Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Daddy struck us, one and then the other. One on the back, as Esther had been struck, and the other a glancing careless blow on the side of the head as if in this case (my case) the child was so hopeless, he was beyond disciplining. Oh oh oh!—we had learned to stifle our cries.

  In long Daddy-strides Daddy returned to the car to smoke a cigarette. This had happened before but not quite in this way and so when a thing happens in a way resembling a prior way it is more upsetting than if it had not happened before, ever in any way. On the lumpy ground in broken and desiccated grasses we lay sobbing, trying to catch our breaths. Esther who was the oldest recovered first, crawled to Kevin and me and helped us sit up, and stand on our shaky stick legs. We were dazed with pain and also with the sick sensation that comes to you when you have not expected something to happen as it did but, as it begins to happen, you remember that you have in fact experienced it before, and this fact determines, in the way of a sequence of bolts locking a sequence of doors, the certitude that it will recur.

  In the car Daddy sat smoking. The driver’s door was open partway but still the car was filling with bluish smoke like mist.

  Between Esther and Daddy there was a situation unique to Esther and Daddy, as it had once been unique to Lula and Daddy: if Esther had disappointed Daddy, and had been punished for disappointing Daddy, Esther was allowed, perhaps even expected, to refer to this punishment provided Esther did not challenge Daddy, or disappoint Daddy further. A clear, simple question posted by Esther to Daddy often seemed, to our surprise, to be welcomed.

  Esther said, a catch in her throat, Oh Daddy why?

  Daddy said, Because I am Daddy, whose children must never give up hope.

  GREAT BLUE HERON

  That cry! Hoarse, not-human, fading almost at once. But in an instant she has been wakened.

  The cry came from the lake, she supposes. Owls. Waterfowl on the lake—loons, geese, mallards. Through the night in her uneasy sleep she hears their beautiful forlorn cries, that are usually muted like human voices heard at a distance. Sometimes there is an agitation on the water, what sounds like a frantic flapping of wings—she listens acutely hoping not to hear cries of distress.

  Too early for her to wake. Too early to be conscious.

  She has been exhausted lately, sleep is precious to her.

  Her nightgown is unpleasantly damp from perspiration. The bedclothes are damp. She is breathing quickly, thinly. The cry from the lake has unnerved her—it did not sound human yet it is familiar to her.

  She whispers her husband’s name. She doesn’t want to wake him but she is feeling anxious, lonely.

  The bed is larger than she recalls. Almost, she isn’t sure if her husband is there, at the farther (left) edge of the bed.

  But he is there, seemingly asleep. His broad naked back to her.

  Gently she eases against him, craving the touch of another. The protective arms of another.

  Her husband appears to be sleeping undisturbed. Whatever the cry from the lake, he has not been wakened.

  He has thrown off most of the covers, his shoulders and upper back are cool to the touch. Without opening his eyes he turns sleepily to her, to close his arms around her.

  Strong and protective the husband’s arms. And his deep slow breathing a kind of protection as well. She lays her head beside his, on a corner of his pillow. In his sleep the husband does strange, sculptural things with pillows: bends them in two, sets them beneath his head vertically, merges two pillows into one, lies at an uncomfortable angle with his head crooked. Yet he sleeps soundly, the nocturnal birds rarely wake him.

  Husband and wife are very comfortable together. Without needing to speak they communicate perfectly in their bed in the dark. The wife will claim that she is a light sleeper yet often she falls asleep close to the husband in this way, sharing just the edge of his pillow.

  It is the purest sleep, sharing the edge of the husband’s pillow.

  Close about the roof of the house are smaller birds. Cardinals are the first to wake at dawn. Their familiar, sweet calls are tentative, like questions. They are asking What is this? Where are we? What will be expected of us? It must be terrifying to be a bird, she thinks. You must forage for food every minute, you must never rest or your small heart will cease beating.

