The Corn Maiden: And Other Nightmares

by Joyce Carol Oates

“But you were—where? When?”

  “Before I went in the service, at Rutgers. And, for a few months, after I was discharged.”

  “You were in the army?”

  “I was in the army.”

  His smile was pained, his eyes were veiled, evasive. His words were uttered as if to echo Helene’s—she hoped not in mockery.

  Yet she persisted: “And was it—a war?”

  “Yes, ma’am. ‘It was a war.’”

  More clearly the man’s remark echoed Helene’s awkward words, in mockery.

  War might mean—what? Afghanistan? Iraq? And before these—the first Gulf War?

  Beyond that was the Vietnam War—but Nicolas was too young for the Vietnam War. Helene tried to calculate dates, years. . . . She wondered: had the intimacy between them been rent, so quickly? Or was it deepening, in the intensity of their awareness of each other?

  She felt her face beat with blood, this was the first emotion she’d experienced since her husband’s death that was not raw pitiless grief but something finer and more hopeful.

  “I—I’m sorry, Nicolas. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  She spoke so softly, he had to relent.

  “No, ma’am. Just that—there’s things I’d rather not talk about, right now.”

  “I understand. Of course.”

  Of course: he has been wounded. Disabled.

  His eyes!

  She’d off ended him, unwittingly. She saw the stiffness in his mouth, the pained half-smile.

  She knew, she must leave. She’d been lingering too long in this place. (Fortunately, no one had come in since she’d arrived. Just once the phone had rung, but Nicolas had made no effort to answer it, which was flattering to her.)

  Since her husband’s death—seven weeks, five days before this bleak November afternoon—Helene found herself in a kind of afterlife in which she often misspoke, miscalculated and misstepped. Often she wasn’t sure if she had spoken aloud since most of her speech had become interior, accusing and despairing, warning—Why am I here, what has brought me here? This desolate place—why?

  Even before her husband had died, during the hospital vigil of nine days in which his doctors had assured her he’d been steadily “improving,” these words had begun to assail her.

  And now since his death the answer came bluntly, cruelly—Why not here? Here is as good as anywhere.

  It was so: there could be no reason why the widow should be in one place and not another since all places were identical now: equidistant from her lost home.

  “Would you like a receipt, ma’am? For tax purposes?”

  Ma’am. Why did he not say Helene.

  “Thank you, no. That isn’t necessary. . . .”

  She’d been fumbling with the belt of her Burberry coat, that had loosened at her waist. All of her clothes fit her loosely now, even this coat.

  In the afterlife of the widow there is the fear, like the fear of stepping too close to the edge of a high building, or an abyss, of stumbling, falling—making a mistake that will be irrevocable. The warning came to her Say good-bye to him now. You must not embarrass yourself further.

  “You sure, ma’am? It’s my job, I’m happy to do.”

  She was sure! That this man would assume she would want to claim a tax deduction for so modest a donation—forty dollars’ worth, she’d estimated on the form—was insulting to her.

  Coolly she said good-bye to him, and turned to leave. Now that the magical intimacy between them was shattered, like a torn cobweb, Helene wanted to escape quickly. She hoped Nicolas would understand that she too had been off ended.

  How to get out of this place! Almost, Helene couldn’t find her way, though she’d managed to make her way in. No choice but to pass through a gauntlet of mirrors: a half-dozen mirrors, leaning against furniture and against a wall: reflecting the widow’s blurred and disjointed figure in a sequence of jerky images like a poorly sliced film.

  At the front door she heard the gravelly-voiced clerk call after her a belated Good-bye. And again Thanks, ma’am.

  This was hateful to her—ma’am.

  Quasi-respectful, yet cruel.

  She was not so very old—was she? Forty-six is not old.

  Too young for widow. Too young to lose your husband.

  Oh, but he died too young! What a tragedy.

  She was tugging at the damned door, for at first it would not open. She’d given no sign of hearing the man’s words for they were perfunctory and impersonal and she’d had enough of Helping Hands.

  For a moment, outside, Helene couldn’t recall where she was—this unfamiliar neighborhood of run-down buildings, cracked and littered pavement—where had she parked her car?—compulsively a widow searches her handbag, in craven terror of losing her keys.

