Solstice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Well,” said Betty Connor, easing past, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never moved in that woman’s circle.”

  Monica pushed her grocery cart on, Monica’s head throbbed, it was unfair, it was malicious, without informing her, without saying good-bye, it was unfair—unjust; yet of course what one might have expected; supremely Sheila Trask; supremely selfish.

  “I never intrude where I’m not wanted,” Monica whispered.

  As the minutes passed, however, she began to feel chilled; even clammy. Beneath her clothes she was perspiring but the dampness was cold. Like the onset of the flu—the worst strain of flu—intestinal flu—a malaise that slowly enveloped the entire body and sickened even the mind. She would have to leave, she was getting seriously sick.

  Only with enormous effort did she continue. Shopping: pushing a grocery cart along the aisles of a food store: going through the routines of a life, her life: reaching with numbed fingers for familiar shapes—cans and bottles and gaily colored packages, items related in some utterly obscure and mysterious way to her well-being. These shapes, these brand names, these things: might they not be seen as calming, reassuring?—a confirmation of the fact that Monica knew very well who she was and what her tasks were and how most efficiently to execute them?

  In the end she did not get sick in the A & P. The attack of nausea and faintness came later, when she was safely home.

  4

  One evening in early February, in Keith’s company, Monica found herself noting, with little emotion, that the textures of the world had subtly altered. What should have been shimmering, iridescent, mysterious, was now merely—surface.

  An attractive surface, surely.

  But surface nonetheless: two dimensions.

  They were in the atrium dining room of the new Hyatt Regency in Olcottsville, a well-groomed well-mannered clearly well-suited young, or youngish, couple. In a setting of waterfalls; banks of poinsettias—red, pinkish-red, creamy-white; “appointments” of the most tasteful and unobtrusive sort. A pianist in a tuxedo, also unobtrusive, was playing romantic songs—“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” for instance—so softly as barely to interfere with the splash of fountains and the hum of conversations.

  Monica was having a martini, which she quite liked; she was listening to Keith speak knowledgeably of current political and financial and legal and moral crises, which he saw as “mutually interrelated.” (The word crisis was a favorite of his, as was the word impasse.) Keith’s irony was so gentlemanly, so carefully modulated, Monica could not always determine its significance. Did Keith detest the present administration in Washington, or was it the administration’s critics he detested?

  At one point during the lengthy dinner Monica heard herself say wittily, though perhaps not entirely appropriately, “Maybe there is no solution because there is no problem,” and Keith regarded her with a quizzical smile.

  Keith Renwick, a lawyer trained at the University of Virginia: tight-curled graying hair, warm moist intelligent brown eyes, a habit of nodding just perceptibly as he spoke: not explicitly aggressive but very much, one could tell, his own man. Monica liked him when she was apart from him rather more than she liked him when they were together, but perhaps that would be no problem—she’d felt the same way with Harold, early in their relationship.

  After a long while Keith said: “There is always a solution—if you know whom to contact.”

  They were not lovers and there was some doubt as to whether they might ever be lovers—which of them would take the risk, make the irrevocable irremediable gesture?—and even friendship was doubtful, friendship was quite doubtful, but they were companionable together; they were an attractive couple, together.

  And Keith was capable of surprising Monica, too: she hadn’t the right to feel complacent about him.

  For, as it turned out, Keith was extremely interested in survival—in survivalism. The survival of a nuclear holocaust, the breakdown of American civilization, that sort of thing.

  Monica, knowing little about the movement, was surprised to discover a considerable library in Keith’s apartment, magazines and handbooks—Survival News, Best about Backpacking, Live off the Land, You and Yours, Rifles & Handguns Guidebook, Survive! When she questioned Keith he was evasive at first, then spoke with mounting enthusiasm and authority. Of course, he said, he didn’t take the paramilitary aspect of the movement too seriously (“Paramilitary?” Monica asked), nor did he make it a fetish to go camping, hiking, backpacking, under hardship circumstances, except for a few weeks each summer. Still, he said, seeing Monica’s look of startled interest, no one can deny that the United States is extremely vulnerable to nuclear attack; and that, contrary to the most pessimistic theories, a good percentage of citizens could survive. “Of course these citizens would have to know how to go about it,” Keith said, smiling faintly. “It won’t be an amateur’s world, postholocaust.”

