Jack of Spades

by Oates, Joyce Carol

  For a moment I couldn’t quite comprehend.

  Stephen King? She’d tried to sue—also?

  Andrew J. Rush is not special to her—after all?

  Grossman was saying that the case Haider had prepared against Stephen King was virtually identical to the one she’d prepared against Andrew J. Rush except for different prose passages from different books.

  Even the ridiculous breaking-and-entering charge was identical.

  “Imagine—the likelihood of Stephen King coming to Harbourton, New Jersey—to break into her house.”

  Grossman laughed heartily. Indeed it was a preposterous fantasy.

  “In October 2004 there’d been a hearing in the same courtroom, with Haider ‘representing herself’ before the same judge.” This, Grossman thought particularly amusing.

  Weakly, I tried to laugh. “Really! The same judge . . .”

  Stephen King had been so alarmed by the woman, who’d also written threatening letters to him in care of his publisher, that he’d hired a private detective to investigate her. He’d been afraid that she might drive to Maine and stalk him and his ­family—afraid that she was crazy enough to try to kill someone. But the detective hadn’t turned up much that sounded dangerous, so King dropped the case.

  “You’re sure she has never written you threatening letters, Andrew? Maybe they went to the publisher, and didn’t get forwarded.”

  I had no idea how to reply to this. I was feeling mildly stunned and could not think coherently. Grossman’s ebullient laughter seemed to be suffocating me.

  “Your adversary has also tried to sue, over the years, John Updike and John Grisham, Norman Mailer and Dean Koontz, Peter Straub and James Patterson—and Dan Brown!—all without success.”

  We laughed together. Well, this was funny—wasn’t it?

  Slowly I was deflating. Like a balloon that has been pierced by a pin.

  “Quite a virtuoso, your ‘Ms. Haider’! Impressive range of styles and themes.”

  “Yes—well . . . I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise.”

  It is a total surprise. And not a flattering surprise.

  “So, Andrew, I’d like to file a complaint against her. As I’d said, the next step should be ours.”

  I understood, this was probably so. A lawyer would know, and would have my best interests at heart. Grossman was only being reasonable and yet, my instinct was to resist.

  “But—do you know how she is? It’s possible that she isn’t even alive . . .”

  “My paralegal made inquiries. She was taken to New Brunswick for ‘observation’—she may have some sort of congenital epileptic condition, that causes her to throw fits when she’s frustrated or angry. There’s a family caretaker with whom my paralegal spoke, who was very helpful. He told the paralegal that ‘fighting her enemies’ was what kept Ms. Haider going after her father died and she was left alone in the world. Not just her literary enemies but neighbors on Tumbrel Place and town officials. Incidentally, she’s sixty-seven years old.”

  Sixty-seven! I’d hoped she was older. This seemed dismayingly young. With the steely resolve of the mad, C. W. Haider could be my nemesis for the next twenty years.

  “If you don’t disapprove, Andrew, I’m going to move ahead with my plans. We’ll get an injunction against her to ‘cease and desist harassing’ you and we’ll file for charges. You don’t have to be involved except to sign a document or two.”

  But still I felt an instinct to resist, to demur. In this unpleasant situation, Andrew J. Rush had to behave nobly.

  “I’ve told you, Elliot—I don’t want to be punitive. This incident has left a sour taste in my mouth.”

  “But you’ve been the victim! Imagine if you didn’t have a publisher who was willing to protect you, and you’d had to hire a lawyer—a Manhattan, not a Harbourton, New Jersey, lawyer. (I don’t come cheaply, Andrew—which is why you should follow my counsel.) Imagine if the local judge hadn’t been reasonable, and the case had gone to trial. Imagine if the judgment had gone against you, who knows what the settlement might’ve been—millions? You’d have to appeal to the New Jersey State Court of Appeals—none of this a bargain, I can tell you. More bizarre and unjust things have happened in the history of US law.”

  “But—what exactly would you do? How much would she have to pay?”

