Jesse stared at her and felt his own helplessness like a wave passing through him.

  “My God, Dr. Vogel—Jesse—Is that really you?” Reva cried.

  “Don’t be angry,” Jesse said quickly. “I had to see you—”

  Reva stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing a bathrobe that was too large for her, wrapped around her, of some dim, soiled material; it had come open in front as if to show that she was wearing nothing beneath it. Her legs were bare and her small pinkened feet were bare, the toes curling on the doorstep. “Is it really you?” Reva cried.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “But—Allen, take the dog away, please, that barking is awful—But, Jesse, what do you want with me? I mean, what do you want?” Reva held the bathrobe tightly closed about her, both hands at her throat. She was smiling sleepily, apologetically. The boy led the collie toward the house, dragging it away from Jesse; he saluted Jesse briskly, backing away. “Oh, that dog is awful, that dog is demented. It isn’t friendly,” Reva laughed. She smiled from Jesse to Allen and back to Jesse again, as if this were a joke and nothing serious, as if Jesse were not staring at her.

  “I only want to talk with you. Can you come with me for a few minutes?” Jesse said.

  “I’m not dressed.”

  “Get dressed and come out.”

  “Yes, but—but—”

  “I only want to talk to you, I have t
o talk to you,” Jesse said miserably. “Why are you barefoot? You’re going to cut your feet, Reva. Why did you come out here barefoot?”

  “I didn’t know who was out here.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” Jesse asked in anguish.

  “The last time you saw me, you told me to go to hell,” Reva said seriously. But he could see that she meant no harm to him; already she had begun to smile again. It was so strange, so effortless, that smile of Reva’s! Jesse stared at her. She looked so complete, so unsurprised, so warmly confident. Her skin seemed to glow with health. Was it the pregnancy? Jesse wanted to open the oversized robe she had on and look at her. It was a dazzling, bitter revelation to him, Reva’s beauty; the power that women have over men, to make them acknowledge their beauty.… A kind of mist passed over Jesse’s brain. He thought of dragging this woman to his car, driving out of here, driving down a lane, back into some scrawny melancholy cornfield.…

  “You’re very beautiful.…” Jesse whispered.

  Reva smiled dreamily at him. There was no part in her hair for him to stare at. Her hair was very thick, full, flowing up from her forehead down past her shoulders like a mane, burnished and blond, her neck rising from her shoulders gracefully, fluidly, everything about her fluid and alive. He could not truly remember having seen her before, not this particular Reva, this particular woman. There was something massively surprising about her, jarring. Jesse stared at her bare legs—tanned and slender—and at her very slender ankles, which were not too clean, dotted with small red marks that were probably insect bites. Insect bites! Her toes were grimy. He loved her. He wanted to urge her over to his car, get her inside his car and slam the door and drive her out of here—

  “Are you in love with that man, that man in there?” Jesse whispered.

  “Yes,” Reva said.

  “And you’re living with him? In the same house with his wife?”

  “Oh, and other people too,” Reva said, surprised at Jesse’s tone, “it isn’t the way it sounds.… Annie and Max have been together a long time, seventeen years, and Max has not always lived with her, but a few years ago they decided to have these babies … they have two boys, four and five years old, and the boys turned out to be disappointing, I mean they were supposed to bring Annie and Max together again and to be sort of childlike and beautiful, but instead they’re hard to manage, they aren’t very interesting … and Annie doesn’t want to take care of them by herself. I don’t blame her. And one of the boys is a little crazy, people think … so Max came back to see how things were.… I met Max in New York. He’s a genius, of course, and very talented, but he has had bad luck most of his life and he drinks too much, and … and I’m afraid to talk to him about leaving because he gets so angry.…”

  “You think he’ll hurt you? Is that it?”

  “Yes, maybe,” Reva said slowly. “Or maybe Annie or one of the boys.… He gets very angry. I don’t want to cause more trouble in his life. He was in the hospital while I was gone—Annie says his liver is weak. That’s very serious, isn’t it? Max is forty-three years old and a very talented man; his students keep following him all around the country, but I’m afraid of the future with him.… I just can’t leave him, I can’t walk out. I love him.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “Oh, the baby,” Reva said, reddening, “well, I guess Max doesn’t want me to have it. I guess I’ll have to …”

  “Come for a drive with me, please. Come with me. I have to talk to you,” Jesse begged.

  “I’m not dressed—”

  “Reva, for God’s sake! I want you so badly, I love you, I would do anything for you—Why are you just standing there staring at me?”

  “Jesse,” she said, pronouncing his name carefully, as if it were not a name she knew well, “Jesse, I don’t think I could love you. I don’t know you very well. Max is the one who needs me.…”

  “He doesn’t need you!”

  “Why are you so angry? Has something happened in your life, that you’ve driven all the way up here? After that day in Chicago I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again. You were so angry with me, so disgusted … your face showed such disgust.… But now you seem to love me again. Why is that?”

  Jesse took hold of her wrists, her hands.

