Beautiful Days

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Perhaps this afternoon she will hike out beyond the crashing waves, beyond the seaweed-shrouded boulders. Icy waves pummeling her slight body against the hard-packed sand. The end will be swift, merciful—her (unprotected) skull cracked against a great rock puckered as if for a kiss.

  But no: she has brought her small inexpensive camera, she will take pictures of the sea, the sea shore, the November sky ragged with clouds. Ocean debris, seaweed and rotted things, desiccated fish, corpses of unnamed creatures, skeletal remains like lace. When the husband sees the digital images he will squeeze her hand and say half in reproach—You see, darling? I’ve always tried to encourage you. Everyone has tried to encourage you. You have an eye for beauty in the least beautiful things.

  Also: she is thrilled at the prospect of examining close up Winslow Homer drawings and paintings she has never seen before.

  There is beauty, and it is outside us. Yet, it is us.

  That is why she’d driven so far that morning, she realizes. Rising early in the dark, driving against the wind until her arms and shoulders and head ached. A purpose to her most impulsive acts, she must learn to have faith and to combat depression settling like a shroud of mist around her, through which only the sharpest and most corrosive sun-rays can break.

  Yet she is reluctant to leave this place. For still, after so many hours, she is in the Fractal Museum.

  A warm room, if slightly airless. No windows. No security cameras. (That she can detect.) No one to observe how strangely she is drawn to the wall beside her, to what covers the wall, taut and tight as skin.

  A thrill of horror comes over her. For it does seem to be—the wall’s surface is neither paint nor wallpaper but a sort of membrane, a skin, soft, heartrendingly soft, exuding a barely discernible warm pulse like a living thing. It is lightly freckled, like droplets of water tinged with cinnamon, or—turmeric . . . In wonderment she touches it—just the lightest touch, with the fingers of her right hand.

  “Ma’am? We’re sorry, the Fractal Museum is closing now.”

  Yes! Of course. It is time for her to leave.

  By the rear exit with the blunt admonition EXIT: NO RE-ENTRY.

  Only one vehicle remains in the parking lot. If the key tightly gripped in her hand fits the ignition, obviously that vehicle is hers.

  Undocumented Alien

  VERY ROUGH FIRST DRAFT REPORT

  PROJECT JRD

  Lost in Time

  TEST SUBJECT #293199 / JOSEPH SAIDU MAADA (UNDOCUMENTED ALIEN, HOME COUNTRY NIGERIA, B. 1990 D. 2016)

  Most immediate and long-lasting effect of the neurotransmitter Microchip (TNM) inserted in the cerebral cortex of the human brain appears to be a radical destabilization of temporal and spatial functions of cognition. (See Graz, S.R., “Temporal and Parietal Functions of the Human Brain,” Journal of Neuroscience Studies 14: 2 for a detailed description of normal functions.)

  In test subject #293199 temporal destabilization was immediate and (seemingly) permanent; spatial destabilization was sporadic and unpredictable.

  For instance, upon several (videotaped) occasions in the PROJECT JRD laboratory (Institute for Independent Neurophysiological Research, Princeton, NJ) test subject #293199 J.S. Maada demonstrated confusion and panic when asked to list events in a chronological sequence. Even those events which were made to occur within a single hour in the Institute laboratory, which he had observed, were virtually impossible for Maada to “list”—(it was noted that the subject seemed to have lost comprehension of what the term “list” means). If subject was allowed to view a videotape of the hour he could list events on a sheet of paper as he observed them occurring, though after the elapse of a half hour, he would not remember their sequence except by consulting the list. Also, Maada did not appear to recognize himself in the video, or would not acknowledge himself. (Who is that black face?—Maada would ask, sneering and anxious. I see him. He does not see me.)

