American Appetites

by Joyce Carol Oates

  HE WENT BACK into the house and, in the kitchen, poured himself an inch or two of Scotch and drank it down, not as Ian McCullough would do but as another man might do, practical-minded, tough, willing to face facts: And if the police questioned her? and if she told, as she must tell, the truth?

  He thought, staring at the snapshots scattered across the kitchen table, the sympathy cards in piles on the windowsill, But I am a posthumous man, am I not?

  He smiled, thinking, What can they do to me?

  4.

  Glynnis died: and was buried. But her death, in a sense, was only now beginning.

  In compliance with state law, the Hazelton Medical Center had reported the death to the Cattaraugus County Department of Health. The chief medical examiner for the county, a physician named Boesak, found nothing with which to fault the Medical Center itself, either in its surgical or its postsurgical procedures, but did rule that the circumstances surrounding the death were suspicious: enough to justify turning the case over to the county prosecutor’s office with a “strong recommendation” that a criminal investigation be made. It did not appear, on the basis of X rays taken upon admission to the hospital, that the subject had walked into the plate-glass window, or even, in all probability, that she had fallen against it; her injuries were to the back of the head primarily, and not to the front, and of sufficient severity to suggest she had been pushed, with considerable force, against the glass. Which might indicate, under the New York State statute, charges ranging from second-degree murder to voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.

  It was early, not yet eight o’clock in the morning of May 27, the day following Roberta Grinnell’s visit, when two Hazelton police detectives, Wentz and Holleran as they introduced themselves, came to the house to ask Ian a few questions and to take a look, if Ian did not mind, at the scene of the accident. Though at this time Ian knew nothing about the medical examiner’s report, and certainly nothing about a formal police investigation, he asked the detectives at once, and simply, “Am I under arrest?” And they said, “No, no, Dr. McCullough, you are not under arrest”—politely, even a bit deferentially—“but we do have a few questions; may we come in?”

  “Yes,” Ian said. “Of course.”

  He had been waiting for this for so long, so very long, the crucial telephone call, the knock at the door, the hour of accounting. Now that it had arrived, however, he realized he had not been prepared for it at all—for its effect upon him was immediate, and visceral, and surely transparent. He must have looked like a man who has been kicked hard in the belly.

  In a haze of pain he let the police detectives in, led them in. “This is the dining room,” he heard himself say, surely unnecessarily, “and this is the window that shattered . . . this is the window that shattered.” There was a brief pause during which time the three of them stared at the window; and, beyond it, at the splendid morning sunshine, and the flagstone terrace with its white wrought-iron furniture, its pots of now rather desiccated geraniums—plants that Glynnis had wintered over, and someone, not Ian so it must have been Marvis or Bianca, had set outside. “Of course, as you can see, I had it replaced,” Ian said. “The window.”

  “When did you have it replaced, Dr. McCullough?” Wentz asked, notebook in hand, unless it was Holleran who asked, for Ian could not remember which man was which, or even whether he had heard the names correctly. At the door they had shown him their IDs and their smart polished badges, not unlike television actors impersonating police officers, but Ian hadn’t seen; hadn’t somehow heard. He knew only that the men were strangers to him, not friends, though with an edge of friendliness—unless he imagined it: no taller than he but large, stocky, physically imposing, within seconds using up too much oxygen in the room, so that, despite the most strenuous efforts of his will, he became dangerously light-headed; indeed, he was suddenly on the verge of fainting and was obliged, to his embarrassment, to lean forward against the dining room table, both hands flat on the table, his head lowered, until the spell passed. Replaced? When had he had what replaced . . . ?

  They asked was he all right, would he like to sit down, and Ian seemed not to hear, trying very hard to answer the question he knew he’d been asked. “The window,” he said. “The day after the accident, I had it replaced, that glass installation and repair store on Charter Street in the village; the receipt is in my desk drawer if you’d like to see it.” It pleased him that he could proffer these men—so reassuringly professional in their suits, white shirts, neckties; the elder of the two even wore horn-rimmed glasses that resembled Ian’s own—this small nugget of information, this most factual of facts.

