Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

  More recent grave stones are substantial, stolid. Death appears to be weightier now. Words, dates are decipherable. Dearest Mother. Beloved Husband. Dearest Daughter 1 Week Old.

  Each day in the late afternoon the widow visits the husband’s grave which is still the most recent, the freshest of graves in the cemetery.

  The grave stone the widow purchased for the husband is made of beautiful smooth-faced granite of the hue of ice, with a roughened edge. Not very large for James would not have wished anything conspicuous or showy or unnecessarily expensive.

  In the earth, in a surprisingly heavy urn, the (deceased) husband’s ashes.

  No grass has (yet) appeared in the grave soil though the widow has scattered grass seed there.

  (Are birds eating the seeds? She thinks so!)

  It is consoling to the widow that so little seems to change in the cemetery from day to day, week to week. The tall grasses are mowed haphazardly. Most other visitors come earlier than she does and are gone by late afternoon. If there is any activity in the church it is limited to mornings. Rarely does the widow encounter another mourner and so she has (naïvely) come to feel safe here in this quiet place where no one knows her….

  “Excuse me, lady. What the hell are you doing?”

  Today there has appeared in this usually deserted place a woman with a truculent pug face. Like a cartoon character this scowling person even stands with her hands on her hips.

  Claudia is astonished! Her face flushes with embarrassment.

  In the cemetery at the gravesite of a stranger buried near her husband she has been discovered on her knees energetically trimming weeds.

  “That’s my husband’s grave, ma’am.”

  The voice is rude and jarring and the staring eyes suggest no amusement at Claudia’s expense, no merriment. There is a subtle, just-perceptible emphasis on my.

  Guiltily Claudia stammers that she comes often to the cemetery and thought she might just “pull a few weeds” where she saw them…. It is not possible to explain to this unfriendly person that untidiness makes her nervous and that she has become obsessed with a compulsion to do good, be good.

  It is her life as a widow, wayward and adrift and yet compulsive, fated. After James’s abrupt death it was suggested to her by the headmistress of her school that she take a leave of absence from teaching and so she’d agreed while doubting that it was a good idea.

  A five-month leave of absence it was. Seeming to the widow at the outset something like a death sentence.

  She has busied herself bringing fresh flowers to James’s grave, and clearing away old flowers. She has kept the grasses trimmed neatly by James’s grave though (she knows) it is an empty ritual, a gesture of futility, observed by no one except herself.

  There is not much to tend at James’s neat, new grave. Out of a dread of doing nothing as well as a wish to do something the widow has begun clearing away debris and weeds from adjoining graves.

  Why do you need to keep busy, Claudia? All our busyness comes to the same end.

  She knows! The widow knows this.

  All the more reason to keep busy.

  In the neglected cemetery the widow has been feeling sorry for those individuals, strangers to her and James, who have been buried here and (seemingly) forgotten by their families. James’s nearest neighbor is Beloved Husband and Father Todd A. Abernathy 1966–2011 whose pebbled stone marker is surrounded by unsightly tall grasses, thistles and dandelions.

  Scattered in the grass are broken clay pots, desiccated geraniums and pansies. Even the artificial sunflowers are frayed and faded as mere trash.

  Claudia has begun bringing small gardening tools and gloves to the cemetery. She has not consciously decided to do good, it seems to have happened without her volition.

  The only sincere way of doing good is to be anonymous. She has thought.

  But now she has been discovered. Her behavior, reflected in a stranger’s scowling face, does not seem so good after all.

  Quickly she rises to her feet, brushes at her knees. She is feeling unpleasantly warm inside her dark tasteful clothes.

  She hears her voice faltering and unconvincing: “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to surprise or upset you. I just like—I guess—to use my hands…. I come to the cemetery so often….”

  “Well. That’s real kind of you.”

