Sourland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Zalk. Really.”

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “Cigarettes. Smoking. If you smoke, or not. Our fates are genetic—determined at birth.” Woods paused, frowning. “Or do I mean—conception. Determined at conception.”

  “Not entirely,” Leah said. “Nothing is determined entirely.”

  “Not entirely. But then, Mrs. Zalk, nothing is entire.”

  Leah wasn’t sure what they were talking about and she wasn’t sure she liked it. The disingenuous blue eyes gleamed at her behind round glasses. Woods was saying, with a downward glance, both self-deprecatory and self-displaying, “My case—I’m an ‘endomorph.’ I had no choice about it, my fate lay in my genes. My father, and my father’s father—stocky, big, with big wrists, thick stubby arms. Now Dr. Zalk, for instance—”

  “‘Dr. Zalk’? What of him?”

  Dr. Zalk was Leah’s husband. It made her uneasy to be speaking of him in such formal terms. Woods, oblivious of his companion, plunged on as if confiding in Leah: “My grandfather, too. You know—‘Hans Gottschalk.’ He was on that team that won the Nobel Prize—or it was said, he should have been on the team. I mean, he was on the team—molecular biologists—Rockefeller U.—who won the prize, and he should have won a prize, too. Anyway—Hans had ceased smoking by the age of forty but it made no difference. We’d hear all about Grandfather’s ‘willpower’—as if what was ordinary in another was extraordinary in him, since he was an ‘extraordinary’ man—but already it was too late. Not that he knew—no one could know. Grandfather for all his genius had a genetic predisposition to—whatever invaded his lungs. So with us all—it’s in the stars.”

  “Is it!” Leah tasted cold. She had no idea what Woods was talking about except she knew that Harris would be scornful. Stars!

  “I think you’re brave, Leah. Giving this party you give every May at about now—opening this house—that shouldn’t become a mausoleum…”

  And now—Woods was offering her a drink?—he’d slipped away from her party with not one but two wineglasses and a bottle of red wine? “If not a cigarette—you’re right, Leah, it’s a filthy habit—‘genetics’ or not—how’s about a drink? This Burgundy is excellent.”

  Leah was offended but heard herself laugh. When she told Harris about this encounter, Harris would laugh. It was not to be believed, this young man’s arrogance: “I have an extra glass here, Leah. I had a hunch that someone would come out here to join me—at large parties, that’s usually the case. Like I say, I’m an ‘emissary.’ I’m a ‘Uranian.’ I bring news, bulletins. I’d hoped you would step out here voluntarily, Mrs. Zalk—I mean, as if ‘of your own free will.’ So—let’s drink, shall we? A toast to—”

  Leah had no intention of drinking with Woods Gottschalk. But there was the glass held out to her—one of their very old wedding-present wineglasses—crystal, sparkling-clean—just washed that morning by Leah, by hand. Unable to sleep she’d risen early—anxious that the house wasn’t clean, glasses and china and silverware weren’t clean, though the Filipina cleaning woman had come just the day before.

  Woods held his wineglass aloft. Leah lifted hers, reluctantly, as Woods intoned:

  “‘The universe culminates in the present moment and will never be more perfect.’ Emerson, I think—or Thoreau. And who was it said—‘Who has seen the past? The past is a mist, a mirage—no one can breathe in the past.’” Woods paused, drinking. “From the perspective of Uranus—though ‘Uranus’ is just the word, the actual planet is unfathomable—as all planets, all moons and stars and galaxies, are unfathomable—even the present isn’t exactly here. We behave as if it is, but that’s just expediency.”

  Leah laughed. What was Woods saying! All that she could remember of Uranus is that it was—is?—unless it had been demoted, like Pluto—one of the remote ice-planets about which no romance had been spun, unlike Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Or was she thinking of—Neptune? She lifted the wineglass, and drank. The wine was tart, darkly delicious. It had to be the last of the Burgundy wines her husband had purchased. Woods was saying, “These people—your friends—Dr. Zalk’s friends—and my parents’ friends—are wonderful people. Many of them—the men, at least—I mean, at the Institute—‘extraordinary,’ like Hans Gottschalk and Harris Zalk. You’re very lucky to have one another. To ‘define’ one another in your Institute community. And the food, Leah—this isn’t the Institute catering service, is it?—but much, much better. What I’ve sampled is excellent.”

