The (Other) You

by Joyce Carol Oates

First target you’d planned was Santa Luce High. Assholes who’d made your life miserable, those years. But fact is, they’ve all graduated. They are all gone. Away at fucking college, and would not even remember you.

  Who? Him? That loser?

  The café with the weird name—Purple Onion. Yes.

  Crazy coincidence if your mom is there. No doubt, some of your mom’s friends will be.

  Preparing the Device requires months. The most painstaking work of your life, nobody to observe and admire. You’d flunked junior year chemistry. If Mr. Alonso could see you now he’d be God-damned impressed.

  Your first time in the Purple Onion Café. Though you’ve passed the place many times. Kind of run-down, back terrace with tables and hanging plants. Painted a dull blue, starting to peel. Kind of place old hippies used to hang out at, now more upscale.

  Carefully choosing clothes. Khaki hoodie, T-shirt. Jeans, hiking boots, Giants cap. Dark glasses. Mom’s Whole Foods tote bag hanging from a doorknob with a half-dozen other useless tote bags.

  The sort of precision device you set beforehand. Not the kind of device you trigger at the site and not a belt you strap around your middle like some asshole on TV.

  Many hours are required to calibrate the Device, attached to a clock. Old windup clock you’d found in the house but it seems to be working. Reliable. Loud-ticking.

  Sweating as you calculate: If you set the detonation for → 1:20 does this leave enough time? But you don’t want an excess of time, either. Your fingers are icy, numb. You are disbelieving—Is this really happening? Laughing at yourself, what kind of bullshit is this, you fuck up everything you do, flunked out of chemistry, never showed up for exams, some kind of joke you’d actually build a bomb. Wild!

  At the Purple Onion making your way to the back terrace, trying not to be distracted by so many people, women’s voices, laughter like breaking glass. Usually no one looks at you but now, they are. In your imagination the scene has been silent, dreamlike. Not so many other people and the figures were filmy, imprecise. Now, you can see they are real.

  Trying not to panic you sight an empty table. Make your way to the empty table gripping the tote bag tight with sweaty hands. All you can see is what’s ahead of you, so sharp-focused it hurts. Your peripheral vision seems to be faded.

  Realizing belatedly you’d forgotten to wait for the hostess. That’s the way it’s done in a restaurant like this—you wait for the hostess. Wait to be seated.

  Anyway, you’re sitting down. Buzzing in your head like locusts. It seems to be OK, nobody is asking you to leave. Can’t see very well. Eyeballs feel dry. Interior of mouth very dry. Busy café, servers carrying trays, shimmering-blond waitress approaches you as if she’s hesitant to give you a menu, you fumble taking it from her, dry lips mutter Thanks.

  Staring at the menu. Can’t make out the words. Some of the menu is handwritten in purple ink.

  Ticking sensation inside your head. Clock-ticking, beneath the table.

  Really you don’t believe that anything will happen. That it will happen.

  Your mind just bypasses it like water rushing around a rock. Could be an old boot tossed in a stream, water rushes around it indifferently. Though you are sweating pretty badly, and your heart is beating like crazed wings inside your rib cage, and there’s a two-inch scared smile on your face. In a movie, light breaking onto your face like wonder.

  Glancing about, curious to see who is close by, who will die with you in—how many minutes? Twenty-two? No, twelve.

  Of course, you can leave the tote bag beneath the table. You can walk away. No one is stopping you. No one knows where you are. No one is waiting for you. You have no “associates”: you are a “lone wolf.” Act as if you’re going into the café to use the restroom, instead keep going out onto the street. At the street, walk fast. Don’t run, walk fast. A block away when the device detonates, nobody will know it’s you. No trace, you are sure.

