A Widow's Story

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As dusk comes on, the pain between my shoulder blades is gradually worsening. And there seem to be related pains, short vertical pains, around my rib cage. But I can’t stop reading Black Mass, I am drawn into the melancholy tale of P. and V.—the celibate priest, the “brilliantly talented troubled poet” . . . Almost, I can forget that this is fiction; it has the tone of memoir, to which fictitious elements have been added, like the light strokes of a watercolor brush.

  Amid a section of unnumbered red-ink pages near the end of the novel there are several paragraphs crossed out, which I can decipher, barely. This seems to be a memory sequence—Paul recalling his sister’s “rebellious behavior”—not the “good” sister Lucy but a “bad” sister Caroline—younger than Lucy—a girl of twelve who flares up in anger against the righteous father—refuses to say the rosary with the family—is obstreperous at mass—becomes personally messy, “smelly”—laughs “inappropriately.”

  “Caroline” is clearly Carol. Ray is writing about his institutionalized sister Carol. But the typed scene breaks off in the middle of a page.

  Then, a few pages later, in scrawled handwriting there’s a new memory sequence involving Caroline in which Paul’s father summons their parish priest—the priest “prays over” Caroline who is believed to be “demon-possessed”—there is an “exorcism” conducted in the parents’ bedroom—Paul (who is nine at the time) and Lucy are terrified and kept from seeing what is done to their sister; at a later time, Caroline is taken forcibly to a doctor/clinic—a “lobotomy” is performed on her brain, to “calm” her—when Paul sees his sister again, he doesn’t recognize her at first. She will be committed to “St. Francis of Assisi”—a hospital, or a residence . . .

  This sequence, too, ends abruptly. The writing is flat, blunt, crude and Ray’s handwriting is near-illegible.

  Lobotomized! This must have been what was done to Ray’s sister Carol, when he was a child.

  The girl had been “lobotomized”—a portion of the frontal lobes of her brain cut out by a crude quasi-surgical procedure of a kind frequently performed in the 1940s and 1950s by self-styled practitioners. The stated purpose was to treat extreme behavior in schizophrenics and others suffering from mental illness, the unstated purpose to control individuals whose behavior was annoying, offensive, or rebellious—like Ray’s sister.

  In 1949, the “peak year” for lobotomies in the United States—forty thousand were performed!—the Portuguese Egas Moniz was awarded a Nobel Prize for having developed the procedure, which was to be discredited only a few years later. In the interim, many thousands of individuals were as much maimed by the operation as “helped”—if indeed any were “helped.”

  This was the shameful family secret of which Ray never spoke except obliquely.

  This was the traumatic memory of Ray’s childhood that had lodged as deeply in him as his early fear of sin and Hell.

  In the fragmentary Black Mass, these vignettes involving “Caroline” are crossed out. Very little of Paul’s family background is included, only just references to Paul’s father that quiver with dislike and irony. Whenever Paul’s father is evoked, Ray’s writing becomes flatly ironic, sarcastic. The author couldn’t seem to find a modulated tone in which to write about this painful material, as if sensing how it would eclipse the more conventional romance of the celibate priest and the beautiful woman poet.

  If Ray had completed the novel, and if it were to be published—very likely he’d have excised this material. Not that it’s too raw or unintegrated with the plot—revising and recasting could have remedied this—but rather, the material is just too personal. Both Ray’s parents were living at the time he’d been writing the novel, as well as his sisters and brother.

  Or maybe—I’m mistaken. Maybe, boldly and defiantly, Ray would have wanted the material included. Maybe he’d have wanted it included, in this posthumous and abbreviated manner, in what I am writing about him.

  Through this turbulent night I’m awake though the room is darkened—I am not trying to read, or watch TV—sharp burning pains in my back, upper torso—can’t find a comfortable position to lie in as if columns of red ants are marching across my skin—thinking of Ray, missing Ray so, for there is no one to whom I can speak about what I have been reading, and what I’ve discovered—trying to remember what Ray told me about his sister: Had Carol been subjected to “shock treatments” too? Or had “shock treatments” been suggested for Ray himself, when he’d been in the sanitarium? And what sort of “sanitarium” was this? Was it a private hospital, or one associated with the Catholic Church? Ray had never told me.

