Wonderland (14 page)

But once they were alone Dr. Pedersen smiled at him and settled back in his chair. A wait of several seconds. Then he said, in a very kindly voice, “My boy, you are fourteen years old?”

“Yes,” said Jesse.

“When is your birthday?”

“October third.”

“You did not attend school this spring, I was told. Why was this?”

“I’ll be going back. I was sick for a while.”

“Oh. Yes. You were sick for a while,” Dr. Pedersen said. He smiled slightly, as if to encourage Jesse to speak. Relax, Jesse. Smile. Jesse was conscious of sitting very straight.

“You are interested in school, aren’t you? You enjoy it?”

“Yes,” Jesse said.

A lie. But maybe it would become true.

“Which subjects do you prefer?”

“I don’t know.…”

“You don’t know,” Dr. Pedersen said flatly. “You don’t know?”

“Well … science.…”

“Science,” Dr. Pedersen said. “Which branch of science?”

Jesse had no idea. He stared at the floor.

“Are you primarily interested in living things or in dead things?”

“Living things.”

“Ah, then—biology! You are interested in biology.”

Jesse could not bring himself to say yes. He nodded vaguely.

A big man, this Dr. Pedersen—an immense torso, an immense stomach that bulged out against the front of his suit coat, straining the material. Enormous thighs. Knees that strained the material of his
trousers so tightly it looked as if it might rip. Jesse could not help but stare at the man’s large ankles, the size of an ordinary man’s knees, swelling out against his black socks. His feet, though, were rather short. His hands were pudgy but rather short.

“You intend to go to college, of course,” Dr. Pedersen said.

Jesse raised his eyes miserably to the man’s face.

“College …?”

“You intend to continue your education beyond high school, don’t you?”

“I don’t know …”

“Why are you in doubt?”

“I don’t know anything about college … nobody ever went that I … I knew.…”

“But you have a willingness to learn?”

“I guess so.…”

“To go as far as you can, as far as your abilities will take you?”

“I guess so,” Jesse said faintly.

Silence. Dr. Pedersen’s voice was subdued and lethargic, his face pale, moony, damp. Yet there was a peculiar excitement in him. It had something to do with his clothes, his expensive stylish clothes, and the way his body strained at them so fiercely. He seemed very pleased with Jesse’s last reply. Jesse stirred himself to add to it, to continue. “I … I want to go as far as I can.…” he said.

“Yes.”

Dr. Pedersen smiled at him, watching him as if from a distance. He needs a telescope to examine me, Jesse thought dizzily. His face was strained from the small frightened smile he had brought with him to the interview, but he could not relax, there was nothing to take the place of that smile. He felt as if Dr. Pedersen were staring into the hollow spaces of his skull, seeing everything, assessing everything. The doctor nodded from time to time, as if their conversation were continuing in silence, while Jesse sat in an unnaturally straight position, conscious of being very skinny. He had lost about fifteen pounds since winter.

“Do you believe, Jesse, that there are human destinies just as there are national destinies? That a human being must realize himself, redeem himself, by becoming what he was meant to be?” Dr. Pedersen
asked. Jesse stared at him without comprehension. He went on, more gently, as if speaking to a child. “You are perhaps too young to understand the currents that pass between people, the relationships that are too subtle to be talked about, that elude analysis. Yes, you are very young. These things must be explained to you. There are certain tugs of feeling between people—an almost literal tugging, a pulling—that cannot be predicted or understood, and yet they exist as surely as our material universe exists. Though I am a doctor and a man of science, and as such committed absolutely to the world of the material, the world of measurement, yet I believe also in the world of the spirit as well … I believe that the spirit is very strong, stronger than the body … and that it is our spirits that commune with one another, in silence.”

Jesse nodded slowly.

“Well, I will say good-by to you for this afternoon,” Dr. Pedersen said in a more formal voice. He stood and shook hands with Jesse, taking Jesse’s thin hand in both of his and squeezing it.