  “Are you all right, Dr. McCullough? You’re looking a little pale.”

  “Not at all. No. I am fine.”

  “Do you mind—?”

  “What? Oh, no. Of course.”

  They unlocked the plate-glass door and pushed it carefully open; went outside to examine the terrace beneath the window; spoke in an undertone to each other, which Ian could not hear and did not wish to hear. As soon as he’d come home from the Medical Center that day he had done his best to clean up on the terrace—he’d swept away the broken glass, scrubbed away the bloodstains. There had been blood in the gravel directly beneath the window, too, and this gravel Ian had carefully raked up, and tossed away in the woods behind the house, and replaced with fresh gravel from the driveway. He had performed his terrible task slowly and even dreamily and had forgotten it immediately afterward; now, as he watched the detectives squatting outside the window, poking in the gravel, he remembered; felt physically sick, remembering; for he’d known at the time that, later, at this time—he hadn’t any doubt this time would arrive—he would remember having done these things, with the understanding that of course he was a murderer, whether Glynnis died or lived.

  Wentz, or was it Holleran, lifted a sliver of glass between his fingers, and examined it briefly, and let it fall. When the men stood they brushed their hands against their heavy thighs, and Ian thought of how they were kindly men, men who wished him no personal harm, yet his enemies, as Glynnis was becoming his enemy, against the grain of all he desired: in opposition to all he knew of himself, of the fundamental decency of his soul.

  The men came back into the house, staring hard, it seemed, at Ian, as if something had been decided. It was Wentz (if Wentz was the one with the glasses) who had the police report, the young officers’ report, made on the night of the twenty-third of April, regarding the circumstances of the accident as it had been told to them, the condition of the dining room, evidence of struggle, and so on and so forth, reading aloud, skimming, too quickly for Ian to entirely grasp. He was stunned to realize that a police report existed; he remembered only dimly the young police officers in his house, summoned, for reasons of inexplicable and unforgivable malice, by their neighbors the Dewalds. One of the officers had wrapped Ian’s bleeding hand in a towel, had helped him walk out to the ambulance. Careful, mister. Careful.

  They had had no right to enter his house. He’d made an irrevocable error to have allowed it.

  Wentz and Holleran were examining the dining room table, the chairs, the rug, the parquet floor . . . though there was nothing to examine, nothing to see. What was there to see? Ian had put everything to rights long ago, Marvis had done a general housecleaning; what was there to see? They went into the kitchen, commented on the attractiveness of the kitchen; they’d heard, they said, that Ian’s late wife—the words “late wife” hung oddly in the air—was a well-known writer of cookbooks, and Ian said yes, yes, that’s true.

  Had he not feared they might think him boastful, he would have showed them Glynnis’s books in their bright cheery wrappers.

  Wentz and Holleran took note, though without comment, of the snapshots on the kitchen table and of the bulletin board, whose numerous items Ian had not touched and did not intend to touch. In the kitchen, the men seemed yet larger and fleshier than before, their expressions graver. Wentz pointed to the magnetized k
nife rack on the wall and said, as if casually, “Which is the knife the officer found on the floor? Is it one of these?”

  “Knife? What knife?”

  “‘Steak knife, ten inches, bloodstained.’ Is it one of these here?”

  “I don’t remember any knife,” Ian said carefully. “There wasn’t any knife.”

  “According to the officers’ report there was a knife, and your hand was cut from the knife; it was bleeding pretty badly from the knife, wasn’t it?”

  “From the glass,” Ian said. “The broken glass.”

  “Wasn’t there a knife?”

  “I don’t remember any knife.”

  “Don’t remember any knife?”

  “There wasn’t any knife.”

  “And how did you cut your hand so severely?”

  “It wasn’t cut severely,” Ian said. He held out his hand for the detectives to examine, should they wish to examine it: the stitches had been taken out; the cuts were healing nicely. “I cut it on the window,” he said. “On pieces of glass in the window.”

