Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In the end, Lisbeth left the dinner, her host having called a taxi for her. By the time the taxi arrived, Mikael Brun had departed.

  How stunned she’d been by the man’s fury! It had been in such disproportion (she thought) to the situation. He’d looked as if he’d have liked to hit her.

  She’d wondered if it meant that Mikael Brun was in fact attracted to her, and possessive of her; or whether his behavior was just mean-spirited male vanity.

  I’m sorry, Mikael. I don’t think I want to see you again.

  Or simply, I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you again.

  These terse words Lisbeth prepared, but Mikael Brun had not called her.

  It was the story of her life! Lisbeth Mueller was the radiantly smiling person to whom others turned in desperation, like stunted plants in need of sunshine. Patiently she listened to them, like a therapist; unlike a therapist, she didn’t charge a fee. (Though if she’d been a therapist she might have had a steady income, at least.) She was kind, generous, unjudging. She had not the personality for the rapacious competition of the stage. She was never ironic and may even have not quite understood what “irony” was—as she’d been accused of by more than one man. Possibly it was easy to take such a woman for granted, even to betray her, who seems to demand so little from others, while freely offering so much.

  But then, after several months, Mikael Brun called her. His voice was tremulous over the phone. He made no acknowledgment that months had passed since he’d last spoken to her as if he’d forgotten the circumstances but he did sound contrite, hopeful.

  “You will, Lisbeth? You’ll come with me?”

  “I said—I’m not sure. If the children can stay with their father a few more days . . . They’re at Aspen.”

  “You’re—free? And you’ll come with me to Lake George?”

  Had he not heard? Children, their father. Aspen.

  “Well, yes, I think so. Yes.”

  Impulsively she spoke, overcome by emotion. She would not have been prepared for her reaction to the sound of the man’s voice.

  Mikael Brun continued to speak, excited, near-ecstatic. Through a buzzing in her ears Lisbeth could barely make out his words. Had she been mistaken, all these months?—had the man been waiting to hear from her?

  After they hung up Lisbeth remained sitting on the edge of the bed, somewhat dazed. Her heart beat sharply, quickened. Her heart had not beat in this way for a long time.

  Afterward she would realize that she’d been waiting for the phone to ring again, and for Mikael Brun to decide that he’d made a mistake and would have to cancel their plans after all. For he’d called the wrong woman.

  ELABORATE PLANS HE’D MADE for the weekend, which had to include the woman. A woman.

  And the Monday following, when he’d have returned home.

  Last things he’d prepared with care. So long he’d contemplated these, with the thrill of toxic bitterness, it was a relief when the last things were finally executed.

  At the time, in his fiftieth year, Mikael Brun was a distinguished scientist, professor of psychology at Harvard and director of the Harvard Institute for Cognitive and Linguistic Research. In Cambridge it was generally believed that Brun was on an extended sabbatical leave from Harvard, freeing him to spend all his time at the Institute; in fact, the leave was unpaid, and open-ended, while Brun was being (secretly, by a committee of professional peers and high-ranking Harvard administrators) investigated for “suspected improprieties” in his research. A former post-doc in Brun’s laboratory had reported him for having purposefully misrecorded data in a number of experiments, subsequently published in leading professional journals. Vehemently Brun had denied the charges; he had no doubt that he had not committed “scientific misconduct” (as it was primly called) either willfully or inadvertently; yet, the effort to clear his name would be demeaning, exhausting; he thought of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, he would not lower himself to the level of the rabble, to save his own career. And his disintegrated marriage, and the disenchantment of his children—he was weary of the effort of trying to make his fickle daughters love him again, and prefer him to their mother as they’d once done.

  To the north. I will go to the north. The words haunted him like words from a song of long ago when life had been simpler and happier.

  Of course he would never do it, that way—so crudely . . .

  Blow out my brains was a phrase he sometimes heard himself say, with a bluff sort of heartiness. There was a Chekhovian ring to such a remark, melancholy, yet bemused. A joke!