  Patiently Grossman explained his plans another time. He estimated a sum—far more than I’d anticipated.

  “I told you, Andrew—we’ll bury her.”

  For a moment I felt this temptation. It was like creeping out onto a diving board—a high diving board—to (gently, almost unobtrusively)—press against the bare back of another, to urge him into space.

  A temptation to give in to the aggressive lawyer’s advice, to sue and to punish. To further defeat the enemy. Bury her.

  But I heard myself say:

  “I understand, Elliot. But—I still don’t want to sue.”

  “Jesus! Are you some sort of—Christian? Quaker? Is it fair to your publisher, to expect the company to pay?”

  “I’ve told you, I will pay the fees and the costs myself. I just want to forget this sorry episode, and get back to my life.”

  “Well—that’s very noble of you. Gentlemanly.”

  (Was Grossman sneering? I could imagine his mouth twitching in disdain.)

  “I feel sorry for the woman, that’s all. Mental illness isn’t a choice or an option, and it shouldn’t be confused with criminal behavior. From Haider’s point of view, she believed that she was right.”

  “Exactly what one might have said about Hitler, or Genghis Khan. Our own war criminal politicians. Quite right.”

  “Haider isn’t a Hitler or a Genghis Khan. She’s a lonely old woman who imagines she’s a writer. She may be permanently disabled, after her stroke. I just don’t want to make things more desperate for her, it was enough to win the case.”

  “Very well, Andrew. We’ll let it go. For now, at least.”

  “I don’t want this to continue any longer, please. I’d be terribly ashamed if anyone knew we were persecuting this woman. I don’t intend to give ‘C. W. Haider’ another thought.”

  “Good! It’s rare that the object of a lawsuit is so generous, but ‘Andrew J. Rush’ is obviously not an ordinary man. Can you promise not to contact her, at least? In the hospital or at home?”

  “Of course! I have no reason to contact her.”

  “You’ve told me already that you did contact her, by phone.”

  “That was to appeal to her, to drop the complaint. I don’t have any reason to contact her again.”

  “Well—you might imagine that you could convince her you’re ‘innocent.’ You don’t seem to realize that ‘innocence’ isn’t the point in the law—it’s what the law determines that establishes ‘innocence’ or ‘guilt.’ Whether you stole every one of your twenty-eight novels from C. W. Haider’s shelf of manuscripts, or not a single line, doesn’t matter; it’s only what the judge has ruled that matters. What other people, like the litigious C. W. Haider, might think is of zero significance.”

  This was damned insulting but I forced myself to murmur in assent.

  “Maybe we’ll speak again. I hate to leave it like this. As a professional, I think my advice is valuable to my client—it isn’t just a matter of sentiment. At least, promise me that you’ll steer clear of the woman.”

  “Of course, I won’t. I mean—I won’t try to contact her.”

  “And if she harasses you again, call me immediately.”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you promise? You will cell me immediately, if she gives you trouble again.”

  “Yes. I will call you immediately.”

  “And what I’ll do, Andrew, is hit her with all I’ve got. No more Mr. Nice Guy, eh? We will bury her.”

  That night I was in bed
fairly by midnight. Too exhausted even to take up my pen and yellow legal pad and sit sipping whiskey at the battered little table immersed in the seductive prose of Jack of Spades.

  But I slept only intermittently. Sighing, and squirming, like a great fish caught in a net.

  And who is wielding the net?

  13 Immunity

  You have immunity now.

  No one will believe the witch if she accuses you.

  Frequently Jack of Spades teased.

  Frequently Jack of Spades taunted.

  In the interstices of my “own” life—my writing-life as Andrew J. Rush—the sibilant words sounded like leaking gas.

  Especially in my attractive study built above the old stable. In what had been my place of refuge I felt vulnerable, edgy.

  Anything you wish to do, C.W. is your target.

  See what is before your eyes! The most delicious challenge.

  “I have absolutely no interest in C. W. Haider. I am not even going to make inquiries about her health.”

