American Appetites

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In the first row, behind him, sat Bianca; beside her, Glynnis’s sister, Katherine. (Who had very little to say to Ian McCullough, these days.) Scattered throughout the courtroom were familiar faces: friends, acquaintances, colleagues whom Ian’s eye nervously sought even as it recoiled from them in shame. (One of the faces, the mouth very red and the pale skin smooth as porcelain, belonged to Meika Cassity.) Most of the men and women who had crowded into the courtroom on the second floor of this rather churchly courthouse were strangers to Ian McCullough and certainly had not known Glynnis. Who were they, Ian wondered, and why, on this freezing icy morning, had they made the effort to come to this place, to crowd into pews, to observe him: to be spectators at his trial? What did they, seeing him, see?

  The setting, and the crowdedness, reminded Ian of Glynnis’s funeral service at the First Unitarian Church. Where the casket bearing his wife’s body had been, Ian himself was now seated; where that spare yet eloquent ceremony had dealt with death, and with life’s accommodation of death, this ceremony, protracted, graceless, subject to constant interruptions and derailments and that air, ingrained in the grime of the hardwood floor and the shiny scrim of dirt on the windowpanes, of the defiantly anachronistic, was to deal with punishment. For justice in its ideality can only be measured in terms of punishment, Ian thought. Without punishment there can be no justice.

  The Cattaraugus County courthouse in the county seat of Cattaraugus, New York, an easy half-hour from Hazelton along a scenic country highway, had been built in the heyday of Greek Revival fashion: chunky granite columns, with a flurry at their tops of Corinthian excess; numberless granite steps; a stately portico; and, inside, a stately foyer, opening onto yet more stairs of the same smooth-worn stone, rising to the second floor, curved and splendid as a staircase in a mansion. To enter its poorly lit and poorly ventilated interior was to enter a place of, paradoxically, solemnity and cacophony: for the acoustics were terrible, and voices, even when raised, even when rebounding from wall to wall, were difficult to hear. Decades out of date, badly in need of renovation, if not actual demolition—in the right frame of mind, Ian was inspired to note such grandiloquent architectural monstrosities with an architect’s unsentimental eye—the building did exact from those who entered it a measure of frightened awe. And the high-ceilinged and many-windowed courtroom with its marble pillars, its oak pews and wainscoting, the judge’s raised bench, the heraldic insignia of American justice and the faded, limp, yet still imperial American flag at its front, did suggest a significance scarcely to be named: though those who entered it were dwarfs, those who inhabited it, at its highest echelons at least, were giants. A self-referential little American world, staffed by females, ordained by males.

  Entering the building in the company of his daughter and, of course, Nick Ottinger and one of Ottinger’s young assistants, Ian had felt, despite his resolve to feel nothing, a stab of physical pain and apprehension, a despairing sense that, however his fate might be decided in this place, it would not really relate to him: would fail to define, to him, the nature of his crime, his guilt, and even his punishment.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE, at the Cassitys’, Meika had said, as if impulsively, laying a hand on Ian’s arm and squeezing with surprisingly strong fingers, “What we should all do, you know, is reject them; reject their damned authority; fly away, the three of us, to someplace nice, like Majorca or Rio. Have you ever been to Rio? Yes? It’s lovely, isn’t it? If you stick to the right quarters.”

  AFTER NUMEROUS DELAYS, including, for some confused and rancorous minutes, the possibility of the trial’s opening being postponed until the afternoon—a document, pertinent to the prosecution’s case, having been misplaced, or lost, and demanded by the court—the trial was finally formally convened: the case of the People of the State of New York v. Ian J. McCullough, on charges of second-degree murder, announced by the clerk of the court, at 10:35 A.M. of February 26, 1988. The prosecutor stepped forward to identify himself, and the defense attorney stepped forward to identify himself—and to request that the court enter a plea of “not guilty” to the charges pronounced against his client. There was a lengthy discussion, in which Ian had no part, before Judge Harmon’s bench: indeed, a surprisingly lengthy discussion. Then the procedure began again, like a faulty engine kicking to life, and, with a certain degree of dramatic flourish the jurors—seven men and five women, all white, most of middle age—were led into the courtroom and took their places in the jury box. They looked at Ian McCullough, and, circumspectly, with a dizzily pounding heart, Ian McCullough looked at them. Nick Ottinger had seemingly taken countless pains with the selection of this particular jury; had done everything within his power as defense counsel—so he assured Ian, and so Ian believed—to make certain that none of these men and women was so much as “latently” ill-disposed to Ian McCullough.

  So it begins, Ian thought.

  He saw the members of the press, a veritable platoon of men and women, rather like a second jury, seated at a long table against the farther wall and in the first two rows of benches, until now slack-jawed with boredom, begin to quicken in interest and to take up their pens. He felt suddenly very like the way he felt in his doctor’s examining room, when, having reported stoically for his annual checkup—the dreaded one involving an examination for cancer of the lower bowel—he was forced to wait so long that his anxiety became dulled. Where visceral fear had been, an anesthetized resignation had settled in. Almost.

