New Jersey Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

  Kittatinny Mountains

  Tell Daddy hello! Run kiss Daddy.”

  He’d been gone from the lake less than an hour but in this new family each parting and each return signaled a sort of antic improvised celebration—he didn’t want to think it was the obverse of what must have happened before he’d arrived in their lives—the Daddy departing, and the Daddy not returning.

  “Sweetie, h’lo! C’mere.”

  He dropped to one knee as the boy ran at him to be hugged. A rough wet kiss on Kevin’s forehead.

  The little girl hesitated. Only when the mother pushed more firmly at her small shoulders did she spring forward and run—wild-blue-eyed suddenly, with a high-pitched squeal like a mouse being squeezed—into his arms. He laughed—he was startled by the heat of the little body—flattered and deeply moved, kissing the excited child on the delicate soft skin at her temple where—he’d only just noticed recently—a pale blue vein pulsed.

  “What do you say to Daddy when Daddy comes back?”

  The mother clapped her hands to make a game of it. This new family was so new to her too, weekends at Paraquarry Lake were best borne as a game, as play.

  “Say Hi Daddy!—Kiss-kiss Daddy!”

  Obediently the children cried what sounded like Hi Daddy! Kiss-kiss Daddy!

  Little fish-mouths pursed for kisses against Daddy’s cheek.

  Reno had only driven into the village of Paraquarry Falls to bring back semi-emergency supplies: toilet paper, flashlight batteries, mosquito repellant, mouse traps, a gallon container of milk, a shiny new garden shovel to replace the badly rusted shovel that had come with the camp. Also, small sweet-fruit yogurts for the children though both he and the mother weren’t happy about them developing a taste for sugary foods—but there wasn’t much of a selection at the convenience store.

  In this new-Daddy phase in which unexpected treats are the very coinage of love.

  “Who wants to help Daddy dig?”

  Both children cried Me!—thrilled at the very prospect of working with Daddy on the exciting new terrace overlooking the lake.

  And so they helped Daddy excavate the old, crumbled-brick terrace a previous owner had left amid a tangle of weeds, pebbles, and broken glass, or tried to help Daddy—for a while. Clearly such work was too arduous for a seven-year-old, still more for a four-year-old, with play shovels and rakes; and the mild June air too humid for much exertion. And there were mosquitoes and gnats. Despite the repellant. For these were the Kittatinny Mountains east of the Delaware Water Gap in early June—that season of teeming buzzing fecundity—just to inhale the air is to inhale the smells of burgeoning life.

  “Oh! Dad-dy!” Devra recoiled from something she’d unearthed in the soil, lost her balance, and fell back onto her bottom with a little cry. Reno saw it was just a beetle—iridescent, wriggling—and told her not to be afraid: “They just live in the ground, sweetie. They have special beetle work to do in the ground.”

  Kevin said, “Like worms! They have ‘work’ in the ground.”

  This simple science—earth science—the little boy had gotten from Reno. Very gratifying to hear your words repeated with child-pride.

  From the mother Reno knew that their now-departed father had often behaved “unpredictably” with the children and so Reno made it a point to be soft-spoken in their presence, good-natured and unexcitable, predictable.

  What pleasure in being predictable!

  Still, Devra was frightened. She’d dropped her play shovel in the dirt. Reno saw that the little girl had enough of helping Daddy with the terrace for the time being. “Sweetie, go see what Mommy’s doing. You don’t need to dig anymore right now.”

  Kevin remained with Daddy. Kevin snorted in derision, his baby sister was so scaredy.

  Reno was a father, again. Fatherhood, returned to him. A gift he hadn’t quite deserved the first time—maybe—but this time, he would strive to deserve it.

  This time, he was forty-seven years old. He—who’d had a very hard time perceiving himself other than young, a kid.

  And this new marriage!—this beautiful new family small and vulnerable as a mouse cupped trembling in the hand—he was determined to protect with his life. Not ever not ever let this family slip from his grasp as he’d let slip from his grasp his previous family—two young children rapidly retreating now in Reno’s very memory like a scene glimpsed in the rearview mirror of a speeding vehicle.