  Had Ray seen his sister, often? While he was growing up? Had he visited her in the institution in which she lived, and was she brought back to the family home to visit?

  Or am I thinking now of my own sister Lynn, whom my father brought home to Millersport, on Sundays? It was said of Lynn that she paid little attention to my parents but was eager to eat her favorite sweet foods which my mother baked for her. My brother Fred said that the visits were a “strain” for my mother but that my father “insisted” on bringing Lynn home—Sunday after Sunday—for years. And to accommodate my father’s wishes, and my sister’s exhausting presence, my mother Carolina began taking tranquilizers—Xanax—to which she would become addicted . . . For my soft-spoken mother could not oppose my father in the smallest matter, let alone in this, his will was so much stronger than hers.

  My brother has told me, too, that each Sunday as it neared the time when my father would take Lynn back to the residence in Amherst, she became restless and eager to leave. She doesn’t feel comfortable anywhere else. With people like herself, she seems—almost—to be happy.

  I wonder if Ray’s sister Carol felt like this. If, though her life as a normal woman had been destroyed by a medical folly, she had had some measure of human happiness in “St. Francis of Assisi”—or its real-life equivalent.

  Chapter 82

  “Good Girl!”

  We take turns throwing the stick into the field. It’s a tree limb stippled with the dog’s teeth marks and damp with the dog’s saliva. As the dog rushes to retrieve the stick, we are admiring of the dog—a beautiful long-haired collie with exquisite fur—burnished-red, tawny-gold, snowy-white—her ears are sharply alert, her eyes are limpid-damp—almost, Trixi seems to be smiling at us—the wet eager smile of a creature for whom happiness is solely pleasing her master, her mistress.

  “Good girl! What a good girl she is. . . .”

  Roughly our friend strokes the collie’s head, snatches up the stick and throws it again, out into the field—again Trixi rushes to retrieve it.

  “Isn’t she a good girl . . . Go, Trixi!”

  Trixi trots back to us with the stick panting with joy, sides shuddering, tail wagging . . . though quickly the game of fetch begins to bore us, especially the game of fetch begins to bore Trixi’s master and mistress who play the game of fetch often with Trixi in summer, in their country place.

  “Maybe that’s enough for now, Trix. Good girl—OK?”

  We are visiting our friends who live in the Poconos, in Pennsylvania, in a sprawling old fieldstone house above a small lake. We will stay overnight in their guest room which has a fieldstone fireplace, bookcases crammed with interesting books, no doubt there will be a nest of spiders somewhere in the room for one of us to discover with a little cry of alarm which will evoke memories of Beaumont, Texas—the flying “palmetto” bugs—“Sure was glad to get out of there alive!”

  Which summer this is, I am not certain. It might have been four years ago, or longer. For time passes so swiftly now. As if sun and moon whirl about, the eye stares dazed and uncomprehending. Our visit wasn’t last summer and probably not the previous summer. Snapshots have been taken of us all at our friends’ summer house for the past fifteen years but the snapshots are interchangeable if not precisely dated—one summer has blended into the next.

  You would think we are the same people—unchanging. The s
napshots must show a pattern of aging but it has been so gradual, we’ve seemed not to notice.

  Except sometimes Ray will stare at a photo of himself which I’ve just had developed at the camera store in Pennington, amid a swath of new photos taken on a recent trip or at a recent party, with a look of dismay—if I’m not alert, and take it from his fingers, he might dispose of it.

  Honey? What’s wrong? I ask him. You look very handsome in that picture.

  Handsome! Ray will wince, and laugh.

  He isn’t a vain person. Quite the contrary! Checking his appearance in a mirror, running his hands through his hair, he frowns, as if slightly embarrassed at what he’s doing.

  Your beautiful eyes. Blue-gray eyes.

  Yet somewhat recessed eyes, so that, behind the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses, the beautiful blue-gray eyes are not prominent; I am thinking that no one has really seen these eyes, gazed into these eyes, except his wife who loves him.

  But Ray winces, seeing a photo of himself—the shadowy face of his father superimposed upon Ray’s younger face.

  (Not, oddly, in life. Only in certain photos, taken at certain angles.)