  In the last several months of Maada’s life, partly as a consequence (it is believed) of deteriorating vision, hearing, and cognitive functions, subject’s paranoia was heightened so that he became convinced that a team of black spies had been sent to abduct him and return him to Nigeria to be imprisoned and tortured in collusion with the CIA. (See Lehrman, M., “Learned Helplessness and Conditioned Paranoia in 30-Year-Old African-American Male,” Johns Hopkins Neurophysiological Journal 22: 17. Though this paper [attributed to Dr. Lehrman but in fact 90 percent of it the work of his post-doc staff at the Institute] is based upon PROJECT JRD classified experiments it does not contain information that reveals the identity of the test subject or the laboratory in which the cycle of experiments took place. Thus, the age of the subject has been altered as well as other details pertaining to the subject’s ethnic identity and legal status in U.S., in conformity with Department of Defense regulations stipulating classified scientific material revised for publication in non-classified journals.) Simultaneously, and with no awareness of the contradictory nature of his assumptions, test subject Maada was made to believe that he was a “privileged alien agent” sent to Earth on a “secret stealth mission” from one of the orbiting moons of Jupiter and that the nature of this mission would be revealed to him at the proper time, and not before. Am I a ticking bomb?—Maada would ask slyly. Or am I just a ticking clock? A heart?

  Over a duration of several months Maada so lost his ability to register the sequence of what we call “time” that he was continually expressing surprise at encountering members of the S___ family (with whom he was living in Edison, NJ; their name is redacted, at least in this rough draft of our report, since the entire S___ family is “undocumented”/“illegal”) in their cramped quarters in a brownstone tenement on Ewing Street, Edison. When the older children returned from school, if Maada was in his room and heard their voices he would rush at them demanding to know why they weren’t at school, for it seemed to him (evidently) that they had just left, or had not left at all; concepts of “earlier”—“previous”—“subsequent”—“consequent”—were no longer available to him. The several children in the S___ household, ranging in age from three to eleven, were very fond of “Saidu” (as they called Maada), because he was “kind” and “funny” with them, like an older brother, and “very smart,” helping them with their homework; but over the course of PROJECT JRD, as Maada’s personality was made to “plasticize” (i.e., alter in a “melting” way) and other features of the experiments were initiated, the children did not know what to expect from their “Saidu” and began to avoid him.

  When the several adults in the S___ household returned from their low-income jobs in the Edison area Maada frequently expressed great anxiety for them, and occasional impatience, that they had failed to go to work at all, and were risking their jobs, thus their livelihood and ability to pay rent which would lead to their arrest and deportation, and his own.

  For the “undocumented alien”—“illegal alien”—it is arrest and deportation that is the prevailing fear, and not, as it is for others of us (who are U.S. citizens) a more generalized fear of the impenetrability of the future: Death, we can assume; but not the how of Death, still less the (precise) when of Death.

  AS EARLY AS 6/11/15, within three weeks of the start of his participation in PROJECT JRD, #293199/J.S. Maada began to have difficulty listing the chronology of events in his previous life: his arrival in the U.S. as an engineering student at Harrogate State University, Jersey City, NJ, at which time a student visa was granted in his name by the United States Department of State (8/21/07); his withdrawal from Harrogate on “academic grounds,” at which time his student visa was declared null and void and he was issued a summons from the Department of State ordering him to report immediately to the Newark Immigration Authority (2/2/08); his (unlawful, unreported) move to Edison, NJ, as an “undocumented alien” given temporary shelter in the small, fiercely protective Nigerian community; his sporadic (and undocumented) employment in the Edison/Newark area as a cafeteria worker, busboy, hospital
and morgue custodian, sanitation worker, construction and lawn service worker, etc.; his (first) arrest by law enforcement officers (Newark) on grounds of creating a public disturbance, refusing to obey police officers’ commands, and resisting arrest (5/21/15); his release from police custody dependent upon agreeing to participate “freely and of his own volition” in the National Defense Security (Classified) PROJECT JRD (5/24/15); his (second) arrest, Montclair, NJ (6/19/16), on more serious charges of sexual assault, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon (teeth, shovel), assault with the intention of committing homicide, and assault against (Montclair) law enforcement officers.

  Following the altercation with law enforcement officers in Montclair test subject J.S. Maada did not return to participate in the PROJECT. Injuries sustained at the time resulted in (emergency) hospitalization at Robert Wood Johnson General Hospital, New Brunswick, NJ, with the (federally mandated) proviso that no medical information regarding the patient could be entered in any hospital computer, and that access to the subject’s room was restricted. Following the subject’s death (6/30/16) his room was declared a quarantine area accessible only to the PROJECT JRD medical team which performed the autopsy establishing cause of death as “natural”: hypothermia, brain hemorrhage, respiratory, cardiac, and liver failure (7/2/16). Per the contract signed by the test subject at the start of his participation in PROJECT JRD, his “bodily remains” became the property of PROJECT JRD and are currently stored in the research morgue at the Institute for Independent Neurophysiological Research on Rt. 1, Princeton, NJ.

