Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Mariana? Where the hell are you? Come to bed.”

  “Yes! I’m coming.”

  “ . . . at least, turn out the light.”

  Mariana turned out the light.

  It was like Mariana to linger in the bathroom, before joining Pearce in bed. Often, by the time she came to bed, Pearce had fallen into a heavy sleep.

  Though the bed was an enormous king-sized bed yet Pearce took up most of it, a dark hulk amid the bedclothes. Like a beached sea lion he snuffled, snorted, whinnied in his sleep; often he flung his legs about; by the morning he would have pulled out most of the bedclothes, dragging them to his side of the bed; his face loomed like a large moon, riddled and rippled. In his sleep he frowned, grimaced, and often muttered—words Mariana couldn’t decipher except to recognize as legalese.

  Her poor husband! Litigator by day, litigator by night. Yet Pearce Shutt was so very successful, you had to concede that the effort of his professional life was worth it. In law, winning is all. Coming in second is not an option.

  So Pearce often observed. This was not boastfulness but fact.

  At the bedside Mariana heard a sound somewhere in the house—a creaking floorboard? a stealthy indrawn breath? Cautiously she went into the corridor—the carpet beneath her bare feet was thick, consoling—she made not the slightest sound, she was certain—there was a guest room at the end of the corridor—in the doorway she stood and saw in the shadowy interior—was it him?—or it?—an upright creature, on hind legs—no, it was a man—a man with an angular head, a snouted face—covered in something like fur, and the fur was sand-colored and speckled—spotted—the ears were oddly rounded though yet pricked-up, alert—his very fur shivered—an electric sort of life thrummed through his limbs that were lean but hard-muscled as his body was lean, angular, tense. Though Mariana stood less than ten feet away from him the creature—the man—didn’t seem to be aware of her—unless he was pretending not to be aware of her; in a semi-crouch he stood beside a bookcase, and in his right hand he held a book, which he now quietly closed and replaced on the shelf.

  The nape of his neck was dense and springy with fur—sandy-silvery-speckled fur—Mariana felt a sudden powerful urge to reach out and stroke that fur—and he seemed to be sniffing rapidly—sniffing her—though not turning to confront her, strangely—as a predator would have done by now. Mariana caught just a glimpse of his face, glittery mica-eyes veiled from her as if in—shyness?—slyness?—subterfuge?

  He has come for me—has he?

  Then, abruptly the figure was gone.

  Mariana switched on the light but saw no one, nothing—the guest room was undisturbed, or seemed so; not only had the windows not been opened, but the curtains hadn’t been disturbed; a small woven rug laid upon the carpet appeared to be untouched, though there were indentations—footprints, pawprints?—in the woven fabric. In the bookcase a single book jutted out—a paperback copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species.

  This had been one of Mariana’s cherished books, from her undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania. She’d been a biology major—she’d intended to continue her studies in graduate school and get a Ph.D.—for the phenomenon of organic life fascinated her, with its myriad manifestations and seemingly inexhaustible permutations. She’d hoped to pursue a course of study in environmental biology though she’d been somewhat daunted by the fierce and fractious competition from pre-med students in required courses like organic chemistry and by the newer, computational sciences like molecular biology that had seemed to reduce the mystery of animal life to its most elemental and seemingly lifeless components . . . And there was the disappointment of her first year in graduate school, also at Penn, that had ended abruptly.

  The paperback Origin of Species was still warm, as if the furry man had been breathing on it. There was a smell—a distinct, acrid, animal smell—like the smell of the other evening—in the guest room.

  In a lowered voice Mariana spoke urgently, pleadingly—“Who are you? What do you want? Why—now?”

  At the far end of the corridor, her husband slept in their bed, oblivious. And in this room, there was no one to hear.

  *

  “You will ‘feel’ the drill—and some ‘tingling,’ Mrs. Shutt—but at a distance. It will be like hearing voices in another room—when you can’t distinguish individual words.”

  Dr. Digges’s warm brown eyes, above the surgical mask that covered his mouth and nose, exuded an air of genial paternal authority.

