Evil Eye

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But when she caught up with Austin in his study he’d thrown himself into a leather swivel chair in his usual way and was laughing into the phone. When Mariana tried to touch him he pushed her away without glancing at her.

  “Henry! Bloody hell! Are you still in—is it Dubrovnik?”

  Quickly Mariana retreated. Such conversations Austin had with old friends could last a long time.

  And she had preparations to do: Ines and the “cellist” niece were due to arrive in two days, the first houseguests of Mariana’s married life.

  “Mariana. You must not be alone for now, my dear.”

  So Austin Mohr had told Mariana, simply. And so it was.

  She’d been midway through her first-year residency as a fellow at the Institute when her life collapsed.

  First her father had died in December. Then her mother had died in early March.

  The first death had not been entirely unexpected, but it had come far more swiftly than anyone might have predicted: Mariana’s father had had surgery to remove a malignant growth from his prostate, but he’d contracted a hospital infection from which he had never recovered.

  Mariana had had to leave the Institute to spend time with her grieving mother. She’d taken work home with her to Connecticut and immersed herself in her work as a distraction when she wasn’t in her mother’s immediate company. Gradually, her mother had seemed to be recovering—she’d urged Mariana to return to San Francisco. But after Mariana returned to the Institute in early March, her mother had a collapse of some kind, possibly a mild stroke, followed a week later by a massive stroke that had killed her.

  The stress of grief Mariana was told.

  Your mother has died of a broken heart.

  Mariana wondered if her mother’s use of prescription drugs had contributed to her death. Barbiturates to help her sleep, tranquilizers to help her endure the day, sometimes washed down with the remains of her husband’s small cabinet of whiskey and bourbon.

  Neither of Mariana’s parents had ever drunk much. The bottles were old, dating back for years. Yet several had obviously been depleted. Mariana told no one, nor did Mariana’s mother’s doctor or anyone in the family bring up the subject.

  Now Mariana, too, was stricken in the heart. Her grief was sharpened by her sense of incredulity—This can’t have happened! Both my parents . . . gone.

  Wandering her parents’ house as if looking for them. Yet in terror of glancing into a room and seeing them.

  Once, after her father had died, she’d happened to see her mother—forlorn, hesitant, standing just inside the doorway of her bedroom, staring at something in the palm of her hand which, as Mariana approached, she’d quickly hidden in her fist, thrust into a pocket of her rumpled bathrobe.

  Pills, Mariana supposed. She’d pretended not to see.

  And now it was a shock to Mariana to discover herself so —weak.

  Yet she was determined to tell relatives that she was fine. She did not need their help, she was fine.

  Like a zombie, barely functioning only when she was in the presence of others, Mariana had lived in her parents’ house for several weeks, having taken a leave of absence from the Institute. There was so much to do, so suddenly—the list of “death duties” was endless—and she had so little energy with which to do it. And when finally she returned to the Institute, her soul had seemed to have drained from her body. When she forced herself to come to the Institute, to sit at her computer in her carrel as she’d done previously, with such enthusiasm, now she was unable to work; she was unable to concentrate; she avoided her colleagues, her new friends, and stayed away from Institute seminars, for the effort to speak to others was too great. Her thesis adviser spoke of her situation to the director of the Institute, who summoned Mariana to see him at once.

  She’d thought He will tell me to quit. He will see I am hopeless.

  What a relief this would be! Eagerly then Mariana would follow her mother, as her mother had followed her father. All this seemed premeditated, utterly natural.

  Certainly, Mariana couldn’t complete her first-year project by May 15, she would tell the director. Nor did she see much point in requesting an extension because at the present time, she didn’t see much point in completing the project.

  How insignificant Mariana’s work seemed to her now, what had been so thrilling to her before her father’s death! She’d come to the Institute with the intention of examining archival materials relating to the films of Ida Lupino in the 1940s and 1950s: Lupino, a Hollywood actress, but also one of the first American women film directors. In the Institute archives were drafts of screenplays, personal notes, journals, letters, countless photographs and snapshots. But Mariana no longer had energy for research; the effort of examining stacks of faded typescripts and handwritten letters and pictures held together by frayed rubber bands, all of this quasi-precious material related to individuals dead for decades, was too depressing. Her discovery was that this first, gifted woman director was a pioneering feminist whose films depicted the Male as the demonic noir figure, and not, as usual, the Female—but even this discovery seemed trivial to her now, in the face of her terrible loss.

  When Austin Mohr saw Mariana hesitating in the doorway to his office, looking as if she were about to faint, quickly he rose to his feet and came to her. “‘Mariana’—is it? Come in, please.”

  He’d heard about her parents, he told her. He offered his condolences.

  Immediately he said of course she could have an extension through the summer at least, to complete her project. That was understood: there was no need for her to file a formal request.

  Mariana was stunned. She had not expected such a sympathetic reception.

