Solstice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Monica regretted one thing: that, since coming to teach at the Glenkill Academy, she had always been too busy to explore the boxwood maze behind the headmaster’s residence.

  If the garden had been between her building and her parking lot no doubt she would have strolled in it from time to time, but it was rather out of the way, she seemed always to be in a hurry, her hair flying in the wind. Now she was pleasantly surprised to find herself in the garden, alone, unobserved, able to walk where she wished, and at her own pace; while at the same time she remained lying in her damp sheets, eyes gummed shut.

  The maze consisted of boxwood and English ivy and laurels with fine glossy leaves. Monica stared, Monica wandered. She was not yet lost. She had always understood that the sprayed and sculpted forms, the odorless blossoms, the narrow graveled walks of tiny pink pebbles and oyster chips were a testament to the school’s affluence and good taste, its Anglophile tradition. At the center of the maze was a small fountain where two slender stone figures—a faun and a nymph—cavorted forever in the bright sparkling water.

  Monica began to walk more quickly. She was frightened, exhilarated. She could not be truly lost because this was only (wasn’t it?) the headmaster’s garden, a small contained space. And surely she was being observed after all. The Glenkill faculty, the Glenkill students. Her own students of whom she had grown very fond, in her warm inattentive way. They would not allow her to injure herself, they would not jeer at her, standing apart from her predicament. Poor Monica: poor Miss Jensen: only partly clothed, smelling of bed and sweat and vomit, wandering sobbing and lost in the boxwood maze. . . .

  Leave me alone, Monica whispered. Let me die.

  20

  After Sheila’s opening at the Laurence James Gallery a good deal happened, and it happened quickly.

  For one thing, the show was considered a success. Even (in the words of one of the gallery assistants, with whom Monica spoke on the phone) a “great success.”

  One of the well-to-do collectors who had bought Flaxman’s work was now interested in acquiring major pieces by Sheila Trask; which fact, not kept entirely confidential, had the agreeable result of triggering “interest” among other collectors. And there were representatives of private galleries, and of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney, and the Guggenheim, and . . .

  But Sheila seemed scarcely to be interested. She told Monica that her show was a success because the paintings obviously hadn’t been priced high enough: if they had been, perhaps none would have sold.

  Sheila was agreeing to do interviews and then canceling them at the last minute. It took four hours for her to be photographed for a feature in Vogue—the woman was so restless, so euphoric, she simply couldn’t sit still. Her very hair crackled about her face as if with electricity but she wasn’t thinking of her show, her success, the sudden attention being paid to her, she was thinking of a new project, her next project.

  Day and night were queerly and wonderfully commingled, as ideas, impressions, images bombarded her. She was dreaming, she said, with her eyes open: could anything be more exquisite! These were visual ideas, contentless forms, motion, wave-motion, hairline factures as of (for instance) great blocks of ice, fractures radiating in several directions at once, perhaps even in several dimensions (“Is time a dimension?” Sheila asked) at once. Ah, it was nothing she could explain! Nothing that made any sense!

  She wanted, she said suddenly, to fly to South America in a few weeks. From there she would go by boat to Antarctica: but she intended to go alone.

  Well—as it developed, perhaps not entirely alone.

  For there was the matter suddenly of Peck.

  Twenty-five-year-old Peck who came out to Edgemont for a few days, Peck who was tall, very lean, lanky, silent, appearing sullen though in truth (as Sheila insisted) he was quite good-natured, once you came to know him. By coincidence Peck shared Sheila’s interest in Antarctica. In Peck it was very nearly an obsession, he wanted to paint and paint and paint ice floes, ice mountains, air scintillating with vapor, he knew what he wanted but (as Sheila said) he wasn’t in a financial position to get what he wanted, not yet. He’d had several group exhibits, two one-man shows, SoHo primarily, his things had sold modestly and had been well reviewed, though not widely reviewed, he was at the very start of what Sheila knew to be an extraordinary career, he quite astonished her with his eye, his painterly wit, a certain clairvoyance. . . . Peck is the real thing, Sheila said, her eyes narrowed in an odd rapturous resentful way, he’s just a kid and he’s the real thing. Shit!