  This was so. This was my resolve.

  In the weeks following the summons, and the hearing. In the weeks following the collapse in the courtroom. The screams.

  Jus-tice!

  Yet it seemed that my work was not going well. The meticulous twenty-page outline of Criss-Cross suddenly did not make sense. Much of my work-time was spent listlessly rereading, revising. Before the summons, I had been at approximately page 120 of the novel but now, with daily corrosion, I had barely half that much that I could bear to read.

  All that I’d labored diligently at, through the crisis, now rang hollow in my ears. My prose, mocked by the wild-white-haired woman in the courtroom, was revealed as flat and unconvincing. My “characters” whom I had, I’d thought, lovingly created, and whose pencil-drawn likenesses were tacked to the corkboard beside my table, seemed to have conspired against me, behind my back, to utter empty banalities of the sort you see in cartoons.

  You see?—the witch has put a curse upon you.

  What will you do, to exorcise it?

  14 “Nephew”

  She’d been transferred to a psychiatric clinic in New Brunswick. I knew, I’d made more than one discreet call.

  “Would you like to speak with Ms. Haider, sir? She’s in the dayroom right now. I can see her from here.”

  Quickly I told the nurse no. No thank you. I didn’t want to upset my aunt.

  “Ms. Haider wouldn’t be upset, I think. She’s been lonely. She has been making excellent progress here but it’s very helpful if a patient has visitors. Especially, older patients need to ‘connect’ with familiar faces to keep them from delusional thoughts. Did you say that you are Ms. Haider’s nephew?”

  Explaining that yes, I was Ms. Haider’s nephew, but only the son of a stepbrother of hers, living in Duluth, Iowa—(but was Duluth in Iowa?)—and too far away to come visit her at the present time.

  “Well, we’re hoping Ms. Haider will be an outpatient soon. She’s the brightest and most talkative patient here right now. ’Course, she’s got a lot to grumble about, it seems. Sure is a grumbler.” The nurse laughed, as if her remark were some sort of understatement, which I, as a relative, might appreciate.

  “So—my aunt is making progress? She’ll be discharged soon?”

  “Yes, sir. What’s your name? I will tell her you called.”

  “Stephen. My name is Stephen.”

  “‘Stephen’—Haider?”

  “No. Stephen King.”

  There was a startled silence. Then, “You mean—like the writer? The same name as the famous writer?”

  “The same name, yes. But not the same person.”

  “Well—good! I will tell Ms. Haider you are thinking of her, Mr. King!”

  “Call me Stephen, please.”

  “Stephen. Gosh!”

  15 “I Like Not That”

  “If you don’t mind, Andrew. I think I should attend . . .”

  Hesitantly Irina spoke. Between us was the issue of Irina’s hours at the Friends School, which seemed to me excessive for the (modest) salary she received.

  “Most of the staff will be there . . . I won’t stay for the buffet supper.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling! If you want to, you should.”

  “Well, I don’t want to. I want to have dinner with my husband of course . . .”

  To placate my dear wife who was looking apologetic, in a way that was both touching and annoying, I told Irina that she should certainly stay for supper with her colleagues, at the headmaster’s house. It would seem rude, or perhaps unprofessional, or might cause them to think she was less committed to her job than others if she rushed home to her husband whom she saw (after all) seven days a week. I would use the opportunity to have dinner with a (recently divorced) friend in Harbourton.

  In addition, I would drop by the Harbourton library, to donate a box of books that had accumulated over the summer. Several times a year I donated books to the local library, that were sent to me by publishers; not always, but sometimes, I used the occasion to donate a paperback or two by Jack of Spades whose novels, I’d noticed, were not purchased by the library.

  (Once, I’d made an inquiry about this omission to the head librarian who was an old friend and she’d said, with a crinkle of her nose, “Oh, well—we don’t purchase books like that.” But I saw that no one at the library seemed to mind if Jack of Spades was donated, to be displayed on the Mystery Paperbacks shelf alongside such hallowed rivals as Michael Connelly, James Ellroy, Mary Higgins Clark, and, indeed, Andrew J. Rush.)