  “The food is excellent. Yes.”

  “I could be a caterer, I think. The hell with being an ‘emissary.’ If things had gone otherwise.”

  Leah was distracted by the deep back half-acre lawn that was more ragged, seedier than she remembered. Along the sagging redwood fence were lilac bushes grown leggy and spindly and clumps of sinewy-looking grasses, tall savage wildflowers with clusters of tough little bloodred berry-blossoms that had to be poisonous. And a sizable part of the enormous old oak tree in the back had fallen as if in a storm. This past winter, there had been such fierce storms! But Leah was sure that Harris had made arrangements for their annual spring cleanup…She felt a stab of hurt, as well as chagrin, that the beautiful old oak had been so badly wounded without her knowing.

  “What do you do, Woods, since you’re not a caterer? I mean—what does an ‘emissary’ actually do for a living?”

  “Oh, I do what I am doing—and when I’m not, I’m doing something else.”

  Woods’s tone was enigmatic, teasing. His eyes, on Leah’s face, flitted about lightly as a bee, with a threat of stinging.

  “I don’t understand. What is it you do.”

  “Strictly speaking, I’m a ‘dropout.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of time. Make that a capital letter T—‘Time.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of Time to monitor eternity.” Woods laughed, and drank. “The crucial fact is—I am sober—these past eleven months—eleven months, nine days. I am not a caterer—not an ‘emissary’—I just ‘bear witness’—it’s this that propelled me here, to deliver to you.”

  Was he drunk? Deranged? High on drugs? (Halfway Leah remembered, she’d heard that the Gottschalks’ brilliant but unstable son had had a chronic drug problem—unless that was the Richters’ son, who’d dropped out of Yale and disappeared somewhere in northern Maine.)

  “My news is—the Apocalypse has happened—in an eye-blink, it was accomplished.” Woods spoke excitedly, yet calmly. “Still we persevere as if we were alive, that’s the get of our species.”

  “Really? And when was this ‘Apocalypse’?”

  “For some, it was just yesterday. For others, tomorrow. There isn’t just a single Apocalypse of course, but many—as many as there are individuals. There is no way to speak of such things adequately. There is simply not the vocabulary. But make no mistake”—Woods shook his head gravely, with a pained little smile—“you will be punished.”

  Now it was you. Leah shivered, she’d been thinking that Woods was speaking with cavalier magnanimity of we.

  “But why?—‘punished’?”

  “‘Why’?” Woods bared big chunky damp teeth in a semblance of a grin. “Are you kidding, Mrs. Zalk?”

  “I—I don’t think so. I’m asking you seriously.”

  A rush of feeling came over her. Guilty excitement, apprehension. For Woods was right: why should she escape punishment? A Caucasian woman of a privileged class, the wife of a prominent scientist—long the youngest and one of the more attractive wives in any gathering—a loved woman—a cherished woman—how vain, to imagine that this condition could persevere!

  “Global warming is just one of the imminent catastrophes. The seas will rise, the rivers will flood—the seashores will be washed away. Cities like New Orleans will be washed away. History itself will be washed away, into oblivion. It happened to the other planets—the ‘Ice Giants,’ long ago. No one laments the passing of those life-forms—none remain, to lament or to rejoice. In our soupy-warm Earth atm
osphere there will arise super-bugs for which ‘medical science’ can devise no vaccines or antibiotics. There will arise genetic mutations, malformations. These are the ‘Devil’s frolicks’—as it used to be said. Entire species will vanish—not just minuscule subspecies but major, mammalian species like our own. There will be as many catastrophes as there are individuals—for each is an individual ‘fate.’ But you will all be punished—when the knowledge catches up with you.”

  “You’ve said that but—why? Why ‘punished’? By whom?”

  Leah spoke with an uneasy lightness. This was the way of Harris—Harris and his scientist-friends—when confronted with the quasi-profound proclamations of non-scientists.

  The pain between her eyes was throbbing now and her eyes blinked away tears. A kind of scrim separating her from the world—from the otherness of the world—and from invasive personalities like Woods’s—had seemed to be failing her, frayed and tearing. She’d been susceptible to headaches all her life but now pain came more readily, you could say intimately. Harris—who rarely had headaches—tried to be sympathetic with her stooping to brush his lips against her forehead. Poor Leah! Is it all better now?