  “Come to Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”

  The name itself seemed to him beautiful, seductive—like the Delaware River at the Water Gap where the river was wide, glittering and winking like shaken foil. As a boy he’d hiked the Appalachian Trail in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania and northwestern New Jersey—across the river on the high pedestrian walkway, north to Dunfield Creek and Sunfish Pond and so to Paraquarry Lake which was the most singular of the Kittitanny Ridge lakes, edged with rocks like a crude lacework and densely wooded with ash, elm, birch, and maples that flamed red in autumn.

  So he courted them with tales of his boyhood hikes, canoeing on the river and on Paraquarry Lake, camping along the Kittatinny Ridge where once, thousands of years ago, a glacier lay like a massive claw over the land.

  He told them of the Lenni Lenape Indians who’d inhabited this part of the country for thousands of years!—far longer than their own kind.

  As a boy he’d never found arrowheads at Paraquarry Lake or elsewhere, yet he recalled that others had, and so spoke excitedly to the boy Kevin as if to enlist him in a search; he did not quite suggest they might discover Indian bones that sometimes came to the surface at Paraquarry Lake, amid shattered red shale and ordinary rock and dirt.

  In this way and in others he courted the new wife Marlena, who was a decade younger than he; and the new son, Kevin; and the new daughter who’d won his heart the first glimpse he’d had of her—tiny Devra with white-blond hair fine as the silk of milkweed.

  Another man’s lost family. Or maybe cast off—as Marlena had said in her bright brave voice determined not to appear hurt, humiliated.

  His own family—Reno had hardly cast off. Whatever his ex-wife would claim. If anything, Reno had been the one to be cast off by her.

  Yet careful to tell Marlena, early in their relationship: “It was my fault, I think. I was too young. When we got married—just out of college—we were both too young. It’s said that if you ‘cohabit’ before getting married it doesn’t actually make any difference in the long run—whether you stay married, or get divorced—but our problem was that we hadn’t a clue what ‘cohabitation’ meant—means. We were always two separate people and then my career took off …”

  Took off wasn’t Reno’s usual habit of speech. Nor was it Reno’s habit to talk so much, and so eagerly. But when he’d met a woman he believed he might come to seriously care for—at last—he’d felt obliged to explain himself to her: there had to be some failure in his personality, some flaw, otherwise why was he alone, unmarried; why had he become a father whose children had grown up largely without him, and without seeming to need him?

  At the time of the divorce, Reno had granted his wife too many concessions. In his guilty wish to be generous to her though the breakup had been as much his wife’s decision as his own. He’d signed away much of their jointly owned property, and agreed to severely curtailed visitation rights with the children. He hadn’t yet grasped this simple fact of human relations—the more readily you give, the more readily it will be taken from you as what you owe.

  His wife had appealed to him to be allowed to move to Oregon where she had relatives, with the children; Reno hadn’t wanted to contest her.

  Within a few years, she’d relocated again—with a new husband, to Sacramento.

  In these circuitous moves, somehow Reno was cast off. One too many corners had been turned, the father had been left behind except for child-support payments.

  Trying not to feel like a fool. T
rying to remain a gentleman long after he’d come to wonder why.

  “Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”

  The new wife was sure, yes, she would love Paraquarry Lake. Laughing at Reno’s boyish enthusiasm, squeezing his arm.

  Kevin and Devra were thrilled. Their new father—new Daddy—so much nicer than the old, other Daddy—eagerly spreading out photographs on a tabletop like playing cards.

  “Of course,” the new Daddy said, a sudden crease between his eyes, “this cabin in the photos isn’t the one we’ll be staying in. This is the one—” Reno paused, stricken. It felt as if a thorn had lodged in his throat.

  This is the one I have lost was not an appropriate statement to make to the new children and to the new wife listening so raptly to him, the new wife’s fingers lightly resting on his arm.

  These photographs had been selected. Reno’s former wife and former children—of course, former wasn’t the appropriate word!—were not shown to the new family.

  Eleven years invested in the former marriage! It made him sick—just faintly, mildly sick—to think of so much energy and emotion, lost.

