The (Other) You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Do you consider yourself overrated?”

  “You would not do it again, would you?”

  “You could not do it again, could you?”

  These bold remarks meet with muffled laughter, titters. Marian Beattie laughs heartily.

  A woman with a smooth bald face, paisley kerchief tied about her hairless head, belligerently introduces herself as “Lizzie Heardon”—(once a friend of yours? seventh grade?—you are remembering, vaguely)—proud to have been a kindergarten teacher for her entire life. Never wrote a word—never published a book—but—took great joy in her career, and never regretted a moment.

  Another woman—(is this Abigail?—so changed, you don’t want to acknowledge her)—speaks of being married, having children, working hard as wife, mother, homemaker, caretaker for the elderly and the infirm in her family and in her husband’s family, working very hard, working damned hard, never wrote a word, never published a book, never had time to read a damned book, worked harder, grew older, grew old, died (in 1999). She has grandchildren, however. She is not (yet) forgotten.

  And there is Olive. Olivia? One of the shrunken females, hardly more than child-sized. She too is hairless, but wears a perky knitted cap. Hesitantly you smile at her. Hesitantly you ask—“Did you ever forgive me?”

  You’d run away and abandoned her by the river. Of course—she was the girl. The howling boys, peals of jeering laughter.

  Someone had been throwing chunks of concrete. A rusted rod. You did run—panicked, in terror.

  But Olive, or Olivia, is saying now, laughing—“Ohhh no that wasn’t me. You’re remembering wrong. In everything you write, you remember wrong. You were the one the boys chased, and caught—you were the one who cried, and tried to crawl away, and they laughed at you.”

  “I—I was not . . .”

  “Of course you were. You were. That’s why you write such lies—to change the way things were, when you couldn’t change them any other way.”

  “That is—not true. It is—just—certainly—not true . . .”

  You are speechless, indignant. You are furious. Your eyes fill with tears. Olive, or Olivia, is rocking in her chair, laughing. She is maddeningly complacent, smug. You. You. You. You.

  Fortunately the others are distracted by photographs of grandchildren being passed around. Exclamations of delight, pride. No one thinks to include you.

  Vastly amused, Miss Beattie wipes her eyes. Tears of laughter have gathered in the fatty creases of her face. She asks a “favor” of you—to inscribe books for the library “for our special collection.” But she has only five of your numerous books, published long ago in the previous century.

  “Is this all you have?”—you ask, surprised.

  “All? How many novels did Jane Austen write? Only five or six, yes? And she is immortal.” Miss Beattie speaks snidely to you.

  To prove her point she brings a card catalogue drawer to show you—“You see? There are only five books under your name. Here are the cards.” You examine the dog-eared cards that give the correct birth date for you but also a death date—1979. You protest, this is a mistake. You are not dead.

  Miss Beattie laughs. A clerical error, obviously!

  You are hurt. You are incensed. You would wrest the drawer from Miss Beattie, and cross out the ridiculous death date, but Miss Beattie returns the drawer to the card catalogue. (This antique feature of the old library, long superannuated by the online catalogue, has been moved to the rear of the library.)

  With an impish expression Miss Beattie says, “By now you should have begun to recognize me. Are you really pretending you don’t know who I am?”

  “Who you—are?”

  “Yes! Indeed.”

  “I—I do not . . .”

  Marian Beattie regards you at close range with a skeptical smirk. It is plain that this annoying woman does not respect you—considers you deceptive, dishonest—you have no idea why. Your nostrils pinch with her distinctive scent, the intimate smell of her fleshy body, soiled clothing, oily hair. Not an altogether disagreeable scent, and somewhat familiar, like the interior of your laundry hamper.

  “Look! Look closely.” Miss Beattie thrusts her face toward yours.

  Badly you want to push away from the strong-willed woman, who treats you with such familiarity. She is just slightly shorter than you, at about five feet six inches, but heavier by as many as seventy pounds; she holds you in a kind of hypnosis, gazing ironically into your eyes.

  The person you were meant to be, who’d never left Yewville.

  Is Marian Beattie—somehow—you?

  You want to protest: you look nothing like Marian Beattie!

