Double Delight

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Terence gathered from the chatter that the henna-colored Pomeranian Pip was the most recent of Chick’s lost-pet discoveries—his predecessor having been Marcellus the Mystery Siamese. (Marcellus had been happily reunited with his desperate owner, a wealthy elderly woman eager to pay a $500 reward, no questions asked, some time ago.) He did not want to speculate how Chick acquired these pedigreed much-beloved creatures; as he had not wanted to think, virtually from the start, of much that went on at 33 Holyoak.

  Nor of Terence Greene himself, lovesick as little Pip in his captor’s arms, kissing his captor’s face.

  Terence saw that it was time to leave. He would not speak with Ava-Rose, and it was time to leave. They were hiding her from him and it was time to leave and he had nowhere to go. Yes, but he would go; he wouldn’t stay. Even if Holly Mae relented, and begged him to stay for supper, he wouldn’t, now. “Very nice to meet you, Lily, and—is it Randy Lee? Very nice.” He rattled his car keys, which was a bright, expectant sound, and backed off, smiling, as Holly Mae Loomis and Lily Pancoke and smoky-eyed Randy Lee Turcoe watched him, and even Buster, lying now panting in the weedy zinnias, watched him, as if to see what he would do. But he too was good-natured as any Renfrew, resigned in defeat but cheerful enough to break into a whistle—except, impulsively, as if the thought only now entered his head, he said to Randy Lee, “You don’t know where she is, do you?—your cousin Ava-Rose?” and the boy grinned without hesitation, and said, “Yessir Doctor, sure do—Ava’s at that weird ol’ church of hers, on Ed’son Street they call it, that ain’t even any Christian church I guess!” He spoke with childlike vehemence, as if expecting Terence to share in his disapproval.

  “Church?—oh, yes.”

  Terence’s heart lurched in sickish triumph, but he managed to retain his smile, his easy, affable smile, calling back, “Why thank you, Randy Lee—that’s kind of you. G’bye!” not letting on how he’d seen Holly Mae’s ruddy face stiffen in alarm; and even Lily Pancoke, who could know very little of Terence Greene’s history, winced.

  As Terence drove off, he saw the three of them standing in the junglelike garden, staring after him. And Buster, in the driveway, stumpy tail wagging, but slowing, stared after him, too.

  Terence located the church on Edison Street near the busy intersection with Eleventh, at the periphery of Trenton’s seedy inner city. What a disappointment! He hadn’t known quite what to expect, but, judging from Ava-Rose’s remarks, he hadn’t expected a “church” of such a kind, in such a neighborhood.

  It was a low, squat, buff-brick building, narrow but long, with opaque glass bricks for its single front window, as in taverns of a certain era—in fact, the building looked unmistakably as if it had had a small bowling alley at one time. The brick was weatherworn and stained, and above the front entrance was a luridly bright marquee with red letters:

  THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE HOLY APOCALYPSE, TRENTON, N.J., USA

  “PLANET EARTH”

  Terence parked across the street from the church wondering what he would do: what would be done to him.

  It seemed to him a very long time since he’d been in the house at 7 Juniper Way but in fact he’d been there that morning; he’d risen as usual, tasting the strangeness of his existence yet no longer questioning it. He and a woman named Phyllis Winston were the adults of the household, Kim and Cindy were the resident children, their children; they lived in such intimacy, what need was there to know one another? As he was leaving the house not long ago Terence happened to overhear Phyllis on the telephone, her voice lowered, as if with emotion, and he had not wanted to pause to listen but he’d done so, hearing, he thought, her voice catch as if she were sobbing, or trying to suppress a sob; he stood uncertain, not knowing what to do, or whether to do anything. I must protect her, he thought, if—But then, after a moment, Phyllis burst into laughter, and so he felt released: indeed, shoved out the door.

  Ava-Rose, don’t refuse me!

  Ava-Rose, I have only you.

  On the commuter train to New York that morning, Terence, taking his usual seat (beside Ted Bawden, an investment lawyer on Wall Street), had glanced about the car, smiling, seeing his fellow passengers, men, women, some of them known to him by name and most of them by appearance, and he’d thought, stunned by the recognition, There are many of us, now.

  It was not an upsetting thought, still less was it a satisfying one. Rather, it was neutral, like a flash of lightning.