  Yes she told him. Oh yes much better thank you!

  Though in fact no. Except in fairy tales no true pain is mitigated by a kiss.

  “Because you’d had the knowledge, and hadn’t acted upon it. Your generation—your predecessors—and now mine. Human greed, corruption—indifference. Humankind has always known what the ‘good life’ is—except it’s fucking bor-ing.”

  Woods spoke cheerily and as if by rote. There was a curious—chilling—disjunction between the accusation of his words and the playful banter of his voice and again Leah was reminded of an actor’s face—a mask-face—fitted on the young man’s head like something wrapped in place. Defensively she said: “Evolution—that means change—‘evolving.’ Species have always passed away into extinction, and been replaced by other species. But no species can replace us.”

  “Wrong again, Mrs. Zalk! I hope your distinguished-scientist husband didn’t tell you something so foolish. Homo sapiens will certainly be replaced. Nature will not miss us.”

  Woods laughed baring his big chunky teeth. Leah stared at him in dislike, repugnance. This arrogant young man had so rattled her, she couldn’t seem to think coherently. Badly she’d been wanting to leave him—to return to the comforting din of the party—by now Harris would have noticed her absence, and would be concerned—but she couldn’t seem to move her legs. In a festive gesture Woods poured more wine into Leah’s glass and into his own but quickly Leah set her glass aside, on the slightly rotted porch railing. Woods lifted his glass in a mock-salute, and drank.

  “Yes—we will miss one another, Mrs. Zalk—but nature will not miss us. That’s our tragedy!”

  “How old are you, Woods?”

  “Forty-three.”

  “‘Forty-three’!”

  Leah wanted to protest But you were a boy just yesterday—last year. What has happened to you…

  Woods’s face was unlined, unblemished, yet the eyes were not a young man’s eyes. Through the wire-rimmed glasses you could see these eyes, with disturbing clarity.

  He’s mad Leah thought. Something has destroyed his brain—his soul.

  “Well. I—I think I should be getting back to my party—people will be wondering where I am. And you should come, too, Woods—it’s cold out here.”

  This was so: the balmy May afternoon had darkened by degrees into a chilly windblown dusk. Dead leaves on the broken oak limbs rattled irritably in the wind as if trying to speak. Quickly Leah retreated before Woods could clasp her hand again in his crushing grip.

  She would leave her unsettling companion gazing after her, leaning against the porch railing that sagged beneath his weight. Cigarette in one hand, wineglass in the other, and the purloined bottle of Burgundy near-empty on the porch floor at his feet.

  How warm—unpleasantly warm—the interior of the house was, after the fresh air of outdoors.

  At the threshold of the crowded living room Leah paused. Her vision was blurred as if she’d just stepped inside out of a bright glaring place and her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darker interior. In a panic Leah looked for Harris, to appeal to him. She looked for Harris, to make things right. He would slip his arm around her, to comfort her. Gravely he would ask her what was wrong, why was she so upset, gently he would laugh at her and assure her that there was nothing to be upset about, what did it matter if a drunken young man had spoken foolishly to her—what did any of that matter when the birthday party Leah had planned for him was a great success, all their parties in this marvelous old house were great successes, and he loved her.

  Harris didn’t seem to be in the living room talking with his friends—they must have moved into another room. The party seemed to have become noisier. Everyone was shouting. From all directions came a harsh tearing laughter. The pianist who’d been playing Liszt so beautifully had departed, it seemed—now there was a harsher species of music—a tape perhaps—what sounded like electronic music—German industrial rock music?—primitive and percussive, deafening. Who were these people? Was Leah expected to know these people? A few of the faces were familiar—vaguely familiar—others were certainly strangers. Someone had dared to take down Harris’s wonderful photographs from his world travels—in their place were ugly splotched canvases, crookedly hung. The dazzling-yellow sprigs of forsythia had been replaced by vases of artificial flowers with slick red plastic stamens—birds of paradise? The rental tables were larger than Leah had wished and covered with garish red-striped tablecloths—who had ordered these? Without asking her permission the caterers’ assistants had rearranged furniture, Harris’s handsome old Steinway grand piano had been shoved rudely into an alcove of the living room and folding chairs had been set up in place of Leah’s rattan chairs in the sunroom. The buffet service had begun, guests were crowding eagerly forward. In a panic Leah pushed blindly through the line of strangers looking for—someone—whom she was desperate to find—a person, a man, from whom she’d been separated—in the confusion and peril of the moment she could not have named who it was, but she would know him, when she saw him, or he saw her.

