The Rescuer

by Joyce Carol Oates

  My parents were not old, really: scarcely in their sixties. Not old.

  Nor were they unwell, so far as I knew. Despite what they’d said on the phone.

  All this while Harvey was trying clumsily to hide something in his hand. Trying to divert my attention he maneuvered himself to a table in a corner of the room, where he shoved whatever he’d been holding—(a small package or bag?)—beneath a pile of newspapers.

  By degrees Harvey regained a measure of his old composure. He’d gotten over the shock and something of the displeasure of seeing me in the corridor outside his door and spoke to me in the voice of an elder brother giving advice to his naïve and intrusive sister: “Jesus, Lydia! You shouldn’t have come here. Our parents have nothing to do with my life any longer—they are the only bond between us, and that bond has been broken. They know this, and you should know it, too.

  “You should not be their handmaid.” He paused, wiping furiously at his nose. He’d worked himself up to a kind of anger. “I guess you can stay the night, then drive back tomorrow to—wherever you came from.”

  Surely Harvey must have known where I was in graduate school, at which distinguished University, quite as distinguished as the seminary he’d quit, and so this was some sort of brotherly insult, I supposed. I tried not to feel hurt. I tried not to reveal hurt.

  “If that’s what you want, Harvey. But I think—”

  “Yes. It is what I want. Haven’t you been listening, for Christ’s sake!”

  In Harvey’s presence, inevitably I was cast back into the pitiable role of baby sister—an object of bemused affection, or affable contempt. My sisters had sometimes liked me, and sometimes not; not often, my older siblings had time for me. Now Harvey said, coldly: “Our parents have no right to interfere in my life—or in yours. This is not a safe environment for a girl like you.”

  I thought But what about you?

  For it seemed to me, in the dimly lighted room, that was badly cluttered as a storage room with boxes (unpacked books and papers) on the floor, and scattered white plastic bags underfoot, that something was wrong with my brother: part of his face was missing.

  Harvey’s hair was long and unkempt, falling to his shoulders, but at the crown of his head he was beginning to go bald. The effect was eerie—as if someone had grabbed his long hair and tugged it back.

  For as long as I could remember Harvey wore his dull-brown hair conventionally cut, trimmed at the sides and back. He’d dressed neatly, inconspicuously. If he was to be a “man of God” it was not as a fervid Evangelist preacher but as a scholarly theologian like his hero Reinhold Niebuhr. He’d never smoked, never drank, so far as anyone in the family knew; he’d never been involved with girls or women, and had had few friends. He’d never appeared in my sight so altered, so—disheveled. It was as if a giant hand had snatched up poor Harvey and shaken him, hard. His skin was both sallow and red-mottled as if he were very warm; his hair hung in his face, in greasy strands. He wore soiled jeans and a soiled T-shirt. In college and at the seminary he’d worn proper white shirts, ties, and jackets; he’d acquired a settled yet expectant look as of middle age, while in his early twenties. My parents had proudly shown photographs of their only son studying at the distinguished seminary at which Reinhold Niebuhr had himself taught fifty years before. Our son is studying to be a man of God!

  Such silly boastfulness was typical of my parents. Perhaps it is typical of all parents. I did not feel envy for Harvey, only resentment and frustration.

  When I did well in school, my parents seemed scarcely to notice.

  Good work, Lydia. Very good.

  There is a finite supply of love in a family, perhaps. By the time the youngest child arrives, that supply has diminished.Harvey was complaining: “You don’t seem to understand, Lydia, that this part of Trenton is an environment in which a—a person—like you—will be singled out for the wrong kind of attention. You will be singular. You’re a young Caucasian woman, you’re attractive, you’re alone, and you are vulnerable.” Attractive and vulnerable were uttered accusingly. Alone seemed to me unfair.

  “But I’m not alone. I’m with you.”

  Harvey stared at me, offended.

  “You are not with me. You’ve just intruded, uninvited. And you’re leaving, tomorrow.”

