Sourland (4 page)

As Mr. Karr was not nearly so hesitant as Mrs. Karr about interpreting the story of the stabbing, in ever more elaborate and persuasive theoretical variants with the passing of time, so Mr. Karr was not nearly so careful as Mrs. Karr about shielding their daughter from the story itself. Of course—Mr. Karr never told Rhonda the story of the stabbing, directly. Rhonda's Daddy would not have done such a thing for though Gerald Karr was what he called
ultra-liberal
he did not truly believe—all the evidence of his intimate personal experience suggested otherwise!—that girls and women should not be protected from as much of life's ugliness as possible, and who was there to protect them but men?—fathers, husbands. Against his conviction that marriage is a bourgeois convention, ludicrous, unenforceable, yet Gerald Karr had entered into such a (legal, moral) relationship with a woman, and he meant to honor that vow. And he would honor that vow, in all the ways he could. So it was, Rhonda's father would not have told her the story of the stabbing and yet by degrees Rhonda came to absorb it for the story of the stabbing was told and retold by Mr. Karr at varying lengths depending upon Mr. Karr's mood and/or the mood of his listeners, who were likely to be university colleagues, or visiting colleagues from other universities.
Let me tell you—this incident that happened to Madeleine—like a fable out of Aesop.
Rhonda was sometimes a bit confused—her father's story of the stabbing shifted in minor ways—West Street became West Broadway, or West Houston—West Twelfth Street at Seventh Avenue—the late-winter season became midsummer—in Mr. Karr's descriptive words
the fetid heat of Manhattan in August
. In a later variant of the story which began to be told sometime after Rhonda's seventh birthday when her father seemed to be no longer living in the large
stucco-and-timber house on Broadmead with Rhonda and her mother but elsewhere—for a while in a minimally furnished university-owned faculty residence overlooking Lake Carnegie, later a condominium on Canal Pointe Road, Princeton, still later a stone-and-timber Tudor house on a tree-lined street in Cambridge, Massachusetts—it happened that the story of the stabbing became totally appropriated by Mr. Karr as an experience he'd had himself and had witnessed with his own eyes from his vehicle—not the Volvo but the Toyota station wagon—stalled in traffic less than ten feet from the incident: the delivery van braking to a halt, the pedestrian who'd been crossing against the light—
Caucasian, male, arrogant, in a Burberry trench coat, carrying a briefcase—doomed
—had dared to strike a fender of the van, shout threats and obscenities at the driver and so out of the van the driver had leapt, as Mr. Karr observed with the eyes of a front-line war correspondent—
Dark-skinned young guy with dreadlocks like Medusa, must've been Rastafarian—swift and deadly as a panther
—the knife, the slashing of the pedestrian's throat—a ritual, a ritual killing—sacrifice—in Mr. Karr's version just a single powerful swipe of the knife and again as in a nightmare cinematic replay which Rhonda had seen countless times and had dreamt yet more times there erupted
the incredible six-foot jet of blood even as the stricken man kept walking, trying to walk—to escape
which was the very heart of the story—the revelation toward which all else led.

What other meaning was there? What other meaning was possible?

Rhonda's father shaking his head marveling
Like nothing you could imagine, nothing you'd ever forget, the way the poor bastard kept walking—Jesus!

 

That fetid-hot day in Manhattan. Rhonda had been with Daddy in the station wagon. He'd buckled her into the seat beside him for she was a big enough girl now to sit in the front seat and not in the silly baby-seat in the back. And Daddy had braked the station wagon, and Daddy's arm had shot out to protect Rhonda from being thrown forward, and Daddy had protected Rhonda from what was out there on the street,
beyond the windshield. Daddy had said
Shut your eyes, Rhonda! Crouch down and hide your face darling
and so Rhonda had.

 

By the time Rhonda was ten years old and in fifth grade at Princeton Day School Madeleine Karr wasn't any longer quite so cautious about telling the story of the stabbing—or, more frequently, merely alluding to it, since the story of the stabbing had been told numerous times, and most acquaintances of the Karrs knew it, to a degree—within her daughter's presence. Nor did Madeleine recount it in her earlier breathless appalled voice but now more calmly, sadly
This awful thing that happened, that I witnessed, you know—the stabbing? In New York? The other day on the news there was something just like it, or almost…
Or
I still dream about it sometimes. My God! At least Rhonda wasn't with me.

