Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But she slept, unknowing. And there was no danger. The room with the low slanted ceiling and the floral wallpaper and the gauzy white curtains like a dream solidified around the dreamer. We could die together. Tonight. Excited, he pulled the black turtleneck sweater off over his head and let it drop. His hands were clumsy in the tight kidskin gloves, but that couldn’t be helped. On a bureau were her clothes, and on a nearby chair, tossed down; she’d barely managed to get undressed for bed he supposed: there, the white lace jacket, the long white skirt partly on the floor, a white silk half slip and a white brassiere; and touching the fabric Colin Asch couldn’t help himself, he removed one of the gloves and held it gripped between his teeth and pressed the silky underclothes against his bare chest managed to force the slip (so fragrant! charged with electricity sparking in his hair, his eyelashes) down over his head, his mouth dry with anticipation, dread of what might happen, or had it already happened and the woman was dead …?

  (But only if Colin Asch was trapped, boxed into a corner. Only if there was no way to accommodate his dignity, pride, manhood. Never would he force her, however—“I promise”—or even beg as Mr. Kreuzer had in the end, fumblingly pressing the very razor into the boy’s fingers, daring him, or actually wishing him to use it—“What more perfect death than death-in-union? Two-in-one? Forever?”)

  Afterward he would not remember precisely but it was like a dream in teasing fragments, the emotional tone of it and not details or images or uttered words: Colin Asch crouched over the sleeping woman slowly tremblingly drawing the covers off her, ascending, like a beam of light … no shadows! no gravity! … and she continued to sleep unknowing, trusting in him—a woman in a nightgown bunched at her knees, a woman with a petite skeleton, flat-bellied, her breasts flattened too as she slept lying on her back but slightly twisted as if she had fallen from a great height—and Colin Asch bent closer, staring, the silk slip in taut tight folds over his chest, fragrance easing upward, his eyes filling with tears like pain. In an ecstasy, nearly blinded, he knelt at the bedside and pressed his burning forehead against the woman’s bare foot … the pale bare foot, cool as stone, and as smooth.

  I want to be good!

  I want to destroy the world!

  Days or maybe weeks later the mood shifted suddenly like the spring woods, turned shitty; Colin Asch was susceptible at this time of the year, the axis of a new fresh head-splitting season when you’re supposed to be happy like the rest of the assholes, lifting your face to the sun, sniffing the earth, the moisture, the warmth, melting snow and dripping eaves and rivulets of water running fast in the gutters; and he made the effort. Christ the fuckers had no idea what an effort it was, how he loathed them manipulating his very body daring to touch his very skin which pained him, it was a true complaint—hyperesthesia, they’d called it, like the outside layer of his skin had been peeled away thus special medicines were required but he hadn’t had those medicines in a long, long time—“I don’t like any doctors fucking with me like I was just some mere body or something,” he’d actually told the judge who’d heard his case, but that was a long, long time ago, in another spring. Anyway he made the effort. Allowed himself to be made up—“You’re a little pale, Colin, also there’s some shadows under your eyes: see?”—and made the fucking effort trying to joke with the photographer, to turn their relationship into something warm something real something other than the merely commercial for he’d been thinking he would like, really, to be a photographer—but a true photographer—taking portraits of distinguished people traveling around the world for (maybe) Time magazine, or Life, or the Boston Globe; it was unnatural for a man of Colin Asch’s energy and temperament and imagination, above all, dignity, to be so passive, so putty-in-the-hands like the other models (those narcissistic assholes, pretty-boys crazy in love with their own reflections), when he was an artist himself: and that primarily. Thus he gritted his teeth, and smiled, and tried hard, showing how serious he truly was, how eager to cooperate, during one of the breaks asking the photographer about his background, what kinds of work he did, what kinds of contracts were necessary, and was photography school actually a good or necessary thing or could you sort of pick it up on your own—“Provided you had good advice, I mean.” Of course Colin Asch had been enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. He’d been told he had almost too much talent for one individual—“It sort of all condenses, y’know, if you have too many things to think about, too many currents pulling at you—like a paragnosiac fugue.”

  Bob the photographer peered at Colin Asch over his heavy white coffee mug steaming coffee and said. “Like a what?”

