Wonderland (61 page)

It was possible that Reva had not yet had an abortion.

He would drive up to Hilsinger and get her. Save her. No, he would not perform any abortion on her; he would marry her; he would be the father of that baby.
I didn’t know what else to do
, Reva had said, frightened. He would be the father of that unborn baby, that mysterious baby, perhaps the one baby he was meant to father out of the entire universe of confused, blundering human beings.… Excited, he leafed through the directory again, glancing at the names, the columns of names … and
none of them meant anything to him, he didn’t give a damn for any of them, not one.… If Reva Denk’s name was not in this book, the book had no value.

He shoved the directory back onto its metallic shelf and went out to his car. He started driving north, north toward Milwaukee; at a gas station thirty miles away he stopped to get gas and a road map, and he thought that maybe he should call his wife, maybe it was now time.… But to tell her what? That she was right, he wanted to pay off his debts and be free, he would never see her again? Never see the girls again?

He drove on.

He could not call her. He did not dare call her. He imagined his saying,
Helene, I have to leave you
, and he imagined her perfectly cool voice in reply:
But I will have another baby for you. Another baby for you. Isn’t that what you want, another baby?

And then he would never be able to leave her.

Dawn. Jesse woke in the front seat of his car, his mouth pounding with dry heat, his eyes sore, raw. He knew at once where he was and something moved in his stomach, low in his belly, a sense of disaster.

He was somewhere outside Hilsinger, Wisconsin. His car on the shoulder of a narrow highway. Nearby, a ditch choked with weeds—pastureland—a stunted, sparse clump of trees. He rubbed his eyes and the landscape took on no more significance. His mouth was dry, the back of his tongue raw with heat as if he had a fever there, concentrated there. Had he spent the night arguing? He remembered arguing in his sleep. Arguing with Helene, with Mrs. Pedersen, with Reva … there were too many women in his life and he needed to clear himself of them permanently.

He sat up stiffly. Moved himself with care. Got behind the steering wheel again, peered at his face in the mirror—that thatch of red-blond hair, wild from a night of misery, of argument, lifting from his forehead with its usual despairing energy.
I am going to marry you. No abortion
.

Why?

He did not believe in abortion, in death. He believed only in life.

Yes, but why?

In life. In life.

But why in life?

He got the car going again, backed around on the highway, and passed at once the “tourist court” that had been closed the night before—the proprietor, a middle-aged man, had refused to give him a cabin last night and had told him to come back in the morning. Well, it was morning now but he was damned if he was going there. He drove angrily past—just a row of ugly little cabins, no more than shacks with screens that belled out loosely and a garbage dump only a few hundred yards away.

Hilsinger: a name on Reva’s lips, melodic and inviting. He had been thinking of that name for some weeks. But Hilsinger itself, the real place, the town itself, was not melodic and inviting at all; it was a dull, dismal, ordinary town of about three thousand people, built along the banks of a narrow river, with a few mills and warehouses and some new gas stations and hamburger stands out along the highway. In the distance were hills, a hazy blend of earth and sky no one but Jesse would bother to look at. The air was chilly and assaulting. He needed to wake up. He needed to get that taste of death out of his mouth.

He turned into the parking lot of a diner. Several large trucks were already parked there. Inside, he ordered a cup of coffee. The woman behind the counter gave him an appraising look. How was he dressed? How had he left home? He couldn’t quite remember but he suspected he had a hunted, perplexed look. He rubbed his sore eyes and finished his coffee and asked for a glass of water. His stomach was heavy, pulling him down. He felt sick. Noticing the waitress staring at him, he felt how easily he had become another person—someone to be stared at, someone to rub his eyes slowly and miserably, in bewilderment, in a sleazy diner in Hilsinger, Wisconsin. It did not seem probable that he was Jesse Vogel, M.D., an associate of Roderick Perrault. It did not seem probable that he was a married man, the father of two children, or that he had inherited $600,000, or that he could perform delicate, patient little operations upon the human brain, yes, the human brain, though right at the moment his eyes and mouth felt encrusted with a kind of dull, pulsating, feverish scum.

“Could you give me some information?” Jesse said.

The waitress, startled, seemed to leap forward. She picked up a filthy yellow sponge and began fingering it, picking at it.

“I’m looking for an art school that’s supposed to be up here. An art colony …?”

“Art colony?”

“I’m from Chicago and I’m looking for an artist named Raeder. I understand he has a kind of art school up here,” Jesse said.

The waitress began wiping the counter in front of him slowly, thoughtfully, with the yellow sponge. “Well, there’s some painters outside town,” she said, “they rented the old Case farm.…”

“Where is that?”

“Oh, just up the highway, outside town, maybe a mile away.…” She looked at him and Jesse saw a very ordinary, friendly, cautious woman of about thirty-five, he felt a sudden surge of pity for her and for her life. But the look she gave him was pitying. “On the mailbox it probably says Case, they probably didn’t bother to change it. A big old place with some barns.… Are you a painter too? They had some painters up from the city to take courses or something. I don’t know what happened. There was some fracas, something went on, a fight or something … it didn’t get in the newspaper … that was maybe five months ago.…”

“I’m not a painter. I’m just up for a visit,” Jesse said.

Jesse found the farm without any trouble. Over the name
CASE
on the mailbox there had been painted the name
MAX RAEDER
in big white bloated balloon letters, the kind of expansive letters used in cartoons to indicate mirth. Self-parodying mirth. Jesse turned up the bumpy drive and at once a large dirty collie ran out after him, barking. Some chickens ran loose. The farmhouse was in poor condition, and behind it were other, more dilapidated buildings—a barn, a kind of coop that had been painted half-way around in a bright unbelievable red color, a few shanties. Two mud-splattered cars and a pickup truck were parked in the driveway.

Jesse got out of the car in spite of the angry dog. “Go away. Get. Go to hell,” he muttered. A man peered out of the house, opening the door cautiously, Jesse saw that it was not Raeder. “Hello,” he called, “hello—can I talk to you? Is Max Raeder there?”

The man came out onto the porch, shivering. He wore only an
undershirt and jeans. “Max is in bed,” he said. “Are you a friend of his or what?”

“I’m a friend of Reva’s.”

“Oh, Reva. Reva. Well yes, Reva.…” the man said slowly. He was not quite a man, really a boy of about nineteen—sandy-haired, smiling, bearded. His skin was rough and some of the pimples had run together into patches of red that looked painful, like burns. “Did you say Reva? Are you a friend of hers?”

“Yes, I think she’s expecting me.”

“Well, yes.… Reva’s in bed too.”

Jesse’s pulse leaped.

Now a woman came out of the house, wearing a raincoat and slippers. Her bare legs were very pale in the morning light.

The boy said to her politely, “Annie, this is a friend of Reva’s. Is she maybe up yet?”

“You know nobody’s up yet,” the woman said irritably. She called the dog back. Jesse, trying to smile at her, afraid of the dog and afraid of what was waiting for him inside the house, felt with a peculiar, lightheaded, almost sweetish panic the sickness of his bowels, his head, the back of his mouth. It was at the back of his mouth that his soul began, and there the sickness began. The woman looked at him, sharp-eyed. Her hair was stringy and long. “How come you’re up here so early, mister? It’s pretty early to be causing so much trouble.”

Jesse imagined Reva in bed with that man—the man of the photograph—the two of them clutching each other in a musty, ill-smelling bed, on a dirty mattress, beneath dirty quilts. Reva entangled in a stranger’s arms and perfectly happy.

“I can wait until they wake up,” Jesse said.

He was very excited.

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.