  Mariana was at the dentist’s, for a complicated and costly dental-surgical procedure involving crowns on several upper front teeth. Dr. Digges had suggested both nitrous oxide—“laughing gas”—and novacaine; the first, to prepare her for the needle injecting novacaine into her gum, as the novacaine prepared her for enduring a procedure that would require as long as ninety minutes.

  Dentistry for Cowards! was Dr. Digges’s specialty. Mariana was grateful for as much anesthetic as she could get. Her pain threshold was not high. She was not a stoic. Even with nitrous oxide she was likely to be tense, anxious. Nor did she laugh. Not once, in the past, in Dr. Digges’s chair, under the influence of nitrous oxide, had she even come close to laughing.

  Dr. Digges’s assistant Felipa, a buxom child-sized young woman with a brightly made-up face, said sweetly, “Mrs. Shutt, I will be tipping you back just a bit.”

  The dentist’s chair was tipped back at a sharper angle than Mariana recalled. Her feet were raised, her head was lowered. Blood rushed to her brain. When Felipa placed the mask on Mariana’s lower face, to administer the nitrous oxide, Mariana instinctively stiffened as if frightened to breathe deeply and give herself over to the curious, oddly distancing and depersonalizing narcotic.

  She found herself staring at a glossy travel photograph on the ceiling directly over her head. The rugged coastline of the Greek island Santorini.

  Dr. Digges’s office was filled with brightly colored photographs of the dentist’s numerous trips. Nowhere to look that wasn’t glossy-gorgeous like a tourist’s brochure: the Eiffel Tower, a Venetian canal, Roman ruins, the Acropolis, the Tower of London. The cliffs of Santorini against a ceramic-blue sky were jagged like teeth—like incisors—primitive—cruel-seeming—yet beautiful, romantic—Mariana stared, and her senses seemed to float—a wonderful airiness suffused her veins.

  She smiled. Amid the cliffs of Santorini were wolf-like creatures, lean, lithe, just barely visible—but visible—their eyes glittering like mica and their tongues lolling as they trotted singly, in pairs, and in a small furry-speckled pack; some were adults, and some were cubs with the upright rounded ears and round eyes of children’s stuffed toys.

  Mariana must have smiled. She must have laughed aloud.

  Felipa said, “Mrs. Shutt, this is good! Good to relax. Would you like your magazine? Dr. Digges is with another patient and will be a few minutes.”

  National Geographic had slipped from Mariana’s fingers to the floor. Felipa picked it up and handed it to Mariana who’d been reading an article about a strange ritual—young Chinese women “betrothed” to dead men—for what bizarre reason, Mariana couldn’t comprehend.

  Why would one want to marry a dead man? Was it to be spared marrying a living man? Could one inherit property if a husband was already dead at the time of the wedding? Did the young Chinese brides want to be married to dead men or was this custom the wish of their families? And what of the “groom’s” family? Mariana was trying to make sense of columns of print but her thoughts flew in all directions, her mouth kept smiling, she thought it was just so—funny . . . She began laughing as if she were being tickled though the gas—the nitrous oxide—hadn’t yet begun—had it?—even as Felipa took the magazine from her fingers as it was about to fall to the floor again—“Mrs. Shutt? Are you sleepy?” Mariana stumbled on steps she hadn’t seen—her eyes were shut—she was dazed, dizzy—falling, and clutching at something—someone. She’d fallen to her knees—her hands, and her knees—scrambling amid
rocks . . . The face looming above her was one she knew well though she hadn’t seen it in a very long time—a boyish face, somber and lean-cheeked, with a freckled skin and prominent ears.

  “ ‘Robb Gelder.’ ”

  “Who? Mrs. Shutt?”

  Robb Gelder! It was he who’d appeared in Mariana’s house, and somehow, too, he was the creature who’d frightened her when she’d returned home—Robb Gelder—whom Mariana hadn’t seen in more than twenty years . . .

  Mariana was astonished. Mariana gripped the arms of the dentist’s chair to keep from falling out. In a faint wondering voice she said:

  “A man I knew, Felipa. A young man. I mean—at the time. He was young at the time. But—I was younger.”