  You must fly, you must exert your wings. Frail bones, that can be snapped so easily. Yet these bones are strong enough to lift you into the air and to buoy you aloft through your life.

  These are the birds of day—birds whose songs are familiar to the ear. On the lake and in the marshy land bordering the lake are larger birds, mysterious birds, that cry, call, hoot, moan, shriek, murmur, and make quavering noises, harsh manic laughter through the night.

  The screech owl, a singular shuddering cry.

  The great blue heron, a hoarse croak of a cry.

  Take my hand. And take care.

  Hand in hand they are walking along the edge of the lake. The earth underfoot is soft, spongy. It is a chill May morning. Color is bleached from the earth as from the sky. Tall grasses at the water’s shore appear to be broken, trampled. There is a smell of wet rotted leaves. Though the season is spring it is a twilit time and all that she sees appears to be neither wholly alive nor wholly dead.

  She is gripping her husband’s hand just slightly tighter than usual. Perhaps the husband is limping—just slightly. It is natural for the wife to weave her fingers through the husband’s fingers. He is the stronger of the two, she defers to him even in the matter of walking together. Soon after they’d met they began holding hands in this way and that was many years ago but in this twilight hour at the lake the wife is unable to calculate how long. A strange silence has come upon her like a veil tied tight against her mouth.

  Come here! Look.

  Carefully the husband leads the wife. Nearly hidden among tall grasses and cattails at the shore is what appears to be a little colony of nesting ducks—mallards.

  These are the most common local ducks. The wife recognizes the sleek dark-green head of the male, the plain brown feathers of the female.

  A light rain is falling, causing the surface of the lake to shiver like the skin of a living creature. The sun doesn’t seem to be rising in the east so much as materializing behind banks of cloud—pale, without color, sheer light.

  She is gripping her husband’s hand. She thinks—We have never been so happy.

  Has he brought her here, to tell her this? Why has he brought her here?

  The lake at this hour appears different than it appears by day. It seems larger, lacking boundaries. Columns of mist rise, like exhaled breaths. By day you can see individual trees but in this dusk all is shadow like a smear of thick paint. And the surface of the lake reflecting only a dull metallic sheen.

  A sun so hazy-pale, it might be the moon. (Is that the moon?) Obscured by clouds that appear to be unmoving, fixed in place.

  There is something melancholy, the wife thinks, in such beauty. For the lake is beautiful, even drained of color. It is one of the beautiful places of her life, it has become precious to her. Though it is not a large lake in the mountains, only a semi-rural, semi-suburban lake of less than two miles in circumference, at its deepest no more than fifteen feet and much of the water near shore shallow, clotted with cattails.

  It is difficult to walk along the lake, there is no single trail amid dense underbrush. Especially dense are stretches of Rosa acicularis, thorny wild rose that catch in clothing and raise bleeding scratches on unprotected skin.

  Hand in hand walking along the shore. They have come to the end of their property and are making their way along a faint trail in the marsh. The wife is shivering, her feet are getting wet, she would like to turn back but the husband presses forward, he has something to show her. Through their long marriage it is the husband who has had much to show the wife.

  Above the lake are flashes of lightning, soundless.

  On the steel-colored lake are shadow figures: a flotilla of Canada geese. The
husband and wife stand very still observing the large handsome gray-feathered geese as they float on the surface of the water, heads tucked beneath their wings like illustrations in a children’s storybook.

  All is serene, near-motionless as in a dream.

  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, about twenty feet away, there appears a curious long-legged creature making its way along the shore, in the direction of the mallard nests.

  The wife stares, appalled. It is a great blue heron, a predator bird, very thin, with a long snaky neck and scaly legs, a long sharp beak. Eerie and unsettling that the thing, the creature, makes no attempt to use its wings to fly but simply walks awkwardly, yet rapidly, like a human being in some way handicapped or disfigured.

