Carthage (41 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Your sister has had some kind of—trauma? That’s it?
We think so. Some bastid she’d got mixed up with, made a mistake with, like young girls will do—he beat the shit out of her. Like, she has amnesia we think.
Is it known did he—rape her? Or—is it not-known?
They think prob’ly he did. Yeh.
But she don’t remember.
She don’t remember.
Could be a blessing, huh?
That’s what we think.
She does seem like a nice girl. Like—some younger version of
you.
Not no young version of me. No. Sabbath is Sabbath—her own self.
Haley’s laughter was a comfort, when you’d forgotten what laughter could be.
IN THE COMFORT
of what
is now,
she’d ceased thinking of
what had been back then.
Or what
was to come.
Had not given any thought at all—(how strange this would seem to her, in retrospect)—to what would happen to her, to her and Haley McSwain, when Drina
burnt out
on Opa Han and
fell back deep in love
with Haley.
So then abruptly it happened. All that Haley had confidently predicted years before.
One day Haley was telling her in a solemn voice that Drina and Opa Han are
having issues.
Another day telling her in the same solemn voice that Drina and Opa Han are
splitting.
It was a time, a complicated time, when Sabbath hadn’t really known what was happening in her friend’s life. When it might have been evident, to another, more perceptive person, that Haley McSwain was drifting from her, attaching herself more firmly to another.
Forgetting to cajole Sabbath into eating, for instance.
Forgetting to buy their favorite shared ice cream—blueberry ripple.
Staying away overnight, so Sabbath slept, or failed to sleep, alone.
It was a time when Drina was having medical issues. It was not a happy time in Drina’s life but it was a time when Haley McSwain was present, and devoted in a way that others were not.
Unknown to Sabbath, Haley had driven Drina to a doctor’s office and later to an outpatient clinic for something ugly-sounding—colonoscopy and biopsy. And the consequence of this was that Drina had to have emergency surgery at that very same Cancer Center to which Haley took Sabbath.
And the consequence of this was that Haley was away for several days—and nights; and when she saw Sabbath again, she was wearing the identical T-shirt and khakis and her sand-colored hair was matted, her eyes were bloodshot and her skin grainy and gray but she was smiling and her voice lifted and lilted like a feather in the breeze.
For it seemed, the emergency surgery of which Sabbath had not known until this moment had turned out to be “very successful—they hope.” And it seemed, Drina now adored Haley, and was so very grateful to her, she and Haley would be living together from now on, through the ordeal of Drina’s post-surgical treatment which would involve both radiation and chemotherapy.
Though she’d heard this news, Sabbath could not comprehend it.
Where
would Haley be living? Not with
her
?
Now with regret Haley was saying that Drina needed to be
the only person
in Haley’s life. Drina could not bear sharing Haley with even her younger sister Sabbath—“That just isn’t Drina’s way, see. She’s not a family-type person. She has never learned to
share
. She is in love, or not-in-love; and if she’s in-love, she wants that person all to herself every minute.”
Haley smiled dazedly. Haley shook her head, she could not believe the happiness of her news.
Bravely then Sabbath said she was happy for her—for Haley. She said she was happy for Drina, too—and hoped that Drina would regain her full health.
(Though thinking meanly
She still might die! Then Haley would come back to me
.)
(And then thinking frightened
If something happens to me! Haley would have no room in her heart for me
.)
At this time in the fall of 2009 Haley and Sabbath were living in Fort Lauderdale where Haley was a security guard at one of the sleazy-swanky resort hotels on the beach and Sabbath was working at a photocopy store and taking “Intro to Economics” as a night-school course at Broward Community College. And they were living in a communal-type household with several other women ranging in age from twenty-one to sixty-one of whom one was a language instructor at Broward Community College and another was an assistant administrator there. Haley and Sabbath had two rooms at the top of the house: one strewn with Haley’s clothes and possessions and dominated by a part-collapsed double bed with a brass headboard, and the other, the smaller room, sparely furnished with a cot-sized bed, a child’s knotty-pine bureau, books, notebooks and papers in neat stacks and taped to the walls charcoal drawings of girls and women—(predominantly Haley and other residents of the house)—deftly executed in a minimalist style.
Sabbath had overheard Haley saying to other residents in the household that it was a new discovery to her, and she was impressed and proud—her
kid sister
was
some kind of artistic talent
—nobody in the family had ever guessed!
