A Widow's Story

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The Blackwell Memorial Home has the comforting look of a watercolor by a gifted amateur—the kind celebrating small-town America of another era.

  More frequently, we walked in the Pennington Cemetery in which, in the oldest section, nearest Main Street, and beside the Pennington Presbyterian Church, there are grave markers from the late 1700s—so aged and weatherworn their inscriptions are no longer readable.

  The local legend is, Hessian soldiers exercised their horses by jumping over the stone wall that separates the old section of the cemetery from the street.

  Always I will see us walking in Pennington, holding hands: Ray and Joyce of another era.

  “If Ray saw us here in Pennington—at this time—he’d be curious what we’re doing. He’d say, ‘Let’s have lunch. I could do with a drink.’ ”

  Why I am inspired to say this, I have no idea. Lately I have heard myself say bizarre unscripted remarks. Ray might have been consumed with curiosity to know what Jeanne, Jane, and I are doing in Pennington in Jeanne’s car as she parks in front of the Blackwell Memorial Home—but it’s hardly likely that Ray would have suggested lunch at this early hour, mid-morning.

  A widow is compelled to say marginally “witty” remarks as a widow is compelled to speak of her husband, to utter his name as frequently as possible, in terror lest his name be lost.

  My friends Jeanne and Jane have come to my house to pick me up this morning. I am weak with gratitude, dry-mouthed and excited in anticipation—a funeral home! The very funeral home past which we’d walked so frequently, which it was my idea to call instead of a funeral home in Princeton, early this morning.

  “But Ray would like this. In Pennington. Closer to our house. It’s only about two miles away . . .”

  How eager I am to believe that, in the parlor of the Blackwell Memorial Home, making these astonishing arrangements for the “disposal” of my husband’s remains, I am behaving normally, or near-normally. I want to think that my concentration—broken and scattered like a cheap mirror when I’m alone—is flawless here, like the concentration of one inching across a tightrope, high above the ground.

  Neither Jeanne nor Jane is a widow—of course. Though neither is a stranger to death within the family—Jane’s mother died not long ago—neither woman is a widow and so I am thinking They are better able to humor me. Another widow would be less patient. She would think—Of course, what did you expect? This is what it is to lose your husband. You never knew, and now you know.

  The widow’s terror is that, her mind being broken, as her spine is broken, and her heart is broken, she will break down utterly. She will be carried off by wild careening banshee thoughts like these.

  In the Blackwell Memorial Home in Pennington, New Jersey, my friends and I are seated in comfortable cushioned chairs in a small room looking out toward Main Street, and on the wood-plank floor are attractive thin-worn carpets. Panes of glass in the tall narrow windows have that distinct look of age. Almost, this might be one of those museum-homes attached to parks—furnishings are spare—“antique”-looking—a large fieldstone fireplace takes up most of a wall—on the mantel is a tarnished-looking but impressive Civil War sword once the property of an ancestor of the proprietor Elizabeth Blackwell Davis—“Betty.”

  Betty has a cat, she tells us. The cat is elusive, in hiding. But on the narrow staircase is a cloth catnip-toy.

  In this domestic setting that reminds me of the wood-frame farmhouses of my childhood—though the houses of my childhood in upstate New York were austere, even grim, more resembling the black-and-white realism of Depression-era photographs than watercolors of small-town America—it’s being explained to us by Betty Davis that the Blackwell Memorial Home has been the Blackwell family business for generations. Betty has lived in this house most of her life and lives here now—upstairs—with her (adult) son—and the cat; Betty, too, is a widow. I am thinking Ray would like her, I think.

  It’s a sign of the widow’s derangement, though a mild sign, that frequently the widow will think My husband would like this.

  Others will conspire in this derangement eagerly. Your husband would like this. This is a good decision!

  But how strange it is, to be making such a decision by myself, without Ray.

  I have not made any “major” decision in my life, I think, by myself—without my parents to consult, or Ray.