  He was trembling violently, absurdly. His teeth were nearly chattering in his head.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing, I was so upset. When Glynnis fell. I tried to catch her, I think—I nearly fell through the window with her. I reached out and grabbed hold of something and it was glass—”

  “What exactly happened between you and your wife, Dr. McCullough? could you tell us, in as much detail as possible?”

  They led Ian back into the dining room, as onto a stage. Ian was sweating inside his clothes, badly confused, unable to judge if the detectives were respectful of him or mocking. Did they know? But what did they know?

  “Where were you standing, approximately, Dr. McCullough, when your wife ‘fell’ through the window? Where was she standing?”

  “I don’t know . . . I really can’t remember.”

  “Assuming she was standing where I am, with her back to the window, where were you standing? Why were you standing, the two of you? Hadn’t you been sitting, at the table?”

  Ian said, “I’ve explained so many times . . . it was an accident. I truly don’t know how it happened.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, his eyes that were raw with pain, unable to bear the men staring at him, so casually yet so frankly, with their air of knowing that he lied even as he inwardly protested he did not lie. “It was an accident,” he said. “A tragic accident. An accident that grew out of a misunderstanding.”

  “Yes? A misunderstanding?”

  “A misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding about what?”

  But Ian, try as he could, could not remember.

  “Finances, marital problems, another woman? You weren’t seeing another woman, Dr. McCullough, were you?”

  Ian shook his head angrily. He said, “My wife and I were happily married.”

  BY THIS TIME Ian’s legs were so shaky he had to sit down. Invited the detectives into the living room, to sit down. Thank you, Dr. McCullough, they murmured. Wentz, Holleran: his enemies. His and Glynnis’s.

  He recalled the state police officers, last September, pounding on his door. The terrifying authority of the police, of raw physical power. These men, for all that they wore suits, ties, decently polished shoes, Wentz with his horn-rimmed glasses and Holleran with his affable potbelly, nonetheless carried revolvers on their persons. Should Ian make a sudden, desperate move, should he in any way threaten them with “bodily harm,” they had the authority to shoot him down; even to kill. He wondered how easily that might happen . . . so lurid, improbable, yet rather tantalizing a scenario. Suppose he’d opened the door to the policemen that night, in a mimicry of rage, shouting for them to get off his property, threatening them with his fists—or, better yet, a knife, a gun—they would certainly have shot him down on his very doorstep and been considered justified in doing so. In such ways, Ian thought, we do control our destinies.

  They continued to ask him questions, and he continued to answer, in his vague, halting, suspicious manner: a man still in shock, it seemed; stunned, still, by the fact of his wife’s death. And indeed the fact of it was to Ian, and would be for weeks to come, if not months, like a sound so explosively deafening it could not be heard, only felt.

  The subject now was the McCulloughs’ drinking on the night of the accident, the high alcoholic content in their blood, and Ian, deeply embarrassed, said yes, yes, they’d both been drinking, more than they were accustomed to, wine mainly, wine at dinner, a protracted dinner, a mistake. Why was it a mistake? Wentz asked. Because they weren’t really drinkers, weren’t really accustomed to drinking, Ian said. And why was that? Holleran asked, frowning the way a friend might frown, purse-lipped, thoughtful, wanting to know the truth; but Ian was silent, Ian was mute, not knowing the truth or not knowing how to speak it. He sat with his hands clasped in his lap, long bony fingers they seemed to him, their backs covered with pale hairs, as his forearms, his legs, his chest was covered in pale, fine, baby-fine hairs, which Glynnis used to stroke: so long ago, when they were first lovers, and each small discovery in the other’s body had the force of revelation. What were they asking him? What was the mistake? Ian lifted his face blindly to his interrogators and said, with dignity, “I tell you, I don’t know.”

  Wentz was seated on one end of the sofa, Ian on the other, Holleran in a lime-green velvet chair whose small, spare frame looked inadequate to bear his bulk. Ian watched the chair’s curved legs nervously. Once, many years ago, when they were all new to Hazelton, Vaughn Cassity, having had a few too many drinks, had sat down hard in an antique chair at someone’s house, and the chair had comically buckled. Holleran must have weighed two hundred thirty pounds and had a disconcerting habit of leaning forward, then settling backward, readjusting his buttocks in the seat.

