A Widow's Story (18 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
In the stark unsparing light of 4
A.M.
on hands and knees on the chill tile floor of the bathroom sobbing in despair, rage, shame—out of my shaky fingers a little plastic container of capsules has fallen to the floor—capsules have rolled merrily in all directions and I am desperate trying to locate them, groping to locate one that has rolled—has it?—somewhere behind the toilet amid wispy balls of dust like the most forlorn and despised of thoughts—except,
where is it?—
in dread of running out of my prescription for Lorazepam which helps me to sleep for somewhere beyond three hours each night for I have not yet filled the prescription for Ambien out of apprehension of becoming addicted to whatever this state of being is, this groggy half-sleep, this zombie half-life in which the outlines of things have become blurred and textures flattened like plastic and voices echo at a distance murmurous and jeering as in an obscure language
decedent—executrix—fiduciaries—codicil—letters testamentary—residuary estate—
haunted by the vision of a stricken bull fallen to its knees in the ring bleeding from myriad wounds in a stream of hot blood provoking a deranged crowd to roar —here I am stricken on my knees, face pounding with blood, in this life shorn of meaning as trash blown across a befouled pavement is shorn of meaning, or the young dogwood tree in the courtyard ravaged by winter is shorn of meaning.
Without meaning, the world is
things.
And these
things
multiplied to infinity.
Six capsules remaining—one is missing—I can’t find—on hands and knees groping, sobbing—thinking
This is what you deserve
,
who had been protected from such misery for too long. Suffer!
Chapter 38
A Dream of Such Happiness!
My parents are asking me
Where is Ray?
My parents—only just middle-aged, thus “young”—as they’d been when, not so very long ago, they’d come to visit us in our Princeton house, and stayed in the “guest suite” we’d designed for them. And my mother Carolina who loved to cook helped me prepare meals in the kitchen, and my father Fred who loved music played piano in the living room. And the glass house that was usually so still with just Ray and me in it seemed to expand and to glow with life.
Except—in this dream—which is in fact a happy dream—my parents are asking about Ray. For somehow, Ray isn’t here. And it has never been the case that my parents came to stay here, and Ray was not here. With childlike earnestness I am assuring them that Ray is all right—
He will join us later.
In particular my mother is anxious as if not believing me, exactly—but I am able to convince her.
Ray will be here for dinner.
Or maybe I told her
Ray will be home for dinner.
Here is the situation: my parents loved Ray as if he were their own son and so in the dream, I don’t want them to know that Ray is in the hospital. (For this is the dream’s secret—Ray is in the hospital now—he is still alive!) Of all things, I dread worrying my parents about anything, most of all about Ray. Or me.
It doesn’t seem strange to me that my parents’ faces are blurred as if undersea. Nor that the farther walls of our living room have vanished. The room is scarcely furnished—in fact, it doesn’t seem to be our living room or any room familiar to me.
Yes—I understand that my parents Carolina and Fred whom I love so much are
not living
. Still, they are here with me, and I am so very happy in their presence, though the happiness is tinged with anxiety for it’s my responsibility to keep my parents from suspecting both that they are
not living
and that
Ray is in the hospital.
The dream communicates the social awkwardness of such a situation: I must shield my parents from this double knowledge that would so upset them.
Yet thinking
It’s a good thing that Mom and Daddy can’t know what has happened to Ray. That’s the only good thing about being where they are.
Chapter 39
“We Want to See You Soon”
She’s a lovely woman, a colleague at the University, not a close friend but of that nimbus of friendly acquaintances who in the aftermath of Ray’s death have sent cards, flowers; she has sent me an e-mail saying that she and her husband, who teaches at another university, want to invite me to dinner at their house soon, and what are some evenings that are possible for me; and so I have responded, for there are many empty evenings indicated in my calendar, in March; in such empty evenings lurks the
horror vacui
that so terrified the ancient Egyptians, this
horror vacui
that seeps from the outer, darkened rooms of the house into the bright-lighted bedroom; and so what better remedy, if a temporary remedy, than a dinner with friends, to dispel this horror.
Yes it’s true—often I see my small circle of friends. My friends who are my family, whom I love. Often, very often we speak on the phone, we exchange e-mails. Still there are empty evenings, in the nest trying to concentrate—reading—trying to read—offprints of Ray’s literary essays and reviews from twenty years ago—bound galleys which publishers have sent me, requesting blurbs—(a blurb! from
me
!
—
how like a cruel joke this seems)—my old battered Modern Library edition of Pascal’s
Pensées
which falls open at the most frequently read/annotated pages—
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away. Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end forever.
We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes forever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. (
Translation by W. F. Trotter
)
Trying to ignore the lizard-thing hovering at the periphery of my vision regarding me with calm impassive tawny-staring eyes
I am patient
,
I can wait. I can outwait you.