  Before any of the mallards sight the predator it attacks the nearest nest. Its beak stabs pitilessly, with robotic precision. There is a violent struggle, there are shrieks, a frenzied flapping of mallard wings as the heron stabs at the nest, piercing eggs with its bill; within seconds it has gobbled down mallard eggs, brazen and indifferent to the smaller waterfowl hissing and flapping their wings in protest.

  At another nest the heron discovers tiny unfledged ducklings. The affrighted mallard parents are unable to interfere as the tall snaky-necked bird lifts ducklings one by one in its bill, swiftly, and swallows them whole.

  By now all the mallards are protesting, shrieking. There must be two dozen mallards aroused to alarm. Some are on land, at the shore; others are flailing about in the water. Their cries are cwak-cwak-cwak, emitted in fury and despair. But the cries come too late. The alarm is ineffectual. The great blue heron remains unmoved, indifferent. Within a minute it has eaten its fill and now lifts its wide gray-feathered wings, extends its leathery-looking neck, and flies away across the lake with a horrible sort of composure.

  Only now does the predator emit a cry—harsh, hoarse, croaking—triumphant-sounding, grating to the ear.

  Oh God!—she is waking now.

  Now, her eyes are open, stark and blind. So surprised, she can’t see at first.

  For long minutes unable to move as her heart pounds. Stunned as if her body, in the region of her heart, has been pierced by the predator bird’s long sharp beak.

  She wills herself to wake fully. It is a conscious, moral decision, she thinks—to wake fully.

  Throws aside the bedclothes that are stifling to her, removes her nightgown, damp with sweat, and tosses it onto the floor like a disgraced thing.

  The bed beside her is empty. Of course, the bed is empty.

  It is three weeks and two days since her husband’s death.

  He has left. He has gone. He will not be returning.

  These words she tells herself a dozen times a day. These words that are the flattest recitation of horror yet somehow cannot be wholly comprehended. Thus, she must repeat.

  He has left. He has gone. He will not be returning.

  A jangling at the front door. There is no keeping the intruder out.

  Not a predator bird but a scavenger bird. Hunched shoulders like deformed wings, rapacious bright eyes that move over the widow like hunger.

  “You will want to sell this property. Of course.”

  No. I do not want to sell this property.

  Gravely the brother-in-law speaks. Though she has told the brother-in-law that it is too soon after the husband’s death to think of such matters.

  “… always said, the property is really too much for just two people. And now …”

  He’d stood on the front stoop ringing the bell. Calling Clau-dia! Clau-dia! It’s me.

  And who, she wonders, is me?

  What has she to do with this me?

  She could not keep the brother-in-law out of the house. She could not run away to hide upstairs for he would have called 911 to report a desperate woman in (possible) danger of harming herself or worse yet he’d have broken into the house to find her, in triumph.

  Saying then—Poor Claudia! I may have saved her life.

  It is all beyond her control. What people say about her now that her husband has died.

  It is astonishing: the (uninvited, unwanted) brother-in-law is sitting in the living room of this house in which he has not (ever) been a guest without the presence of his brother.

  The first time (ever) that the brother-in-law has been alone with his brother’s wife who has long been wary of him—his glistening eyes, too-genial smile.

  The brother-in-law has even helped himself to a drink—amber-colored whiskey splashed into a glass, from a bottle kept in a cabinet with a very few other, select bottles of liquor. The brother-in-law has asked if the widow will join him in a drink and the widow has declined with a nervous smile. How strange, to be asked to join an unwanted intruder in a drink, and to murmur No thank you in your own house.

  A numbed sense of horror is rising in the widow, of all that she has relinquished and lost.

  In his earnest salesman’s voice the brother-in-law is speaking of planning for the future, the widow’s future. She is the executrix of the husband’s estate which involves a good deal of responsibility, and “expertise”—which the widow does not have, understandably.

  “I can help you, Claudia. Of course …”

  How strange, her name on this man’s lips—Claudia. Worse, he sometimes calls her Claudie. As if there were a special intimacy between them.