  When Irina was hired to teach art at the Friends School in Hadrian, she’d been very happy and I had been happy for her. Since the children left home she’d tried with varying degrees of success to work on her own art, such as it was—landscape watercolors, glazed ceramics, macramé—but there was nothing quite like teaching to invigorate her. Irina also had our house and property to maintain, which she enjoyed, and on which she spent a considerable amount of money—(of course, with my approval); she was generous with her time at local charitable organizations, and served on various fund-raising committees. There is no term that so sinks the heart of a husband as ­fund-raiser—but I have tried to be supportive of her in these efforts. I have always wanted my dear wife, who is inclined to emotional moods and “melancholia,” to be productively happy.

  At the same time, I don’t want Irina’s good nature to be exploited by others.

  “If anyone is going to exploit you, darling, it should be me.”

  With a little wince Irina laughed. I leaned over to kiss her warm cheek and felt her stiffen just slightly for Irina does not always like my jocular side, as she describes it.

  When we’d first met at Rutgers, as undergraduates, it had certainly seemed that we were equals; in fact, Irina’s grades were higher than mine. In our writing workshops, which we’d happened to take together, it was Irina Kacinzk with her “poetic” prose in the mode of Virginia Woolf whom the other writers and our instructor most admired, and not Andy Rush whose Hemingway-derived stories were flatly written, awkwardly earnest, and plot-driven with melodramatic “action” scenes and Hollywood-type dialogue. The first story of Irina’s I’d read, about a deaf, dumb, and blind girl, brilliantly evoked and convincing, made a powerful impression on me. I’d thought, with the naïveté of a nineteen-year-old—Here is the girl I will marry.

  It did not matter to me that, in our workshop, Irina was often too shy to speak; and that, among other young women at Rutgers, she was not strikingly attractive or sexually provocative, but rather quietly appealing, with ashy blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses, intense eyes. An intelligent person—obviously. The kind of person who must be cultivated, to be appreciated and who is, if female, grateful for the interest of one with a stronger personality than her own.

  Of the numerous girls I’d known, none h
ad seemed to be so impressed with me as Irina. In her eyes the Andy Rush who was reflected scarcely seemed, at times, to be me.

  “Irina? Call me ‘Andy,’ please.”

  “‘I think that I would rather call you ‘Andrew.’”

  This was flattering, somehow. For everyone I knew called me “Andy”—a name comfortable as an old sneaker. There was dignity in “Andrew,” and a kind of depth, complexity. Perhaps I began to fall in love with Irina Kacinzk for seeing more in me than I saw in myself at the time.

  Of course, from time to time, Irina has called me “Andy.” In her most affectionate moments, when she feels comfortable in my love, she even calls me “dear”—“darling.”

  But it is “Andrew” that is most natural to her for it seems to suggest a slight distance between us: “Andrew” the husband, father, protector and provider.

  Soon after we were married, Irina gave up writing. I had been her most enthusiastic reader and had continued to encourage her, going through drafts of stories and novels, but something hesitant and self-doubting had crept into her sense of herself as a writer. Gently I admonished her—“Darling, you care too much for precision and perfection. There’s no need to polish each damned sentence—just say what you want to say.”

  But Irina grew ever more shy about her writing. I hope it wasn’t because I insisted upon reading everything she wrote, and offering my heartfelt, sincere, and sympathetic critiques.

  Though we’d begun as equals, to a degree, both of us finding teaching jobs in the Highland Park area, Irina’s salary from the start was less than mine; her high grades at Rutgers and the great enthusiasm of her professors didn’t so much matter outside the university. Many times in those early, strained years I had to assure Irina that it didn’t matter in the slightest—(indeed, it did not matter in the slightest!)—that the income she brought into the household was rarely more than 70 percent of my own, and went almost entirely for day care when the children were young.