The Sacrifice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  How disappointed she’d be. But sympathetic, wanting to hug him.

  (Could he bear being hugged? Jesus! He was twenty-seven years old.)

  And his dad stunned with disappointment. And his brothers pitying him so for once they wouldn’t tease or torment him. (But—what would they say to him, when they saw him? Something inside him shriveled and died, trying to think what he’d say to them.)

  Kind of shitty news. Can’t talk about it right now OK?

  On patrol with his training officer he’d made some mistakes. It was his “probationary period”—they’d kept reminding him—which made him more anxious and more likely to fuck up like freezing when advancing on an altercation in the street, black youths with guns, drug dealers, knowing what he was supposed to do but totally unable to do it, unable to draw his weapon as commanded, hyperventilating so he’d nearly fainted. And on Camden Avenue assigned to crowd control at the black church he’d had something of the same thing happen, a swirling in his vision, pounding heart, breathing quick and shallow and he’d heard gunshots and his instinct was to duck, actually wasn’t able to hear—to hear and process—what his training officer was shouting at him. He’d been utterly, hopelessly—could not even think of the word to describe his state—terrified? panicked? paralyzed? Like at the gun range in the academy when he was being examined he’d misfire while before that, at practice, he’d done fairly well—it was the pressure on him that was suffocating him, felt like a vise tightening around his chest.

  A cop obeys orders. A rookie cop doesn’t fucking think!

  He’d tried to explain, he loved being a cop. He’d always hoped to be in law enforcement. City cop, state trooper, highway police. He’d had his heart set on it. He wanted to “enforce” law—“protect” people. He liked the uniform—he loved the uniform. Carrying a firearm was a symbol, like a badge. The uniform, the badge, the holster and revolver but something in him was uncomfortable with the gun, not the object but the firing of the gun in the presence of others, the loud crack!—the sense that, having pulled the trigger, you could not nullify what you’d done. Pull the trigger, it was done.

  Ironically for a law enforcement officer he hadn’t been a kid who’d played much with guns. He’d taken little pleasure in “killing” his friends and he’d been dismayed when they’d shot at him.

  And he wasn’t “political.” Rarely read a newspaper or watched TV news except local news. Like everyone he knew he’d voted for Ronald Reagan. Reasons behind things didn’t engage him as things-in-themselves engaged him. You’re a cop, you follow orders.

  You’re a rookie cop, all you do is follow orders.

  He’d been praised for his skills with low-stress rookie-cop duties like traffic control, taking notes at an accident scene and comforting people, typing and filing reports, accompanying older officers on school visits. “Neighborhood Rapport”—a new feature in the Pascayne PD in the aftermath of the State of New Jersey Law Enforcement Reform Project.

  There were COs—“corrections officers”—in the Zahn family, though not in Jere’s immediate family. A parole officer, in Rutherford. But no cops in Jere’s immediate family.

  His brothers had been surprised, and impressed. Kid brother Jere admitted to the police academy in Sea Girt.

  The nicest of the Zahn brothers. Sweet kid, you could see he wasn’t cut out to be a cop.

  Why’d they let him? We all knew it was a bad idea.

  Jesus! Just ’cause he was big and strong-seeming, doesn’t mean he’d make a good cop.

  And not in Red Rock.

  His training officer told him the news. Brusque in his speech so Zahn wouldn’t see how sorry he felt for the poor kid, the look in the kid’s face, like he’d been kicked in the gut and out of nowhere, total surprise.

  How could it be a total surprise, hadn’t Zahn known? Hadn’t he sensed?

  That was one of Zahn’s problems, like something was missing in his brain like, what’s it called, “synapse”—“synapses”—something not quite connected. So he’d seem to understand what you were telling him, nodding and saying Sir, yeh but it wasn’t being absorbed so a few days later he’d screw up and each time was like the first time. You had to like the kid, but you’d never trust him out on the street. The kind of guy who if he fired his weapon might shoot his own foot or worse yet, your foot.

  There were two more weeks of the rookie probationary period but they called Zahn in early, to inform him. Better sooner, than later. Better now, than nearer Christmas.