  I saw that Harvey’s hands were trembling. His fingernails were ragged. He looked at least ten years older than his age. We had not embraced in a greeting—we hadn’t brushed lips against the other’s cheek—but I was aware of my brother’s fierce breath like something combustible. The thought came to me Oh God—he’s sick. He’s a drug addict. I didn’t wish to think that my brother might be paying those hulking youths to service him in ways other than just supplying drugs.

  In a bitter voice Harvey continued to complain about our parents intruding in his life, and how little they understood of his life. He’d worked himself up into a state in which he was cursing the Seminary as well—a “Protestant refuge against reality.” In a voice heavy with sarcasm he spoke of individuals whose names meant little to me, professors of his at the seminary.

  The Riverdale Theological Seminary was one of the oldest and most distinguished seminaries in the United States, overlooking the Hudson River just north of New York City. It had been a great honor for Harvey to receive an appointment as a fellow at this seminary after his graduation from college; my parents had boasted of nothing else for months. But now, Harvey seemed to be expressing contempt for it.

  I was waiting for Harvey to suggest that we go downstairs to my car, and bring my things into his apartment—my hastily packed suitcase, a backpack and my laptop. But he didn’t seem to think of it. I couldn’t help thinking He is waiting for me to be discouraged, and to leave.

  It was then I saw: Harvey’s left ear had been injured. It looked mangled as if it had been partly bitten off and was covered in ugly dark scabs, all but hidden by his straggly hair.

  “Harvey, what happened to you? My God.”

  “What—where?” Laughing irritably Harvey tried to pass off my alarm as some curious foible of my own.“Your ear. Here.” Gingerly, I meant to touch the mangled ear but Harvey pushed my hand away.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my ear. Jesus!” Harvey’s sallow face was flushed with embarrassment. I remembered how, as a child, usually a very well behaved boy, Harvey would suddenly flare up in anger if one of our sisters teased him a little too long or made a gesture to touch him.

  I remembered the lanky-limbed “good” boy striking out with his fists. Kicking.

  He turned on me, furious. It was the first time since I’d stepped into his apartment that Harvey had actually looked at me.

  “What about you? It looks like somebody blackened your eyes. Your face is bruised. What the hell happened to you?”

  I’d forgotten my accident entirely. My face was more or less numb, and no longer throbbed with pain.

  “I—I had an accident. I slipped on a staircase, and . . .”

  Harvey clearly disbelieved me; nor did my explanation sound very plausible, even to me.

  “I wasn’t beaten.”

  “Well. I wasn’t beaten, either.”

  “But your ear looks mutilated. Part of the lobe is missing . . .”

  Harvey ran his fingers rapidly over the scarred ear. “It was an accident, too. Dargo mistook me for someone else.”

  “That horrible dog? He attacked you?”

  “Leander—that’s Dargo’s master—wasn’t to blame. Leander wouldn’t hurt me. But it was a confused scene, there was a lot going on and the dog got confused. Such things happen, in Grindell Park.”

  Wryly, Harvey rubbed the scabby ear. And then I saw that the tip of his little finger was missing, too, on his right hand.

  Chapter Three

  A night passed, and another day, and a night. Harvey was gentlemanly enough to lend me
his bed—but such a lumpy, smelly bed, with grungy bedclothes and a pillow that looked as if it had been flattened with a baseball bat; when I asked Harvey for clean sheets he laughed at me and said the God damn sheets would be cleaned when someone took the laundry to the Laundromat, how else?

  I thought this was probably an invitation, in my brother’s oblique way, to take the laundry to a Laundromat for him; to stay a while longer, and be of help.

  Of course, Harvey would never have appealed to me directly.

  So I drove to the nearest Laundromat, which was on Camden Avenue a half-mile away. There was a grocery store close by so I set out for the store while Harvey’s laundry was being washed.

  And there on the sidewalk was Leander taller and more savage-looking in sunlight, half his face a lurid tattoo and dreadlocks falling down his back.

  “Hiya l’l dude. How’s it goin.”