And so what better remedy than a dinner with friends except the lovely C
_
replies to my e-mail saying that, of the dates I’ve named, not one is quite right.
For it seems, C
_
is hoping to compose a dinner party of heroic proportions. Where I’d thought the dinner would be just C
_
and her husband and another couple perhaps, it is revealed that C
_
wants to invite X, Y, Z—
All friends of yours
,
Joyce—who want to see you
,
too
—but these others, one of them a university president with a very busy schedule, can’t make the dates we’ve marked in pencil, maybe other dates, maybe later in the month, or early April—finally, I send C
_
an e-mail suggesting that we have just a small dinner, just her and her husband and one or two other couples—but C
_
insists
So many people want to see you
,
Joyce!
—she has ten guests “committed” for a Saturday in early April—except, R
_
, a mutual friend, can’t make this date—also S
_
, who will be in Rome at a conference on international law—and so, could I look at my calendar again; more e-mails are exchanged; at last C
_
has invited eighteen people—several of them “friends” whom I have not seen in a very long time—but of these, one or two are “tentative”—and so C
_
must change the date another time; the new date suggested isn’t a date that I can make; another time, C
_
must change the date; I am beginning to realize that though C
_
has said that she and her husband are “eager” to see me they are in fact dreading to see me; to that end, C
_
is erecting obstacles to our dinner as in an equestrian trial in which each jump must be higher than its predecessor, and more dangerous; I envision a thirty-foot dining room table and at the farther end the widow placed like a leper, as far from the lovely C
_
as possible.
I would so much prefer a small dinner
,
just you and your husband and another couple perhaps
,
I think that’s what I would like best
which pleading e-mail C
_
seems never to receive or, receiving, chooses to ignore; abruptly then, our e-mails on the subject cease; the heroic dinner party imagined by the lovely C
_
never materializes.
I will not hear from C
_
again for a very long time though mutual acquaintances will assure me,
C_ misses you
,
she says
,
and wants to see you soon!
“Good afternoon! Is it—Joyce?”
Yes it is Joyce. Steeling herself for the next, inevitable question
Where is your husband
,
Joyce?
Or maybe, since everyone is on friendly, first-name terms here at the Hopewell Valley Fitness Center, the cheery blond receptionist will ask
Where is Ray
,
Joyce?
But she doesn’t ask about Ray. If she’s curious—for I’ve never stepped into the Fitness Center except with Ray—(though Ray sometimes came here without me)—she doesn’t let on.
The blond receptionist is unflaggingly sunny, upbeat—as one of the Fitness Center trainers she’s professionally obliged to be upbeat—but she isn’t naive. For of course husbands must vanish from the rosters of the Fitness Center frequently: separation, divorce, death?
Separation and divorce are more likely than death, among the Fitness Center members. Since really old and/or “unfit” men aren’t likely to belong to a health club.
In any case, it wouldn’t be diplomatic to ask. And maybe the blond receptionist sees in my face a certain tightening, a tension around the eyes pleading
Don’t ask please!
All fitness centers are places of hope, optimism. Belief in the future as progress.
Every gain is good!
Ray’s trainer never failed to praise him. The more praise, the harder Ray tried. For he’d meant to be “fit”—to “maintain fitness.”
We’d come to the Fitness Center, on the average, about three times a week, for the past several years. We came only in the winter months.
It is very strange to be here without him. I have to think—to realize—he isn’t behind me on the stairs, or outside at the car. He hasn’t gone ahead of me to begin stretching exercises.
When you pass your plastic card through a device here at the check-in counter, a mechanical voice chirps
THANK YOU HAVE A GOOD WORKOUT!
I have come to the fitness center for a purpose. I think it must be for exercise—unless it’s to terminate my membership.
Physical exercise!—exertion! This will be my solace.
If I can exhaust myself, maybe I can sleep. Maybe I can sleep “normally.” Parts of my brain feel as if they’re carbonated. The kind of carbonation that fizzes out of the bottle and runs down your hand.
The Fitness Center is about two miles from our home, just off busy Route 31. It’s a building of no distinction, windowless, fluorescent-lit, exuding perpetual music—“soft rock”—“pop standards”—in a cheery upbeat tempo.
Sometimes, this music would be intrusive. Loud, bland, persistent, brainless. When I couldn’t bear it any longer I would find areas in the building—unoccupied, sometimes darkened—into which the music wasn’t piped, and there I would run in place, or sit and take notes on whatever was preoccupying me at the time, while Ray worked out on the machines.
Often I remained outside. I preferred the outdoors, running/jogging/walking along a track, or trails. In a field beside the Fitness Center I would run in a large figure eight, in a trance of happiness—an ordinary/domestic happiness—for running has always been thrilling to me, both invigorating and comforting.