  Only when Terence was in Ava-Rose’s presence, or, as now, in pursuit of the young woman, was he fully awake, alive.

  Alert.

  “—but unarmed.”

  He sat in the Oldsmobile, shivering; he’d been sweating profusely, and the air conditioning was cold. He did not think of Holly Mae and the others, certainly he did not think of Tamar, it did no good to ponder others’ motives for wishing to deceive him; for failing to wish him, as he’d always wished them, well.

  Minutes passed, and it was 8:30 P.M., and the door of the Church of the Holy Apocalypse remained closed. Terence wondered what sort of “service” was in session. Several times he’d hinted that he would like to accompany Ava-Rose to church, but she’d been evasive; prettily, she’d deflected Terence’s intention by teasing him—“Why, Ter-ence, you know you are an ‘agnostic,’ as you call yourself. A ‘born agnostic,’ isn’t that your boast?”

  (The word “boast” had been a bit of a taunt. Like the way Ava-Rose sometimes pinched Terence, in the soft flesh at his waist.)

  He waited. He had no plan, but to wait. When he saw her, if he saw her, he would know what to do.

  Staring mesmerized at the fresh-painted green door of the building that had been a bowling alley and was now a church, a place of a distinctly American worship with a marquee boldly lit as that of X-RATED ADULT FILMS in the next block. How has it come to this, Ter-ence? Poor old fella. He wondered, What is religion? Why do men and women believe? Why do they want so passionately to believe? Ava-Rose’s lovely eyes took on an opaque, dreamy look when she spoke of her faith—“All my life I have believed. In my heart. But it wasn’t till three years ago when a friend took me to the Church of the Holy Apocalypse, and, oh my! my heart was turned inside out.” Terence had said, wryly, “It sounds like an evisceration.” Ava-Rose had ignored this (perhaps she didn’t know what “evisceration” meant?) and said, with an air of childlike conviction, “We have faith that, after the Apocalypse, divine justice will prevail. If there is no justice now, there will be, then. ‘Only have faith, and do not be afraid, and the unspeakable shall be spoken.’”

  Terence had asked when the Apocalypse might be, maybe he’d better prepare for it, and again Ava-Rose ignored his tone, and said, with a coldly dazzling smile, “Our Reverend Smithy Crystal says nobody knows, except for sure it’s sometime between now and midnight of December 31, 1999.”

  Terence shivered now, remembering her certitude.

  Years ago, as a child in Shaheen, New York, Terence had sometimes been taken by his Aunt Megan to a Methodist church in the country, he and his cousin Denton, if Denton didn’t rebel. Once every six weeks, approximately—when the “spirit” moved Megan and the “dread of the Lord” was in her bones. (Aunt Megan’s moods were unpredictable, except as they related to her husband’s moods, which had to do with his drinking.) “If you don’t anger God, He will not probably notice you,” Megan told Terence, who might have been eleven years old at the time, “—at least, not to punish.” Terence, who had seemed not to believe in God, much, even at that young age, thought this a pretty fair deal. But then his aunt went on to urge him to pray, on his knees, for his mother, and Terence became frightened, and asked, as if stubbornly, “But not my father?” and Aunt Megan’s solid, stern face had tightened, and she’d said, “No. Not your father.”

  Terence recalled having tried to pray. Kneeling, and bowing his head, bumping his forehead against the back of the pew in front of him; clasping his fingers together in the way that others in the church did, as if something i
nvisible was trying to wrench them apart. Yes, he’d tried to pray to God, but it was like speaking into his own cupped hands. The words were trapped and went nowhere.

  It was nearly nine o’clock. Terence, still staring at the door of the Church of the Holy Apocalypse, had rolled down his car window, and a warm, sulphurous air eased in. That gritty urban smell of Trenton he’d halfway come to like yes even to love.

  Then the church door opened, at last. People began to file out.