  Monica leafed through a hardcover book titled Life after Doomsday. She noted lists of “primary,” “secondary,” and “tertiary” target areas in the United States: “anticipated fallout zones”: “relatively fallout-free ‘refuge’ zones” (the Florida Everglades, the uplands of North Carolina, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, the sand counties of Wisconsin) where survivalists could flock.

  She said, with less equanimity than she intended, “Most of us would carry our own fallout zones with us,” and Keith, as if prepared for that remark—as if, indeed, he and his brethren heard it all too often—replied, taking the book out of Monica’s fingers, “Most of you—but not all of us.”

  5

  Midwinter. Late winter. Snow-stubbled fields and days of bright harsh slanted sunshine alternating with days when the sun never appeared—never emerged at all. Monica was sick for a while but others were sicker, it was the annual flu, a prolonged feverish malaise, passed desultorily from person to person, among the teaching staff, the students. Monica could not reasonably object to being sick if it meant that happiness was never a possibility, hence never an issue.

  She wrote on the blackboard in her classroom, in a large clear hand: Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. And what could Henry David Thoreau, so generally misunderstood as an uncritical nature lover, have meant by the enigmatic statement . . . ?

  (He loves Nature, the brightest boys argued, but he hates human nature. No: he really hates Nature, beneath all the poetry. Or: he means something different from what his words seem to say.)

  With a passion that might have had a good deal to do with her fevered nerves Monica threw herself into her classroom teaching; there was indeed the dizzying sense of falling . . . plunging . . . and surfacing again, greatly exhausted, at the end of the day. She did not become infatuated with her students, not even with the two or three most appealing boys, but there were certainly hours when she was so mesmerized by her own voice and her imagined image in their eyes, she felt the pangs of love; an almost carnal love; the not-wanting to break away, the not-wanting for the experience ever to end.

  But of course it ended, invariably. The hours were only fifty minutes long and the weeks consisted of six days.

  One day Monica received a letter from Harold and opened it swiftly, carelessly. She found no threats—no accusations—no sly troubling innuendos—only a dozen or so neatly typed lines inquiring after Monica’s health and general well-being and supplying Monica with news of Harold’s health and general well-being. And his professional “prospects.” The letter was so perfunctory, so totally lacking in voice, Monica could not understand why it had been written. To assert that Harold still existed? To prick her into feeling jealousy? It seemed incredible that this was the person who had hired a private detective to investigate her only a few months ago. . . . By the graying opalescent light of mid-February that seemed wholly unlikely; but, by that light, nothing seemed likely.

  Just let it go, Monica thought.

  It happened that Monica, Miss Jensen, became a confidante of sorts for several boys (Mitch
ell, Alan, Jeremy, occasionally Sean) who were mysteriously unhappy because of problems at home. (“Ah, ‘problems at home!’” Jill Starkie exclaimed with a sigh. “There are always, always ‘problems at home.’”) She was required to listen attentively and sympathetically; to proffer advice, in a judicious manner; to avoid cruel generalizations (“Adolescence is invariably a difficult time”) since her students were individuals, defiantly and helplessly individuals, and rather proud of their plight. From time to time a boy actually wept in the privacy of Monica’s office but she resisted the almost kinetic urge to touch, let alone embrace, fold in her arms, for that was not to be done, that would be folly indeed. Hadn’t coarse-minded Sheila Trask suggested, a long time ago, that Monica’s students might harbor erotic fantasies of her? And how much more ignoble, if Monica, deranged by loneliness, were to begin to harbor fantasies of them. . . .

  The subject of survivalism was never again mentioned by Keith Renwick; nor did Monica wish to bring it up.

  Nor did they speak at any length about their past histories. Surely Keith was curious about Monica’s failed marriage but his manner was circumspect and tactful. He was too carefully trained in the law to wish to pose questions of a personal nature outright.

  It was understood generally that each had been disappointed in love, each was more or less unhappy, if not mildly depressed, at the present time. Otherwise—what had they in common?

