Lovely, Dark, Deep

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Eat! She’d forgotten entirely about eating.

  The thought of food was repulsive to her. She could not imagine ever eating again.

  “Let us know if you feel nauseated. Immediately, let us know.”

  The nurse was administering a sonogram. An X-ray of the pregnant womb. This was a requirement of the “new” law.

  Drewe was lying on an examination table, on her side staring at an illuminated dark screen, an X-ray showing a tiny ectoplasmic shape, ever shifting, fading. She recalled fraudulent photographs of “ectoplasm”—spirits, ghosts—at the turn of the previous century. But the sonogram wasn’t fraudulent. In the screen she could see her own pulse, the fierce beat of her blood.

  Baby wants to live. Just like you.

  The baby’s father did not want the baby. He had not said so, but she knew. Of course, she knew.

  Conover loved her—but did not love her enough.

  He certainly did not love her enough to want to have a baby with her. To start a family with her. She’d known this, but had not wished to acknowledge it.

  The man had his own children of course. His children who were already born. Grown to adulthood, or nearly. Safely in the world, and their very existence no longer precarious, dependent upon any whim of their father, or mother.

  A daughter, a son, seemingly on cordial terms with Conover, but not very intimate terms. And the separated-wife had been deeply wounded by Conover, and could never forgive him. The divorce, if there was a divorce, would be bitter and debilitating. Drewe had come belatedly in Conover’s life.

  The doctor with the skinned-back hair was regarding Drewe with surprise. Were Drewe’s eyes welling with tears? Where was Drewe’s old resolve, that had caused her family to say of her It’s like she isn’t even one of us, sometimes. Like she doesn’t even know us.

  The doctor was asking Drewe if she was having second thoughts? She didn’t need to make a final decision of such importance today.

  Yes. She was saying, insisting.

  Yes. That was why she’d come—wasn’t it!

  She was not going to go away without . . .

  Her voice trailed off, uncertainly.

  The patient was given sedatives. Some time was required before the sedatives began to take effect.

  The voice would be diminished, as the sedatives took hold. She saw a tiny pinprick of light, the baby-to-be, fading, about to be extinguished.

  They helped her lie on her back, on the table. Her feet in the stirrups.

  So open, exposed! The most secret part of her body, opened to the chilly air.

  She was feeling panic in spite of the pills. But much of this she would forget, afterward. As her uterus was sucked empty, so her brain was emptied of memory. A machine thrummed close by, loudly.

  She saw now: the sequence of actions that had begun in the early morning of that day, and was now irreversible. Running from her residence hall to the curb, to climb into the steel-colored Toyota into the passenger’s seat beside her lover; kissing her lover on the lips as an act of subtle aggression, and buckling herself in the seat belt, her hard, curved little belly that had not yet begun to show, as her small hard breasts had not yet begun to alter, or not much. (The nipples were more sensitive, and seemed darker-hued. But she could not bring herself to examine her body, that filled her with dread.) Almost gaily—brazenly—she’d begun that sequence of actions, that had led to this: naked, on her back, knees spread. And the tiny pinprick of light all but extinguished.

  She would be awake through the entire procedure, it was explained to her. Not fully awake, but in the way of someone seeing a movie without sound, at a little distance.

  When the mask was fitted to her lower face she felt an impulse to push it away, panicked. She’d forgotten the purpose of the mask—the self-monitored laughing gas for the control of pain.

  There was a natural lock on the mechanism, Drewe was told. So that she could not inhale too much of the gas at one time. So that she wouldn’t lose consciousness.

  The procedure would take no more than minutes.

  So fast! Yet so very slow, Drewe felt herself drifting off to sea, her eyes heavy-lidded, the sickly-smelling gas in her nostrils and mouth so that, as she breathed, she felt an instinct to gag.

  The cervix was being dilated. She did not think My cervix!

