Beautiful Days: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But that is only the façade.

  From the (west) parking lot the Fractal Museum is revealed to be, behind the sandstone façade, a private house, or what had once been a private house: a renovated old Victorian shingle board painted dark purple with lavender trim, bay windows, steep slate roofs, lightning rod and weathervane—exactly the sort of distinctive old property given away by heirs to townships for charitable purposes, to escape property taxes. Overlapping shingles suggest a fractal pattern that repeats itself top to bottom, bottom to top, impossible to measure with the eye as a result of its repetition; as the visitor’s eye moves about this (visible) portion of the house it comes to seem, uncannily, that there are more tall narrow windows here than could possibly fit into the limited space; it is an effort to move the eye horizontally, left to right, right to left, and not rather vertically, as if something in the structure of the building is an active (if subliminal) impediment to the visitor’s curiosity.

  Seen from the (east) parking lot the Fractal Museum is revealed to be, behind the sandstone façade, another private house, very different from the Victorian: a large Colonial with weatherworn white shingles, dull-green shutters, a greeny glimmer of moss on its roof, exactly the sort of distinctive old property given away by heirs to townships for charitable purposes, to escape property taxes. Here too there is something uncanny about the windows—there are not enough windows for the space and they appear to be of differing sizes; the observer is led to glance quickly from window to window, to see how they differ, yet there is some sort of impediment (instant amnesia?) preventing “seeing” the windows in relationship to one another, so that each sighting of each window is distinct from its predecessor, and forming a comparison is not possible.

  Also, there appear to be in the windows remnants of holiday decorations, candles or Christmas lights, unless these are but (fractal-like, repetitive) reflections in wavy glass.

  The rear of the Museum is a blank freshly-painted (beige) stucco wall that might be the rear of a fast-food taco restaurant—blunt, pragmatic, windowless, and so textured that if you look closely you can see the suggestions of fractal designs in the material, leaf-like, overlapping in seemingly infinite repetition. There is a single large metal door marked EXIT and below this a smaller sign: NO RE-ENTRY. From a stoop, a short flight of concrete steps and a ramp to the parking lot.

  As he has been taking pictures of the Museum with his iPad Oliver has been trying to explain to the mother that the Fractal Museum is considered a “living paradox”—a “living conundrum.” Measured from the outside its square footage is (reputedly) considerably less than the square footage measured from the inside—“Interior fractal space.” Oliver plans to take pictures inside the Museum to determine for himself the authenticity of interior fractal space, at which online commentators have marveled.

  The mother has listened, or half-listened, to the child chattering about the Fractal Museum for weeks. But this is new to her. How can the Museum be smaller on the outside than on the inside? And how can a museum, which is nothing but a building constructed of wood, brick, stone, stucco, unliving materials, be living?

  The mother hesitates to ask the child another time to explain what he is talking about. (Especially, the mother hesitates to ask the child to explain what the hell he is talking about. What the hell will be registered by the child as exasperation, dismay.) The mother is self-aware enough to dread that hour when she hears in the (prepubescent) boy’s voice the equivalent of Oh Jesus, Mom! Please.

  At the entrance of the Fractal Museum a woman of about Amanda’s age, looking both harried and flushed with a mother’s eagerness to please, is ushering inside several children of whom the eldest, lanky-limbed, with round eyeglasses, resembles Oliver to an uncanny degree.

  The mother holds her breath waiting to see if the two boys notice each other: they do not.

  6.

  It is just 10:28 A.M. The Fractal Museum has opened at 10:00 A.M. Inside, there is a surprisingly long line for tickets. Families with young children, a predominance of mothers. The Fractal Museum advertises itself as a family-friendly museum.

  While the son studies an interactive floor map of the Museum that bristles with lights and animation like a casino game the mother purchases their tickets. She is surprised that this obscure museum in a quasi-rural suburb of Portland, Maine, is expensive: thirty-five dollars for adults, thirty for seniors, twenty for children under twelve. Twenty for children under twelve. Is this even legal?