  “Reva, please. There’s a place down the highway—a tourist court—some cabins—I could get us one of them—please, I want to talk to you—”

  “I can’t leave like this,” Reva laughed. But her expression was becoming guarded, cautious. She glanced back at the house, and Jesse was maddened for an instant, wondering if her lover were watching. He would kill that man! “The truth is, Jesse, that Annie and I have been having a very serious discussion for the last several days. We’ve talked everything through and I probably will be leaving him in a while, but …”

  “All right!” Jesse said. “All right, fine! I’ll take you back today.”

  “But not so abruptly,” Reva whispered. She pulled away from him. “Do you want to kill him? He’s not well, and you’re so strong—you look so angry, so healthy! I think you want to drive me crazy. What would it be like to live with you? To marry you? You would push me around, you’d suffocate me—”

  “No—”

  “You’d suffocate me with your love. I know what you want,” Reva said, narrowing her eyes. She was so sweet, so cunning, that Jesse could not tell whether she was serious or teasing. “Yes, I know you … I know men like you.… When I was a girl I knew men just like you, oh, exactly like you … your eyes are getting red at the rims just from looking at me … what you’d really like is to drag me out of here and back in some old barn or some old cornfield, I know you, I know what you want.… A big country boy! You look so healthy and so angry.…”

  Reva took Jesse’s hand. She was smiling tauntingly. Closing her eyes, she pressed Jesse’s palm against the side of her face—he felt the slight chill of her cheek in amazement—

  Jesse thought he might faint.

  “Well, if you become my lover, you must promise this: never make me remember that day I looked you up to ask for an abortion. Never bring up the past to me,” Reva said in a swift, rather perfunctory voice. “It will begin all over again, for us. It will begin today. Everything new. A new start. No Max for me and no wife for you. Is that a promise? Is it?”

  “Yes—yes—”

  “And do you still want me to be Reva to you?”

  “Yes—”

  “You have no objection to that name?”

  “I love that name—”

  “And you won’t force me to love you? Not right away? Because I don’t love you right now, but I will try to love you. I will be faithful to you and try to love you, and eventually I will love you, I can guarantee that. Yes, I can guarantee that. But don’t bully me, don’t suffocate me.…”

  “I won’t bully you. Never,” Jesse whispered.

  “And you’ll marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the baby—?”

  “I want you to have the baby.”

  Reva smiled at this. “So you’ll be the father of this baby, good! That baby will be very proud of his father! And so you’ll marry me, you’ll let me have the baby,” she said lightly, as if running through a list of items, “you’ll never bring up the past to me, and never bully me, never? And you’ll never see your children again, never, and never your wife? Never your wife? Will I be your wife? Will I be your only wife?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said.

  He tried to embrace her but she stepped away. “No, Max might be watching, we’re out in the open,” she said. Her face was feverish, beautiful. It seemed to glare at him. “Can you give me an hour, Jesse? An hour? Jesse, can you go away and wait an hour? I will explain this to him, that I’m leaving, I will get free of him, I’ll get ready for you—I want to take a bath—I need to take a bath—”

  Suddenly she and Jesse both laughed. There was a shrill, terrible, glaring sound to their laughter.

  �
��Will you go away, Jesse, and give me an hour, just an hour?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you, you should fix yourself too. For me. You should get ready for me. Your eyes are bloodshot and you haven’t shaved—your clothes are all wrinkled and musty—”

  She was speaking in an intimate, hypnotic voice, almost a singsong voice, maddening Jesse. He could not speak.

  “Go away, please, and give me an hour. I want to take a bath.”

  Jesse backed to his car.

  “An hour. Just an hour,” she said.

  He backed away, stumbling. Took hold of the door handle of his car. The fever in his mouth and throat had begun to glow like a flame. Reva was backing away from him at the same time, waving.

  “One hour!” Reva cried.

  One hour.

  “My God.…” Jesse said aloud.

  He backed his car out of the driveway. He was so excited he could hardly manage to drive, his limbs moved of their own accord, in spasmodic jerks. Where was he? Hilsinger, Wisconsin. Where was that? He got the car turned around somehow and drove back along the highway, past the diner, back to the tourist court. This time the proprietor was willing to give him a room. “It’s three dollars a day,” he said. “How many days do you want it for?”

  “Just a few hours,” Jesse said. “I want to get washed up. Shaved.”

  The man led him through a patch of weeds to the first cabin, which had been whitewashed not long ago; the grass around it was flecked with whitewash. “Well,” he said, grunting, “you can get washed up just fine—here’s some water—see?” He turned on a faucet and rusty water splashed out. Jesse’s face broke into a radiant grin.

  He paid in advance for the cabin: three dollars.

  Left alone, he hurried to the sink. Panting. He stared at his face in the mirror and, yes, it was really his face, Jesse, the face of a thirty-one-year-old man, skin fair and firm, mouth strong, temples strong, a hectic glare to the eye and to the broad ridge of his cheekbones. What had Reva said? So angry and so healthy! So angry and so healthy. But now he must shave. He must shave. He ran his hands hurriedly over his face, his rough cheeks and jaw.

  He had no razor. Nothing.