A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
“Go to Italy. Don't wait until September.”
“You'd let me go, I suppose? Yes.”
“I can't very well stop you, can I?”
“You used to talk of traveling to Egypt. And India. Remember your map books? We pretended we were ‘homesteaders' in Alaska.”
Alaska! He remembered, but vaguely.
Suddenly Deborah was saying in a low, hurtful voice, “Look at your mother and my uncle Curt. They loved—they love—each other, so much. For years she was his mistress, just a girl who couldn't have known whether he'd marry her, or care for her really; she had his child, she had faith in him. And he adored her … he adores her. That's why people hate them, out of jealousy.”
Swan rubbed his hands against his eyes. “Deborah, you're talking about my mother.”
“I know it, so what? I admire Clara, too.”
“You hate my mother. You've said.”
“She dislikes me. She sees through me, my pretensions. She's the only genuine Revere, because she isn't a Revere.”
Swan lay very still, thinking. Sleepless for so many hours he felt that thinking, the activity of his brain, was a kind of gluey fluid through which he had to propel himself, with an effort like swimming. If you cease that effort, you drown.
“I used to dream I would break free to some other country, and I'd be myself, there. I would know when I arrived, I would be so happy. Now it's different. I'm like a bulb that's burning out. Except for you I just keep going. I'm not even unhappy about it, any longer.”
“Steven, please—”
“It's like everything was decided when I was born. Like in a book, or a map. I was never able to see it.”
“Do you mean God?”
“God? What about God?”
“Seeing you. Seeing us. From some perspective we can't have.”
Swan felt the insult, that Deborah should interpret his predicament in a theological way. There was that limitation to her, the country-girl's failure of imagination, he despised.
To amuse her he told of seeing Piggott. A doctor out of the Yellow Pages. “And he couldn't draw blood out of me. My veins are all dried up.”
“What doctor? Why?”
Swan shrugged.
“Is something really wrong with you? Steven.”
It excited him to be called by that name; it might have been that he was being mistaken for another man. Swan pulled Deborah down beside him, wanting to hide himself in her body; to get through to her what he knew he must tell her: that there was a great love dammed up in him but it could not be loosed. The more rigid that love lay inside him, frozen hard, the more frantic his body was to convince both her and himself that he really did love her. She was saying, half-sobbing, “Steven, I love you—I love you. Please.”
At the very end, when he felt his backbone arching, his body dissolving in a spasm that sucked the breath out of him, he shut his eyes upon the flux of light only to see Clara's young adoring face melt in and out of his vision.
By train and by airplane. All around the world.
After she left, he dressed and went downstairs. He asked for his car. He must have looked strange because the man at the desk stared at him; when Swan returned his stare he looked away. Music was coming from somewhere behind them. Sentimental dance music, love music. Swan waited for the car to come and now it seemed that time was drawn out: there was a gilt clock over the elevator whose minute hand jumped with the passage of each minute, but very slowly, very frigidly did it move so long as Swan watched it. Some people came in, laughing. The telephone rang at the desk. Swan watched the clock. He thought it might be broken, then the minute hand jumped. At this rate it would take him a week to get there, he thought. In his imagination the highway between here and Tintern stretched out for thousands of miles, not marked on any map, a secret distortion more relentless and sterile than the great wide deserts of the Southwest, marked so blankly on the maps he had tacked up in his room at home.
Finally the car was brought around. Swan gave the man a dollar. When he drove off it seemed to him there was a slight shove, as if he were pushing off to sea and someone had given him a helpful shove with his foot. Swan squinted to get his vision clear and saw a policeman rubbing at his nose with a professional look, not three yards away. The city lights were confusing but he knew enough not to think about them. No matter how the night lights shone and wavered before him, he would drive right through them and think nothing of it. He drove slowly. He could not quite believe in the reality of his big automobile, so he had no reason to believe he might crash into someone else. Everyone else was floating by. Then he saw that it had begun to rain: was that why he had thought he was going to sea? At once the rain turned into sleet. The streets would be dangerous. It was late March, struggling into spring.