  “Another year, and I’d be paying the ‘adult’ price for my son here.”

  Just a mild observation. Not a complaint. The mother understands that the Fractal Museum is privately owned and probably isn’t subsidized by the state.

  “Eleven? Your son is eleven?”—a query from the woman selling tickets isn’t intended to be rude but yes, it is tactless.

  “Yes. He is eleven.”

  With a pang of dismay the mother sees that the child who so often seems to her immense in his intelligence and imagination and willfulness is indeed small for his age. Not short, as tall as an average eleven-year-old perhaps, but painfully thin, with underdeveloped shoulders and arms, the slender neck of an aquatic bird, and that pale, skim-milk, cinnamon-freckled skin—vulnerable is the word that comes most readily to mind.

  In his dark red flannel shirt he’d buttoned crookedly, and she’d had to rebutton. In wire-rimmed eyeglasses that enlarge his eyes that glow like bees.

  Fiercely the mother thinks—I will protect him with my life.

  But Oliver isn’t so frail, to himself: Oliver is strong-willed, even defiant. He has been an only child for eleven years—a lifetime!

  Edging away from the mother frowning as he struggles to clip the bright blue Fractal Museum badge (which is in fact several fractal-leaf-badges conflated as one) onto his shirt without her assistance. Though he hasn’t heard the exact exchange between the ticket seller and his mother, the mother’s friendly chatter with strangers is embarrassing to him.

  Especially since the child knows that the friendly chattering mom is not really the mother—just some silly mask and costume the mother puts on, in public.

  Adjacent to the foyer is the gift shop. Adjacent to that, a planetarium with hourly showings—Our Fractal Universe. Also a café that is brightly lit and buzzing with customers.

  Oliver suggests that the mother have coffee in the café and meet him afterward in the third-floor exhibit—for he knows how badly she would like coffee (very black, strong!) after the stress of the drive—but the mother quickly demurs. “No! I’m not letting you out of my sight in this weird place.” Adding, as if it were an afterthought, with a smile, “Sweetie.”

  It is the mother’s nightmare, that she might lose the child in some unfamiliar place like a museum, airport, subway. Perhaps an outdated nightmare since the child is not of an age to be easily lost any longer.

  Sweetie is a signal, the mother is pleading with him. The child is stiff-backed, not in a mood to be pleaded-with.

  If she didn’t know that the child would ease away from her like a cat not wishing to be stroked she’d have taken his hand. Just to feel the small, hot-skinned hand in her own and to claim—See?—I’ve got you. Safe.

  “OH, OLIVER! Look.”

  Their first exhibit is on the third floor: Naturally Occurring Fractals. This is a massive and dazzling display that winds its way in brightly lighted glass cases and interactive presentations through the entire third floor. Crowded with visitors (including the harried-looking young mother with a son who resembles Oliver) this exhibit appears to be at least twice as large as the mother would have anticipated, given the (apparent) size of the museum from the outside. Just to gaze into it, to the farther walls of the museum that seem to dissolve into the ether, is disconcerting.

  Giant illuminated photographs of seeds, leaves, flowers. Feathers, hairs, fur, scales (snake, fish, lizard). Many-times-magnified snowflakes, crystals. Magnified cells, neurons, ganglia so tangled and so beauti
ful, they evoke a sense of vertigo in the brain. And there are, scarcely less startling and strange, skeletal trees with fractal-branches, fractal-twigs, fractal-veined leaves. Fractally dense evergreen cones looking sharp and lethal as spikes. With his iPad Oliver takes multiple pictures. He is particularly interested in a sequence of highly magnified photographs of the New England coastline, in ascending order of magnification.

  No matter how many times magnified, the fractal pattern of the coastline recurs. The mother can see this but can’t quite see the point of magnification. Is there to be no end of things?—no end?

  “What you think is a straight line,” Oliver says, “actually isn’t. There are all these little breaks and creases, that go on forever.” The child speaks with a sort of grim glee as if forever were not a terrifying prospect.