  Though there’d been strain between Reno and his ex-wife—exacerbated when they were in close quarters together—he’d still insisted upon bringing his family to Paraquarry Lake on weekends through much of the year and staying there—of course—for at least six weeks each summer. When Reno couldn’t get off from work he drove up weekends. For the “camp” at Paraquarry Lake—as he called it—was essential to his happiness.

  Not that it was a particularly fancy place: it wasn’t. Several acres of deciduous and pine woods, and hundred-foot frontage on the lake—that was what made the place special.

  Eventually, in the breakup, the Paraquarry Lake camp had been sold. Reno’s wife had come to hate the place and had no wish to buy him out—nor would she sell her half to him. In the woman’s bitterness, the camp had been lost to strangers.

  Now, it was nine years later. Reno hadn’t seen the place in years. He’d driven along the Delaware River and inland to the lake and past the camp several times but became too emotional staring at it from the road, such bitter nostalgia wasn’t good for him, and wasn’t, he wanted to think, typical of him. So much better to think—to tell people in his new life, It was an amicable split-up and an amicable divorce overall. We’re civilized people—the kids come first!

  Was this what people said, in such circumstances? You did expect to hear, The kids come first!

  Now, there was a new camp. A new “cabin”—an A-frame, in fact—the sort of thing for which Reno had always felt contempt; but the dwelling was attractive, “modern,” and in reasonably good condition with a redwood deck and sliding glass doors overlooking both the lake and a ravine of tangled wild rose to the rear. The nearest neighbor was uncomfortably close—only a few yards away—but screened by evergreens and a makeshift redwood fence a previous owner had erected.

  Makeshift too was the way in which the A-frame had been cantilevered over a drop in the rocky earth, with wooden posts supporting it; if you entered at the rear you stepped directly into the house, but if you entered from the front, that is, facing the lake, you had to climb a steep flight of not-very-sturdy wood steps, gripping a not-very-sturdy railing. The property had been owned by a half-dozen parties since its original owner in the 1950s. Reno wondered at the frequent turnover of owners—this wasn’t typical of the Water Gap area where people returned summer after summer for a lifetime.

  The children loved the Paraquarry camp—they hugged their new Daddy happily, to thank him—and the new wife who’d murmured that she wasn’t an “outdoor type” conceded that it was really very nice—“and what a beautiful view.”

  Reno wasn’t about to tell Marlena that the view from his previous place had been more expansive, and more beautiful.

  Marlena kissed him, so very happy. For he had saved her, as she had saved him. From what—neither could have said.

  Paraquarry Lake was not a large lake: seven miles in circumference. The shoreline was so distinctly uneven and most of it thickly wooded and inaccessible except by boat. On maps the lake was L-shaped but you couldn’t guess this from shore—nor even from a boat—you would have to fly in a small plane overhead, as Reno had done many years ago.

  “Let’s take the kids up sometime, and fly over. Just to see what the lake looks like from the air.”

  Reno spoke with such enthusiasm, the new wife did not want to disappoint him. Smiling and nodding yes! What a good idea—“Sometime.”

  The subtle ambiguity of sometime. Reno guessed he knew what this meant.

  In this new marriage Reno had to remind himself—continually—that though the new wife was young, in her mid-thirties, he himself was no longer that young. In his first marriage he’d been just a year older than his wife. Physically they’d been about equally fit. He had been stronger than his wife, he could hike longer and in more difficult terrain, but essentially they’d been a match and in some respects—caring for the children, for instance—his wife had had more energy than Reno. Now, the new wife was clearly more fit than Reno who became winded—even exhausted—on the nearby Shawagunik Trail that, twenty years before, he’d found hardly taxing.

  Reno’s happiness was working on the camp: the A-frame that needed repainting, a new roof, new windows; the deck was partly rotted, the front steps needed to be replaced. Unlike Reno’s previous camp of several acres, the new camp was hardly more than an acre and much of the property was rocky and inaccessible—fallen trees, rotted lumber, the detritus of years.