  Sheila invited Monica over to Edgemont to meet this prodigy but Monica begged off: she was unwell: she was preoccupied. (Also, as she did not wish to tell Sheila, she looked frankly sick; she wouldn’t have wanted anyone, especially Sheila, to see her in such a state.) Sheila went on at some length about her young artist friend, who, as it turned out, greatly admired her work . . . felt temperamentally drawn to it . . . though (“Queer, isn’t it!”) he said that Flaxman’s work generally left him cold. In company, Sheila said, Peck could sit silent and glowering for hours, but when they were alone he talked wonderfully, beautifully, for a young man with no consistent schooling he knew so much, far more, Sheila said, than she’d known at that age: Monica must meet him. (“Must I?” Monica said faintly, ironically.) Though Sheila disapproved of representational art on principle she was overwhelmed, she said, with a series of paintings Peck had done just last winter; she’d bought two of them, in fact, would be hanging them in her studio, Monica could see, of course the paintings were not strictly representational—nothing hard-edged about them, nothing photographic—they suggested dream states, perhaps—large undefined spaces in which doors were ajar, opened to various degrees, so that you could see through one door to a shadowy interior where another door, caught at a slant, was open—and so on, and so forth—and there were windows too, seen at odd oblique angles—but it wasn’t so clear as Sheila was making out, the effect of the paintings was altogether different—“Of course what interests him is problem solving in terms of space, open areas and closed, you’d see, Monica, you will see, when you come over.”

  In the end Sheila brought Peck to Monica’s house uninvited, they could only stay for a few minutes, she said, they were on their way elsewhere, she was euphoric, handsome, rather loud, too restless to sit down while Peck, hardly troubling to say hello to Monica, or to look at her, sprawled lazily on the sofa, his long legs spread and his arms limp, slung over the cushions. He looked precisely his age, twenty-five; he was unshaven, sullen; clearly bored; yet irritably attentive to Sheila Trask, who paced about, talking rather too animatedly, swallowing large mouthfuls of her drink, informing Monica of the fact that he and she were having the most remarkable joint experience. . . . Each had dreams of gigantic ice islands, extinct volcanoes, dry valleys of volcanic ash . . . night skies glaring with pinpoints of intense light . . . each had dreams of blazing sunshine on snow . . . and when they spoke of these dreams each knew immediately what the other meant . . . as if they’d had the identical dreams at the identical times.

  Solitude, and silence, and the fact that, there, in Antarctica, “history” had not yet begun.

  When are you leaving, Monica wanted to ask.

  21

  Now she was sick, seriously sick, but there was nothing to be done except wait it out.

  Time leapt, pleated. Now sunshine dazed her and fell in lurid bright patches on the wall; now it was dusk; night; and someone was prowling about downstairs. She heard the clatter of horses’ hooves. In the front hall? In her house? But Sheila would not dare, even as a jest . . . !

  She saw Peck sprawled on her sofa, frowning, watching Sheila Trask closely, jealously; she felt the agitated movements of his eyeballs, which were her own. On the way out he and Sheila had passed through Monica’s kitchen without noticing the stained glass lily balanced in one of the windows but Monica was not hurt, Monica did not care, she squirmed in dread only at the thought of how Peck passed judgment on
her, what he said afterward of her if he said anything at all.

  A disfiguring scar, sensitive to the touch as an open wound, repulsive to look upon. As if Monica’s legs were spread wide. As if the wound there were exposed. Good-bye! good-bye! Sheila cried in her great glaring joy, backing away. Good-bye!

  Monica thought: I am to blame.

  Monica thought: I am to blame so it is proper that I suffer, and soil the sheets.

  She would be a stoic about this humiliating sickness (virulent intestinal flu, headache, fever, “unreality”) because she knew she would not die. One does not die for a trifle after all. One does not die simply because one deserves to die.

  Falling asleep, falling sick. Falling.

  Falling in love: falling.

  Once or twice, making her way downstairs, Monica nearly fell because of weakness; because her heart pumped too little oxygen (or too much) to her brain. This too is falling, she thought. This too must be acknowledged.