That morning Clara had said, “It's sure trying to get sunny.”
For several hours he drove straight into the sleet. No one else on the highway except trucks flashing and dimming their lights to greet him. Swan felt absurdly touched, that strangers should signal to him as if they knew him. He had to wonder: was there a secret alliance of individuals, to which unknowingly he belonged, and was it wrong of him to feel such indifference for it? Outside, shapes and ghostly lights floated by in the night, part-lighted service stations, roadside restaurants, houses, rising up and falling away in silence. He drove on. His foot became numb from the constant pressure, he was afraid to slow his speed. He had become one of those fated actors in the movie he'd seen, speeding into the dark unthinking, in the knowledge that a final scene awaited, words and actions had been scripted for him to fulfill.
He arrived at Revere Farm before morning.
Clara kept a back porch light burning, who knows why! Swan hurried from his car without troubling to shut the door, and ran to the porch. Its white wrought-iron railings were slick with ice. With the childish panic of one who'd been locked out of his house, Swan pounded on the door. He was panting, his breath steamed. Then he thought to take out his key. His fingers were trembling so from the cold, he could hardly jam the key into the lock. Overhead he heard a sound. Someone was calling. He swore and turned the key in the lock and managed to get the door open.
Clara was approaching, cautiously. She had no idea who he was: he saw his mother, Swan thought, as a stranger might see her, and was struck by her wild, astonished-looking ashy hair, her youthfulness. A silky pale-orange kimono-robe flapped around her, he was aware of her breasts encased in the bodice of a matching nightgown. Recognizing him, Clara became at once frightened, and angry.
“You! For God's sake, what are you doing? Are you drunk?”
“Is he awake? Tell him to come downstairs.” Swan was pleased with himself, he spoke so calmly.
“He thinks it's somebody trying to break in. He'll get the gun.” Clara went to call up the stairs, “It's just Steven! Your son!” There was silence upstairs. Then Swan heard Revere's slow, heavy footsteps. “Never mind, Curt, it's all right!” Clara called.
Curt. Swan still resented that name, somehow.
“No, let him come down. I want to talk with him.”
Clara stared at him. “You what?”
“I want to talk to him. You and him.” Swan could not stop shivering. There was a roaring in his ears like a distant waterfall. “We can sit in the kitchen here. Please.”
“Steven, what? Are you drunk?”
“Go sit down, I said please.”
“Your father will—”
“Shut up, Clara.”
“Look, who are you talking to?”
“I said, shut up.”
Still he was calm. He would remain calm. He dared to push his mother before him, dared actually to touch her, the silky kimono she'd purchased for herself in a Hamilton store, the fleshy heat that exuded from her. She stared at him, swallowing; she was frightened, and yet would hide it; her eyes narrowed like a cat's, yet she sat at the table where Swan had pulled out a chair, in the dark. Fumbling for the switch, Swan turned on the li
It came to him in a flash: the Reveres, and Clara and himself, seated at the old rectangular woodtop table. He could rememeber Curt Revere's seat at the table and he could remember Clark's but he wasn't sure where Jonathan had sat, or Robert. And where he'd sat, the youngest.
“Is he coming down, or what?” Swan asked. Now he was becoming impatient, listening for Revere's footsteps on the back stairs.
“He's an old man. What the hell do you want with him, like this? Can't it wait till morning? Are you in trouble, is it something that happened in the city? You didn't hurt anyone, did you?”
“Where is he?”
“If you want him, go get him yourself.”
They waited. Clara was breathing harshly, looking at Swan and then away, wiping at her eyes, as if she saw something in his face she wasn't yet ready to absorb. She was frightened, Clara was frightened at last. Long ago he had known she must be punished, she had sent him away with five dollars to buy his own lunch, she'd left his miniature antelope in the back of a taxi, she cared nothing for him. It was this judgment she saw in his face, yet could not believe.