  She wasn’t pretty—she wasn’t sexually attractive. She’d never thought so.

  And now in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths her skin was deathly pale and her cheeks thin, her eyes raw-looking, bloodshot.

  Her dark chestnut hair, which was usually wavy and glossy, falling past her shoulders, was limp, wan, in need of shampooing. Her fingernails were broken and uneven and ridged with dirt—her clothing had grown too large for her, unflattering on her lanky frame.

  She’d lost ten to twelve pounds: she weighed hardly more than one hundred pounds, at five feet six.

  In a kindly voice altogether different from the public personality that was eloquent, playful, and “witty,” Austin Mohr asked Mariana about her parents. Her father, her mother.

  Gravely he listened as she spoke. And tentatively, then with more emotion, Mariana spoke as she had not spoken since her mother’s death.

  Stumbling, faltering. Trying not to cry. But telling Austin Mohr something of what had happened, that still seemed to be unbelievable, unfathomable.

  He asked her about how she was taking care of herself.

  Mariana had no idea how to reply. Her self was of little interest to her now, a flimsy remnant of a time now past, extraneous, worthless.

  “It’s a dangerous time for you now, Mariana. The pull of the ‘other’ is so strong.”

  Mariana knew that Austin Mohr meant the other world.

  “You must not be alone, my dear. I hope you know that.”

  Mariana wept, pressing a wadded tissue against her eyes. Austin Mohr spoke gently yet forcibly.

  “We all have losses we think we can’t survive. And sometimes, some of us can’t. So we need help. We need emergency help. I will provide you what I can of ‘emergency’ help—first, I will cancel the rest of my appointments for the afternoon.”

  “But—”

  “Of course. I will. I have.”

  “Just talk to me. Tell me more about yourself. Your work. Why you’d come to the Institute last fall. We have many applicants, you know—we can accept only one in ten—and so you’re very special to us, Mariana. To me.”
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br />   Mariana hadn’t known she’d had so much to say, or the energy with which to say it.

  It was said of the director of the Institute that in addition to the numerous essays and books he’d written on the subject of twentieth-century cinema, both American and European, he’d virtually memorized classic films and could recite long passages of dialogue. And so it seemed to Mariana that Austin knew as much, or more, about the noir films of Ida Lupino as she herself knew. He succeeded in distracting her from her grief to discuss the directorial strategy of Lupino’s major films, as well as an obscure Twilight Zone episode Lupino had directed called “The Masks” in the 1950s. Together, Mariana and Austin analyzed the parable-like plot of this TV drama in which craven individuals at Mardi Gras in New Orleans are obliged to don masks whose ugly features reveal their inner selves—and, when they remove the masks at midnight, their faces bear the imprint of the ugly masks.

  “It’s a brilliant little moral fable, worthy of Poe. The mask deforms the face—the mask reveals the soul. So convincing is Lupino’s presentation of the fantastical material, it hardly seems surreal. And hardly like typical television in the 1950s or even now.”

  Mariana was amazed that Austin knew so much about her thesis subject, that others thought to be obscure if not of questionable relevance. And that he seemed so clearly, so sincerely to care about her.

  Though he was somewhere in the vicinity of sixty Austin spoke with the animation of a young person excited by films. Almost, there was a kind of naïveté in the man’s enthusiasm, Mariana recognized as very like her own, until recent months.

  Austin Mohr was a large gregarious man with gingery-silver hair still thick, wiry. At times—though not today—he wore this slightly long hair in a little ponytail, or pigtail; he had about him a Latino sort of swagger, though he didn’t have Hispanic features; he wore crisply ironed dazzling-white cotton shirts open at the throat, showing tufts of gingery-silver hair on his chest. His eyes were alert, intense, unnerving in their intensity. On his left wrist was a large beautifully designed watch, on his right wrist a bracelet of small gold links.

  Mariana’s hands were limp and chill. Austin held her hands, and warmed them. Like a fussing father he murmured to her, chided her. “I insist—you must not be alone right now. And you must take better care of yourself. I will see to that, my dear.”

  Mariana hadn’t been comforted in such a way since childhood. She felt her stiffness melt, a physical melting, she began to love the man then, love for Austin Mohr swelled in her, the first feeling she’d had since the news had come to her shortly before Christmas, her father was gravely ill, comatose, and would probably not ever regain consciousness.

  In the early evening Austin drove Mariana to his house in the Berkeley hills, and prepared a meal for her, a classic chicken tajine made with dried fruits, almonds, couscous. It had been weeks—months—since Mariana had been able to eat a substantial meal, but she found herself eating now, hungrily.

  In Mariana’s family, men rarely prepared meals. It was touching to see this man in his kitchen, taking time, taking care.

