The Corn Maiden: And Other Nightmares

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Gideon returned, and Helene led the men into the basement, by a staircase adjacent to the kitchen. Here was a back corridor that led to another wing of the house, overlooking an expanse of wooded land.

  Switching on a light, descending into the basement, Helene had the terrible—unbidden and baseless—thought that these strangers could shove her down the stairs, cause her to fall and crack her skull, rob her. . . .

  Who would know? And when?

  This was absurd of course. Helene would have been deeply ashamed, if either of the men knew what she’d been thinking. Particularly, Helene was not a racist.

  Neither she nor her husband had ever been, in any of their sympathies, racists.

  Nor was Birnam Wood, still less Quaker Heights, segregated by race.

  At the foot of the stairs were two doors: one to the left, that led into the finished part of the basement, which contained the family room with its large flat-screen TV and attractive furnishings, an exercise room and her husband’s wine cellar; the other, that led into the large, unheated and unfinished part of the basement containing the furnace, hot water heater, electrical boxes and switches and the door and steps to the outside of the house. This was not a part of the basement in which Helene felt comfortable for it was chilly and smelled faintly of backed-up drains; the things it contained—furnace, switches—she did not understand and dreaded that they might break down. The majority of the space was used for storage and contained items long ago exiled from the upstairs—furniture, lamps, cartons of clothing, books. None of these things was shabby or useless and yet none had been seen upstairs for years. An upholstered cobbler’s bench with a frayed wicker back, a coffee table in Scandinavian blond wood with a just slightly cracked glass top, orphaned dining room chairs, box springs and headboards, Venetian blinds, folded curtains layered in dust . . . Helene did not want to look too closely at a white leather sofa that had once been the pride of their living room, or at boxes of college textbooks her husband had been reluctant to part with though acknowledging that probably he would never read the books again.

  Annually the subject had come up: they should call one of the charity organizations, Goodwill perhaps, to come and haul away the things accumulating in the basement, for much here was in good condition, usable and even valuable. But neither had ever gotten around to doing it and now the task fell to the smiling widow.

  “Nicolas, Gideon—here we are! Please take all these things away. Just in this room, not in the other part of the basement—not in the ‘family room.’ All this furniture, these boxes, clothing . . .” Helene’s voice faltered. She saw both men looking at her with—sympathy? pity? She supposed it was routine in their lives, Helping Hands summoned to take away clothes and household possessions after a death in the family.

  She was routine in Nicolas’s eyes. Yet she could not believe that, so much had passed between them.

  “The door to the outside is here, I can open it for you.”

  Helene tugged at the door, and managed to open it. Mossy stone steps led up, outside. There was a smell of wintry damp, earth. Helene hadn’t used these steps for years though furnace repairmen, plumbers and electricians used them routinely.

  Immediately, without hesitation, like a practiced team, Nicolas and his frowning dark-skinned coworker hoisted up tables, chairs. Helene stepped out of the way as they headed for the opened door. It was striking to her, how efficient and capable both men were, at a task that would have defeated her both physically and emotionally.

  She’d thought that she might oversee the pickup, to speak with Nicolas perhaps, but felt a touch of vertigo, as of inexpressible sorrow, and went back upstairs.

  Through a back window she observed the men carrying furniture across a stretch of lawn and to the van, for just a few minutes. The impersonality of what she saw made her feel weak, debilitated. She wondered if she’d made a terrible and irremediable mistake—what urgent need was there to clear out stored things in the basement, now that her husband had departed?

  His college textbooks! Helene felt a stab of something like anguish, that these books would be hauled into the dim-lit interior of Helping Hands, dumped into a bin with other unwanted books, to be sold for pennies.

  Of course: she’d hoped that Nicolas would come to the house, and she’d hoped he would come alone.

  She had several precious things to give to him—one of her husband’s Savile Row suits, his black wool overcoat, a floral-print shirt from Liberty of London.

  “Will you have something to drink? Coffee, fruit juice . . .”