  Give the kid time to start looking for another job or return to school for more credits.

  Don’t understand sir, you’re telling me—what?

  You aren’t being promoted, Jere. You aren’t moving up to grade two.

  He’d sat there, facing the officer whose responsibility he’d been since early summer. Like an older brother McGreavy had been and between them there’d been—(so Jere had believed, naÏvely)—a special understanding of the kind between older and younger brothers If you fuck up expect your ass to be kicked but basically it’s OK. You can keep trying.

  Except somehow this was wrong: Zahn wasn’t being told that he could keep trying.

  That was the meaning of “probation”—you were being judged, assessed, and if you were found lacking, you were not promoted but asked to resign from the force.

  He seemed to understand this, yet sat unmoving. His eyes blinked slowly and his mouth had stiffened into a kind of half-smile, his lips parchment-dry.

  There were pathetic older patrolmen in the Red Rock precinct. Middle-aged, fat-bellied. Never promoted past Officer III and so just waiting out their time to be retired with pensions. A sound of gunfire on a Red Rock street, these police officers were likely to drive their cruisers in the opposite direction. Their radios often broke down, their reports were confused and incomplete. Like zombies they seemed to the rookie-cops. Going through the motions of the job. You’d never turn into one of them.

  Like you’d never turn into most of the older men, the veterans, officers with ranks of sergeant and above, all looking older than their ages. Some of them frankly fat, puffy-red-faced and only in their early forties—Christ! Jere was thinking he was better off without the uniform. Better off in some other line of work, maybe public school teaching since he liked kids and kids liked him and it had to be low-stress compared to being a beat-cop.

  His father, his brothers would be ashamed of him. They would pity him, as the loser they’d always (secretly) known he was, which fact his loving mother had never known, and would never accept. His sister adored him, he’d been her protector against their brothers. His sister would never doubt him—but she’d be disappointed too, and maybe she’d cry. (If she cried, and Mom, he couldn’t bear it, Jesus!—run out of the house and slam the door.) His brothers wouldn’t tease and torment him as they had when they were living in the same house together because this was serious. Did’ya hear, Jere got canned from the force? Sons of bitches aren’t keeping him on, those fuckers who the fuck do they think they are? It’s this “firmative-action”—they got to hire blacks and spics—son-of-a-bitch! I’m telling Jere he should sue.

  There was Kimba Jacyznek, with whom he hadn’t spoken since October 14. Kimba would learn the news, and feel sorry for him; and maybe, he hated to think this, Kimba would think That loser! I knew.

  He’d been so happy with Kimba, those nights—and she’d seemed so happy with him. Just not possible he’d imagined it all—was it? He could not believe this.

  Though maybe it hadn’t been altogether real, Kimba’s little girl staying with Kimba’s mother on those nights. So Kimba missed the little girl and missed being Mommy, at the same time resolved to relate to Jere Zahn as a woman to a man: the sex-relationship but also, and primarily, an emotional relationship. The sex she could do, the emotion she had difficulty with.

  He’d guessed she was playing an old, outgrown role—the girl she’d been before she had married and had a baby at the age of twenty-two nearly a deca
de ago. Yet, he hadn’t the experience with women to free her from this role. He had not adequate words.

  Yet, overall, she’d seemed pretty happy with him. In a good mood, with him. Laughing, and eyes shining, and seeming to listen intently to him as somewhat falteringly he spoke.

  Just three times they’d been intimate, in her apartment. Making love in her bed in pale-peach sheets, and a bedside lamp with a rose-colored shade like the lamp in Jere’s sister Elise’s bedroom. Each of these nights the little girl was away with the grandmother, but there were traces of the child everywhere so Jere felt he should ask about her, but asking about her involved a sort of play-acting since the prospect of being a kind of father to a stranger’s child was disconcerting to him. And he felt that this stranger’s child would be judging him—comparing him to the child’s father (who barely paid child support, lived out of state and rarely troubled to visit or even to call). Kimba had seemed to like Jere’s lovemaking—that was the impression he’d had. Kimba hadn’t said much. She was quiet, secretive. Jere was a quiet person who talked nervously when women didn’t talk as normally they did, to fill the silence; feeling at such times like a bat that needs to send out jittery little waves of air-vibrations to situate himself with other bats and with objects. Some people, it’s how you define yourself—talking and being heard. And so, he’d talked but wasn’t sure he was being heard though the woman leaned forward listening to him with that air of female intensity that could be turned on and off like a light switch.