Bravely Sabbath faced the loss of her friend though Haley insisted that she would see Sabbath as often as she could, email her and talk to her on the phone as if “almost nothing” had happened.
Haley promised too that she would send money to Sabbath when she could—maybe not as often as she wished.
Drina was sensitive about that kind of
sharing
too.
Also, Drina would not be working for who knew how long—weeks? Months? And so Drina would have no income, as Drina had no medical/hospital insurance.
She
would be paying for Drina’s medical expenses, what she could. And what she could not, she would
beg, borrow or steal.
To this, Sabbath could think of no reply. A shivering sensation had begun deep inside.
So! Haley rubbed her hands together. The dazed elation in her face.
Sabbath managed to say, she was very happy for Haley.
Haley said, Oh shit Sabbath, I’m happy for me too. For now.
Haley wrapped Sabbath in her long, tight-muscled arms. For a long time the women held each other not daring to step away, open their eyes, breathe.
MOVED OUT
OF
THE HOUSE
in which she and Haley had lived—disappeared with no farewell to her housemates except on a folded sheet of paper the terse message
I am leaving now. Thank you & good-bye. Sincerely, Sabbath McSwain
and a half-dozen neatly-smoothed twenty-dollar bills which by her calculation was just slightly above her share of the rent for the remainder of that month.
The women had been Haley’s friends, not hers. She could not believe that they would miss her, as they would miss Haley.
Sabbath took with her only what she could carry. What she was obliged to leave behind she erased from her memory as you’d wash down a wall—quick, crude, effective.
She moved then to Temple Park. She knew no one in Temple Park. In an area of Fort Lauderdale near the ocean Haley was living with Drina in a new place they’d rented together.
Emails she received from Haley each day, or nearly.
Hope you are well! We are doing pretty well here.
Maybe come for supper sometime. Or we could meet somewhere.
But such meetings were rare. Sabbath didn’t have a car and it was a distance for Haley to drive after one of her long workdays, for soon Haley was supplementing her full-time employment at the resort hotel with part-time work as a security guard at a shopping center.
In a rotting Victorian house near the University of Florida campus Sabbath rented a single room. The majority of the other residents were students—foreign-born graduate students. Like a wraith she passed among them unobserved. That her skin was
white
and her national identity presumably
Caucasian-American
made her less and not more visible in their eyes.
An infinite number of discrete steps in a finite amount of time
.
It was Zeno’s Paradox, restated: you were confronted with infinity within finitude. Naturally, your brain would shatter to pieces..
Yet, she persevered. Though Haley had abandoned her, yet she persevered. Though others had thrust her from them as unloved, despised, disgusting yet she persevered and even, by chance, became acquainted with new friends, of a kind: by chance, she was living just across the street from a university residence called International House where she could eat inexpensive “ethnic” meals at long communal tables at which it wasn’t so very unusual to be sitting alone, with just a book for company, or a sketch-pad. She became acquainted with a circle of women associated with Females Without Borders of whom one, Chantelle Rios, would become one of her closer friends.
“Girl, you always
alone
. Why’s that?”
“I guess”—Sabbath laughed, awkwardly—“I don’t know.”
“Well, I know.”
“Yes? You do?”
“ ’Cause you got a look in your face like the way some kinda nasty lizard looks—iguana, I’m thinking of. Mean ugly thing sayin
Leave me alone. Don’t fuck with me
.”
Sabbath laughed, embarrassed. Yet it was not so surprising to her, that another might so interpret her expression.
Chantelle Rios was a clinical psychology post-doc in her early thirties. She wore her shiny-black hair in braids and her clothing, outside the Psych Department, was bright-hued; at Females Without Borders, and to make Sabbath McSwain smile, though she had an advanced degree from the University of Florida at Gainesville, she affected the sexy-insinuating style of an Hispanic rapper.
Like Haley McSwain, Chantelle Rios was involved with another person—(whom Sabbath was never to meet). But, like Haley, Chantelle seemed to want to take up Sabbath McSwain as a cause.
“You don’t have any family, girl? At all? Is that possible?”
Yes. It was possible.
“Everyone you know is—dead? Y’know, li’l dude—that don’t hardly seem likely.”