  By the time the men had finished hauling her things out to the van, and brought the printed form for Helene to sign, she’d recovered from her spell of melancholy; she’d hurried upstairs to put on makeup, lipstick; she’d knotted a pink-striped silk scarf around her neck. In the mirror she’d looked surprisingly young, even radiant.

  “. . . you’ve worked so hard! Please let me give you something before you leave. . . .”

  Despite the cold air, the men were warm from their exertions. Hesitating at first, Nicolas unzipped his windbreaker and allowed Helene to take it from him, to drape over the back of a kitchen chair; Gideon unfolded a handkerchief and wiped his dark, oily face.

  At first the men asked for ice water. Then, Nicolas asked if Helene had any beer.

  “If you got any, ma’am. Otherwise, no matter.”

  Beer! It wasn’t yet noon.

  Helene laughed, and brought two bottles of German lager from the refrigerator. For weeks—now, months—these bottles had been at the back of the refrigerator. Helene had been reluctant to remove them—she hadn’t wanted to remove any of her husband’s things—his special fig jam, his favorite black olives, even a chunk of hardened Gorgonzola cheese. These bottles of beer Helene was delighted to serve to the Helping Hands men who’d worked so hard.

  They were self-conscious at first, sitting at the breakfast table. Helene gave them glasses to pour the beer into but they preferred to drink from the bottles. She set out a plate of multigrain bread, sliced cheddar cheese, black olives. She went away, and returned with the Savile Row suit, the black wool overcoat, the floral-print shirt from Liberty, all on hangers. Both men were eating hungrily when she returned.

  She saw in Nicolas’s eyes an understanding that yes, he knew these beautiful articles of clothing were for him personally; but no, he did not want Helene to say anything, in Gideon’s presence.

  “I’d forgotten these. I’d meant to bring them downstairs with the other things, but . . .”

  On a hook in the kitchen Helene hung the suit, the overcoat, the floral-print shirt.

  The men mumbled thanks ma’am! As quickly they downed their beers.

  Gideon asked to use a bathroom and Helene directed him to the guest bathroom in the back hall, with its William Morris– style wallpaper, rose-marble sink and brass faucets, a glistening spotless pale-rose ceramic toilet; in a marble soap dish, fragrant hand-soap stamped Dior. When Gideon returned to the kitchen, Nicolas asked to use the bathroom.

  Without asking if they wanted a second beer—(for Helene could see that they were restless, wanting to leave)—Helene brought out two more bottles of lager from the refrigerator. By this time the plate of bread and cheese had been emptied and Helene sliced more bread, more cheese, set out more black olives and a little bowl of cashews.

  It was painful to her—she did not want the men to leave! Desperately she wanted them to stay a while longer, to talk with her—not as Mrs. Haidt, not as a well-to-do donor to their organization, but as an equal, and a friend. But when she asked the men about their lives—particularly, what had brought them to Helping Hands, what their experiences in the army had been—Gideon frowned and shrugged, and would not meet Helene’s eye; Nicolas was silent at first, staring at his feet, then, abruptly, he began telling Helene that the worst mistake he’d ever made had been to enlist in the U.S. Army but—at the same time—what the army brought him to in the Middle East was a “revelation” to him,
he wouldn’t have had at home.

  “See, the way the world is. Seeing it in movies and TV isn’t the real thing, the war-thing, you have got to be in it.”

  Gideon grunted, and grinned. These harsh words of Nicolas’s, he agreed with.

  Helene asked uneasily what did Nicolas mean? She was sitting across from the men at the breakfast table, her arms folded tightly beneath her breasts as if she were cold, and trying not to shiver. Sitting only just eighteen inches from Nicolas, and from Gideon, she felt that she herself was on the brink of a profound revelation, no neighbor of hers in Birnam Wood would ever know.

  Nor could her poor, deceased husband have known. His widow had gone so far beyond him, now.

  “What do I mean? What’d you think I mean, ma’am? Getting shipped over to Iraq, trained to be a soldier ‘defending democracy’—with a rifle—for a while, inside a tank—firing at whatever was out there, from a tank—sure we killed people, why not? That’s what we were sent there for.”

  Helene was disconcerted, Nicolas smiled so frankly at her. Yet his voice was jeering, derisive.