  Just barely the woman relents. Though the woman doesn’t seem to be speaking ironically or meanly it is clear that she doesn’t think much of Claudia’s charity, that has cast an unflattering reflection upon her as a slipshod caretaker of the Abernathy grave.

  Unlike Claudia who is always well dressed—(she is too insecure to dress otherwise)—the scowling woman wears rumpled clothing, soiled jeans and flip-flops on her pudgy feet. Her streaked-blond hair looks uncombed, her face is doughy-pale. She too is a widow whose loss has made her resentful and resigned like one standing out in the rain without an umbrella.

  Claudia hears herself say impulsively that her husband is buried here also.

  “He just—it was back in April—died….”

  It is unlike the widow to speak so openly. In fact it is unlike the widow to speak of her personal life at all to a stranger.

  Claudia has no idea what she is saying or why she feels compelled to speak to this stranger who is not encouraging her, whose expression has turned sour. Her brain is flooded as with a barrage of lights. How have you continued to live as a widow? How did you forgive yourself? Why will you not smile at me? Why will you not even look at me?

  “O.K. But in the future maybe mind your own business, ma’am? Like the rest of us mind ours.”

  Rudely the woman turns her back on Claudia. Or maybe she has not meant to be rude, only just decisive.

  Claudia returns to James’s grave but she is very distracted, her hands are trembling. Why is the woman so hostile to her? Was it such a terrible thing, to have dared to pull out weeds on a neighboring grave?

  Forget her. It’s over. None of this matters—of course.

  It is ironic, Claudia manages to elude friends, family, relatives who express concern for her, and worry that she is in a precarious mental state still; yet here in the cemetery, where Claudia would speak to another mourner, she has been rebuffed.

  At James’s gravesite she stands uncertain. She is grateful that in some way (her brain is dazzled, she is not thinking clearly) her deceased husband has been spared this embarrassing exchange. She is still wearing gardening gloves, and carrying her hand trowel. Her leather handbag is lying in the grass as if she’d flung it down carelessly. Why is she so upset, over a trifle? A stranger’s rudeness? Or is she right to feel guilty, has she been intrusive and condescending? A quiet woman, one of the softer-spoken teachers at her school, Claudia has occasionally been criticized as aloof, indifferent to both students and colleagues. She winces to think how unfair this judgment is.

  She doesn’t want to leave the cemetery too soon for the woman will notice and sneer at her departing back. On the other hand, she doesn’t want to linger in this place that feels inhospitable to her. She dreads someone else coming to join the scowling woman, and the scowling woman will tell her what she’d discovered Claudia doing at Todd Abernathy’s grave, and what Claudia had done will be misinterpreted, misconstrued as a kind of vandalism.

  High overhead is a solitary, circling bird. Claudia has been aware of this bird for some minutes but has not glanced up since she supposes it must be a hawk, hawks are common in this area, and not a great blue heron for there isn’t a lake or wetlands nearby….

  She wants to think that it is a great blue heron. Her heart is stirred as a shadow with enormous outflung wings and trailing spindly legs glides past her on the ground and vanishes.

  “Ma’am?”—the scowling woman is speaking to her.

  “Yes?”

  “There were potted geraniums on my husband’s grave. Did you take them?”

  “Potted geraniums? No …”

  “Yes! There were potted ge
raniums here. What did you do with them?”

  Hesitantly Claudia tells the woman that she might have seen some broken clay pots in the grass, but not geranium plants; that is, not living plants. She might have seen dead plants….

  “And some artificial flowers? In a pot here?”

  “N-No … I don’t think so.”

  “Ma’am, I think you are lying. I think you’ve been stealing things from graves. I’m going to report you….”

  Claudia protests she has not been stealing anything. She has cleared away debris and dried flowers, and pulled weeds…. Everything she has cleared away is in a trash heap at the edge of the cemetery…. But the scowling woman is speaking harshly, angrily; she has worked herself up into a peevish temper, and seems about to start shouting. Claudia is quite frightened. She wonders if she has blundered into a place of madness.