  “Oh. But—why?”

  “Just is, Mom.”

  “I mean—why pursue it? Why would you want to know so much that has no use?”

  Oliver retorts that most of science is “useless”—plus math, fractal geometry. That something is useless is not a description of its essential properties but is irrelevant. Useful is also irrelevant.

  The mother feels rebuked. For a mother is of all things meant to be useful.

  Before each dazzling display the mother lingers. She is (half-) aware of time fracturing, fractal-ling. Unlike Oliver who seems to be familiar with much of this information the mother needs to carefully read, reread the descriptive passages on the walls. Her brain feels gluey. Her eyes feel the strain of so much to see.

  Her arms ache from the effort of having held the damned steering wheel steady for so long, to keep the SUV in its proper lane and prevent a sudden catastrophe, crash into an abutment (just beyond exit nine at a place called Elk River) and two lives snuffed out just like that.

  But no, that did not happen. Without incident they’d passed the exit where they’d been most at risk, at about 9:05 A.M. Arms trembling with effort the mother held the steering wheel firm as an enormous tractor-trailer truck thundered by in the adjacent left lane.

  The child had not even noticed. Absorbed in the intricate puzzles of the iPad.

  The mother wonders: is there such a thing as fractal-time? She feels a thrill of dread that this must be so. Each hour, each minute, each second broken down into its components, to infinity; and in each, an alternative fate of which she knows nothing.

  Up close, life is but life. At a little distance, life is fate.

  Crushed, broken amid the wreckage. Steam lifting, stink of gasoline.

  Snuffed out just like that: two lives.

  To the husband she’d have said Serves you right! You have abandoned your child and your wife and now you have lost them.

  Something is staring—glaring—into her face. Another of the giant illuminated magnifications. Reduced to its fractal components the photograph (rock, lichen) is unrecognizable as a swirl of molecules.

  Yet, the fractals abide. No matter the degree of magnification.

  The mother has certainly underestimated the Fractal Museum, she is thinking. She’d meant simply to humor the child, driving him here. She’d hoped that, if there was an extra hour, on the way home she could stop at the Winslow Homer Studio at Scarborough about which she has read in the AAA Maine Guide, and that would have made the long trip worthwhile for her.

  But now, she is quite absorbed in the exhibits. It is a new world to her, close beneath the surface of the world she believes she knows without needing to examine how she knows.

  Naturally occurring fractals seem to encompass virtually everything in the physical world—all that the mother has been seeing with her eyes (and not with her brain) through her life.

  The fractal is the basic unit of design.

  The fractal repeats itself endlessly and yet each fractal is unique and unlike any other.

  Trying to grasp this. Like stepping out onto ice. Possibly it is rock-solid and will support your weight. Possibly it is not.

  “SHALL I TAKE YOUR PICTURE, Olly?”

  Shakes his head no.

  Ducks his head. Smooth-freckled pale skin reddening as if slapped for certainly the mother must know that the child hates being called Olly in a public place.

  Well, in fact—the child isn’t comfortable being called Olly at any time, this past year.

  Stubbornly resisting. No picture!

  The mother feels a surge of something like fury and wants to take hold of the child’s skinny shoulders, give him a shake.

  But consider: she is the mother, she is not the child.

  In a contest of wills the mother does not need to vanquish the child to establish her power over him.

  “Come on, sweetie. Please. Just stand here. We can mail the picture to Daddy, to make him envious he isn’t here with us.”

  This is very mild sarcasm. This is not actually a condemnation of the father who is oblivious of much in the household.

  “Actually, Daddy asked me to take your picture. And send it to him. So he knows we got here safely. OK?”

  None of this is true. But the mother exudes such sincerity, the most icy-hearted child could not resist.

  And the mother has exerted her authority by taking the iPad from the child—virtually unhooking it from his fingers—and positioning him against a wall, as if he were a much younger child.