  “But you—you were a soldier, Nicolas. You hadn’t any choice. . . .”

  “Civilians, too. ‘Iraqis’”—contemptuously the word sounded from Nicolas’s lips: Eeer rak eees—“some of them women, old people shrieking like pigs being slaughtered—kids . . . First I thought, Jesus! This ain’t right, we’re Americans!—then, seeing what the other guys did, I thought, Why the fuck not? Prob’ly I won’t be coming back anyway, who gives a shit.”

  Helene shrank from Nicolas, shocked and off ended. His eyes on her were disdainful. Noisily he drained his bottle of German lager, laughed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “So? You don’t want to hear, Mrs. Haidt? Why’d you ask, then? All of you—‘civilians’—always ask, and always regret it. Why’d you call me, to come here?”

  “I—I—called Helping Hands—to make a donation. . . .”

  “Like hell. Ma’am, you called me.”

  Helene had stumbled to her feet, drawing away. Confusedly she thought that—if something happened—she could run into another part of the house: her husband’s downstairs study.

  There, she could lock the door. She could dial 911.

  Gideon said he was out of here, and left the house; Nicolas lingered to finish the remainder of the food. He ate with his fingers hungrily, insolently. Within minutes he’d seemed to become drunk, an elated and violent sort of drunk, repulsive to Helene. Boastfully he was telling her about what a feeling it is, outside the “U.S. territory of law”—“like, free to do any God-damn thing you want to, your buddies will look the other way that’s why they are called buddies.” Seeing the look in Helene’s face he leaned close to her, telling her that the rehab hospital he’d been in, in New Brunswick, wasn’t just for “physical trauma” but “psy-chi-at-tic” too: “See, thing is, ma’am—Gid and me, we’re both dead. You’d thought it was some live vets coming out in the van but thing is, we are dead.”

  Laughing, Nicolas lurched to his feet. “Good-bye, ma’am! Thanks for these! ’Bye!” Carelessly he seized her husband’s beautiful suit, overcoat, floral-print shirt as if they were ordinary articles of cast-off clothing, slung them across his arms, and left the house.

  His companion, who had trotted around the corner of the house to get the van, drove now to the circle driveway where Nicolas climbed inside and both men drove away.

  In a state of shock, Helene stood unmoving for several minutes. Then, she went to check the guest bathroom: the toilet had not been flushed. The towel on the rack had been used roughly, soiled and wet and twisted. Was something missing from the sink counter?—the marble soap dish? The expensive Dior soap was in the sink as if it had been flung there.

  Not Nicolas but Gideon must have done this. Helene could not believe that her friend who’d admired her so, could have done this.

  Flushing the toilet, turning away.

  Then, she hurried downstairs to check the unfinished basement—all of the furniture, all of the clothes and other items were gone. Though this had been Helene’s directive, now she felt a further shock for how bare, how vast the basement was, how grubby the concrete floor! You could see the outlines of objects that had been stored here for years; silhouettes in the floor, only just slightly less dirty than the rest of the floor.

  The door to the outside had been left carelessly ajar. Helene went to close and lock it.

  Helene left the unfinished basement and would have returned upstairs except, impulsively, she opened the door to the finished basement, the “family room”—and saw in disbelief that this room, too, had been emptied.

  The men had taken away the sofa, the chairs—the coffee table—even the carpet; they’d managed to detach and haul away the fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV. They’d taken away the exercise machines—treadmill, StairMaster—that had not been used for years. The door to the wine cellar was ajar; Helene had no need to look inside to know that Helping Hands had emptied the shelves of wine bottles.

  In the vacated room Helene stood trembling. On the floor of this room as in the wake of a whirlwind were left-behind, broken things—pottery, a small lamp, vases containing dried grasses and wildflowers. She was too numb to know what to do. Thinking But it has to be a mistake—doesn’t it? This could not be deliberate. She saw again the derision in the man’s eyes—That’s what I was sent there for. Why’d you ask!

  6.

  She began to see the van in the neighborhood.

  From an upstairs window she saw the metallic-colored van with red lettering on its side—Helping Hands—passing her driveway to turn into a neighbor’s house.

