Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates
“You see, Miss Mayfield, in the most elementary sense it isn’t ‘fair’—it isn’t ‘just’—to make an exception for a single student, while others struggle to get their work in on time.”
Cressida stood stunned. Cressida did not dare lift her eyes to the professor’s bright alert eyes, that were fixed upon her in a way she wished to perceive as kindly, and not assessing.
“That no one else in the class could possibly have accomplished this in the same period of time is beside the point, you see. I’d given a deadline—many times. And you chose to ignore it.”
Ignore. Cressida tried to comprehend ignore.
“Can you explain why this is so late? Apart from its length, and its excellence, I mean.”
Cressida stood very still trying to think. A flutter of thoughts in her head, like frantic butterflies. A terrible impulse came to her, to seize the Frankenstein project in her arms, to take it back from Professor Eddinger and run from his office—except, where?
The river. To the river. You must throw yourself into the river.
“I hope you were not ‘experimenting’ with me? Testing me, to see if I would accept this late paper, despite the deadline?”
Numbly Cressida shook her head, no.
In slow drowning waves the knowledge washed over Cressida, her professor did not think that she was so special after all.
He didn’t know her father Zeno. Was that it!
To the river! You are so ridiculous, so ugly.
Ugly should not be allowed to live.
When Cressida couldn’t seem to reply, Professor Eddinger continued, now in a rapid, vexed voice: “Miss Mayfield, there is no question but that your work is good. I mean—very good. I mean—brilliant. I found myself utterly enchanted by this ‘project’ even though, initially, I’d been reluctant even to examine it, because you handed it in so late, and without any attempt of an excuse—a medical excuse, for instance.” Eddinger paused, as if giving Cressida an opportunity to claim—what? (Dyslexia, autism? Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, paranoia? Stupidity?) “Unlike some gifted students I’ve had in the past, you don’t work swiftly and carelessly—or, if you work swiftly, you take exceptional care, and revise. And expand. This is the way of the ‘creative artist’—to revise, expand. But there really isn’t time for that sort of perfectionism in a university semester. And ‘Romantics & Revolutionaries’ is an undergraduate, three-hundred-level course. I would not criticize you for spending too much time on this project but only for refusing to acknowledge the restrictions others were obliged to acknowledge. Obviously this is an A-plus project, if it were to be graded at all.” On a sheet of paper, Eddinger scrawled, in red Magic Marker ink, A+, as if he were speaking now to a kindergarten student. “You see, this is the ‘grade’ if there were a grade. But the project is nine days late, and I have made my requirements as clear as possible, and cannot and will not alter them for anyone. I realize that this is petty, Miss Mayfield—but it is necessary, for pettiness can be a virtue, at times. Because the project is late, it must be penalized. Not the project, which is A plus as we have seen, but its lateness—that grade is D.” With an irritable flourish, Eddinger scrawled D.
Was he intending to suggest the childishness of grades? The pettiness? Yet Cressida stood stunned, uncomprehending.
In truth, she’d forgotten that she would be graded. In her long hours immersed in the project, particularly in the numerous line-drawings she’d done out of which she’d selected just a fraction to include in the project, she had forgotten that she would be handing in the work to a professor, to be assessed and judged.
“I—I don’t know what I . . . I don’t . . . I guess, I . . .”
Like a brain-damaged person Cressida stammered. These words were thick and ungainly in her mouth like big clots of uncooked dough and her mouth was suddenly dry of saliva, she could not swallow.
“Unless,” Eddinger persisted, “—there is some sort of ‘disability’ you might claim? A health issue, medical excuse . . .”
Cressida shook her head, no.
Vehemently Cressida shook her head, no.
She felt a wave of disgust wash over her. Self-disgust like a bad taste in the mouth.
For there was a familiarity about this situation, it was not new or original. Déjà vu was the term, always accompanied by a sensation of disgust, nausea.
In high school too Cressida Mayfield had surprised, shocked, disconcerted, disappointed and annoyed her teachers, she’d heard their voices of regret tinged with vexation, frustration; she heard her parents’ voices—Oh Cressida! Oh honey—again?
And Zeno, registering disgust as well as dismay. God damn, Cressie! Not again.
Blindly Cressida turned, and ran out of Professor Eddinger’s office. She heard him call after her but paid no heed.
Run run run you are so stupid, so ugly. Get to the river before it’s too late and they stop you.
At the river, south of Canton.
On the riverbank walking swiftly. Away from the small town, and from the university she’d come to despise.
For it was a death sentence, unmistakably.
If she did not lack courage.
Better to have never been born. This is the most ancient wisdom.
As far as her legs could carry her. Though she’d been exhausted from sleepless nights working on the Frankenstein project yet now she was suffused with a strange radiant throbbing energy and she was whispering and muttering to herself as in a language newly discovered and known only to her.
How she hated the university, and all who dwelled there! Misshapen creatures ascending and descending stairs and many of the stairs upside-down and none took notice for the damned souls in Hell have no eyes with which to see their own ludicrous fates.