Running for me has always been meditation, contemplation.
Though now such states of mind are fearful to me, for I am not able to control my thoughts.
Sagely Ralph Waldo Emerson observed
A man is what he is thinking all day long
. We can assume that by
man
the philosopher did not exclude
woman.
If we can control our thoughts, we can control—what? Only our feelings, emotions. Only our thoughts. Of the vast unfathomable world beyond ourselves, we have not the slightest control.
How sad it is to recall, the brilliant Emerson “lost” his mind as he aged. Many years of his later life he existed in a state of consciousness like a light slowly dimming, fading.
This is the dark, ironic, slyly cruel rejoinder to Emerson’s sunny optimism. How self-reliance when there is no
self
?
For days—weeks?—I’ve been intending to come to the Fitness Center. For here, I am not-known, as Ray was not-known—a few of the employees recognized us as
Ray
,
Joyce
—but nothing more about us.
I am trying now not to imagine an alternative universe—in fact, this would be a universe far more probable, plausible, and recognizable than this universe—in which Ray was with me, as he’d always been. Outside in the car I’d been parked for several minutes without moving from the driver’s seat. Staring at the stucco wall of the building waiting for—what? My life now seems to be waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to be decided, waiting to know what I must do next. Alone in the car—here? But why? Without a companion to say
Well—why are you just sitting there? Let’s get out. Here we are.
Often when I return home to our house—that is, to
my house
—I find myself sitting in the car like this, in a kind of spiritual paralysis. When I am away from the house, I yearn to return to it; when I am in the house, I think that there is danger there, and I should flee; yet, in the car parked outside the house, in a kind of stasis, often I don’t move for minutes as if hypnotized. Ray would be astonished at this behavior, which is wholly “unlike” his wife.
The woman he’d known as
his wife.
Now, as
his
widow
, she is not performing so very well.
Ray was the guardian of the household, and the house. Already without Ray’s guidance the house is beginning to fail. Think of the collapse of the chic future house in Ray Bradbury’s beautiful and chilling little parable, “There Will Come Soft Rains.”
Away from the house, sitting here—where?—why?—fighting a sensation of mounting panic—I am suddenly convinced that the house is in danger. Yet, I am too lethargic to drive back to the house. And there is something else I am frightened of—more frightened of—this is the Fitness Center.
Weighing the degree of fear/panic: am I more anxious about the house, or about going into the Fitness Center; is it
more practical
to deal with the anxiety about the house or the anxiety about the Fitness Center? . . .
Look. You’re here. You must be here for a reason.
So Ray would advise me, exasperated.
Oh but I am so reluctant to leave the (relative) safety of my battered white Honda—to enter the Fitness Center—to make my way to the large workout room, the size of a ballroom, to which Ray always went.
Soon, I will give a name to such places:
sinkholes.
Places fraught with visceral memory, stirring terror if you approach them.
At this stage of the Siege—this is still early March—I haven’t been able to comprehend my experiences in any coherent way, let alone categorize them. Taxonomy is the instinctive response to a world of dismaying fecundity and complexity but I am not strong enough for taxonomy just now.
Much of my life washes over me like a frothy/dirty surf. In this surf are bits of debris—seaweed, broken glass, mud-clumps, rotted fish, nameless things—a kind of spiritual catatonia as if I’ve been stung by a venomous sea-creature hidden in the surf—a jellyfish, for instance.
On the south Jersey shore once, we’d seen them: hundreds—thousands?—of jellyfish washed up on the beach after a storm.
Transparent, translucent, dying dead. Even if they are dead you would be unwise to touch one of these jellyfish with a bare forefinger.
Ray said
Let’s get out of here. We can walk somewhere else.
(Why am I thinking of jellyfish, in the Hopewell Valley Fitness Center? Why does every thought that pierces my brain seem to come from a source beyond me, and why do these thoughts bring both pain, and pleasure? Frequently we’d spoken of returning to Cape May. We’d never seen the annual bird migration which is supposed to be spectacular, nor the monarch butterfly migration. For years we’d spoken of this trip to south Jersey which was hardly an exotic trip, a matter of a few hours’ drive, and in the interim we’d traveled to England and to Europe a number of times but we’d never returned to beautiful Cape May and now the thought taunts me
It’s too late for Cape May. You are never going to Cape May
.)
Lisa is greeting someone else at the reception counter. Another plastic card has triggered the chirrupy
THANK YOU HAVE A GOOD WORKOUT!
It’s been several minutes and I am still lingering in the corridor above the stairs to the workout room.
I am thinking of how coming to the Fitness Center with Ray was fun, or could be fun sometimes.