  Once, we’d spent New Year’s Eve with these friends at the home of other, mutual friends in Princeton. On the windowsill in my study is a photograph memorializing the evening. Eight of us in the picture—all very festive, smiling—my hair is longer, and curlier; Ray is standing at the rear, almost in shadow. I see that he’s wearing the Unicorn Tapestry necktie I’d bought for him at the Cloisters, years ago when we’d slipped out of the very long May ceremonial of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, amid the marathon announcements of literary awards, and driven a few miles north to the Cloisters Museum which was one of the places that made Ray very happy . . .

  Ever more I am being pitched into the past, as into a roiling sea. I think there is some danger that I will drown in this sea.

  “Good girl!”—the call summons me back.

  “Good girl—isn’t she? But I think that’s enough for now, Trix.”

  I will never be able to think of these friends whom we loved—who loved us—without thinking of Ray and I will not be able to see them, I think, without Ray.

  Here is a shameful fact: when these friends called on the day following Ray’s death, I could not lift the phone receiver.

  I dared not lift it. That name in the caller ID—I could not answer.

  Joyce? Hello? We’ve heard the—terrible news . . .

  Will you call us? Please?

  How are you doing? Should we drive to Princeton? We could be there tomorrow afternoon.

  Please call, let us know . . .

  Joyce? Are you listening?

  But this is the future—unimaginable now.

  This summery late-afternoon in the Poconos. A grayish haze in the mountains and dark thunderheads at the horizon but elsewhere, as if from a supernatural source, there is a bright, brilliant light across the hills—as in an eerily luminous—ominous—landscape by Martin Johnson Heade: The Coming Storm.

  Trixi the collie was a rescued dog—a “shelter dog”—now in the prime of life, a dynamo of energy, her eyes filled with adoration for her master and mistress who are so kind to her—and very wonderfully Trixi nudges her head against our hands also, eager to be petted, ears stroked, the beautiful burnished-red fur admired, and the fast-wagging tail. Though we are attentive to her, to a degree, yet we’ve ceased throwing the stick for her to retrieve, which is disappointing to her, and is making her anxious—she barks, quick high yips like a child’s whimpering, a craving for more attention, immediate attention; for Trixi’s doggy-life is subservient to our human life, unimaginable without us—“Good girl! Go fetch! One last time! That-a-girl.”

  Again the saliva-dampened stick is tossed into the field, into a patch of Queen Anne’s lace, and again Trixi bounds to retrieve it, now barking excitedly.

  It is now that our friend astounds us by remarking, casually—“When Trixi passes on, we’re going to get a smaller breed. To take on airplanes.”

  I am so surprised by this remark that I can’t respond. I dare not even glance at Ray.

  “ . . . it’s such a hassle, putting her into a kennel. And she’s so agitated, and misses us so. If we’re away even for a day or two . . .”

  “ . . . we try to take her with us, when we can . . .”

  “. . . when we can, but usually we can’t, not—”

  “ . . . not very conveniently.”

  “Except if we’re driving. . . .”

  “ . . . If we’re driving, it’s all right. Not ideal, but—”

  “ . . . it’s all right. But a hassle. She’s a lovely dog, she’s a terrific dog and we love her, but—Trix! Put the damned stick down, girl. Enough for right now.”

  Chapter 83

  The Resolution

  In the morning—in the mirror—my upper back is striated with vertical red welts throbbing with heat—shingles?—for a long moment I stare utterly astonished.

  Thinking But this is something real! This is visible.

  In my naiveté thinking—almost thinking—This is good!—it will take my mind off the other.

  On the Internet I learn that shingles is a painful, blistering rash caused by the chickenpox virus, that is believed to be activated by severe stress; I learn that its clinical term is Herpes Zoster (great name for a Thomas Pynchon character); and that its symptoms include red patches on the skin followed by small blisters that resemble early chickenpox . . . the blisters break, forming small ulcers that begin to dry and fall off in 2–3 weeks.

  Medication should begin within twenty-four hours of the onset of these symptoms, to prevent serious complications.

  When Dr. M_ examines me, however, he says flatly that I don’t have shingles.