  As my friends talk with Betty Davis—how much more sociable my friends are, than I am!—I am grateful for them, as I sit staring at a form, yet another form, a series of questions to which I must provide answers. I am thinking how much I yearn to lie down beside Ray in the hospital bed, and shut my eyes to all of this.

  Too late. Now it’s too late.

  You had your opportunity, now it’s too late.

  Betty is explaining the services she will provide. She will arrange for the cremation, in Ewing—it was Ray’s wish to be cremated—she will pick up the death certificate and make duplicates and bring them to me at my house—“You will need them. Plenty of them.”

  Strange it seems to me, in my groggy slow-time, that already a death certificate has been prepared.

  And little will I know, how frequently the death certificate will be required, in succeeding weeks, months—even years! For there is a bizarre suspicion among an entire category of strangers—bank officers, investment brokers, bureaucrats of all kinds—that the deceased may not in fact be deceased but the victim of some sort of prank on the part of his survivors.

  Yet more strange, to find myself inside the Blackwell House, on Main Street. To have stepped into a kind of storybook looking-glass world only a few doors from the house in which our genial longtime dentist Dr. Sternberg shares his practice with another dentist, Dr. Goodman; scarcely a block from the Village Hair Salon where both Ray and I have our hair cut; a quarter-mile from the Pennington Food Market where we’ve shopped for thirty years. Countless times we’d seen the facade of the Blackwell Memorial Home in passing and perhaps we’d commented on it but not once had either of us remarked that this “historic” structure might one day be a place one of us might enter, on the occasion of the other’s death.

  Never. Not once. Nor did we envision the Pennington Cemetery as a place where one of us might “bury” the other.

  There are plots available in the Pennington Cemetery at the rear, in the newer section—so Betty is informing me. Older parts of the cemetery, long the possession of local families, are virtually closed now.

  A small marker—“Aluminum, in good taste”—will be provided by the funeral home and later, if I want something larger, at a later time, I can buy it.

  And would I like a second plot? I am asked.

  “In fact the two plots together—a ‘double plot’—won’t be any larger than the standard single plot. You see, with ashes, in just a container, the space doesn’t need to be so large. It’s very economical to purchase a double plot right now, Mrs. Smith.”

  Economical! This is important.

  “Yes. Thank you. I will.”

  Intimate as a double bed, I am thinking.

  Ray would like this—would he? No one wants to be alone in the grave for longer than necessary.

  “You will be purchasing a double plot from the ‘Pennington Cemetery Association,’ Mrs. Smith. You will be issued a certificate of ownership as well as a document from the ‘Ewing Cemetery Association’ and you will have to sign just a few more papers—for instance, do your husband’s remains contain a pacemaker, radioactive implant, prosthetic devices or any other device that would be harmful to the crematory?—if no, sign here.”

  Harmful to the crematory? This is a sobering thought.

  In any case I seem to be signing documents. Contracts. I seem to have agreed to purchase the “double plot” for the surviving spouse of Raymond Smith: “Joyce Carol Smith.”

  Numbly, I make out a check. Three thousand two hundred and eighty-one dollars. I have been making out checks lately, and will continue to make out checks, on our jo
int checking account. For death is not inexpensive, should you wonder.

  Trained as a lawyer, my friend Jeanne reads through the documents before I sign them. From their remarks both Jeanne and Jane seem to think it’s a reasonable decision, at this time, to purchase the double plot from the Pennington Cemetery Association.

  This is good! I have not behaved rashly or insanely. I have demonstrated common sense.

  All this while it has been my hazy unexamined idea that Ray is still at the hospital, in the hospital bed where I’d left him. In my vision of Ray he is always, forever, in the hospital bed in room 539 of the Princeton Medical Center, he is “sleeping”—he is “at peace”—his eyes are closed, his face unlined and smooth shaven, he is very still, I am leaning over him to kiss him—and so when Betty informs me that “your husband’s remains” are in an adjoining room and will have to be identified, I am taken by surprise; I am stunned; I am utterly shocked.