  They ate outside at a wrought iron table on the deck of his house overlooking the glittering city of San Francisco, the Bay and bridges. Mariana had never tasted such delicious wine—a Spanish wine, Austin said. A chardonnay.

  The wine, the exquisite food, the view of the glittering city framed by eucalyptus branches—Mariana had to shut her eyes, the sensation of joy came so strong.

  Maybe. I will live after all.

  Austin drove Mariana back to her rented apartment, miles away. He walked with her to the door, steadying her. He didn’t come inside but gently gripped her shoulders. Mariana lifted her face, prepared her numbed lips to be kissed—but Austin only brought his lips to her forehead, lightly as one might kiss a child.

  “Good night, my dear Mariana! This is a beginning.”

  All that night she felt the invasion in her blood, as of a virulent infection.

  A small fever beginning to rage. But of course this was not an invasion of malevolent bacteria, but love.

  Within a week, Mariana was having dinner with Austin Mohr each night, usually alone with him.

  Within six weeks, Mariana spent most nights at Austin Mohr’s house.

  And within six months, they were married.

  2.

  “Mariana. What the hell have you done.”

  She’d been so taken by surprise, so unprepared for a sudden flaring of anger in her husband of just a few weeks, she’d thought at first that Austin must be joking.

  Mariana had been preparing the house for an evening reception following a film screening at the Institute, moving furniture, repositioning chairs, making a wider pathway to the outdoor deck. She’d carried the lacquered Japanese screen to another part of the living room, placed a set of Catalan bowls on a wall shelf where there was less chance of their being broken, and moved one of the more savage-looking African masks to a less conspicuous corner of the room. Several exquisite orchid plants in ceramic pots she also moved out of harm’s way. But when Austin saw what she’d done, instead of being pleased with her as she’d hoped, he’d stared at her in disapproval.

  “I suggested that you help prepare for the reception, before the caterers arrive. Not that you dismantle my house.”

  My house. Mariana was too shocked to fully absorb this.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I thought . . .”

  Mariana stammered an apology but Austin seemed not to hear.

  “Have you been thinking, since you moved in here, that the way this house is furnished hasn’t been carefully considered? Does it look to you as if things have been randomly thrown together? With no aesthetic logic? That my taste is inferior?—inferior to yours?”

  Austin spoke in a voice heavy with sarcasm. Mariana was frightened, disoriented: it was astonishing to her that her husband, normally so civil and good-natured a man, a man with an effervescent sense of humor, should fly into a rage over her having moved a few things in the living room—such a trifle!

  Murmuring Sorry, sorry Mariana hauled the Japanese screen awkwardly back to its original position. The lacquered screen had seemed to her a beautiful artwork, ebony-black stippled with small cream-colored butterflies and birds, at six feet just slightly too tall for its position in the room, but now Mariana could scarcely bear to look at it. Austin continued to rage as Mariana returned the Catalan bowls, the African mask, the exquisite orchids—(she was terrified that orchid petals would fall, being jostled. For some of the flowers were past their bloom)— ignoring the alacrity and humility with which his young wife undertook to correct her mistake.

  Even now a part of Mariana’s brain assured her He isn’t serious! He can’t be serious. This is so petty . . .

  “I’m sorry, Austin! So sorry. I wasn’t thinking . . .”

  “Obviously. You weren’t thinking.”

  How was it possible, Austin was still furious with her? After she’d apologized profusely and returned everything to its original position? Yet his eyes glared with a piggish intensity, his fleshy-ruddy face was suffused with blood. Austin couldn’t have been more angry, more disgusted, if Mariana had defaced and broken his precious possessions—yet nothing had been damaged in the slightest. Why did he continue to be so angry? Mariana shrank from him, afraid that he might hit her. For the thought came to her, a swift warning If he hits you once, he will hit you again. It will be the end.

  Badly she wanted to turn and run from the room, and out of the house—she had her own car, she could drive away. . . . The marriage had been a mistake: she must escape. But she knew she must not turn her back on this furious man, she must not insult him further. Though she’d never had any experience quite like this in her life she understood that Austin’s fury had to run its course, like wildfire. If she did nothing further to provoke it, but maintained her atti
tude of abject apology and regret, the fit would subside, eventually.

  She tried to recall quarrels she’d had with men. Young men: lovers.

  But none had been anything like this, provoked by something so innocent and trivial. None had been so one-sided.

  None had left her feeling so frightened and helpless. So alone.

  Austin went to examine the orchids. There were six plants of about twenty-four inches in height, in ceramic bowls. In a small atrium in the living room were other exquisite plants—bonsai trees, a jade plant with glossy leaves, a three-foot lemon tree. Initially Mariana had wondered if these beautiful living things had been left behind by her most recent predecessor or whether they were Austin’s; since she’d moved into the house, care of the plants seemed to have fallen to Mariana.

  Finally, Austin stormed away, into his study. And Mariana was left behind trembling.