  Quickly, Terence got out of his car, and crossed Edison Street; like a sleepwalker, or a drunk, so that car horns sounded, and a black man in a convertible yelled, “Hey man, you fucked? Get outta the street!” At the curb he stood uncertainly, self-consciously aware of himself as an intruder, an interloper: a tall, thin, rather pale, well-dressed if slightly disheveled man of youthful middle age, with intelligent features that looked as if they’d been pinched in a vise. His eyes snatched eagerly at the men and women who left the buff-brick building, some of whom glanced at him curiously—he was surprised to see how ordinary, how normal, they appeared. (And how did he appear to them? Unconsciously, he was standing with one hand thrust in the pocket of his seersucker coat, in the stance of a man gripping a pistol.) Surprising too that most of the church members were relatively young, in their thirties or twenties, Ava-Rose’s age; most were whites, though here and there was a black face; there was an Asian-American couple, very American in their dress, in the cheaply stylish clothes bought at shopping malls. And there was Ava-Rose Renfrew.

  Terence stood frozen on the sidewalk. The others, the strangers, melted around him, like ghosts. Ava-Rose, her arm through the arm of the handsome young light-skinned black man Terence had seen in the parking garage, had not seen him yet; she was laughing up into the young man’s face with that sweetly playful expression with which, so many times, she’d looked up into Terence Greene’s face.

  The shock was such, Terence felt the breath knocked from him.

  Even as he adjured himself—Of course. I knew.

  Whatever the religious service of the Church of the Holy Apocalypse, it seemed to have left the worshippers, including Ava-Rose Renfrew and her sheriff’s deputy friend, radiant, buoyant. Terence, standing on the pavement, alone, felt the keenness of loss, the insult of being excluded, the more sharply.

  Amid that crowd of ordinary-seeming men and women, Ava-Rose certainly stood out. How did the others see her? She wore a turban of some silky orange fabric wound about her head, her crimped, fair-brown hair spilling out and cascading past her shoulders—Terence had never seen her in such apparel before. She wore countless necklaces, bracelets, and rings, as usual, and her delicate ears were nearly hidden by sunburst turquoise feather-earrings. How moistly crimson her lovely mouth, the lower lip fleshy as if swollen! A long, layered, uneven skirt of some gauzy red material drooped to her ankles; her feet in the narrow black ballerina slippers looked like a schoolgirl’s.

  Ava-Rose, how could you.

  How, deceive me, who has killed for you, who has ransomed his life for you.

  The black man, off-duty, out of uniform, yet had the air of a policeman; a certain swagger, a watchful manner. He wore khaki trousers, sharply creased, and a boxy checked poplin jacket of the kind made with wider than average shoulders, for men with “athletic builds.” His eyes were both merrily sparkling and quick-darting—even before Terence stepped forward, he seemed to have noticed him.

  How swiftly, then, things happened!—though it would require some time to absorb them.

  In a hoarse, cracked voice he would scarcely have recognized in himself, Terence called, “Ava-Rose!” and Ava-Rose, seeing him, murmured, guiltily, “Oh—Dr. Greene,” even as, in virtually the same instant, she gripped the sheriff’s deputy’s muscular arm and leaned forward to whisper something in his ear. At once, as if instinctively, the deputy moved to block Terence’s way; Terence was advancing upon Ava-Rose, with a look of extreme urgency and hurt. “Ava-Rose?—please?—I must talk with you,” Terence said, not so much pleading as demanding, and Ava-Rose cried, “Are you spying on me, is that it! I’ve told you I will not be spied upon.”

  “Just a minute, man, what’s up, man, be cool, okay?”—the deputy expertly jammed the heel of his hand against Terence’s chest, pushing him back.

  But Terence too was belligerent, Terence too was strong, or so fueled by a sudden rush of adrenaline he appeared strong, pushing the deputy back, in his effort to get at Ava-Rose—to grasp her slender arm, to make her listen to him. By this time, a dozen people were watching, wide-eyed and expectant. Terence’s face was slick with sweat and he was panting as if he’d run a great distance. “Ava-Rose, please, you know we must talk. You know—”

  “Where is your pride, Ter-ence! I’ve told and told you! You’re no better than the others, are you!”

  Terence tried to push past the deputy, who was blocking his way.

  “Ava-Rose, I—must talk to you—”

  “Man, you better stay cool,” the deputy said, “—don’t be harassin this young lady, or somebody gonna get hurt!” He was smiling, grinning: Ferocity and boyish elation shone in his face.

  Terence said, as if reasonably, “Look, I only want to talk to Ava-Rose. Just for a—”

  “Shit, man, the lady don’t want to talk to you.”