  But your legs are leaden. Feet heavy as hooves in the hiking boots. Heartbeat so hard, blood is draining from your head and there’s the risk you might faint if you tried to stand up. So better sit still. You are here, you are not leaving. Why’d you go to such an effort if you leave now. You are making a profound statement. First project you’ve actually finished since seventh grade. You are rejecting the rejectors. You are sneering at the sneerers. Your mouth is dry as sand, like a convulsion the way you are swallowing. Imagine breaking news on CNN. Santa Luce, the place where nothing happens. Rarely on TV. Bond issues, school board elections, sewer repair, library referendum but now, this evening—breaking news. Santa Luce, California, rocked by ingenious explosive device . . .

  You are actually becoming calmer. Draw a deep breath. Dad will be seeing this. You’d remembered to take three of your mom’s “nerve” pills. To your left, a table of chattering women. To your right, a table occupied by just two men.

  One of the men seems to be interviewing the other. Fake foreign accent, annoying as hell. IPhone on the table.

  In a sudden rage you think—Who the fuck cares about what either of you think? What any of you think?

  That’s when you realize—It will happen! You feel a rush of relief as if a burden is being lifted from your shoulders. Time ticking away means time running out and time running out means all choices running out.

  Peering at your watch inside the khaki sleeve—1:19 P.M.

  12.

  You have arrived alone at the Purple Onion Café. Not long after noon judging by the position of the sun in the sky.

  No idea why, why here. “D’you mind if I record our conversation?”—a stranger, who looks familiar, positions his iPhone between you and himself.

  The Unexpected

  Thank you for the honor. I am very—honored.”

  A solemn moment. If like most solemn moments, tinged with an element of the absurd.

  You have been instructed to remove the clumsy black mortarboard from your head, at this point in the commencement ceremony. Now inclining your head, that a red ribbon bearing a brass medallion inscribed with the Latin phrase VINCIT OMNIA VERITAS can be looped around your neck.

  Then, a royal-blue velvet doctoral hood with white satin trim is also lowered over your head, and secured in place around your shoulders with a snap.

  A rotund little man identified as the president of the college congratulates you, shakes your hand vigorously. You are left alone at the podium, smiling foolishly.

  Applause. Not a thunderous applause but polite, even warm—you choose to think. You are made to feel encouraged—empowered. You adjust the medallion, that falls heavily onto your breastbone. You stare out into the audience of expectant young faces pale and translucent as sea anemones, that, like sea anemones, appear to be slightly swaying.

  “. . . an honor, and a pleasure . . . this celebratory occasion . . .”

  You have not died. You have been invited to receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the community college near your old hometown in upstate New York. In exchange, you are obliged to deliver the commencement address to several hundred black-robed graduates seated on bleachers on a playing field rain-soaked from recent showers.

  It is a chill pale day of cirrus clouds, a capricious wind borne southward from Lake Ontario. High overhead, with ominous frequency, fighter jets pass in formation. You make a joke about the planes, you express gratitude that the planes are on our side but the joke, if that’s what it is, falls flat, or is muffled by the jets’ roaring; on the commencement stage behind you there is a polite sort of laughter from your hosts but few among the graduates join in. No doubt they have grown so accustomed to fighter jets in the sky above the college—and their homes—that they no longer hear them. The graduates are a practical lot who have earned degrees in such subjects as education, hotel management, nursing, business administration, engineering, communication arts, forestry, animal husbandry.

  You are obliged to speak louder, to be heard over the dull roar of the jets. You confide in the
graduates that you have not been invited to the region of your birth to receive a degree, to give a lecture, to read from a new book or even to sign books, since you left thirty-six years ago. And so, this commencement ceremony is indeed a significant event in your life. Wittily you say to your audience: “I am very grateful to my hosts for inviting me, after thirty-six years! I hope that, in another thirty-six years, they will invite me back again.”

  But this remark too falls flat. Your audience stares at you with baffled smiles.

  You are joking, are you?—or, you are not joking?

  Very likely, the young graduates don’t expect humor on this occasion. Certainly not humor from the (female) recipient of an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

  Chagrined, you return to your written speech. Laboriously you’d written it in longhand, in a script large enough for you to read easily, for you feel most comfortable with handwritten material on such occasions; but the pages are fluttering in the wind, and it’s difficult to read them.