Swan glanced down and saw that he'd tracked up the tile, his wet feet were leaving small puddles. And still he was shivering.
“Yes, look at you, you'll be sick in the morning,” Clara chided. But her words didn't quite convince either of them. Then she said, in a softer voice, “Swan—”
“Don't call me that!”
“What are you going to do?”
Revere descended the stairs slowly, one of his knees was stiff with arthritis. An old farm dog, your heart was wrenched with pity for such dogs, their baffled eyes snatching at your own. Swan half-shut his eyes. Damn he did not want to feel pity. When Revere stood in the doorway Swan saw that he'd hastily put on overalls—old work pants that were faded and soiled. His voice was hoarse, baffled.
“Steven? What are you doing here?”
Swan said, louder than he wished, “Come in here! Sit down!”
He took out his pistol and lay it on the counter, so that they could see it. His hands were shaking badly.
“What are you—”
“Stop! I can't stand you talking!” he shouted at Revere. “Come in here, sit down with her, be quiet.”
Revere came in, haltingly. He was staring at Swan's pistol. He had never seen it before, he did not approve of handguns. Since Robert's accident he did not approve of firearms on his property. Clara was sitting limply, hugging herself. She too stared at the gun, and then at Swan, startled, assessing. Her face was clammy-pale. Swan had never seen her so respectful. In the vestibule she'd looked young but in the bright overhead light you could see she was not young, fine white lines in her forehead, at the corners of her eyes, bracketing her mouth. Her skin was sallow, it was skin that now required makeup. It was not a skin to be examined closely.
Swan was trying to articulate what he wanted. He began to speak but his words ended in a gasp for breath. Dr. Piggott had not prescribed medicine for him, you could say it was Piggott's fault. He must sleep, and he would sleep. He covered the pistol with the flat of his hand as if embarrassed. “I don't want to … I mean, I want to …” He stared at them, his parents. The clock and the new refrigerator hummed, “… explain something to you.” Yet, as he stood, waiting, no words came to him. Finally he had no choice but to pick up the pistol, and check the safety.
“Swan—” Clara cried.
“I said, don't call me that! I can't stand it!”
They were calculating could they take the gun from him, he knew.
Revere, an old man suffering from high blood pressure yet canny, shrewd. And Clara.
“I came back here to explain to him, Clara. What needs to be done. To us. Before it's too late, and something happens to him.”
“Steven, no …”
Clara's bare toes were curling on the tile floor. It was preposterous, he saw what he believed to be remnants of red polish on her toenails. He said, “I want him to hear, to be a witness. Then he can explain, later.”
Sharply Clara asked, “Later—when?”
“What is he saying?” Revere asked.
“Nothing! He's crazy!” Clara got to her feet, suddenly. Swan was forced to step back against the counter. He held the gun pointed at her, not very steadily. Yet he held it, he was determined. Clara said hotly, “You, what are you doing? With your brains, how stupid you are! Never went to college, why? Look at you now, behaving like a crazy man waking us up like this. They will come and lock you up and you know what I will say?—I will say ‘The hell with him, he had all the advantages and threw them away.' ” But Clara's face seemed to break. She paused, with the look of a drowning woman. “Swan, everything I did was for you—you know that. Everything—”
“No. Not for me.”
“For you.”
“I can't stand you talking—”
“But what did I do wrong? Tell me! All my life was for you—all of it.” She was trembling, preparing to jump at him. She would use her nails. She would claw him, pummel him. She was taunting him as crude children would taunt one another. “No, you're not going to shoot. Not me, not anybody. You think you can kill your own mother? You can't, you can't pull the trigger. You're weak, you're nothing like your father, or your grandfather, that's my secret knowledge of you—‘Steven Revere.' ”
Swan raised the pistol, blindly. The roaring in his ears was deafening and yet he would remain calm, he was determined.