  She took hold of the backs of chairs, door frames, the kitchen counter, making her slow staggering way, not quite remembering where she was headed—the refrigerator?—food?—but dear God, the very thought of it!—she would vomit everything up in the kitchen sink, she wouldn’t even make it to the toilet.

  Falling into bed, falling into sleep.

  Falling.

  She wondered mildly if she might fall too far—the notion of falling quite dazzled her—and never return.

  Might one fall into the depths of one’s own body, retreating to a small snug well-lit place deep in the brain, huddled there, knotted up, perfectly at ease, paralyzed, if you will, but perfectly at ease?—a languorous deathly sleep, the most delicious of sleeps?

  What must be avoided, Monica thought, opening her burning eyes as the telephone rang, is self-pity.

  So she didn’t dare answer the phone. Wouldn’t have dared, even if she could make it to the phone. For in her current state it was impossible to keep a note of self-pity out of her voice. For in her current state she cared for only one telephone call, one voice, which of course—being no fool, even with a temperature of 103°—she knew she would not hear.

  Her hair, she discovered, had become coarse and greasy. Her golden hair, so much admired!—but when she washed it, last time she washed it, how long ago was that, she had been frightened that so many hairs came out, sticking to her breasts, her belly, her legs, caught in the shower drain, a sickening sight. Perhaps it was a revelation but she needed no revelations, her fever darted and leapt and played about the ceiling, dazzled the insides of her eyelids, she had enough of revelations. Hairs in the shower and in the sink: Harold’s, discovered by chance: and she had cleaned them out, deftly, not thinking a great deal about it, that was simply something she’d done, she was always to be observed doing something after all, every minute of every hour of every year, why not clean a husband’s hairs out of a sink, the marriage would not last forever.

  Had she the energy she might have turned Sheila’s watercolor to the wall, or tossed it into the closet, or under the bed. Had she the energy she might have turned her mirrors to the wall, to spare herself their special revelation. It was particularly unnerving to see herself in the cabinet mirror in the bathroom—that sallow ravaged face, those puffed eyes, a dull-normal glaze over all—she, the golden girl!—now staggering and puking and damned grateful to have a place, a private place, in which to puke out her guts: which was the point, the sole point, wasn’t it.

  22

  In that bathroom, in the medicine cabinet, on the lowermost shelf amidst a stained toothbrush, and a tweezers, and a cuticle scissors, there is Monica’s safety razor lying flat on a bit of dirty Kleenex.

  Which vision never fails to bring a rush of tears to her eyes, for reasons she could not have named.

  Which vision never fails to make her pulses leap, in a delirium of relief and expectation.

  23

  On the day of her thirtieth birthday Monica was clever enough to telephone home before her parents telephoned her, and she spoke cheerily enough, if at times rather faintly; so that was accomplished. Yes, she heard herself say, oh yes surely, yes of course, yes, yes, only a few more weeks now, sometime in mid-June I think, and there are examinations, there is commencement, I think I’m required to attend, yes of course, very well, very well, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. So that was accomplished and she hadn’t broken down and cried, it was far too late for tears, they would only be shocked and embarrassed.

  Her nightgowns all stank but what could she do?—she hadn’t the energy to wash them.

  She slept in her underwear, or naked.

  How odd: she was naked, yet the real estate agent took no notice, Mrs. Connor, Betty Conor as she’d introduced herself, shaking hands briskly, one professional woman to another, cards on the table, everything frank, crystal clear, yet, as Monica understood, she was a fool to take on the responsibility of a house of this size. You’ll be living alone? Betty Connor asked. Alone? One eyebrow lifted and quizzical, one side of her mouth raised.

  Naked too, pleading with one of the men at school. Farley, it was. Farley, subtly altered. He spoke contemptuously to Monica without looking at her. (Of what sexual interest is a skeletal woman, a woman whose eyes have sunk back into her head . . . ?) Monica was begging him in her dream as she had not begged him in real life to allow her to return to work but Farley knew her too well, he knew the secret in her heart, the sly terrible truth, that she did not care about him, she did not care, really, about her work, she cared about only one thing, one person, and if that were lost to her why should she care even about life? living? drawing one breath after another?