  A page is loosened from your fingers, and blows from the podium—desperately you lunge for it, but it blows across the stage, past pairs of feet, until it is retrieved by a gentleman in a black cap and gown, one of the college dignitaries, who returns it to you with a smile.

  So embarrassing! By this time you’ve lost your place in the speech—can’t remember what you’ve been saying.

  And so, you address your audience directly. From the heart.

  At first you stutter, stammer. Speaking without a text is not unlike diving from a high board, in front of spectators—striding to the end of a high diving board, as the crowd gapes up at you. Once you’ve made your way to the end of the diving board, you cannot retreat.

  You are short of breath. You are suffused with adrenaline. After your initial stumbling you begin to speak more fluently. Then, passionately. You have no idea what you are saying—what you will say. Your audience has become riveted, aroused.

  In the bleachers directly before you are the graduates of the college in their somber dark robes and mortarboards; behind them, and flanking them, are rows of guests—families, friends, visitors from the community. All of these gaze at you in silence as if startled by genuine emotion amid prepared speeches by college administrators, trustees, a local congressman or two. You had intended to speak in abstract terms of the value of a college education but instead you speak of your childhood in the small city of Yewville nine miles away. You speak of the gratitude you feel for your teachers, some of whom are still living in the vicinity, though long retired. You speak of your family, most of whom are deceased. You speak of the beautiful rolling hills of western New York State, the stark glacial formations, the prevailing winds of this harsh landscape south of Lake Ontario. You speak of the public library in Yewville where you’d spent so many hours as a young person.

  Our gratitude for those persons who helped to shape our lives. Those persons to whom we owe our lives.

  You are wiping at your eyes. You feel as if you might burst into tears. The audience has become very quiet. Uncomfortable at witnessing such unfeigned emotion, in such circumstances. Nor are you comfortable out of your role, for you are the most calibrated of persons.

  Soon then, you conclude your speech. Your voice cracks, you feel you must apologize.

  There is a moment’s silence—an awkward silence. Then, an outburst of applause.

  Especially, the response from the graduates is warm, enthusiastic. Here and there individuals rise to their feet, applauding. For a dazed moment you think—Do I know them? Are these my friends? But it is decades later, these are not your classmates.

  Parts of rows, entire rows on their feet—waves of emotion rush at you like the waves of Lake Ontario roiled by wind, rushing at you on the beach years ago.

  Moved by gratitude you think—Am I home, at last? Is this where I belong?

  * * *

  “Oh. My God. No.”

  Beneath your academic gown you are—part-naked?

  You make the discovery after the ceremony has ended. After you have marched offstage with others in the presidential party to the heartening rhythms of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  Disrobing in a field house nearby, preparing to hang your gown on a rack with others, you realize to your horror that you aren’t fully clothed beneath the gown—not naked, of course, yet not fully clothed . . . How is this possible? Had you prepared for the ceremony so carelessly, stepping into the robe provided by the college without realizing you weren’t dressed beneath? You’d been alone in your hotel room, distracted by thoughts of your upcoming speech. No one to examine you before you left the room for the ceremony at the college.

  Perils of a lonely existence. You might die alone, and you might make a fool of yourself, alone.

  And so you’d gone out half-naked, inside the academic gown.

  Surely the wind had lifted the hem of the gown exposing your bare white legs on the commencement stage, and God knows what else . . . No wonder the young graduates were riveted by your performance. No wonder they could not look away. Trying not to laugh at you, taking pity on you, no wonder they clapped so boisterously when the excruciating performance came to an end.

  * * *

  After the commencement luncheon you are brought in a hired car to the small city of your birth nine miles away. What a relief, to escape! The humiliation will smolder forever in your heart, you think.

  At the luncheon you’d accepted the congratulations of college officials who claimed that they had never experienced graduates reacting so enthusiastically to any commencement speaker before. Wonderful how you connected with our graduates! Born here, went to school here, evoked the time and the place so we all had tears in our eyes . . .