Revere was on his feet, moving to interfere. Clara pushed back at him, to keep him away. She taunted Swan, “Think you can pull the trigger—well, you can't! You can't!”
At the last instant Swan's hand swerved. His finger jerked on the trigger, it was the old man he struck. Revere cried out, stumbling back against the counter. He would fall, a bullet wound would blossom red in his chest, but Swan did not see him fall. Already he had lifted the gun to his own head.
12
When she was only in her mid-forties she had this strange trouble with her nerves. Sometimes the right side of her body would fall numb, as if asleep, paralyzed. She stayed at the Lakeshore Nursing Home, where she was the youngest patient: at forty-five she looked years younger and the pretty little nurses stared at her with pity. She went on trips “home”—that meant to distant and uninterested relatives—but she was never well there or anywhere, and she could not return to Revere Farm because the property had been sold, so after a while she remained at the Lakeshore Home permanently and in a few years she was not even the youngest resident any longer, though she would remain the most attractive for some time.
Clark came to visit her. Every week or two. On Sundays in good weather he took his stepmother out to dinner at the White House, a showy inn with a Negro doorman in coat and tails. Clara would be vague and distracted; she had the air of an invalid anticipating pain. If, with her tremulous hand, she overturned a glass, she sat staring at the water soaking into the white linen tablecloth as if it were a catastrophe she might as well see through to the end.
In his car that was showy too, in the way of mid-century America, Clark drove the mostly silent woman along the lakeshore. Sometimes he brushed tears from his eyes, while driving. He wasn't an alcoholic: he could control his drinking. Still, a few shots could trigger his emotions. He talked to Clara about his children, about his wife, the damned lumberyard he hated and wished to hell would burn down. He talked about how things were changing in the valley, how Tintern was expanding; there was a West Tintern now, with a shopping center, fast-food restaurants. On land his brother Steven had bought cheap.
He was crude, head-on as a flummoxed farm animal. Saying “Steven”—“Steve”—as if not knowing how the name, the mere sound of that word, would make Clara stiffen.
Or if he knew, not giving a damn.
“You're the only one who knows. You were there. The only one
With the passage of years, Clark came to see Clara less frequently. Every month, every two months. But he telephoned her, and he never forgot Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day. At the Home, Clara was Clark's mother: though he looked hardly younger than Clara, the nurses would call out to Mrs. Revere, “Your son is here, Clara. Here he is.” A hefty man, inclined to wheezing. His stomach hung over his straining belt. His face was beefy, the ruins of a good-looking boy's face. There was something fierce and tender in his manner, as he stood at the doorway of “Mrs. Revere's” room, turning his panama hat in his hands.
Clark pretended not to notice how annoyed Clara could be when he interrupted her television programs. She was in her early fifties now: she'd begun to gain weight at last. The Home was a private establishment, and expensive. From her husband she'd inherited far more money than even the Home would devour, though she wasn't much aware of it, or grateful for it. It was Judd Revere who oversaw the finances, with Clark's approval. Clark said repeatedly, “She could get well if she wanted to. She could live with us.” But at the door of his stepmother's room, peering in at her, he wasn't so sure. On either side of her mouth there were sharp lines. Her once-beautiful eyes were bloodshot and clouded and ringed with soft puffy tissue. Her once-beautiful ashy hair, now thinning at the crown, dry and brittle. Clark might have been waiting for the younger Clara to return, as if it were a matter of his showing up at the right time.
He was a suitor. He was a long-lost son, confusing her with his own mother whom he scarcely recalled. He insisted upon taking her from her room, out into a garden area where goldfinches hovered about feeders, and some of the more active residents trimmed roses. Clark steered Clara to their usual bench, where he could brood and mourn the past, seated with his fleshy thighs outspread and his elbows on his knees. When he asked Clara how she felt, she would answer reluctantly, as if the effort wearied her, or bored her.