  The detectives circled about the idea—the theme, it might have been—of the McCulloughs’ mysterious misunderstanding. Did it escalate into a quarrel? Did the quarrel escalate into a pushing and shoving match? Were there weapons of any kind involved . . . candlestick holders, bottles, a knife? Ian shook his head mutely, stubbornly. He knew he must say nothing further, must not incriminate himself, or poor Glynnis, further. He would not make of his wife whom he loved a drunken frenzied knife-wielding woman, to save his own skin.

  Casually, or with a pretense of casualness, Wentz informed Ian that it had not been only the Dewalds who’d heard screaming on the night of April twenty-third; the twelve-year-old son of their other neighbors, the Weschlers, had heard something too but hadn’t been certain, thinking it might have been a television set turned up loud. The boy told police he’d heard shouts or screams for a long time, an hour maybe. Did Ian have any comment on that?

  Ian stared at the floor at his feet: one of Glynnis’s inherited Oriental rugs, beautiful colors, serpentine patterns, arabesques. He said, “The boy is lying.” He said quickly, “I mean—he’s exaggerating.”

  Again, quite casually, Wentz mentioned that they’d heard, from residents in the neighborhood and in Hazelton generally, that the McCulloughs belonged to a circle of unusually social people; that they were in the habit of giving parties frequently, going to parties frequently . . . was that true? Reluctantly, Ian said, “Yes,” still staring at the floor, “it’s more or less true, we seem to have been caught up in social life more than I wanted. . . .”

  “This looks like a great house for a party,” Holleran said. “You could fit how many people in here, fifty? Sixty?”

  Ian said, as if in rebuke, “But we weren’t in the habit of drinking heavily.”

  “Why, then, Dr. McCullough, on the night of the twenty-third, were the two of you drinking ‘heavily’?” Wentz asked.

  His tone was matter-of-fact, in no way aggressive; as if, Ian thought, the three of them were uniformly engaged in the pursuit of an elusive but not ineluctable truth. Yet Ian spoke with surprising anger. “How many times must I tell you! I don’t know.”

  Wentz regarded him q
uizzically. “Don’t know why you were drinking? Why that night was something out of the ordinary? You told us—”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was nearly ten o’clock. The detectives had been questioning him for two hours.

  Ian got abruptly to his feet, told Wentz and Holleran that he couldn’t speak with them any longer; he had an appointment (it was true: he had an appointment) at the Institute, at ten o’clock. And he couldn’t speak with them in any case, any longer, without an attorney.

  So, affably enough, they put away their notebooks and thanked Ian for his trouble; and, at the door, which Ian opened for them, Wentz, unless it was Holleran, the one with the horn-rimmed glasses, shook Ian’s hand, and smiled, and said, “You won’t be leaving town of course; you’ll be staying in this area, Dr. McCullough, for the foreseeable future, won’t you.”

  And Ian said, furiously, “I’ll go anywhere I damned want to go; in fact I am going to a conference in Frankfurt very soon”—though the Frankfurt conference was past; he’d missed it of course, had never even completed his paper.

  “Well,” Wentz said, still smiling, “I wouldn’t, Dr. McCullough. If I were you.”

  HE’D KNOWN AT the time that he was making one blunder after another in talking to the detectives as he had: with so little premeditation or calculation; with such emotion, such a hope of making them see his innocence, even as he lied. His initial mistake, of course, was letting them into the house without a warrant.

  Yet, as he was to tell his attorney, would an innocent man refuse to talk to the police? Why would an innocent man refuse to talk to the police?

  “Because he’s an amateur,” Ian’s attorney said. “And they are professionals.”

  5.

  After May 27 things happened swiftly.

  As if a dike were unlocked, a great flood of water unleashed.

  And there is no stopping it now, Ian thought.