  Seated behind you on the speakers’ platform they hadn’t seen your gown lifted in the wind. Hadn’t glimpsed your stark white body beneath. Probably they’d only half-heard your faltering “genuine” words. Their gratitude to you seems sincere. You are the one who feels like a fraud.

  Yet, as soon as you are alone in the rear of the hired car, headed for Yewville, you begin to forget the humiliation, and the triumph. As the familiar landscape of your past drifts by silent as a dream you find yourself transfixed with longing.

  You’d intended to work on the drive. Such spare moments are valuable to you, you dare not waste them. In your lap your notebook lies untouched except for a single sentence which you will discover after you return home from Yewville, without remembering that you’d written it.

  So little has changed, her temptation is to believe that she herself has not changed.

  Farmland, rolling hills to the horizon. Glacial formations: drumlins, trough-like ridges in the soil, small mountains covered in deciduous trees. The roughened landscape looks as if it has been scraped with a great trowel; mirrored by similarly roughened clouds overhead, now covering most of the sky. There is a heightened wind from Lake Ontario, only just visible, a faint hazy blue, in the distance.

  Then, a long descent. Ahead is the Yewville River narrow and scintillant in the sun as a snake’s scales. Ahead is the Yewville Valley, famous for its thousands of acres of fruit orchards: peaches, pears, apples. A two-lane wrought-iron bridge, scarcely changed since you saw it last. A blacktop state highway formerly two lanes, now three. Farmhouses, orchards. Grazing pastures: Holsteins, horses. Names of roads you haven’t recalled in decades that stir your heart like fragments of dreams.

  When you were a child you couldn’t have guessed that the names of these country roads were only just the names of individuals who’d purchased land here in a bygone century. Adams Road, Eimer Road, Skedd Road, McDermitt, Cadden, Dunway . . . No one now living remembers these landowners for whom the roads were named and surely children in the Yewville Valley grow up exactly as you did, unquestioning.

  Entering Yewville on the blacktop highway you see the old water tower silhouetted above the city. Now too it has been defaced with graffiti, savage red initials, cryptic signs, familiar boasts—Class of
2018 overwriting Class of 2017. Graduating seniors from Yewville High have had a tradition of climbing the tower on the serpentine ladder, ignoring warning signs, DANGER DO NOT CLIMB, boldly spray-painting their names, initials, class years on the metallic side of the tower. Every several years the water tower is power-cleaned of old fading graffiti and a new generation climbs the serpentine ladder to make its claim.

  Class of 2018! You don’t want to recall the year you’d graduated from high school. Long ago in the previous century . . .

  In the year you’d graduated, one of the (drunken) senior boys who’d climbed the water tower had fallen, to his death. Not a friend of yours—though his name is indelibly imprinted in your memory: Jamie Haas.

  Useless memories, yet precious. Virtually every name of every classmate of yours from elementary school through graduation is imprinted in your brain.

  You don’t want to speculate how many of your classmates have vanished. How few probably remain in Yewville and of these, how few will remember you, and come to your presentation at the library this afternoon.

  There you will be honored for the second time today, as Yewville’s “most distinguished literary figure.” So far as you know there has never been any other writer from Yewville, literary or otherwise.

  Driving along Main Street you are stirred by memories of shopping in these stores with your mother and your grandmother when you’d been a young girl. Repetitive activities must imprint themselves most deeply in a child’s brain and shopping was the most repetitive of all activities in your family life. Food shopping, once a week at a store called Loblaw’s. Shopping for clothes, shoes. Accompanying your mother, sometimes your grandmother, occasionally both your mother and your grandmother along the street. The adventure of store windows! (You were fascinated by the double vision in a store window: inside, merchandise; reflected in the plate glass, a luminous view of the street beyond a shadowy image of your own face.) Led along the aisles of Yewville’s premier department store, Schuyler Brothers. The feel of a warm firm adult hand gripping yours.