  A straw-like instrument was being inserted into her body. Up tight between her thighs. The machine began to hum, louder. A sucking noise, and a sucking sensation. Quick-darting cramps wracked her lower abdomen. These were claws like the claws of sea-creatures, locking into her. She began to count One two three four . . . but lost her concentration, for the suction-noise was so loud, close beside her head, and the cramps so quick, biting and sharp, and the laughing-gas was filling her brain like helium into a balloon, she was in danger of floating above the table to which (she realized now) she was strapped, as her knees were strapped, wide-parted.

  The cramping came now in long, almost languorous ripples. Almost, a kind of sensuous cruelty, as if a lover were hurting her, with crude fingers, fingernails, deep inside her body.

  She’d begun to cry. Or, she was laughing.

  Please no. I don’t want this. It was a mistake.

  Let me up, this was a mistake.

  God help me . . .

  SHE FUMBLED WITH the paper-thing, that clung to her sweaty thighs.

  Into a wicker basket it went crumpled. Then, her clothes—into which she bound herself with badly shaking fingers. Telling herself in an ecstasy of relief It’s over!

  She was herself again. Only herself.

  Though the cramping continued. And she was bleeding, into a sparkling-white cotton-gauze sanitary napkin.

  For a while she lay dazed, comatose. The N2O was still in her bloodstream: she tried to think what might be funny, so that she could laugh.

  She had no idea how much time had passed. The procedure itself had been less than eight minutes, she’d been told. On her left wrist was a watch but it was too much effort for her to look at it, to see what time it was.

  The silver-star ring on the third finger of her left hand felt loose. Or, her fingers were sweaty . . . There was the danger that the ring would slip off.

  Then, she was being rudely awakened. She was being led out of the recovery room. She was leaning on the nurse’s arm. Sweat oozed in tiny beads at her hairline. She was being told that she should make an appointment to see her gynecologist in Madison in two weeks. And she was not to “resume relations” for at least two weeks. Did she need contraception?

  She laughed. Contraception!

  She’d always used contraception. She’d been terrified of any intimate encounter that was not contra-conception. Yet, the contraception she and Conover had been using had failed.

  Conover was waiting for her. Conover looking tired, and the lines in his face deeper.

  Conover took her hand. Conover stooped to kiss her sweaty forehead. Conover said in a lowered voice in her ear what sounded like My good girl! I love you.

  This was so un-Conover. Drewe pushed a little away from him, laughing.

  “‘Good girl.’ Sounds like a dog.”

  Bad luck, or maybe good luck: there was a commotion in front of the clinic as another woman arrived outside to enter, forced to run the gauntlet.

  And then, when they left the clinic, to hurry out to Conover’s car, it was a surprise that the demonstrators paid little heed to them—in their focus upon the frightened-looking new arrival, a dark-skinned woman in her mid-thirties, in the company of an older woman. The lanky-limbed WomanSpace escort had come to the assistance of the woman, aggressively.

  Drewe looked for the heavyset woman in the maternity smock, with the perky-shiny synthetic wig—the woman who’d dared to strike Drewe with her fist—but she couldn’t see her.

  Look straight ahead, Conover was saying. We’re almost there.

  His arm around her waist. She was stumbling, feeling weak and light-headed—the cramping in her belly was like
quick-darting electric currents. She’d understood that Conover had been shocked to see her, when she’d reappeared in the doorway of the waiting room, on the nurse’s arm, not seeming to see him seated almost in front of her. She’d been smiling and blinking in the dazed way of one who has been traumatized without knowing it.

  Get in! Take care . . .

  Conover helped her into the passenger’s seat. Behind them, swarming after the new arrival, the demonstrators were loud, excited. Conover had locked Drewe’s door for her. She was staring out the window—looking for someone—she wasn’t sure who . . .

  Conover was shaken, but Conover quickly recovered. Near the entrance to I-94 south he stopped at a deli where he bought sandwiches and bottled water for Drewe and for himself, and a six-pack of cold beer, for the long drive home.

  Try to eat, he told her. Then maybe try to sleep.

  Drewe couldn’t eat much of her sandwich. Conover ate his, and the remainder of hers. Conover drank most of the Evian water, thirstily. And, in furtive illegal swallows, at least two of the beers.