  Still, he would not blow out his brains for such a trifle as the meretricious investigation at Harvard. And it was an absurd cliché to ascribe suicide to the breakup of his family, that was hardly a new development in Mikael Brun’s life. It was infuriating to him, that others might interpret his suicide in such petty and reductive terms.

  Who dies for what is quantifiable dies in shame. The suicide soars beyond your grasp as beyond your ignorant understanding.

  One final time, he would return to Big Burnt. He would put his things in order before driving north so that, when he returned, he would not be confronted with the responsibility. He’d come to realize that all the places he had lived had been spoiled for him by the experience of living in them, except for Big Burnt Island.

  Impulsively, he called a woman whom he’d known casually, in the years following his divorce; a woman whom he found attractive or in any case sympathetic, an intelligent woman, an uncomplaining woman, with a local reputation as an actress—Lisbeth Mueller. And when he heard the woman’s startled voice over the phone he’d thought—She is the one. He heard himself ask Lisbeth if she would like to come with him to Lake George, in the Adirondacks, over the long Labor Day weekend.

  In an instant he’d felt certain. Something like a leaden vest had slipped from him. There’d been other women he called, or left messages for—(this, Mikael would never tell Lisbeth, of course!)—but Lisbeth Mueller was the one.

  She was a beautiful woman, or had been. He saw other men appraising her, and took solace in their looks of admiration and (maybe) envy. Several times he’d seen her onstage (only once in a play of substance, by an Irish playwright whose name he’d forgotten) and would scarcely have recognized her, her ivory-skinned face illuminated by stage lights, flawless as her carefully enunciated words.

  In actual life, Lisbeth Mueller was not so assured. Often there was faint anxiety in her face, even when she was smiling—a “dazzling” smile. Her manner was gracious, and seductive; she was a woman who is always seducing, out of a dread of being rejected. A woman always slightly off balance, insecure. Mikael quite liked it that Lisbeth was always in need of money for the man should provide the money, binding the woman to him for as long as he wished her bound to him.

  Seeing Lisbeth Mueller enlivened in his presence, made happy by him, he’d laughed with relief and pleasure. Often there was a kind of skin or husk over him, that made relating to others difficult, even breathing in their presence difficult; but that was not the case when he was with Lisbeth, who seemed never to judge, and always grateful for his attention.

  It was crucial to Mikael, or had once been—that others might be made happy by him. For so long he’d been an outstanding son who’d made his parents happy or in any case proud of him. All of the Brun family, proud of Mikael who’d received a scholarship to an excellent university (Chicago) and had the equivalent of an M.D. (that is, a Ph.D.) from another excellent university (Yale). And now he was a professor at the greatest university of all (Harvard)—in fact, he was the director of his own research institute (though it wasn’t clear to the relatives exactly what Mikael was researching).

  There’d been a few women whom he’d made happy, if not for long. And the children—for a while.

  For a long time he hadn’t had a reasonable expectation of happiness for himself. Maybe something like gratification—being elected to the National Academy of Sciences at the right time, before most of his ri
vals; being awarded million-dollar grants, in the days when a million dollars meant something. And of course seeing his ambitious experiments turn out successfully, results published in the American Journal of Cognitive Science and elsewhere.

  Not happiness but relief. Shrugging off the leaden vest.

  As if his lungs were filled with helium. He could float.

  Neatly laid on the desk in his home study were these items: Mikael K. Brun Last Will & Testament; a manila folder containing financial statements, including IRS records; the title for his Land Rover, which he was leaving to a cousin (whom he had not seen in fifteen years); an envelope containing a final check for the Filipina woman who’d been cleaning his house—soiled laundry, stained sinks and toilets, sticky tile floors, carpets—on alternate Mondays for nearly twenty years; envelopes containing detailed instructions for his young laboratory colleagues, who would be devastated by their mentor’s death; and envelopes addressed to several former students containing letters of recommendation.