  The woman is saying, still with an attempt at lightness, levity, though now you sense the bitterness beneath, how she had not left Yewville on a fancy scholarship as you did—“I didn’t abandon my family who needed me. I got a degree in library science at the state university at Elmira and came right back. That was good enough for me!”

  How to respond to this?—an accusation buried inside a boast.

  It is true, you’d once thought you might be a librarian, and remain in Yewville. Or a teacher. And it is true, you were the recipient of a fancy scholarship that bore you away as if on wide, extended wings—the leathery wings of Milton’s Lucifer, you’ve thought.

  “But—I am not you. You are not—you are not me.”

  Your rejoinder to Marian Beattie is feeble, near-inaudible. For you have no idea how to respond to her.

  You are happy for Marian Beattie, that she is, or seems to be, so satisfied with her life in Yewville, yet you understand that you are being blamed, somehow, for not having stayed. She is accusing—You are me, as I was meant to be. You have destroyed me. Bitterly she tells you of those many classmates of yours who have passed away prematurely: individuals who died in car crashes and other accidents, of cirrhosis of the liver, of opioid overdoses, emphysema, strokes, heart attacks, cancer—“every kind of cancer”—as well as suicide—“every kind of suicide.”

  You are overcome with remorse. Sympathy. Yes, and guilt. But you have no idea what to say.

  If you’d failed to leave Yewville, if you’d failed utterly as a writer, and if you were living now in Yewville, how would that have altered the lives of Marian Beattie and the others? You would like to explain this, but Marian Beattie isn’t in a mood to listen to you. Now she is indignant: “But we don’t complain. Not hardly. We are patriotic. We are not treasonous, we don’t question our government. We don’t write fancy books that no one reads. We don’t look down our noses at the ‘common folk.’”

  You would apologize, but Marian Beattie isn’t interested in an apology from you. Huffily she leads you to a “reception” in your honor: on a card table, a punch bowl filled with gasoline-colored liquid, paper cups, platters of orange cheese and Ritz crackers, scattered bowls of peanuts. “Mingle with your fans, please. Some of them have journeyed a long way.”

  Grateful for something useful to do, you occupy yourself with signing books. Most of your audience has departed but a few diehards remain, grinning at you. Pictures are taken with iPhones. You note that most of these books are years old, paperbacks with torn covers. No one seems to have purchased a hardcover copy of your most recent novel and so you come to wonder if indeed it has been published yet, or even written. You recall how difficult this novel had been to write, how harrowed you’d felt . . . as if you could not bear to endure such an ordeal another time, but would rather cease to exist.

  If I am a card catalogue, how easy to remove!

  Signing books on the title page with a flourish. Even your signature begins to be unrecognizable. Still you are being plied with a few final questions that buzz about your head like gnats. When did you know you wanted to be a writer. What do you regret most about your life. Which is your favorite book of your own. Which is your least-favorite. Would you do it all over again, if you had the choice. Or would you choose another life.

  Would you remain in Yewvill
e instead of leaving as you did at the age of eighteen. In which case—where would you be at this very moment?

  Wordlessly you shake your head at this last question. Indeed, this is a riddle!

  For surely you would not be here, signing books. Yet, you might well be here, visiting the Yewville library as a longtime patron.

  “Excuse me, please . . .”

  Edging out the others, the gentleman in the wheelchair rolls himself forward to meet you.

  It appears that he is misshapen, or disfigured: his spine twisted, one shoulder higher than the other, neck and head forced forward at an angle.

  In his lap, on his wasted thighs, is a large duffel bag filled with books heavy and bulky as rocks.

  You see with relief that this man, though severely handicapped, is relatively youthful-looking, with a head of thick gray-white hair, a ruddy complexion, earnest pale eyes. He is clean-shaven, well-groomed. His clothes are of high quality, if somewhat worn. Tenderly he confronts you: “D’you remember me? Rollo.”

  Rollo? Roland?