  If the widow loses her keys, the widow will be doubly, trebly bereft—homeless, afoot.

  Across the street was a weatherworn stone church Helene hadn’t noticed before. Once a church of some distinction, judging by its size and the impressive masonry of its facade, but now its front door had been painted a jarringly bright yellow and there was a matching yellow sign with fire-engine red letters EMMANUEL BRETHREN CARING & SHARING—this too was a charitable organization of some kind, a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter. A half-dozen individuals—men, dark-skinned, judging by their appearance homeless and derelict—had assembled on the steps, awaiting entry.

  The walking wounded of America. Helene felt a stab both of guilt and of dread, that they would see her.

  A sudden revulsion came over her, for such places—caring & sharing, helping hands. Disabled.

  Quickly she walked to her car. After the stifling interior of Helping Hands even the tainted air of Trenton smelled fresh to her. Overhead the November sky mottled with storm clouds like soiled upholstery drew her eyes upward, in relief and exaltation.

  “Never again! But this once, it was right.”

  She could not have said why she was so happy. Like one who’d narrowly escaped a terrible danger.

  By dusk, in a crawl of traffic on northbound route 1, she’d returned to Quaker Heights.

  2.

  Not the next day, nor the next, but on the third day.

  For some mysterious turn had happened in the previous night, in sleep—and when the widow awakened, at first dazed, confused, not knowing where she was—(and why alone)—a new resolve came to her, fully formed, incontestable.

  “Yes. Of course!”

  Morning and into early afternoon she spent feverishly sorting through her husband’s clothing to bring a selection to South Falls Street, Trenton: several shirts, a handful of neckties, an Icelandic cableknit sweater, the beige cashmere blazer that was so beautiful, she could barely bring herself to remove it from the closet.

  Her heart felt torn, when she touched the blazer. Pressed her face against it. Then thinking But it will make someone else happy. He would want this.

  “Hello?”—boldly this time Helene entered the dim-lit thrift shop, knowing beforehand that the door was heavy and required being pushed-against with the weight of her slender body. And with breathless laughter for she gripped unwieldy garment bags in both arms, so long they trailed on the ground.

  He was taken by surprise. He stared at her with a look of startled recognition—“Ma’am? Is it—Mrs. Haidt?”

  It was a pleasure to Helene, to see how surprised Nicolas Zelinski was, that she’d returned.

  And so flattering, he remembered her.

  Quickly he came to her, in his loose limping stride, to take the heavy garment bags from her and lay them on a table.

  “You’re back! Is it—‘Helen’?”

  “‘Helene.’”

  Nicolas was staring at her. She saw not the quick-flashing smile that had verged upon insolence but another sort of smile, of recognition.

  And the intimacy of recognition: for each was revealed to the other, in the cluttered and twilit interior of Helping Hands.

  “Yes—I thought—I would brin
g a few more things. I . . .”

  Helene’s heart beat rapidly with relief, that Nicolas Zelinski had not forgotten her. For she’d been thinking of him a good deal, since the other afternoon.

  She’d driven from Quaker Heights on route 1 south into Trenton in thunderous traffic, eighteen-rig trucks and massive SUVs careening past her in the left lane, and throwing up skeins of spray onto her windshield, yet she hadn’t been intimidated; at the Market Street exit she hadn’t hesitated. A wild sort of elation, or recklessness, had guided her. The maze of one-way streets through derelict neighborhoods had not fazed her.

  To her disappointment Helene saw that Nicolas wasn’t alone this afternoon—he’d been setting up a display of small rugs, with the help of a coworker, a burly black man. The two had been struggling with odd-sized rugs that were intended to be spread out in a fan-like, imbricated fashion on the floor and on a wall to a height of about three feet; their faces shone with perspiration. Not one of the rugs was even reasonably attractive and Helene had the impression that the men hadn’t been working well together and that her interruption was welcome to both.

  Nicolas introduced Helene to his coworker Gideon—(Gideon’s surname was African-polysyllabic, passing by Helene like a floridly-feathered parrot)—telling him that Helene had brought a clothes contribution to Helping Hands just the day before.