Sabbath sat inert, silent. She could not think how to speak: how to defend herself.
For by this time it did seem to her,
back there
had vanished.
Her memory had been so washed-away, as with a crude hosing, all that remained were swaths of “familiar” scenes—a room that had once been
her room,
a view of a residential street seen from a window in this room she could not recall was called
Cumberland Avenue
. If she shut her eyes tight she could see a house—a large, sprawling house with many staircases—(too many staircases not to be a dream, or a drawing by M. C. Escher)—and harried stick-figures on the staircases rushing up and down oblivious of one another: the foot of one sharing a step with the foot of another who is upside-down. (If you turned the house-drawing upside-down, ingeniously it would be revealed as the same drawing; whether this-side-up, or its reversal, the drawing of the house of many staircases is only one drawing.)
No idea what any of this meant. Why the fuck did it haunt
her.
Why her instinct to hide her face in shame.
“Know what, Sabbath? I’d like to get you in our lab. We’re working with volunteers but we can pay you a few dollars an hour. It’s an experiment in ‘induced amnesia’—pretty damn interesting.”
Sabbath shook her head mutely,
no.
For it was hopeless to speak. To try to explain.
Like stammering in a foreign language in which you know only a few words but not how to connect them.
There are fairy tales in which one sister is the good beautiful sister—one sister is blessed. And another sister is damned.
I am that sister. The damned sister. Yet, I am still alive—a mistake not yet corrected.
H
E’D SAID TO HER
You betrayed me.
Those words ringing in her ears. In her brain.
Betrayed. You have betrayed.
Like harsh-glaring sunshine on a beach littered with storm debris, the dead and desiccated bodies of creatures once living. This sunshine was blinding to her, terrible.
For she was beginning now to see the devastation of her life—that she herself had precipitated.
For perhaps it had been a mistake, to have fled. To have erased her life
back there
.
She’d allowed herself to believe what her rescuer had wished her to believe—that whoever had hurt her, would hurt her again.
That whoever belonged to her past would not miss her. Did not love her and would not claim her.
Had she been sick? For so long?
Turning the silver star-ring around on her finger, and around.
SHE CALLED.
Tried to call.
The old number so long-ago memorized: her own.
But a recording clicked on:
The number you have called has been disconnected.
PANIC GRIPPED HER:
the Mayfields no longer lived in the house on Cumberland Avenue.
One of her parents had died? It would be Zeno.
And then, her mother had moved from the house. And Juliet—of course by now, Juliet would have moved from the house.
Juliet would be—how old? Twenty-nine.
How strange it was to her, that the house on Cumberland Avenue had existed in some way unknown to her, all this time.
Her father Zeno, her mother Arlette. Her sister Juliet.
In ways unknown to her, they’d outlived her.
Six years, eight months.
And
he—
Brett Kincaid.
In those years she’d scarcely given them a thought. She’d become Sabbath McSwain and all of her energy had gone into the effort of maintaining this imposture as a one-legged person with a single crutch must concentrate upon her ability to move, not easily, not gracefully, nor even without pain, but simply to move in a clumsy simulacrum of “walking.”
Sabbath McSwain was of little value in the vast world yet of inestimable value to Haley McSwain. It is required that we must be fiercely beloved by one individual in order to exist: for Sabbath, Haley was that individual.
And so, she’d lost the capacity to recall the Mayfield faces. And the face of the corporal.
A part of her brain had seemed to shut down. Much of her memory had become like a paralyzed limb, attached to the body but estranged, useless.
Since having entered the execution chamber at Orion, she was beginning to see differently. She was beginning to wonder if her behavior had been a primitive sort of revenge for their failure to love her.
Her family, and Brett Kincaid.
How otherwise could she have erased them from her memory!
She would have liked to explain to the Investigator. She would have liked to ask his advice: What, now, should she do?
He would know. He would give an immediate answer.
Yet how could she confess to him, or to anyone—in all those years she’d made no attempt to contact her family?
Never called, never tried to call.
She’d never sought information about them, online. She’d never typed into any computer the names
Zeno Mayfield. Arlette Mayfield. Juliet Mayfield. Corporal Brett Kincaid.
Still less, she’d never typed into any computer the name
Cressida Catherine Mayfield.
THE INVESTIGATOR
had named her:
betrayer.