  “I insist, God damn it—”

  “Man, you watch that stuff! You gonna get hurt!”

  Ava-Rose’s face was flushed with alarm and indignation; she seemed about to burst into tears. She gathered up her skirt to dash back into the building, and Terence lunged around to grab her. Again the deputy struck Terence with the flat of his hand, hard enough to knock the breath out of him, but Terence insisted upon pressing forward, as if blinded, no longer knowing what he was doing, overcome with mute suicidal rage, and in that instant as in a film rapidly unwinding he saw how he would die—the deputy would draw his Police Service revolver out of his coat, for of course, though off-duty, he was armed, as Terence was not; he would fire a single deafening shot, and Terence would fall down dead. And Terence Greene would lie on the filthy pavement outside the First Church of the Holy Apocalypse, Trenton, on Edison Street, blood gushing from a wound in his chest. Women would scream. Ava-Rose would scream—for of course she had some feeling for him, if only pity.

  “No.”

  Crouched, panting, Terence backed off. He held his hands out before him, fingers spread, to indicate that he was unarmed, and no threat; yet, still, in the grip of a furious momentum, the deputy drew his revolver, and, as women screamed, struck Terence several sharp, stunning, painful blows to the head and shoulders—“Get outa here, asshole! Go suck!”

  Terence reeled, but did not fall. In a crouch, dripping blood from his nose, he ran across Edison, where again traffic lurched about him, and there was a sound of angry horns and screeching brakes.

  He managed to get the heavy door of the Oldsmobile open, and to collapse inside. At once, the cream-colored leather cover of the seat was slippery with blood. He could not see, there was blood in his eye, yet he jammed the key into the ignition, he managed to start the car, to drive away, not daring to look back suffused with shame and humiliation yet alive he drove away, he fled, he did not look back, he was free, he was alive.

  He fled.

  Vowing, I will never see that treacherous woman again.

  Double Delight

  Days passed, and he did not call her. And she did not call him.

  He rose early. He left the house early. Before taking the train to New York he swam in the pool of the Queenston Athletic Club, squinting against the cool, chlorine-smarting aqua water. His heart beat like an angry fist. His nose throbbed. If he had to blow his nose, after swimming, the watery mucus was likely to be threaded with blood.

  He never thought of her who had betrayed him. He thought of her constantly. He had moments of fitful, surging strength. He was wounded, sick, drowning. He would never forgive her. He would never forgive her.

  He rose early. H
e did not sleep. (In truth, Terence did sleep: But it was a thin, fleeting unsatisfying sleep, like strands of mist blown by a wayward wind, and he could not recall it afterward.) He did not dream.

  He dreamt of her constantly but could not recall, afterward.

  “Daddy?—why are you crying?”

  Guiltily he glanced up, and there was his daughter Kim staring at him. Her thin pretty face, large intelligent dark-lashed eyes—he had not looked at her in some time.

  Quickly Daddy said, swiping at his face with his knuckles, “I’m not crying, honey—it’s just my eyes.” He laughed, to indicate that this remark, though true, was meant to be amusing.

  What did he do? What did he do? A wild, reckless thing, he did: Precisely one month to the day after the disappearance of “Eddy Schrieber, Jr.,” he telephoned Queenston Township police, to ask if there was any more news of him. He identified himself as a “friend of the family.”

  He was told his call would be transferred to one of the detectives assigned to the case, and so he was put on hold, and he waited. He’d begun to perspire. His head throbbed, and his nose. His eyes. Why did they water so frequently now, since the sheriff’s deputy’s blows? Lucky to be alive, asshole. Lucky old fella. He suspected that his call was being traced, or recorded, or both; but he did not hang up. He tried to remember the Schriebers’ names—well, Edward was the father, of course; was the mother’s name Diane? Doris? What would it mean to have “lost” a son? Would he grieve for Aaron?—don’t ask.

  The detective came on the line. Terence repeated his question. It was an innocent question, for he was a friend of the Schrieber family, all residents of affluent Queenston are friends, or friendly acquaintances, of one another. The detective did not sound friendly. He asked who was calling, and Terence mumbled a name, and the detective asked him to repeat it, and Terence repeated it—“Quincy Ryder.”