  He had tried, and failed, to write letters to his son and his daughters. He had not tried to write to his former wife (whose address he no longer had) nor had he tried to write letters to his own relatives. For words of a personal, revelatory nature did not come easily to him.

  Was he hoping that the woman would change his mind in this late stage of his life, that was a possibility but—no.

  No more than a terminal cancer patient could have a reasonable hope that vitamin C shots will alter the course of his disease.

  Had he hoped for the woman to change his mind about the possibility of his being amenable to his mind being changed by any woman—No. Not that either.

  “Here we are.”

  At last they’d come to Big Burnt Island. Lisbeth was prepared to find the island remarkable in some evident way, unusually “scenic”—but of course it closely resembled nearby islands, as it resembled the densely wooded Adirondack mainland surrounding the lake. Tall pines, deciduous trees, a hilly landscape, what looked like dry, slightly sandy soil—“It’s very beautiful,” she said uncertainly.

  “Is it!”

  Mikael Brun laughed. She supposed he was laughing at her—for having said such banal words, with an air of surprise.

  Mikael had been in an exalted mood since early morning. Lisbeth had never seen him so happy, and was grateful for his happiness; he was a man of moods, mercurial and unpredictable. Not happiness itself but the relief of the other’s happiness was crucial to her.

  At first she’d been uneasy in the rented boat. It did look—small. And Mikael had made a droll comment that it wasn’t teak, only just fiberglass—“Minimally adequate.” She could not control a faint shudder as she stepped down into the boat, that immediately rocked beneath her weight, assisted by Mikael and by the lanky-limbed marina attendant. She’d never felt comfortable in any boat for invariably she was forced to recall the canoeing accident of her childhood about which she hadn’t wanted to speak to Mikael Brun—of course. He’d have laughed at her for worrying that a fifteen-foot outboard might be as easily overturned as a canoe.

  Mikael had rented a boat with a canopy, to protect them from the direct sun. Lisbeth was relieved to see oars and bright orange life preservers stored in the rear.

  On their way to Big Burnt Island Mikael kept to a reasonable speed even as other boats rushed past. He was in very good spirits. Lisbeth thought—How close we are! How intimate. Seen from a little distance they were certainly a couple.

  At Glen Island, where, at the ranger station, Mikael applied for a single-day permit for Big Burnt Island, as at Big Burnt Island itself, he had some initial difficulty securing the boat to the dock. In both cases Lisbeth was pressed into helping him, awkwardly looping a rope around a pole. In both cases the helpless thump-thump-thump of the small vulnerable-seeming white boat against the wooden dock was distressing. Lisbeth saw her companion’s jaws clench as if he were feeling pain.

  But then, at last, at Big Burnt the boat was secured. There were a few other outboards in the small inlet but none at the dock for which Mikael had a permit. Happily he sprang out of the boat and reached down to grasp Lisbeth’s hand, to pull her up onto the dock. His fingers tightened upon hers to the point of pain. She laughed breathlessly and protested—“Please! You’re hurting me.”

  Sorry! He hadn’t realized, he said quickly. He was wearing a cap with a visor pulled low over his forehead, and dark sunglasses that obscured his eyes. His skin was just slightly coarse, pitted. He seemed excited, mildly anxious. But happier than Lisbeth had ever seen him.

  How easy it would be to love such a man, she thought. And easy to be loved by such a man.

  It was a foolish, feckless thought. Such thoughts plagued the woman in times of stress in particular, seeming to come from a source beyond her.

  In their backpacks were sandwiches, Evian water, towels and the morning’s New York Times. Mikael intended to swim, and hoped that Lisbeth would also—“I don’t enjoy swimming alone.” He was scornful of her mild addiction to the daily crossword puzzle but she’d thought that in these circumstances, in protracted intimacy with a man she scarcely knew, focusing on the crossword puzzle would be a way of focusing her excitement.