  Is that what comes next, after grief? Is there no hope?

  Abjectly Claudia apologizes again. In a flash of inspiration—in which she sees the jeering face of her brother-in-law—she offers to pay for the “missing” geranium plants.

  “Here. Please. I’m truly sorry for the misunderstanding.”

  Out of her wallet she removes several ten-dollar bills. Her hands are shaking. (She sees the woman greedily staring at her wallet, and at her dark leather bag.) The bills she hands to the woman who accepts them with a look of disdain as if she is doing Claudia a favor by taking a bribe, and not reporting her.

  With sour satisfaction the woman says: “O.K., ma’am. Thanks. And like I say, next time mind your own damn business.”

  At her vehicle Claudia fumbles with the ignition key. She is conscious that her car is a handsome black BMW; the only other vehicle in the parking lot, a battered Chevrolet station wagon, must belong to the scowling woman. More evidence that Claudia is contemptible in some way, in the woman’s derisive eyes.

  She is very upset. She must escape. The cemetery, that has been a place of refuge for her, has become contaminated.

  A shadow, or shadows, glides across the gleaming-black hood of the BMW. Her brain feels blinded as if a shutter had been thrown open to the sun. She feels a powerful urge to run back to the scowling woman bent over her husband’s grave in a pretense of clearing away weeds. She would grip the woman’s shoulders and shake, shake, shake—she would stab at the sour scowling face with something like a sharp beak….

  Of course the widow does nothing of the sort. In the gleaming-black BMW she drives back to the (empty) house on Aubergine Lake.

  “Claudie? I’d like to drop by this afternoon, I have a proposal to make to you….”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve been talking to a terrific agent at Sotheby’s, you know they’re only interested in exceptional properties….”

  “I said No. I won’t be home, this isn’t a good time.”

  “Tomorrow, then? Let’s say four-thirty P.M.?”

  “I—I won’t be home then. I’ll be at the cemetery.”

  “Fine! Great! I’ll swing around to the house and pick you up at about quarter to? How’s that sound? I’ve been wanting to visit Jimmy’s grave but have been crazy-busy for weeks and this is—the—ideal—opportunity for us to go together. Thank you, Claudie.”

  Claudia tries to protest but the connection has been broken.

  Your husband has left. Your husband has gone. Your husband will not be returning.

  Calmly, cruelly the voice stalks her. Especially she is vulnerable when she is alone in the house.

  Not her own voice but the voice of another speaking through her mouth numbed as with novocaine.

  Your husband has left. Your husband has gone….

  Shaking out sleeping pills into the palm of her hand. Precious pills! One, two, three …

  But the phone will ring if she tries to sleep. Even if there is no one to hear, the phone will ring. New messages will be left amid a succession of unanswered messages like eggs jammed into a nest and beginning to rot—Claudia? Please call. We are concerned. We will come over if we don’t hear from you….

  The doorbell will ring. He, the rapacious brother-in-law, will be at the door.

  “I will not. I’ve told you—no.”

  Hastily she pulls on rubber boots, an old L.L. Bean jacket of her husband’s with a hood. She has found a pair of binoculars in one of James’s closets and wears it around her neck tramping in the wetlands around the lake.

  Here, the widow is not so vulnerable to the voice in her head. No telephone calls to harass her, no doorbell.

  Rain is not a deterrent, she discovers. Waterfowl on the lake pay not the slightest heed even to pelting rain, it is their element and they thrive in it.

  A sudden croaking cry, and she turns to see the great blue heron flying overhead. The enormous unfurled wings!—she stares after the bird in amazement.

  Belatedly raising the binoculars to watch the heron fly across the lake. Slow pumping of the great wings, that bear the bird aloft with so little seeming effort.