  So long ago! Mariana would have thought she’d forgotten Robb Gelder as surely Robb Gelder had forgotten her.

  She’d known Gelder as a graduate student in the Ph.D. program in biology at Penn—he’d been an assistant in the lab to which Mariana had been assigned, under the direction of a senior professor renowned in his field of biological research and soon to win a Nobel Prize. Mariana had been intimidated by the renowned professor who’d scarcely acknowledged her presence except to stare at her from time to time as if he had no idea who she was.

  In the lab, Mariana had reported to Robb Gelder. It was Gelder who oversaw the experimental work of the younger graduate students and Gelder upon whom Mariana had come to depend more than she would have liked.

  She asked Felipa what did it mean—“If you see someone who isn’t there?”

  “Like a ghost, Mrs. Shutt?”

  A ghost? Could Robb Gelder be a ghost? Mariana didn’t want to think so.

  “Oh no—he didn’t seem like a ghost. He didn’t behave like a ghost. I’m sure he wasn’t a ghost. He was much more solid. He left footprints, he had a—smell . . .” Mariana had begun to shiver, recalling.

  “Mrs. Shutt, could be he died. And his ghost was summoning you.”

  Felipa spoke somberly, as one who’d had some experience with ghosts.

  “Oh, but—I don’t think . . . Robb Gelder is too young to die.”

  “Mrs. Shutt, nobody is too young to die.”

  Rebuked, Mariana could think of no reply. The airy lightness that had permeated her brain—had been making her laugh—turned cold suddenly. Nobody is too young to die!

  This was true of course. This was absolutely irrefutably true.

  As if she’d spoken too harshly Felipa relented, “Could be he’s having some bad time, Mrs. Shutt, in his life, and he’s thinking of you—like sending a prayer.”

  Felipa spoke in a gravely poetic way that was very touching.

  “I hope Robb isn’t—hurt. He would still be young . . . fairly young.”

  In fact Robb Gelder had been a slightly older graduate student, as Mariana recalled. In his late twenties perhaps, when Mariana had known him. Now he would be in his late forties—at least Pearce’s age. Mariana felt a pang in her chest at the prospect of seeing him again.

  Felipa asked, “This is a man, Mrs. Shutt? Yes? Someone—close to you?”

  Mariana felt her face burn. An airy sort of laughter gripped her, like a swarm of small moths.

  Though Mariana was forty-three, she did not feel as if she were forty-three. She did not even feel as if she were twenty-three. (She’d been twenty-one when she’d known Robb Gelder, in her brief and not very happy single year in graduate school.) Absurd, to be thinking of Robb Gelder! Feeling such emotion for a man she hadn’t seen in twenty-two years, and knew nothing about. It wasn’t that they’d lost contact with each other—they’d never really been in contact with each other.

  Mariana had been the youngest and most inexperienced individual in the biology lab, and one of only two women. She’d felt like a swimmer caught in a riptide—often she couldn’t understand what was being presented in the most matter-of-fact way, and her own presentations were nightmare occasions for her, fraught with anxiety and dread. She’d had the desperate thought that her professors, who were all men, had sized her up within the first week or two, were not impressed and were not about to change their minds.

  Though he’d been enormously busy with his own research, Robb Gelder had taken time to meet with Mariana. She’d had difficulty with her experiments—he’d tried to guide her through them. He’d been supportive, patient, kind. At times, his patience had seemed strained—but he’d never spoken sarcastically to her. Unlike the other male graduate students, he’d never made a sexist remark, of which Mariana was aware. He hadn’t been a particularly attractive individual, superficially—often he was unshaven, and his skin was lumpy and blemished; his hair was lank, sand-colored, and likely to be dirty; his clothes were rumpled, and likely to be dirty; when harassed and anxious, he smelled of his body. Addressing the lab he spoke in a stiff, self-conscious manner that undermined the originality and intelligence of what he had to say; a sharp question from the senior professor who headed the lab threw him into confusion, though he knew the answer perfectly well; at his most nervous he breathed through his mouth, and spoke haltingly as if to forestall a stammer. But his eyes were greenish-hazel, and seemed to Mariana beautiful.