  Of course I must know—I know—that Ray’s body was picked up this morning at the medical center by a driver for the Pennington funeral home. I know this, since I arranged for it. I know that Ray’s body was delivered in a coffin, transported in an inconspicuous vehicle to the rear of 21 North Main Street, Pennington, in order to be “identified.”

  All this I know, yet somehow I have forgotten.

  All this I know, yet somehow I am overwhelmed by the fact that Ray is in the next room. Ray is dead, Ray is in the next room. Ray is here . . .

  Until now I have been behaving normally—I think. I have been talking—even smiling—in the company of Betty Davis, Jeanne and Jane—but now I begin to panic, to hyperventilate; I am light-headed, terrified. Quickly Jeanne says that she and Jane will identify Ray. “You stay here.”

  I am too weak to protest. I am too frightened. I can’t bear the thought of seeing Ray now. Why this is, I don’t know. I will regret this moment. I will regret this decision. I will never understand why at this crucial moment I behave in so childish a way, as if my husband whom I love has become physically repulsive to me.

  How ashamed I will be, at this decision! Like a child shrinking away, hiding her eyes.

  Always I will think: as I’d exercised such poor judgment, bringing Ray to the regional Princeton hospital, and keeping him there when he would surely have received superior treatment elsewhere, so my judgment is faulty now, inexplicable.

  “You don’t have to see Ray now,” Jeanne tells me. “You saw him last night. You’ve said good-bye.”

  The Widow has entered the stage of primitive thinking in which she imagines that some small, trivial gesture of hers might have meaning in relationship to her husband’s death. As if being “good”—“responsible”—she might undo her personal catastrophe. She will come slowly to realize that there is nothing to be done now.

  “Identifying” her husband’s body, or not—seeing his body one final time, or not—none of this will make the slightest difference. Her husband has died, he has gone and is not coming back.

  Chapter 21

  Double Plot

  What my friend Jeanne has said is both true and not-true.

  You don’t really—ever—say good-bye.

  In the Pennington Cemetery at the intersection of Delaware Avenue and Main Street, a short distance behind the Pennington Presbyterian Church, there is a relatively new, grassy section in which, in a space identified as #551 West Center, a small marker reads

  RAYMOND J. SMITH, JR.

  1930–2008

  Oddly, there are few other grave markers in this section. Except, a near-neighbor, an attractive large grave marker made of granite—KATHERINE GREEF AUSTIN 1944–1997, WILLIAM J. O’CONNELL 1944–1996. I stare at these words, these numerals, and conclude—A widow, who died of grief.

  The contingencies of death have made SMITH and O’CONNELL neighbors, who had not known each other in life.

  How strange it is, to see Ray’s name in such a place! It’s very difficult for me to comprehend that, in the most literal way, the “remains” of the individual who’d been Raymond J. Smith are buried, in an urn, beneath the surface of the earth here.

  “Oh honey! What has happened. . . .”

  In dreams sometimes it is revealed that what you’d believed to be so is not so after all. In life it is not often revealed that what you’d believed to be so is not so after all—yet there is always the possibility, the hope.

  Because my mind is not functioning normally every moment is predicated upon the infantile hope This is not-right. But maybe it will become right if I am good.

  No one is visiting the cemetery this morning except me. This is a relief! Though I am anxious when I am alone, yet I yearn to be alone; the empty house is terrifying to me yet when I am away from it, I yearn to return to it. Except now, in the cemetery where my husband’s remains—“cremains” (hideous word)—are buried, I am both alone and not-alone.

  I am almost late for an appointment, I think. Maybe it’s probate court—Jeanne will be taking me—since Ray’s death my life has become a concatenation of appointments, duties—“death-duties”—making of each day a Sahara stretching to the horizon, and beyond—a robot-life, a zombie-life—from which (this is my most delicious thought, when I am alone) I am thinking of departing. When I have time.