  On land, Mikael took Lisbeth’s hand in his and led her briskly uphill. There was no evident path but Mikael’s way was unerring through stands of scrub pine—he might have made his way blindfolded.

  “This was our campsite. On this promontory.”

  Mikael’s face fairly glowed with excitement and his voice seemed higher-pitched, tremulous.

  Fortunately no one was camping on the site. There was a clear and unimpeded view of the lake. Happily Mikael pointed out to Lisbeth mountain peaks in the distance—Black Mountain, Erebus Mountain, Shelving Rock Mountain. Lisbeth shaded her eyes and stared.

  They left their backpacks on a weathered picnic table which, Mikael told her, had been the table his family had used. He was speaking warmly, intensely. Lisbeth knew better than to interrupt as he reminisced of the summers he’d come to the island with his family—“Until everything ended.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Why was that?”

  She’d said something wrong—had she? Was he angry with her, in an instant?

  “I mean—did something happen? So that you stopped coming here . . .”

  “Yes. Of course ‘something happened.’ It’s in the nature of our lives that something invariably ‘happens’—isn’t it? You do something for a finite number of times, but you often don’t know when you will do it for the last time. In our case, we knew.”

  Mikael was speaking matter-of-factly now, as if he were lecturing, and not accusingly; after a while he said, relenting, “It was more than one thing but essentially, my father died.”

  Lisbeth asked how old he’d been when his father had died and Mikael said, with a shrug, “Too young for him, and too young for me.”

  Lisbeth touched his wrist in silent commiseration. She did not intrude upon him otherwise for she saw that he was deeply moved. Behind the dark lenses his eyes were rapidly blinking and evasive.

  Another time she thought—He is such a lonely person!

  She thought—I will make him love me, and that will save him and me both.

  It was another of her bizarre feckless thoughts, that seemed to come to her from a consciousness not her own.

  Several times Mikael circled the campsite. He might have been seeking the entrance to an enclosure—a tent? His expression was pained, yearning, tender. He took pictures with his iPhone. He squatted on his heels, oblivious of Lisbeth who stood to the side, waiting uneasily. Indeed it was a beautiful setting—the campsite with an open view of the lake, and the pale blue sky reflected in the lake. She was touched, that Mikael Brun was sharing this private place with her and that they would be bound together by this sharing.

  It was a fair bright warm morning on Lake George. As midday approached, the air grew brighter and hotter. There was the likelihood of rain sometime
later that day—(so Mikael had mentioned to her at the motel, casually)—but for now, the sky was clear, luminous. Lisbeth noted the abrupt drop beyond the campsite—not a very good site for children. She noted how clean the island was, so far as she could see. Visitors to the islands were forbidden to leave debris and garbage behind; they were required to carry it back with them to the mainland. In that way overflowing trash cans were avoided. The air was wonderfully fresh and the lake water, as Mikael had several times said, was pure enough to drink.

  Was it! Lisbeth wondered at this. Hadn’t acid rain fallen in the Adirondacks, in recent decades? Was the lake so pure as it had been in Mikael Brun’s childhood? Lisbeth noted that they’d brought bottled water with them, in any case.

  A thrilling idea occurred to her: she would suggest to Mikael that they camp on Big Burnt sometime, together. Was that possible? Would Mikael be touched by this suggestion, or would Mikael resent her intrusion? Was it an intrusion, if he’d brought her here? Lisbeth had no great love of the outdoors, still less camping, but if such a romantic interlude would appeal to Mikael . . .

  We decided that Big Burnt would be our honeymoon. Beautiful, remote, Mikael’s boyhood place . . .

  After some minutes Mikael returned to Lisbeth, walking unsteadily. His cheeks shone with tears. He seized her hand again, as if he’d feared she might be easing away. For a moment she was frightened that he would do something extravagant—he would kiss the back of her hand and cry out that he loved her, like a Chekhov hero.