  I was trying not to acknowledge him, not to see him. Except of course Leander recognized me and knew exactly who I was.

  The relief was, Leander didn’t have the pig-pit-bull with him, straining at the leash. It seemed strange to see him alone on the sidewalk, not unlike an ordinary pedestrian. He said, in a mock-accusing voice: “Y’know—you’ brother owes somebody a sum. He told you this, eh? Like six hundred eighty-eight dollars the fucker owe. You will pay, eh?”

  “I will pay—why?”

  “You brother say you are here to help him. You here to get him well again. He love you, he say. My sister is the one of all the world, I love.”

  Leander spoke extravagantly. His speech was a kind of music. What he said was unbelievable but he spoke with such sincerity, you wanted to believe. As if it was Harvey and not Leander who spoke: Harvey the young idealist and not the burnt-out Harvey who was now.

  “Well. I love Harvey, too.”

  “There you go, girl! That be good for both.”

  The dark-skinned boy loomed over me smiling and twitching his lips that were thick, protuberant. As his eyes were protuberant, like the eyes of a primitive African carving. The tattoo looked painted-on, savage; it appeared to be a copy of the Maori tribal tattoo that the ex-heavyweight champion Mike Tyson had had tattooed on half his face. Leander’s breath, too, was fierce—combustible. Heat lifted from his oily-dark skin, where he’d left partway open a smart black suede coat that fell to his knees; beneath the coat, he was wearing just a suede vest and a gold chain.

  I said I didn’t have so much money. I said I was a student, like my brother.

  Leander said, sneering, “You too old, be a student! Fuck that bullshit, man! Neither of you, specially him. Ain’t be any asshole gon believe you be students of—what?”

  “I am a—a graduate student—cultural anthropology—”

  “Cuntchural ’pology—bullshit. Like you’ brother sayin he gon be some kinda preacher. Is that fucked, man! He owe us this sum six hundred ninety-eight dollars, man. It goin up all the time, man—’int’rest.’ He say you come here, gon help him out.”

  “But I—I don’t have six hundred dollars . . .”

  In fact, of course I did have six hundred dollars. I had somewhere beyond sixteen hundred dollars, in a banking account near the University.

  This was my stipend, or rather part of it. Monthly installments were wired to the account, not much, but enough to cover my expenses month to month. I had to suppose that Harvey too had such an arrangement at the Seminary, or had had such an arrangement before he’d dropped out.

  Leander leaned close to me as if he could read my thoughts. I felt a sensation of faintness, quickness of breath. I thought He can’t hurt me here in front of witnesses.

  Yet—were there “witnesses” on Camden Avenue? Traffic moving in an erratic stream of stops and starts—a predominance of vans, trucks, buses—a scattering of dark-skinned individuals waiting at a bus stop—a few grim-faced pedestrians. In this part of Trenton, no one dallied: everyone had a mission, to get somewhere else. If Leander threatened me, or attacked me, would anyone so much as glance in my direction? Would anyone care?

  He was laughing at me. Between us there was a bond of some kind: as if we’d known each other in the past, intimately.

  The Maori tattoo: an eerie curdled-cream-color, bracketing half his face like shark’s teeth.

  “He say you’ name is—Lyd-jai? You gon be my friend, girl—you see. There’s ways of payin back what you’ brother owe, we work out just fine betwin us, Lyd-jai.”

  These were ominous words. I did not quite hear these words.

  I did hear Lyd-jai. Harvey must have spoken with Leander just recently, without my knowledge, telling Leander my name.

  Leander reached out to touch my face—to frame my face in his hands. His movements were snaky-quick, I had no time to pull away.

  Long fingers framing my face, a pressure of thumbs at the corners of my eyes.

  “You be pretty-girl, you’ eyes some kinda blue—like sky. But not Trenton sky.”

  Leander spoke with a mocking sort of tenderness. I stood very still, not breathing; just slightly on my toes, as he was pulling upward at my head, straining my neck.