  Of course you remember: Roland Kidd. Your friend from math class. Eighth, ninth grades. A tall soft-bodied boy with an unexpectedly sweet smile, a (left) eye with a slight cast. Roland, or Rollo, is telling you how he has read virtually everything you’ve written, he has followed your career for decades. In the duffel bag are a small fraction of your books, he has brought from his library. “You know, I never married. I almost did—I was engaged more than once—but truth is, I never felt for any girl or woman the way I’ve felt for you. Many times over the years I wanted to write to you, to explain how important you are to me, how avidly I read everything you write . . . I admit, I am searching for myself in your fiction, and a few times I think I’ve found portraits of myself, not altogether flattering, but—well, it is flattering to be made ‘immortal’ in prose. At least, I’ve discovered enough of myself in your fiction to keep reading, and to keep hoping.”

  You are astonished, hearing these extravagant words. You would recoil in disbelief except Rollo Kidd speaks with enormous sincerity in a deep baritone voice like a radio broadcaster. So charismatic is he, the bullying Marian Beattie shrinks away abashed, the smirk fading from her face.

  You want to ask Rollo Kidd what he can possibly mean—“searching for myself” in your fiction. You dare not ask Rollo Kidd what he can possibly mean—“never felt for any girl or woman the way I felt for you.”

  Rollo is intent upon telling you about his house on Ridgemont Avenue with its walls of books in nearly every room, to the ceiling—“Many of them your books, dear. Both hardcover and paperback. I collect other contemporary American writers as well but you are the center of my collection. Will you do me the honor of signing just a few books, inscribed to me? And dated? Thank you!”

  Remarkably, Rollo has brought seventeen of your books to be signed—all hardcover. You are thrilled, a bit dazzled, as if a blinding light were shining in your face, out of a pit of darkness.

  Signing books in the midst of chaos has been a kind of solace for you, like scrubbing a floor on your knees—in a way a pointless activity, except that the activity is the point. And now, signing Rollo Kidd’s books, so meticulously encased in plastic covers, you feel relief mounting to actual pleasure.

  As you sign his books Rollo waits close by in his wheelchair. He speaks of his “fidelity”—his “longtime commitment”—to you; the only one of his classmates whom he’d respected, and one of the very few to leave Yewville. He confesses that, several times, he did write to you, in care of your publisher; but he never had a reply, which he attributed to your publisher not forwarding his letters.

  Can this be true? You receive very few letters from readers, fewer in recent years than in the past, but had never given it much thought; from time to time people have complained to you that their letters to you hadn’t been forwarded. Possibly, Rollo Kidd’s letters had disappeared into that abyss. You feel a pang of regret, for (possibly) you would have answered Rollo’s letters. Even before the days of email, you sometimes replied to letters from strangers, in handwritten outbursts of sincerity.

  Rollo profusely thanks you for signing his books. His eyes brim with tears, he is deeply moved. (You see, yes—Rollo’s left eye is indeed slightly out of focus. But both Rollo’s eyes are thick-lashed, rather beautiful. You have to wonder if you’d dared to notice years ago, when you were a girl.)

  “Now I am hoping, my dear, that you might visit my house? Where I have a complete collection of your work? Not just hardcover books but paperbacks and other reprints, and many—many hundreds—of magazines and literary journals, and anthologies, in which your fiction has appeared. I would doubt that you own a complete set, yourself. I think—my dear—you might see yourself in my collection, in my house—as you’ve never quite seen yourself.”

  My dear. These words too are caressing, hypnotic. No one has called you my dear in a very long time.

  “It’s only a short walk back to my house. Ten, fifteen minutes. I would be so honored! The culmination of my life, actually—to see you standing before shelves of your books—in my house . . . Of course, you are welcome to spend the night here, instead of in the fancy hotel your hosts at the college have surely arranged. My house is at the farthest end of Ridgemont, overlooking the ravine, and the river. D’you remember those old cobblestone houses we all admired when we were children? Like fairy-tale houses, with turrets, towers, slate roofs, wrought-iron fences? Built in the early years of the twentieth century? You remember.”

  You do remember. Vaguely at first, then more vividly. Ridgemont was one of the few prestigious streets in Yewville, adjacent to Ridgemont Park. In the loneliness of your life in exile from Yewville you have often performed an eidetic exercise: making your way, on foot, along Ridgemont, seeing in your mind’s eye each of the distinctive old houses. Now, you realize that the houses were small mansions built in imitation of English architectural styles—predominantly English Tudor. But there were other styles as well, one of them the large foursquare cobblestone house set back amid a lawn of tall elms—probably, this is the house Rollo Kidd lives in. You wonder how on earth he came to acquire it. For, if you recall correctly, the Kidd family was no more affluent than your family.