(The university that despised her.)
(The university that had rejected her.)
(But Cressida could not ever admit this! How to explain to her parents?)
(In all of the biological world it is only the human world in which parents are stricken by the shame of their offspring. Not in any species other than Homo sapiens is this possible.)
Better just to die, to put an end to her life. It would be a mercy certainly to spare poor Zeno saying another time with forced Daddy-bravado But still, Cressie—you can try . . . Maybe transfer in your junior year to Cornell . . .
And Arlette would want to hug her, to console her. And Cressida in a paroxysm of self-loathing did not want to be consoled.
As far as her (now faltering) legs would carry her. Whispering and muttering and laughing to herself. The professor had not liked her. Always you believe that those whom you adore will adore you. Not in any species other than Homo sapiens is this possible—this delusion! The professor had seemed to be inviting his most brilliant student to claim a disability—or did he think she was crazy?
“The fact is: I am the sanest person I know.”
Sadly Cressida laughed. That was a depressing fact.
Running out of the professor’s office like a little cornered rat that has managed to escape her corner. The look in the man’s face—in his eyes. He’d been frightened of her!
God damn she wished now she’d taken the Frankenstein project away with her but she’d have had to step around the stunned professor to approach the table and might’ve come close to touching him and the professor might’ve recoiled from Cressida or might have attempted to restrain her and—
Better to forget. Erase from her mind.
Trembling at the thought of stepping so close to him. Risking the man’s touch.
As it was, his eyes had caught at hers. She would not soon forget that.
Because the project is late it must be penalized.
Better for you to die. Never to have been born.
Her other university courses she’d neglected for weeks in order to work on the project for Eddinger who’d rejected her anyway. And now exams in a few days for which she wasn’t prepared. And an exam in Eddinger’s course, she could not
Could not possibly see the man again.
He had rejected her.
And now she hated him.
Thinking how she deserved to be annihilated, obliterated. Erased.
All so petty.
And what a clean death it would be, to throw herself into this rapidly-rushing river so much wider and deeper than the Black Snake River of Beechum County. Swept downstream, vanished. No one would know where she’d gone.
No one would miss her. Not for hours.
Except the riverbank was choked with underbrush and debris from recent storms. Thorns catching at her clothing, her hands.
The St. Lawrence had flooded its banks a few weeks before. Small bridges over local creeks had been washed away. She was desperate to find a bridge, for she would have to throw herself from a bridge in order to drown most effectively.
The nearest bridge was back in Canton. But traffic flowed over this bridge in a continuous stream.
There stood Brett Kincaid at a little distance, on the riverbank.
Cressida don’t, that is a mistake.
Wanting to hide her face in shame so that Brett Kincaid would not see.
I am your secret friend Cressida. You can’t hurt yourself, you would be hurting me.
Was this true? Cressida wanted to think it was true.
Now she was more than two miles from Canton in the countryside she was beginning to feel better.
Beginning to feel relieved, less exhausted.
It was so, she wanted to “die”—she wanted to “disappear”—but she did not want to be dead.
Dead was dull flat black-matte. Dead was an empty hive.
If dead she would never see Brett Kincaid again.
Her brother he would be, her brother-in-law—her secret friend.
She would not ever see her parents again, and Juliet—whom she loved.
“If they love me I guess I love them.”
She had no existence, in herself. From earliest childhood she had believed this. Rather she was a reflecting surface, reflecting others’ perception of her, and love of her.
So strangely her heart was beating, she could not catch her breath.
This happened to Cressida sometimes when she was very excited, anxious. When she was very happy.
Her narrow rib cage rising and falling and quavering with the quick pulse of her heart.
Heedless if anyone might be observing her she lay down on the weedy riverbank, amid thorns and spiky grasses. This was not a comfortable place in which to lie but when Cressida’s heart beat quickly she had learned to lie down flat on her back and lift her arms above her head and slowly inhale/exhale and to repeat this several times and often then the rapid heartbeat would slow to normal. She’d never told anyone about this infirmity, if that was what it was.
Heart palpitations. Racing to keep pace with her thoughts.
She had hiked several miles from Canton. Now her legs were tired, with a pleasurable ache. In the May sunshine lying on her back in the spongy grass she fell into a doze. She fell into a dream of home—of the creaky porch-swing on the side deck of the house on Cumberland Avenue in which suddenly she was lying, wrapped in Daddy’s disreputable old red-plaid camping blanket from L.L. Bean, that Mom was always trying to throw away and Daddy was always retrieving from the trash. She smiled, remembering: that scratchy old blanket, that gave such comfort on chilly nights! Yet still she was lying in the sun—the sun beat against her eyelids. Cressida? Cressida. Not twenty feet away the young soldier regarded her with concerned eyes. He alone knew her heart, he alone cared for her. He was leaning on crutches—this was a new development. She could only just make out his face which was cruelly scarred.