She’d wronged him! Never would he forgive her, nor would he trust her again.
Turning the ring on her finger, round and round.
“SABBATH MCSWAIN.”
These precious documents she gathered: the birth certificate, the Social Security card, the laminated Mountain Forge High School card long outdated, and the Florida driver’s license.
Mailed in an envelope to Haley McSwain at the new address.
Dearest Haley—
I am saying good-bye to you now. I will not see you again.
I will pray for you & Drina—that she will be well, & you will be happy together as you deserve.
I know you would not look for me and it is a good thing if you do not. I am going back to my home—it is time.
I should not have left as I did. This is what I think now.
I may be mistaken. I will return there, to see.
Still I owe my life to you. I am so grateful to you.
Sincerely & with Love—
Your Sister Who Was Sabbath
STRING SHE FOUND
to wrap around the inside of the silver star-ring the Investigator had given her, that it would fit her finger less loosely.
It was her fear, the ring would slip from her finger and be lost.
SHE’D FLED.
Like a kicked and terrified dog she’d fled. Like a dog she’d wished only to hide, and lick her wounds. Her shame that was a kind of wound. It did not occur to her, it had not once occurred to her, that others might have been injured as well.
“But they didn’t love me. Did they?”
IT WAS RIGHT,
that they should be punished. If they had thought her dead, all these years.
She had not been beautiful in their eyes. She had not been loved.
The smart one
. She smiled, a ghastly struck smile—so she had hurt them, she hoped!
Then, a moment later, the recoil came over her, the revulsion—
Betrayer! You have betrayed those who loved you.
“HELLO?
Is this—Juliet?
”
“Yes. This is Juliet. Who is this?”
The voice was both friendly and guarded. She would not have recognized the voice perhaps except knowing it was Juliet, she gripped the little phone tight against her ear and for a moment could not speak.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“Juliet, this is Cressida.”
Silence. You could guess, a shocked silence.
“What do you mean—‘Cressida’?”
“It’s Cressida. Your sister.”
This was mistaken, what she was doing. She was speaking too bluntly, and yet in a weak guilty voice. Juliet said sharply:
“My sister is not living. This is not—this is not funny . . .”
Abruptly the line went dead.
Not living
. Strange that Juliet hadn’t said
My sister is dead.
Cressida called the number again. This time, there was no answer.
It had not been easy for Cressida to acquire her sister’s cell phone number. The old way of landlines was passing—there was no national directorial assistance any longer.
She’d acquired the cell phone number from the mother of a girlfriend of Juliet’s who lived on Caledonia Street, Carthage. Mrs. Hempel had been happy to look up Juliet Mayfield’s number for her, in an address book. She had not recognized Cressida Mayfield’s voice.
Cressida had told Mrs. Hempel that she was an old high school friend of Juliet’s who had lost touch with her. Mrs. Hempel hadn’t questioned the name Cressida provided, which was the name of an actual girl who’d gone to Carthage High at that time.
This matrix of old, lost names. A vast spiderweb of associations long forgotten and now resurrected for a desperate whim.
She’d said, “Thanks for Juliet’s number, Mrs. Hempel,” and Mrs. Hempel said, “Of course! No problem. But Juliet doesn’t live in Carthage any longer, you know.” And she’d said, “She doesn’t? Where does she live now?” and Mrs. Hempel said, “Well, I think—I think she lives in Albany. Her husband has something to do with—I think it’s a state government position,” and she’d said, “Oh. Juliet is married. I—I didn’t know,” and Mrs. Hempel said, lowering her voice as if they might be overheard, “Well, you know—after that terrible thing that happened to her sister . . .” and Cressida listened in silence, gripping the phone, scarcely daring to breathe, “Juliet had some sort of breakdown. Because it had been her fiancé, you know—who’d killed her sister. He’d drowned her in the Nautauga River, people thought—but the body was never recovered. And Juliet moved out of Carthage and never has moved back but Carly sees her sometimes in Albany, and they keep in touch, by email and phone. And I think Juliet is well, now—I think she has a child, or two children—that’s what Carly has said.”
All this information, volunteered to a stranger. Cressida thanked Mrs. Hempel and said good-bye.
Killed her sister.
Drowned her in the Nautauga River.
Body never recovered.