All that week Jesse asked Mr. Foley if he had heard anything. Had Dr. Pedersen said anything to him? What would happen? Jesse kept going back over the conversation, angry with himself for not having said more, for having sat so passively, so stupidly.… He had been a child of action, always doing things, running around, getting into trouble; he could remember that part of his life clearly. And yet it seemed to belong to another boy, another Jesse, and he didn’t know how to get back to being that person, that self. Sometimes he felt a flurry of panic, to think that he was nothing at all, that he did not exist. What did that mean—
to exist?
He tried to remember the strange things Dr. Pedersen had said to him, as if he, Jesse Harte, could understand them. No one in his life had ever talked like that to him. He did not understand. It made no sense.
A human being … must become what he was meant to be
.… But though the words made no sense, though back in Yewville people would just have laughed at them, Jesse had the idea that they were attached to something real, something invisible and terrifying in its reality.

He went around arguing with himself. Angry and yearning. Here he was: in an orphanage. The Niagara County Home for Boys. His heart hammered when he thought of Dr. Pedersen, the bulk of the man, the enormous swelling energy of the man.… He had never met
anyone like Dr. Pedersen He had never heard anyone talk like that. As the week passed he kept hearing Dr. Pedersen’s voice in his ears, as if he were still close by, talking gently and relentlessly at Jesse. He was baffled, angry. He did not want to remain in this place, and yet there was no way for him to leave except by being adopted, or taken into a foster home. Since he’d come here to live, one boy had already gone out into a foster home and come back again. The boys were scrawny and rat-faced and stupid, most of them. There was a look of quick, evasive cunning to them, as if they were happiest in small packs, mumbling jokes behind their hands … and Jesse was among them, scrawny himself, his face so thin that it, too, had that ratty, sharp, deprived look, and also an expression of vagueness. The boys’ faces were sharp, but they were also vague and anonymous. One of them might turn out to be another one; Jesse often mistook one boy for another, mixing up their names but also mixing up their faces, mixing them up. He lived in the Niagara County Home for Boys. He hated the Jesse Harte who lived here, who was in the files, here, in someone’s manila folder.

He kept hanging around Mr. Foley, He asked about Dr. Pedersen—did he operate on people? Did he save people’s lives? Jesse half shut his eyes and saw again the big puffy knees straining the material of the trousers. Did Dr. Pedersen have any children? How many children? Where did he live? On the brink of tears, feeling himself skinny and defeated, he followed Mr. Foley around for a week. Dr. Pedersen was a strange man, he kept saying. But Mr. Foley never agreed to this, not really. Dr. Pedersen was so fat, Jesse said,
fat
. But maybe he was too thin himself. His ribs showed. His wrists were bony. His upper arms were too thin for a boy, weren’t they? He tried to recall Dr. Pedersen’s words for Mr. Foley, but he could not quite remember them.
To go as far … as your abilities will take you
.… “Do you think he’ll come back?” Jesse asked Mr. Foley.

On Friday afternoon he went to Lockport by himself, hitching a ride in. This was not allowed but he hardly thought of it, every cell in his body strained forward, eager, perspiring, alert, anxious to get him into the city, the city where Dr. Pedersen lived! He had been hacking away at some dead weeds and near the edge of the field he had simply put down his small scythe and walked away. One of the boys called after him, “Hey! Hey you! Jesse!” Jesse had not bothered to reply. It did not matter what he was called in that place, which name they called
him. His name, “Jesse,” was not a word he acknowledged there. They might call him anything and he would not acknowledge it.

He wandered around Main Street, walking slowly. He had the idea that Dr. Pedersen might come along at any moment. He felt confused, a little frightened. What was going to happen to him? Traffic passed continually and he was impressed with how busy this city was, much busier than Yewville, many more people … small crowds of shoppers on Friday afternoon … many boys his own age, in little groups, glancing at him but not bothering with him.… In a drugstore he looked through the telephone directory and came across Dr. Pedersen’s name. There were two addresses after the name, one for his home on Locust Street and one for his clinic on Plank Road. Jesse was very excited. He memorized the addresses. Then he looked through the Yellow Pages and came across Dr. Pedersen’s name under the heading
Physicians;
eagerly he underscored the name with his finger:
Dr. Karl Pedersen, General Medicine
. The same addresses! Jesse wandered out onto the street again and looked at the street sign. He would find Dr. Pedersen’s home. He walked for a while in one direction, but could not find Locust Street. He was not really lost, he believed, yet it would have been difficult for him to find his way back to the Home. After a while he asked someone where Locust Street was; the girl, who was his own age, seemed to look at him strangely. How shameful it was to be so weak, so skinny! He wondered if Dr. Pedersen had forgotten him, if he had decided against him and was making plans now to adopt another boy. Why, why was he so thin, so scrawny? He climbed to Locust Street—Lockport seemed to be built on a number of hills—and was alarmed at how weak he felt when he got there. His brain raced. He argued with himself, snatches of words that made no sense, he even put his fingers around his wrist, nervously measuring it.…

There, there was the Pedersen home!