It seemed now that Madeleine's new friend Drexel Hay—“Drex”—was frequently in their house, and in their lives; soon then, when they were living with Drex in a new house on Winant Drive, on the other side of town, it began to seem to Rhonda that Drex who adored Madeleine had come to believe—almost—that he'd been in the car with her on that March morning; daring to interrupt Madeleine in a pleading voice
But wait, darling!—you've left out the part about…
or
Tell them how he looked at you through your windshield, the man with the knife
—or
Now tell them how you've never gone back—never drive into the city except with me. And I drive.

Sometime around Christmas 1984 Rhonda's mother was at last divorced from Rhonda's father—it was said to be an
amicable parting
though Rhonda was not so sure of that—and then in May 1985 Rhonda's mother became Mrs. Hay—which made Rhonda giggle for
Mrs. Hay
was a comical name somehow. Strange to her, startling and disconcerting, how Drex himself began to tell the story of the stabbing to aghast listeners
This terrible thing happened to my wife a few years ago—before we'd met—

In Drex's excited narration Madeleine had witnessed a street
mugging—a savage senseless murder—a white male pedestrian attacked by a gang of black boys with switchblades—his throat so deeply slashed he'd nearly been decapitated. (In subsequent accounts of the stabbing, gradually it happened that the victim had in fact been decapitated—even as, horribly, he'd tried to run away, staggering forward until he fell.) (But was
decapitation
so easy to accomplish, cutting through the spinal cord?—Rhonda couldn't think so.) The attack had taken place
in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses and no one intervened—somewhere downtown, below Houston
—unless
over by the river, in the meat-packing district
—or
by the entrance to the Holland Tunnel
—or (maybe)
by the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, one of those wide ugly avenues like Eleventh? Twelfth?—not late but after dark.
The victim had tried to fight off his assailants—valiantly, foolishly—as Drex said
The kind of crazy thing I might do myself, if muggers tried to take my wallet from me
—but of course he hadn't a chance—he'd been outnumbered by his punk-assailants—before Madeleine's horrified eyes he'd bled out on the street.
Dozens of witnesses and no one wanted to get involved—not even a license plate number or a description of the killers—just they were “black”—“carried knives”—Poor Madeleine was in such shock, these savages had gotten a good look at her through her windshield—she thought they were “high on drugs”—only a few yards from Madeleine my God if they hadn't been in a rush to escape they'd have killed her for sure—so she couldn't identify them—who the hell would've stopped them? Not the New York cops—they took their good time arriving.

Drex spoke with assurance and authority and yet—Rhonda didn't think that the stabbing had happened quite like this. So confusing!—for it was so very hard to retain the facts of the story—if they were “facts”—from one time to the next. Each adult was so persuasive—hearing adults speak you couldn't resist nodding your head in agreement or in a wish to agree or to be liked or loved, for agreeing—and so—how was it possible to know what was
real
? Of all the stories of the stabbing Rhonda had heard it was Drex's account that was scariest—Rhonda shivered thinking of her mother being killed—trapped in her car and angry black boys smashing her car windows, dragging her out
onto the street stab-stab-stabbing…Rhonda felt dazed and dizzy to think that if Mommy had been killed then Rhonda would never have a mother again.

And so Rhonda would not be Drex Hay's
sweet little stepdaughter
he had to speak sharply to, at times; Rhonda would not be living in the brick Colonial on Winant Drive but somewhere else—she didn't want to think where.