A dutiful sort of fun. Like grocery shopping.
Once, shopping at one of those massive windowless warehouse-sized stores on Route 1, I said to Ray with an air of actual surprise
It’s fun shopping with you when you’re in a good mood! It doesn’t matter where we are.
Dryly Ray said
It doesn’t?
Ray’s sense of humor!—he was droll, deadpan, often very funny. He never drew the attention of a gathering of friends by telling stories or anecdotes, his manner was to murmur asides, at the margins of a gathering. Sometimes his humor was unexpected, disconcerting. I know that, if Ray could comment on the Hopewell Valley Fitness Center, and on all the hours he’d spent here in the hope of maintaining “fitness,” thus prolonging his life, he’d have said with a wry philosophical shrug—
Well
,
that was a God-damned waste of our time wasn’t it!
I am smiling, hearing this.
But nothing is sadder.
Here is the challenge: to summon all my strength, to descend the steps to the ground floor to the large, open, high-ceilinged space where the treadmills and weight machines are located.
Am I becoming catatonic?
Am I catatonic?
(What do
catatonics
think about, I wonder. Encased in concrete, maybe they can’t think at all. Maybe that’s the point of
catatonia.
)
“Just the treadmill. A half hour. I can do this.”
Yet—I’m out of breath so frequently now. My heartbeat feels always slightly fast. While Ray moved dutifully from one weight machine to the next usually I just ran on the treadmill—as far from other people as I could manage. I did not want to be distracted by the huffing/puffing/grunting of red-faced sweaty men at their machines like visions out of Dante’s
Inferno
of twisted bodies, contorted faces, popping eyeballs.
(Was Ray one of these diligent, determined males? Not really! There was a certain—hard to describe—
dogged languor
in my husband’s fitness workouts that rarely left him sweaty, let alone short of breath. Ray had never been an athlete, nor had he much interest in sports, the lifeblood of the American male and, along with politics, the primary source of
male bonding
in our culture.)
On the treadmill, which I would set at 4.5, then raise, by degrees to 6—(for the uninitiated, this means six miles an hour—not fast for a runner)—I would lapse into a dreamy state—ridding my mind of the myriad distractions of my domestic life—what one might call “real life”—what I would now call my
inexpressibly precious real life
—that I might scroll through pages I’d written that morning—in my head revising, rewriting, “proofreading”—at such times my memory is sharply visual—eidetic?—and running seems to intensify it; my metabolism feels “normal” when I am running . . . But now, I am afraid of what my thoughts will veer toward, if I run on the treadmill. I am afraid that the frothy surf will wash over me, bearing more than I can withstand.
In the bland interior of the gym, I will be at the mercy of the memory-flash which I see almost continuously. No matter where I am, no matter what I am looking at—staring at—in fact I am seeing Ray in the hospital bed—in that moment when I hurried into the room—in the instant when I knew I’d come too late.
His face is so composed! His glasses have been removed from his face as if he were sleeping. The IV fluid drip in his bruised arm, the disfiguring oxygen mask, the heart monitor—all are removed.
They have given up on him. Their machines—they’ve taken from him
,
they’ve abandoned him.
I have come too late. I too abandoned him.
It’s as if a scrim has descended over the world. On this scrim, the memory of Ray. My last vision of Ray . . .
Cheery-blond Lisa is surprised, I am alone. Or, I am not greeting her with a bright flash of a smile to mirror her own.
Before the Fitness Center receptionist can inquire if something is wrong I tell her—the words are blurted out, with a faint stammer—that my husband and I have decided to “discontinue” our membership.
You would have thought that I’d rushed to the reception counter to report a fire.
“Oh! Is there any—reason?”
I explain that we’re moving away.
We’ve been very happy with the Fitness Center—“It’s been a wonderful place, we will miss it”—but—we’re moving away.
Lisa seems personally distressed to hear this. Perhaps there is something in my face—my watery eyes, a tightness in my mouth—that stirs her concern. Hesitantly she mentions that she hadn’t seen Ray in a while—a few weeks—and quickly I tell her, “Well, no—that isn’t quite right. Ray has been here more recently than that.”
Why it seems important to me to correct the receptionist on this utterly trivial point, I have no idea.
Carefully I enunciate our names for Lisa—“Raymond Smith”—“Joyce Smith.” With a somber little smile-frown Lisa removes our cards from a file. She types into a computer. She is terminating us, I suppose. Erasing, deleting. Yet—“Your and your husband’s membership dues are paid through March, so you can continue to visit us . . .”
Never! The thought fills me with dread.
“Where are you and Ray moving to, Joyce?”
My mind is blank. I am having trouble remembering why I am here. And why—alone?
“Just away. We’re not sure where.”