  “Paragnosiac fugue.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  Blinking and smiling his dazzling white smile, drawing his fingers swiftly through his newly shampooed hair—“Oh, I forget.”

  Then seeing how Bob looked at him not knowing if he should smile or not as (maybe) Bob’d looked at Colin Asch a few too many times for his own good (the fucker: telling tales on him like all the rest he didn’t doubt), Colin Asch quickly added, “Just like a nervous spell, sort of.”

  “Oh,” said Bob, still looking at him, still holding the coffee mug steaming in front of his mouth. “Is that it.”

  He wanted to plead with her; he was surrounded by mental and spiritual inferiors—except of course for her! and Charles Carpenter (if Charles Carpenter would only see!)—thinking sometimes he was swimming to save his life, desperately flailing his arms to keep from sinking, drowning: “The worst kind of death, Dorothea. You don’t know.”

  It was moist warming air that upset him. It was the acceleration of the earth. The approach of the summer solstice before he was prepared. This year held a threat of being worse than the year before, scaring him with its excitement and violence like pelting rain against the windows and the roof of the car, like thunderclaps, the smell of lightning—his sense of smell was so heightened at these times, like a dog’s actually: “I’d have liked to be a dog, just, y’know, trotting around sniffing, seeing the world through my nose,” Colin Asch had told one of his doctors when the fugue had just about lifted and he was himself again or nearly; the fault lay with the impure PCP he’d dropped which left one of his temporal lobes short-circuited (or so he surmised: the doctors gave him and his fellow victims double-talk in which you couldn’t believe or confidently disbelieve)—all this he would explain to Dorothea Deverell one day soon. That it scared him, things speeding up as they sometimes did. “And I haven’t touched any PCP for years.”

  Which was true. Absolutely incontestably true.

  Of course Colin Asch could not confide in Dorothea Deverell everything. That he was tortured not knowing, not being able to decide, what exactly to do about the Carpenters: to eradicate the husband, or the wife. There were powerful arguments on both sides. There were voices yammering on both sides.

  For one thing, he hated Charles Carpenter, didn’t he, for supplanting Colin Asch in Dorothea Deverell’s affections; if Charles Carpenter died it would fall to Colin Asch to comfort her, and no one else. Our mutual tragic lives. Life?

  But he couldn’t be blind to the fact that if Charles Carpenter died, or was killed suddenly, Dorothea Deverell would be terribly upset: broken-hearted. “Christ, it might kill her.” And he didn’t want that. No—scrutinizing his soul—he didn’t want that. “What I want is happiness for her, and happiness for me. But Dorothea must come first, otherwise there is no me.”

  Knowing this he was flooded with relief like simple happiness, or happiness like simple relief. He did after all want only to be good in homage to the goodness in her.

  Thus he inwardly debated. Thus the thoughts rose and fell and drifted and faded and reemerged in his head as he stood on his balcony in the soft spring rain … or drove the Porsche along unfamiliar highways … or posed near-naked, his head tilted at an insufferable angle, modeling sea-green swimwear coyly bulging at the crotch, eyes opened wide despite the glaring brain-frazzling lights. For hours
, or was it weeks, Colin Asch analyzed the possibilities open to him, and to her. Yes, he wanted only what would yield happiness to her—“So Mrs. Carpenter must die.” It was that simple. Inescapable.

  XXX performed out of humane indifference, disinterest. For he had nothing personal against the woman, in fact he felt clean and neutral toward her, he’d forgiven her for challenging him that night at the Weidmanns’—in truth, she’d played into his hands like the two of them were performers and the others mere spectators—and he had been pleased he could convince her that the young blond New Wave model “Alvarado” had so promising a future why not invest $10,000 in his career? and she’d thought about it awhile then said she would limit herself to $7,000: “But don’t tell my husband! Don’t anybody”—she’d begun giggling, the alcohol flush warm in her cheeks—“tell that coldhearted prig.”

  Of course not, Mrs. Carpenter.

  Thus in his unhurried reverie Colin Asch came to the conclusion clear as Euclidean logic that Agnes Carpenter, and not Charles Carpenter, must die. So clearing the way for Dorothea Deverell and Charles Carpenter to wed. So ushering in, in time, a new ménage in which more and more frequently young Colin Asch would be included: weekends, special holidays, birthdays. It would be the most natural thing in the world; older childless couples often take up younger unattached men. A kind of spiritual adoption.