  “Not yesterday—Monday. I was here on Monday.”

  But Helene only faintly protested, the point was so trivial.

  Nicolas was looking better-groomed than the other day. His lean jaws were clean-shaven, or nearly; his hair looked as if it had been recently shampooed and combed, flaring back from his forehead like a blue jay’s crest. The ridged and rippled scar tissue on his cheek seemed less inflamed. The stony-pale eyes were alert and alight and Helene felt weak, as they glided over her.

  “Mrs. Haidt—Helene—lives way up in Quaker Heights. You been up there in the van, Gid?—haven’t you?”

  Nicolas spoke almost boastfully. In his hoarse gravelly voice the name “Helene” was startling.

  Gideon shrugged but seemed to be saying yes. He was staring just a little too frankly at Helene, as if he didn’t think so very much of Quaker Heights. Helene saw his gaze drop to her feet—her Italian leather shoe-boots, that were not new, but clearly expensive—and lift to her face, the taut-skinned white-woman face, a small faint smile fixed like a prosthesis. Gideon was older than Nicolas Zelinski by several years, thick-set, short-legged, in a stained gray sweatshirt imprinted with red lettering—N.J. VETS HELPING HANDS—above the clasped-hands symbol that Helene thought so striking.

  Helene was touched that Nicolas seemed pleased to see her again. She’d hoped that he would react in this way and yet—she hadn’t been certain.

  But don’t ever doubt me. I am your friend, Helene.

  There followed then a magical interlude, after Nicolas told Gideon he could leave for the day: Helene removed her husband’s clothing from the garment bags, item by item, to display for Nicolas. She hoped that her hands weren’t trembling. She heard in her voice a strange eager buoyancy.

  “I thought I might as well bring a few more things for Helping Hands. Since no one will be wearing them any longer . . .”

  She paused. She hadn’t meant to say these words, exactly.

  No one. Any longer.

  Tactful Nicolas heard, but did not comment.

  Tactful Nicolas had surely seen the engagement and wedding rings on Helene’s finger, that had grown loose in recent weeks. But he was too sensitive of her feelings to comment.

  “. . . these are Brooks Brothers shirts, in quite good condition as you can see. This one is still in the dry cleaner’s bag, it was never removed. And this . . .”

  It was the Icelandic wool sweater, she’d given to her husband for a birthday, years ago. A beautiful thick-knit sweater, warm as a coat, of the hue of heather, with tortoiseshell buttons.

  “You might like this for yourself, Nicolas? ‘Icelandic wool’ . . .”

  Her eyes blurred with tears. Her voice quavered. Nicolas stood near. When Helene fumbled removing the heavy sweater from the garment bag Nicolas took it from her.

  Eagerly Helene asked if Nicolas would like to try it on?

  Nicolas glanced about, as if uneasy. But the shop was empty except for Helene and him: Gideon had left by a rear door.

  “Ma’am, I don’t know. It’s maybe kind of—expensive.”

  “Yes, but—it’s very warm. And it would suit you, I think.”

  “Would it!”

  “It has barely been worn, in fact. He—the previous owner—had so many lovely sweaters. . . .”

  “We’re not supposed to just take things for ourselves, ma’am. There’s records we’re supposed to keep for our files.”

  Helene took back the sweater from Nicolas and held it up against his chest. It was an impulsive gesture—an intimate gesture—but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances. “It looks as if it would fit you. And the color is so—subtle. Let me put it aside for right now, over here.”

  Next, Helene removed the beige cashmere blazer from the garment bag, on its special wooden hanger.

  “And this too, I think you should try on, Nicolas.”

  “Ma’am, thanks! But—”

  “Please call me ‘Helene.’ You know my name.”

  “‘Helene’—yes.”

  In the days and now weeks following her husband’s death, often Helene had found herself at opened closets, staring inside. Slowly and deliberately she moved at such times, as if her limbs were attached to her body in some rudimentary way, by sheer force of will. The mere act of seeing required such effort! Touching her husband’s beautiful clothes, leaning her face against them, to inhale their special, faint smell, she felt a sense of utter loss, grief, and then lassitude overcame her; her brain was struck dumb as if from lack of oxygen, for long dazed minutes she could not move.