  (Information concerning TNM inserts, shunts, surgical and chemical alterations to J.S. Maada’s brain and body are not indicated in the [official] autopsy which has been sent to the test subject’s family in Nigeria but are to be found in the [classified] autopsy on file with NDS [National Defense Security].)

  Though the equivalent of hundreds of pages of data have been recorded in PROJECT JRD computer files, the participation of test subject #293199/Joseph Saidu Maada in the cycle of experiments at the time of his demise is considered incomplete and unsatisfactory.

  NOTE: As indicated above, this report is a rough first draft, a compilation of lab notes with some expository and transitional material put together by a small team of post-docs assigned to Dr. M. Lehrman working late at night in the depressing and ill-smelling quarters of the Institute. If you have read this far please do not be offended by our plea (of a sort) that allowances might be made for our (relative) lack of data concerning test subject #293199/Joseph Saidu Maada whose full name was not available to us until this morning when we arrived at the lab to learn to our surprise that (1) #293199 was not coming today, as he had been coming every Thursday for months; and (2) #293199 would not ever be coming again, for any scheduled Thursday.

  Oh. Shit—one of us murmured.

  Weird. We’d got to know the guy kind of well, and now—

  It is common practice in laboratories under the auspices of PROJECT JRD to refer to test subjects by their (classified) ID numbers and not by their (actual) names; so too test subjects are not told the (actual) names of the research scientists and medical authorities who work with them over the course of the cycle of experiments. (So far as Joseph Saidu Maada could know, the names on our badges—Dr. R. Keck, Dr. M. Lui, Dr. J. Mariotti—indicated who we actually are, and in addition to this [quasi-]information we encouraged the subject to call us by first names closely resembling our own, actual first names: “Rick” for “Rich”; “Michelle” for “Millicent”; “Jonny” for “Jonathan.”) In this way, a desired atmosphere of trust was established, a crucial goal for all PROJECT JRD labs.

  Also, as post-doc assistants to Dr. M. Lehrman, director of our Institute lab, and not director of PROJECT JRD itself, we could not access some essential files without arousing suspicion. Each rank at the Institute, as at PROJECT JRD, as at the Department of Defense, carries with it a degree of “classified clearance,” and post-docs are of the lowest rank. (Just above lab technicians—we are sensitive about being confused with lab technicians who do not have Ph.D.’s as we do.) Hence the haphazard nature of this report, which we intend to correct in subsequent drafts, before submitting it to Dr. Lehrman, who will slash through it with a red pencil, correcting our mistakes (as he sees them), revising and excising, and providing (restricted) information of his own (which we will never see), to the director of PROJECT JRD whose very name is not known to us but whose office is in the Department of Defense, Washington, DC.

  (Unfortunately, the final draft of this report is due on Monday morning. If only we were outfitted with the more potent neurotransmitter chips inserted into J.S. Maada’s brain, or, at least, one or two of the amphetamine biochemical boosters that kept the hapless test subject awake at night!)

  RADICAL TEMPORAL DESTABILIZATION seems to have intensified the subject’s confusion about his (classified) role as a “privileged alien agent” with special powers (invisibility, ability to read minds, to pass through solid walls, and to perceive the shimmering molecular interiors of all things; to “detonate”—“demolecularize”—when directed by his Commandant) and his (actual, literal) life as a manual laborer in the not always reliable hire of Adolpho’s Lawn Care & Maintenance of Montclair, NJ.

  From the perspective of Institute research scientists it would have been preferable that the test subject had not worked at all, and that he was available for their purposes at all times, like a laboratory animal that is kept, for his own safety as well as for the convenience of experimental researchers, in a cage; but J.S. Maada’s disappearance from the Nigerian enclave in Edison would have aroused suspicion, it was believed. And so, inevitably, J.S. Maada’s real-life activities impacted upon his role as an experimental subject, and presented serious limitations, which resulted in the tragic events of 6/19/16.

  Precipitating factors include extreme heat on the day of the “assault” (a high of 96°F in Montclair, NJ, by noon), protracted labor (the lawn crew had begun work at 7:00 A.M. at the E___s’ large, three-acre property; the assault occurred at 11:00 A.M.), and an evident miscommunication between Mrs. E___ and J.S. Maada that ended in a “violent outburst” on the part of the test subject, bringing to an abrupt and unforeseen halt the subject’s participation in PROJECT JRD.