  He’d thought impulsively I love you!

  The last time, she’d asked him to leave by 2:00 A.M. and not stay through the night, she’d had a reasonable excuse but he’d been hurt and anxious. Next day he’d called and she didn’t call back. And next day he’d followed her, not really following her since he’d been driving in that direction anyway, south on Amsterdam Street, and there was Kimba in her car, driving just ahead of him. And a few days later at the mall he’d seen her and considered calling to her but decided against it.

  And he’d called her, and left another message. And she had not called back.

  Then, astonishing to Jere Zahn, Kimba Jacyznek lodged a complaint against him at the Red Rock precinct!

  Sometime that week she’d called, and one morning his sergeant asked him if this female was someone he knew?—she’d claimed he was “stalking” her.

  Jere had been shocked. He hadn’t ever stalked anyone in his life! Possiby two or three times he’d driven past the duplex on Irving Street where Kimba and her daughter lived, out of curiosity to see if Kimba’s car was in the driveway, or whether other cars were parked there, that might belong to friends of Kimba’s, or the ex-husband. Off-duty, driving home to his single-bedroom apartment two miles away he’d fallen into the habit of driving past Kimba’s house and slowing his speed as he approached; gazing at windows lighted from within, and shades drawn. He’d had a premonition that Kimba might be in trouble and needing him and she’d call his cell phone and he’d be at her door within minutes, having been, by chance, in the neighborhood.

  One of those things they’d look back upon. That night, when I called you. And you came.

  The sergeant was saying all right, he believed him, or at any rate he wasn’t taking the female’s complaint seriously. She’d sounded hysterical on the phone, some kind of ethnic accent, half of what she’d said the sergeant couldn’t make out. Jere insisted he hadn’t ever even considered stalking this woman, or any other.

  At the precinct, maybe they’d put it into Jerold Zahn’s file. The sergeant had indicated the complaint had been dropped but, who knew?—Jere was sick at heart thinking he couldn’t trust anyone.

  He’d loved Kimba Jacyznek. Badly, he’d wanted to love her.

  Made it a point never to drive past her house on Amsterdam, since that day. Though he’d called her and left a friendly message which wasn’t an unnatural or an illegal thing to do, with the pretense that she hadn’t complained to the sergeant, or that he knew nothing about it. But this message, or messages, were not returned. He had to wonder why, at the start of their relationship several months before, when he’d left messages for Kimba at home or at her work she’d called him back within hours, even minutes—what had gone wrong? What had been the disappointment she’d felt for him? Was it his intelligence? His personality? His body? The way he’d made love to her, that was wrong somehow? That was in error, somehow? Not a normal way of lovemaking, or inadequate in some way, but what way? Was his breath repulsive, was his body repulsive? (Examined himself in the bathroom mirror with its pitiless overhead light. He hated the white blond hair, eyebrows and lashes, some kind of albino freak, but apart from that he looked OK, he thought. Not so different from any other guy, he thought.) Then in the Mill River Mall he’d seen Kimba pushing a cart, and the little girl Edie with her, quickly he’d turned and exited the mall before Kimba could see him and register surprise, dismay, fear—before she had grounds to report him another time.

  Yet, his heart was broken. They would say, his sister Elise would say, it wasn’t just the Pascayne police letting my brother down it was that woman.

  In the Zahn household, that woman would not have a name. “Kimba Jacyznek” would not be named.