A vast three-story house made of a very dark gray stone. Many windows, framed in white. Yes, many windows; it dazzled Jesse to see so many of them. In front, there were two high pillars and a large front door made of heavy wood, and, just before the steps, two stone animals—maybe lions—that seemed to be guarding the house in their sleep. The lawn was a very bright, neat green, and had evidently been seeded only recently. The grass looked fragile; Jesse could see faint rake marks in the earth through the blades of grass. The house and its
large lawn were surrounded by a waist-high iron fence with leafy patterns in it. Jesse stood nervously on the public sidewalk, staring at the house. He was afraid that someone would notice him out here, that someone in the house might glance out the window and see him. What if Dr. Pedersen himself looked out?… Jesse walked by the house several times, staring. He ran his fingers along the iron fence. They came away a little dusty. He was aware of danger, yet he could not leave … he walked by the house again … he wondered what would happen if he went inside the gate, up the steps past those stone lions, what would happen if he rang the doorbell?

But he hadn’t the nerve for this. So he hesitated on the sidewalk, looking around. And he saw a very fat woman approaching him from the corner. She walked with her shoulders slumped forward and her head bowed, so that her thick, babyish chin was squeezed against her throat. She wore a white blouse out of which her thick upper arms pushed, like pale sausages, and a dark cotton gathered skirt that billowed out about her wide hips. Jesse backed away, seeing her. She looked familiar. But she did not seem to notice him, she hardly glanced up as she approached, and when she came to the Pedersen house she turned up the walk, moving slowly, wearily, as if she were very old. But Jesse had been mistaken about her age—she was not even a woman, but only a girl about his own age, or younger, with a very fair, luminous skin, eyes that were heavily lashed and almost shadowed, but a small prim pink mouth that resembled Dr. Pedersen’s.

He stared at her as she walked so slowly and laboriously right up to the Pedersen house, entering it as if it belonged to her, so naturally and easily entering it, coming home. His heart beat with a terrible yearning. He wanted to call out after her. But he only stared, and after a few minutes he backed away, across the street to the other side, backing away from the big stone house, amazed at its size, at the spread of elms and oaks and bushes around it. He kept measuring his wrist nervously, absentmindedly.

That evening Dr. Pedersen and his wife came to see him.

He escaped being punished because of their visit. Good luck, what good luck, he thought greedily, dizzily, as Mr. Foley led him to the office. Dr. Pedersen shook hands with him as if they were old acquaintances and introduced him to his wife. She was a short woman with an immense body, though not as large as her husband’s, but squat and soft
and strangely lifeless, as if the weight of her flesh were a burden she was not accustomed to. Her face was high-colored and strained, the cheeks flushed, the eyes very bright. Out of the soft, inert ripeness of her flesh her features stared with a bright, hectic alertness. Yet beneath the face, beneath the plump chin, her body seemed to ooze without shape, inertly. She smiled at Jesse and was too shy to extend her hand when Dr. Pedersen introduced them.

“Well. It is a warm evening,” Dr. Pedersen announced.

Mrs. Pedersen nodded at once, smiling at Jesse. Jesse imitated her and nodded. His heart was pounding very hard and he wondered if Dr. Pedersen could sense his nervousness.

“Well. Jesse Harte. We must sit down together, commune together.” They sat. Dr. Pedersen seemed larger than Jesse had remembered. He wore a gray suit of fine, expensive material, and a silvery-gray vest, and a dark tie. He crossed his legs with care, raising one leg and easing it over the other, then drawing it back slightly so that his ankle rested on the knee of the other leg, and the large sole of his shoe faced outward, facing Jesse, a blank smooth gray sole. Jesse could see his flesh above the top of the black socks. Dr. Pedersen looked at him gravely. His face was prim, pursed. He drew in his breath slowly, not opening his mouth but widening his nostrils. It was a luxury, the way he breathed—he seemed to be tasting, assessing the very air.