  Flying above the lake. Rain-rippled slate-colored lake. Chill gusty air, mists lifting from the water. Yet the heron’s eyesight is so acute, the minute darting of a fish in the lake, glittery sheen offish skin thirty feet below the heron in flight, is enough to alter the trajectory of the heron’s flight in an instant as the heron abruptly changes course, plummets to the surface of the lake, seizes the (living, thrashing) fish in its bill—and continues its flight across the lake.

  That stabbing beak! There has been nothing like this in the widow’s life until now.

  She is determined, she will be a good person.

  James would want her to continue her life as she’d lived her life of more than fifty years essentially as a good person.

  This catastrophe of her life, a deep wound invisible to others’ eyes, she believes might be healed, or numbed. If she is good.

  She forces herself to reply to emails. (So many! The line from The Wasteland seeps into her brain: I had not thought that death had undone so many.) She forces herself to reply to phone messages by (shrewdly, she thinks) calling friends, relatives, neighbors at times when she is reasonably sure no one will answer the phone.

  Hi! It’s Claudia. Sorry to have been so slow about returning your call—calls …

  I’m really sorry! I hope you weren’t worried …

  You know, I think there is something wrong with my voice mail …

  Of course—I am fine …

  Of course—I am sleeping all right now …

  Of course—it’s a busy time for a—a widow …

  Thanks for the invitation but—right now, I am a little preoccupied …

  Thanks for the offer—you’re very kind—but—

  Yes I will hope to see you soon. Sometime soon …

  No I just can’t. I wish that I could …

  Thank you but …

  I’m so sorry. I’ve been selfish, I haven’t thought of you.

  The phone drops from her hand. She is trembling with rage.

  Still the widow is determined to do good, be good.

  She will establish a scholarship in her husband’s name at the university from which he’d graduated with such distinction.

  She will arrange for a memorial service for her husband, in some vague future time—”Before Thanksgiving, I think.”

  She will donate most of his clothes to worthy charities including those beautiful woolen sweaters she’d given him, those many neckties and those suits and sport coats she’d helped him select, how many shirts, how many shoes, how many socks she cannot bear to think, she cannot bear to remove the husband’s beautiful clothing from closets, she will not even remove the husband’s socks and underwear from drawers, she has changed her mind and will not donate most of his clothes, indeed any of his clothes to worthy charities. She will not.

  That hoarse, harsh cry!—it has been ripped from her throat.

  Flying, ascending. The misty air above the lake is revealed to be textured like fabric. It is not
thin, invisible, of no discernible substance but rather this air is thick enough for the great pumping wings to fasten onto that she might climb, climb, climb with little effort.

  She has become a winged being climbing the gusty air like steps. Elation fills her heart. She has never been so happy. Every pulse in her being rings, pounds, beats, shudders with joy. The tough muscle in her bony chest fast-beating like a metronome.

  Low over the lake she flies. Through ascending columns of mist she flies. The great blue heron is the first of the predator birds to wake each morning in the chill twilight before dawn. It is an almost unbearable happiness, pumping the great gray-feathered wings that are so much larger than the slender body they might wrap the body inside them, and hide it.

  Into the marshy woods, flying low. Her sharp eyes fixed on the ground. Small rodents are her prey. Small unwitting birds are her prey.

  She will wade in the shallow water moving slowly forward on her spindly legs, or standing very still. She is very patient. Her beak strikes, she swallows her prey whole, and alive—thrashing and squealing in terror.

  The hoarse, croaking cry—a proclamation of pure joy.

  Yet she is happiest when flying. When she is rising with the air currents, soaring and floating on gusts of wind. When her eye detects motion below, a flash of color, fish color, and her slender body instantaneously becomes a sleek missile, aimed downward, propelled sharply downward, to kill.

  Through the air she plunges and her sharp beak is precise and pitiless spearing a small fish which in a single reflex she swallows alive, still squirming as it passes down her throat, into her gullet.

  She hunts without ceasing for she is always hungry. It is hunger that drives all motion, like waves that never come to an end but are renewed, refreshed.