  Monica calculated Keith’s age as between thirty-seven and forty-three. (She afterward learned it was thirty-five.) His sandy graying hair, though receding from his forehead, grew thick and springy at the crown of his head; his nose was strong, full, wide-tipped; his eyes intelligent and watchful. He spoke with the faintest of midsouthern accents yet he laughed heartily, even zestfully, if the situation required. He played squash, tennis, and golf; he rose every morning at six without fail and swam two miles in the pool at the Olcottsville Athletic Club; he might have been a few pounds overweight, about the waist in particular, but he carried it well. A man of moderate height, with a moderate frame. And handsome enough, Monica supposed. A subject in two dimensions, a matter of affable surfaces; handsome enough.

  If he felt sexual desire for her the desire was evidently well under control. In fact, it seemed to Monica that he treated her rather like a convalescent. (Perhaps Jill Starkie in her mildly hysterical way had hinted that Monica was not yet recovered from her divorce; that she’d been abused—battered?—by her husband.) His kisses were courtly, his caresses gentle. There was invariably an air of apology between him and Monica—a half-embarrassed sense that they were too old for such things yet too young to give them up.

  One evening when they were having coffee at Monica’s she brought up the subject, rather impulsively, of suicide. “Have you ever had any suicidal friends?” she asked Keith. Her voice was neutral enough so that he need not become alarmed, or take offense; he might answer casually if he wished.

  He took his time replying. “Yes,” he said finally, stroking his jaw, “—a close friend. My roommate at college. But I haven’t thought of him in years.”

  “Why not?” Monica asked. She’d had several glasses of white wine at dinner and felt uncharacteristically bold. Why not, indeed.

  “Steven and I were extremely close for years,” Keith said. “We were at Choate together; then we roomed together at Virginia, as undergraduates, our junior and senior years. After graduation something happened to Steven and he eventually killed himself. A hunting ‘accident’ in the mountains. . . .” Keith was speaking in a slow flat voice, as if the words in his mouth had density, weight. He said: “Of course everyone knew Steven had been unhappy for years but it was hard to take it seriously because . . . because it had gone on for years, it had become a sort of psychic tic. He was morbid but he joked about it too. He was always joking, in fact. So if you took him at his word he was liable to turn mocking. And then it was all so frustrating and wearisome. . . .”

  Keith sounded faintly annoyed. Monica murmured, “How sad,” and felt quite a fool, staring at the coffee mug in her hand. But she could not resist—why should she resist?—going on to ask why Keith’s friend had committed suicide.

  “Oh, as to ‘why’—!” Keith said impatiently. “Do you think they know? It’s all a sort of a harlequin routine—a sham—”

  “A sham?”

  “It’s all so stupefyingly self-conscious. Any reason will do: a professional failure, a bad weekend, a love affair that hasn’t worked out, childhood memories that aren’t perfect. There isn’t anything you can do if someone wants to kill himself. These people are incredibly stubborn and devious. They want to die and they’re determined to die and it never has anything much to do with other people, or even with their own lives—their good or bad luck, whatever. There’s something crippled and stunted about their souls.” At this Keith paused; he had been speaking rather dramatically. He said, with an effort at a smile: “Basically they don’t give a damn about other people. Which is why we resent them—we are the other people.”

  “I see,” Monica said.

  She was deeply moved by Keith’s words; she felt tears gathering in her eyes. But for whom? For the lost Steven? For Keith himself, trembling with hurt and disappointment . . . ?

  Then, in the next instant, he startled her with the perfunctory nature of his voice. As if giving counsel he said: “If you know anyone who’s suicidal, Monica, I hope you will simply avoid him or her. Friendship with a person like that is a cul-de-sac—a kind of maze or labyrinth. Strength seems to flow from the healthy person to the unhealthy but it drains away, it doesn’t do the slightest amount of good, it’s a profitless situation all around.” He paused; he took out a freshly laundered handkerchief and dabbed lightly at his mouth. “I hope you aren’t thinking of someone in your family? I don’t suppose it would be someone around here. . . .”