  But no longer. Not since she’d discovered Helping Hands.

  She would explain to anyone who questioned her Now I will live for others. I have had enough of the old, self-enclosed life.

  For what is grief but self-pity. She must push herself beyond that, now.

  Feeling this almost girlish anticipation, excitement. And a kind of residual pride, that her husband’s clothes were of such high quality, and so tastefully chosen.

  Nicolas took up the cashmere blazer. An expression of something like pain came into his ravaged face. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and corduroy trousers and on his feet the battered hiking boots of the other day.

  With Helene’s encouragement and assistance, Nicolas pushed his arms into the blazer’s sleeves. Helene tugged at the sleeves which were slightly too short for Nicolas’s long arms, even as the shoulders appeared to be slightly too large for his narrow shoulders.

  “Here’s a mirror. Come look!”

  Almost shyly Nicolas came to stand before one of the mirrors. The contrast between his worn corduroy trousers and the dazzling blazer was such, he had to laugh.

  “Oh but the blazer looks wonderful on you, Nicolas! Maybe the sleeves could be adjusted by a tailor.”

  Nicolas gazed at his mirror-reflection, with an expression both abashed and pleased. Helene saw in the glass that his eyes were deep-socketed, and thin-lashed; the bony ridge above his eyes seemed to curve in a permanent scowl. His gaze locked with Helene’s.

  “Sure it’s nice. But maybe not for me. I could get in serious trouble, taking these things.”

  “You aren’t ‘taking,’ Nicolas—I am ‘giving.’ They are mine to give.”

  Helene spoke quickly, concerned that Nicolas would remove the blazer and lay it down beside the Icelandic sweater.

  Her husband’s beautiful things, rejected by him.

  With a kind of ritual precision Helene removed other articles of clothing from the garment bags—short-sleeved shirts, sport shirts, a cardigan sweater with leather-patch elbows, neckties. Her heart was lacerated—each of the neckties
was so beautiful, and each contained its own small story, now known only to Helene, and of no interest to anyone else. These items she didn’t offer directly to Nicolas though she hoped that he would see how very special they were, how precious.

  It was not the widow’s vanity, to see that the clothing she’d brought to this thrift shop was of a much, much higher quality than anything in sight.

  Nonetheless Nicolas removed the cashmere blazer. Thoughtfully he returned it to its hanger and set it aside, with the Icelandic sweater and not with the other articles of clothing Helene had brought.

  Which seemed to mean—he would keep them for himself?

  Did it seem strange to Helene, that Nicolas hadn’t asked about her husband, or anything about the circumstances of her life that had brought her to Helping Hands?

  She thought Of course he knows. By instinct he knows.

  She thought This man knows my heart.

  It wasn’t clear that anything had been decided but Helene supposed it was time for her to leave. The November afternoon had quickly waned, what she could see of South Falls Street through the murky front window of the shop was near-twilight. A vehicle with lighted headlights lumbered by.

  Very rarely, Helene had spoken to her husband in this voice of subtle coercion, for in their relationship her husband had been the stronger-willed, as he’d been older. But now with this stranger Helene heard herself persist, with uncharacteristic ardor: “Nicolas, I hope that you’ll keep the blazer and the sweater, at least—they’re for you. I wouldn’t have brought them otherwise.”

  Nicolas held himself stiffly. In the mirror, stubbornly his face was averted from the woman.

  Half pleading she said: “You’re deserving of so much, Nicolas. You are a veteran—aren’t you? You’ve been wounded, I think—haven’t you?”

  Nicolas shrugged. “Have I!”

  “I mean—you’ve served in the army. You’ve served your country.”

  Served your country—what flat banal language—yet Helene had no other words.

  “You’ve had that experience, that few of your fellow citizens have had.”

  Not one person Helene knew, in fact. Not one person in her or her husband’s extended families, nor certainly in the family of any friend, acquaintance or neighbor in affluent Quaker Heights.