  Possibilities accounting for Maada’s extreme reaction following an exchange with Mrs. E___ are: the shunt in the subject’s cerebellum had begun to work loose and/or one or another of the inserted Microchips may have been malfunctioning. Usually “docile, reticent, cooperative, and naïvely unquestioning” the test subject allegedly became “excitable, belligerent, and threatening.” According to witnesses Maada lifted his shovel as if to strike the terrified Mrs. E___ but decided instead to attack the Floradora bush, rendering it into pieces; he then threw down the shovel, seized Mrs. E___ by her shoulders and shook her violently as one might shake a doll with the intention of breaking it. Further, according to Mrs. E___, Maada bared his “wet, sharp” teeth and lunged as if to bite her in the (right) breast.

  By this time two of Maada’s co-workers came shouting to the rescue of Mrs. E___. Inside the house, a housekeeper called 911 to report the attempted sexual assault/homicide.

  When Montclair police officers arrived at the E___ residence they discovered the agitated (black, Nigerian-born) laborer “cowering at the foot of the property, by a fence”—“foaming at the mouth like a mad dog”—“rushing at us with a shovel”—after “repeated warnings” no choice but to open fire seriously wounding but not (immediately) killing subject #293199.

  TRANSCRIPT OF TESTIMONY OF MRS. E___, TO THE ESSEX COUNTY PROSECUTOR. 6/28/16

  I did not condescend to Mr. Marda. I did not provoke him.

  You can ask any of Adolpho’s men—I am always very friendly when I see them. I will admit, most of the time I can’t remember their names—their names are so exotic!

  We couldn’t possibly—personally—know which of the workers are undocumented—illegal. I would never dream of quest
ioning anyone who works for us, who is obviously working very hard to send money back home to a wife and seven children, or a mother and eleven siblings, in God knows what poverty-stricken African or Central American country, still less would I register suspicion of their legal status. I suppose that some are Mexicans, and some are Filipinos, and some are African, and some are—Pakistani? Well, I don’t know. They are all foreign.

  Mostly, they are excellent workers. Sometimes, in the house, I see them working out in the sun, and start to feel faint watching . . . Of course, as Adolpho has said, they are not like us. They don’t mind sun and heat, they have been born nearer the equator.

  So in all innocence I approached “J.S. Marda”—this is the name I would afterward learn—I will never forget!—to whom I had spoken the week before, at least I think that I had—(it’s hard to keep them straight, they look so much alike especially hunched over in the rose garden), and I told him that the Floradora rose had not worked out well where he’d transplanted it, so he would have to move it again, back to where it had been originally, except now there was an azalea bush in its place which he’d planted, and that would have to be relocated . . . I was not speaking rudely. I am not a bossy person! I was speaking slowly and carefully as you would speak to a child or a retarded person. For the man did not seem to comprehend my words. I could see his mouth working—but no sounds came out. He was sort of hunched over in the rose bed like a dwarf, with a back like a dwarf’s back, but he was not small like a dwarf, and sweating terribly, and “smelling”—(well, I know he could not help it, none of them can help it which is why we don’t allow them to use the bathroom in our house or to come into the house for any reason)—it was a strong smell—and was making me feel sickish . . . He was not looking at me, his eyes were averted from my face. He had a very dark skin that seemed to suck in all the light, like an eclipse in the sky. He was polite and stiff and he was trying to smile but his face was contorted like a mask and I could see that he had cut his arm on some of the rose thorns but he did not seem to be bleeding like a normal person. It was like some kind of mucus leaked out, with a strange, sharp smell. And now I could see, his eyes were not matching colors. The iris of one eye was a strange bright russet-red and it was larger than the other iris, which was mud-brown. Though his face was very dark it seemed to have begun to splotch with something like mange, or melanomas. It was very frightening to see—the black, “Negroid” skin seemed to be peeling off, but what was beneath?—a kind of pinkish skin, like our own skin if the outermost layer is peeled off, an unnatural pink, like raw meat. And now, the man was furious—at me. I could not believe how he lifted the shovel to hit me—screaming at me in a strange, brute language like the grunting of an ape—and then he struck the rosebush with the shovel—like a crazy man—and then he took hold of me and shook, shook, shook me and bared his wet, sharp teeth to b-bite . . .