  (The wall display is one of the gorgeously colored magnifications of—is it a nebula? a multifoliate rose? a neuron in the human brain?)

  “There! That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  The child has allowed the picture to be taken, to humor the mother.

  The fear that our likenesses will outlive us. The image of a being in a (future) time in which the being has ceased to exist.

  This is a morbid thought that has leapt into the mother’s brain like a sly louse or tick, out of the gorgeous fractal display on the wall. But the mother casts the morbid thought off as she always does such thoughts, by ignoring it.

  The time is 10:31 A.M. But—how is that possible? The mother stares at her (digital) watch, baffled and uneasy. She has given the iPad back to the child, or she would check the time on the electronic gadget as well.

  Hadn’t they arrived at the Museum shortly before 10:30 A.M.? The mother is sure she remembers the time correctly. And if so, if at least forty minutes have passed in the exhibit, it would now be 11:10 A.M., approximately; how then can it be only 10:31 A.M.?

  Something is very wrong. The mother’s brain reels.

  If time moves with such glacial slowness in the Fractal Museum they will never be released from it. They will never return to their home in New Haven where someone, the third party of the triangle of which they constitute two-thirds, awaits them.

  The mother gives her watch a shake. Damned battery must be slowing down.

  “Oliver, wait!”—the child is eager to move on.

  Culturally Appropriated Fractals is an equally massive and dazzling display sprawling through the Museum’s second floor. Here are walls of illuminated mandalas, rose windows. The mother will spend many minutes here entranced as one who has been deprived of beauty and is now blinded by it.

  Astonishingly elaborate, intricately designed Hindu mandalas. In these you can lose yourself. That is, self.

  The mother is mesmerized by the great illuminated mandalas. These are as different from one another, and alike one another, as fireworks in a night sky. Seeing one, you have seen them all; seeing many, you have seen one.

  Like the infinite faces of God.

  The child is less intrigued by (mere) visual beauty. The child is drawn to the cerebral component—the fractal structures that underlie beauty.

  In the beige tile floor of the Museum are several stripes: green, red, blue, yellow. Each leads to an exhibit. It is the green stripe that Oliver wants to follow to bring him to more cerebral exhibits, video puzzle-games and interactive robots that mimic/mirror the individuals who stand before them typing on keyboards. There is the promise of the Sierpinski Triangl
e Labyrinth which is a “challenging” maze-game in the form of a triangle containing countless triangles in which time as well as space has to be navigated.

  Oliver plucks at the mother’s wrist to move her along but the mother finds it difficult to break the spell of the mandalas. The exhibit area is enormous, the size of a football field. Always there is more to see: another gorgeous dazzling intricately wrought mandala that seems to hold a secret—a secret meaning. Beauty exudes a powerful spell upon the mother, like a heady perfume.

  The mother becomes aware of an agitated hubbub of the air about her as of a crowd pressing near but when she looks around, there is virtually no one else (visible) in the enormous room.

  At the farther end of the room a Museum guard motionless as a mannequin. His face is generic and friendly, of the hue of skim milk.

  Oh, where is Oliver?—the mother hurries to locate him. And there Oliver is, around a corner, in a corner, absorbed in an interactive video that makes him laugh.

  Something about fractals, of course. Fractal topology? Vivid colors, like explosions in the brain.

  The mother tells the child please don’t move away from her. It is crucial for them to stay in each other’s sight. The Museum is much bigger than she’d thought, and—(how to express this)—“Time moves differently here.”

  The mother dislikes video games which she interprets (correctly) as an alternative reality not congruent with her best interests. She would like to imagine herself the emotional center of the child’s life, and not a brain-exhausting game.

  (Can a machine love her son, as she loves her son? Of course not.)

  Being of an older generation to whom such antic video figures will never exude familiarity or comfort the mother instinctively distrusts humanoid figures. She knows that they are “programmed”—(she thinks that “programmed” means “safe”)—but this makes no difference to her. She cannot trust any machine.