  Reno set for himself the long-term goal of clearing the property of such litter and a short-term goal of building a flagstone terrace beside the front steps, where the earth was rocky and overgrown with weeds; there had once been a makeshift brick terrace or walkway here, now broken. Evidence of previous tenants—rather, the negligence of previous tenants—was a cause of annoyance to Reno as if this property dear to him had been purposefully desecrated by others.

  During the winter in their house in East Orange, Reno had studied photos he’d taken of the new camp. Tirelessly he’d made sketches of the redwood deck he meant to extend and rebuild, and of the “sleeping porch” he meant to add. Marlena suggested a second bathroom, with both a shower and a tub. And a screened porch that could be transformed into a glassed-in porch in cold weather. Reno would build—or cause to be built—a carport, a new fieldstone fireplace, a barbecue on the deck. And there was the ground-level terrace he would construct himself with flagstones from a local garden supply store, once he’d dug up and removed the old, broken bricks half-buried in the earth.

  Reno understood that his new wife’s enthusiasm for Paraquarry Lake and the Delaware Water Gap was limited. Marlena would comply with his wishes—anyway, most of them—so long as he didn’t press her too far. The high-wattage smile might quickly fade, the eyes brimming with love turn tearful. For divorce is a devastation, Reno knew. The children were more readily excited by the prospect of spending time at the lake—but they were children, impressionable. And bad weather in what was essentially an outdoor setting—its entire raison d’etre was outdoors—would be new to them. Reno understood that he must not make with this new family the mistake he’d made the first time—insisting that his wife and children not only accompany him to Paraquarry Lake but that they enjoy it—visibly.

  Maybe he’d been mistaken, trying so hard to make his wife and young children happy. Maybe it’s always a mistake, trying to assure the happiness of others.

  His daughter was attending a state college in Sacramento—her major was something called communication arts. His son had flunked out of Cal Tech and was enrolled at a “computer arts” school in San Francisco. The wife had long ago removed herself from Reno’s life and truly he rarely thought of any of them, who seemed so rarely to think of him.

  But the daughter. Reno’s daughter. Oh hi, Dad. Hi. Damn, I’m sorry—I’m just on my way out.

  Reno had ceased cal
ling her. Both the kids. For they never called him. Even to thank him for birthday gifts. Their e-mails were rudely short, perfunctory.

  The years of child support had ended. Both were beyond eighteen. And the years of alimony, now that the ex-wife had remarried. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars … Though of course, Reno understood.

  But the new children! In this new family!

  Like wind rippling over the surface of Paraquarry Lake—emotion flooded into Reno at the thought of his new family. He would adopt the children—soon. For Kevin and Devra adored their new Daddy who was so kind, funny, patient, and—yes—predictable—with them; who had not yet raised his voice to them a single time.

  Especially little Devra captivated him—he stared at her in amazement, the child was so small—tiny rib cage, collarbone, wrists—after her bath, the white-blond hair thin as feathers against her delicate skull.

  “Love you—I love you—all—so much.”

  It was a declaration made to the new wife only in the dark of their bed. In her embrace, her strong warm fingers gripping his back, and his hot face that felt to him like a ferret’s face, hungry, ravenous with hunger, pressed into her neck.

  At Paraquarry Lake, in the new camp, there was a new Reno emerging.

  It was hard work but thrilling, satisfying—to chop his own firewood and stack it beside the fireplace. The old muscles were reasserting themselves in his shoulders, upper arms, thighs. He was developing a considerable axe swing, and was learning to anticipate the jar of the axe head against wood which he supposed was equivalent to the kick of a shotgun against a man’s shoulder—if you weren’t prepared, the shock ran down your spine like an electric charge.

  Working outdoors he wore gloves which Marlena gave him—“Your hands are getting too calloused, scratchy.” When he caressed her, she meant. Marlena was a shy woman and did not speak of their lovemaking but Reno wanted to think that it meant a good deal to her as it meant to him, after years of pointless celibacy.

  He was thrilled too when they went shopping together—at the mall, at secondhand furniture stores—choosing Adirondack chairs, a black leather sofa, rattan settee, handwoven rugs, andirons for the fireplace. It was deeply moving to Reno to be in the presence of this attractive woman who took such care and turned to him continually for his opinion as if she’d never furnished a household before.