  “You will never be lonely again.”

  “Why, Colin. That is, Alvarado. How nice. Finally.”

  Seven-thirty P.M. of April 10, Colin Asch has rung the doorbell of the residence of Charles and Agnes Carpenter, 58 West Fairway Drive, Lathrup Farms, Massachusetts, eight-inch stainless-steel switchblade knife in his right-hand coat pocket, small tidy fragrant bouquet of flowers (daffodils, carnations, yellow tulips) in his right hand, and after a wait of five minutes or so he’s being invited inside by the lady of the house: his second visit to this house, and his last. “Come in, come in,” Agnes Carpenter says airily, “Just in time for a drink”—swaying a little on her feet leading the way into the semidarkened not-entirely-clean living room where the smell of cigarettes and alcohol is strong. Colin Asch thanks her and goes out into the kitchen himself to fetch a vase and water for the flowers, since it’s the least he can do under the circumstances. From the other room Agnes Carpenter calls to him half accusing half teasing and he doesn’t quite know what she is saying but he answers, “Right! Good! Great! Yeah!” Bottles on the kitchen counter, on the floor, dirtied plates stacked in the sink; his nostrils pinch in fastidious disdain. For who would think, contemplating the outside of the Carpenters’ fine old colonial, it would be in this condition inside?

  In the living room Agnes Carpenter has prepared Colin Asch a drink, a dandy big Scotch to match her own, handed him with shaky beringed fingers, and Colin Asch sets the bouquet atop the fireplace mantel (“That’s nice, thank you,” Agnes Carpenter barely murmurs) and accepts the drink, smiling his sweet cheery boyish dazzling smile but not drawing off his tight black kidskin gloves; he’s too shrewd to be leaving fingerprints anywhere around here. He sees that the poor bitch had hurried to make herself up when she heard the doorbell—quick-powdered face, sad-glamorous crimson lipstick, some attempt at fluffing out the permed dry-as-straw colorless hair; and she’d buttoned (crookedly) up to her wrinkled throat the emerald-green brocaded Japanese housecoat or kimono she’s wearing: not knowing who might be ringing her doorbell this time of evening but hoping for a pleasant surprise. Peering worriedly at her lanky visitor through the squares of stained glass framing the door until, yes, yes, finally, she recognized him—her young friend Colin Asch, her secret investment “Alvarado.” Recognized him and opened the door wide.

  “It has been a long time … hasn’t it? At least a month?”

  Giving Colin Asch a pug-dog look of reproach, moist eyes narrowed, and he likes it since there’s invariably an edge of flirtatiousness to such reproach, allows him to shake his head, baffled, and smile sheepishly. “Gee, Mrs. Carpenter—I mean Agnes—I meant to call but I’ve been so busy these past six weeks, I guess your investment is really going to pay off ’cause Alvarado’s phone practically never stops ringing—”

  And Agnes Carpenter exercises her power by interrupting, careless-seeming, “Not at all! Not at all! I’ve been busy too! I quite understand!” She lowers her voice mock-dramatically: “All I was, actually, was a tiny bit concerned, Colin, that you were still around. That you hadn’t disappeared.”

  Tall blond natural-aristocrat Colin Asch fixed the woman with his wide-open quizzical eyes. “Disappeared? But where?”

  Agnes Carpenter laughs sharply as if he has said something intentionally comic.

  They sit; and Agnes talks. In surges and gusts like someone who has not had the opportunity to talk in a long time. She is semi-drunk; not quite slurring-drunk; some color in her sallow cheeks and a look of sudden light in her bloodshot eyes. With a tinge of regret C.A. touches the weapon through his coat pocket. Why is it the fate thrust upon some of us, to bring not peace but a sword? Self-consciously Colin Asch settles himself in a velvet loveseat facing Agnes; close by a brass and mother-of-pearl mahogany cabinet that looks Mediterranean and antique. He listens politely to his hostess’s yammering, crosses his long sinewy legs, shifts his shoulders inside his striped boxy double-breasted coat, nervously straightens his tie (a beauty, a creamy silk Dior with a pattern of tiny black horse-figures—Valentine’s Day gift from Susannah Hunt): all to suggest that he’s charmingly ill at ease in this plush bourgeois setting—he’s an innocent, even naïve young man, of the sort the modeling profession might well take advantage of: and predatory women. Agnes Carpenter pauses in mid-sentence, to squint at him. “Your gloves—why are you wearing gloves?” she asks. Colin Asch says, embarrassed, “Oh, these? I’m so anxious these days, I’m back in an old bad habit of biting my nails till they bleed—the thumbnails especially—so the doctor said, he said the very best method, the most practical, is just to wear gloves. Until the anxiety lifts.”