IT SHOULD NOT
have surprised her that, in Carthage, she was believed to be dead.
Missing for so many years, presumed dead.
And maybe it was better that way? As she’d always thought, with that part of her mind in which
back there
remained prominent.
Better to have vanished. That she would cause no one any further grief.
But there was the matter of the corporal, who’d been with her at the time of her vanishing. And there was the matter of Cressida Mayfield’s family, she realized now must continue to miss her as one lost to them, and her body never recovered.
ZENO HAD SPOKEN
OF
an ancient Greek philosopher whose teaching was
It is better never to have been born.
How they’d laughed! Rob Roy had barked in delight, frisking about their legs and with his long swishing setter-tail coming dangerously close to knocking over glasses and bottles.
She’d asked who had said this and Zeno had screwed up his quizzical-Daddy face and said it was (maybe) Sophocles, and it was (maybe) Socrates. And it was (certainly) Schopenhauer—centuries later.
Better never to have been born.
But how then would you know?
They’d thought the philosopher was silly—had to be an
old grouch.
A typical weekend evening at the Mayfield house on Cumberland Avenue. When the girls were young, which meant that Zeno had been active in politics at the time, perhaps even mayor of Carthage. Frequently they’d had visitors, dinner guests and houseguests, friends, neighbors, Zeno’s Democratic party friends, friends of Arlette’s—companionably crowded at the long table in the dining room covered with a beautiful Irish linen tablecloth.
Candlestick holders, and bright-colored candles. Flames reflected dancing in the darkened windowpanes.
The consensus was, this cranky old philosopher had obviously never (A) been in love (B) held a baby in his arms (C) inhaled the smell of fresh-mown grass (D) sipped Champagne (E) won an election.
In the gaiety of the moment all had laughed. Zeno’s friends had lifted their glasses to him in a toast—one toast of many. So perhaps it had been an evening to celebrate Zeno’s election to the office of mayor of Carthage. And Rob Roy had trotted about the room, licking fingers as they stroked his sleek handsome head. And Cressida who’d been a child at the time hadn’t laughed with the others for the fear of
never having been born
had pierced her heart, so young.
A FOURTH TIME,
and a fifth she called Juliet’s number.
Then leaving a message, in a careful voice.
Juliet it is me—Cressida . . .
I am calling from Florida . . .
I will be coming home—back home—if people would want me . . .
I am well. I am not ill or—hurt in any way. I have not been incarcerated or hospitalized . . .
I have a job here in Temple Park. Or, I had a job . . .
I am living alone. I am alone but I am—I am not . . .
I am not
a sick person.
Her voice broke. She began to sob. She had no control over the tears that spilled from her eyes hot, stinging and blinding.
I did not think that any of you would miss me—much.
I did not think that any of you loved me much . . .
I was very frightened, I think. I am frightened now.
I wonder if you can forgive me . . .
She was sobbing now. She could not catch her breath, now.
The cell phone that had been given to her by the Investigator slipped from her fingers, fell to the pavement and shattered into a dozen pieces of plastic.
THE TRIP NORTH
would not be an easy one, by bus.
The trip north she did not wish to be easy, or quick—it would require all the days she would spend on the bus, to prepare herself for Carthage.
(She might have flown, or taken a train. Which would have required her traveling as
Sabbath McSwain
.)
(Her own identification, as Cressida Mayfield, had been lost long ago.)
Air-conditioning in late March when the bus disembarked from Fort Lauderdale. In a seat near the rear of the bus she huddled hoping to remain alone, avoiding the eyes of fellow passengers who shuffled past. Her few belongings were in the rack overhead, books, notebooks and papers on the seat beside her.
It was March 16: five days since the visit to Orion.
Five days since, in the execution chamber, she’d known that she must return to Carthage.
She had not tried to acquire her parents’ phone numbers. She might have called her mother’s sister Katie Hewett, assuming that Katie was still living in Carthage, and had a landline; but she could not force herself to call her aunt, who would recognize her voice immediately.
The prospect of seeing her family again filled her with an almost unbearable apprehension—dread, shame, yet also anticipation, hope.
Forgive me. I thought you didn’t . . .
. . . was sure you didn’t . . .
. . . love me.
She forgot, Zeno might have died. This awful thought came to her frequently but seemed then to fade almost at once.
She did not think that Arlette would have died.