  Though he’d urged her to sleep, yet Conover couldn’t resist talking to her as he drove. He was too edgy to drive in silence, or even to listen to a CD. He laughed, and talked, and told her stories he’d told her already, but not at such length, and with such detail.

  These were stories out of history. These were not personal stories. Judging by the way in which he told them, he’d told them to other audiences, at other times. Abraham Lincoln caricatured in pro-Confederacy newspapers as a Negro, or a black ape—“The hatred of Obama is nothing new in U.S. politics.” Draft riots in New York City—notable Wall Street “Panics”—the defeat of the Bank of the United States by wily “Old Hickory”—Andrew Jackson. Conover did not specialize in personal stories.

  Drewe didn’t know her lover’s children’s names. Possibly he’d mentioned these names, but not frequently. Drewe knew the former wife’s name but little of the woman. And Drewe had not asked, out of tact as well as shyness. Or maybe it had been disdain, for the lover’s family whom she had hoped to supplant.

  They arrived back in Madison by nighttime.

  Drewe said, I think I want to be alone. Just drop me off, thank you.

  Her lips were parched. Her eyes ached as if she’d been staring into a hot sun.

  Conover said, Don’t be ridiculous, Drewe! You’re staying with me.

  I don’t think so. I think I’d better be alone.

  I thought we’d planned this. Tonight.

  I don’t think so.

  Drewe, look—I’m here.

  He took her hand. Both her hands. She was feeling very weak, there was little strength in her hands. Something like her identity had leaked away, like liquid down a drain.

  She did not say You are here but not-here. Better that you are not-here in a way that I can see.

  He relented, and drove her to her residence hall. Seeing that she was adamant, and just very possibly on the brink of hysteria.

  In his car parked at the curb in front of her residence hall Conover talked to her earnestly. Lights on all six floors of the building were on. It was an aged stone building of some distinction. A women’s graduate residence in which Drewe had lived, in a single room, spare as a nun’s cell, for two and a half years.

  Conover lived in a large but somewhat shabby Victorian house, a mile away in a neighborhood called Faculty Heights. Drewe had visited this house often, and often stayed overnight, but had never lived there, and understood now that she would never live there.

  The relief in his face! She’d seen.

  The dread in his face. That she would weaken, she would plead with him to love her as she loved him.

  Or worse yet, as women do, plead with him that she could love enough for two.

  She was bleeding into the sanitary napkin. That was enough of pleading, for now.

  He said, I’m not going to leave you. Come on.

  She said, No. Thank you.

  She said, I need to be alone. For now.

  She opened the car door. She saw her hand on the door, and the door opening, and she saw herself leaving the steel-colored Toyota and walking away. It was the edge of a precipice: the fall was steep, and might be fatal. Yet, she saw herself walking away.

  Conover hurried after her, to the door of the residence hall. Drewe said, sharply, It’s all right. Please—I need to be alone.

  You don’t need to be alone, that’s—that isn’t true. I’m not going to leave you alone.

  She turned away. She left him. In secret bleeding into the already-soaked napkin she walked away, not to the stairs but to the elevator for she was too weak and too demoralized for the stairs and would wait for the sluggishly-moving elevator instead. At the opened door—through which several young women passed, into the foyer, glancing curiously at Drewe and at Conover—he called after her, he would not be leaving but waiting for her in his car.

  From her room on the fourth floor, she saw his car at the curb, and his figure inside, dimly. When vehicles passed in the street their headlights lit upon him, a stoic and stubborn figure in the parked vehicle. He’d turned on the ignition to listen to the radio, probably. He would finish the six-pack of beer.

  Cautiously like one composed of a brittle breakable substance—very thin glass, or plastic—she lay down on her bed. Her skin was burning, she was very tired. The cramping was not so bad, dulled by Vicodin. Her life would be a painkiller life: she would be aware of pain but would not feel it, exactly, as her own.

  She was bleeding, thinly. She’d changed the sanitary napkin and replaced it with a fresh sparkling-white cotton-gauzy napkin for the WomanSpace nurse had thoughtfully provided her with a half-dozen napkins in a plastic bag.

  There was no serious danger of bleeding to death yet the word exsanguination sounded in her head like a struck gong.