  (In fact she had tried to speak with Farley at the outset of her illness, some days before. But he happened never to be in his office and she found herself rerouted to one of the administrative assistants whose cold small smug voice maddened her. Miss Jensen this and Miss Jensen that, a just perceptible edge of disdain, mockery, contempt. She meant only to explain that she wouldn’t be in to teach that day but she surely would be in to teach the following day without fail. But the conversation went poorly; she slammed down the receiver.

  Another time when she telephoned the school she was told that her classes had been taken over for the remainder of the semester by one of her colleagues. Yes all the arrangements had been made. Yes the decision was irrevocable. Monica asked who the colleague was and was told ——: a name she recognized but forgot immediately, as if this conversation were occurring in a dream and nothing could be retained. Licking her parched lips, swallowing, trying to clear her head Monica heard herself apologize . . . heard herself accuse Farley of deception, prejudice . . . heard herself pleading for another chance. She could get there, she promised, for her afternoon classes. For the next morning’s classes at least.)

  At any rate the birthday came and went without incident and now she was in her thirty-first year and would surely survive.

  Monica is a good sport, she overheard.

  She was grateful for the blinding headaches and the sharp stabbing coiling pain in her bowels that signaled yet another attack of diarrhea: these sensations meant after all that she existed; she still lived; she had not yet melted into the surrounding air. (And the air hurt, chafed her delicate skin. There was an element of rapacity to it, as if it were greedy to devour her, to penetrate her and carry her off.) After the abortion she had spent days, perhaps it was weeks, months?—in a twilit state, feeling very little, caring about very little, examining the blood-soaked sanitary pads as if they were evidence of another’s folly and not her own. Then, she had been numbed by drugs as well as by the trickery of her own mind, but now her punishment was her own, it inhabited every cubit of her flesh, and must be borne bravely.

  There were rumors, whisperings, that Sheila Trask was going away again; and not alone.

  Yet Monica was driving Sheila along the Poor Farm Road in Sheila’s rattling station wagon and nothing seemed to be wrong. A blindingly bright day. Snow banked up high i
n the ditches. Monica did not dare glance up toward the sky but she felt its pressure, a cold hard ceramic blue like the blue of the tiles in Sheila’s kitchen. The women were speaking softly together . . . laughing . . . Monica couldn’t hear what they said but she understood their mood . . . and she understood that Sheila was joking when she reached out to take hold of the steering wheel and give it a sharp little twist. Monica was in control after all; Monica was supremely in control; it could do no harm, if Sheila teased.

  The heavy car began to slip and slide and skid along the road. Monica tried to wrench the wheel away from Sheila’s strong fingers, she pressed hard on the accelerator, suppose I call your bluff, Sheila, she whispered, but both women were laughing, both were enjoying themselves immensely, what danger in such sport? such childlike play? Monica gripped the wheel tight and Sheila tugged at it and the road dissolved into a blinding wall of light and both the women were laughing, convulsed in laughter.

  24

  Ten days, two weeks, and Monica began to recover.

  It was late May and deceptively warm, in the afternoons in particular. One might be tempted to wander outside. To poke about in the old barns, to lie in the wet lush grass, to wander in the fields. It would be a humid spring, a balmy lilac-rich spring: the season of suicide: of raking over old humiliations and regrets like rotted matter in a compost heap.

  The diarrhea was chronic but since she ate and drank very little she suffered less. Her stomach had shrunk to the size of (perhaps) a walnut. Her head was hollow, buzzing with static electricity, but the pain had subsided: now it was simply a matter of waiting.

  Even at her sickest she had known the importance of not allowing anyone to guess what had happened. This sudden astonishing weakness, this exposure of her condition. The scar, the female gash, quivering nerve ends, repulsive to contemplate. She would be patient, she would not give in to the ignominy of terror. (When the roach had fallen into her hair, for instance. When everyone including Sheila had shrieked with laughter.)