  And elsewhere in Birnam Wood, and in Quaker Heights—there was the bullet-shaped vehicle making its slow determined way along tree-lined circuitous streets. Among the elegant Colonials, French Normandy, quasi-Edwardian, quasi-Georgian houses set back from curving lanes with names like Eucalyptus Way, Pheasant Hill, Deer Hill Drive, Pilgrim Lane, Old Mill and Birnam Wood Pass—the red letters Helping Hands. Daily in the rolling hills of Quaker Heights were vehicles bearing lawn crews, carpenters, roofers, painters, Guatemalan housemaids—a continuous stream of service vehicles—and among these the Helping Hands van was not so very different from the rest.

  Helene saw, and felt a jolt of emotion—alarm, dread—but also something like envy. For he might be coming to another woman’s house, and not to her.

  She had not called 911, to report theft. She could not have sworn—the Helping Hands men might testify to this—that she’d made it absolutely clear, she had not wanted them to enter the finished part of the basement. A misunderstanding—maybe.

  One night she saw an ambulance pull into the driveway of the neighbor’s house, which the Helping Hands van had visited that morning. The wailing siren had wakened her from a sedative sleep. At the corner of Birnam Wood Circle and Foxcroft Lane was a fieldstone manor with a remarkable slate roof, larger than Helene’s house. She recalled—a widow lived in that house. An older woman, in her sixties, whose husband had died before Helene’s husband, the previous spring. How remote it had seemed to Helene, the death of a man in his sixties! A widow in her sixties! Helene had not known the couple well but she’d walked over to the house, after a few days, to bring potted flowers to the bereaved woman; the woman had been gracious to Helene but distracted, clearly she’d preferred to be alone.

  Helene dreaded now to learn what might have happened to Mrs. Windriff.

  7.

  Why’d you ask me. Why’d you send for me.

  In the twilight of her bedroom he came to her. His face was shadowed, the quick-flashing bared teeth and the glisten of his eyes were all she could see of his face. She knew his smell: unmistakable. Her body tensed against him. Her heart was beating close to bursting. Her shoulders, her back, her hips and buttocks, her straining head, were pinned against the bed by the weight of his body. His hands on her throat, fingers tightening. You called me, you wanted me here. This is what you wan
ted. Through the house there was a heavy pulsing silence. The grandfather clock in the downstairs hall had ceased its solemn chiming weeks before. For in the Haidt household it had been Helene’s husband who oversaw the Stickley clock, inherited from his family. Helene had begun to realize that she hadn’t been hearing the clock for—how long? The tolling of time had simply ceased.

  For this is death—the tolling of time has ceased.

  Yet the man did not strangle her. His fingers relaxed—then again tightened, and again relaxed—tightened, relaxed: this was mercy, that he would allow her to breathe. For the gift of breath was the man’s to give her, it was not for her to take.

  Weakly she pushed at the man, whose coarse skin scraped against her skin, the scarred and pitted face, the stubbled jaws, a mouth like a sucking predator-fish. One of his legs was atrophied, the thigh-muscles badly wasted, yet still he was strong, pinning her against the bed, paying no heed to her cries, her pleas and her desperation, she had not wanted this, she had wanted the man as a friend, as a companion, as a lover who would love her—she had not wanted this. His hand slapped over her mouth, to silence her. His gritty hand that tasted of salt and dirt, to silence her. Her head struck against the headboard like the rapping of knuckles on a door until—at last—something gave, something broke, the door opened and she fell through.

  8.

  Now in the wintry morning in the circle drive outside the widow’s front door, the metallic-colored van with HELPING HANDS in red letters on the side.

  Just inside the door she crouched, panting. Barefoot and her hair in her face. She could not see who was driving the van—sunshine reflected from the windshield, blinding.

  She would not! Not ever.

  A Hole in the Head

  Strange!—though Dr. Brede wore latex gloves when treating patients and never came into direct contact with their skin, when he peeled off the thin rubber gloves to toss them into the sanitary waste disposal in his examination room his hands were faintly stained with rust-red streaks—blood ?