  She hadn’t fallen in love with Robb Gelder, she was certain!—there were other men she found much more attractive, who were attracted to her. One of these was Pearce Shutt.

  Abruptly in the spring of her first year Mariana’s graduate studies were terminated. She could not have been surprised when her advisor summoned her to speak with him, to inform her that the graduate committee wasn’t recommending that she continue in the program; yet she’d been crushed, terribly hurt. For all that she’d known she was having trouble, and couldn’t seem to compete with other graduate students, she’d somehow hoped that—she’d wanted to hope that—some allowance might be made for her, because she’d tried so very hard; some sort of suspended judgment . . . But in an instant in her advisor’s office, as the older man stared coldly at her as if waiting for her to leave, she’d felt that all she had worked to establish—the days, weeks, months of assiduously studying, her experimental work and her effort of presenting herself publicly—being positive, feminine, sweet—had been swept aside like the petals of a Japanese tulip tree in a violent rainstorm.

  She’d left her advisor’s office stunned as if the man had slapped her face. She would come to think that he’d spoken to her in this way because she was a woman—an attractive young woman with long thick pale-blond hair to her shoulders, who didn’t dress like the other female graduate students in tattered jeans and pullovers; men didn’t want to take her seriously. Nor did women scientists want to take her seriously. There was, in the most seemingly neutral of circumstances, a distinct sex-consciousness, a prevailing sexual rivalry. For all of biology—all of life—was about sex: sexual attraction, sexual intercourse, reproduction of the species. That was all that life was.

  In the corridor of the biology building she’d encountered Robb Gelder and before Gelder could speak—even as he smiled at her, and prepared to say hello—Mariana told him bluntly that she’d been dropped from the program. She wouldn’t be working with him that summer—(as she’d planned)—and she wouldn’t be returning in the fall. In Gelder’s face she saw—she would fix upon this, afterward—not quite so much surprise as she might have expected to see. She thought Of course! He’s one of them.

  He’d been consulted about her. He’d been frank about her. He hadn’t shielded her from the others. In a sudden fury Mariana cut him off as he was expressing sympathy for her, suggesting that maybe she could try another school, or maybe, if she wanted to teach biology, she could enroll in the school of education and get a teaching degree, she’d interrupted saying that really she didn’t care, she’d come to dislike the program at Penn, she’d come to almost dislike science, the life of a scientist, if the scientists at Penn were representative. Robb Gelder stared at her in surprise as she said, with a bitter twist of her mouth, “Well—I’m going to be engaged anyway. I’ll be getting ma
rried and moving away from here. This is really for the best.”

  Rudely she’d turned away from Gelder before he could say anything further. She wasn’t hurt so much as she was angry, furious. She hadn’t wanted to see Robb Gelder again. He’d been her only friend yet she felt that she hated him, for he’d betrayed her—he hadn’t helped her, and so he’d betrayed her. It was a male-female thing, a sex-thing. She was the weaker of the two, it had been incumbent upon him to help her—and he had not. She never wanted to see Robb Gelder again, nor had she wanted to think about him. She would seek out men like Pearce Shutt who took for granted their superior strength, and would protect her.

  It wasn’t equality Mariana wanted—except nominally. In truth it was dependency, and an acknowledgment of dependency. A woman is loved precisely because the man is strong enough to love her. A man who was a woman’s equal would be a weak sort of man—because he was her equal.

  Robb Gelder hadn’t tried to contact Mariana after their final encounter. All that had been between them had vanished as if it had never been. She’d become engaged to Pearce Shutt, and she’d married Pearce Shutt, and hadn’t given a thought to Robb Gelder except when she’d seen references to his work in the newspaper—in the New York Times science section she’d read about the Gelder experiments involving animal behavior and animal “languages” and she’d felt a pang of something like envy, and regret; but only in passing. Once, Pearce said, “What on earth are you reading, Mariana?”—curious that Mariana was reading anything in the paper with such concentration; and Mariana told him she was reading about “animal communication”—a series of experiments conducted by a biologist she’d known in graduate school.

  Pearce asked to see the paper, laid it down beside his TV chair and never again touched it so far as Mariana knew.