  “Until the anxiety lifts,” Agnes Carpenter echoes, suddenly touched. “But you know, Colin dear boy, that might not happen for a long time. With some of us—a long, long time.”

  Surreptitiously Colin Asch glances at his platinum-band wristwatch. Seven-forty already: he hopes to be out of here and in rapid motion by nine-thirty.

  Unless he can wrap it up earlier? The woman is getting drunk.

  And there is another drink, for Agnes, while Colin Asch (like a young athlete in training) nurses his, and more talk, the conversation swerving and lurching along a track very like the one it took on Colin Asch’s previous visit in March. “I suppose you have heard? I suppose everyone is talking about it, laughing behind my back? Charles wants a separation; he says he wants a divorce. And only out of spite! Only to hurt me! Because”—and here Agnes begins laughing, laughing and coughing, wheezing, her jowls quivering, in mirth and indignation—“he knows I know him, inside and out. There’s no mystery to Charles Carpenter to me! To his wife! I don’t doubt he has a woman friend with whom he imagines himself madly in love—some cold greedy ambitious young woman twenty years younger than he who flatters him sexually—if it’s possible to flatter my husband sexually without bursting into laughter. These pseudo-‘liberated’ young women today, they’re all stalking other women’s husbands since there aren’t enough heterosexual men to go around. But the hilarious part of it, Colin, or the tragedy, take your pick, is that no man is a mystery to his wife—no wife is a mystery to her husband.” Agnes Carpenter pauses, laughs derisively, succumbs to a fit of coughing, wipes her mouth on her sleeve, the lovely emerald-green fabric despoiled by a gesture of slovenly drunkenness that fills Colin Asch with revulsion and pity. And anger.

  “Someone should put you out of your misery, Agnes.”

  “What? Don’t mumble, please!”

  “Someone should take you out, out on the town, like,” Colin Asch says, wildly improvising, as if he too is on the brink of being frankly drunk and in a party mood
, as, perhaps, having swallowed down a bennie or two before coming over, he is. “A good-looking woman like you, cooped up in here. It’s a great house but, well, it’s just—an interior.”

  Agnes Carpenter laughs shrilly, as if her young male visitor has said something not only intentionally comic but profound. “Christ. Are you correct. It’s, whatever it is, just an interior.”

  So the minutes pass. Colin Asch tries to calibrate the degree of the woman’s drunkenness vis-à-vis the actions he requires her to perform.

  Since as “Alvarado” he is hoping for another generous check, another gesture of faith in him as a top-rank model, he naturally turns the conversation in that direction, and Agnes Carpenter willingly follows, for isn’t there something titillating? salacious? about the very notion of a male fashion model? Thus, minutes of banter, some of it gay and flirty and some of it—“D’you think, dear Colin, or, I mean, ‘Alvarado,’ d’you think, being in such close contact with some of those people, there’s any danger? for instance, of getting AIDS?”—rather nasty, and at last Agnes Carpenter heaves herself up from her chair to lead Colin Asch into another room—Charles’s “den” as she bitterly calls it—and to make out a check for “Alvarado” (who has, so very shrewdly and prudently, his own savings account in an area bank from which all monies will be withdrawn first thing in the morning of April 11) for the sum of $8,500. The grim satisfied smile on the woman’s pug face suggests that she is doing this primarily to take revenge upon the absent, so conspiciously absent husband: there is a happy violence in the very swash of her signature. The bedrock of personality shows through the scrim of girlish intoxication: flushed and panting slightly, Agnes Carpenter hands the check to Colin Asch as if handing the young man her virtue, or her very life, and says very nearly the same words she’d said the first time: “But don’t tell my husband, he would so strongly disapprove. That coldhearted”—and she searches for a word—“bastard.”