Never would Rhonda have met elderly Mrs. Hay with the soft-wrinkled face and eager eyes who was Drex's mother and who came often to the house on Winant Drive with presents for Rhonda—crocheted sweater sets, hand-knit caps with tassels, fluffy-rabbit bedroom slippers which quickly became too small for Rhonda's growing feet. Rhonda was uneasy visiting Grandma Hay in her big old granite house on Hodge Road with its medicinal odors and sharp-barking little black pug Samson; especially Rhonda was uneasy if the elderly woman became excitable and disapproving as often she did when (for instance) the subject of the stabbing in Manhattan came up, as occasionally it did in conversation about other, related matters—urban life, the rising crime rate, deteriorating morals in the last decades of the twentieth century. By this time in all their lives of course everyone had heard the story of the stabbing many times in its many forms, the words had grown smooth like stones fondled by many hands. Rhonda's stepfather Drex had only to run his hands through his thinning rust-colored hair and sigh loudly to signal a shift in the conversation
Remember that time Madeleine was almost murdered in New York City…
and Grandma Hay would shiver thrilled and appalled
New York is a cesspool, don't tell me it's been “cleaned up”—you can't clean up filth—those people are animals—you know who I mean—they are all on welfare—they are “crack babies”—society has no idea what to do with them and you dare not talk about it, some fool will call you “racist”—Oh you'd never catch
me
driving into the city in just a car by myself—even when I was younger—what it needs is for a strong mayor—to crack down on these animals—you would wish for God to swipe such animals away with His thumb—would that be a mercy!

When Grandma Hay hugged her Rhonda tried not to shudder crinkling her nose against the elderly woman's special odor. For Rhonda's mother warned
Don't offend your new “grandma”—just be a good, sweet girl.

Mr. Karr was living now in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for Mr. Karr was now a professor at Harvard. Rhonda didn't like her father's new house or her father's new young wife nor did Rhonda like Cambridge, Massachusetts, anywhere near as much as Rhonda liked Princeton where she had friends at Princeton Day School and so she sulked and cried when she had to visit with Daddy though she loved Daddy and she liked—tried to like—Daddy's new young wife Brooke who squinted and smiled at Rhonda so hard it looked as if Brooke's face must hurt. Once, it could not have been more than the second or third time she'd met Brooke, Rhonda happened to overhear her father's new young wife telling friends who'd dropped by their house for drinks
This terrible thing that happened to my husband before we were married—on the street in New York City in broad daylight he witnessed a man stabbed to death—the man's throat was slashed, blood sprayed out like for six feet Gerald says it was the most amazing—horrible—thing he'd ever seen—the poor man just kept walking—trying to walk—with both his hands he tried to stop the bleeding—Gerald shouted out his car window—there was more than one of them—the attackers—Gerald never likes to identify them as
black—persons of color—
and the victim was a white man—I don't think the attackers were ever caught—Gerald opened his car door, and shouted at them—he was risking his life interfering—he's utterly reckless, he has the most amazing courage—the way Gerald describes it, it's like I was there with him—I was in middle school at Katonah Day at the time—just totally unknowing, oblivious—I dream of it sometimes—the stabbing—how close Gerald and I came to never meeting, never falling in love and our entire lives changed like a tragic miracle…

You'd have thought that Mr. Karr would try to stop his silly young wife saying such things that weren't wrong entirely—but certainly weren't right—and Rhonda knew they weren't right—and Rhonda was a witness staring coldly at the chattering woman who was technically speaking her
stepmother
but Mr. Karr seemed scarcely to be listening
in another part of the room pouring wine into long-stemmed crystal glasses for his guests and drinking with them savoring the precious red burgundy which appeared to be the center of interest on this occasion for Mr. Karr had been showing his guests the label on the wine bottle which must have been an impressive label judging from their reactions as the wine itself must have been exquisite for all marveled at it. Rhonda saw that her father's whiskers were bristly gray like metal filings, his face was ruddy and puffy about the eyes as if he'd just wakened from a nap—when “entertaining” in his home often Mr. Karr removed his glasses, as he had now—his stone-colored eyes looked strangely naked and lashless—still he exuded an air of well-being, a yeasty heat of satisfaction lifted from his skin. There on a nearby table was Gerald Karr's new book
Democracy in America Imperiled
and beside the book as if it had been casually tossed down was a copy of
The New York Review of Books
in which there was said to be—Rhonda had not seen it—a “highly positive” review of the book. And there, in another corner of the room, the beautiful blond silly young wife exclaiming with widened eyes to a circle of rapt listeners
Ohhh when I think of it my blood runs cold, how foolishly brave Gerald was—how close it was, the two of us would never meet and where would I be right now? This very moment, in all of the universe?