  For his appearance in court Ian wore his dark gray pin-striped suit minus the vest, which fitted him rather loosely now, as if it were another man’s. Glynnis had selected it, years ago, for an honorific occasion now long forgotten; Bianca had selected it more recently, having conferred with Nick Ottinger, for this occasion. And a white shirt with modest cuff links, and a tie of some somber hue and fabric, and polished shoes. His hair, faded almost entirely to silver and receding from his high forehead—catching sight of himself unexpectedly, in mirrors, Ian was now in the habit of thinking, Who is that man?—had been trimmed to the perfect length, neither too short nor too long.

  Though, from having seen the grand jury transcript, Ian knew beforehand the substance of the prosecution’s case against him and, more or less, what Samuel S. Lederer would say of him in his opening remarks, it was a daunting thing to sit, in so public a place, and hear himself accused of having caused the death of his wife of twenty-six-years “with intent”; of having killed her by fracturing her skull in an action “as deliberate, and as cruel” as if he had bludgeoned her to death with a hammer. “This is a simple case,” Lederer said. “A case of lust, greed, and barbaric selfishness.” He had lowered his voice dramatically; he addressed not only the jurors, who were staring at him with rapt, it seemed very nearly hypnotized attention, but everyone in the courtroom. Ian felt a spasm of nausea, a threat of immediate physical distress. He thought, I cannot bear it.

  The defendant McCullough, Lederer continued, had a very specific motive for wanting his wife dead and out of the way: he had entered into an adulterous liaison with a young woman, “a young woman half his age.” Though a highly respected faculty member of the Institute for Independent Research in the Social Sciences and an allegedly well-liked member of his community, McCullough lacked the patience, or the moral integrity, to sever his marital ties in an aboveboard manner, or perhaps he did not want to give up any portion of his estate in a costly divorce settlement. In any case. . . .

  Ian stared at Lederer through a mist of pain as the man paced about before the judge’s bench, with a veteran’s sense of how to use the space and how to use his gesticulating hands to advantage. How confident he was! How unhesitating, in the dreadful things he said! His eyes shone like chips of glass in his broad, ruddy, creased face; his gleaming head, which seemed disproportionately large for his narrow shoulders, had a look of being hard and was fringed with graying red curls. Ottinger had so long spoken disparagingly of Lederer, questioning not only his integrity in bringing charges agai
nst Ian but his knowledge of the law and his competence as a prosecutor, that Ian was disconcerted by his performance; for much of what he said was convincing, however exaggerated for theatrical emphasis. My enemy, Ian thought. Who wants my heart. But the man was of course a fellow professional, going about his job.

  As Ottinger had explained to Ian, the prosecutor’s task was to construct an agent, a hypothesis, to account for a death that had come under his jurisdiction, a death that might not seem accountable in ordinary—i.e., noncriminal—terms. If he charged murder in the second degree it was probably with the hope of winning with manslaughter; there was no third-degree murder charge under the New York State statute. In the normal course of events—if, for instance, Ian had had prior convictions—he and his attorney might have plea-bargained with Lederer and settled for a lesser charge. It was unlikely that murder could be proven without eyewitnesses, and on circumstantial evidence of the kind the prosecution had assembled; yet in an American law court, given the jury system and the notorious unreliability of witnesses, not to mention the deviousness of certain members of the bench, anything might happen. Anything! Particularly if Ian refused to take the witness stand and defend himself; and this Ian did not want to do. So now, listening to Lederer, to a careful description of witnesses and exhibits to come, Ian could see all too readily the logic of the man’s argument: his invention of an agent, and of a motive, to account for the death of Glynnis McCullough. None of it was true but all was logical.

  And why not simply kill yourself, he thought, and escape them all; make a noble Roman end of it? In all that you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your hands . . . as Marcus Aurelius taught. He’d been with his friends, and they’d been drinking—Ian McCullough too had been drinking a bit more than usual, a bit more than was usually associated with that upright self-conscious citizen “Ian McCullough”—and the subject had come up; or was it an issue, suicide, a moral issue, not entirely serious yet not entirely playful either? and Meika Cassity had said, baring her lovely teeth in a grimace, But why cut your throat? There are so many others ready to do it for you.

  Another time, Meika had said, There are better things to do. Besides dying, I mean.

  Samuel S. Lederer was concluding his presentation. It had gone on a long time. At the very end he stood in silence, as if exhausted by his effort. His manner had by degrees become heavily ironic; challenged several times by Ottinger, the ever-vigilant, he had acquiesced, with an expression of disdain, before Judge Harmon could rule against him. Indignation oozed like oil from his pores: he wiped his heated face with a handkerchief and still did not move from the spot until Judge Harmon made an impatient gesture and invited him to step down.

  “Certainly, Your Honor,” he said.