  He leaned his savage smiling face to mine. His nostrils were enormous. And the dark-purplish lips enormous. At the corners of my eyes, the pressure of his fingers tightened. I tried not to panic thinking He could gouge out my eyes. He could snap my neck. He is restraining himself.

  Instead, Leander stooped and took hold of my lower lip in his teeth. It wasn’t a kiss—it was a bite: a quick sharp nasty bite of my lower lip.

  Then, a sudden release.

  Laughter in my face, and release.

  Dazed, I stumbled away. I managed to find a tissue in my handbag, to press against my bleeding mouth.

  At first I wasn’t sure if it was blood that I was tasting, or saliva that seemed to be flooding my mouth.

  If he is infected. HIV, AIDS.

  I walked away—no one on the street seemed to have noticed Leander and me.

  Or, if anyone had noticed, he had not intervened.

  I was headed for—where?—a grocery store. Pinneo’s Market: a corner store with a small littered parking lot.

  Possibly Leander was watching me, hands on his hips, standing behind me. Or maybe he’d disappeared.

  Grocery store!—food store! There was virtually no food in Harvey’s refrigerator. I recalled my parents enjoining me to shop for Harvey, cook for him, make sure that he ate . . . But I had to feed myself, too. By mid-morning of this first full day in Trenton, I was ravenously hungry.

  In the little grocery store, which looked to be very old, family owned, smelling of Mediterranean spices, cloves of raw garlic, black olives, I pushed a rickety cart along narrow, congested aisles of mostly canned goods. Out of nowhere a boldly bright girl of about nineteen, with toffee-colored skin, and dyed-cranberry hair in stiff cornrows, approached me. At first I thought she worked in the store, then I saw that she was a customer, or had followed me inside.

  “Say, girl—that my cousin L’nd’r I saw you just now talking with. Girl, I wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t—what?”

  “Wouldn’t hang out none with L’nd’r. That be a mistake. Get too close with that type, y’know? L’nd’r no common cit’zen.”

  The girl’s smile was a sneering sort of smile, yet not unfriendly. She was a gorgeous young woman of about my height, much fleshier than I was, with thick crimson lips and heavily made-up eyes like a model in a ra
p-music video.

  “Girl, you hearin me? You lookin kinda—lost. What you got to know is, my cousin L’nd’r is not one for trifling.”

  “He—he’s a friend of my brother’s . . .”

  The girl laughed as if I’d said something witty.

  “Girl, he ain’t no friend of any brother. Believe me, girl. You better run-like-hell in some other direction from L’nd’r is what I’m saying.”

  “Thank you. I will ‘run-like-hell’ when Leander comes near, I promise.”

  The girl laughed. She introduced herself as Maralena. I meant to continue shopping but she followed close after me. “There’s no good buyin ‘fresh produce’ in any store like this. It’s all old-stuff, see. You get it home, it’s goin brown. Just get like can-things, bottle-things, like that. Freezer-things, you got to check the date. He put the old crap up front, the new stuff at the back. You got to use your thinking, a place like this. He gonna cheat you he see you some white-girl dropped by ain’t gon be a steady customer.”

  I felt a sensation of warmth for Maralena. She looked nothing like her dark-skinned cousin but she was as exotic as he with her beautifully cornrowed hair and glamorous eyes. She smelled strongly of something fruity, sweet—hair pomade? Her mouth was swollen-looking as if it had been vigorously kissed and sucked.

  She wore clothes in layers. Long-sleeved black T-shirt over a tight little black short-sleeved T-shirt. Tight black skirt that barely covered her buttocks and beneath thin black leggings and black boots to the knee.

  I’d placed a few items in the rickety cart. Pasta in a cardboard box, cans of “spaghetti” sauce. Boxes of cereal. A jar of applesauce, a quart container of yogurt, a container of vitamin-D-fortified milk. And cans of condensed soup. At the checkout counter I hoped Maralena would have gone away but there she was waiting for me, checking her cell phone. When she moved her head, the cornrowed plaits rippled.