  I don’t have shingles? But—

  Dr. M_ asks me how I am sleeping, and I tell him that I am not sleeping very well; Dr. M_ asks me how the anti-depressant tablets have been working, and I tell him that I don’t know—I don’t really know . . . It is tempting to hide my face in my hands and cry I don’t know! I don’t know how I feel! I think that I am—not right . . . I think that there is something very wrong with me but—I don’t know.

  Dr. M_ refills my prescriptions for Lunesta and for Cymbalta. I have not the heart to tell Dr. M_ that I’ve stopped taking Lunesta out of a fear of becoming addicted and that I am frightened of continuing to take Cymbalta because—I think—the medication has been making me feel very strange—but I’m not sure. . . . I’m not sure of so many things, my brain feels as if it has been zapped or cut with an ice pick, the frontal lobes in which “feelings” reside.

  And so, though I have been told by my primary care physician that I don’t have shingles, or Herpes Zoster, and this knowledge should placate me, or have the ameliorative effect of a placebo, the reddened welts on my upper back continue to erupt, and after a miserable night of insomnia compounded by actual physical distress in the morning I see in the mirror that there are twice as many welts on my chest, and my rib cage—flaming itching unbearable!—and so in desperation I call Dr. M_’s office again, and make another appointment, and this time, with some chagrin, Dr. M_ examines my flaming throbbing upper torso that looks as if I’ve been whipped and concludes that yes, I do have shingles after all.

  “The worst case I’ve ever seen.”

  But more than twenty-four hours have passed since the symptoms first began to erupt, at least forty-eight hours, and so the antiviral medication Dr. M_ prescribes for me will have a limited effect. Abruptly now I am suffering from shingles, in medias res, and can’t imagine what my life was like before this—what happiness, to be freed of this violently itching burning encasement of frayed nerves! My pain-free life of only a few days ago seems idyllic to me now but it’s a measure of my delusion that I am almost cheerful about this, for shingles is something real—“visible”—and not of the ontological status of the ugly lizard-thing urging me to swallow all the pills in the medicine cab
inet, curl up and die.

  Except that now, when I check the Internet, I discover that shingles isn’t a matter of two to three weeks but a much more serious ailment:

  Sometimes, pain may last for months, or years. The pain, Postherpetic neuralgia can be extremely severe. Complications may include blindness, if there are lesions in the eyes; deafness; infection, lesions in body organs, sepsis, encephalitis . . .

  Suddenly I am frightened: is shingles so serious? What if the angry blisters erupt in my eyes? The posthumous life of the widow is narrow enough, but what of a life both posthumous and blind?

  My remedy is to flee the house where too many thoughts bombard me as if I’m trapped in a spider’s web. There are a number of perennials from Kale’s which I haven’t yet set in the ground and this effort demands my total concentration so that the shingles-pain isn’t predominant. Digging holes for anemone—beautiful “wind-flowers”—and a half-dozen hostas—I am wearing Ray’s gardening gloves, and I am using Ray’s gardening implements. If I don’t glance up, or turn around, I can imagine that Ray is in the garden with me and that we’re working companionably together in silence, with no need to talk. I will hide from Ray the distressing fact that my upper body is striated with shingles—“lesions”—he would be too concerned. I will hide from Ray the distressing fact that Dr. M_, who’d prescribed too many antibiotics for him, had failed to recognize the obvious symptoms of shingles in his patient and had failed to prescribe the antiviral medication in time.

  What Ray would be curious to see, here in his garden, is what I’ve been planting. I think he would admire what I’ve done—I have taken time to place the new plants in the soil carefully, and to keep the roots damp. These are purple coneflowers—“rugged prairie plants”—and hostas with white and purple flowers. And something new to me—Siberian iris. Half of Ray’s garden is now planted. The Russian sage is thriving. Morning glories I’d planted from seeds are throwing up thin tender vines. Amazing to me, that I have managed to do so much in a few weeks, wresting some sort of order out of weedy chaos . . . I am reminded of a conversation I’d had with Ray about D. H. Lawrence’s novella The Escaped Cock/The Man Who Died which I’d taught at the University of Windsor, in a graduate seminar on Lawrence’s prose and poetry—this highly poetic and provocative parable of Jesus’ “true” resurrection in which the question is asked From what, and to what, could this infinite whirl be “saved”?