  “I have to admit, I purchased the house because of its numerous bookshelves—because I hoped to accommodate you. I became a local businessman—dabbled in real estate—expressly to make a little money, and buy a house on Ridgemont Avenue. For I hoped, one day, if you ever returned to Yewville, you would come to visit me, in that house. You would see what a shrine I have made for you, utterly without any expectation that you would ever come to me in this lifetime.”

  In this lifetime. Rollo speaks with such extravagance, you can’t possibly believe him. Yet, there is such genuine feeling in the man, such youthful energy, in contrast to his physical condition . . . (Does Rollo have Parkinson’s disease? He makes no effort to hide the tremor in his left hand.)

  You thank Rollo for his invitation but explain that you must return to your car, which has been hired to take you to the Buffalo airport. Yes, you did stay in a hotel, the previous night; but you are leaving now, for your home in another state.

  “You have a ‘home’ elsewhere, to which you intend to return? Really?”—Rollo laughs, baring glistening teeth.

  You find yourself laughing with him. Yes, really!—it does seem absurd, that you have a home not here in Yewville.

  Uncanny, how familiar this dignified older man seems to you. The more you stare at him from this close perspective, the more he resembles the boy you’d known, when you and he were twelve, thirteen years old. As if you’d grown up together, not hundreds, or is it thousands?—of miles apart.

  Indeed, Rollo is more attractive now, in some respects, than he’d been as a pudgy adolescent. He has dressed himself in a dapper tweed sport coat and a cream-colored shirt, open at the throat. On his wasted legs, trousers with a sharp crease. And on his feet limp as wooden blocks, black silk socks and po
lished black leather shoes.

  So sorry. You explain to Rollo Kidd that you can’t visit his house. With genuine regret, you just can’t. Maybe another time . . .

  Graciously you say farewell to the several “fans” who remain at the card table sipping punch from paper cups. One of them, who’d claimed to be your old friend Lizzie Heardon, glares at you with an expression of intense dislike. You are feeling magnanimous, however. Rollo Kidd’s presence has suffused you with strength, even a sort of childish pride, and so you don’t turn away from Marian Beattie as you would like to do; instead, you grit your teeth and thank the spiteful woman, the woman you’d been meant to be, for her hospitality in welcoming you to the library.

  “In another thirty-six years I hope that I will be invited back again,” you tell Miss Beattie, gaily.

  You are leaving the library without a backward glance but—there comes Rollo Kidd wheeling himself after you. The man is not shy in pursuit but rather exhilarated, determined. As you descend the front steps he rolls himself down a parallel ramp, so swiftly that his thick graying white hair, a silky sort of hair, is blown in the wind.

  “Please accept my invitation, my dear. You will be astonished to see my house—a shrine to you. I wasn’t exaggerating! I promise I won’t expect you to sign more than a few of your limited edition publications. These are kept ‘under lock and key’ in a specially designed bookcase with glass doors that lock . . .”

  You see, at the curb, the stately black hired car awaiting you. Yet you linger, reluctant to be rude to Rollo Kidd. Your heart swells with the melancholy certainty that Rollo Kidd was meant to be your soul mate; yet, something went wrong in your early life, you’d missed each other. Even now you are thinking—You can return. You can begin again. Here is the one person in the world who cherishes you.

  You are walking beside Rollo, who rolls himself companionably at your side. Astonishing how companionable the two of you are, how familiar with each other; that you loom above Rollo in his wheelchair feels familiar to you as well. You note with approval how Rollo is determined to ignore his infirmity. Indeed, his upper arms and shoulders, his back, have thickened with muscle, in the effort of rolling his non-motorized chair; the very slant of his head has been re-imagined by the man as, not a disability brought on by Parkinson’s disease, but a sort of macho hyper-vigilance. This man is not meek, shy, invalided; he is aggressive, even belligerent. Here is a man not easily dissuaded. Here is a man who knows his own mind. He dares to take your hand that has drifted close to his, and will not readily surrender it.