  The brother-in-law speaks of “finances”—”taxes”—”lakeside property”—as if he is being forced to utter painful truths. As if this visit is not his choice (not at all!) but his responsibility as the (younger) brother of the deceased husband, the (concerned, caring) brother-in-law of the widow.

  Politely, stiffly the widow is listening.

  In truth, the widow is not listening.

  Only dimly does the widow hear the brother-in-law speak for there is a roaring in her ears as of a distant waterfall. Only vaguely is she aware of the mouth moving. A kind of hinge to the mouth, like that of a scavenger bird.

  Why is he here? Why is he here with her? This person in all of the world whom she has never trusted. This person who she believes borrowed money from her husband with the tacit understanding on both sides that the money would (probably) not be returned.

  The brother-in-law who has expressed an awkward, unwished-for interest in her as if there were a kind of complicity between them. You know—that I know—you will never tell Jim.

  Jim! But the husband was called James.

  Except at times by the younger brother. With a smirking smile—Jim. Worse yet, Jimmy.

  But this is so: she’d never told her husband how his younger brother has had a habit of standing uncomfortably close to her, looming his bulky body over her; he leans his face into hers, hugging her too tightly in greeting or in farewell, so that she is made to feel the unpleasant solidity and heat of his (male) body. How he addresses her in an undertone with a suggestive smile—H’loClaudie. Been missing you.

  Often, at family gatherings, the brother-in-law’s breath smells of whiskey. Warm, gaseous. And his heavy hand falling on her arm as if accidentally.

  She has never told her husband. She would have been embarrassed and ashamed to tell her husband. Rather she would keep a disagreeable secret to herself than share it and disturb others.

  Her love for her husband had been a protective love, which she did not want to jeopardize. She did not want to be the bearer of upsetting news to her kindly, sweet-natured and trusting husband and had kept many things from him in the long years of their marriage.

  She would keep from him now, if she could, the rawness of her grief. She would not want the (deceased) husband to know how she misses him.

  She would not want the (deceased) husband to know how she distrusts, dislikes, fears his brother.

  In any case (she has told herself) nothing is likely to happen between her and the brother-in-law because she would not allow it to happen.

  “You’re looking very pale, Claudia. We all hope you’re getting enough sleep.”

&nb
sp; At this she smiles ironically. Enough sleep! There could be only enough sleep if she shut her eyes forever.

  “Sure I can’t fix you a drink? I think I’ll have another—just a little….”

  The brother-in-law is in his mid-fifties, several years younger than the (deceased) husband and of the widow’s approximate age. He has made a show of being a devoted family man but his life has been carefully arranged so that he spends as little time with his family as possible. Solid-bodied, big-armed, despite his slightly hunched shoulders he has a ruddy golfer’s face and the manner of one eager to take charge with his very hands if necessary.

  The widow can see the hands getting a grip—on her.

  As if she were a golf club. An instrument to be deftly deployed by one who will take charge.

  “The real estate market isn’t great at the present time—I acknowledge that. Mortgage rates are high. But with careful marketing, and sound investments after the sale of the property …”

  The brother-in-law’s eyes are damp, inquisitive. Moving over the widow’s body like swarming ants as he pours himself another drink, and drinks.

  “… of course, it has been a terrible shock. You have had a trauma. Which is why …”

  The brother-in-law is confident that he will win over the widow. Her silence is a goad to his ingenuity. Her politeness, her courtesy, her habit of deference are a goad to his loquacity. It isn’t clear to him—it isn’t clear that it much matters—whether the widow is near-catatonic with grief or is simply stiff-backed with female stubbornness in opposition to him precisely because he has the very best advice to give to her.

  That is how women are—perverse!

  In his professional life the brother-in-law has been an investment banker. He is not an investment banker now—(the widow isn’t sure if he “has his own business” or is “between jobs”)—but he retains the skills, the information, the experience of investment banking or at least the insider vocabulary, and he is after all the widow’s brother-in-law, to whom the widow might naturally turn in this time of distress.