  Now Nicholas Ottinger rose to his feet and began his rebuttal. He too would present the case as a simple one: no crime had been committed, and no crime could be proved to have been committed. No crime and no criminal; no proof and no case. The prosecutor, Mr. Lederer, was faced with reelection, and, having no record of distinction with which to run, he was “desperately grasping at political straws,” using any means at his disposal to court public favor and to get his picture in the papers. (Here, a mild ripple of laughter ran through the courtroom, at Lederer’s expense. Those who had avidly followed his words only minutes ago now smiled at his reddened, surely not very photogenic face in skeptical mirth.) Similarly, the Hazelton township police were engaged in a personal vendetta of sorts against Ian McCullough, as a consequence of Dr. McCullough’s involvement in an American Civil Liberties Union case of some years ago. (Of which, more, in time.) There was no adulterous liaison with the young woman named Sigrid Hunt, who had been Mrs. McCullough’s friend primarily; there was no marital discord, but, as friends of the McCulloughs would testify, a long, happy, mutually respectful relationship; Glynnis McCullough had died as a result of a tragic accident, an accident sui generis—“which is to say, unique of its kind”—for which no one, absolutely no one, could be blamed. As for the accused: Dr. Ian McCullough, for sixteen years a senior fellow on the political science faculty at the Institute for Independent Research in the Social Sciences, Hazelton-on-Hudson, was one of the most admired, respected, and loved men in his community: one of the most brilliant, industrious, and productive men in his field, the comparatively new field of demographics. (“That is,” Ottinger carefully emended, yet in such a way as to suggest that no one would be expected to know so exotic a word, “population study.”) To imagine that Dr. McCullough, of all men, a devoted husband of twenty-six years, a loving father of a college-age daughter, the most reliable of friends, neighbors, citizens, would so much as wish injury to another human being, let alone commit it, was self-evidently ludicrous; to imagine that he would wish injury to his wife, let alone commit it, verged upon the obscene. The public prosecutor of Cattaraugus County has misused the power of his office in an effort to. . . . The defense will show. . . .

  Ian sat very straight and very still, his hands clasped together, hard, on the table before him, his head raised, alertly and respectfully, as if he were listening. Through a tall narrow window beyond the jurors’ box there came a dull but harsh winter light, of the color of bone marrow, and Ian willed it to flood his consciousness: to muffle all sound, sight, motion. He understood with a part of his mind that his “counsel” was performing beautifully on his behalf; that the mood of the courtroom had shifted; that it would, again, and yet again, who knew how many times, shift: like sand, like water, like molecules, the flood of atoms swerving through the void. He had no instruments, but he knew it all. He would learn to retreat, Ian thought, to a place beyond karmic illusion. He would get there, and he would survive.

  2.

  Meika slapped Ian, lightly; she wanted him, she said, to be awake. For he had to leave soon didn’t he and their time together was precious wasn’t it she wanted him to be fully awake. “Yes and I do too,” Ian said, smiling but very sleepy, groping for her hand, her hands, which were so warm, busy, fretful, proprietary.

  He squeezed the hands in his, the small light bones, a sparrow’s bones, until she winced.

  “. . . love you.”

  “Yes and I . . . do too.”

  “Loved you for such a damned long time. But you know.”

  “Do I . . . ?”

  “You know now.”

  “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  But he kept falling asleep. Images, bright, blurred, as if seen fleetingly through water, passed through his vision, toppled over, disappeared. Meika leaned over him and kissed him and ran her tongue, and her teeth, over him, laughing quietly, the length of her body warm and insistent against his, as intimate as if they had been lovers, like this, for a very long time. Though of course he did not know the woman. Did he. Meika Cassity who is Vaughn Cassity’s wife, old friends of Glynnis’s and mine; we are all old friends, belong to the same circle of friends, entertaining in one another’s homes for years, a circle of friends, unknown to one another. Meika was stroking his belly, his thighs, his penis, at first lightly, with feathery touches, then more firmly, assuredly; Meika was kissing, tonguing, his nipples, biting his nipples, her breath warm and damp against his chest, her hair with its ashy-dry synthetic smell in his face, strands of it against his mouth. She’d been lazy and yawning and fucked out, she said; now she wanted to fuck again and damn him she wanted him awake—laughing in his ear, sticking her tongue in his ear, pummeling him, tickling him hard, and again taking his penis between her fingers, with a rough proprietary air, like milking a cow’s teat (she’d said the other night, rather shocking him), and Ian, laughing, struggling to breathe, felt all the blood of his body rush as if panicked to the organ between his legs; limp and boneless it had been, like the man himself, exhausted, emptied out, sucked dry; but now, as if in defiance of his will (for, sleep-dazed as he was he nonetheless knew he must get up and get home, must get up and get home, there was Bianca, in bed, he hoped in bed bu
t surely not asleep, well aware of her father’s inexplicable lateness, her father’s really quite mysterious lateness, returning from supper at the Cassitys’ and expected back hours ago), gradually hardening, becoming erect, a rod of vengeance, delirium. Oh God I love you I’m crazy about you came the hot urgent breath in his face as she straddled him, grunting with effort, panting, her thin body slippery and snaky and dank with sweat; come inside me I’m dying for you. But he kept falling asleep.

  IS IT MEIKA, is it you and Meika, why now, why her? Bianca so clearly wanted to ask; are you that desperate? that reckless? that mad? But of course Bianca had not asked: Bianca was no longer that kind of daughter. And Ian had not explained himself to her.