  LOST DADDY

  The mommy was at the University Medical Center Clinic where she worked—the mommy’s work was anesthesiology which made your tongue twist like a corkscrew—one of those words that make you laugh and cringe—you could hear it, and recognize it, as a dog recognizes his name, but could not ever pronounce it.

  Mommy puts people to sleep the daddy said. Mommy is paid very handsomely to put people to sleep and to wake them up again—if Mommy can. The daddy laughed saying such things like riddles—the daddy often laughed saying things like riddles which made Tod uneasy and provoked him to say in a whining voice Why’d you pay to sleep?—why’d anybody pay to sleep?—you can just go to bed to sleep can’t you? Daddy’s being silly—because really you never knew if the daddy was being silly or serious or something in-between and not-knowing was scary.

  This day was a special day. At breakfast, Tod knew.

  The daddy waited until the mommy left for work then pushed aside the bright yellow Cheerios box and the daddy whistled loudly preparing French toast pouring maple syrup lavishly onto slabs of egg-soggy toast so the toast floated in the syrup and spilled out onto the Formica-top breakfast nook table. Some of the toast burnt in the frying pan and the daddy scraped it out with a sharp knife and the smell of scorch filled the kitchen, the daddy grunted opening a window and fresh air rushed in making Tod sneeze. It was one of those fierce bright mornings the daddy loved little dude so, hugged him so hard Tod shrieked with laughter anxious the daddy would crack his ribs or drop him onto the hardwood floor.

  Love you li’l dude! One day, you’ll know how much.

  The change in our schedules—this was what the mommy called it speaking in a lowered voice on her cell phone when the daddy wasn’t near—began so soon after To
d’s birthday—which was March 11—when Tod was four years old—that sometimes it seemed maybe his birthday had something to do with it. Tod knew better but sometimes he felt that the daddy blamed him—for it was just a few days later that the daddy was downsized.

  What this meant wasn’t clear for if Tod asked his father what was downsized his father just joked waving his hands in the harassed-daddy way as if brushing away flies Some kind of shrink-wrap it’s the principle of mummization which Tod didn’t understand—for the daddy said such things, to make you realize you didn’t understand—not just to Tod but to everyone including the mommy and Tod’s grandparents—and once—this was in the park, the daddy was talking with a friend—Miniaturized is what it is, each day I shrink a little till my kid and I will be twins and fit in each other’s clothes.

  This was scary too but Tod knew, the way the daddy laughed, and the other man laughed with him though not so loudly as the daddy laughed, it was meant to be a joke, and meant to be funny.

  Now it was, in the weeks following Tod’s fourth birthday in March, the daddy was home much of the time. This was so strange!—for as long as Tod could remember the daddy had always been away at work all day and returned in time for supper at 7 P.M. or sometimes later after the mommy had put Tod to bed. Now the daddy was always home. The daddy was home in the morning after the mommy left for the medical center. The daddy was the one to make Tod’s breakfast and walk Tod six blocks to nursery school and return at noon to bring Tod back home.

  No longer was there any need for the nice Filipina lady to take care of Tod after school. Suddenly it happened that Magdalena was gone for the change in our schedule came abruptly and seemingly irrevocably and within days Tod was forgetting that there’d ever been Magdalena for now there was just the daddy in the house when the mommy wasn’t there. There was just the daddy to rouse Tod from bed, bathe him and hug him hard in the bath towel and feed him. And sometimes it was the daddy who put Tod to bed if the mommy came home late. All this because the daddy had been downsized—which was a word the daddy pronounced like it was something sharp inside his mouth cutting it or a red-hot coal the daddy would have liked to spit out except it was making him laugh, too—or was the daddy trying not to laugh?—you had to look at the daddy closely like somebody on TV to see if he was serious or not-serious but if you looked too close at the daddy the daddy became angry suddenly because the daddy was like Canis familiaris he said he did not like to be stared at at close quarters Got that, little dude?