  Forty minutes later, when she struggled to her feet, the Toyota was still at the curb.

  He’d been trying to call her on her cell phone, she discovered. She’d turned the phone off at Eau Claire and had not turned it on again.

  She slept again, fitfully. Sometime after midnight parched-mouthed and her eyes aching as if she had not slept at all she staggered to her feet and to the window. And the car was gone.

  “STEPHANOS IS DEAD”

  HAVE YOU HEARD?—STEPHANOS IS DEAD.”

  “Oh no! When—?”

  “Just this morning, I think.”

  “But—how?”

  “A heart attack, or an aneurysm—something sudden.”

  “My God! Stephanos. . . .”

  Mickey was standing beneath an overhang just outside the quaintly titled Smila’s Sense of Organic Foods, waiting out the worst of a sudden thunderstorm. Despite the loud thrumming of rain on the overhang and on the pavement it was impossible not to hear this emotional exchange between a Nordic-looking professor of math at the university and a middle-aged woman who was someone’s wife. (Mickey knew: this was insufferably snobbish. In fact, in certain quarters, Mickey herself, despite her Ph.D. and post-doc status, was no more than “someone’s wife.”) And she knew Angelo Stephanos, or had known him, slightly. Mickey met the glances of the math professor and his companion with an expression of surprise and sympathy, for it seemed only tactful; she wasn’t prepared for the looks of extreme sorrow, even horror, in their faces, nor for the way in which they seemed not to see her, as if she were invisible.

  “But—where did it happen?”

  “In his house, I think. Just—within minutes.”

  “He can’t be very old—not fifty . . .”

  “He’d been sick, someone was saying, after he’d returned from India . . .”

  “That wasn’t Stephanos, that was Bandeman, he came back with malaria, I think you’re confusing them . . .”

  “Stephanos was such a world traveler! He went to all sorts of dangerous places, like Kashgar, and Tibet, and then, to die at home—”

  “Poor Beata! She’s so devoted to him . . .”

/>   “My God! Are you sure? It’s impossible to believe that—Stephanos is gone.”

  Now another woman joined the two, astounded and aggrieved—“Stephanos? Angelo? Died? What are you saying?”

  Mickey recognized Abigail Burdine, wife of one of Mickey’s husband’s older colleagues in the political science department: a woman Mickey considered cold-blooded and aloof except at this moment she was looking stunned as if someone had struck her in the face.

  Abigail Burdine was a woman whom Mickey knew, but not well; who hadn’t been particularly friendly to Mickey in the early, difficult years at the university when Mickey’s husband hadn’t yet been granted tenure and exuded, in the eyes of tenured faculty and their smug spouses, something of the precariousness of a rock climber on a near-vertical slope: you felt sympathy for such vulnerability, but did not want to become involved with it.

  Eventually, when Mickey’s husband was promoted, and women like Mrs. Burdine were marginally friendlier to her, Mickey hadn’t been able to respond with any sort of convincing warmth. She’d perfected a method of not-seeing which was a kind of reverse social radar.

  Now crowding beneath the overhang, grocery bags gripped in both arms, the Burdine woman repeated in breathless disbelief: “Stephanos is dead? You mean—Angelo Stephanos? Are you serious? How?”

  “Heart attack, or maybe an aneurysm . . .”

  “My God—when?”

  A surprise to Mickey, and something of a rebuke, that the woman who’d snubbed her for years was capable of such emotion.

  “The news is just going out. It’s on the university Web site. You can check your cell phone . . .”

  “My God! Oh.”

  By this time a half-dozen individuals were standing beneath the overhang as rain pelted the pavement. A sleety sort of rain striking the pavement like machine-gun fire.

  It was a relief to Mickey, shoppers emerged from Smila’s who had no awareness of or interest in news of Stephanos’s death. They stood quite quietly by themselves staring out at the rain and biding their time until they could rush out to their vehicles.

  Mickey saw with a smile how one straggly-haired young man, wearing a shiny yellow poncho, placed his purchases in his bicycle basket, covered with something waterproof, and pedaled out bravely into the storm.