“MISS?”—it was a male voice, more annoyed than concerned, waking her from her stuporous sleep; a man, a young soldier, in U.S. Army fatigues, wanting to sit in the seat beside her and so would she move her things? “Thanks!”
In New York City in the massive Port Authority bus terminal she transferred to a bus bound for Watertown in upstate New York. Here she saw many young soldiers in fatigues, in small groups in the cavernous waiting room and queuing in bus lines and among these soldiers were young women. By this time she was very sick.
Head wracked in pain. Each thought was a shard of glass sharp and wounding.
Skin burning and sensitive to the touch as if the outermost layer had been peeled off and she was dazed and exhausted from a dozen trips to the lavatory her insides emptying out in rushes of scalding diarrhea. She could not keep food down but gagged helplessly. Even water, she could not tolerate.
Coming home. If anyone will know me.
Forgive me.
PART III
The Return
THIRTEEN
The Long Wall
April 2012
DRIVING THE LONG WALL.
Sixty-foot-high wall with no (visible) end.
So suddenly the wall looms close beside you—you failed to see the beginning of the wall and can’t see the end.
The wall is of finite substance: concrete. But its circumference is infinite.
You are outside the wall, driving the long wall. Inside, the wall encircles.
Though the (exterior) wall can be measured the (interior) wall cannot be measured.
The color of old, soiled bones. The long wall.
In the distance you’d seen the long wall but had not recognized it for never before had you seen anything like the long wall sixty feet high bordering a state highway.
Inside, hidden from civilian eyes, the Clinton Correctional Facility for Men at Dannemora, New York.
Until suddenly the long wall looms beside your vehicle so high you can’t see its height nor can you see the guards’ watch-towers at intervals at the top of the long wall.
The long wall, that looms just a few feet to the right of your vehicle. The long wall that swallows up most of the view from the windshield of your vehicle.
How many miles on Route 375! How many hours through the careening countryside, glacier-hills of the Adirondacks in the coldest most northern edge of New York State.
The long wall, of the hue of old bones. Bordering the small town of Dannemora.
To the right of Route 375 North, the long wall stretching to infinity.
To the left of Route 375 North, the bleak storefronts of Dannemora.
Driving the long wall where at the (gated) entrance you will be permitted inside. Where somewhere inside the long wall he is waiting for you.
Into the small bleak town of Dannemora outside the long wall as the banks of the Styx border that bleak river. Into and through Dannemora which is a deserted town at this hour of the morning and yet, the long wall continues.
FOURTEEN
The Church of the Good Thief
March 2012
HE WAS A TRUSTEE. He was trusted.
In the mental unit and in the adjoining hospice he was an orderly, for it was his role to establish and maintain order.
Though not a (baptized) Catholic yet he was Father Kranach’s closest and most trusted assistant in all matters of the upkeep of the Church of the Good Thief and at counseling sessions in which the chaplain participated; and an editor of the prison newspaper which appeared on alternate Mondays.
He’d been a corporal in the U.S. Army. Wounded in the U.S. Army in the war in Iraq and somehow, this was known and respected in the prison among both inmates and guards.
Though long-ago discharged. Sent back home wounded and broken and less than a man yet through prayer strengthened and reclaimed to himself as a man trapped to the waist in quicksand might haul himself out of his imminent death by the frantic actions of his hands, hands and arms, pulling himself up by a rope to save his life so the corporal had managed to restore some measure of his manhood and the dignity of his manhood and some measure of his ruined soul.
Prayer to others beside Jesus Christ for instance to Saint Dismas who was the Good Thief, he’d learned to pray as you might speak to one of your
Of the two malefactors crucified beside Jesus on Calvary hill it was Saint Dismas who was the “Good Thief” of legend. For it was Saint Dismas who had rebuked the other thief who’d taunted Jesus if ye be King of the Jews, save thyself and us, with the fierce words, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
And in his last agony yet Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Many times the corporal had read these words in the Bible, given to him by the Catholic priest Father Kranach. Many times reading the book of Luke which was one of the shorter books of the New Testament, filled with wonders as with horror and revulsion.
For Jesus did despair. There was no doubt, Jesus did despair as a man would despair in his place.
And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Holding the Bible at an awkward angle in front of his face. His single “good” eye. Near-transparent fine-printed pages lifted to a wan fluorescent light in his cell shared with another inmate.
Gave up the ghost. These words so struck him.
Gave up the ghost. He had wished this but God had not taken from him his life that was damned, and worse than damned—of no more worth than trash, feces dried and flaking on a nearby wall not hosed-down in years.
In his former life in his former religion which was the Protestant religion the corporal had not known of the Good Thief for he had known little of the existence of saints and the influence of saints upon humankind. And still in this new radically altered life—(he did not wish to think this was the afterlife)—he was slow to believe in the authority of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and in the rituals and prayers of that Church though his closest friend was Father Fred Kranach who had counseled the corporal in his hour of need seeing in the corporal’s ruined-boy’s-face the innocence and purity of his heart and the remorse for all he had done to injure others.