  “I don’t know,” Monica said uneasily. Then she realized how ambiguous she sounded. “No, the person I’m thinking of is in North Africa as far as I know. Thousands of miles away. And we’re out of contact.”

  Keith had been watching her closely. “Good,” he said. “If you’re wise you will steer clear of him—or her—whoever it is. And consider yourself fortunate.”

  “Oh yes,” Monica said, “I do. I do consider myself fortunate.”

  And if the world’s secret panels slid shut? and all became slick shadowless surface? and there remained no texture, no resistance? and she could not bring herself to mourn? and her life was a matter of going on—and on—and on?

  6

  The house in which Monica lived was not hers and never would be but she spent a good deal of time working on it, to give it the semblance of being hers. She felt greedy for possession; for the corporeal fact of property; “real” estate. She scoured—she sanded—she stripped wallpaper—she painted floors and walls, even ceilings. (Why don’t I help you, Keith had suggested shyly, but Monica murmured excuses, Monica didn’t want the man to lift a hand, she feared that, if he imprinted himself upon the house even minimally he would want to buy it, and move in with her. He would want to marry her: wasn’t that the natural next step?)

  Since she had to write letters home to prove to her parents that she was happy, she was busily absorbed in her new life, Monica wrote at length about her teaching and about her work—her physical labor—in her house. (That it was not strictly speaking “her” house was an issue she did not dwell upon.) She enclosed little sketches, floor plans, cheery little progress reports that meant nothing back in Wrightsville. Once on the telephone Monica’s mother had uttered the terrible words, “Well, Monica—it is important to keep busy,” and Monica had felt pierced to the heart.

  Still, her mother was right. She kept busy, busy.

  Monica spent many hours cleaning the cellar. She wore a filthy old jacket and gloves, and a scarf tied about her head to protect her from cobwebs. As she raked up piles of foul-smelling debris she thought, as if mesmerized, How good, how healthy, this is real, this is ab
solute. Her breath steamed; the air was freezing but stagnant; below-ground, she kept imagining she heard the telephone ring . . . and ring and ring. She imagined she heard the back door (always kept locked) being forced open. She imagined she heard footsteps directly overhead. . . .

  It’s a man’s world, one of the nurses had said, at the abortion clinic, years ago. It’s a man’s world: said sighingly, as one might make a reference to the weather, or the time of day. A man’s world, that world, the fluorescent-lit disinfectant-smelling clinic, populated solely by women.

  But why did Monica think of that remark now, so safely below-ground?

  And why think of one of Sheila’s pals breaking into her house, Eddy, or Buzz, or Grady, or Fitch, they’d forgotten Mary Beth long ago. They had never known Mary Beth at all. No, if someone broke into her house it would be a stranger, Monica supposed: a man she had never seen before, never even guessed at.

  It was in the cellar, however, that Monica discovered a sheet of stained glass, amidst a pile of debris stacked in a corner. The glass, lightly cracked in several places, measured about three feet by two and was a self-contained work of art: crimson, green, and turquoise panels framing a languorous, stylized fin de siècle lily, of the kind Klimt or Beardsley might have created. When it was scrubbed clean Monica was struck by its beauty and by her rare good luck in finding it. This too is an absolute, she thought in triumph, not knowing quite what she meant.

  She placed the glass carefully in her kitchen window, facing south, so that it would catch the morning light. Her first instinct was to telephone Sheila, to call her over to examine it.

  7

  They were so tirelessly good, so fatiguingly selfless, it was impossible not to admire them: James and Jill Starkie, the Glenkill chaplain and his devoted wife: James in a turtlenecked Highlander sweater of heather-gray and Jill in her orange embroidered hostess gown with a Mexican shawl draped dramatically about her shoulders. James exuded the rich scent of pipe tobacco, Jill a heady, perhaps too concentrated scent of Chanel No. 5. James was tall and thick-bodied and vibrant with good health and good Christian cheer, Jill was nervously exhilarated, visibly trembling with maternal solicitude, magnanimity, gaiety. Her greetings were all exclamations, breathy and urgent: How good to see you! How wonderful you look! How kind of you to come!