  Where some may be frightened by the thought, the temptation, of suicide, the widow is consoled by the temptation of suicide. For suicide promises A good night’s sleep—with no interruptions! And no next-day.

  “I shouldn’t have left you. I’m so sorry . . .”

  It’s a sunny-gusty day. Snow lies in part-melted skeins and heaps amid the grave markers which are of very different sizes. How terrible it is, Ray is here—it seems incomprehensible, here.

  I tell myself with childish logic that if Ray were alive but not with me, that absence would be identical with this absence.

  Which day this is, how many hours after Ray’s death, I am not sure—much of my mental effort is taken up with such pointless calculations—it is a mental effort exerted against the ceaseless buzz of word-incursions—fragments of music, songs—how best to describe my mind, perhaps it’s the quintessential novelist’s mind, other than a drain that has captured all variety of rubble—when my life is most shaken, the drain is heaped with rubble as after a rainstorm—there is little distinction between anything in the drain except most of it is to no purpose, futile and exhausting; nothing of what I “hear” is exactly audible, as it would be, I assume, in a person afflicted with schizophrenia; these distractions are merely annoying, when not cruelly mocking.

  There once was a ship . . .

  The name of our ship was

  The Golden Vanity.

  Like a metronome set at too quick a rhythm a pulse begins to beat in my head. It’s the beat, beat, beat of mockery—a sense that our life together was in vain—now it has ended—sunken into the Low-Land Sea as in the ballad’s melancholy refrain.

  Most of the words of the ballad are lost to me. Only a few words recur with maddening frequency.

  Sometimes seeing Ray with a faraway or a distracted look in his eye I would ask him what he was thinking and Ray would reply Nothing.

  But how can you be thinking about nothing?

  I don’t know. But I was.

  How funny Ray could be! Though there was always this other side of him, as if in eclipse.

  He would be so very touched, to know how our friends are missing him. How stricken they are, that he has died. A kind of family has come into being . . . It is horrible to think that Ray’s last hours were passed among strangers.

  If he’d been conscious at the time, of what was he conscious?

  What were his final thoughts, what were his final words?

  Suddenly I am gripped by a need to seek out the young woman doctor who spoke to me in Ray’s room. I don’t even know her name—I will have to find out her name—I will ask her what Ray said—what she remembers—

  Except of course she won’t remember. Or, if she remembers, she
won’t tell me.

  Better not to know. Better not to pursue this.

  From the time of our first meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, it was Ray who was the more elusive of the two of us, the more secretive, elliptical. Some residue of his puritanical Irish Catholic upbringing remained with him through the decades, long after he’d dropped out of the Church at the age of eighteen; he disliked religion, in all its forms, but particularly the dogmatic; he disliked theology, particularly the morbidly arcane and exacting theology of Thomas Aquinas which he’d had to study at the Jesuit-run Marquette High School in Milwaukee.

  The Jesuit motto—I do what I am doing.

  Meaning What I am doing is justified because I am doing it.

  Because I am in the service of God.

  There was a side of Ray unknowable to me—kept at a little distance from me. As—I suppose—there was a side of myself kept at a distance from Ray, who knew so little of my writing.

  What is frightening is, maybe I never knew him. In some essential way, I never knew my husband.

  For I had known my husband—as he’d allowed himself to be known. But the man who’d been my husband—Ray Smith, Raymond Smith, Raymond J. Smith—has eluded me.

  Or is it inevitable—no wife really knows her husband? To be a wife is an intimacy so close, one can’t see; as, close up to a mirror, one can’t see one’s reflection.

  The male is elusive, to the female. The male is the other, the one to be domesticated; the female is domestication.

  There’s a sudden trickle of liquid—blood?—on my wrist. Without knowing, I’ve been digging at my skin.

  Rashes, welts, tiny hot pimples like poison ivy have erupted on the tender skin of the insides of my arms especially, and on the underside of my jaw; striations like exposed nerves have emerged across my back. Staring at these configurations in the mirror of my bathroom this morning as if they were a message in an unknown language.