  He was religious about cleaning his revolver. He’d never failed to clean his revolver each week. He took pride in the revolver that had been issued to him: Police Officer Jerold Zahn, Pascayne Police Department. He was supposed to turn in the revolver, with his badge. His uniform, he could not wear. They were taking all these things from him. He had not ever used his revolver, except at the firing range. He was not a good “shot.” He’d been shaky, he’d had to take longer than others. But his instructors at the academy had liked him. His schoolteachers had liked him. Guys had liked him, especially guys on the team. Girls liked him, though a girl had not ever “loved” him.

  His mother said When you smile, Jere honey—you light up the room!

  Wish you smiled more, honey.

  “This, too, shall pass.”

  (“This, too, shall pass”—a familiar saying of his grandfather, his mother’s father who’d died when Jere was ten years old. Jere hadn’t known what the words meant but guessed they were intended to be a consolation, yet not a happy consolation. Like saying that, if you’re in a wheelchair, it’s raining out anyway, you can’t go out to play.)

  But they didn’t want him now. Kimba, or the others. Any of the others including those girls he’d never called, knowing beforehand how they wouldn’t want him. And guys he’d been friendly with from school, but wasn’t seeing much any longer like they’d lost interest in Jere Zahn or had forgotten him. And the Pascayne PD. Probation means you’re promoted or out on your ass. No second chances for losers.

  His size was misleading. In high school he’d lifted weights, he’d been diligent and possibly a little obsessed, and it had paid off. And his smile—Jere Zahn’s “nice” smile. (You smiled to show you were cool, you weren’t anxious or fretting. You smiled to show you had some good reason to smile.) The Zahn kid was never sarcastic like most teenagers. Always sincere. But they didn’t want him now, anyway. None of them wanted him: the Pascayne PD, and the woman. They just didn’t want him. He felt sick, having to know this. It was a fact simple as a nail driven through a hand. Later that day after stopping by his parents’ house he’d driven to a liquor store and bought a bottle of gin with a nasty boar’s head on it, he’d never had a swallow of gin before in his life and now drinking gin in mouthfuls trying not to vomit, like kerosene it tasted, what you’d imagined kerosene would taste like. His badge he’d been so proud of, he’d leave on the kitchen table in his little apartment. No note, he wasn’t the kind to express himself clearly in words. Any words he’d ever used seriously he had fucked up. He couldn’t trust just words. He was getting sicker, drinking, not a good idea to drink but there was some reason he’d begun. Cleaning the revolver for the final time, smelling the oil, the nickel-finish, shutting his eyes in wonderment and a loss beyond al
l thoughts as beyond all words hearing a voice bemused and chiding Oh shit Zahn just do it. C’mon just do it. The bullets are in, it’s in working condition, you ain’t gonna miss from close range. Now’s your opportunity to do something right for one fucking time in your sorry-ass life.

  The Twins

  God damn.”

  He’d tripped on a step. Hurrying, breathless, and he hadn’t glanced down, or having glanced down hadn’t seen the step, for his vision was occluded and the beat of his blood strong and distracting in his ears and there were strangers watching, whose faces he couldn’t see—a TV audience? And these blinding lights?

  “Jesus help me . . .”

  Waking then, abruptly. Sweating. And for a moment not recalling where he was except not home.

  Not in his own bed, in his home. But in a spare bedroom, in a lumpy bed, at his brother’s place in Newark.

  For he and Klarinda had had a rare quarrel and the consequence was that in the heated aftermath he’d said God damn it all right, he would move out, and Klarinda said she thought that might be a good idea, for now.

  How furious he’d been! How quick to be wounded, how sensitive to Klarinda’s every word, every glance these past several weeks—his wife whom he’d loved for too long perhaps, he’d become overly dependent upon the woman, and so weakened in himself, as a man.

  Unlike his brother Marus: dependent upon no female, on principle.

  Hot-faced, shaking, relenting just slightly, for his pride had been grievously wounded by the woman’s accusations, if she so distrusted him, if she had no faith in him—if she wanted him to move out he would.

  And gazing at her husband with frank pitying eyes Klarinda had said: “Yes. I think so, Byron. As long as you’re aligned with him. That might be a good idea, for now.”

  Excited by the prospect of combat, he could not easily sleep.